Dialectical thought is self-reflexive thinking about thinking, unlike scientific objectivity

Evidence

The dialectical method is precisely this preference for the concrete totality over the separate, abstract parts. Yet it is more complicated than any objective apprehension of a merely external kind of totality, such as takes place in the various scientific disciplines. For in these the thinking mind itself remains cool and untouched, skilled but unselfconscious, and is able to forget about itself and its own thought processes while it sinks itself wholly in the content and problems offered it. But dialectical thinking is a thought to the second power, a thought about thinking itself, in which the mind must deal with its own thought process just as much as with the material it works on, in which both the particular content involved and the style of thinking suited to it must be held together in the mind at the same time. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 103

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise definition of dialectical method as ‘thought to the second power’ — the self-reflexive core Jameson inherits from Hegel via Lukács.
• XREF: This is the Frankfurt-School method itself — Adorno’s ‘thinking against itself’ and reflexive critique. Traces back to Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness which Jameson is explicating here. — connects to: Dialectical thinking is thought to the second power inscribed in the sentence itself — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 115; The shock of self-transcendence is constitutive of any genuinely dialectical consciousness — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 635; Thinking must hold dialectic and its opposite together at once — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 170 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• For Adorno, dialectical thinking requires self-consciousness be inscribed in the sentence structure itself #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 115
• Dialectical style requires self-awareness inscribed in the sentence #expands (0.85)
• Thinking must hold dialectic and its opposite together at once #expands (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 170
• Subjectivity and objectivity form a dialectical unity in knowledge #qualifies (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 83
• Negative dialectics theorizes why dialectical thinking is both indispensable and impossible #responds-to (0.75)
• Dialectical thought is inherently comparative across heterogeneous operations #responds-to (0.70) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 103
• Negative dialectics preserves undefined experience as a counterweight to philosophies of science #complicates (0.70) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2578