Idealism Philosophy Using the dialectic as an instructional method Essay

Idealism Philosophy Using the dialectic as an instructional method - Essay Example One way - the Socratic method - is to show that a given hypothesis (with other admissions) leads to a contradiction; thus, forcing the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth. Another way of trying to resolve a disagreement is by denying some presupposition of the contending thesis and antithesis; thereby moving to a third thesis. Briefly, the term "dialectic" owes much of its prestige to its role in the philosophy of Plato, where it figures as the logical method of philosophy in the Socratic dialectical method of cross-examination. The term was given new life by Hegel, whose dialectically dynamic model of nature and history made it, as it were, a fundamental aspect of the nature of reality (instead of regarding the contradictions into which dialectics leads as a sign of the sterility of the dialectical method, as Kant tended to do in his Critique of Pure Reason). Hegel's dialectic, which he usually presented in a threefold manner, was vulgarized by Heinrich Moritz Chalybaus 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. In the mid-nineteenth century, the concept of "dialectic" was appropriated by and Engels and retooled in a non-idealist manner, becoming a crucial notion i