Idealism Philosophy Using the dialectic as an instructional method - Essay Example

Broadly defined, Dialectic is an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue. It is one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are rhetoric and grammar) in Western culture. In ancient and medieval times, both rhetoric and dialectic were understood to aim at being persuasive (through dialogue). The aim of the dialectical method, often known as dialectic or dialectics, is to try to resolve the disagreement through rational discussion.

One way - the Socratic method - is to show that a given hypothesis (with other admissions) leads to a contradiction; thus, forcing the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth. Another way of trying to resolve a disagreement is by denying some presupposition of the contending thesis and antithesis; thereby moving to a third thesis.Briefly, the term "dialectic" owes much of its prestige to its role in the philosophy of Plato, where it figures as the logical method of philosophy in the Socratic dialectical method of cross-examination.

The term was given new life by Hegel, whose dialectically dynamic model of nature and history made it, as it were, a fundamental aspect of the nature of reality (instead of regarding the contradictions into which dialectics leads as a sign of the sterility of the dialectical method, as Kant tended to do in his Critique of Pure Reason). Hegel's dialectic, which he usually presented in a threefold manner, was vulgarized by Heinrich Moritz Chalybaus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the concept of "dialectic" was appropriated by and Engels and retooled in a non-idealist manner, becoming a crucial notion in their philosophy of dialectical materialism. In the work of Marx and Engels the dialectical approach to the study of history became intertwined with historical materialism, the school of thought exemplified by the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Marxists view dialectics as a framework for development in which contradiction plays the central role as the source of development. . Contradiction is the key to all other categories and principles of dialectical development: development by passage of quantitative change into qualitative ones, interruption of gradualness, leaps, negation of the initial moment of development and negation of this very negation, and repetition at a higher level of some of the features and aspects of the original state.

Thus this concept came, for a time, to play a prominent role on the world stage and in world history. Today, "dialectics" can also refer to an understanding of how we can or should perceive the world (epistemology), an assertion of the interconnected, contradictory, and dynamic nature of the world outside our perception of it (ontology), or a method of presentation of ideas or conclusions.References:"What is Dialectic" In Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 312-35.

Routledge, 1992.