Dialectics

sing. The old name for logic, or the art of reasoning and disputing justly. According to So crates, D. were so called from being an inquiry pursued by persons who take counsel together, separating the subjects considered according to their kinds. There were several systems of D. among the ancients. The D. of Plato are a kind of analyses to direct the human mind by dividing, defining, and bringing things to the first truth; which having reached, it applies itself to explain sensible things, but with a view to return to the first truth, where alone it can rest. The D. of Aris totle comprise the doctrine of simple words, delivered in his book of Predicaments; the doctrine of propositions, contained in his book De Interpret at i one; and that of the several kinds of syllogism, in his books of Ana lytics, Topics, and Elench uses. The D. of the Stoics appear to have been little more than a system of grammatical rules. In modern times various systems of D. have been propounded in different countries; but by no philosophers, either ancient or modern, has this science been more succe fully cultivated than by the Germans, who, among a host of other names more or le distinguished, can boast of a Fichte, Kant, Leibnitz, Hegel, Schelling, and Schlegel, as the propounders each of a peculiar dialectical system. - See LOGIC.