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DIALECTIC
The belief that social organization, culture and intellectual ideas change because of the development of contradictions that create challenges to the existing state of affairs and lead to the emergence of something new from this tension. Georg Hegel (1770-1831) developed this idea in Western philosophy when he claimed that every existing social arrangement or intellectual belief system represents a ‘thesis’ - a way of doing or thinking about things - that gives rise to a contradictory, or opposing, ‘antithesis’. From the contest between ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’ emerges something new and unique: a ‘synthesis’. There is some element of this conception in the writing of Karl Marx (1818-1883) when he claims that contradictions arise in capitalism and the resolution of these contradictions produces a new type of social and economic system. This suggests that the seeds of capitalism's demise or transformation are located within capitalism and are not generated from outside. See: CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM / DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM / .

Last updated 2002--0-9-


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Athabaca University ICAAP

© Robert Drislane, Ph.D. and Gary Parkinson, Ph.D.
The online version of this dictionary is a product of
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*This social science dictionary has 1000
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