dialectic (redirected from Dialectical subtlety)

dialectic (dīəlĕk`tĭk) [Gr.,= art of conversation], in philosophy, term originally applied to the method of philosophizing by means of question and answer employed by certain ancient philosophers, notably Socrates. For Plato the term came to apply more strictly to logical method and meant the reduction of what is multiple in our experience of phenomena to the unity of systematically organized concepts or ideas. Immanuel Kant gave the name "Transcendental Dialectic" (the title of one section of his Critique of Pure Reason) to his endeavor to expose the illusion of judgments that attempt to transcend the limits of experience. G. W. F. Hegel applied the term dialectic to the logical method of his philosophy, which proceeds from thesis through antithesis to synthesis. Hegel's method was appropriated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their philosophy of dialectical materialism.

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dialectic

1. disputation or debate, esp intended to resolve differences between two views rather than to establish one of them as true

2. Philosophy

a. the conversational Socratic method of argument

b. (in Plato) the highest study, that of the Forms

3. Philosophy (in the writings of Kant) the exposure of the contradictions implicit in applying empirical concepts beyond the limits of experience

4. Philosophy the process of reconciliation of contradiction either of beliefs or in historical processes