Chapter 4/9

Remember Heraclitus and the unity of opposites (thesis and antithesis)? Remember he said that conflict is the source of everything? Now look at your triangle, at the bottom corners, your thesis and antithesis, and give your attention to the line between them. This line carries their differences, puts them into active conflict, puts our mind into tension. Thought is the business of recognizing both ends of the line–thesis and antithesis–and seeking the best way to resolve the tension between.

The answer may come quickly or it may take hours, months, or years. Meanwhile the thesis and antithesis (antitheses) are in dialogue with each other in a growing DIALECTICal tension. Feeling the tension, you go to a specialist for a second opinion. The new physician sees no need for surgery. Now the tension increases between two medical opinions. What should you do? You trust your family doctor, but the specialist is the best in the state. Weeks pass, weeks of indecision and anxiety. Subconscious tension builds. You lose sleep, become irritable, eat all the time, and your condition worsens.

You decide to go ahead with surgery, but meanwhile you have begun googling for help. Repeatedly you find reference to a new medicine for your problem. You ask your doctor about it. He tells you that surgery and the new medication together would work the best.

After surgery you are given a prescription for the new drug, and within a few months everything has cleared up and you feel like your old self again. You are now at the peak of the Hegelian triangle/triad. You have reached a synthesis of the thesis and antithesis.

Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis–the recurrent pattern of the DIALECTIC according to Georg Hegel. The synthesis does not come about as a gradual progression from a foundational beginning. Rather, it is through the opposition between a thesis with which you take your stand and an antithesis that stands in challenging opposition to it. It is a struggle, tension, uncertainty that rules until a synthesis finally emerges. Rather than a smooth and gradual movement up the side angles, it is more as if the synthesis pops directly up, jumps out of the tension between surgery and the options.

It is a rule of the Hegelian DIALECTIC that every thesis has an antithesis. Moreover, every synthesis comes to be seen as a more satisfying place to take our stand. Thus, it becomes our new thesis. It doesn’t take long to realize that there are new antitheses, and the process starts all over again.

In this book I will not limit the DIALECTIC to the Hegelian version of it, but his systematic logic is very useful. We will refer to it often.