Andrew Nash: The Dialectical Tradition in South Africa Routledge, London, 2009

reviewed by Christopher Allsobrook, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

We provincial South African philosophers, trapped in second-hand, neo-Kantian antinomies, tend to discriminate just two basic senses of the abused and beleaguered term, ‘dialectic’: the first associated, respectfully, with a dialogical method of Ancient philosophy; the second, pejoratively, with muddled transgression of the principle of non-contradiction in Continental philosophy. Dialectical thinking is held unreflectively to stand in contrast to analytical thinking; the insertion of such a term in philosophical discussion confirms suspicion that a line of argument has run astray, if not to the point of opinionated assertion, then, to senseless confusion occasioned by impassioned failure to draw sufficiently clear and precise distinctions. In the dominant English-speaking philosophical environment, right-minded philosophers sensibly avoid the dialectic. It is in response to this crisis that The Dialectical Tradition in South Africa recalls and attempts to revive a dormant tradition of dialectical critical thinking that has long animated a dissident sector of predominantly Afrikaans-speaking philosophers in this country.

The Moment of Western Marxism in South Africa

by Andrew Nash, 1999

Any attempt to build a South African left which is both  militant and rational — capable both of engaging with the struggles of the oppressed majority and developing analyses and arguments which depend on argument and evidence rather than faith — had better be aware that history is against it. We build on an activist culture pervaded by sectarianism and dogma, and an intellectual culture in which the assimilation of radical ideas has reproduced patterns of intellectual dependence and fragmentation. This legacy will not be overcome except to the extent that we understand the forces that produced it. Indeed, to the extent that we do not understand those forces, the more vigorously we seek to distance ourselves from that legacy, the more likely we are to reinforce it instead.