Dialectic
Etymology
From Greek "dialektikē technē," "the art of conversation," from "dialegesthai," "to converse," built from "dia," "through" or "across," and "legein," "to speak." For Socrates it was truth-seeking through question and answer; Hegel later recast it as the movement of history and thought through opposed ideas resolving into a higher one, a scheme Marx turned toward material conditions. The common thread is that reason advances through opposition, not around it.
noun · /dye-uh-LEK-tik/
A method of arriving at truth through the clash and resolution of opposing arguments or ideas.
What it names
Progress by contradiction — the idea that you get closer to truth not by defending one position but by letting it collide with its opposite and seeing what survives.
Example
Their long-running dialectic, each rebuttal sharper than the last, produced a far better theory than either had started with.
Related idea
A dialectic seeks synthesis through opposition; a polemic is one-directional attack, aiming to defeat the other side rather than learn from it.