Formal Logic vs Hegelian Bullshit

Formal logic—the thing that all edgy Hegelians like to shit on. It is simply too "normie" for our taste. Imagine dealing with logic that goes in a straight line—where identity statements do not entail their obverse. Imagine thinking knowing is to acquire concepts and schemas and not to experience a full-blown acid trip of elevating the Understanding through Reason. Imagine when your jargon isn't capitalized for looks and poeticized with fancy grammar for vibe.

The proponents of formal logic can usually decimate any taunt from the Hegelian with a simple retort: imagine writing a system so needlessly complex that no one understands what it means, misinterpreting you constantly to the point where no one wants to give a shit about your abstract as fuck systems of logic.

Yet, the Hegelian would say "of course we are terribly complex, but so is the world! Your attempts at reducing it into your 'simple' logic is a harrowing butchering of logic, making it into a mere sophist weapon of abstraction."

Indeed, the real world is definitely not where formal logic shines. Think of economic theories—those are founded on formal logic. In the consensus of economists, it's recognized that they are merely models attempting to describe and identify trends within the world, and almost none work 100%. Keynesian economics had its shining point in the last century, but it quickly ended with the stagflation of the 70s: the truth of this economics has paradoxical character, time limit.

Formal logic perhaps suffers from even more tragic defeats in history. When asked why the West advanced so much ahead of other regions towards the industrial age, formal logic fails to provide a definite answer. Some might say it's due to colonialism, while others might say it's due to the openness of western societies at the time—there is no definite, truthful answer that formal logic demands. In the end, we often find ourselves at flimsy conclusions such as "x is definitely a factor that influenced y along with other factors such as z through a process A, but we must consider radical new possibilities." In other words, formal logic often finds itself, when applied on a large scale, caught between rigor—the eideticness of truth—and content—the faithfulness to reality.

More so that it gets "blinded" from the real conclusion: there is no solution to this problem—there is no answer to why the west was more technologically and socially advanced than the rest of the cultures, to why colonialism happened, to why the Soviet Union collapsed.

The world, as Hegelians recognized, is chaotic, influenced by so many factors that we cannot even begin to cognize (and those who take this maxim to the extreme, such as Deleuze, would say "factor" is even a bad way to characterize how crazy the world actually is). For example, us—the subject cognizing the world—is one such factor in arriving at historical truths. What is defined by the structural circumstance at the time may well influence our thinking: the enlightenment was seen as the absolute good and liberal movement by many from the 18th to the 19th century, but as we witnessed the fragility of systems developed by the enlightenment, we began to critically assess it, reject it, unveiling its dialectical contradictions.

Which assessment from the two periods is true? The answer is neither is "true" and both are true. Neither is true in the sense that we characterize the Enlightenment distinctively in two periods because of our ideological character of that time. The liberal movement had a mix of liberal ideals but wanted to preserve certain elements of old times—such as Christian morality. In contrast, the development of Marxism and the terrors of WWII radicalized intellectuals into a critical assessment of it—the Frankfurt School, for example, became critical of the Enlightenment precisely because they saw its ideal's perverted obverse, fascism. The two assessments find their foundations in the subjectiveness of ideology: contrasted from conclusions we make in science, there is no factual or material basis to these conclusions. Therefore, modern debates in formal logic that stem from them are also ideological for they create the illusion of an absolute, abstract truth—an illusion that such truth can be derived from exploring the intricacies and rabbit holes of the topic—that hides the real Truth: ideology.

Is not the example of Jordan Peterson made flesh? His defense of the Enlightenment is precisely of formal logic: it provided the genesis of human rights and other important ideals that laid the foundations of western society, so it is one of, perhaps, the greatest intellectual tides in history. His ignorance of the limits of such ideals for a long period—human rights certainly not extended to the oppressed native Americans, to the tortured people of the Congo, and the slaughtered Latin American workers—and its perversion—Enlightenment ideals provided the ideological ammunition for colonial empires to justify their anti-human atrocities (the rhetoric is colonialism brought precisely Enlightenment ideals to the natives). Is not such a stand ideological? It represses Peterson's subliminal message—Euro/Anglo-centric conservatism and Christian morality—through the neutral terms of "logic debate," much like how ideology is repressed in signifiers like money. Does this not precisely fit the framework of formal logic: find arguments and refute them. The critic of Peterson here could well find arguments against him, but will inevitably fall within the same trap as his opponent—repression.

On the other hand, both assessments are simultaneously true. Both assessments from the two periods stand for a correct interpretation of the Enlightenment at that time: for the liberals who just emerged from the dark ages of monarchic and religious oppression, who just realized the unjustness of the system they lived in, the Enlightenment really was a beacon of progress. As for the post-WWII intellectuals, the powerlessness and perversion of the Enlightenment was fully manifested, appearing as absolutely true too.

It is precisely this paradoxical and chaotic nature of the world that formal logic misses. Perhaps as hinted with the Peterson example, formal logic ignores and creates this illusion of progress and debate of precisely the most abstract content without realizing the relation of the subject and the material world. In our case of the Enlightenment (or, broadly speaking, history), this relation is embodied in ideology—our ideological situation influences our assessment. Without the realization of this relation—which formal logic represses—we will never be able to see the "full truth": the paradox of historical appraisals as both "true" and "untrue" (and its further implications such as the retroactivity of history). We are instead caught up in this abstract word game, where we deduce conclusions that appear objective and true without realizing the repressed ideology behind them.

Perhaps now we understand why formal logic fails to account for the real world—the complex relations between subject and object, the contradictions impossible within the framework of formal logic. Then, the dedication of formal logic to the eideticness and purity of truth ironically becomes its downfall. The devotion to eideticness becomes falsity since formal logic cannot account for the real world in its paradoxical chaos. The devotion to purity becomes hypocrisy since the abstractness of formal logic dictates that it must repress negative content, which eventually leads to the perversion of logic into ideology (as with Peterson).

However, this debate is by no means over. There exists an equally ironic and repressed negative content for dialectical logic: language. The language of the dialectic, due to its complex and contradicting nature, seems to constitute a power structure that "tricks" people into believing the truth. Perhaps Bertrand Russell's peremptory dismissal of Hegel as a charlatan has some basis: his language offers no possibility for layman or beginner to critically examine his philosophy. Then, ironically, dialectical logic now falls under the same criticism as it has on formal logic: it ignores and represses its elitism.