Good article. I agree to most of what he says except for his interpretation that "synthesis" is not a feature of the 'trinity'.
I never read enough of Hegel directly but to most especially how Karl Marx used this with regards to history. Although I remembered finding difficulty in what I read of his years ago, I completely understand the underlying logic and disagree with Bertrand Russel's take on it as commented above. I too highly value Russel's work, btw, and you guys must note that his greatest effective philosophy was done at the turn of the century. His 'loss' of any fortunes may reasonably be due to his and Whitehead's investment in "Principia Mathematica" a GIANT three-volume tome that, while well invested in to trying to prove everything logically from 'scratch', would hardly be something that a mere handful of people EVER read!! And worse, Godel's "Incompleteness Theorem" was sufficient by the dates above to indicate no one would waste their time to buy any more of Bertrand's largest investment.
But that is a digression and a topic for some other place. As to Hegel and the Trinity, I assure you that while we don't have a lot of extant material discussing the origins of this in history, it HAD to be a process of the thinking from even as far back as ancient ancient Egyptian history as you can see tell-tale traces of the thinking in what we actually have of their religion and language.
I almost think that I'm like a reincarnation in part of Hegel and so can actually address this in modern terms. It has to begin by questioning META-logic, the logic of logic itself. I have a feeling that I could write a book here and so to avoid my own desire to completely explain this from scratch, let me point out the 'logic of Trinity'.
In most traditional forms of logic, one must find a way to begin with rules ABOUT the logic one is going to use. But most such logic can be derived in various ways, just as there are a potential infinite ways to redesign a computer programming language (a logic). As such, many have tried to reduce this to what is most 'minimal'. A search for understanding reality begins in logic and for some, like Hegel, this must begin by assuming ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. But we are biased to think that
at the least, and ABSOLUTE SOMETHING must be true merely based on our presence to even question reality. (I'm guessing Decartes may have had his contemporary "Method" in mind that also certainly derived from lost ancient dialectic.)
Given some ABSOLUTE concept like, 'totality' OR our own existence as, 'I', the question to first ask is whether something or nothing was an origin. To most, as I've pointed out, nothing, and especially an absolute form of it, could not cause anything because it lacks anything-ness to initiate reality. I prefer to point out though that if we begin with some ABSOLUTE NOTHING, not even "laws" themselves exist there. So this means not even a 'law' of logical form that distinguishes between what is or is not contradictory. NOR could it speak on what is 'consistent', a necessary universal idea derived as "identity" [con- (with), -sis- (same), -ness (nature or state)].
So if you begin with ABSOLUTE NOTHING, it is both 'true' and 'false', among an infinity of other things. The 'true' part of it though suggests that it MUST be 'consistent', or stay BEING ABSOLUTE NOTHING. How can it require such a 'law' when it is 'lawless', though? It isn't necessary to question how or why, but given that an infinity of what isn't real can be imagined, it seems reasonable that where no law is concerned, it can also BREAK that 'law' simply because there is no resistance against this. As such, Absolute Nothing BECOMES Something.
But as SOON as it is, the state of reality needs to SPLIT to provide a place for remaining ABSOLUTE NOTHING
AND ANYTHING OTHER. This conjunction IS that third factor. It is what we refer to as "contradiction". But now that it has established itself, existence itself "SYNTHESIZES" a kind of 'repair'. The 'splitting' of totality occurs at each contradiction that exists given any (1)X, that assures some (2)non-X, but proves that there is a greater 'place' that includes them both as (3) X and non-X.
The third factor is what is the 'conflict' AND the FORCE of reality that demands resolution, the 'synthesis'. We usually discard contradictions. But if reality itself does this, it does not, it just distinctly MAKES IT WORK: The resolution of (3) is to MAKE it true by definition. This to logic is a process of "denial". So, to make (3) non-contradictory is to realize (X and non-X) is identical to denying it as NOT(X and non-X). To those attuned to logic, this is done by negating the terms distributively: (not-X not-and not-non-X) == (non-X OR X). But this is thus keeping the original (3) but look at it by a DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE.
I've drawn a diagram at some point on this very site that illustrates this but don't know where it is right now. Basically it is like this:
- Perspective of A&B versus AorB
- 2016-11-24_AorB.png (5.47 KiB) Viewed 3659 times
Looking vertically, (A AND B) is included in that line; Distinctly (disjuctively), taking EACH distinctly, the distinct arrows horizontally, this is
(A OR B).
So, where originally, if you start out horizonally, and making A = not B,
- My logical 'trinity' example
- Trinity in logic.png (11.89 KiB) Viewed 3660 times
[I used A = X and B = non-X; Also, though I didn't indicate it, the third is representative of a conjuction horizontally and a disjuction vertically. That is the 'dimensioning' I refer to in this post. Also, if this is to represent spatial description, you can rearrange this by placing (2) to the right instead to get a sense of the 'symmetry' when dealing with actual coordinate spaces.]
The first A, is the "Thesis" (proposition), the second is its denial or "Anti-thesis", and the third is the state of contradiction being (A and not-A).
The contradiction justifies resolving the conflict by finding a 'new' direction or dimension AT the point of contradiction! That is the vertical part that from looking from the top to bottom is (not-A not-and A). This is identical to saying (not-A
OR A).
This should give you a hint at what the logic of Trinities are from in 'form'. The third state is BOTH the conflict AND its resolution "synthesis" because of it. In fact. I use this to generate my own logical-to-physical argument from "first principles". Just extend these to real spaces itself.
NOTE that this is what some call a "paraconsistent logic" because it denies using the default assumptions of the following logical assumptions that all other logics use:
1) The Law of Identity: that things are consistent or stay true of themselves
2) The Law of non-Contradiciton: that things should not contradict being both 'true and false' simultaneously
3) The Law of Excluded Middle: that there is NO middle value between 'true and false'.
As you can see, these are actually just forms of the same idea most often derived from "consistency". So this is at least HOW Hegel thought of addressing thinking. Abandon an assumption of 'value' to the first thing in some issue; then deny that 'value'; which leads to conflict AND its inevitable resolution.
Karl Marx caught on correctly to point out how "history repeats itself" in political stages. Ironically, if anyone understood, then they would have even realized that his Communism would be doomed to this as a cycle. That its intention to be most 'liberal' to require "LAW" (anarchy) voluntarily, leads to chaos because it only takes one's own personal idea to express their freedom to use force and rule, which leads to eventual conflicts. I think he thought that 'communism' was just like a new or next DIMENSION to this process.