-----Original Message-----
From: Tahir Wood <twood at uwc.ac.za>
>>You
>>don't need much Hegel to recognize the need for a synthesis.
>>Lou Paulsen
>>
Wood: Actually for this you mustn't know any Hegel at all. Synthesis is something superimposed onto Hegel by people who didn't understand aufhebung or supercession. If you did know any Hegel, far from wanting a synthesis, you would want something way, way better than the ham-fisted Leninists or the anarchist demagogues. (God just imagine how ghastly the two rolled up into one would be!)
me: Well, you don't need MUCH Hegel, but you need more Hegel than Wood has. The 'synthesis' is not just an arithmetic average of the thesis and the antithesis!! It is something that overcomes the contradiction between the two by putting forward something new, and would, in this case, be 'way, way better.' No time to elaborate on this at this moment though.
lp