Dialettica e immutabilità del sillogismo

“Human thought has assimilated the cosmogony of Kant and Laplace, the geology of Lyell, the biology of Darwin, the sociology of Marx, which analyze every existing thing in the process of its uninterrupted change, evolution, development, catastrophes, etc. But for formal logic the syllogism remains immutable; it does not appear as an instrument, a historical lever of our consciousness in the process of its adaptation to external nature with the aim of learning about nature – in a word, not a concrete historical formation conditioned by the circumstances of time and place, including the structure of our consciousness, the scope of its experience, etc. On the contrary, the syllogism appears as a once-and-for-all-given form of comprehending external events. The syllogism stands above these events, above humanity itself and its consciousness, above matter, and is the eternal beginning, immutable and allpowerful, for it controls all our activity; in other words the syllogism is invested with all the attributes of God” [Leon Trotsky, ‘Dialectics and the Immutability of Syllogism’ (Unfinished writings and fragments, frammento del 1939 ca.)] [(in) Leon Trotsky, ‘Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1939-40’, New York, 1973]