dialectic
pronunciation
How to pronounce dialectic in British English:
UK [ˌdaɪəˈlektɪk]
How to pronounce dialectic in American English:
US [ˌdaɪəˈlɛktɪk]
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- Noun:
- any formal system of reasoning that arrives at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments
- a contradiction of ideas that serves as the determining factor in their interaction
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- Adjective:
- of or relating to or employing dialectic
Word Origin
- dialectic (n.)
- 1580s, earlier dialatik (late 14c.), from Old French dialectique (12c.), from Latin dialectica, from Greek dialektike (techne) "(art of) philosophical discussion or discourse," fem. of dialektikos "of conversation, discourse," from dialektos "discourse, conversation" (see dialect). Originally synonymous with logic; in modern philosophy refined by Kant, then by Hegel, who made it mean "process of resolving or merging contradictions in character." Related: Dialectics.
Example
- 1. Hegelian dialectic begins with a thesis , initially taken to be true .
- 2. Thus as life is the initial particularisation , so it results in the negative self asserting unity : in the dialectic of its corporeity it only coalesces with itself .
- 3. He used to turn dialectic , first against ordinary consciousness , and then especially against the sophists .
- 4. In a subject at once so humble and so heavy with emotion , the learned and classical dialectic must yield , one can see , to a more modest attitude of mind deriving at one and the same time from common sense and understanding .
- 5. Such a style of dialectic looks only at the negative aspect of its result , and fails to notice , what is at the same time really present , the definite result , in the present case a pure nothing , but a nothing which includes being , and , in like manner , a being which includes nothing .