From the Meriam Webster Dictionary:
Dialectic -
"a : the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite; also : the critical investigation of this process b (1) usually plural but singular or plural in construction : development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism (2) : the investigation of this process (3) : the theoretical application of this process especially in the social sciences"
This is what Marx says:
"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e. the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." (Capital, Volume 1, Moscow, 1970, p. 29).
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The modern (i.e. German Idealist) conception of dialectic derives from Kant's usage of the term in the _Critique of Pure Reason_. Kant meant by a dialectic of reason two contradictory propositions which could each be logically 'proven' but without deciding the issue. For example: one could prove both that the universe had a beginning or that it was eternal. Or one could prove that we are free and that we are determined. Kant called such dilemmas "Antinomies of Pure Rason" and he thought that they showed the boundaries of the legitimate use of reason.
ReplyDeleteHegel comes along and says that such a dialectic is unified into a higher figure of thought: the progression of Spirit through the dialectic of reason.