Principles of dialectics: structure and content

The rapid development of natural sciences in the second half of the 19th century showed that the fundamental methodological foundations of scientific knowledge that existed before could no longer describe the general laws governing the development of nature, the phenomenon of being.

In addition, there were accumulated problems of a public nature, requiring scientific explanation and interpretation. The metaphysical philosophy and principles of Hegel's dialectic that prevailed in scientific knowledge had not been able to answer the question of the historical laws of development. The peculiarity of the need for the new method was that it required an explanation of the universe, starting from the positions of a materialistic understanding of the unity of the world.

Significant contribution to the development of dialectical methodology in the second half of the century before the first introduced K. Marx, who developed his own view of the basic principles of dialectics, noted its difference from Hegelian philosophy - Marxist dialectics was of a materialistic nature. This kind of dialectic became the core of all materialistic thinking, and the principles of dialectics in philosophy began to be interpreted from the materialistic standpoint.

Dialectics, in its most general sense, is both a method of cognition and a theory, and therefore includes, as content components, a general theory of development, as well as a system of principles, laws and categories, through which the content of this theory is revealed.

The basic principles of dialectics are as follows:

The principle of objectivity follows from the materialistic version of the solution of the basic question of philosophy and implies the recognition that each object of nature exists outside of human consciousness and manifests itself in it independently. Reflection of the surrounding world in the mind of a person occurs in the process of human activity, that is, thinking "obeys" the object when it is reflected by consciousness.

Principles of dialectics include such as the principle of comprehensiveness, the essence of which is to recognize the universal interconnection of phenomena in nature and society. Although all objects are separated by space and time, nevertheless, there are indirect links between them that affect their properties, states and changes. The most complex of such links are present in the life of society. But this principle should not be interpreted utilitarily, because human knowledge is always relative and can not be turned into an absolute. Otherwise, dialectics degenerates into dogmatics, which studies and analyzes all phenomena of the universe outside their relationship with reality and beyond understanding their ability to develop.

The dialectical principle of development presupposes the consideration of dialectics itself as a science. That is why many philosophers, when considering the principles of dialectics, call the principle of development basic. This principle, in fact, integrates all other principles and characterizes their influence as a whole.

The peculiarities of this process are such properties of material objects and phenomena as direction, deployment in time, generation of a new state, regularity, irreversibility. That is, the relationship of development with the specific conditions of movement of material and non-material substances is recognized. And this, in turn, generates the diversity of the world, consisting in the fact that the movement is not always linear, but can manifest itself as a zigzag, accelerated or delayed, etc. The most vivid and simple example of such ambiguity is the existence of two main directions in development - progress and regress, each of which reflects a very definite version of the movement in the material world.