The law of negation

The law of negation gives the answer to the question where development is directed to. It states that a process of development goes on in several stages, which stipulate each other. This law shows not just separate acts of development or their properties but reflects the consistency of all its phases, the connection of new and old, future and past, their succession, continuity and gradualness. The action of this law is manifested through such categories as dialectical negation and replacement (the second negation).

Dialectical negation characterizes the connectivity of the sequential stages of development. It means that qualitative changes are possible only through the negation of the old quality; i.e. dialectical negation is on the one hand, a moment and conditions of development and, on the other hand, it is a moment of connection with the old one. F. Engels, explaining the meaning of the given category, wrote that in dialectics to negate does not mean merely to say “no”. Dialectical negation presupposes determination of a sequence in the process of development. Contrary to that one, destruction of an object is described by such category as metaphysical negation. For example, if some grain was grown to make flour, then it was metaphysically destroyed. If some grain was planted and then it sprouted, here we can speak about dialectical negation.

Retention of old quality in a new one but in a changed form is expressed by such a category as replacement (the second negation), which indicates a spiral way of development. Each of its new stage (turn) contains some elements of the previous one and is based on it.

However, one negation is not enough to determine the directedness of development because it only defines the limits and conditions of the existence of old, and indicates the necessity of its removal. That is to say the connection between the old and new reflects the unity of opposites and defines the conditions of further development. This function is given to the second negation (negation of negation). Without that negation the first one cannot realize itself up to the end. For example, if they carry out reforms only to solve an acute problem without a proper analysis of some consequences and correlations with the existing situation, then such changes, as a rule, fail. The very second negation determines and directs the process of development.

Everything is finite in this world. Without negation of the old, the birth and maturing of a higher and stronger new is impossible, and thus the process of de­velopment itself is impossible. All that is the scene of struggle be­tween mutually excluding sides and tendencies. This struggle leads to negation of the old and the emergence of the new. As it appears, a new phenomenon already carries its own contradictions in it. The struggle of opposites starts on a new basis; the need arises for a new negation, i.e. for negation of negation, ad infinitum. It is this constant negation that realizes the dialectical process of becoming of qualita­tive definiteness of phenomena, the replacement of some nodal lines of the measures of development by others.

The emergent new cannot assert itself without negation on the one hand, and without retention and conti­nuity,on the other. We have got the development where the new interrupts the existence of the old, absorbing from it everything positive and viable. This retention of the positive is precisely the continuity in the discrete, continuity in development. Development is marked by con­tinuity, consistency, orientation, irreversibility and retention of the results, obtained.

The development of matter does not follow a single path, but a countless multitude of directions. It is an error to present it either as a straight line or as a circle: it is a spiral with an infinite number of turns. In this form, for­ward movement is strangely combined with circular movement. De­velopment leads to a return, as it were, to previous stages, when some features of already outlived forms replaced by others are re­peated in the new forms. This, however, is not a simple return to the original form, but a qualitatively new level of development.

History is a series of turns of an expanding spiral moving outwards and up­wards. No subsequent cycle of development repeats the previous one – it is a new and higher level. Such is the objective orientation in the infinite succession of phenomena and processes, in the incessant struggle between the new and the old; such is the dialectical path of the forward movement of being.

For society, this criterion is the level of development of productive forces and labor productiv­ity, as well as the character of social relations, all of which is con­centrated in a single criterion: the level of society's development is determined by the extent to which man is raised to a higher level in this society.

The methodological significance of the law of negation consists in the fact that it offers an understanding of the direction of the de­velopment of systems and objects both of the social and the natural world, permitting a correct evaluation of the scope, possibilities and rate of that development.

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