Dialectics

[Tommy4ever]

Now I realise that there are a lot of people here who don't like the theory of dialectics, but I would none the less like to get an understanding of it.

I believe that one of the main concepts of Dialectics is that when one force contradicts another force (say the proletariat and the bourgeiosie) then a change must occur.

But from then on I have only vague ideas of what else is included in the idea.

So could someone either explain it to me in relatively simple language or point me somewhere which can. :)

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

Dialectics: literally, "to grasp [something] by means of [something else.]" A particular form of reasoning, by means of syllogisms, as in, if a is not b, then a+b = c. This practice periodically returns in Western Culture (in the thirteenth century, for instance), as a useful counter to various dogmatisms ("a=a, or else).

(The stuff about thesis, antithesis, etc. is absolutely minor. Hegel almost never used any of those terms; neither did Marx. Kant uses the expression "dialectics" quite often, but rejects its validity for knowledge. One might fairly argue that Hegel's interest in dialectics is proportionate to his need to refute Kant's use of the concept.)