dialectic

dialectic [Gr.,= art of conversation], in philosophy, term originally applied to the method of philosophizing by means of question and answer employed by certain ancient philosophers, notably Socrates. For Plato the term came to apply more strictly to logical method and meant the reduction of what is multiple in our experience of phenomena to the unity of systematically organized concepts or ideas. Immanuel Kant gave the name "Transcendental Dialectic" (the title of one section of his Critique of Pure Reason ) to his endeavor to expose the illusion of judgments that attempt to transcend the limits of experience. G. W. F. Hegel applied the term dialectic to the logical method of his philosophy, which proceeds from thesis through antithesis to synthesis. Hegel's method was appropriated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their philosophy of dialectical materialism .

dialectic, dialectical materialism See ENGELS, FRIEDRICH; GURVITCH, GEORGES; HEGEL, G. W. F.; HISTORICAL MATERIALISM; MARX, KARL; MATERIALISM.

dialectic Method of argument through conversation and dialogue; based on the philosophy of Socrates, in particular the Dialogues. Hegel went on to argue that ordinary logic, governed by the law of contradiction, is static and lifeless. In the Science of Logic (1812–16) he claimed to satisfy the need for a dynamic method, whose two moments of thesis and antithesis are cancelled and reconciled in a higher synthesis. Logic was to be dialectical, or a process of resolution by means of conflict of categories. See also dialectical materialism