Find the word definition

Crossword clues for dialectic

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
dialectic
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And there was the little hut ... He didn't know himself what he meant by that ... Wycliffian dialectic.
▪ But the Master-Slave dialectic seems to capture the relation between people in pornographic eroticism.
▪ In general, what the theory of dialectic materialism states is that every society is structured around its material basis of production.
▪ In the Consultation the emerging model of organic union is a dialectic between unity and pluralism, between structures and life.
▪ In this sense, the ideology allows for the possibility of an implicit, internalized dialectic.
▪ It is prized in cultures which use second-order systems of logic and dialectic to reason about the world.
▪ Trotsky, claimed James, had misunderstood the dialectic and therefore there was a fundamental flaw in his interpretation of history.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dialectic

Dialectic \Di`a*lec"tic\, n. Same as Dialectics.

Plato placed his dialectic above all sciences.
--Liddell & Scott.

Dialectic

Dialectic \Di`a*lec"tic\, Dialectical \Di`a*lec"tic*al\, a. [L. dialecticus, Gr. ?: cf. F. dialectique. See Dialect.]

  1. Pertaining to dialectics; logical; argumental.

  2. Pertaining to a dialect or to dialects.
    --Earle.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
dialectic

1580s, earlier dialatik (late 14c.), from Old French dialectique (12c.), from Latin dialectica, from Greek dialektike (techne) "(art of) philosophical discussion or discourse," fem. of dialektikos "of conversation, discourse," from dialektos "discourse, conversation" (see dialect). Originally synonymous with logic; in modern philosophy refined by Kant, then by Hegel, who made it mean "process of resolving or merging contradictions in character." Related: Dialectics.

Wiktionary
dialectic

a. dialectical n. 1 Any formal system of reasoning that arrives at a truth by the exchange of logical arguments. 2 A contradiction of ideas that serves as the determining factor in their interaction.

WordNet
dialectic

adj. of or relating to or employing dialectic; "the dialectical method" [syn: dialectical]

dialectic
  1. n. any formal system of reasoning that arrives at the truth by the exchange of logical arguments

  2. a contradiction of ideas that serves as the determining factor in their interaction; "this situation created the inner dialectic of American history"

Wikipedia
Dialectic

Dialectic or dialectics (, dialektikḗ), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments. The term was popularized by Plato's Socratic dialogues but the act itself has been central to European and Indian philosophy since ancient history.

The term dialectic is not synonymous with the term debate. While in theory debaters are not necessarily emotionally invested in their point of view, in practice debaters frequently display an emotional commitment that may cloud rational judgment. Debates are won through a combination of persuading the opponent, proving one's argument correct, or proving the opponent's argument incorrect. Debates do not necessarily require promptly identifying a clear winner or loser; however clear winners are frequently determined by either a judge, jury, or by group consensus. The term dialectics is also not synonymous with the term rhetoric, a method or art of discourse that seeks to persuade, inform, or motivate an audience. Concepts, like " logos" or rational appeal, " pathos" or emotional appeal, and " ethos" or ethical appeal, are intentionally used by rhetoricians to persuade an audience.

The Sophists taught aretē (, quality, excellence) as the highest value, and the determinant of one's actions in life. The Sophists taught artistic quality in oratory (motivation via speech) as a manner of demonstrating one's aretē. Oratory was taught as an art form, used to please and to influence other people via excellent speech; nonetheless, the Sophists taught the pupil to seek aretē in all endeavours, not solely in oratory.

Socrates favoured truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion) as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one's actions. To Socrates, truth, not aretē, was the greater good, and each person should, above all else, seek truth to guide one's life. Therefore, Socrates opposed the Sophists and their teaching of rhetoric as art and as emotional oratory requiring neither logic nor proof. Different forms of dialectical reasoning have emerged throughout history from the Indosphere (Greater India) and the West (Europe). These forms include the Socratic method, Hindu, Buddhist, Medieval, Hegelian dialectics, Marxist, Talmudic, and Neo-orthodoxy.

Usage examples of "dialectic".

See Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans.

The fundamental text that describes this development and anticipates its results is Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans.

His bringing of the disturbing passages into juxtaposition where they could readily be compared proclaimed that even beginners in dialectic could, by selecting the right passages from the doctrinists, bolster either side of fundamental arguments.

This transcendent political apparatus corresponds to the necessary and ineluctable transcendent conditions that modern philosophy posed at the pinnacle of its development, in Kantian schematism and Hegelian dialectics.

What in the midst of the crisis in the 1920s appeared as transcendence against history, redemption against corruption, and messianism against nihilism now was constructed as an ontologically definite position outside and against, and thus beyond every possible residue of the dialectic.

Stoic and Aristotelian syllogistic and dialectic method used also by his Monarchian opponents.

Wisdom and Dialectic have the task of presenting all things as Universals and stripped of matter for treatment by the Understanding.

To unravel the dialectic between specificity and plasticity and to understand its mechanisms form some of the major tasks of modern biology.

It was complicated dialectic, based on the concept of earthly representation, and amounting to a line of reasoning which supposed that what was good behaviour between Baal and his mate Astarte would be equally justifiable between their earthly representatives -although, of course, not between a priestess and any other person than the High Priest of Baal.

Then of an event, an argument, a dialectic euhemerism, protoplasmic or blastodermic?

In following the development of weaponry from the primitive through the sophisticated I'd noted that weapons and defenses and new weapons really did appear to arise in response to each other with such a chartable predictability that the area might well be viewed as one of the few classic examples of a dialectic doing just what dialectics are supposed to dothesis, antithesis, synthesis, ad nauseum.

This is almost certainly the dialectic that I saw during my March 1974 revelations, and I am willing to admit that it is certainly possible that the blind, dark counterplayer against which the vitalistic good element worked could be "God's own earlier stages," as Driesch viewed it.

Yet the theme was good, and timely, and heartfelt, and White preserves an awareness of persons and aerates the dialectics with traits of character and colloquial asides.

He's dealt with old-time commie weak-AIs before, minds raised on Marxist dialectic and Austrian School economics: They're so thoroughly hypnotized by the short-term victory of global capitalism that they can't surf the new paradigm, look to the longer term.

He's dealt with old-time commie weak-AI's before, minds raised on Marxist dialectic and Austrian School economics: they're so thoroughly hypnotised by the short-term victory of capitalism in the industrial age that they can't surf the new paradigm, look to the longer term.