Thinking dialectically means looking past facts to essence without ignoring the surface
Evidence
One of the ways which lead to it is … that the individual should not remain stuck in registering and predicting facts, in mere calculation, but rather learn to look behind the facts, to distinguish the surface from the essence (of course, without ignoring the surface), to formulate concepts which are not simply classifications of facts, and to structure his whole experience continuously according to definite goals, without falsifying these goals; in short, that the individual should learn to think dialectically. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 205
Categorization
- DEFINE: A compact, quotable statement of what dialectical thinking concretely requires as against fact-registration.
- XREF: connects to: Dialectical thought is essentially the elaboration of dialectical sentences — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 16; Dialectical analysis sees a thing through awareness of what it is not; The form-content distinction is the central operative mechanism of dialectical thinking — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 670 (+3 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Dialectical thought is essentially the elaboration of dialectical sentences — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 16; Dialectical analysis sees a thing through awareness of what it is not; The form-content distinction is the central operative mechanism of dialectical thinking — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 670 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Horkheimer’s dialectical insight substituted for empirical research into facts
#complicates(0.76) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 203