Dialectics is the method of studying the movement of things and ideas through internal contradictions.
History of the term
The word "dialectics" initially meant, primarily, the art or the science of argumentative discussion.
For Plato, dialectics is, firstly, the art of extracting all the positive and negative consequences contained in an idea or principle. Secondly, it is the rational movement of the mind which ascends by successive stages, from perceptible data to ideas, the eternal and immutable principles of things, and, finally, to the primary idea of all, the idea of the Good. Since for Plato ideas are the only reality worthy of the name, dialectics or the science of ideas comprises science itself.
For Hegel dialectics is the movement of ideas through the successive stages of overcoming (negation of the negation) until the absolute idea is attained.
For Marx and Marxists, dialectics is not only the movement of ideas, but rather the movement of things themselves through contradictions, of which the movement of the mind is but the conscious reflection. An extensive study of Marxist dialectics can be found in the fourth part of the present work.[1]
Categories
Singular, particular, universal
Quantity and quality
Form and content
Contradiction
Negation of the negation
References
- ↑ “For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain.”
Friedrich Engels (1886). Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy.