In philosophy, the of thesis, antithesis, synthesis is a progression of three ideas or propositions. The first idea, the thesis, is a formal statement illustrating a point; it is followed by the second idea, the antithesis, that contradicts or negates the first; and lastly, the third idea, the synthesis, resolves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis. It is often used to explain the dialectical method of German philosopherGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, but Hegel never used the terms himself; instead his triad was concrete, abstract, absolute. The thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad actually originated with Johann Fichte.
, in his Prolegomena to Coleridge's Opus Maximum, identifies Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as the genesis of the thesis/antithesis dyad. Kant concretises his ideas into:
Thesis: "The world has a beginning in time, and is limited with regard to space."
Antithesis: "The world has no beginning and no limits in space, but is infinite, in respect to both time and space."
Inasmuch as conjectures like these can be said to be resolvable, Fichte's Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre resolved Kant's dyad by synthesis, posing the question thus:
* No synthesis is possible without a preceding antithesis. As little as antithesis without synthesis, or synthesis without antithesis, is possible; just as little possible are both without thesis.
Fichte employed the triadic idea "thesis–antithesis–synthesis" as a formula for the explanation of change. Fichte was the first to use the trilogy of words together, in his Grundriss des Eigentümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre, in Rücksicht auf das theoretische Vermögen : "Die jetzt aufgezeigte Handlung ist thetisch, antithetisch und synthetisch zugleich." Still according to McFarland, Schelling then, in his Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie, arranged the terms schematically in pyramidal form. According to Walter Kaufmann, although the triad is often thought to form part of an analysis of historical and philosophical progress called the Hegelian dialectic, the assumption is erroneous: Gustav E. Mueller concurs that Hegel was not a proponent of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and clarifies what the concept of dialectic might have meant in Hegel's thought. According to Mueller, the attribution of this tripartite dialectic to Hegel is the result of "inept reading" and simplistic translations which do not take into account the genesis of Hegel's terms: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels adopted and extended the triad, especially in Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy. Here, in Chapter 2, Marx is obsessed by the word "thesis"; it forms an important part of the basis for the Marxist theory of history.
Writing pedagogy
In modern times, the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis has been implemented across the world as a strategy for organizing expositional writing. For example, this technique is taught as a basic organizing principle in French schools: Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis has also been used as a basic scheme to organize writing in the English language. For example, the website WikiPreMed.com advocates the use of this scheme in writing timed essays for the MCAT standardized test:
