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The Hero’s Journey and Hegel’s Dialectic

by Reg Harris

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

Nineteenth century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is known primarily for being an idealist: he believed that we do not live in the world of material objects, but in an ideal world of the Mind, Spirit (Geist) or “world-soul.” Hegel believed that everything that exists originates in this ideal spirit, and that human history should be viewed as the unfolding of this spirit through time.

For Hegel, the Geist unfolds through history following a logical process of negation. This process is known as the Hegelian dialectic. In Hegel’s dialectic, progress or greater understanding originates in the paradoxical nature of consciousness. Consciousness is intentional (i.e., directed or focused) and discriminating. It focuses on one pole of a reality, called the “thesis.” However, as with hsiang sheng or mutually arising opposites in Taoism, focusing on one pole provokes its negation, the discovery of a contradiction within the thesis or an awareness of its self-limiting opposite pole, the “antithesis.”

Awareness of both thesis and antithesis awakens the mind to the relationship between the two and the false, “opposing poles” distinction the mind has created. This awareness triggers the third stage of the dialect: “synthesis,” in which we reconcile the difference between the poles so that the poles are no longer opposites, but merely two sides of one reality. We have synthesized the “opposites,” combining the positive aspects of the two.

Each Dialectic Cycle Triggers a New Cycle

But Hegel’s dialectic does not end with synthesis, for the synthesis itself becomes a new way of seeing things, another opinion, so it becomes the thesis in a new dialectic cycle (see the illustration). This process continues until, presumably, one achieves an “ultimate” truth that is so broad that it subsumes all poles.

In Hegel’s dialectic, then, each stage in growth, progress or understanding emerges from the discovery and synthesis of opposites. The dialectic reminds us that opposites do not exist in reality but are constructs of the discriminating mind.

Both the beautiful and ugly, the good and not good, have a psychological origin, being products of human consciousness and valuation, but the very consciousness and pursuit of beauty and goodness as values are accompanied by the consciousness and presence also of the ugly and not good as disvalues. Opposites, including moral and value opposites, issue from the same ground and always accompany each other (Chen, p. 56).

In a sense, the dialectic breaks us free of the dichotomy our mind has created and makes us aware of the deeper unity from which the opposites appear. As Alan Watts wrote when discussing the yin-yang: “The yin-yang principle is not, therefore, what we would ordinarily call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity” (1975, p. 26). In the context of our study, this emergence of a higher awareness is the transformative potential in polarities, which is expressed in the dialectic. (For more on polarity in the Hero’s Journey, see my articles “Yin and Yang: Polarity and the Hero’s Journey” and “Hsiang Sheng:” Mutually Arising Opposites.”)

The Hero’s Journey is a Dialectic

If we visualize the dialectic as a cyclical process, we can see clear parallels between it and the transformative cycle in the Hero’s Journey. Both are processes through which we expand our consciousness to achieve a more inclusive and encompassing perspective on life. We must always remember that our perspective is only a partial view of the whole. Each time our perspective grows, we discover a broader and deeper view of life. That new view will challenge our understanding and send us into another cycle of the dialectic.

Expressed in the vocabulary of the Hero’s Journey, we begin the cycle with a basic understanding. This is our thesis or state of equilibrium. That understanding eventually awakens us to a weakness, contradiction or limitation in our thesis (exposing the antithesis). This awakening to or realization of the antithesis triggers the negation, which is our Call to Adventure, and we embark on a journey to resolve the imbalance by “working through” the surface dichotomy to a deeper truth hidden within. The “working through” occurs during the Road of Trails, wherein we face challenge after challenge until we reconcile the dichotomy in the Abyss and Apotheosis, thus creating a new, more inclusive understanding (the synthesis). Seen its most abstract form, this hermeneutic or interpretive “feedback loop” appears to be the basis for all human engagement with the world.

Negation Calls Us to the Hero’s Journey’s

There is one final aspect of the dialectic that offers us a valuable insight into the Hero’s Journey: negation drives the dialectical process because it stimulates the transformation in perspective necessary for growth and change. Translating this concept the Hero’s Journey, we see that, if we are to grow, we must remain open to the negations in our lives. These come to us as ideas or experiences that challenge our perspective or beliefs: disagreements, criticisms, suggestions, fears and failures. Only by being open to the negation of our current understanding, our thesis, can we be open to the transformative power of opposites that will bring us greater understanding.

Hegel’s dialectic is usually applied to the evolution of society, but it is clearly a process of reconciling opposites similar to what we see in Taoist thought in the flow of the yin-yang, and which we can see in other expressions of polarity, including enantiodromia, hermeneutics and the complementary poles of mythos and logos.

References

Chen, E. (1989). The Tao Te Ching: A new translation with commentary. New York: Paragon House.

Watts, A. (1975). Tao: The Watercourse Way. New York: Pantheon.

Copyright © 2015 by Reg Harris. (Updated June, 2023.) All rights reserved. Reproduction of this article or any part thereof in any form without the expressed written permission of the author is strictly prohibited. Posting this article or any part thereof to the Internet in any form without the expressed written permission of the author is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and strictly prohibited. For permission to use, please contact Reg Harris.