Text: Pages 193 and 194

Human development can be viewed as a dialectic process of a synthesis between the affirming and negating forces in daily life. The struggle with contradictory tensions creates a needed urgency for change. This dialectic process is the Hegelian ontological logic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This is a process necessary for historical progress because as an example of the dialectic process, both a slave owner and a slave lack freedom since all humans are born to be free (thesis). Slaves cannot know this until they feel oppression from the slave owners (antithesis). The synthesis is the slave owner understanding that freedom is an instrument for a greater good and the betterment for all humanity, which includes their own freedom (synthesis). In history, change occurs through the dialectic process, which is conflictual and even at times violent.