Editing Dialectic (section)

=== Hegelian dialectic ===
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{{redirect|Hegelian dialectic|the Prodigy album|Hegelian Dialectic (The Book of Revelation)}}
{{See also|Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel#Dialectics, speculation, idealism}}
The '''Hegelian dialectic'''<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> describes changes in the forms of thought through their own internal contradictions into concrete forms [[unity of opposites|that overcome previous oppositions]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hegel |first1=Georg Wilhelm Friedrich |author1-link=Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |title=The Science of Logic |series=Cambridge Hegel Translations |location=Cambridge, UK; New York |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=2010 |doi=10.1017/9780511780240 |isbn=978-0-511-78978-6 |oclc=664571199 |pages=34–35 |quote=the necessity of the connectedness and the immanent emergence of distinctions must be found in the treatment of the fact itself, for it falls within the concept's own progressive determination. What propels the concept onward is the already mentioned negative which it possesses in itself; it is this that constitutes the truly dialectical factor. ... It is in this dialectic as understood here, and hence in grasping opposites in their unity, or the positive in the negative, that the speculative consists.}}</ref>

This dialectic is sometimes presented in a threefold manner, as first stated by [[Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus]], as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a ''thesis'', giving rise to its reaction; an ''antithesis'', which contradicts or negates the thesis; and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a ''synthesis''.<ref>{{cite book |title=Historische Entwicklung der spekulativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel |trans-title=Historical development of speculative philosophy from Kant to Hegel |language=de |location=Dresden-Leipzig |orig-date=1837 |page=367 |edition=4th |date=1848}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Fox |first=Michael Allen |date=2005 |title=The Accessible Hegel |location=Amherst, NY |publisher=Humanity Books |page=43 |isbn=1591022584}} Also see Hegel's preface to the ''[[Phenomenology of Spirit]]'', trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), §50–51, pp. 29–30.</ref> Although, Hegel opposed these terms.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Adorno |first=Theodor |title=Lectures on Negative Dialectics: Fragments of a Lecture Course 1965/1966 |date=2008 |location=Cambridge, UK |publisher=[[Polity (publisher)|Polity]] |isbn=978-0-7456-3510-1 |page=6}}</ref>

By contrast, the terms ''abstract'', ''negative'', and ''concrete'' suggest a flaw or an incompleteness in any initial thesis. For Hegel, the concrete must always pass through the phase of the negative, that is, mediation. This is the essence of what is popularly called Hegelian dialectics.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Maybee |first=Julie E. |date=Winter 2020 |title=Hegel's Dialectics |encyclopedia=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/hegel-dialectics/ |access-date=2024-02-11 |edition=Winter 2020 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University}}</ref>

To describe the activity of overcoming the negative, Hegel often used the term ''[[Aufheben]]'', variously translated into English as 'sublation' or 'overcoming', to conceive of the working of the dialectic. Roughly, the term indicates preserving the true portion of an idea, thing, society, and so forth, while moving beyond its limitations. What is sublated, on the one hand, is overcome, but, on the other hand, is preserved and maintained.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hegel |first=Georg Wilhelm Friedrich |author-link=Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |date=1812 |title=Hegel's Science of Logic |location=London |publisher=[[Allen & Unwin]] |at=§&nbsp;185}}</ref>

As in the Socratic dialectic, Hegel claimed to proceed by making implicit contradictions explicit: each stage of the process is the product of contradictions inherent or implicit in the preceding stage. In his view, the purpose of dialectics is "to study things in their own being and movement and thus to demonstrate the finitude of the partial categories of understanding".<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Hegel |first=Georg Wilhelm Friedrich |author-link=Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |date=1874 |title=The Logic |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences |edition=2nd |location=London |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |at=Note to §&nbsp;81}}</ref>

For Hegel, even history can be reconstructed as a unified dialectic, the major stages of which chart a progression from self-alienation as [[Master–slave dialectic|servitude]] to self-unification and realization as the rational [[constitutional state]] of free and equal citizens.