dialectic an argumentative exchange involving contradiction or a technique or method connected with such exchanges. The word’s origin is the Greek dialegein, ‘to argue’ or ‘converse’; in Aristotle and others, this often has the sense ‘argue for a conclusion’, ‘establish by argument’. By Plato’s time, if not earlier, it had acquired a technical sense: a form of argumentation through question and answer. The adjective dialektikos, ‘dialectical’, would mean ‘concerned with dialegein’ or (of persons) ‘skilled in dialegein’; the feminine dialektike is then ‘the art of dialegein’. Aristotle says that Zeno of Elea invented dialectic. He apparently had in mind Zeno’s paradoxical arguments against motion and multiplicity, which Aristotle saw as dialectical because they rested on premises his adversaries conceded and deduced contradictory consequences from them. A first definition of dialectical argument might then be: ‘argument conducted by question and answer, resting on an opponent’s concessions, and aiming at refuting the opponent by deriving contradictory consequences’. This roughly fits the style of argument Socrates is shown engaging in by Plato. So construed, dialectic is primarily an art of refutation. Plato, however, came to apply ‘dialectic’ to the method by which philosophers attain knowledge of Forms. His understanding of that method appears to vary from one dialogue to another and is difficult to interpret. In Republic VI–VII, dialectic is a method that somehow establishes ‘non-hypothetical’ conclusions; in the Sophist, it is a method of discovering definitions by successive divisions of genera into their species.
Aristotle’s concept of dialectical argument comes closer to Socrates and Zeno: it proceeds by question and answer, normally aims at refutation, and cannot scientifically or philosophically establish anything. Aristotle differentiates dialectical arguments from demonstration (apodeixis), or scientific arguments, on the basis of their premises: demonstrations must have ‘true and primary’ premises, dialectical arguments premises that are ‘apparent,’ ‘reputable,’ or ‘accepted’ (these are alternative, and disputed, renderings of the term endoxos). However, dialectical arguments must be valid, unlike eristic or sophistical arguments. The Topics, which Aristotle says is the first art of dialectic, is organized as a handbook for dialectical debates; Book VIII clearly presupposes a ruledirected, formalized style of disputation presumably practiced in the Academy.
This use of ‘dialectic’ reappears in the early Middle Ages in Europe, though as Aristotle’s works became better known after the twelfth century dialectic was increasingly associated with the formalized disputations practiced in the universities (recalling once again the formalized practice presupposed by Aristotle’s Topics). In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant declared that the ancient meaning of ‘dialectic’ was ‘the logic of illusion’ and proposed a ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ that analyzed the ‘antinomies’ (deductions of contradictory conclusions) to which pure reason is inevitably led when it extends beyond its proper sphere. This concept was further developed by Fichte and Schelling into a traidic notion of thesis, opposing antithesis, and resultant synthesis. Hegel transformed the notion of contradiction from a logical to a metaphysical one, making dialectic into a theory not simply of arguments but of historical processes within the development of ‘spirit’; Marx transformed this still further by replacing ‘spirit’ with ‘matter’. See also ACADEMY, ARISTOTLE , HEGEL, MARX , PLATO , SOCRATES , TOPIC. R.Sm.