The notion of process, activity, or change has an inextricable relation to the nature and meaning of dialectic. In ancient philosophy, dialectic (dialektik‘), derived from the Greek dialegein, meaning to ‘converse,’ ‘argue,’ or ‘discourse,’ involved a conversational method of argumentative exchange. By Plato’s time, the term acquired a technical sense in the form of question and answer similar to a debate, and is now generally equated with Socrates’ pedagogical style primarily represented in Plato’s Dialogues. In this sense, dialectic is both the art of refutation and the quintessential method for ascertaining knowledge.

Aristotle attributes Zeno of Elea with inventing the notion of dialectic due to his paradoxical arguments against motion and multiplicity, which rests on premises yielding contradictory consequences (Smith, 1999). Aristotle is one of the first philosophers to organize formal procedures for dialectical debates in the Topics, which reappeared centuries later in the formalized disputations practiced in universities throughout the Middle Ages in Europe. Responding to the ancient’s alleged ‘illusory’ logic, Kant (1781) introduced the notion of the ‘Transcendental Dialectic’ in his first Critique as a means of analyzing antinomies or contradictions in reasoning, while Fichte (1794) attempted to bridge opposition by showing how thought seeks a natural synthesis. Hegel (1807, 1817,a,b,c) extended his dialectic of spirit (Geist) to a metaphysical enterprise that attempts to account for logic, nature, mind, and human history, while Marx in turn reduced spirit to matter. Whitehead (1929), on the other hand, reanimated nature as mind in his cosmology and established the last great metaphysical system in the history of philosophy emphasizing the primacy of process.

The passage above comes from this paper by Jon Mills, Psy.D., Ph.D., ABPP

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Digital Illustration by Chinese-born, London based, artist Céli Lee

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