Dialectic as praxis

Joel Kovel

pp. 235-242

in: Bertell Ollman, Tony Smith (eds), Dialectics for the new century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Abstract

As a theoretical identity dialectic is considered passé by fashionable schools of thought, Marxist and non-Marxist alike (Smith, 1993). Yet few are the commentators upon the human situation who can resist the impulse to employ the term in the most diverse intellectual settings. What is striking about this is that "dialectic", so used, is frequently assigned a positive value. It is tacitly considered good to be dialectical, or some argument is rejected on grounds of not being dialectical enough, and so forth. We have all seen such usage on countless occasions. It is as if thought retrieves a memory of some primeval dialectical virtue long past the moment when prevailing philosophical opinion would justify this.

Cited authors

Marx Karl