Dialectics as Immanent Critique. Or, Dialectics as Both Ontology and Epistemology with a Practical Intention

Abstract

This response to Asger Sørensen’s paper From Ontology to Epistemology: Tong, Mao and Hegel is made on the basis of a reflection on the author’s intellectual development with special reference to the idea of ‘dialectics’. This development is mainly composed of three periods, in which the author formed his strong antipathy toward dialectics as a mere tool of power (in the 1970s), learnt to understand the importance of ‘dialogical logic’ in providing conceptual tools for human knowledge of a type of reality which is both objective and subjective – human practices (in the 1980s) – and attempted to understand the ‘dialectics of rationalization’ by integrating ‘dialectics’ in the Western tradition of Critical Theory with the Chinese tradition of ‘dialectics’ systematically interpreted by Feng Qi (1915-1995) since the 1990s.

Ovaj odgovor na poglavlje Asgera Serensena Od ontologije do epistemologije: Tong, Mao i Hegel je formulisan na temelju refleksije o autorovom intelektualnom razvoju sa posebnim osvrtom na ideju ,dijalektikeʻ. Ovaj razvoj se sastoji iz tri perioda, u kojima je autor razvio jaku antipatiju prema dijalektici kao jednostavnoj alatki moći (u 1970-im), i razumeo značaj ,dijaloške logikeʻ u pružanju pojmovnih oruđa za ljudsko spoznavanje one vrste realnosti koja je istovremeno objektivna i subjetivan – ljudskih praksi (u 1980-im) – i pokušao da razume ,dijalektiku racio nalizacijeʻ integrišući ,dijalektikuʻ iz zapadne tradicije kritičke teorije sa kineskom tradicijom ,dijalektikeʻ sistematski interpretiranom u delima Feng Ćija (1915-1995) u 1990-im.