Dialectics is a very ambiguous word that has existed in philosophy since time immemorial. At one time, Hegel succinctly described the emergence and significance of this philosophical method: "If Thales was the creator of the philosophy of nature, Socrates - moral philosophy, then Plato created the third philosophy - dialectics." In philosophy, the laws of dialectics are understood as the doctrine of the most general connections, basic principles and the formation of being, as well as the development of knowledge. Thus, dialectics is both a philosophical theory and a method of cognition.
The laws of dialectics or their elements in a simplified form appear among many ancient philosophers who describe the world or cosmos as an internally contradictory process. Ancient Greek epistemology is characterized by such a term as "sophia" - dialectical comprehension. We also observe elements of dialectics in the East, especially in philosophical systems of Taoism and Buddhism (for example, in the doctrine that not every concept is identical to itself, or in paradoxical reasoning that "weakness is great and strength is negligible"). Heraclitus’s doctrine of the Logos is dialectical - this is war, and peace, hunger and satiation, water and fire, and each birth is the death of the previous one. Socrates’s dialectic is the ability to conduct a dialogue, which he calls maevitika - “the art of a midwife”. The statement of Plato that the idea is and is not a thing can be called dialectical. There are many such examples both in the philosophy of the Middle Ages and in the New Age.
However, in Hegel, the laws of dialectics are finally formulated as postulates of the relationship between being and thinking, or rather the dominance of thinking over being. In his most fundamental works - “The Science of Logic”, “Philosophy of Nature” and “Phenomenology of the Spirit”, he, refuting Kant's thesis that matter is not derived from consciousness, but consciousness from matter, actually stated that both matter and consciousness develop according to one law - dialectical logic. Initially there was an identity of being and thinking (esse), but in this identity there were contradictions between the subject and the object. Knowing itself, this unity alienates its objective qualities and creates another being (matter, nature). But since the essence of this other being is thinking, the material world is logical, and its meaning is the development of an absolute idea, the highest level of which is the Absolute Spirit.
The laws of Hegel’s dialectic are in fact the laws of thought as the highest form of cognition. Thinking is able to detect its own content in an object, which is the concept - the essence of the object. Only dialectical thinking can comprehend that the rational, divine, real and necessary coincide in essence, and not in outward manifestations. Formal logic is incapable of this, because it is limited by the laws of thought, while dialectic comprehends the laws of development.
The laws of dialectics formulated by Hegel primarily relate to concepts. The first law says that concepts develop from simple to complex, from concrete to abstract, and, conversely, they flow from one to another. The creation of new concepts occurs through qualitative changes, leap, "interruption of continuity." The second law states that each concept is a unity of identity and difference - because at the heart of any of them are opposites, which lead to movement and development. And finally, the third law - the negation of negation - describes a pattern of development of concepts. Every new concept denies the previous one, at the same time takes something from it, and the next returns to the first, but at a different level.
Hegel also developed the categories, principles and laws of dialectics. Single, special and general are the main categories of development of concepts and represent a triad. Hegel’s very scheme of the development of being and thinking, the natural, spiritual and historical world is also a triad. If he characterizes the original, single being-thinking as “abstract being,” then the philosopher calls the creation of nature “substantial being,” and the appearance of man, the historical process, and the emergence of cognition as “conscious being.” Thus, his dialectic is "the science of an idea in and of itself."