Negation through history: dialectics and human development

Abstract A central tenet of this paper is that dialectics has served as a foundational 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 offered reasons as to why dialectics has failed to achieve greater recognition in the field. This paper focuses on two possible interdependent reasons: (1) dialectics position in the history of ideas as an alternative to empiricism and rationalism, and (2) the lack of historical explication of dialectics as a tool for the study of human development. Historical explication is especially important, because it brings into focus the important relationship(s) between dialectics, history, and phenomenology. A limited historical analysis covers some of the philosophical underpinnings of dialectics; the way in which social theorists translated dialectics into issues of social and cognitive development in general; and the way in which two leading dialectical theorists applied these ideas to the study of human development in particular.