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DESCRIPTION:
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For the first example, let us take the Eulofy of the Dialectic. The image is of a house with the windows opening upon the interior. This interior contains another house with its doors and windows closed. Every house is made of an interior and an exterior, separated one from the other by walls and a roof, but this interior and this exterior are never completely separated. We can go from one to the other by the doors and the windows. Usually it is the doors that permit a displacement of the body from the inside towards the outside and inversely whereas the windows authorize this exchange only for light and viewing. Although all this being well known, we don't expect to see the exterior of a house in the interior of a house. We don't expect to, because we see without thinking about the invisible bond between the interior and exterior. This image, in the same vein as "Hegel's Holiday" illustrates, or more exactly, describes exemplarily the logico-dialectic thought of inside and outside.
Every exterior is the exterior of an interior. This signifies the impossibility of conceiving of one of these terms without also conceiving the other. An interior that would be only an interior would not even be an exterior.
The usual error in reflection is to confound the essence of things with their interor. He who seizes things only in their intimacy completely misses them and does not grasp even their most external shell. The Eulogy of the Dialectic appears thus as a recall to the order of thought where the view of the interior is at the same time the view of the exterior. To see the essence of a thing is to see the outside and the inside of that thing. It is not to go from its appearance to its hidden reality or from its hidden reality to its appearance. On the contrary it is hardly to let oneself become enclosed in this sterile coming and going : it is to start with the conjunction of the outside and the inside. The pathway of the dialectic of essence is for Hegel the condition for access to Concept, that is, to properly philosophical thought.
Magritte's painting describes the dialectic of the exterior and the interior. He limits himself to underlining the necessity of starting from this conjunction however he does not himself yet do that which he emphasizes. For this one must wait for the ceberated Black Magic.
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