

Written by an international group of authors including both established and younger scholars, the chapters in this volume constitute a rich set of discussions of several key aspects of the history of these practices that have heretofore received inadequate attention.

What emerges in the book is an account of several interrelated ways in which the ancient practices of dialectic reflect the nature of philosophy as a lived activity, in which the interlocutors are oriented toward ultimate goals like learning to account for truth by carving up nature at its joints or assessing the worth of received opinion through a question-and- answer process. The term διαλεκτική and its cognates were used to describe a wide range of practices throughout antiquity, and the contributors to this volume trace out several consistent themes corresponding to its usage. Send us feedback.Dialectic After Plato and Aristotle is a collection of ten papers, nine from the 13th Symposium Hellenisticum held in the Abbaye des Prémontrés at Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine, France in July 2013, each addressing the role of dialectic in Hellenistic or early imperial thought. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'dialectic.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Matthew Continetti, National Review, See More 2021 The dialectic of Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump drove the nation into its current obsession with race, culminating in the protests, riots, vandalism, cancellations, and iconoclasm that followed the murder of George Floyd one year ago. 2021 Messing with that dialectic is the peak of technological hubris. 2021 The students would soon be caught up in the thrust and parry of dialectic. 2021 This public-private dialectic ultimately bore fruit in the form of an offbeat yet luxurious 12-piece furniture and glassware ensemble. 2022 To collapse the Marxian dialectic of premature revolution: this was history simultaneously as tragedy and farce. 2022 This tension is often observed in the dialectic between a founder’s organization and a successor’s organization. 2022 Godwin also discussed Hegel’s dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, with which a case can be made that the United States is currently grappling. Recent Examples on the Web These ideas would culminate with Hegel’s dialectic of history, through which humans progressively realize the Geist of their age, driving toward an ever more perfect human freedom.
PLATONIC DIALECTIC SERIES
Other philosophers had specific uses of the term dialectic, including Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, and Marxism.Īsking a series of questions was considered by Socrates a method of “giving birth” to the truth, and a related word, maieutic, defined as “relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new ideas from another,” comes from the Greek word meaning “of midwifery.” The goal, according to the definition in our Unabridged Dictionary, was to “elicit a clear and consistent expression of something supposed to be implicitly known by all rational beings.” Dialect and dialectic come from dialecktos (“conversation” or “dialect”) and ultimately back to the Greek word dialegesthai, meaning “to converse.”Ĭonversation or dialogue was indeed at the heart of the “Socratic method,” through which Socrates would ask probing questions which cumulatively revealed his students’ unsupported assumptions and misconceptions. Plato’s famous dialogues frequently presented Socrates playing a leading role, and dialogue comes from the Greek roots dia- (“through” or “across”) and -logue (“discourse” or “talk”). Dialectic is a term used in philosophy, and the fact that it is closely connected to the ideas of Socrates and Plato is completely logical-even from an etymological point of view.
