Dialectic
/ˌdaɪəˈlɛktɪk/noun
Reasoning that advances by setting opposed positions against each other.
The Greek roots
Literally: “the art of talking through”
The story of the word
Diogenes Laertius reports that Aristotle credited Zeno of Elea with inventing dialectic, meaning the trick of pulling a contradiction out of an opponent's own premises. Plato made it the highest study; medieval universities made it one of the three arts of the trivium, beside grammar and rhetoric. Hegel gave it the modern sense of contradiction driving history forward, though thesis-antithesis-synthesis is a formula attached to him by others rather than his own phrasing. Dialect is the same word aimed sideways: the way one group talks among themselves.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The seminar was less a dialectic than two people waiting to speak.