Editing Dialectic (section)

== Criticisms ==
{{See also|Category:Critics of dialectical materialism}}
[[Friedrich Nietzsche]] viewed dialectic as a method that imposes artificial boundaries and suppresses the richness and diversity of reality. He rejected the notion that truth can be fully grasped through dialectical reasoning and offered a critique of dialectic, challenging its traditional framework and emphasizing the limitations of its approach to understanding reality.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UPVwzQEACAAJ |title=The Gay Science |first1=Friedrich |last1=Nietzsche |year=2001 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-63645-2 |page=117 |orig-date=1882}}</ref> He expressed skepticism towards its methodology and implications in ''[[Twilight of the Idols]]'': "I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity".<ref name="Nietzsche-1997">{{Cite book |title=Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize with a Hammer |first1=Friedrich |last1=Nietzsche |year=1997 |publisher=Hackett |isbn=978-0-87220-354-9 |orig-date=1889}}</ref>{{rp|42}} In the same book, Nietzsche criticized Socrates' dialectics because he believed it prioritized reason over instinct, resulting in the suppression of individual passions and the imposition of an artificial morality.<ref name="Nietzsche-1997" />{{rp|47}}

In 1937, [[Karl Popper]] wrote and delivered a paper entitled "What Is Dialectic?" in which he criticized the dialectics of Hegel, Marx, and Engels for their willingness "to put up with contradictions".<ref name="Popper-1940">{{multiref2 | {{cite journal |last=Popper |first=Karl R. |date=October 1940 |title=What is dialectic? |journal=[[Mind (journal)|Mind]] |volume=49 |issue=196 |pages=407, 426 |doi=10.1093/mind/XLIX.194.403 |jstor=2250841}} | {{cite book |last=Popper |first=Karl R. |date=1962 |chapter=What is dialectic? |title=Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge |title-link=Conjectures and Refutations |location=New York |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |pages=316, 335 |isbn=0-7100-6507-8 |oclc=316022}} }}</ref> He argued that accepting contradiction as a valid form of logic would lead to the [[principle of explosion]] and thus [[trivialism]]. Popper concluded the essay with these words: "The whole development of dialectic should be a warning against the dangers inherent in philosophical system-building. It should remind us that [[philosophy]] should not be made a basis for any sort of scientific system and that philosophers should be much more modest in their claims. One task which they can fulfill quite usefully is the study of the critical [[Scientific method|methods of science]]."<ref name="Popper-1940" /> Seventy years later, [[Nicholas Rescher]] responded that "Popper's critique touches only a hyperbolic version of dialectic", and he quipped: "Ironically, there is something decidedly dialectical about Popper's critique of dialectics."<ref>{{cite book |last=Rescher |first=Nicholas |date=2007 |title=Dialectics: A Classical Approach to Inquiry |location=Frankfurt |publisher=Ontos Verlag |page=116 |isbn=978-3-938793-76-3 |oclc=185032382 |doi=10.1515/9783110321289}}</ref> Around the same time as Popper's critique was published, philosopher [[Sidney Hook]] discussed the "sense and nonsense in dialectic" and rejected two conceptions of dialectic as unscientific but accepted one conception as a "convenient organizing category".<ref>{{cite book |last=Hook |first=Sidney |author-link=Sidney Hook |date=1940 |chapter=Sense and nonsense in dialectic |title=Reason, Social Myths and Democracy |location=New York |publisher=John Day |pages=[https://archive.org/details/reasonsocialmyth00hook/page/262 262–264] |oclc=265987 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/reasonsocialmyth00hook/page/262}}</ref>

The philosopher of science and physicist [[Mario Bunge]] repeatedly criticized Hegelian and Marxian dialectics, calling them "fuzzy and remote from science"<ref>{{cite book |last=Bunge |first=Mario Augusto |author-link=Mario Bunge |date=1981 |chapter=A critique of dialectics |title=Scientific materialism |series=Episteme |volume=9 |location=Dordrecht; Boston |publisher=[[Kluwer Academic Publishers]] |pages=[https://archive.org/details/scientificmateri0000bung/page/41 41–63] |isbn=978-9027713049 |oclc=7596139 |doi=10.1007/978-94-009-8517-9_4 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/scientificmateri0000bung/page/41}}</ref> and a "disastrous legacy".<ref name="Bunge-2012">{{cite book |last=Bunge |first=Mario Augusto |author-link=Mario Bunge |date=2012 |title=Evaluating philosophies |series=Boston studies in the philosophy of science |volume=295 |location=New York |publisher=Springer |pages=84–85 |isbn=9789400744073 |oclc=806947226 |doi=10.1007/978-94-007-4408-0}}</ref> He concluded: "The so-called laws of dialectics, such as formulated by Engels (1940, 1954) and Lenin (1947, 1981), are false insofar as they are intelligible."<ref name="Bunge-2012" /> [[Poe Yu-ze Wan]], reviewing Bunge's criticisms of dialectics, found Bunge's arguments to be important and sensible, but he thought that dialectics could still serve some [[heuristic]] purposes for scientists.<ref name="Wan-2013">{{cite journal |last=Wan |first=Poe Yu-ze |date=December 2013 |title=Dialectics, complexity, and the systemic approach: toward a critical reconciliation |journal=Philosophy of the Social Sciences |volume=43 |issue=4 |page=412, 416, 419, 424, 428 |citeseerx=10.1.1.989.6440 |doi=10.1177/0048393112441974 |s2cid=144820093}}</ref> Wan pointed out that scientists such as the American Marxist biologists [[Richard Levins]] and [[Richard Lewontin]] (authors of ''[[The Dialectical Biologist]]'') and the German-American evolutionary biologist [[Ernst Mayr]], not a Marxist himself, have found agreement between dialectical principles and their own scientific outlooks, although Wan opined that Engels's "laws" of dialectics "in fact 'explain' nothing".<ref name="Wan-2013" />

Even some Marxists are critical of the term "dialectics". For instance, [[Michael Heinrich]] wrote, "More often than not, the grandiose rhetoric about dialectics is reducible to the simple fact that everything is dependent upon everything else and is in a state of interaction and that it's all rather complicated—which is true in most cases, but doesn't really say anything."<ref>{{cite book |last=Heinrich |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Heinrich |date=2004 |chapter=Dialectics—A Marxist 'Rosetta Stone'? |title=An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital |title-link=An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital |translator-first=Alexander |translator-last=Locascio |location=New York |publisher=[[Monthly Review Press]] |pages=[https://archive.org/details/introductiontoth0000hein/page/36 36–37] |isbn=978-1-58367-288-4 |oclc=768793094 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontoth0000hein/page/36 |chapter-url-access=registration}}</ref>