What is dialectics and what are its forms?

What is dialectics? We are used to treating it as a kind of concept that conveys the unity of diversity and reflects the basic principles of being. However, it did not happen immediately. Historical forms of dialectics existed since the era of antiquity. Plato's ideas, Aristotle's categories, the universals of medieval scholasticism, the phenomena and noumenes of Kant and, finally, the principles of Hegel - all of them to some extent fit this definition or contain its elements.

What is dialectics and how were its categories created?

Categories of dialectics reflect the search for the essence, from which the picture of the world is composed. They are universal signs, characteristic not for certain types of being, but for the whole universe. Through these categories one can comprehend the universe, its life and development, at least, how we imagine it all. These forms of human thinking are formed at certain stages in the development of philosophy. For this, certain prerequisites developed-socio-cultural, historical, and intellectual. Before answering the question of what dialectics is, people first tried to find out what time, space, motion, matter means. That is, they came to the invention of terms, which were described by very general concepts. At first dialectics existed in very naive forms. Then - in the form of religious concepts and philosophical laws. There were new categories of knowledge that were reflected in the language. They have become the framework for the formation of abstract concepts. Of these, philosophical thought has created clearly expressed terms, which were previously expressed only spontaneously and were not clearly understood.

What is dialectics and its main characteristics

Dialectics describes the general principles and relations of the universe. Its categories are universal forms of thinking, linking knowledge and form, ontology and epistemology. They are also fundamental concepts, which in the most concentrated form express the main connections of the universe. These are the most stable principles of the process of thinking. These categories are grouped together, like the bricks from which the picture is built: single - universal, similarity - difference, quantity - quality, simple - complex, part - whole, finite - infinite. They also include such universal definitions as the phenomenon and essence, the cause is the effect, the necessary - the possible and so on. Dialectics is therefore also a logic, which, as Aristotle argued, really reflects the existing connections in the world. She studies the categorical composition of thinking, its epistemological functions and carries out its historical analysis. It also explores the principles and laws of the formation of knowledge, its transitions from one system to another, as well as its inherent contradictions. In modern Western philosophy , both the dialectic and its alternatives are recognized as a method. Such, for example, as set forth in Kuhn's famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In addition, there are also original forms of dialectics, such as the philosophy of the Frankfurt School (Habermas and Horkmeier). It opposes two kinds of this universal method. We are talking about the dialectic of the Enlightenment, from which, according to the thinkers, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the other - was formed. The latter they believe to be a method free from problems of domination and power.