Gorgias, Not Plato Was the Archi-Stalinist
There are, roughly speaking, two philosophical
approaches to an antagonistic constellation of
either/or: either one opts for one pole against the
other (Good against Evil, freedom against oppression,
morality against hedonism, etc.), or one adopts a
"deeper" attitude of emphasizing the complicity of
the opposites, and of advocating a proper measure or
the unity. Although Hegel's dialectic seems a version
of the second approach (the "synthesis" of
opposites), he opts for an unheard-of THIRD version:
the way to resolve the deadlock is neither to engage
oneself in fighting for the "good" side against the
"bad" one, nor in trying to bring them together in a
balanced "synthesis," but in opting for the BAD side
of the initial either/or. Of course, this "choice of
the worst" fails, but in this failure, it undermines
the entire field of the alternative and thus enables
us to overcome its terms. (Say, in politics, in the
choice between organic unity and destructive terror,
the only way to arrive at the truth is to begin with
the "wrong" choice.) Therein resides the
insurmountable difference between Hegel and the New
Age notion of balancing the opposites.