Dialectic (from the Greek dialektikê tékhne, “art of dialogue,” derived from dialégesthai, “to converse,” “to argue”) — a method of thought that advances through the confrontation of opposing positions and which, in its modern versions, also designates the contradictory, processual structure of reality itself. Originally it is the art of investigating truth through question and answer: Socrates practices it as élenchos, refuting his interlocutor to expose the weakness of his opinions; Aristotle, who credits Zeno of Elea with inventing dialectic, distinguishes it from demonstrative reasoning because it proceeds from merely plausible premises (éndoxa) rather than from necessary principles. Plato raises dialectic to the philosopher’s supreme method, the one leading from sensible opinions to intelligible Ideas. The decisive turn comes with Hegel, especially in the Science of Logic and the Phenomenology of Spirit: dialectic ceases to be a technique of discussion and becomes the movement of reality itself, in which each determination generates its own contradiction and is overcome by a richer figure, through determinate negation and Aufhebung (a sublation that at once preserves and elevates). Contradiction thus becomes the engine of logical and historical development. The famous formula “thesis, antithesis, synthesis,” incidentally, was popularized by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus, not coined by Hegel. Marx, finally, claims to “invert” the Hegelian dialectic, making it operate within the materiality of history and economic relations rather than in Spirit — the source of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
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