Hierarchy Index Cards - H
Card-H-28-01. Hegel.
DEH: Whole and Parts - one of H’s basic conceptions. Any part of whole is what it is because of its relation to system as a whole and to the other parts. Thus in living organisms each organ is what it is because it is part of a whole. No part can arise or survive unless it is sustained by the others and helps to sustain them… H. extends this doctrine to all truth and reality = organic theory of truth and reality (since everything is determined by its relations to everything else.
I analyse this theory and make it more explicit in the 8 [hierarchy], which shows how the part is determined by the whole and determines the whole.
And in 8 [hierarchy] the factor of time is included, so that the organism teleologically determines the behaviour and structure of its parts and vice versa.
Card-H-28-09-Hegel
“All determination is negation.” Hegel uses this dictum of Spinoza’s. When you define a term and assert it has certain properties you deny it has others…
Any thesis implies its antithesis, and the 2 are united in a higher synthesis in which their opposition is aufgehoben, reconciled, overcome in larger unity…
What any monad is, is determined by what the monad isn’t. In other words a monad’s relations make the monad what it is. The relations must therefore be regarded as “internal” to the monad. This is what I mean by the term “extension”. Include the monad’s extensions and one comes to a new inclusive whole, the monad’s first super-self, the monad which is next above it in the hierarchy. This is the first synthesis. But this new inclusive monad is what it is by virtue of what it is not. And so on. By postulating first what a thing is, then by realising that what it is is related to what it is not, and finally by realising that we must include both in a new whole — by this dialectic we reach the Whole.
Parts II and II are this dialectic in space and space-time respectively, described in detail. Chap 20, 21, and 22, are this dialectic in terms of mind.
All being, all process — physical and mental — is such a dialectical process. The 8 [hierarchy] is the symbol of the dialectic process.
Card-H-28-13-Hegel
DH: …negation is the means by which affirmation is driven to a higher synthesis. Only the antithesis, the not A, which demands to be overcome, makes inclusion possible. Growth must have its outside material, its food, struggle its opposition, work its material.
So also differentiation must have its wholes to differentiate. At every sage affirmation and negation imply one another and give concreteness.
Dragram. For A to process to B, the opposite process of B’’s regress to A’ is necessary
Index Card H-28
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