Negation through history: dialectics and human development

A central tenet of this paper is that dialectics has served as a foundation al basis for a number of important developmental theories. In spite of this , explicit discussion of dialectics as a general frame of reference for the study of human development has had an uneven history in the field of human development, especially in the United States. A number of theorists have o ffered reasons as to why dialectics has failed to achieve greater recogniti on in the field. This paper focuses on two possible interdependent reasons: (1) dialectics position in the history of ideas as an alternative to empir icism and rationalism, and (2) the lack of historical explication of dialec tics as a tool for the study of human development. Historical explication i s especially important, because it brings into focus the important relation ship(s) between dialectics, history, and phenomenology. A limited historica l analysis covers some of the philosophical underpinnings of dialectics; th e way in which social theorists translated dialectics into issues of social and cognitive development in general; and the way in which two leading dia lectical theorists applied these ideas to the study of human development in particular. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.