The form-content distinction is the central operative mechanism of dialectical thinking

Evidence

WHAT WE have examined above in terms of a temporal or diachronic sequence, we might also have expressed as a contradiction between a form and its content: for the new is to the old as latent content working its way to the surface to displace a form henceforth obsolete. This distinction, in which, among other things, the reader will recognize Marx’s model of revolutionary change, is no doubt the central operative mechanism of both the Hegelian and Marxist dialectics, and in the long run the most momentous of Hegel’s conceptual innovations. For the new opposition is to be sharply distinguished from that older idea of form which dominates philosophical thinking from Aristotle to Kant and for which the conjugate term is not content but matter, inert materials, filling, the passive. Nor is the new Hegelian duality to be seen as simply one more version of the more primal dialectical reality of the relationship between subject and object. Rather, the distinction between form and content is precisely that which lends the notion of a subject-object relationship its secret dynamics, which permits Hegel to see the various logical combinations of the latter as an emergence, as a generation out of each other, and which permits him to construct a ladder of forms out of what would remain at any point a simple empirical measurement of an existing ratio of forces. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 670

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines form-content against the older Aristotle-to-Kant form-matter duality and against the subject-object relation.
• XREF: The ‘ladder of forms’ concretely instantiates the Jameson mediation/totalization procedure this reader is tracing in dialectical criticism. — connects to: Dialectical thought inverts Aristotle’s artisanal model of form as starting point — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 672; The form-content dialectic succeeds for Marx precisely because it is aesthetic in origin — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 671; Form and content are mutually translatable terms in dialectical criticism — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 769 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Form and content are mutually translatable terms in dialectical criticism #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 769
• Philosophical propositions dialectically preserve, suppress, and present their cancelled form #expands (0.78)