Resentment of Dialectics

Averse to idealist readings, Paulo Arantes conceives of dialectics primarily as an attempt at conceptual transcription, a formalization of a determined intellectual experience. If it is indeed true that the historically situated social availability of certain intellectuals forms a predisposition towards dialectics, the inherent free oscillation of this intelligentsia and the dialectics somehow converge. This crossroad between social tendency and formal schema, pursued and mapped in its diverse configurations, constitutes the master line of a multi-tiered construction. On one level, the comparison of Hegel’s thought with other modern versions of dialectics frequently disqualified as subjective and negative forms (the "brilliant" conversation of worldly life, irony, nihilism, etc.), grounded by Arantes in the common soil of intellectual experience, by establishing new leads for the comprehension of the intellectual genesis of these dialectics, allows for an unparalleled appreciation of the uniqueness of the Hegelian dialectic. Once the ensemble of circumstances that presided over the modern resurgence of dialectics is recovered, here we break with a secular procedure: instead of taking Hegel's dialectics as a logical apparatus ready to be applied to the world's facts, that is, as a timeless method, Arantes attributes cognitive value to the exposition of its historical genesis, treating its concepts as the formalized transposition of actual interconnections, objectified by the world’s course. This bidirectional passage between critique of epistemology (or culture) and critique of society, or, in another scope, the interest in the intellectual and historical trajectory of dialectics, signifies a critical dialogue with the tradition of Western Marxism, particularly with some of its most notable works. "Dialectic Resentment" would not be feasible and at the same time we would forego one of its most original aspects if we did not regard it at least as a partial critique of a lineage that includes, among others, Georg Lukács's "The Young Hegel" (but also studies on German literary culture), Herbert Marcuse's "Reason and Revolution", Antonio Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" (especially the parts referring to intellectuals and their organization of culture), Jean-Paul Sartre's "What is Literature?" (whose concept of bad faith is here complemented by that of resentment), Theodor Adorno's "Three Studies on Hegel" and "Negative Dialectics". Anchored in his particular reading of Marx and Engels's "The German Ideology", Paulo Arantes reconstructs the ideological-political history of the modern European intelligentsia. What allows him—thanks to the structural affinity between the various modalities of historical "delay" resulting from the uneven and combined development of capitalism—to systematize the diverse national circumstances of late capitalism (Germany, Italy, and even France). Besides the undeniable gain for understanding the peculiarities of capitalism, this mapping becomes essential for understanding a stratum, the intellectuals, whose inclination to assume conflicting social roles constitutes the ground of modern dialectics. Whether because of a sense of mission of a directive vocation, or due to the very resentment that sometimes propels intellectuals to align with revolutionary classes. This analysis is as significant for an evaluation of Marxism's triumphs and tribulations as for the establishment of a future emancipatory agenda.

(Ricardo Musse, book flap of the original 1996 edition)

Keywords: Bildung, Culture, Dialectics, Diderot, Goethe, Gramsci, Hegel, German Idealism, French Enlightenment, Intelligentsia, Irony, Lukács, Marx, German Misery, Modernization, Nihilism, European Periphery, Russian Populism, Rahel Varnhagen, German Romanticism, 19th Century.