Dialectic
idea · 6 works · 9 mentions · 14 anchored passages
dialectic · dialectics · collection and division · dialecticians · power of dialectic · reason · science of free men · serious discourse · that art · the art of dialectic
in the texts
On Moral Ends
The art of correct reasoning, classified by the Stoics as a virtue
And to those virtues of which we have argued they add also dialectic and physics, and both these they call by the name of virtue:
For the dialecticians teach us, as you know, that if the things which follow upon any matter are false, that very thing which they follow is false.
Phaedrus
The method of definition, division, and fitting speech to the soul that Socrates treats as the genuine philosophical craft of discourse.
Phaedrus.
but please recall to my mind what was said.
I think we have shown pretty clearly what is and what is not a work of art.
Republic
The highest section of the intelligible order, in which reason treats assumptions as hypotheses to rise to a first, unconditioned principle, then descends using only pure ideas.
Understand then, said I, that by the other section of the intelligible I mean that which the reason itself lays hold of by the power of dialectics, treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings, and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting-point of all, and after attaining to t …
But what is the pertinency of this comparison to the novices of dialectic?
“And is not this experience of those who take up dialectics in this fashion to be expected and, as I just now said, deserving of much leniency?
Lucullus
The logical art claimed by the Stoics to judge true and false propositions, shown here to be self-undermining via the sorites and the liar paradox.
" Break them, then, if you can, that they may not be troublesome;
You say that dialectic was invented as the arbiter, as it were, and judge of true and false.
That art, then, helps you nothing against the sorites, which teaches neither what, in increasing or diminishing, is first nor what is last.
Stromata
The art of asking and answering, defended here as necessary for scriptural interpretation despite its sophistic misuse.
" What, then, is the knowledge of answering?
And how is it not useful to distinguish the ambiguous expressions and those uttered with the same name across the covenants?
And the dialectic harped on in the schools is shown to be the philosopher's exercise about the probable, for the sake of the power of arguing against;
Sophist
The science of correctly dividing things by classes and discerning which kinds can and cannot combine, identified as belonging to the free man and to the philosopher pursuing philosophy in purity.
How could it be granted to anyone else?
But you surely, I suppose, will not grant the art of dialectic to any but the man who pursues philosophy in purity and righteousness.
Or, by Zeus, have we unwittingly stumbled upon the science that belongs to free men and perhaps found the philosopher while we were looking for the sophist?