DIALECTIC. — From διαλέγομαι, discorro. Frequently used in philosophy, it has very different meanings. In the sense still most common today, it is the art of reasoning, of developing concepts and judgments according to their logical connection and movement.
In this sense, d., as Aristotle points out, goes back to Zeno of Elea, who defended Parmenides’ doctrine through discussion and the reductio ad absurdum of the twofold Pythagorean conception of the unity-point and of infinite divisibility. As the art of arguing for and against the same subject (antilogies) and of “making the losing argument victorious,” it is found among the sophists. In Socrates, d. is established as the art of inductive reasoning in the search for definition. Plato’s d. is connected with the central conception of knowledge as reminiscence: d. is the ensemble of the analytical and synthetic logical processes by which the relations of coordination and subordination are determined, according to the generic and specific values, of the ideas awakened by sensible knowledge (Soph., 253, C, D; Phaedr., 265, F; 266, B, C). And since, in the Platonic system, ideas constitute the most intimate truth and essence of things, d. thus comes to assume, within the structure of the system, a significance that is not purely logical but also concrete and metaphysical. This significance would later be reaffirmed explicitly in the Neoplatonism of Proclus, who understands the emanationist process of things from the One as a process of the particular from the universal through the three dialectical moments of persistence, emanation, return, that is, homogeneity, identity, and reunion of the particular with the universal. A more distant repercussion of the real significance of Platonic d., though in a different form, would be found in the medieval ultrarealist position concerning the problem of universals.
In Aristotle, d., opposed to analytics, is the logic of probability: while analytics develops the more strictly scientific process of demonstration, which proceeds from true and certain principles, d. represents rather the attempt to attain truth by starting from common opinions or generally accepted principles and subjecting them to the scrutiny of criticism, through reasoning and disputation: “what philosophy knows, d. attempts” (Met., IV, 2, 1004 b 25; Top., I, 1, 100 n 27, b 21; Anal. post., I, 2, 71 b. Cf. A. Trendelenburg, Elemente logiche Arist., Berlino 1892, pp. 108-10). D., therefore, in the technical Aristotelian sense, once again assumes a purely logical and well-defined meaning, and presents itself as a limitation in comparison with the Platonic position.
With the Stoics, and later in Scholasticism, d. came to encompass formal logic as a whole, or the science of deduction and reasoning; it was the discipline that in the medieval scholae constituted the second subject of the trivium, alongside rhetoric. The development that d., understood in this way, underwent in the Middle Ages was imposing, especially because of the broad interest that arose around the question of universals. There were also lively repercussions in relation to theological science, into which, with St. Anselm and Abelard, the dialectical method decisively entered, not without some excesses; it was opposed by the school of the mystics and subsequently wisely tempered by St. Thomas. The equivalence d. = formal logic is still fairly common today in Neoscholastic treatises.
In the Renaissance, as the devaluation of Aristotelian-medieval syllogistic became more pronounced, d. assumed a new meaning: in P. Ramo, and later more openly in Valla and Agricola, d. approached rhetoric: “ars dialectica” is the art of speaking well, “ars disserendi,” an aid to oratory.
For Kant, d., as purely formal logic, since it teaches nothing concerning the content of knowledge and consequently does not serve to extend our actual knowledge, is a sophistical verbal game, the pure logic of illusion and appearance (Kritik der V. Vermuft, Italian translation by G. Gentile, Bari 1940, pp. 89-99). Alongside this pejorative sense, Kant calls the second part of his logic “transcendental d.,” in the sense of a critique of the understanding and reason with respect to their ultraphenomenal use (ibid., p. 100): it consists in an investigation of the paralogisms and contradictions in which metaphysical human thought necessarily becomes entangled.
With post-Kantian absolute idealism, d. resumed an essential metaphysical significance in the conception of reality. In Fichte, d. is the rhythm of the activity of the I unfolding through the three inseparably connected and reciprocally conditioned moments of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Every position (thesis) of the I generates, through its own development, an opposing moment (antithesis), which in turn opens into a higher moment (synthesis), and so without end in the process of cosmic self-consciousness. D., understood in this way, is rooted in the very metaphysical structure of self-consciousness, which, in determining itself as “I,” necessarily posits the “non-I” together with it; and it has a deeper requirement in the essential ethical character of the I, which demands nature (the non-I) as an instrument of its realization. It then constitutes the substance of every spiritual process, insofar as every conceptual position, and generally every position of consciousness, unless it opens, stimulated by the antithesis, into higher moments, exhausts itself in inertia and spiritual stagnation.
In Hegel, d. is the eternal immanent movement of thought toward the construction of rational reality through the continual overcoming of its inner contradiction. This dialectical character, through which spirit passes from affirmation, by way of negation, to a new synthesis in a higher concept, is the very intrinsic nature, the driving force, of thought and therefore of the world: “in its peculiar character d. is the true and proper nature of intellectual determinations, of things, and of the finite in general” (Enzycl. der philos. Wissench., Italian translation by B. Croce, Bari 1923, § 81, p. 84; cf. § 11, p. 15). B. Croce, while partly accepting Hegelian d., sees it as vitiated by a fundamental error, insofar as it has treated opposed concepts (good-evil) and distinct concepts (good-true) in the same manner; for the latter, according to Croce, the dialectic of opposites does not apply, but rather the connection of distinct concepts: that is, simply distinct concepts stand to one another as a lower degree stands to the higher one, to which spirit passes without nullifying the preceding one (cf. Saggio sullo Hegel, Bari 1913, pp. 58, 60). Gentile too considers Hegelian d. insufficient, insofar as it would retain a residue of reference to being as thought (a defect which, according to Gentile, is common to every other d., beginning with the Platonic and Aristotelian), instead of fixing itself in the being of thought as act. Gentile’s d. intends to attain this rigorous conceptual purity beyond the dialectic of the thought, which retains all its value within its own field; it is understood as the eternal immanent process of the self-conscious Act through the three moments of subjectivity (art), objectivity (religion, science), and the synthesis of both (philosophy): the dialectical process of thought that at the same time constitutes the true and essential dialectical character of reality, since true and concrete reality is nothing other than thought in act (cf. Teoria gener. dello spirito, 5th ed., Firenze 1938, chap. 4, pp. 39-57).
In existentialism, both in Kierkegaard and among contemporary thinkers, d. is affirmed as the method of existential philosophy (v. L. Lavelle, La dialectique de l’éternelle présent, I, De l’être [Parigi 1928]; II, De l’acte [ivi 1937]).
Beyond these strictly technical meanings, whose legitimacy depends on the value of the respective metaphysical systems, dialectic has today assumed a highly varied and manifold meaning and field of application, to which the universal value conferred upon it by idealism has contributed in large part. There are, first of all, derivations based on the ancient meaning, according to which every progressive logical-conceptual development of thought from a concept, a judgment, or a fact toward the conclusions with which the concept, judgment, or fact is pregnant is called dialectic: in this sense, for example, one speaks of the dialectic of being, experience, and consciousness. From this field, which might be called the logical-real, dialectic is transferred, as it were by an inverse movement, to the real-logical field, whereby every development of reality, facts, and phenomena that occurs in dependence upon and according to the scheme of a logical process, however metaphysically conceived—whether reality itself is understood as immanent (idealism) or transcendent (realism)—is called dialectic. It is in this sense that, for example, one speaks of the dialectic of history, culture, civilization, and life, etc. The conception of Christian philosophy by no means intends to deny this concrete dialectical character of the world, of history, of civilization, and, in general, of being in its actualization and becoming; rather, it locates the determining logical schema in the order of intrinsic finality that is actualized and unfolds in every created being according to the archetypal design of transcendent Rationality, without excluding the extraordinary manifestations—particularly in the economy of rational creatures—of its liberal and sovereign Providence. For the application of dialectic to the socio-economic field V. MATERIALISMO STORICO.