Dialectic

DIALECTIC. - From διαλέγομαι, I discourse. Of frequent use in philosophy, it carries quite different meanings. In the sense that is still the most common today, it is the art of reasoning, of developing concepts and judgments according to their logical connection and movement.

In this sense dialectic, as Aristotle notes, goes back to Zeno of Elea, who defends Parmenides' doctrine by means of discussion and reduction to absurdity of the twofold Pythagorean conception of unity-point and of infinite divisibility. As the art of arguing for and against on one and the same theme (antilogies) and of "making the weaker argument win," it is found again in the Sophists. In Socrates dialectic asserts itself as the art of inductive reasoning in the search for definition. Plato's dialectic is a function of the central conception of knowledge as recollection: dialectic is the whole set of analytic and synthetic logical processes by which the relations of coordination and subordination among the ideas awakened by sense knowledge are determined, according to generic and specific values (Soph., 253, C, D; Phaedr., 265, F; 266, B, C). And since in the Platonic system the ideas constitute the innermost truth and essence of things, dialectic thus comes to assume, within the structure of the system, a meaning that is not purely logical but also concrete and metaphysical. This meaning would later be reaffirmed explicitly in the Neoplatonism of Proclus, who understands the emanative process of things from the One as a process of the particular from the universal through the three dialectical moments of persistence, emanation, return, that is, homogeneity, identity and reunion of the particular with the universal. A more distant repercussion of the real meaning of Platonic dialectic, albeit in a different form, would occur in the medieval ultra-realist position on the question of universals.

In Aristotle dialectic, as opposed to analytics, is the logic of probability: whereas analytics develops the more strictly scientific process of demonstration that starts from true and certain principles, dialectic represents rather the attempt to conquer truth, starting from common opinions or generally accepted principles and submitting them to the test of criticism, by means of reasoning and disputation: "what philosophy knows, dialectic attempts" (Met., IV, 2, 1004 b 25; Top., I, 1, 100 n 27, b 21; Anal. post., I, 2, 71 b. Cf. A. Trendelenburg, Elemente logiche Arist., Berlin 1892, pp. 108-10). Dialectic therefore, in the Aristotelian technical sense, comes back to assume a purely logical meaning, well determined, and one that presents itself as a limit in comparison with the Platonic position.

With the Stoics, and then in Scholasticism, dialectic expands to comprise the whole of formal logic, or the science of deduction and reasoning; that which in the medieval scholae constituted the second discipline of the trivium, alongside rhetoric. The development that dialectic, thus understood, had in the Middle Ages was imposing, especially because of the vast interest that was kindled around the question of universals. There was no lack of lively repercussions with regard to theological science, into which, with St. Anselm and Abelard, the dialectical method decisively inserted itself, not without some intemperance, opposed by the school of the mystics and later wisely tempered by St. Thomas. The equivalence dialectic = formal logic is still fairly common today in neo-Scholastic treatises.

In the Renaissance, as the devaluation of Aristotelian-medieval syllogistic grew more pronounced, dialectic assumes a new meaning: in P. Ramus, and later more openly in Valla and Agricola, dialectic draws close to rhetoric: "ars dialectica" is the art of speaking well, "ars disserendi," an aid to oratory.

For Kant dialectic, as purely formal logic, since it teaches nothing about the content of knowledge, nor therefore serves to extend our actual knowing, is a sophistic verbal game, pure logic of illusion and appearance (Kritik der v. Vernunft, Ital. trans. by G. Gentile, Bari 1940, pp. 89-99). Alongside this pejorative sense, Kant calls the second part of his logic "transcendental dialectic," in the sense of a critique of the understanding and of reason with respect to their ultra-phenomenal use (ibid., p. 100): it resolves itself into a search for the paralogisms and contradictions in which metaphysical human thought necessarily ends up entangling itself.

With post-Kantian absolute idealism dialectic takes on again an essential metaphysical meaning in the conception of reality. In Fichte dialectic is the rhythm of the activity of the I unfolding in the three indissolubly linked and mutually conditioned moments of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Every positing (thesis) of the I generates, by its very development, an opposite moment (antithesis) which in turn opens into a higher moment (synthesis), and so on without end in the process of cosmic self-consciousness. Dialectic thus understood is rooted in the very metaphysical structure of self-consciousness, which in determining itself as "I" necessarily posits at the same time the "non-I"; and it has moreover a deeper exigency in the essential ethicality of the I, which demands nature (the non-I) as the instrument of its realization. It then constitutes the substance of every spiritual process, inasmuch as every conceptual positing, and in general every positing of consciousness, if it does not open, stimulated by the antithesis, into higher moments, exhausts itself in itself, in inertia and spiritual stasis.

In Hegel dialectic is the eternal immanent motion of thought toward the construction of rational reality through the continuous overcoming of its inner contradiction. This dialecticality, by which the spirit passes from affirmation through negation to a new synthesis in a higher concept, is the very intrinsic nature, the propulsive soul of thought and therefore of the world: "in its peculiar character dialectic is the true and proper nature of the determinations of the understanding, of things and of the finite in general" (Enzykl. der philos. Wissench., Ital. trans. by B. Croce, Bari 1923, § 81, p. 84; cf. § 11, p. 15). B. Croce, while partly accepting the Hegelian dialectic, sees it as vitiated by a fundamental error, in that it treated opposite concepts (good-evil) and distinct concepts (good-true) in the same way; for the latter, according to Croce, the dialectic of opposites does not hold, but rather the nexus of distincts: insofar, that is, as simply distinct concepts stand to one another as a lower grade in relation to the higher, to which the spirit passes without annulling the preceding one (cf. Saggio sullo Hegel, Bari 1913, pp. 58, 60). Gentile too considers the Hegelian dialectic insufficient, in that it would preserve a residue of reference to thought-being (a defect, according to Gentile, common to every other dialectic, beginning with the Platonic and Aristotelian), instead of fixing itself in the being of thought as act. To this rigorous conceptual purity, beyond the dialectic of the thought-object which retains all its value within its own field, the Gentilian dialectic intends to attain, understood as the eternal immanent process of the self-conscious Act through the three moments of subjectivity (art), objectivity (religion, science) and the synthesis of both (philosophy): a dialectical process of thought that constitutes at the same time the true and essential dialecticality of the real, since the true and concrete reality is nothing other than thought in act (cf. Teoria gener. dello spirito, 5th ed., Florence 1938, ch. 4, pp. 39-57).

In existentialism, both in Kierkegaard and in contemporary thinkers, dialectic is affirmed as the method of existential philosophy (v. L. Lavelle, La dialectique de l'éternelle présent, I, De l'être [Paris 1928]; II, De l'acte [ibid. 1937]).

Beyond these rigorously technical meanings, whose legitimacy depends on the value of the respective metaphysical systems, dialectic has today assumed a highly varied and manifold meaning and field of employment, to which the universal value conferred upon it by idealism has largely contributed. There are, first of all, derivations founded on the ancient meaning, according to which every progressive logical-conceptual development of thought from a concept, a judgment, or a fact toward the conclusions with which the concept, the judgment, or the fact is pregnant is called dialectic: in this sense one speaks, for example, of the dialectic of being, of experience, of consciousness. From this field, which could be called logical-real, dialectic is transferred, almost by an inverse movement, to the real-logical field, according to which every development of reality, of facts, of phenomena that occurs in dependence upon and according to the schema of a logical process however metaphysically conceived—whether that reality itself be immanent (idealism) or transcendent (realism)—is called dialectic. It is in this sense that one speaks, for example, of the dialectic of history, of culture, of civilization, of life, etc. The conception of Christian philosophy by no means intends to deny this concrete dialectical character of the world, of history, of civilization, and, in general, of being in its actualizing and becoming; but it places the determining logical schema in the order of intrinsic finality that is actualized and unfolds in every created being according to the archetypal design of transcendent Rationality; not excluding the extraordinary manifestations, particularly in the economy of rational creatures, of its liberal and sovereign Providence. For the application of dialectic to the socio-economic field, v. MATERIALISMO STORICO.

Ugo Viglino