Method
Dialectic
Overview
Dialectic (Ancient Greek: διαλεκτική, romanized: dialektikḗ; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and rhetoric; the object is more an eventual and commonly held truth than the "winning" of a (commonly binary) competition. It has its origins in ancient philosophy and continued to be developed in the Middle Ages.
Hegelianism refigured "dialectic" to no longer refer to a literal dialogue. Instead, the term takes on the specialized meaning of development by way of overcoming internal contradictions. Dialectical materialism, a theory advanced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, adapted the Hegelian dialectic into a materialist theory of history. The legacy of Hegelian and Marxian dialectics has been criticized by philosophers, such as Karl Popper and Mario Bunge, who considered it unscientific.
Dialectic implies a developmental process and so does not fit naturally within classical logic. Nevertheless, some twentieth-century logicians have attempted to formalize it.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Dialectic is discussed.
But in its true and proper character. Dialectic is the very nature and essence of everything predicated by mere understanding,--the law of things and of the finite as a whole. Dialectic is different from 'Reflection.' In the first instance, Reflection is that movement out beyond the isolated predicate of a thing which gives it some reference, and brings out its relativity, while still in…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
_Negation of the Negation._ "The historical sketch (of the so called original accumulation of capital in England) is comparatively the best part of Marx's book and it would be even better if it had been developed scientifically and not by means of the Dialectic. The Hegelian negation of the negation is called upon to serve here as a midwife, in default of anything better and clearer, and by means of it the future is…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
The dialectic is thus thre-fold: (_α_) the external dialectic, a reasoning which goes over and over again without ever reaching the soul of the thing; (_β_) immanent dialectic of the object, but falling within the contemplation of the subject; (_γ_) the objectivity of Heraclitus which takes the dialectic itself as principle. The advance requisite and made by Heraclitus is the progression from Being as the first…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Hegel was not merely put on one side, the school attached itself on the contrary to his openly revolutionary side, the dialectic method. But this method was of no service in its Hegelian form. According to Hegel the dialectic is the self-development of the Idea. The Absolute Idea does not only exist from eternity, but it is also the actual living soul of the whole existing world.
Friedrich Engels, Feuerbach
states what it is; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
5. Whence does this science derive its proper principles? Intelligence furnishes the soul with the clear principles she is capable of receiving. Having discovered and achieved these principles, dialectics puts their consequences in order. Dialectics composes, and divides, till it has arrived at a perfect intelligence of things; for according to (Plato),[350] dialectics is the purest application of intelligence and…
Plotinus, Plotinos
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it
Philosophers who discussed Dialectic
- Kitarō Nishida
- Georg Simmel
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- John Scotus Eriugena
- Max Stirner
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- Stilpo
- Gershom Scholem
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Henri Bergson
- Heraclitus
- Zeno of Elea
- The Ego and Its Own
- Murray Bookchin
- The Clouds
- Giambattista Vico
- Karl Marx
- Xenocrates
- Eduard Zeller
- Victor Cousin
- Friedrich Schleiermacher
- Johann Friedrich Herbart
- Marshall McLuhan
- Boethius
Related ideas
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Bernard Lonergan
- Vladimir Lenin
- Ancient philosophy
- Gorgias (dialogue)
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Basic Books
- Argument
- Philosophy
- Sidney Hook
- Immanuel Kant
- Marxists Internet Archive
- Murray Bookchin
- Joseph Stalin
- Karl Popper
- Karl Marx
- Topics (Aristotle)
- Dialogue
- Materialism
- Boethius
- Mario Bunge
- Thomas Aquinas
- Karl Barth
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.