The laws of Hegel's dialectic: thinking determines being

Dialectics - a very polysemantic word, existing in philosophy from time immemorial. At one time, Hegel in a capacious phrase characterized the emergence and significance of this philosophical method: "If Thales was the creator of the philosophy of nature, Socrates - moral philosophy, then Plato created a third philosophy - dialectics." In philosophy, the laws of dialectics are understood as the doctrine of the most common connections, the basic principles and the formation of being, and also the development of knowledge. Thus, dialectics is both a philosophical theory and a method of cognition.

The laws of dialectics or their elements in a simplified form appear in many ancient philosophers who describe the world or space as an internally contradictory process. For ancient Greek epistemology there is a term such as "sophia" - dialectical comprehension. Elements of dialectics we observe in the East, especially in the philosophical systems of Taoism and Buddhism (for example, in the doctrine that not every concept is identical to itself, or in paradoxical arguments that "weakness is great and strength is insignificant"). Dialectical is the doctrine of Heraclitus about the Logos - this is war and peace, hunger and saturation, water and fire, and every birth is the death of the previous one. Socrates has a dialectical ability to conduct a dialogue, which he calls maevtika - "the art of midwife." Dialectical can be called the statement of Plato that the idea is both there and is not a thing. There are many examples of this in the philosophy of the Middle Ages and the New Age.

However, in Hegel, the laws of dialectics are finally formulated as postulates of the relationship between being and thinking, or rather the dominance of thinking over being. In his most fundamental works, The Science of Logic, The Philosophy of Nature, and The Phenomenology of the Spirit, he, refuting Kant's thesis that matter is not derived from consciousness, but consciousness from matter, actually stated that matter and consciousness are developing According to some laws - dialectical logic. Originally there was an identity of being and thinking (esse), but in this identity there were hidden contradictions between the subject and the object. Knowing itself, this unity alienates its objective qualities and creates otherness (matter, nature). But since the essence of this other-being is thinking, the material world is also logical, and its meaning is the development of an absolute idea, the highest level of which is the Absolute Spirit.

The laws of Hegel's dialectic are in fact the laws of thought as the highest form of knowledge. Thinking can detect in the subject its own content, which is the concept - the essence of the subject. Only dialectical thinking can comprehend what is reasonable, divine, real and necessary coincide in essence, and not in outward manifestations. Formal logic is incapable of this, because it is limited by the laws of thought, while the dialectical comprehends the laws of development.

The laws of dialectics formulated by Hegel, first of all, refer to concepts. The first law says that concepts evolve from simple to complex, from concrete to abstract and, conversely, they flow one into another. Creation of new concepts occurs through qualitative changes, a jump, "interruption of continuity". The second law states that each concept is a unity of identity and difference - in fact, at the heart of any of them are the opposites that lead to movement and development. And, finally, the third law - the negation of negation - describes a scheme for the development of concepts. Every new concept negates the previous one, at the same time takes something from it, and the subsequent one returns to the first, but at a different level.

Hegel also developed the categories, principles and laws of dialectics. Single, special and general are the main categories of concept development and represent a triad. The very scheme of Hegel on the development of being and thinking, the natural, spiritual and historical world is also a triad. If he defines the original, single being-thinking as "abstract being", then the creation of nature philosopher calls "substantial being", and the appearance of man, the historical process and the emergence of knowledge - "conscious being." Thus, his dialectic is "the science of the idea in itself and for itself".