Abstract
Dialectics is a way of thinking that emphasizes contradictions in social forces and/or ideas as inherent to processes of change in society and thought. Forms of dialectics appear in many classical civilizations, with India, China and Greece being the most well known. In many of these, dialectics became formalized into systems of logic. Dialectics developed significantly in the philosophies of Hegel and Marx that emphasized the internal contradiction of ideas/concepts or of social classes. Dialectics helps to analyse the contradiction/s and potentially transform them. From this comes the common reduction of dialectics as the overcoming of contradictions under a new synthesis. Rather, dialectics rejects static binary oppositions, promoting a dynamism within the philosophy of internal relations wherein contradictions are seen as inherent to the fluid, interconnected nature of reality and which offer potential sites for sublation. As a methodological approach, dialectics offers much for the study of International Relations as it fosters a comprehensive understanding of relations within complex systems and their development over time.