Dialectical Realism
Towards a Philosophy of Growth

By Yves Chesni, M.D.

• Published by The Live Oak Press®, LLC
• 202 pp.
• $35.00 clothbound, ISBN: 978-0-931095-00-9
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 86-27726

What is real freedom? What are its conditions? Is it restricted to the recognition and inevitable acceptance of the profound laws of reality? Does freedom imply the power to refuse them? What is meant by responsibility? Sanction? How are freedom and happiness linked?

Translated from the original French by Joseph Zenk, Dialectical Realism: Towards a Philosophy of Growth seeks to answer these questions. In so doing, the book evaluates certain basic elements of human sciences according to one fundamental characteristic of human progress: the search for freedom.

Fundamentally a realist, Chesni devotes the first part of this work to the theory of knowledge, defining his position in opposition to Cartesian idealism, Kantian idealism, and their offshoot, Husserl's phenomenology.

In the second part, the author discusses the theory of knowledge as a particular case of the theory of relationships. A living organism, Dr. Chesni asserts, "is an original entity in relationship to its surroundings. It is created at least by the interaction of its chromosomes and external factors. During the evolution of species and the progress of civilization, innate behavior and capacity to learn both contribute to that mobility, memory, and coherence, which are the conditions for understanding the whole."

Development is the subject of the third part of Dialectical Realism, and in this section, the writer discusses human advance as an increase of consciousness, also noting the value of catharsis.

In the fourth section of the book, Chesni examines the relationship between human development and economic growth in the light of the general technological relationship, which links automation, production, consumption, expansion, and the quantitative level of employment.

Two short complementary articles summarize the specify the relationship between analytical-synthetic dialectic and conflictual dialectical and the charms as well as the difficulties of Darwin's theory.

A selected bibliography with references to the author's personal and group research work completes the book.

Dialectical Realism: Towards a Philosophy of Growth is intended not only for psychiatrists and psychoanalysts and other specialists of human sciences, but also more generally for those possessed of a love of true humanity.

Selected Reviewer Comments

"This work (is) conceived and written with a penetrating intelligence, and with the heart..."
- H. Solms, adviser to the World Health Organization

"I found in it a model of reflection and exposition. In brief, it was most beguiling, and I bring it to the attention of my associates."
- D. Douady, President of the "Sante des Etudiants de France" foundation, member of the Academie Nationale de Medecine

"The perspective in which you envisage the entire question of human growth corresponds to my own scientific,  philosophical, and cultural conception of man and his development."
- T. A. Lambo, Deputy General Director of the World Health Organization

"The author has targeted not only his confreres in psychiatry and psychology, and specialists in other human sciences, but more generally the sort one used to call "gentlemen", those graced with a minimum of general culture and love for humanity."
- Revue Internationale de Criminoloqie et de Police technique

"In the last part of his work, the author, basing himself on his professional experience in psychiatry, airs his views on the relations between economic development and human growth. He is striving especially to determine the consequences of economic progress -- and of certain phenomena which accompany it, such as automation -- in the development or the stifling of humanity in man."
- Revue Internationale de Travail

Contents

• Preface to the American Edition, viii
• Preface, x
• PART ONE--Theory of Knowledge, 1
• PART TWO--Theory of Relations, 15
• PART THREE--Theory of Development, 29
• A. Knowledge Of Development and Development of Knowledge, 31
  Chapter 1. Knowledge as Conscious Modification of a Subject in Relation, 33
  Chapter 2. Knowledge of Change and of the Absence of Change, 41
  Chapter 3. Determination, Indetermination, Prevision, Creation of the Future, 50
  Chapter 4. Special Modalities of Thought, and Particularly of the Knowledge of Time and Mistakes about Time, Solitude, and Relation, 56
• B. Biological and Human Development, 65
  Chapter 1. Mathematical, Physico-Chemical, and Biological Points of View Regarding the Development of Living Beings, 67
  Chapter 2. Relations, Drives, Emotions, Logic, Consciousness, 73
  Chapter 3. Natural History and Philosophies of Happiness, 83
  Chapter 4. Innate Behaviors, Maturation, Training, and Learning, 90
  Chapter 5. The Liberty of Universality and Some Other Senses of the Word Liberty, 94
  Chapter 6. Individual, Group, Species, 107
  Chapter 7. Disillusionment, the Awakening Of Consciousness, and Choice, 120
• PART FOUR--Economic and Cultural Problems, 129
  Chapter 1. Quantitative and Qualitative Level of Employment in Its Relations with Automation, Production, Consumption, Expansion, and Demography, in Different Economic Systems. General Technological Relation, 132
  Chapter 2. Economic and Noneconomic Motivations, 142
  Chapter 3. The Individual Worker's Debt to the Individual, the Collectivity, or the Group, 147
• PART FIVE--Appendices, 151
  Letter to Monsieur P., 153
  Some Perspectives on the Dialectical Nature of Progress, 157
  Theories of Evolution. Some Doubts and Some Suggestions, 160
  Bibliography and Notes, 163

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