A spectacular firework

After having started by confounding substance and the individual, Descartes explicitly turns his back on Aristotle, followed later on by Hegel... with Hegel came dialectics and the primacy of relation.

We thus have forgotten that substance is the indirect source of relation. One could say that relation is the granddaughter of substance, its daughter being quality. If we truly understood relation we would paddle up to the grandmother - substance - and this would help us to understand its necessity... at least it would be easier to grasp it than in a direct manner. In lieu of which, we have thrown grandmother off the train!

We started with substance and we magnified relation and the relative, setting off a spectacular firework, but we are only left with smoke and an odor of burning. Contemporary philosophy knows no principles; it can't teach us anything; it only carries breezes which give the neuron a cold.

Now relation is literally asinine when it seeks to take the place of substance. Hence the world is an asinine place.

In the last analysis, there are only two ways to go about it, either we start with relation to go to substance, or we start with relation to decapitate substance. There are presently two philosophies on the market, not three, two: to divide philosophy into philosophy of spirit on the one hand and philosophy of relation on the other hand is a delusion, for what does human intelligence do if not abstract, thus produce the universal, and what is the universal if not a relation? Thus there lays the choice, because we well and truly have to start with relation: either one starts with relation to go to substance (and it is not handy for one must paddle counter current and the descending current is quite fierce), or one does as everyone else: you start with relation, you head dunk grannie, and you let yourself drift down the current whilst splashing amongst the corpses.

Well then, we have no choice! We must go back to Aristotle to see how he looks at relation, and also take a peek at Hegel. Between the two there is Descartes, but it doesn't take too long to walk around that diminutive thinker. Conversely, one must absolutely go back to Aristotle and spend a bit of time with Hegel, for he is the father of all contemporary dialectics.
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