This is a difficult one. The Zen master Dogen’s philosophy is not easy, though I find his style of writing (translated into English from Japanese of course!) enchanting, if painful, and addictive ( I don’t think he would approve of that!). An issue came up the other day in a livestream of my favourite YT channel (Midwestern Marx) concerning Hegel’s logic and dialectic and the problem of form/content. This brief essay looks at the various sorts of dialectical philosophy represented by Heraclitus, Hegel, Schelling and Dogen, and to this issue of form and content. I would also like to state that I’m an expert on none of the four great thinkers, and so my efforts are best taken as the scribblings of an enthusiastic amateur prone to self-induced migraines!
All conceptualisation, all philosophy including the formulations of dialectic philosophy, begin with an understanding of immediacy (the immediate this of experience) as a point of departure.
Dialectical philosophy regards reality as a constant activity where change occurs according to the presence and interaction of opposites. There are several forms of dialectic, and there are various kinds of opposites posited (or experienced) as constituent of the dialectic process (es);
-some opposites are contrary, such as contrasting colours like yellow and red,
-some are contradictory such as A and -A where one negates or cancels out the other,
-and some are polar opposites, like north and south that do not cancel each other and cannot exist apart from each other. They are mutually implicating opposites.
The Heraclitean dialectic was mainly concerned with depicting reality in terms of polar opposites– in the sense that opposing aspects or forces in the total flow of existence (the One, which was also the creative God) generated a creative force from their tension. It was a depiction of opposition as harmony. These polar dualities remained and did not cancel each other out but were inseparable and in this sense, united.
Hegel’s dialectic by contrast is one which makes much greater use of the contradictory form- the A,-A form. The negation. What Hegel presents is a progressively dynamic reality whereby change is a development where each thing/part- being a part and therefore not the whole -can be negated and yet preserve something essential. The negation or destruction of a thing is only so of it's particular one-sided aspect. Something develops by way of this negation which is then manifest as a new and higher form in the unfolding of the universal, or the process of the universe. This is change of a dynamic sort which in recognising truth as an interdependent totality seems to concur well with aspects of Buddhist philosophy.
Hegel famously criticized Von Schelling’s understanding and application of the dialectic as abstract and simply applying a formula (or imposing one) on phenomena. It was in Hegel’s view a case of splitting form and content and thus fracturing reality where they are inseparable and in constant progress according to the principle (of dialectical development).
Dogen’s understanding of reality is also extremely dynamic, or non-static in the sense of constant activity. It is also dialectical, but his interest was soterological and religious (to liberate sentient beings from suffering). For Dogen as for Buddhists generally, what is immediate in ordinary experience is not really immediate. It is tainted by ignorance and liberation from this primordial ignorance is the way to end suffering. Immediacy is something to be uncovered from the false views that cloud perception and understanding. This position seems to be going in a different direction than the abstraction and conceptualisation that take ordinary given experience as a reliable point of departure for speculation built on discursive thinking.
In this sense, neither Heraclitean nor Hegelian dialectics would cut to the radical root of ignorance and suffering since they begin with (well, we can’t be sure about Heraclitus – he was working in a different religious context and may have had some training in meditative absorption for mystic insight) an uncritical acceptance of immediacy from which to abstract and objectify.
For Dogen, conceptualisation and objectification are themselves part of the problem. Even Hegel’s totality tends towards an objectification, and hence an abstract from reality rather than towards immediate reality.
The Zen understanding of such dualities of whole and part is that they are dependent on each other and thus empty of any essence in themselves. The very notion that reality can be transcended or objectified is to this understanding a misunderstanding.
The dialectic used by Dogen in his writings on the Dharma and such subjects as being and time is one influenced by the Diamond Sutra;
-any phenomena, A , is empty of self, is dependent on everything else for its existence. In other words A=-A. In being empty in itself it is no different from every other phenomena, but as a particular phenomenon of absolute emptiness (the universal ‘empty of self nature’ of all phenomena') it is that particular. Therefore the dialectical formula here ’A is -A, and thus it is A’.
While Hegel could criticise Schelling for abstractism and presenting a dialectic where form and content seemed sundered, Dogen could accuse Hegel of a deal of abstractism himself. Hegel posits progressive development, but this presupposes a temporality that is not really apparent (or rather, is not closed to questioning; Dogen has quite a striking and strikingly difficult to grasp view of temporality) Further, while we do see purposeful change, we can also observe quite a bit of chaotic destruction and extinction. While Hegel prioritises the continuity aspect of becoming, there is also a discontinuity aspect.
Most of all, Hegel's is an anthropocentric view of the cosmos. Zen, and Buddhism more generally, does present an anthropocentric view. Humans are simply one instance, form and hence perspective. Zen philosophy (as I understand it) does not take the paradigm of a self-and-world, subject/object duality -hence ordinary immediacy of experience- uncritically. In fact, it’s criticism is that the very assumed validity of this paradigm is a root cause for further delusions and bondage to suffering.
Therefore it’s dialectical forms are not progressive in the Hegelian sense. Nor does it regard reality as something static in the sense of no activity, or of an unmoving substratum. It’s methods can be extremely dialectical and it’s universe extremely dynamic, but these are all presented for the goal of salvation from suffering and realisation of true-selfhood, or ultimate subjectivity, not for system building as with both Schelling and Hegel.