Dialectic
dialectic (dialectique) The term 'dialectic' originated with the Greeks,
for whom it denoted (among other things) a discursive procedure in which an
opponent in a debate is questioned in such a way as to bring out the contra-
dictions in his discourse. This is the tactic which Plato ascribes to Socrates,
who is shown as beginning most dialogues by first reducing his interlocutor to
a state of confusion and helplessness. Lacan compares this to the first stage of
psychoanalytic treatment, when the analyst forces the analysand to confront
the contradictions and gaps in his narrative. However, just as Socrates then
proceeds to draw out the truth from the confused statements of his interlocutor,
so also the analyst proceeds to draw out the truth from the analysand's free
associations (see S8, 140). Thus Lacan argues that 'psychoanalysis is a
dialectical experience' (Ec, 216), since the analyst must engage the analysand
in 'a dialectical operation' (Sl, 278). It is only by means of 'an endless
dialectical process' that the analyst can subvert the ego's disabling illusions
of permanence and stability, in a manner identical to the Socratic Dialogue
(Lacan, 1951b: 12).
Although the origin of dialectics goes back to the Greek philosophers, its
dominance in modern philosophy is due to the revival of the concept in the
eighteenth century by the post-Kantian idealists Fichte and Hegel, who
conceived of the dialectic as a triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. For
Hegel, the dialectic is both a method of exposition and the structure of
historical progress itself. Thus in Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel
shows how consciousness progresses towards absolute knowledge by means
of a series of confrontations between opposing elements. Each confrontation is
resolved by an operation called the Aufhebung (usually translated as 'sub-
lation') in which a new idea (the synthesis) is born from the opposition
between thesis and antithesis; the synthesis simultaneously annuls, preserves
and raises this opposition to a higher level.
The particular way in which the Hegelian dialectic is appropriated by Lacan
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