Word Finder - dialectic

definition

Any formal system of reasoning that arrives at a truth by the exchange of logical arguments.

definition

A contradiction of ideas that serves as the determining factor in their interaction.

example

This situation created the inner dialectic of American history.

definition

Progress of conflict, especially class conflict.

definition

Dialectical

To Bernard of Clairvaux and many other churchmen the application of dialectic to the things of faith appears as dangerous as it is impious.

The application of dialectic to theology was not new.

Knowledge resides not in sense but in reason, which, on the suggestion of sensations of changing individuals, apprehends, or (to be precise) is reminded of, real universal forms, and, by first ascending from less to more general until it arrives at the form of good and then descending from this unconditional principle to the less general, becomes science and philosophy, using as its method the dialectic which gives and receives questions and answers between man and man.

Beyond knowledge lies opinion, beyond discovery disputation, beyond philosophy and science dialectic between man and man, which was much practised by the Greeks in the dialogues of Socrates, Plato, the Megarians and Aristotle himself in his early manhood.

With Plato, who thought that the interrogation of man is the best instrument of truth, dialectic was exaggerated into a universal science of everything that is.

It may be imagined further that, when he established himself at the Academy, his first care was to draw up a scheme of education, including arithmetic, geometry (plane and solid), astronomy, harmonics and dialectic, and that it was not until he had arranged for the carrying out of this programme that he devoted himself to the special functions of professor of philosophy.

Moreover, he compared dialectic and sophistry, on account of their generality, with primary philosophy in the Metaphysics (P 2, 1004 b 17-26); to the effect that all three concern themselves with all things, but that about everything metaphysics is scientific, dialectic tentative, sophistry apparent, not real.

He is at the same time the only Greek philosopher who clearly discriminated discovery and disputation, science and dialectic, the knowledge of a definite subject from its appropriate principles and the discussion of anything whatever from opinions and authority.

Aristotle, who made this great discovery, must have had great difficulty in developing the new investigation of reasoning processes out of dialectic, rhetoric, poetics, grammar, metaphysics, mathematics, physics and ethics; and in disengaging it from other kinds of learning.

Dialectic was distinguished from science by Aristotle.

Is logic, then, according to him, not science but dialectic ?

I, 1 355 a 33-35); rhetoric, since its artificial evidences involve characters, passions and reasoning, is called a kind of offshoot of dialectic and morals, and a copy of dialectic, because neither is a science of anything definite, but both faculties (SvvItyas) of providing arguments (i.

As for dialectic itself, it would have been represented by Aristotle's early dialogues, had they not been lost except a few fragments.

They contain however many relics of dialectic. The Rhetoric is declared by him to be partly dialectic. The Topics is at least an investigation of dialectic, which has had an immense influence on the method of argument.

Among all the eight passages mentioned above, the most valuable is that from the Eudemian Ethics (A 8), which discriminates extraneous discourses and philosophical (Kai ie rois i wTEpLKOLS XIyocs Kai iv roas Kara 4cXoac41av, 1217 b 22-23); and it is preceded (A 6, 1216 b 35-37 a 17), by a similar distinction between foreign discourses (h¦Xorpioc Aoyoc) and discourses appropriate to the thing (oiKEioc Aoyoc Tor, 7rpayp,aros), which marks even better the opposition intended between dialectic and philosophy.

Hence, as science and dialectic are different, so scientific induction and syllogism must be distinguished from dialectical induction and syllogism.

Dialectic is useful, for exercise, for conversation and for philosophical sciences, where by being critical it has a road to principles.

His purpose was, as Otto Pfleiderer says, "to connect the metaphysical ideas, which had been arrived at by means of philosophical dialectic, directly with the persons and events of the Gospel narratives, thus raising these above the region of ordinary experience into that of the supernatural, and regarding the most absurd assertions as philosophically justified.

He meant a new " speculative " method, dialectic, founded on an assumption which he had already learnt from Schelling, namely, that things which are different but similar can have the same attribute, and therefore be also the same.

With this powerful instrument of dialectic in hand, he attempted to show how absolute reason differentiates itself into subjective and objective, ideal and real, and yet is the identity of both - an identity of opposites, as Schelling had said.

By the same dialectic Hegel was able to justify the gradual transformation of transcendental into noumenal idealism by Fichte and Schelling.

Hegel, he said, had only supplied the logic of negative philosophy; and it must be confessed that the most which could be extracted from the Hegelian dialectic would be some connexion of thoughts without proving any existence of corresponding things.

In working out this process he supposes that reason throws into consciousness a priori categories, synthetic predicates a priori, or, as he also calls them, " dialectic percepts."

Intellectually in agreement with the Megarian dialectic, he followed the practical ethics of the Cynics both in theory and in practice.

He received the best education to be had at the time, and was noted for his proficiency in the arts of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. Entering on a public career he held, about 573, the high office of prefect of the city of Rome; but about 574, feeling irresistibly attracted to the "religious" life, he resigned his post, founded six monasteries in Sicily and one in Rome, and in the last - the famous monastery of St Andrew - became himself a monk.

Pinches has pointed out' that Shumer may be a dialectic form of an as yet unestablished non-Semitic form, Shenger, just as the non-Semitic word dimmer, " god," is equivalent to another form, dingir.

The Stoics discovered that their "perfect man" was not to be found in the luxurious, often morbid society of the Graeco-Roman world; that something more than dialectic ethics was needed to reawaken a sense of responsibility.

There was also a dialectic licence in grammatical forms, which had not as yet been greatly restricted.

The attacks of rationalism, aided by Greek philosophy, were repelled and vanquished by the weapons of scholastic dialectic borrowed from the enemy; on most points of dispute discussion was forbidden altogether, and faith in what is written in Koran and tradition was enjoined without question as to how these things were true (bila kaifa).

Philosophy still means no more than scholastic dialectic, and is the humble servant of orthodoxy, no man venturing on devious paths except in secret.

From a comparison of Melissus with Zeno of Elea, it appears that the spirit of dialectic was already tentatively at work, though it was not conscious of its own power.

In 1601 he was sent to the order's establishment at Sellye, where his eloquence and dialectic won back hundreds to Rome, including many of the noblest families.

The language often had a theological tinge (never entirely absent), as when the " idea " was spoken of, or " the night of the divine mystery," or the dialectic of the absolute called the " course of the divine life.

The dialectic of negative reason rudely dispels these theories.

Dialectic is, therefore, a dislocating power; it shakes the solid structures of material thought, and exhibits the instability latent in such conceptions of the world.

Instead of thought, we have perception; instead of dialectic, gravitation; instead of causation, sequence in time.

McTaggart's Studies in Hegelian Dialectic (1896), Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (1901) and Some Dogmas of Religion (1906) have opened a new chapter in the interpretation of Hegelianism.

The first part, entitled KE4aXaca dicXococAuca, is an exposition and application of theology of Aristotle's Dialectic. The second, entitled HEpi aipiVEcov ("Of Heresies"), is a reproduction of the earlier work of Epiphanius, with a continuation giving an account of the heresies that arose after the time of that writer.

Again, as the Socratics - Plato himself, when he established himself at the Academy, being no exception - were, like their master, educators rather than philosophers, and in their teaching laid especial stress upon discussion, they, too, were doubtless regarded as sophists, not by Isocrates only, but by their contemporaries in general; and it may be conjectured that the disputatious tendencies of the Megarian school made it all the more difficult for Plato and others to secure a proper appreciation of the difference between dialectic, or discussion with a view to the discovery of truth, and eristic, or discussion with a view to victory.

He was much impressed by the teaching of Phaedrus, the Epicurean, at a period before he assumed the toga virilis; he studied dialectic under Diodotus the Stoic, and in 88 B.C. attended the lectures of Philo, the head of the Academic school, whose devoted pupil he became.

His Plato is important in that it emphasizes the generally neglected passages of Plato in which he seems to indulge in mere Socratic dialectic rather than to seek knowledge; it is, therefore, to be read as a corrective to the ordinary criticism of Plato.

The explanation is that outer speech is more obvious than inner thought, and that grammar and poetic criticism, rhetoric and dialectic preceded logic, and that out of those arts of language arose the science of reasoning.

The basis of Bradley's logic is the fallacious dialectic of Hegel's metaphysics, founded on the supposition that two things, which are different, but have something in common, are the same.

The sophists furthered the transition from dialectic to logic in two ways.

The result is a selflimiting dialectic. This higher dialectic is a logic. It is no accident that the first of the philosophical sophists, Gorgias, on the one hand, is Eleatic in his affinities, and on the other raises in the characteristic formula of his intellectual nihilism' issues which are as much logical and epistemological as ontological.

He has no other instrument than the dialectic of his compeers, and he is as far off as the rest from a criticism of the instrument, Socrates.

And it sets forth a dialectic with a twofold movement, towards differentiation and integration severally, which amounts to a formulation of inference.

There is even formal recognition of the fact that to advance in dialectic is a greater thing than to bring any special inquiry to a successful issue.

Dialectic then, though it may prove to be the ultimate method of establishing principles in philosophy, 5 starts from probable and conceded premises, 6 and deals with them only in The the light of common principles such as ma be reason g p p y ably appealed to or easily established against challenge.

We start with what is prima facie given, to return upon it from the ground of principles clarified by the sifting process of dialectic and certified by vous.