Can someone put Hegelian Dialectics in a simple term?

[The Man]

I'm am not sure what it is at all.. All I know is that there is a Thesis, Antithesis, and systhesis.

[Apoi_Viitor]

I'm am not sure what it is at all.

Of course not, it's all nonsense.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-philosophical-theories-t148537/index.html

[Desperado]

"Crap".

The "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" is the traditional bit of all dialectics (for example Socrates' method), which can't really be argued against. But the Hegelian dialectic goes into far more mumbo-jumbo, with some nonsensical idealism and then meaningless statements about "unity of opposites" and "quantity into quality". The point is you're not meant to understand - like an awful lot of philosophy, it's some therapeutic catchphrases without any real-world basis made by a misuse of language.

[Luís Henrique]

Aside the ignarrogant posts above...

no, it is not possible to put Hegelian dialectics in simple terms.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Of course not, it's all nonsense.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-philosophical-theories-t148537/index.html


Unfortunately, the text quoted above is no better than Hegel. It is a collection of illogicalities, sophisms, and bad use of Wittgensteinian methodology.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

"Crap".

But here is a better example of "crap":


The "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" is the traditional bit of all dialectics (for example Socrates' method), which can't really be argued against.You definitely don't know what you are talking about. Where are "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" in Socrates or Plato? When did they even mention this?

Socratic dialectics bears no relation to Hegel; it is merely a method of philosophical investigation, or perhaps even better, of pedagogy, consisting in leading the interlocutor into desired conclusions by use of wisely designed questions.


But the Hegelian dialectic goes into far more mumbo-jumbo, with some nonsensical idealism and then meaningless statements about "unity of opposites" and "quantity into quality".Those "meaningless statements", however, are rather Engels' than Hegel's. Hegel's idealism consists in an ontologisation of method, which was, from his point of view, perfectly consistent. Since for him the world is idea, it is quite logical that the ontological subject - the Geist - is in a permanent process of learning about itself. Trying to debunk such ideology from the methodological point of view is, consequently, sterile: it is the underlying thesis that the material world is merely a manifestation of the "Spirit" that needs to be confronted.


The point is you're not meant to understand - like an awful lot of philosophy, it's some therapeutic catchphrases without any real-world basis made by a misuse of language.This is quite comical, because you are actually using a lot of catch phrases in your text ("traditional", "all dialectics", "can't be argued against", "mumbo-jumbo", "meaningless statements", "you're not meant to understand", "awful lot of philosophy", "misuse of language"), which make you sound as a parrot, meaninglessly repeating buzzwords that you don't understand.

Luís Henrique

[ZeroNowhere]

The point is you're not meant to understand - like an awful lot of philosophy, it's some therapeutic catchphrases without any real-world basis made by a misuse of language. Speaking of therapeutic catchphrases...


I'm am not sure what it is at all.And you're not going to find out on the Revleft philosophy board. To be honest, I think that Hegel is generally not that hard to understand, and frequently quite brilliant, but I suppose that to gain a basic understanding it helps to have some knowledge of philosophy, especially Plato, Descartes and so on (it can then be useful to look at Hegel's works on the philosophy of history to see how Hegel connects their themes with those treated in his works, and as it were puts their works into his terms. Generally, Descartes and the like are more easy to understand than Hegel if one is beginning, although Plato can be very hard to understand if you really don't want to (just like it's easy to look at Hegel's writing and think that it's gibberish on the level of 'Jabberwocky' if one really wants to, as many here could perhaps bare witness to)). Knowing some Wittgenstein can also help a fair bit, especially when it comes to understanding some parts of Hegel's ethical works, so long as one reads Wittgenstein for his own sake and not as aid in debates. He also helps in seeing the way beyond Hegel, but nonetheless they also have quite a few commonalities, as indeed do Hegel and Marx.

Marx can also help a fair bit on this matter if one has read a decent amount of his work relating to Hegel, especially in the earlier works such as the 1844 manuscripts, 'The German Ideology', 'The Holy Family', and so on. But, of course, Marx isn't simple or easily condensed either, so what can you do. Engels' writings on the matter are also great, although 'Dialectics of Nature' is fairly fragmentary (which is very unfortunate) and 'Anti-Duhring' primarily polemical, which means that some of the more profound points are hard to grasp until you know the general issues already. The text on Ludwig Feuerbach could also be helpful, although best understood if one is already somewhat familiar with, well, Hegel.

To be honest, I do think that a fairly simple account of dialectics could be given, and am currently working on one as part of a larger work, but it's still going to have to be fairly long. Your best bet if you wish to understand things is, as always, to read a lot, take notes and work things out, always making sure to remember that comprehension is not aided by dismissiveness and precedes criticism. That is, one's first concern when reading a text is not to say, 'Oh, hey, that conflicts with my beliefs', which generally leads to intellectual laziness at best and becoming a debater, probably susceptible to curiously resembling a parrot, at worst. It's to work out the logic of the philosopher; the more one reads and analyzes philosophy, the more one comes to admire the general insightfulness of most well-known philosophers, whether one agrees with them or not. Of course, that's not to condemn dismissiveness in all contexts, but in this context one really has to be able to entertain ideas even without accepting them if one is to gain much.

[Manic Impressive]

Philosophy at least the way students of philosophy explain it is intentionally complicated and over blown to keep it within their special little club.

As shown by Luis Henrique's arrogant posts above.

[ZeroNowhere]

Philosophy at least the way students of philosophy explain it is intentionally complicated and over blown to keep it within their special little club.

As shown by Luis Henrique's arrogant posts above.
There was really nothing much complicated, let alone intentionally, about any of those posts.


Trying to debunk such ideology from the methodological point of view is, consequently, sterile: it is the underlying thesis that the material world is merely a manifestation of the "Spirit" that needs to be confronted.I was a bit sceptical about this sentence on first reading, but if you mean that from idealist beginnings one ends at idealist conclusions, so that Hegel's idealism can't be put down to a faulty deduction at some point along the progress (ie. it's not akin to carrying out a mathematical problem and doing a wrong sum at one point and hence ending up at a wrong answer), then I would probably agree. While Hegel is not immune from methodological critique at some points, he's generally quite consistent given his initial orientation. I think that Marx had said something similar in the 1844 manuscripts where he locates Hegel's results in the fact that he begins ultimately from the abstract individual, man as self-consciousness, the Cartesian 'I', and hence ends up with abstract nature, so that appropriation of this nature (for it is evident that the absolute divorce of subjective and objective cannot hold up under scrutiny) can only be a further alienation unto the absolute subject.

Something similar happens in capitalism, where the subject begins as abstract individual (ie. abstracted from society, atomized), alienates their product, and hence appropriation as the necessary moment complementing self-alienation only takes place through capital.

[Rafiq]

Hegelian Dialectics is Idealist... While that of Marx's are Materialist, as the saying goes.

[Manic Impressive]

There was really nothing much complicated, let alone intentionally, about any of those posts.

Someone who can't explain themselves in ordinary language is shit at explaining themselves. Philosophy in general uses language which is inaccessible to the normal person, it's an elitist club.

[Luís Henrique]

Someone who can't explain themselves in ordinary language is shit at explaining themselves. Philosophy in general uses language which is inaccessible to the normal person, it's an elitist club.

The same can be said of law, engineering, music, mathematics, sociology, actually any branch of knowledge. That's because the "normal person" is denied deeper education, not because engineers or musicians have the intention of protecting the misteries of Calculus or Harmony from common mortals.

Now pray tell me what is unordinary about any of my posts, I might dumb it down so that you can understand it.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I was a bit sceptical about this sentence on first reading, but if you mean that from idealist beginnings one ends at idealist conclusions, so that Hegel's idealism can't be put down to a faulty deduction at some point along the progress (ie. it's not akin to carrying out a mathematical problem and doing a wrong sum at one point and hence ending up at a wrong answer), then I would probably agree. While Hegel is not immune from methodological critique at some points, he's generally quite consistent given his initial orientation. I think that Marx had said something similar in the 1844 manuscripts where he locates Hegel's results in the fact that he begins ultimately from the abstract individual, man as self-consciousness, the Cartesian 'I', and hence ends up with abstract nature, so that appropriation of this nature (for it is evident that the absolute divorce of subjective and objective cannot hold up under scrutiny) can only be a further alienation unto the absolute subject.

Yes, I think it is more or less that, though you evidently know more Hegel than I do, or intend to do.

Luís Henrique

[S.Artesian]

I'm am not sure what it is at all.. All I know is that there is a Thesis, Antithesis, and systhesis.


The "simplest" explanation exists only in its "overcoming," in Marx's transposition of the of Hegel's analysis of the development of "spirit" through self-antagonism, conflict, contradiction, to the development of social labor through the antagonism, conflict, contradiction of labor and the conditions of labor.

[Ingraham Effingham]

For every idea (thesis) there is a counter-point (anti-thesis.)

When these come into conflict (as they usually do) the resulting, surviving idea is a synthesis of the previous two ideas, taking aspects of both to formulate a new one, ideally for the betterment and evolution of both ideas. Makes sense, because after every conflict, no idea is 100 percent the same. It will always have to account for that antithesis in the future. Whether the synthesis is 50/50 or 99.99/0.01 depends on the case.

Problem is, its almost never occurs in real terms, as one idea usually supresses and shuts down its antithesis, even if the antithesis has good points.

Most people hate on hegel because he is a poor writer, and applying his method means you have see the good points in your opposite, which is tough to do for everyone.

[Luís Henrique]

I fear that from Hume's metaphorical bonfire to the Hitler Jugend's very material bonfire there is a small step.

The kind of antiintellectualism that has been fostered by Ms Lichtenstein's anti-dialectical rants is actually very dangerous. Any kind of more in depth or critical view of things may be dismissed as "mumbo-jumbo" without any serious effort of critique or evaluation. Psychoanalysis, set theory, quantum theory, relativity, and, of course, Marxism, linguistics, evolution, etc., can easily be characterised as "non-ordinary language" or "untranslatable into ordinary language" and put into the Index of forbidden literature - metaphorically or not.

Time for actual leftists, with an actual commitment to working class interests and the struggle for a better society to react against this wave of obscurantism. Indeed, time also for the actual Wittgensteinians here - if there are any - to dissociate themselves from such stupidity. Lest the Tractatus, which cannot be accused of intellectual populism, be thrown away by the chorus of "socialist" sheep shouting "four legs good, two legs baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad".

Luís Henrique

[ZeroNowhere]

For every idea (thesis) there is a counter-point (anti-thesis.)

When these come into conflict (as they usually do) the resulting, surviving idea is a synthesis of the previous two ideas, taking aspects of both to formulate a new one, ideally for the betterment and evolution of both ideas. Makes sense, because after every conflict, no idea is 100 percent the same. It will always have to account for that antithesis in the future. Whether the synthesis is 50/50 or 99.99/0.01 depends on the case.

Problem is, its almost never occurs in real terms, as one idea usually supresses and shuts down its antithesis, even if the antithesis has good points.I'm not sure that this has much to do with Hegel. His philosophy is not composed of platitudes about how people should be open-minded and accepting of differing opinions or something of the sort. He was not attempting to synthesize the antitheses of post-modernism and kindergarten.

It's valid to say that he thought that, in many philosophical disputes, issues arise from an abstract 'either-or' view. Insofar as being is finite being, it contains non-being within it, and so on (or, to begin with, the concept which has existence in itself is in fact ultimately nothing due to lacking all determinations, a point which Marx commented on as essentially resolving into the necessity of the material world and the fact that abstractions gain their content only from existing things, although Hegel cannot allow this and hence circles around to make this progress in fact a progress of the concept translating itself into the material world. The conceptual chair is not a chair, because any chair must be a particular chair, and hence must proceed out of itself in order to become a chair so as to attain content and being for itself, and hence strolls out to form the material world). In any case, one can hardly disagree that Zeno's arrow paradox isn't a particularly satisfactory picture of the world.

However, this isn't a simple matter of saying that one side of the debate should take the other into account and incorporate the ideas together, but rather that the abstract separation must be superceded altogether and the sides reconceptualized entirely (in which there's no question of percentages.) Hegel is not simply talking about people disagreeing, he is concerned with the development of reason, here conceived as a power above man (rather than as man's own power as existent in their relationships with both nature and society.) Reason's self-development, as it were. Hegel wasn't simply giving an account of debate, at least in its basic and vulgar form, or debating etiquette. His approach does not entail entering a debate on, say, evolution or abortion and saying, 'You both have a lot to learn from each other', but rather concerns, well, philosophy and its development, conceived of as the self-development of reason.


I fear that from Hume's metaphorical bonfire to the Hitler Jugend's very material bonfire there is a small step.You mean to defacing the works of prominent specimens of Jewish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx) intellectualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein)?

[Luís Henrique]

You mean to defacing the works of prominent specimens of Jewish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx) intellectualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein)?

I suspect that, at least in Europe and countries whose histories are direct extensions of European history, there is no anti-intellectualism that isn't connected, at some level, to antisemitism.

Luís Henrique

[A Marxist Historian]

Speaking of therapeutic catchphrases...

And you're not going to find out on the Revleft philosophy board. To be honest, I think that Hegel is generally not that hard to understand, and frequently quite brilliant, but I suppose that to gain a basic understanding it helps to have some knowledge of philosophy, especially Plato, Descartes and so on (it can then be useful to look at Hegel's works on the philosophy of history to see how Hegel connects their themes with those treated in his works, and as it were puts their works into his terms. Generally, Descartes and the like are more easy to understand than Hegel if one is beginning, although Plato can be very hard to understand if you really don't want to (just like it's easy to look at Hegel's writing and think that it's gibberish on the level of 'Jabberwocky' if one really wants to, as many here could perhaps bare witness to)). Knowing some Wittgenstein can also help a fair bit, especially when it comes to understanding some parts of Hegel's ethical works, so long as one reads Wittgenstein for his own sake and not as aid in debates. He also helps in seeing the way beyond Hegel, but nonetheless they also have quite a few commonalities, as indeed do Hegel and Marx.

Marx can also help a fair bit on this matter if one has read a decent amount of his work relating to Hegel, especially in the earlier works such as the 1844 manuscripts, 'The German Ideology', 'The Holy Family', and so on. But, of course, Marx isn't simple or easily condensed either, so what can you do. Engels' writings on the matter are also great, although 'Dialectics of Nature' is fairly fragmentary (which is very unfortunate) and 'Anti-Duhring' primarily polemical, which means that some of the more profound points are hard to grasp until you know the general issues already. The text on Ludwig Feuerbach could also be helpful, although best understood if one is already somewhat familiar with, well, Hegel.

To be honest, I do think that a fairly simple account of dialectics could be given, and am currently working on one as part of a larger work, but it's still going to have to be fairly long. Your best bet if you wish to understand things is, as always, to read a lot, take notes and work things out, always making sure to remember that comprehension is not aided by dismissiveness and precedes criticism. That is, one's first concern when reading a text is not to say, 'Oh, hey, that conflicts with my beliefs', which generally leads to intellectual laziness at best and becoming a debater, probably susceptible to curiously resembling a parrot, at worst. It's to work out the logic of the philosopher; the more one reads and analyzes philosophy, the more one comes to admire the general insightfulness of most well-known philosophers, whether one agrees with them or not. Of course, that's not to condemn dismissiveness in all contexts, but in this context one really has to be able to entertain ideas even without accepting them if one is to gain much.

Trying to summarize Hegel in a few slogans or catchwords is a horrible mistake. It just leads to dogmatic sloganeering and stupidities. Hegel was investigating just how logic, the universe and the human mind *really work.* The most difficult of all subjects, especially if treated in pure abstraction the way Hegel does it.

Basic rules of dialectics:

1) Everything is connected to everything else. Everything is *always* in a state of change, motion and transformation.

2) Quantitative changes at a certain point become qualitative.

2) Opposites are identical and transform themselves into each other.

A gross oversimplification, which if mechanically applied will invariably lead to extreme stupidities. The hardest to wrap your noggin around is three. As Lenin put it in his Philosophical Notebooks,

"opposites can be and habitually become identical--under what conditions they transform themselves into each other and become identical--why the human mind should not take these opposite as dead and rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, changing into each other."

That's how Hegel described human thought. As a pure idealist, for him, human thought was everything. A *materialist* dialectician, like Marx, understands that what Hegel was really investigating was how the universe works, not just human thought patterns.

The best intro to dialectics is Peter Fryer's article "Lenin as Philosopher," which is reprinted in the current issue of the Spartacist theoretical magazine.

Second best IMHO is Hegel's own sole attempt to give a popular explanation of dialectics, entitled "Who Thinks Abstractly?" Only four pages long, and deceptively easy reading, you'll need to read it a few times to get the point.

It's the appendix to "Hegel: Texts and Commentary," a short little Doubleday paperback translated and edited by Walter Kaufman of about 120 pages. Published in 1965 and doubtless way out of print, but probably pretty findable. No doubt the piece is findable many other places too.

-M.H.-

[$lim_$weezy]

I am currently reading "The Philosophy of Hegel" by W. T. Stace, which I find to be extremely effective at explaining what are on the surface hopelessly obscure concepts. I highly recommend it! Setting aside whether or not Hegel has me convinced on any level, my mind has been blown many times since I began reading.

[Kronsteen]

The thesis-antithesis-synthesis stuff is indeed not in Hegel. He was aware of the idea, thought it was useless, and wrongly attributed it to Kant - it actually comes from Fichte. As for whether Marx believed it was Hegel's method, I'm pretty sure he didn't, but there's plenty of marxists who try to forcefit Marx into the tripartite system.

Now, what was Hegel's system? That is a contested issue to say the least, but most marxists accept Plekhanov's interpretation of Hegel, which is:

* Human knowledge progresses as a series of approximations to the truth, passing through discrete stages, where each stage incorporates, combines and refines the insights of all the previous stages.

* Human societies progress in the same way, approaching justness.

* The universe itself does the same thing, approaching...something. Possibly self-awareness.

We tend to think ideas get better as they approach reality, and ideas in our heads come from the physical universe. For Hegel, the physical universe is a poor reflection of ideas, and it gets better as the ideas get closer to their foreodained goal.

There are the fraught questions of how much Hegel is in Marx unmodified, how much is 'inverted', and how much Marx simply discarded. And the separate same questions about Engels, Lenin etc.

Certainly Marx's notions that human society goes through distinct economic stages, each an improvement on the last, 'till we reach Communism which is where humans become what they 'truly are'...looks rather Hegel-inspired. Orthodox marxists say this is because Hegel's central insights are correct, but it took Marx to demystify them.

[LJJW]

Kronsteen is right, the triad -- thesis/antithesis/synthesis isn't Hegel's method, but that of Kant and Fichte.

I can't post liks yet, but you will find a post in the stickied thread above ('Help with updating stickies'), about five or six posts down the first page, that settles this once and for all.

Also, when I have passed the 25 posts mark, I'll add a link to a site that explains dialectical materialism in very simple terms for absolute beginners, along with it's major flaws.

If you go to page two of this section, you will find another thread: 'Anti-dialectics Made Easy', which goes into far more detail.

[Comrade Trotsky]

I too have been trying to find a simple definition of Hegel's dialecticalism, but haven't been able to do so.

Hell, I am still trying to fully grasp Dialectial Materialism, for that matter. I know the jist of it, which is two conflitcting forces will ultimately give rise to a new system (I hope im not making a fool of myself here :( ) But that's about all I understand of it at the moment.

Complicated stuff. (for me anyways)

[black magick hustla]

I
Time for actual leftists, with an actual commitment to working class interests and the struggle for a better society to react against this wave of obscurantism. Indeed, time also for the actual Wittgensteinians here - if there are any - to dissociate themselves from such stupidity. Lest the Tractatus, which cannot be accused of intellectual populism, be thrown away by the chorus of "socialist" sheep shouting "four legs good, two legs baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad".

Luís Henrique

i used to be a partsian of rosa's take on wittgenstein, i am not anymore, but i don't think you get her criticism. the idea is not so much that philosophy is hard to understand, or that it uses strange jargon, but that it is nonsensical. it has nothing to with how accessible it is, but that even the people who expouse it are confused. furthermore, its useless because its "misuse" of language implies that virtually anything can be justified or proved with it. look at marxist historian's take on "quantiative to qualitative", that is just meaningless, because quantitative and qualitative are not absolute concepts, but only acquire sense in the context. i think rosa was an extremist, but anyone who says that a lot of the wordplay that comes from some aspects of philosophy is as justified as mathematical technical jargon is talking nonsense.

[Luís Henrique]

i used to be a partsian of rosa's take on wittgenstein, i am not anymore, but i don't think you get her criticism. the idea is not so much that philosophy is hard to understand, or that it uses strange jargon, but that it is nonsensical. it has nothing to with how accessible it is, but that even the people who expouse it are confused. furthermore, its useless because its "misuse" of language implies that virtually anything can be justified or proved with it. look at marxist historian's take on "quantiative to qualitative", that is just meaningless, because quantitative and qualitative are not absolute concepts, but only acquire sense in the context. i think rosa was an extremist, but anyone who says that a lot of the wordplay that comes from some aspects of philosophy is as justified as mathematical technical jargon is talking nonsense.

I don't think Ms Lichtenstein's positions directly imply obscurantism. I do think that the way she proposes such positions do embold ignorant people to get proud and loud about their ignorance, because "it is just gibberish anyway" as "proved by Rosa". That's why I called for "actual Wittgensteinians" to take a stance against obscurantism. They should realise that manifestations of willful ignorance aren't a sign that their ideas are gaining momentum, but that they are being distorted and misused, to ends that they would not agree with.

Luís Henrique

[Dasein]

From an introduction to Hegel book I have:



The dialectical method

While working on a draft of Capital Marx wrote to Engels:

In the method of treatment the fact that by mere accident I again glanced through Hegel's Logic has been of great service to me ... If there should ever be time for such work again, I would greatly like to make accessible to the ordinary human intelligence, in two or three printer's sheets, what is rational in the method which Hegel discovered but at the same time enveloped in mysticism...

The method Marx is referring to is of course the dialectical method, which Hegel describes as, 'the only true method' of scholarly and scientific exposition. It is the method he uses in the Logic to uncover the form of pure thought.

Marx never found the time to write his explanation of what is rational in the dialectical method. Many others did, however, and they were by no means as brief as Marx had intended to be. Some of these commentators build up dialectics into an alternative to all previous forms of logic, something that supersedes such ordinary reasoning as the simple syllogistic form of argument. There is nothing in Hegel to justify such extravagant claims for the dialectical method. Nor is there any need to treat the dialectical method, as others do, as something deep and mysterious. It is, Hegel says, a method with a 'simple rhythm'; to dance to it takes no great skill...

In the Philosophy of History, one immense dialectical movement dominates world history from the Greek world to the present. Greece was a society based on customary morality, a harmonious society in which citizens identified themselves with the community and had no thought of acting in opposition to it. The customary community forms the starting-point of the dialectical movement, known in the jargon as the thesis.

The next stage is for this thesis to show itself to be inadequate or inconsistent. In the case of the community of ancient Greece, this inadequacy is revealed through the questioning of Socrates. The Greeks could not do without independent thought, but the independent thinker is the deadly foe of customary morality. The community based on custom thus collapses in the face of the principle of independent thought. It is now the turn of this principle to develop, which it does under Christianity. The Reformation brings acceptance of the supreme right of individual conscience. The harmony of the Greek community has been lost, but freedom is triumphant. This is the second stage of the dialectical movement. It is the opposite or negation of the first stage, and hence is known as the antithesis.

The second stage then also shows itself to be inadequate. Freedom, taken by itself, turns out to be too abstract and barren to serve as the basis for society. Put into practice, the principle of absolute freedom turns into the Terror of the French Revolution. We can then see that both customary harmony and abstract freedom of the individual are one-sided. They must be brought together, unified in a manner that preserves them, and avoids their different forms of one-sidedness. This results in a third and more adequate stage, the synthesis. In the Philosophy of History, the synthesis in the overall dialectical movement is the German society of Hegel's time, which he saw as harmonious because it is an organic community, yet preserving individual freedom because it is rationally organized.

Every dialectical movement terminates with a synthesis, but not every synthesis brings the dialectical process to a stop in the way that Hegel thought the organic community of his own time brought the dialectical movement of history to an end. Often the synthesis, though adequately reconciling the previous thesis and antithesis, will turn out to be one-sided in some other respect. It will then serve as the thesis for a new dialectical movement, and so the process will continue...

So the dialectic leads on; but we shall not follow. We have seen enough to grasp the idea of the dialectical method. For Hegel it is a method of exposition, but it is a method that, Hegel says, 'is in no way different from its object and content--for it is the content in itself, the dialectic which it has in itself, that moves it on'. In the categories of our thought, in the development of consciousness, and in the progress of history, there are opposing elements which lead to the disintegration of what seemed stable, and the emergence of something new which reconciles the previously opposing elements but in turn develops its own internal tensions. This process is a necessary one, because neither thought nor consciousness can spring into existence in an adequate form. They can achieve adequacy only by the process of dialectical development. According to Hegel, the dialectic works as a method of exposition because the world works dialectically.



Also, from another book I have:




The word dialectic derives from the Greek word for "conversation" and refers to the way our ideas develop through a process of conflict and opposition. Hegel believes ideas have their own internal laws of change, so that when a partial truth is examined and pushed to its limits, it will reveal its own inadequacies at the same time that it points to its successor. Thus every idea is a roadside inn, only a temporary stopping place on the mind's journey toward completely adequate knowledge.

Many commentators describe Hegel's idea, called the thesis, which is then opposed by another standpoint called the antithesis. The tension between these two is then resolved by moving to a higher-order perspective called the synthesis. But this third stage now becomes a thesis, which produces its own antithesis, and then the process continues. For example, Parmenides says that reality is unchanging an permanent. However, it would seem impossible for us to come to know this since "coming to know something" involves a change in our understanding. The antithesis to this philosophy was found in Heraclitus, who said reality is constantly changing. However, this idea is inadequate, for if reality is continually changing and I am changing, then there is nothing enduring to know and no enduring person to know it. The synthesis of these two positions is found in Plato, who said that one aspect of reality is permanent (the eternal Forms) and another aspect of reality is changing (The physical world). Thus, two partial truths led to a more comprehensive viewpoint, which historically led to further developments.

As common as it is to view Hegel's philosophy in terms of this triadic pattern, this interpretation is itself only partially true, for it fits only some of the movements of Hegel's thought. The problem is that Hegel rarely uses the terms "thesis," "antithesis," and "synthesis." Instead, this terminology was used by Hegel's predecessor, Fichte. Although Hegel does have a tendency to divide things up in triads, he does not always do so. For example, sometimes an idea is found to contain an absurdity within itself, instead of being contradicted by a second idea. In other cases, an idea is found to be incomplete and is filled out or supplemented by another standpoint. Sometimes, two complementary ideas are found to presuppose a third, more comprehensive notion. The point of Hegel's dialectic is that, short of perfect knowledge of the totality, our ideas are always one-sided and inadequate and, thus, they have a restless tendency to find their fulfillment in progressively more complete viewpoints...

[ScarletStandard]

First off, the "Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis" triad is Fichte's, not Hegel's.

Also, to defend Hegelian philosophy against the charge of "misusing language," language is not a tool, external to ourselves, which we can use to carve up reality into more or less precise pieces. We are always already swimming in language. Hegel was among the first to realize that we subjects are a function of language. Language is not a function of subjects which precede it and can be thought of apart from it.

Now to answer the question which started this thread as best I can, the clearest and most concise definition of the dialectic I have read is by Hegel himself, in his Encyclopaedia Logic. It can be found in the section entitled "A More Precise Conception and Division of the Logic," from sections 79 to 83.

In my own opinion, if you are interested in Marx's theories, it is very important to grapple with Hegel. There is a thick fog of mythology around him, but many people who dismiss him outright do so only based on a long history of misreadings elevated to the level of popular dogma. Once you really get to know his system, you'll find that he is not actually guilty of mysticism, idealism, or intentional obscurity in any simple and straightforward manner. In any case, that is what I have found.