Dialectics

World outlook and method of thinking opposite to metaphysics. Metaphysics views the world from an isolated, static and one-sided point of view; dialectics vies the world from the comprehensive point of view of interconnection and development. The word “dialectics” originated from the ancient Greek word dialektiké téchne. The ancient Greeks called the method of art of arriving at the truth by exposing the contradictions in the argument of an opponent and overcoming these contradictions dialectics. The classical German philosopher Hegel was the first to treat dialectics as a philosophical category opposite to metaphysics, endowing it with the significance of a philosophical world outlook of universal interconnection and development, which constituted the meaning of dialectics in its later common usage. Dialectics has taken three main forms in the development of history: ancient naïve dialectics, modern idealist dialectics and materialist dialectics.

Ancient naïve dialectics, on the basis of men’s contemplative experience, regarded the world as a whole interwoven with all sorts of interconnections and interactions, and held that nothing was immobile and immutable, and that everything constantly moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. This was a primitive and naïve, but essentially a correct world outlook. It saw the general nature of the world as a whole, change and development, but has not delved into each part of the world to know the things. Its knowledge of the world in its totality was not yet proven in detail, had a speculative nature, and did not yet grasp the laws of dialectics in a profound way.

Hegelian philosophy was a representative of modern idealist dialectics. Hegel regarded the whole nature, history and thinking as a process of motion, change and development, and tried to reveal their inner connection. He elucidated an abundant idea of dialectics in the vast philosophical system that describes this process, and comprehensively and consciously presented the general form of the dialectical motion. But in Hegelian philosophy, dialectical motion is the self-movement of the “absolute spirit”, while the movement of nature and society is only a form of alienation of the movement of the “absolute spirit”. In Hegel’s view, the process of thinking is the creator of the real world of things, while the real world of things is only the external phenomenon and manifestation of this process of thinking. Thus, Hegel’s dialectics was based on idealism.

Marxist materialist dialectics upholds to explain the material world from the material world itself, which is a science of the universal laws of the development and motion of nature, society and thinking. Based on the new achievements of human social practice and of the development of natural science, materialist dialectics explained the universal interconnection and the motion and development of the material world as well as the three basic laws of the dialectical motion of things, i.e., the law of the unity of opposites, the law of the transmutation between quality and quantity, and the law of the negation of the negation. The law of the unity of opposites is the essence and core of dialectical materialism. Mao Zedong said: “This dialectical world outlook teaches us primarily how to observe and analyze the movement of opposites in different things and, on the basis of such analysis, to indicate the methods for resolving contradictions.” Materialist dialectics upholds the unity of materialism and dialectics as well as the coincidence of dialectics, epistemology and logic, and has a critical and revolutionary nature. Marx said: “dialectics regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.”