dynamic
toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

dialectic
in a sentence

show 115 more with this conextual meaning
  • One of the first to notice this was a French dialectician, Louis Gauchat, who studied changing pronunciations in the dialect of a small village in the Swiss Alps.†   (source)
  • That is he above the course of history and the compulsions of dialectic?†   (source)
  • Under the circumstances, how could even the most committed racists among the faculty be diverted by the Professor's cunning dialectics?†   (source)
  • As a scientist, I am not sure anymore that life can be reduced to a class struggle, to dialectical materialism, or any set of formulas. Life is spontaneous and it is unpredictable, it is magical. I think that we have struggled so hard with the tangible that we have forgotten the intangible.   (source)
  • They joined in a dialectic search for truth.
  • The dialectical argument searches for the synthesis of theses and antitheses.
  • The dialectical argument between the two professors put less interested students to sleep.
  • Hegel believed there was an interactive, or dialectic, relationship between man and nature.†   (source)
  • But Hegel's dialectic is not only applicable to history.†   (source)
  • The dialectic tension had come to a point where something had to happen.†   (source)
  • It is Quality, not dialectic, which is the generator of everything we know.†   (source)
  • Don't stretch me on a rack of dialectic.†   (source)
  • Plato believed the dialectic was the sole method by which the truth was arrived at.†   (source)
  • As best I know, Aristotle's opinion is that dialectic comes before everything else.†   (source)
  • "And from the dialectic come the forms," Phaedrus continues, "and from.†   (source)
  • Dialectic, which is the parent of logic, came itself from rhetoric.†   (source)
  • He was outraged that rhetoric had been brought down to the level of dialectic.†   (source)
  • Phaedrus wasn't insulted that dialectic had been brought down to the level of rhetoric.†   (source)
  • Then the question is asked him, "What is dialectic?"†   (source)
  • The Professor of Philosophy seemed most ill at ease on the subject of "dialectic."†   (source)
  • Hegel calls this a dialectic process.†   (source)
  • Finally I'll give you an example of how a dialectic tension can result in a spontaneous act which leads to a sudden change.†   (source)
  • But because Marx realized that there was an interactive or dialectic relation between bases and superstructure, we say that he is a dialectical materialist.†   (source)
  • Here is this dialectic, like Newton's law of gravity, just sitting by itself in the middle of nowhere, giving birth to the universe, hey?†   (source)
  • He wants to have a dialectical discussion in class in which he, Phaedrus, is the rhetorician and is thrown by the force of dialectic.†   (source)
  • Rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic, it had said, as if this were of the greatest importance, yet why this was so important was never explained.†   (source)
  • Dialectic generally means "of the nature of the dialogue," which is a conversation between two persons.†   (source)
  • He gives it the position of highest honor, subordinate only to Truth itself and the method by which Truth is arrived at, the dialectic.†   (source)
  • The only thing that was clear was that Aristotle was very much concerned about the relation of rhetoric to dialectic.†   (source)
  • Once it's stated that "the dialectic comes before anything else," this statement itself becomes a dialectical entity, subject to dialectical question.†   (source)
  • Thus the dethronement of dialectic from what Socrates and Plato held it to be was absolutely essential for Aristotle, and "dialectic" was and still is a fulcrum word.†   (source)
  • Analytic reason, dialectic reason.†   (source)
  • And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost.†   (source)
  • All this, which is simply Gorgias' description of what people called Sophists have tended to do, now becomes subtly rendered by Socrates' dialectic into something else.†   (source)
  • Socrates knows very well what Gorgias does for a living and how he does it, but he starts his Twenty Questions dialectic by asking Gorgias with what rhetoric is concerned.†   (source)
  • Phaedrus began to wonder if "dialectic" had some special meaning that made it a fulcrum word...one that can shift the balance of an argument, depending on how it's placed.†   (source)
  • His thoughts move up to lightning speed, winnowing through the dialectic, playing one argumentative chess opening after another, seeing that each one loses, and moving to the next one, faster and faster...but all the class witnesses is silence.†   (source)
  • Phaedrus guessed that Aristotle's diminution of dialectic, from Plato's sole method of arriving at truth to a "counterpart of rhetoric," might be as infuriating to modern Platonists as it would have been to Plato.†   (source)
  • His mind races on and on, through the permutations of the dialectic, on and on, hitting things, finding new branches and sub-branches, exploding with anger at each new discovery of the viciousness and meanness and lowness of this "art" called dialectic.†   (source)
  • He sees that they consistently are doing exactly that which they accuse the Sophists of doing...using emotionally persuasive language for the ulterior purpose of making the weaker argument, the case for dialectic, appear the stronger.†   (source)
  • In a later class another student who seemed to be having the same trouble asked the Professor of Philosophy to redefine dialectic and this time the Professor had glanced at Phaedrus with another quick flicker of fear and become very edgy.†   (source)
  • Socrates is not using dialectic to understand rhetoric, he is using it to destroy it, or at least to bring it into disrepute, and so his questions are not real questions at all...they are just word-traps which Gorgias and his fellow rhetoricians fall into.†   (source)
  • Rhetoric, 2; Dialectic, 0.†   (source)
  • Aristotle attacked this belief, saying that the dialectic was only suitable for some purposes...to enquire into men's beliefs, to arrive at truths about eternal forms of things, known as Ideas, which were fixed and unchanging and constituted reality for Plato.†   (source)
  • The Professor of Philosophy had defined dialectic, and Phaedrus had listened carefully, but it was in one ear and out the other, a characteristic that philosophic statements often have when something is left out.†   (source)
  • Rhetoric, 1; Dialectic, 0.†   (source)
  • Dialectic...the usurper.†   (source)
  • Once the Good has been contained as a dialectical idea it is no trouble for another philosopher to come along and show by dialectical methods that areté, the Good, can be more advantageously demoted to a lower position within a "true" order of things, more compatible with the inner workings of dialectic.†   (source)
  • Dialectic, eh?†   (source)
  • Before dialectic itself.†   (source)
  • He believed that history itself revealed this dialectical pattern.†   (source)
  • But his answer was quite dialectical, a contradiction in terms, almost.†   (source)
  • The short-changing dialectical deacon ....All right.†   (source)
  • Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later.†   (source)
  • It just demolishes the whole dialectical position.†   (source)
  • From the point of view of pure logic or philosophy, there will often be a dialectical tension between two concepts.†   (source)
  • But because Marx realized that there was an interactive or dialectic relation between bases and superstructure, we say that he is a dialectical materialist.†   (source)
  • A friend once asked me how I could reconcile my creed of African nationalism with a belief in dialectical materialism.†   (source)
  • Does the spread of California dialectical features across America—"oo" fronting, rising inflections, use of like and all as quotatives—mean that young people in the rest of the country yearn to be like Californians?†   (source)
  • The secret of all their esoteric philosophies, of all their dialectics and super-senses, of their evasive eyes and snarling words, the secret for which they destroy civilization, language, industries and lives, the secret for which they pierce "their own eyes and eardrums, grind out their senses, blank out their minds, the purpose for which they dissolve the absolutes of reason, logic, matter, existence, reality-is to erect upon that plastic fog a single holy absolute: their Wish.†   (source)
  • I was attracted to the scientific underpinnings of dialectical materialism, for I am always inclined to trust what I can verify.†   (source)
  • I acquired the complete works of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and others and probed into the philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism.†   (source)
  • He wants to have a dialectical discussion in class in which he, Phaedrus, is the rhetorician and is thrown by the force of dialectic.†   (source)
  • He knew himself to be a pretty sharp logician and dialectician, took pride in this and looked upon this present dilemma as a challenge to his skill.†   (source)
  • There, Phaedrus thinks, is a definition of Quality that had existed a thousand years before the dialecticians ever thought to put it to word-traps.†   (source)
  • Phaedrus would have asked, What evidence do we have that the dialectical question-and-answer method of arriving at truth comes before anything else?†   (source)
  • But the dialecticians don't know that.†   (source)
  • Then, when they have thoroughly cut him up dialectically, they will suggest that he either shape up or get out.†   (source)
  • Once it's stated that "the dialectic comes before anything else," this statement itself becomes a dialectical entity, subject to dialectical question.†   (source)
  • First they are going to destroy his status dialectically in front of the class by showing how little he knows about Plato and Aristotle.†   (source)
  • He could hold off the attack for a while with fancy dialectical footwork and insults about competence and incompetence, but sooner or later he had to come up with something more substantial than that.†   (source)
  • Of course there's "empty rhetoric," that is, rhetoric that has emotional appeal without proper subservience to dialectical truth, but we don't want any of that, do we?†   (source)
  • But in his attempt to unite the Good and the True by making the Good the highest Idea of all, Plato is nevertheless usurping areté's place with dialectically determined truth.†   (source)
  • It is what he was saying months before in the classroom in Montana, a message Plato and every dialectician since him had missed, since they all sought to define the Good in its intellectual relation to things.†   (source)
  • His original goal was to keep Quality undefined, but in the process of battling against the dialecticians he has made statements, and each statement has been a brick in a wall of definition he himself has been building around Quality.†   (source)
  • Once the Good has been contained as a dialectical idea it is no trouble for another philosopher to come along and show by dialectical methods that areté, the Good, can be more advantageously demoted to a lower position within a "true" order of things, more compatible with the inner workings of dialectic.†   (source)
  • There's a titter from one of the women in the class which displeases Phaedrus because he knows the Professor is trying for a dialectical hold on him similar to the kind Socrates gets on his opponents, and his answer is not intended to be funny but simply to throw off the dialectical hold the Professor is trying to get.†   (source)
  • Phaedrus reads further and further into pre-Socratic Greek thought to find out, and eventually comes to the view that Plato's hatred of the rhetoricians was part of a much larger struggle in which the reality of the Good, represented by the Sophists, and the reality of the True, represented by the dialecticians, were engaged in a huge struggle for the future mind of man.†   (source)
  • She took his dictation with care, but because of his runaway fervor, in some haste, so it was not until she got down to the job of typing it out for the printer that she began to glimpse seething in that cauldron of historical allusions and dialectical hypotheses and religious imperatives and legal precedents and anthropological propositions the smoky, ominous presence of a single word—repeated several times—which quite baffled and confounded and frightened her, appearing as it did in this otherwise persuasively practical text, this clever polemic which voiced with breezily scurrilous mockery the sly propaganda she had half heard more than once over the Bieganski dinner table.†   (source)
  • Prescott calls it dialectic trans-spatial interdependence.†   (source)
  • Instinct'—'Feeling'—'Revelation'—'Divine Intuition'—'Dialectic Materialism.†   (source)
  • On the other hand, dialectic materialism...†   (source)
  • Indeed, it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectic, rhetoric, and one or two other things.†   (source)
  • Indeed, it was at Westminster that I received a very large part of my education in politics, dialectic, rhetoric, and one or two other things.†   (source)
  • It became a habit of mine to visit Washington Park of an afternoon after collecting a part of my premiums, and I would wander through crowds of unemployed Negroes, pausing here and there to sample the dialectic or indignation of Communist speakers.†   (source)
  • The dialectic process, Peter.†   (source)
  • I am really trying to express myself as clearly as I can, but it is impossible to present a dialectic state by covering it up with an old fig leaf of logic just for the sake of the mentally lazy layman.†   (source)
  • The little boy crowed with delight at the success of his dialectic.†   (source)
  • Before her tiny fist the forces of lust and corruption rolled away; nay, the very march of destiny stopped; inevitable became evitable, syllogism, dialectic, all rationality fell away.†   (source)
  • Swann remained silent, and, by this fresh act of recreancy, spoiled the brilliant tournament of dialectic which Mme. Verdurin was rejoicing at being able to offer to Forcheville.†   (source)
  • And they resumed their visits to Settembrini and Naphta, as well as walks with those two antagonistic allies; when they were joined by A. K. Ferge and Ferdinand Wehsal, which frequently happened, that made a party of four before which the two intellectual adversaries could engage in constant duels—and we could not hope to present them in their entirety without fear of likewise losing ourselves in the same desperate infinitude into which they daily threw themselves for their large audience, although Hans Castorp chose to see his own poor soul as the chief object of their dialectic rivalry.†   (source)
  • But I kept my dialectic battery in reserve for a suitable opportunity, and I interested myself in the prospect of my dinner, which was not yet forthcoming.†   (source)
  • Don't ever kid yourself with too much dialectics.†   (source)
  • If this sounds like a contradiction, it is not a proof of bad logic, but of a higher logic, the dialectics of all life and art.†   (source)
  • His thesis that slavery might become national, although probably without factual foundation,'2 was a clever dialectical inversion of a challenge to the freedom of the common white man set forth by the most extreme Southern advocate of slavery.†   (source)
  • How much dialectics have you read?†   (source)
  • He is studying dialectics.†   (source)
  • Antithesis, dualism—that is the motivating, passionate, dialectical, spiritual principle.†   (source)
  • But Martin was by now too much of a scientific dialectician for Holabird, who gave up and retired to his den (or so Martin gloomily believed) to devise new ways of plaguing him.†   (source)
  • For the rest, he thought the dialectical part of his argument of little worth; he saw only too clearly that the result of these ecstatic moments was stupefaction, mental darkness, idiocy.†   (source)
  • This fixed idea of the rhapsodist was delivered with animated enthusiasm, in a manner entirely declamatory, for he had plainly no skill as a dialectician.†   (source)
  • She listened to the Smails and Kennicott trying to determine by dialectics whether the copy of the Dauntless, which Aunt Bessie wanted to send to her sister in Alberta, ought to have two or four cents postage on it.†   (source)
  • He had a mind that delighted in dialectics, and he forced Philip to contradict himself; he pushed him into corners from which he could only escape by damaging concessions; he tripped him up with logic and battered him with authorities.†   (source)
  • And did not this animosity also play a role in the two dialecticians' attitude toward Pieter Peeperkorn?†   (source)
  • The honest old scholar suffered every abuse imaginable as a result of young Leo's intellectual obstinacy, captiousness, skepticism, contrariness, and cutting dialectical logic.†   (source)
  • These minor monumental productions were always exciting to Mr. Casaubon; digestion was made difficult by the interference of citations, or by the rivalry of dialectical phrases ringing against each other in his brain.†   (source)
  • Homer's predecessors in hexameter song had developed a complete, artificial poetic language, cobbled out of memorable archaisms, metrically useful dialectical forms, and a sort of grammar for generating new "traditional sounding" forms.†   (source)
  • —Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts into the world.†   (source)
  • LYNCH: He likes dialectic, the universal language.†   (source)
  • One observes, of course, a polite speech and a common speech, but the common speech is everywhere the same, and its uniform vagaries take the place of the dialectic variations of other lands.†   (source)
  • Since then the school-marm has combatted it with such vigor that it has begun to disappear, and such forms as /pisen/, /jine/, /bile/ and /ile/ are now very seldom heard, save as dialectic variations.†   (source)
  • The ladies and gentlemen of the American Dialect Society, though praiseworthy for their somewhat deliberate industry, fall into a similar fault, for they are so eager to establish minute dialectic variations that they forget the general language almost altogether.†   (source)
  • This substitution, at first dialectical, gradually spread to the whole language.†   (source)
  • But most of these become misleading by reason of their lack of scope; forms practically universal in the nation are discussed as dialectical variations.†   (source)
  • The same may be said of Hindustani, which is the language of 100,000,000 inhabitants of British India; it shows wide dialectical variations and the people who speak it are not likely to spread.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)