The hegelian dialectic

Saturday 21 January 2012

     
     Any feedback, suggestions, corrections, criticisms or referrals to 

     existing similar models will be useful in refining the technical 

     terminology, visual metaphor and general conceptualisation of 

     the model, and will be greatly appreciated. 
     ('Positions on political correctness: towards a stratigraphical 
     model of argumentation')

So it turns out my 'stratigraphy of argumentation' model is merely the plain old Hegelian dialectic (although I gather it isn't as 'Hegelian' as that name implies). But yes, it's thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which we covered briefly in one of my Theory for Practising Writers classes, but I didn't remember enough to pick up on the similarities.

It's always a strange mix of pride, relieved excitement and embarrassment when this kind of thing happens. Pride that you came up with the same idea as a renowned philosopher on your own, relieved excitement over the fact that it's already been theorised and discussed and all you have to do is research it and apply it and possibly build upon it, and embarrassment that (in this case, anyway) I publicly and ignorantly put forth an idea that was already in existence as though it was original. 

But as I said, I'm very excited to research the concept, and I'll then be able to see how much of what I came up with on my own is superfluous and how much could still be useful for expounding upon the notion. Once I've determined that I can do another post updating my ideas. The only thing is I'm not sure when I'll get the chance, now. I've landed a massive editing job that'll see me hard at work right until university starts up again. If it stays quiet around here, that's why.