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[Greekdialektike (techne ormethodos), the dialectic art or method, fromdialegomai I converse, discuss, dispute; as noun alsodialectics; as adjective,dialectical].
(1) In Greek philosophy the word originally signified "investigation by dialogue", instruction by question and answer, as in the heuristic method ofSocrates and the dialogues ofPlato. The worddialectics still retains this meaning in the theory ofeducation.
(2) But as the process of reasoning is more fundamental than its oral expression, the term dialectic came to denote primarily the art of inference or argument. In this sense it is synonymous withlogic. It has always, moreover, connoted special aptitude or acuteness in reasoning, "dialectical skill"; and it was because of this characteristic ofZeno's polemic against the reality of motion or change that thisphilosopher is said to have been styled byAristotle the master or founder of dialectic.
(3) Further, the aim of all argumentation being presumably the acquisition oftruth orknowledge about reality, and the process of cognition being inseparably bound up with its content or object, i.e. with reality, it was natural that the term dialectic should be again extended from function to object, from thought to thing; and so, even as early asPlato, it had come to signify the wholescience of reality, both as to method and as to content, thus nearly approaching what has been from a somewhat later period universally known asmetaphysics. It is, however, not quite synonymous with the latter in the objective sense of thescience of real being, abstracting from the thought processes by which this real being is known, but rather in the more subjective sense in which it denotes the study of being in connection with the mind, thescience ofknowledge in relation to its object, the critical investigation of the origin and validity ofknowledge as pursued inpsychology andepistemology. ThusKant describes as "transcendental dialectic" his criticism of the (to him futile) attempts of speculativehumanreason to attain to aknowledge of such ultimate realities as thesoul, theuniverse, and the Deity; while themonistic system, in whichHegel identified thought with being andlogic withmetaphysics, is commonly known as the "Hegelian dialectic".
[Fordialectic as equivalent tologic, see art.LOGIC, and cf. (2) above. It is in this sense we here speak of dialectic intheology.] The traditionallogic, or dialectic, ofAristotle's "Organon"--thescience and art of (mainlydeductive) reasoning--found its proper application in exploring the domain of purely naturaltruth, but in the earlyMiddle Ages it began to be applied by someCatholictheologians to the elucidation of thesupernaturaltruths of theChristian Revelation. The perennial problem of the relation of reason tofaith, already ably discussed bySt. Augustine in the fifth century, was thus raised again bySt. Anselm in the eleventh. During the intervening and earlier centuries, although the writers andFathers of the Church had always recognized theright andduty of natural reason to establish thosetruths preparatory tofaith, theexistence of God and the fact of revelation, thosepraeambula fidei which form the motives of credibility of theChristian religion and so make the profession of theChristian Faith arationabile obsequium, a "reasonable service", still their attitude inclined more to theCrede ut intelligas (Believe that you may understand) than to theIntellige ut credas (understand that you may believe); and theirtheology was a positiveexegesis of the contents of Scripture and tradition. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, rational speculation was applied totheology not merely for the purpose of proving thepraeambula fidei, but also for the purpose of analysing, illustrating and showing forth the beauty and the suitability of the mysteries of theChristian Faith. This method of applying to the contents of Revelation thelogical forms of rational discussion was called "the dialectic method oftheology". Its introduction was opposed more or less vigorously by such ascetic and mystic writers asSt. Peter Damian,St. Bernard, andWalter of St. Victor; chiefly, indeed, because of the excess to which it was carried by thoserationalist andtheosophist writers who, likePeter Abelard andRaymond Lully, would fain demonstrate theChristian mysteries, subordinatingfaith to private judgment. The method was saved from neglect and excess alike by the greatScholastics of the thirteenth century, and was used to advantage in theirtheology. After five or six centuries of fruitful development, under the influence, mainly, of thisdeductive dialectic,theology has again been drawing, for a century past, abundant and powerful aid from a renewed and increased attention to the historical andexegetical studies that characterized the earlier centuries ofChristianity.
[cf. (3) above]
From the beginnings of Greek philosophy reflection has revealed a twofold element in the contents of the knowinghumanmind: an abstract, permanent, immutable element, usually referred to theintellect or reason; and a concrete, changeable, ever-shifting element, usually referred to theimagination and the external senses. Now, can the real world possess such opposite characteristics? Or, if not, which set really represents it? For Heraclitus and the earlier Ionians, stability is a delusion; all reality is change--panta hrei. For Parmenides and the Eleatics, change is delusion; reality is one, fixed, and stable. But then, whence the delusion, if such there be, in either alternative? Why does ourknowledge speak with such uncertain voice, or which alternative are we to believe? Both, answersPlato, butintellect more than sense. What realities, the latter asks, are revealed by those abstract, universal notions we possess of being, number, cause,goodness, etc., by thenecessary, immutabletruths we apprehend and the comparison of those notions? The dialectic of thePlatonic "Ideas" is a noble, if unsuccessful, attempt to answer this question. These notions andtruths, saysPlato, have for objectsideas which constitute the real world, themundus intelligibilis, of which we have thus a direct and immediateintellectualintuition. These beings, which are objects of ourintellectualknowledge, theseideas, really exist in the manner in which they are represented by theintellect, i.e. asnecessary, universal, immutable, eternal, etc. But where is thismundus intelligibilis? It is a world apart (choris), separate from the world of fleeting phenomena revealed to the senses. And is this latter world, then, real or unreal? It is, saysPlato, but a shadowy reflex of reality, a dissolving-view of theideas, about which our conscious sense-impressions can give us mere opinion (doxa), but not that reliable, properknowledge (episteme) which we have of theideas. This is unsatisfactory. It is an attempt to explain an admitted connection between the noumenal and the phenomenal elements inknowledge by suppressing the reality of the latter altogether. Nor isPlato any more successful in his endeavour to show how theidea, which for him is a really existing being, can be at the same time one and manifold, or, in other words, how it can be universal, like themental notion that represents it.
Aristotle taught, in opposition to his masterPlato, that these "ideas" or objects of ourintellectual notions do not exist apart from, but are embodied in, the concrete, individual data of sense. It is one and the same reality that reveals itself under an abstract, universal, static aspect to theintellect, and under a concrete, manifold, dynamic aspect to the senses. TheChristianphilosophers of theMiddle Ages took up and developed thisAristotelean conception, making it one of the cardinal doctrines ofScholastic philosophy, thedoctrine of modern Realism. The object of the abstract, universal notion, they taught, is real being; it constitutes and is identical with the individual data of sense-knowledge; it is numerically multiplied and individualized in them, while it is unified as a class-concept or universal notion (unum commune pluribus) by the abstractive power of theintellect which apprehends the element common to theindividuals of a class without their differentiating characteristics. The universal notion thus existsas universal only in theintellect, but it has a foundation in the individual data of sense, inasmuch as the content of the notion really exists in these sense-data, though the mode of its existence there is other than the mode in which the notion exists in theintellect:universale est formaliter in mente, fundamentaliter in re. Nor does theintellect, in thus representing individual phenomena by universal notions, falsify its object or renderintellectualknowledge unreliable; it represents the Real inadequately, no doubt, not exhaustively or comprehensively, yet faithfully so far as it goes; it does not misrepresent reality, for it merely asserts of the latter the content of its universal notion, not the mode (or universality) of the latter, asPlato did.
But if we get all our universal notions,necessary judgments, andintuitions of immutabletruth through the ever-changing, individual data of sense, how are we to account for the timeless, spaceless, changeless,necessary character of the relations we establish between these objects of abstract,intellectual thought: relations such as "Two and two are four", "Whatever happens has a cause", "Vice is blameworthy"? Not because our own or our ancestors' perceptive faculties have been so accustomed to associate certain elements of consciousness that we are unable to dissociate them (as materialist and evolutionistphilosophers would say); nor yet, on the other hand, because in apprehending thesenecessary relations we have a direct and immediateintuition of thenecessary, self-existent, Divine Being (as theOntologists have said, and as some interpretPlato to have meant); but simply because we are endowed with anintellectual faculty which can apprehend the data of sense in a static condition and establish relations between them abstracting from all change.
By means of suchnecessary, self-evidenttruths, applied to the data of sense-knowledge, we can infer that our own minds are beings of a higher (spiritual) order than material things and that the beings of the whole visibleuniverse--ourselves included--are contingent, i.e. essentially and entirely dependent on anecessary, all-perfect Being, who created and conserves them in existence. In opposition to this creationist philosophy of Theism, which arrives at an ultimate plurality of being, may be set down all forms of Monism orPantheism, the philosophy which terminates in the denial of any real distinction between mind and matter, thought and thing, subject and object ofknowledge, and the assertion of the ultimate unity of being.
WhileScholasticphilosophers understand by reality that which is the object directly revealed to, and apprehended by, the knowing mind through certain modifications wrought by the reality in the sensory andintellectual faculties, idealist or phenomenalistphilosophers assume that the direct object of ourknowledge is themental state or modification itself, thementalappearance, orphenomenon, as they call it; and because we cannot clearly understand how the knowing mind can transcend its own revealed, or phenomenal, self or states in the act of cognition, so as to apprehend something other than the immediate, empirical, subjective content of that act, thesephilosophers are inclined todoubt the validity of the "inferential leap" to reality, and consequently to maintain that the speculative reason is unable to reach beyond subjective,mental appearances to aknowledge of things-in-themselves. Thus, according toKant, ournecessary and universal judgments about sense-data derive their necessity and universality from certain innate, subjective equipments of the mind called categories, or forms of thought, and are therefore validly applicable only to the phenomena or states of sense-consciousness. We are, no doubt, compelled to think of an unperceived real world, underlying the phenomena of external sensation, of an unperceived realego, or mind, orsoul, underlying the conscious flow of phenomena which constitute the empirical or phenomenalego, and of an absolute and ultimate underlying, unconditioned Cause of theego and the world alike; but these threeideas of the reason--thesoul, the world, andGod--are mere natural,necessary products of themental process of thinking, mere regulative principles of thought, devoid of all real content, and therefore incapable of revealing reality to the speculative reason of man.Kant, nevertheless, believed in these realities, deriving a subjective certitude about them from the exigencies of the practical reason, where he considered the speculative reason to have failed.
Post-Kantianphilosophers disagreed in interpretingKant. Fichte, Schelling, andHegel developed some phases of his teaching in a purelymonistic sense. If whatKant called the formal element inknowledge--i.e. thenecessary, universal, immutable element--comes exclusively from within the mind, and if, moreover, mind canknow only itself, what right have we to assume that there is a material element independent of, and distinct from, mind? Is not the content ofknowledge, or in other words the whole sphere of the knowable, a product of the mind orego itself? Or are not individual human minds mere self-conscious phases in the evolution of the one ultimate, absolute Being? Here we have the idealistic monism orpantheism of Fichte and Schelling.Hegel's dialectic is characterized especially by its thoroughgoing identification of the speculative thought process with the process of Being. Hislogic is what is usually known asmetaphysics: a philosophy of Being as revealed through abstract thought. His starting-point is the concept of pure, absolute, indeterminate being; this he conceives as a process, as dynamic. His method is to trace the evolution of this dynamic principle through three stages:
Absolute being in the first stage is theidea simply (the subject-matter oflogic); in the second stage (of otherness) it becomes nature (philosophy of nature); in the third stage (of return or synthesis) it is spirit (philosophy of spirit--ethics, politics, art, religion, etc.).
Applied to the initialidea of absolute Being, the process works out somewhat like this: All conception involves limitation, and limitation is negation; positing or affirming the notion of Being involves its differentiation from non-being and thus implies the negation of being. This negation, however, does not terminate in mere nothingness; it implies a relation of affirmation which leads by synthesis to a richer positive concept than the original one. Thus: absolutely indeterminate being is no less opposed to, than it is identical with, absolutely indeterminate nothing: or BEING-NOTHING; but in the oscillation from the one notion to the other both are merged in the richer synthetic notion, of BECOMING.
This is merely an illustration of the a priori dialectic process by whichHegel seeks to show how all the categories of thought and reality (which he identifies) are evolved from pure, indeterminate, absolute, abstractly-conceived Being. It is not an attempt at making his system intelligible. To do so in a few sentences would be impossible, if only for the reason, thatHegel has read into ordinaryphilosophical terms meanings that are quite new and often sufficiently remote from the currently accepted ones. To this fact especially is due the difficulty experienced byCatholics in deciding with any degree of certitude whether, or how far, theHegelian Dialectic--and the same in its measure istrue ofKant's critical philosophy also--may be compatible with the profession of theCatholicFaith. That thesephilosophies haveproved dangerous, and have troubled the minds of many, was only to be expected from the novelty of their view-points and the strangeness of their methods of exposition. Whether, in the minds of their leading exponents, they contained much, or little, or anything incompatible with Theism andChristianity, it would be as difficult as it would be perhaps idle to attempt to decide. Be that as it may, the attitude of theCatholicChurch towardsphilosophies that are new and strange in their methods and terminology must needs be an attitude of alertness and vigilance. Conscious of the meaning traditionally attached by her children to the terms in which she has always expounded those ultimate philosophico-religioustruths that lie partly along and partly beyond the confines of naturalhumanknowledge, and realizing the danger of their being led astray by novel systems of thought expressed in ambiguous language, she has ever wisely warned them to "beware lest any man cheat [them] by philosophy, and vain deceit" (Colossians 2:8).
For the use of dialectic in the earlyChristian andmedievalschools, seeTHE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS.
APA citation.Coffey, P.(1908).Dialectic. InThe Catholic Encyclopedia.New York: Robert Appleton Company.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04770a.htm
MLA citation.Coffey, Peter."Dialectic."The Catholic Encyclopedia.Vol. 4.New York: Robert Appleton Company,1908.<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04770a.htm>.
Transcription.This article was transcribed for New Advent by Rick McCarty.
Ecclesiastical approbation.Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor.Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.
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