Analyzing the Form of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Nonfiction and Philosophy

The "Hegelian dialectic" is often rendered as Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis, meaning any statement can be opposed by an opposite idea, and the clash of the two ideas will create a better philosophical statement. Hegel preferred the terms "abstract," "negative," and "concrete," which better explained the ideas' relationship. Hegel's dialectic was widely influential; it was used by thinkers like Karl Marx and argued against by philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.