A Reflective Note for Dialectical Thinkers

Cadell Last

Abstract


The dominant forms of thought today exist as either deconstructive or metalinguistic structures.  Here we attempt to situate dialectical thinking as a constructive meta-mediation of this opposition between deconstruction and metalanguage.  Dialectical thinking offers us a way to think about the processual nature of reason itself as a force of thought mediating being.  In this mode of understanding we attempt to think the possibility of articulating the meaning and importance of ‘metaontology’ defined as the ontology of epistemology.  In a metaontology we treat the structure of concepts not as reflecting external territory (map is territory), nor as existing at a distance from external territory (map is not the territory), but as having their own territory (geometry) (i.e. maps as territory).  We attempt to approach metaontology by reflectively observing the singularity of the author’s own internal territorial map, revealing a ‘quadratic twisted circularity’; and also the movement of the symbolic order itself, revealing a possible invariant unsymbolizable real.  From these reflections we dive into the foundations of dialectical thinking, starting with Plato, and then exploring modifications introduced by Hegel and Lacan.  Finally, we offer a dialectical structure of knowledge for the 21st century.  This offering is meant only as an offer, a consideration, for how dialectics can be deployed at the location of key antagonisms in the contemporary field.  The hope is that future dialecticians

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