Category:Dialectical Social Analysis

A dialectical view of history and society has several basic premises: 1. Things and people do not have essences in and of themselves, but are always related to other things. This is the basis of social life, the radical relationality of all elements.

2. Relations always imply dynamic tension, which is the motor of change.

3. Social conditions are never static, but always changing.

Master-Slave Dialectic
1) One Self meets another and confronts him as an adversary.

2) In the confrontation, the winner becomes the master and the loser the slave.

3) Both of these selves remain “alienated”: they cannot fully recognize themselves, because they cannot fully recognize the Other, both of which are created in tension.

4) Only through full mutual recognition, dissolving the relation of domination and making both men equal, is alienation overcome and full self-knowledge, reason and freedom possible.