Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

The thesis, antithesis, synthesis (German: These, Antithese, Synthese; originally:Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis) is often used to describe the thought of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel never used the term himself. It originated with Johann Fichte.

The relation between the three abstract terms of the triad, also known as the dialectical method, is summarized in the following way in the Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions:

(1) a beginning proposition called a thesis, (2) a negation of that thesis called the antithesis, and (3) a synthesis whereby the two conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new proposition.

Thomas McFarland (2002), in his Prolegomena to Coleridge's Opus Maximum, identifies Immanuel Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781) as the genesis of the thesis/antithesis dyad. Kant concretises his ideas into:

Inasmuch as conjectures like these can be said to be resolvable, Fichte's Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftaslehre (1794) resolved Kant's dyad by synthesis, posing the question thus:

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 Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre, in Rücksicht auf das theoretische Vermögen (1795): "Die jetzt aufgezeigte Handlung ist thetisch, antithetisch und synthetisch zugleich." ["The action here described is simultaneously thetic, antithetic, and synthetic."]

Still according to McFarland, Schelling then, in his Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie (1795), arranged the terms schematically in pyramidal form.

According to Walter Kaufmann (1966), 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:

...
Wikipedia