Have you heard the term dialectic? It’s a philosophical concept that is a bit complicated. This blog will explain what a dialectic is, how it can be useful, a little bit of history, etc. At bottom, it is a way of moving toward wisdom in which two opposing positions come to reconcile, compare, and synthesize, thus arriving at a new insight. It’s a higher-order phenomenon borne of philosophizing, communicating, comparing, contrasting, analyzing, and parsing. Strengths of each opposing point of view is considered, explicated, and utilized. Different theories can be compared in this manner and a final, integrative model can result.
Philosopher and author of Voices of Wisdom, Gary E. Kessler, says: “The word dialectical comes from a Greek word that means to talk or think through. In a general sense, philosophical thinking involves thinking through an issue to a deeper level than is usual, and trying to get clear about it.”
Otto Bird describes it as thus: “Dialectic, as one of the methods of philosophy, is characterized by being prepositional, interrogative, controversial, and interminable. These notes suffice to distinguish dialectic from science, sophistic, rhetoric, and, generally, from intuitive and demonstrative knowledge.”
This interesting phenomenon probably began with Socrates, and was popularized by Plato, his student (Socrates wrote nothing down!). Wikipedia elucidates this: “Socrates favoured truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion) as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one’s actions. To Socrates, truth, not aretē (moral virtue), was the greater good, and each person should, above all else, seek truth to guide one’s life. Therefore, Socrates opposed the Sophists and their teaching of rhetoric as art and as emotional oratory requiring neither logic nor proof. Different forms of dialectical reasoning have emerged throughout history…. These forms include the Socratic method, Hindu, Buddhist, Medieval, Hegelian dialectics, Marxist, Talmudic, and Neo-orthodoxy.”
Julie Maybee, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, puts it fairly plainly: “Dialectics is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between opposing sides. In what is perhaps the most classic version of dialectics, the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato (see entry on Plato), for instance, presented his philosophical argument as a back-and-forth dialogue or debate, generally between the character of Socrates, on one side, and some person or group of people to whom Socrates was talking (his interlocutors), on the other.”
She continues: “In the course of the dialogues, Socrates’ interlocutors propose definitions of philosophical concepts or express views that Socrates challenges or opposes. The back-and-forth debate between opposing sides produces a kind of linear progression or evolution in philosophical views or positions: as the dialogues go along, Socrates’ interlocutors change or refine their views in response to Socrates’ challenges and come to adopt more sophisticated views. The back-and-forth dialectic between Socrates and his interlocutors thus becomes Plato’s way of arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated views or positions and for the more sophisticated ones later.”
“’Hegel’s dialectics‘” refers to the particular dialectical method of argument employed by the 19th Century German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel (see entry on Hegel), which, like other ‘dialectical’ methods, relies on a contradictory process between opposing sides. Whereas Plato’s “opposing sides” were people (Socrates and his interlocutors), however, what the ‘opposing sides’ are in Hegel’s work depends on the subject matter he discusses.”
Llyod Spencer and Andrzej Krauze add: “[Philosopher Georg] Hegel’s different way of thinking has become known as dialectical thinking. What makes dialectical thinking so difficult to explain is that it can only be seen in practice. It is not a ‘method’ or a set of principles, like Aristotle’s, which can be simply stated and then applied to whatever subject-matter one chooses.”
As usual, Wikipedia clarifies: “The term dialectic is not synonymous with the term debate. While in theory debaters are not necessarily emotionally invested in their point of view, in practice debaters frequently display an emotional commitment that may cloud rational judgment. Debates are won through a combination of persuading the opponent, proving one’s argument correct, and proving the opponent’s argument incorrect.”
I will now attach a few quotations that help to clarify the slightly-heady concept. Feel free to search The Wisdom Archive on your own, and perhaps concentrate on the “ValueSet” Development, Progressivism, and Integration. Integration is where I tend to see quotes reminiscent of the dialectic falling, and thus I categorize them as such. May you find truth!
“Always, of course, the dialectic continues between the call to individualism and the call to community. Neither way is exclusively right. We must respond to both and discover a paradoxical resolution in answering each of these contrary calls.”
“In the Socratic dialogues, Socrates applies a dialectical method, called elenchos, to examine knowledge in the search for truth. The method, a process of logical reasoning, essentially entails asking the question, “‘What is it?'”
“What Sigmund Freud called the reality principle lies in dialectical tension to the pleasure principle. Most of the time, we conduct ourselves in a way that denies us certain pleasures so as to exist in an integral society. The primal unconscious instincts (the id) must be controlled through the cultivation of a moral conscience (the superego), derived from parental and social strictures and constraints.”
“What counts as a religious fact or value is determined by each individual who, in turn, must discuss her views with another in a dialogue aimed at creating a new social dialectic aimed at recognizing a vision of truth that can accommodate personal variations. It is not that truth has variations, but that the understanding of truth may not be uniform.”
“What is [John Rawls’s] method of reflective equilibrium? It’s moving back and forth between our considered judgments about particular cases and the general principles we would articulate to make sense of those judgments. And not just stopping there, because we might be wrong in our initial intuitions, but sometimes revising our particular judgments in the light of the principles once we work them out.”
“…though the silenced opinion be in error, it may be and very commonly does contain a portion of the truth. And since the general or prevailing truth on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.”
“Human lives are a dialectical movement between shelter and venture, attachment and freedom.”