Dialectical method in philosophy

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

Dialectics in philosophy is a way of thinking in which things and phenomena are considered in their formation and development, in close relationship with each other, in the struggle and unity of opposites.

In antiquity, the sensually perceived world was presented as eternal becoming and movement, in which opposites coexist and remain in unity. The early Greek philosophers saw the infinite variability of the surrounding world and at the same time spoke of the cosmos as a beautiful and complete whole, at rest. Their dialectic was formed as a description of this movement and rest, and also as a reflection of the incessant transformations of one element into another, one thing into another.

Among the Sophists, the dialectical method was reduced to pure negation: paying attention to the continuous change of ideas that refute each other and concepts, they came to the conclusion about the relativity and limitations of human knowledge in general, believed that it was impossible to comprehend the truth.

Fruitful struggle

ba opposing each otherideas - what the dialectical method of Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, is based on, who expounded his ideas about the world not in treatises, but orally, not even monologically. He conducted conversations with the inhabitants of Athens, in which he did not state his position, but asked the interlocutors questions, with the help of which he sought to help them free themselves from prejudices and come to a true judgment on their own.

Georg Hegel, the German philosopher, developed the dialectic method most of all XIX century: its main idea is that opposites mutually exclude and at the same time mutually presuppose each other. Contradiction for Hegel is an impulse to the evolution of the spirit: it makes thought move forward, from simple to complex and more and more complete result.

Hegel sees the main contradiction in the very idea of the absolute: it cannot simply resist the non-absolute, finite, otherwise it would be limiting

moose them and would not be absolute. This means that the absolute must contain the limited or the other. Thus, absolute truth contains the unity of opposing private and limited ideas, which, complementing each other, emerge from their rigidity and acquire a new, more true form. Such a movement covers all particular concepts and ideas, all parts of the spiritual and physical world. All of them exist in inseparable connection with each other and with the absolute.

Hegel's dialectical method is a process of self-improvement of the concept. Dialectics is both the method and the content of his philosophy.

Marxist philosophy tooused the dialectical method, but it is closely connected with the materialistic concept of being and man and therefore more practical: it considers, first of all, social, and not purely philosophical contradictions.

The dialectical method was used not only in Western, but also in Eastern philosophy: for example, in China it is the concept of Yin and Yang - two different sides of a single reality that turn into each other.

The dialectical method is the opposite of the metaphysical one, which is directed to the origins of being as such, to the search for the original nature of reality.