Features of dialectical approaches to the development of society

Dialectics is a method of argumentation in philosophy, as well as a form and method of reflective theoretical thinking that explores the contradictions found in conceivable content of this thinking. In dialectical materialism, there is a general theory of the development of the material world and, at the same time, a theory and logic of knowledge. The dialectical method is one of the central in the European and Indian philosophical traditions. The very word “dialectics” comes from ancient Greek philosophy and became popular thanks to Plato's

“Dialogues”, in which two or more participants in the dialogue could hold different opinions, but sought to find the truth by exchanging their opinions. Starting with Hegel, dialectics is opposed to metaphysics as a way of thinking that considers things and phenomena as unchanging and independent of each other.

In the history of philosophy, major thinkers have defined dialectic as:

• •    the doctrine of eternal becoming and variability of being (Heraclitus);

• •    the art of dialogue, understood as comprehension of the truth by asking leading questions and methodically answering them (Socrates);

• •    the method of dismembering and linking concepts in order to comprehend the supersensible (ideal) essence of things (Plato);

• •      science concerning the general provisions of scientific

research, or, which is the same thing, common places (Aristotle);

• •    the doctrine of the combination of opposites (Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno);

• •    a way of destroying the illusions of the human mind, which, striving for integral and absolute knowledge, inevitably gets entangled in contradictions (Kant);

• •    a universal method of cognizing contradictions as internal driving forces in the development of being, spirit and history (Hegel).

• 3. Contradiction as a force of creation 4. Transition from quantity to quality (chains and breaks). 5. Negation of negation: thesis, antithesis and synthesis (the principle of development in a spiral). Note that Georges Politzer (1936) combines principles 3 and 5. This does not cause inconvenience, since the content of the principles has not yet been determined ... Changing our scientific knowledge leads to a constant revision of the content of these principles.

The first philosophical teachings arose 2500 years ago in India, China and Ancient Greece. Early philosophical teachings were spontaneously materialistic and naive-dialectical in nature. Historically, the first form of dialectics was ancient dialectics. In Eastern wisdom, theoretical thinking has gone the same way: reliance on the pairing of categories of thinking, the search for a common foundation in various, to the point of direct opposition, ripened concepts and ideas, images and symbols, both in esoteric and in philosophical directions and schools known to all. Although for a European their exotic form is not entirely familiar, it is a form of unity and struggle of opposites in the content of the conceivable. She tuned the theoretical thinking of the Egyptians, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Chinese and other Eastern thinkers to the awareness of its universal forms, to their substantive classification, to the search for a reasonable basis for their mutual determination. And in the center of most of them is the opposite of wise contemplation of the eternal meaning of being to vain action in the transient world. The way to achieve this ability is in the sense-sensory-bodily achievement of harmony with oneself and the world by overcoming the opposite moments of experience and action.

In the 20th century, Nikolai Hartmann studied dialectics both historically (dialectics in antiquity and in German classical philosophy) and theoretically. Some modern philosophers, such as Lucien Seve and Jean-Marie Brom, are again turning to dialectics, considering it exclusively in relation to human action, activity. They deny the dialectic of nature and the existence of scientific laws that exist outside of human action. However, after the Second World War, a number of philosophers (Richard Lewontin, Stephen Gould, Alexander Zinoviev, Patrick Cake) widely use dialectics in their works, considering it as a subject of study. In the 21st century, there are works by Bertell Olman, Pascal Charbonne and Evariste Sanchez-Palencia, in which dialectics is introduced into science, along with the dialectical materialism of Marx and Engels.

Thus, dialectics makes it possible to make intelligible and accessible contradictions in science (antagonistic tendencies), so to speak, unusual and paradoxical situations that occur in observations and scientific experiments. Strictly speaking, the content of dialectics changes with the progress of science, because, in a sense, this content is science itself, based on the principles of abstractions. Here is a summary of the dialectical principles originally formulated by Engels (1878), as interpreted by J. M. Brom: (Principles of Dialectics, 2003): 1. Movement and change. 2. Interaction (or interdependence)

Materialistic dialectics has found a number of confirmations in biology (Richard Lewontin, Stephen Gould). Living organisms, with their physico-chemically determined development (see Prigogine) and a certain content of information, are subject to endless changes in their metabolism and evolution. In this sense, the concept of the dialectic of nature proposed by Engels can be used.

According to Evaristo Sanchez-Palencia, dialectics allows to resolve contradictions in science, unusual and paradoxical, in all kinds of knowledge, including applied mathematics, but primarily sociology and psychology. In fact, in his opinion, dialectics is not logic with its exact laws, but a more general framework into which evolutionary phenomena fit.

In modern works, attempts are being made to use dialectics in the study of such phenomena as patriotism and economic inequality and unequal economic exchange within the framework of international relations (together with I. Wallerstein's world-system analysis).

Popper begins his criticism by saying that synthesis is subjective—it is determined not only by the material of the thesis and antithesis, but also by the minds defending it (this synthesis). But, correctly noting that contradictions are the engine of intellectual progress and that they are inevitable, dialecticians draw an extremely incorrect conclusion that it is even undesirable to get rid of contradictions. This is dangerous, says Popper, since the so-called fruitfulness of contradictions is simply the result of our decision not to put up with them. In addition, he shows how anything follows from a contradiction[en]. Reconciliation with contradiction necessarily leads us to the rejection of criticism, the search for consistent theories, synthesis, to the end of rationality and science. Therefore, dialectical logic, more than suitable for the philosophical description of history, should not occupy the fundamental place of formal logical inference in life. And it is all the more absurd to assert that physical reality develops dialectically, as Marx does.

• K. Popper notes that logical terms are incorrectly used in dialectics, and the concepts of “negation” and “contradiction” have a certain logical meaning, different from the dialectical one. Such terminology, according to Popper, is only misleading. Less misleading would be the terms “conflict”, “opposite trend” or “opposite interest”. And Popper calls the invulnerability of dialectics to criticism extremely dangerous "reinforced concrete" dogmatism.