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Dialectics And Farting

/ 12 min read

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Some people say dialectics is a premature freak: not actually usable at our current stage of understanding, yet still seductive as an overall view. Modern science has developed hints of holism and organic thinking, but that is not a return to dialectics. It is only science itself, slowly and dimly, extracting certain principles. Monistic truth is hard to accept. Science never gives up on a possible direction, no matter how faint the hope.

I farted in class. Just an ordinary fart. Not especially foul, though certainly not fragrant either.

The terrible thing was that the professor happened to be lecturing on dialectics.

“Please judge your fart yourself,” the professor said. “Is it good or bad?”

I had to answer, “Bad.”

“Wrong,” said the professor. “Everything consists of contradictions. Since it has a bad side, it must also have a good side.”

“Then saying it’s good would also be wrong?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said.

“So it is both good and bad.”

“Wrong. You only see the oppositional struggle of the two sides and not their unity.”

Forced to take the matter seriously, I thought for a moment and said, “Then the fart is both good and bad, but the bad side is the principal contradiction. It occupies the dominant position.”

“Wrong again. You are using a static point of view. The two sides of contradiction transform into one another. The side that is dominant today may be subordinate tomorrow.”

“Are you saying that tomorrow all humankind may cheer for my fart?”

“Not exactly, but you cannot deny such a developmental tendency.”

I stared for quite a while, then reluctantly said, “My fart is both good and bad, both bad and good. Today it may be bad, tomorrow it must be good. Today it may be good, tomorrow it may become bad.”

The professor shook his head. “That is complete skepticism, not dialectics.”

Just like that, because of one fart, I became a skeptic.

The professor continued: “The power of dialectics lies not only in refuting any point of view with ease, but also in finding a theoretical basis for any point of view with ease.”

“But my fart has no basis at all,” I protested.

“That is only because you have not found it. In fact it is simple. It is the inevitable result of the unity and struggle of contradictions inside your stomach.”

I had no reply.

The professor went on: “Let us stop talking about farts and consider a more complicated issue. A watermelon and a sesame seed. However you choose between them, there is a theoretical basis.”

I said quickly, “I pick up the watermelon and throw away the sesame seed.”

“Excellent,” he said. “You have grasped the principal contradiction, that is, the key to solving the problem.”

“Then I will pick up the sesame seed and throw away the watermelon.”

“Only quantitative change can lead to qualitative change. Your sequence for solving the problem is entirely correct.”

“Then I want both the watermelon and the sesame seed.”

“You grasp the principal contradiction without neglecting the secondary contradiction. You are using a comprehensive vision.”

“Then I want to smash the watermelon and crush the sesame seed.”

“Very good. You are using a developmental point of view. New things are the negation of old things. All old things are bound to perish. Their destruction is the precondition for new things to arise.”

“Then I want to eat the watermelon and smash it at the same time. I want to pick up the sesame seed and step on it at the same time. But there is only one watermelon and one sesame seed. What should I do?”

“Now you are finally entering the gate of dialectics. The important thing is that the two sides of contradiction are not merely opposed; they also have a unified side. Eating the watermelon is reasonable, but smashing it is not unreasonable either. Only by unifying the two can one enter a higher level of struggle.”

I was dumbfounded. “But you still haven’t solved my problem.”

The professor smiled. “Dialectics solves no problems. Its first use is to turn people into fools, if there are any left who are not already fools.”

“Did you say ‘first’?” I asked.

“Yes. After that, it allows one to leap from fool to scholar. Why dialectics solves nothing, how it turns people into fools, and how one leaps from fool to scholar, that will be the subject of the next lecture.”

Then the professor bounced cheerfully out of the classroom.

Lecture Two

The professor said, “Now let us discuss the practical use of dialectics with a more complicated example: how should we view traditional Chinese culture?”

I said, “One must use a dialectical point of view.”

“Exactly. We have many famous dialectical scholars. They skillfully employ the three great laws of dialectics, connect theory with practice, quote widely, and maneuver across all directions. They write ten thousand words without ever letting go of the main subject. Finally they give you a conclusion: take the essence and discard the dross. Aren’t you impressed?”

“Yes. Doesn’t that show dialectics is useful?”

“I used to think so too, until I met a stray dog.”

“A dog?” I asked in confusion.

“Yes. Behind my house there was a garbage heap. One day a stray dog came by. It ignored everything else and bit down on a bone with a single crunch.”

“That is not surprising. Any dog would do that.”

“Exactly. But for the dog, that bone was the ‘essence’. The garbage heap also contained bricks, metal scraps, broken buckets, and other dross. Why did the dog choose only the bone? How did it know to keep the essence and discard the dross? Had it already mastered the conclusions of famous dialecticians?”

“Probably not.”

“Certainly not. So those grand scholars, after elaborate argument, end up arriving at a brilliant conclusion that even a stray dog already knew. If so, why should we applaud and worship them?”

“Why indeed?”

“The only explanation is that dialectics has already succeeded in turning you into a fool.”

“I understand.”

“And once you understand, you should ask the next question: all right, ‘take the essence and discard the dross’ is something anyone knows. The problem is: what counts as essence, and what counts as dross?”

“Right. Let us see how they answer.”

“You cannot stump them. They will once again employ the three great laws, relate theory to practice, quote widely, maneuver brilliantly, write endlessly, and finally conclude: analyze concrete problems concretely. Clever, isn’t it?”

“It does sound reasonable.”

“But I think it is not merely useless. It is bordering on shamelessness.”

“How so?”

“Does anyone in this world ever perform ‘abstract analysis of concrete problems’? When the stray dog arrived at the garbage heap, do you imagine it stood there like Aristotle, classifying the objects, clarifying their intension and extension, and then, after deduction and induction, deciding whether to eat a brick or a bone?”

“Impossible. At that rate it might really eat the brick.”

“Exactly. Nobody analyzes concrete problems abstractly. So the sentence ‘analyze concrete problems concretely’ is equivalent to saying nothing at all. Yet dialectical scholars often love to use abstract methods to analyze concrete issues. Since dialectics is supposed to be a universal truth valid everywhere, if you ever see a dog eating bricks, do not underestimate it. It may well be a distinguished scholar.”

The professor packed up his lecture notes again. “The basis of dialectics lies in using a ‘comprehensive, developmental, and interconnected’ point of view. Like all lies, that sounds very much like truth. Next lecture we will discuss the origin of dialectics and its relationship with metaphysics.”

Lecture Three

“Up to now,” said the professor, “humanity has used three methods to study the world. The first is the butcher’s method, which most scientists use. They cut the world into tiny parts and study them one by one. The second is the philosopher’s method, which tries to take in the whole at once. The third is the dialectical method, which claims to do both by invoking totality, motion, and relation. The problem is that the third method often inherits the weaknesses of the second while imagining itself superior to the first.”

He went on to explain that modern science had achieved its results not by immediately grasping the whole, but by isolating variables, analyzing parts, and proceeding in a patient, even clumsy, fashion. To study a forest, one often begins from trees. To study life, one often begins from cells. To study matter, one often begins from the simplest measurable phenomena. Anyone who insists on swallowing the universe whole before studying any part at all usually ends up producing slogans instead of knowledge.

Dialectics, he said, presents itself as deep precisely because it can speak in vague but elevated language. It can tell you that things are interconnected, that they develop, that they contain contradiction, that the old is negated by the new. None of that is entirely false. But in practical thought it often becomes a device by which any conclusion can be defended and every objection can be absorbed. It does not guide inquiry so much as excuse whatever answer one already wanted.

When the discussion turned to Marxism, I asked whether dialectical materialism was not supposed to be its soul.

The professor disagreed. Marx, he said, attacked Hegel’s grand system in early works such as The Holy Family, and throughout his life he never clearly defined what dialectics actually was. It was mainly Engels who systematized the language of dialectics into something later called dialectical materialism. In that system, the famous three laws were inherited from Hegel’s Logic: the transformation of quantity into quality, the unity of opposites, and the negation of negation. But these were only the surface. Beneath them lay two deeper commitments: first, a belief in monistic truth, hostile to pluralism and relativism; second, the belief that truth is indivisible, so that partial research cannot genuinely discover it because every local truth is merely a fragment of the whole.

That, the professor argued, is where dialectics becomes unrealistic. The world is too entangled to be grasped all at once. If one insists on taking every relation into account before beginning analysis, nothing will ever be done. Human knowledge advanced precisely because people were willing to isolate, freeze, and simplify. Only after gaining detailed understanding of specific properties and laws could they cautiously place those findings back into wider systems.

He mocked the old habit of wanting to “become fat in one bite” by proposing grand total explanations from the very start. In his view, this tendency matched traditional Chinese habits of thought all too well. What Chinese thought often lacked was not a sense for totality, but the slow and stubborn craft of isolating, suspending motion, and examining one side of a problem at a time.

So where did dialectics come from? I repeated the official textbook line: it was supposedly a comprehensive and correct summary of the objective world, human society, and the laws of thought.

The professor called that absurd. Humanity has never possessed such total knowledge of the world, society, or the mind. To claim otherwise is fantasy. Even today we know only a small fragment of the physical world, perhaps half a fragment of society, and less than half a fragment of the laws of thought. To say that Hegel, starting from an erroneous idealist premise, somehow managed to produce a complete and correct summary of everything is even more absurd. We fail often enough even when we begin from correct assumptions. Why should we believe that one German philosopher could begin from a false premise and arrive at a universal key to reality?

The professor refused to believe it. He insisted that science advanced not because of dialectics but in spite of it. Wherever dialectics used its prestige to scold science as “metaphysical” or “mechanistic”, it became an obstacle rather than a guide. In some places it even froze inquiry. He cited the Soviet experience, where ideological pressure turned scientific disputes into political dangers.

When I asked how science fought back, the professor answered that Western philosophy responded with positivism and logical empiricism, but science itself often did not bother to argue. It simply continued developing, producing more food, steel, machines, and almost everything human beings needed except spiritual consolation. As those achievements became irreversible facts, dialectics slowly found itself embarrassed. It had spent so much time denouncing others that it failed to notice that it was the one being left behind.

At the same time, he admitted that dialectics retained a certain charm. There is something undeniably seductive about the dream of a unified view of things. Modern science has also, in its own ways, developed forms of systems theory, complexity, and holism. But that is not a return to dialectics. It is science cautiously reaching for broader patterns through scientific methods rather than mystical slogans.

He even mentioned the Santa Fe Institute, founded in 1984 by many famous scientists, including Nobel laureates and backed by wealthy figures such as George Soros. Their goal was to investigate the general principles governing complex adaptive systems. He said he did not personally expect a final theory of totality to succeed, but he still regarded the attempt as one of the boldest in the history of science. Science, unlike dialectics, is willing to risk failure honestly.