Student Question
What is dialectic philosophy?
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Dialectical philosophy is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argumentation in which there is a contradictory process between opposing sides. Sometimes the outcome of the dialectic may be the refutation of the original argument. On other occasions, there might be a synthesis of the argument with its counter-argument.
In classical philosophy, dialectic referred to a dialog based on arguments and counter-arguments, the purpose of which was to arrive at the truth. A prime example of dialectic would be the method used by Plato’s Socrates to shake various citizens of Athens out of their ignorance and complacency. Through a vigorous process of argument and counter-argument, Socrates would hope to at least get a better understanding of certain important concepts such as justice.
What’s interesting about the use of dialectic in Plato is that it often leaves things hanging in the air without resolution. In other words, the end of the dialog is seldom the last word to be said on the subject, and merely serves to inspire further debate. It is this open-ended quality of Plato’s dialectic that makes his thought so relevant to our own age, where we’re so often reluctant to pronounce the final truth.
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most part, this is because we exist in an age where science is held up as the paradigm of human knowledge. As science, of its very nature, is constantly changing and evolving, it never makes, nor seeks to make final pronouncements. All scientific knowledge is subject to further revision by new developments in science.
That being the case, it shouldn’t surprise us that Plato’s open-ended dialectic, with its never-ending process of argument and counter-argument, speaks to us in the twenty-first century as loudly and as forcefully as it did to Socrates and his interlocutors back in ancient Athens.
What is the Hegelian Dialectic?
The Hegelian Dialectic is the process by which one understands historical evolution and philosophical truth. Hegel introduces this with the organic development of a Thesis, or Idea. Within each idea is its Antithesis, or opposing forces, and between both there is a struggle to the death. Both are equal in magnitude and the process of historical, social, individual, and phenomenological understanding evolves through this battle. In the end, the new force that results is the Synthesis. Hegel believes that this is an organic and developmental process, similar to the growth of a flower. Hegel's student, Karl Marx, "industrializes" this process and makes it a bit more mechanical in his materialist dialectic that argues a strict Thesis + Antithesis= Synthesis formula to explain the progression of historically economic stages of human development.