Concept in Definition ABC

This term has two meanings. On the one hand, it refers to the art of dialogue and reasoning discursive. On the other, it is a philosophical approach with a long tradition.

A way of reasoning that has marked the history of Western philosophy

In every dialectical vision the following scheme is revealed:

1) be part of a statement or thesis,

2) the first thesis is opposed by another opposite or antithesis and

3) a new vision or synthesis emerges from the two previous parts.

A brief journey through the history of philosophy

The philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus affirmed that everything moves and that everything changes. This dynamism implies that not only do things change, but when they change they stop being what they are. If this thesis is accepted, we cannot know reality as it is. This vision of the world and of knowledge is the origin of the dialectic in the philosophy western. Plato assumed the dialectical method as a reasoning technique to expose his ideas in his various dialogues.

In the Middle Ages, dialectics was understood as a study method to search for the truth and together with grammar and rhetoric they formed the Trivium. Thus the Trivium and the Quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy) lead the way to the seven liberal arts.

Hegelian thought can be explained with one of his metaphors, the dialectic of master and slave.

For Hegel, human history begins when two forms of conscience: someone who wants to command and, therefore, who needs another to obey him. The first is the master and the second the slave. This creates a tension and a certain confrontation between the two. One of them is afraid and in order not to be defeated by the other, he decides to assume that he is a slave.

The one who imposes his desire on the other and is not afraid becomes the master. However, the slave is the one who works and the one who knows how to do things, while the master ends up depending on the slave and becomes an idle and passive being. This gives rise to a paradox: the slave is the one who builds the world and the master ends up depending on the slave of him. This story is the foundation of dialectics and with it Hegel sought to explain the origin of human history.

Marx was a disciple of Hegel and is a dialectical philosopher

Marx affirms that the proletariat (the slave for Hegel) has the mission of destroying the power of the bourgeoisie (the master for Hegel) in order to create a new social order, the communism. In this sense, the thought Marxist is eminently dialectical.

Specifying, we observe and appreciate:

- In its broadest and most general use, dialectic implies that which is proper or relative to this branch of philosophy.

- Also, to the ordered succession of truths or reasonings that derive from each other it is called dialectic.

- On the other hand, reasoning method that faces different positions with the mission of confronting them and obtaining truth from them, it is known as dialectic.

- And to art of dialogue and conviction about something or someone from the word exclusively, it is called dialectic too.

- For his part, the materialism dialectical , is the formal name given to the current of the philosophical materialism that follows the approaches of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. This thought proposes matter as the substrate of all objective and subjective reality and emancipates supremacy of matter over consciousness and the spiritual and postulates knowledge of the world thanks to its nature material.

Topics in Dialectic