What is a dialectical thought?
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**In short, dialectical thought is seeing things from multiple perspectives,** and especially being able to make sense of both of those perspectives at once. It’s the realization that things that are seemingly opposites can be “and,” not “or.”
In much of the world of academics — and especially philosophy — “dialectics” refers to the process of considering or arguing multiple points of view and perspectives, and then coming to the most suitable and reasonable conclusion.
Marsha Linehan, a prominent psychologist, has described dialectics as “a synthesis or integration of opposites,” which I find a useful definition.
**Part of why the terms “dialectics” and “dialectical thinking” are confusing is that different fields use them in different ways.** Marx uses the term differently than the ancient Greeks, who uses the term differently than modern philosophers. If you talk about dialectics in a psychology class vs. a philosophy class vs. a sociology class, you’ll get slightly different definitions, and see these words used as different parts of speech.
But it always relates to/comes back to this idea of considering multiple perspectives.
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