A method of argument based on the idea of two people in dialogue each putting forward a proposition that the other counters and by this means arriving at an ultimate truth. The word originates in Classical Greek philosophy---its invention is sometimes attributed to Zeno, but it was Socrates and Plato who popularized it as a means of obtaining truth by a process of asking questions. German Enlightenment philosopher, Kant, Immanuel rejected this method as sterile, as producing nothing but illusions. In contemporary critical theory, however, it is the names Frege, Gottlob and Marx, Karl which are most often associated with the dialectic, each one credited with having reinvented the concept. Central to Hegelâs notion of the dialectic is the constant presence of contradiction: as Hegel points out, identity contains its opposite, namely difference, inasmuch that to be one thing something must also not be another thing. His best known demonstration of this argument is his essay on the relation between the master and the slave in PhĂ€nomenologie des Geistes (1807), translated as Phenomenology of Spirit (1977), in which he famously argues that because the master is conscious of the need to dominate the slave he is enslaved and therefore not fully himself. For Hegel, history can be understood in the same terms as a constant progression from the abstract to the concrete, mediated by a process he referred to as negation. To become a true master, the master must negate that part of himself which is enslaved, but in doing so he does not thereby become whole; on the contrary, he merely becomes deficient in a different way, so the negation itself must be negated. Hegel called this process Aufhebung which in German means the superseding, surpassing, and cancelling out of what was. It is generally translated into English as sublation, but this isnât wholly satisfactory. Marx felt that Hegel got things around the wrong way and described his own version of dialectics, also known as dialectical materialism, as a standing of Hegel back on his feet. His complaint was that Hegel treated the real world as merely the phenomenal form of the idea, whereas for him it is the real world that gives rise to ideas. However, like Hegel, Marx gives a central role to contradiction, which in its empirical form of class struggle is the motor of history. Marx wanted to show that capitalism is simultaneously the best and the worst thing that has happened in human history and that it is only by grasping its dual nature that it can truly be understood. In Marxâs view, capitalism created tremendous productive capacity, enabling necessity to finally be conquered, but did so at the price of the monstrous exploitation of the many by the few. Marx saw his dialectical method as a âscandal to the bourgeoisieâ because implicit in it is the view that its recognition of the present state of affairs is also a foretelling of its inevitable destruction. In his development of dialectical criticism, Jameson insists that this sense of scandal must be preserved. Further Reading: F. Jameson Valences of the Dialectic (2009).