Equilibrium vs. Synthesis. Is that Aristotle vs. Hegel? Aristotle's middle way is a golden mean ever stationary. Hegel's synthesis is a spiral ever climbing or rather moving forward, in time.

But perhaps this is apples and oranges. I am not sure. Aristotle's mean was an ethical teaching. It did not permeate all of his work. Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis did permeate all of his work. In my rather under-informed understanding, it was primarily a historical phenomena writ metaphysically large. I am not sure if it was also writ small in the the ethical progression of the individual.

Time then seems to be one major difference. Aristotle's universe always was and ever will be. Geocentric and static, perhaps changing but only in cycles that repeat. Hegel's change was spiral linear. Hegel's universe began at the metaphysical Genesis of Being and Nothing whose synthesis Becoming is the first step on the path that ever approaches some apocalyptic X.*

But we don't have to make this about Hegel and Aristotle. That's just what popped into my mind.

Synthesis and equilibrium is also the difference between combination on the one hand and balance on the other. Synthesis is a sort of smashing together of opposites in some perhaps ill-conceived attempt to take everything in. Equilibrium lets opposites be opposites and seeks safe passage between Scylla and Charybdis.



*Somebody help me out: what is Hegel's apocalyptic X again? (not a rhetorical question.)

I am just overwhelmed by this swirl of ideas. Could you please summarize it?

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