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| Plato as depicted by Raphael in his painting ‘The School of Athens’, 1509-11 |
Although dialectical thinking begins with Heraclitus, it is in the work of Plato that we find the name ‘dialectic’ given to a system of thought – one that tries to play this heuristic (problem-solving) role. In fact, he seems to have invented the term, according to classical scholars:
Plato was a prolific coiner of terms words ending with -ikē… There seems to be little question that Plato coined the word dialektikē. [1]
Plato’s version of the dialectic was a core part of the programme in the Academy in Athens and throughout antiquity.
The edition of Plato’s dialogues I will refer to is the Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson (Hackett, 1997). Referencing is by Stephanus number.
Heraclitus exerted a strong influence on Plato, who shares Heraclitus’s commitment to trying to look beyond the surface of the world to underlying, hard-mined truths. But Plato prefers a kind of union of Heraclitus with Parmenides: for him, Heraclitus’s conception of constant motion is true of the transitory world that we perceive immediately through the senses; this however is in a sense less real than another eternally unchanging world, intelligible only through reason, that resembles more closely the conception of Parmenides. This contradiction between an abstract, apparently immutable reason and concrete, changeable sense data is one of the most fundamental dichotomies in philosophy.
One could dedicate a career to investigating the ins and outs of the Platonic dialogues with respect to dialectic. All I attempt here is an overview.
Etymology
The word ‘dialectic’ comes from the ancient Greek verb dialegomai (also dialegesthai) which means to converse, or to talk through. This comes from the Greek roots dia- (‘through’, ‘across’ as in ‘diameter’, or ‘between’) and legein, a verb meaning ‘to talk’ or ‘to gather’ that also gave Greek the word logos (‘discourse’ or ‘talk’, as I discussed in Part 2 on Heraclitus). We see here the sense of talking between people. That verb gives us the noun dialektos (‘discourse, conversation’) and the adjective dialektikos (discursive, conversational). The same root is the origin of the English words dialogue and dialect.
The term entered English by way of late Latin dialectica and then Old French dialectique, deriving from the expression dialektike (technē), in Greek διαλɛκτική (τέχη), which leans on the term technē meaning art, skill or craft. The way to understand this expression is explained by David Roochnik in his book Beautiful City:
Consider dialektikē. As John Lyons has shown, its suffix implies technical knowledge: ‘The form in -ikē may be used indifferently with or without technē and in either case it will be picked up by technē with equal readiness’... In general, -ikē is used to turn an adjective, which itself is derived from a noun, into the name of a specific technē. An example: hippos means ‘horse’; hippikos then means ‘having to do with horses’; and hippike means ‘the technē of horsemanship.’ The pattern with ‘dialectic’ is the same. The noun is dialektos, ‘discourse, discussion, debate, dialect, or language.’ Dialektikos then means ‘skilled in language or argument,’ and dialektikē names the technē. [2]
The ending -ikē indicated ‘art of’, therefore dialektike means ‘the art or skill of discourse’. As Robert Burch summarises:
This etymology on the one hand suggests that dialektike has its basis in ordinary discourse as fundamental to our way of being and being-together, and of ordering, accounting for, and making sense of things; and yet on the other hand that it emerges as distinct from ordinary talk precisely in being the art of discourse. [3]
Dialogue refers to a conversation between two people about any topic; it happens whenever two people talk to each other. It also has a long tradition in philosophy as a literary form. Although he may not have been the inventor of philosophical dialogues, Plato was the first to use the form systematically and brought it to maturity. The 3rd century CE biographer Diogenes Laertius reports:
They say that Zeno the Eleatic was the first to write dialogues. But, according to Favorinus in his Memorabilia, Aristotle in the first book of his dialogue On Poets asserts that it was Alexamenus of Styra or Teos. In my opinion Plato, who brought this form of writing to perfection, ought to be adjudged the prize for its invention as well as for its embellishment. A dialogue is a discourse consisting of question and answer on some philosophical or political subject. [4]
Dialectic however is not simply dialogue. It is a technē, in which, as we shall see, the skill lies in asking the right questions. By separating itself from conversation/dialogue it becomes structured, even scientific. It is, says Burch, ‘a form of discursive knowledge’, a systematic method of reasoning. Thus we find in it the roots of logic, as developed by Aristotle. This journey was summarised by Dmitri Nikulin in Dialectic and Dialogue:
Dialectic originally was an oral practice established in oral dialogue; written dialogue then appeared as an imitation of oral dialectic; and finally, written dialectic was distilled into a non-dialogical and universal method of reasoning. [5]
Like ‘aesthetics’, the English word can be singular (‘dialectic’ / ‘the dialectic’) or plural (‘dialectics’), though there’s no difference between the two. I’m not sure why or how this happened, since we don’t do it for a word like ‘rhetoric’ for example.
Note that dia- doesn’t mean ‘two’, though it looks a bit like it might – the Greek prefix for ‘two’ would be di-. We also shouldn’t confuse dialectic with dialogism, a discourse developed by the 20th century theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, which explores how characters can express a multiplicity of sometimes-contradictory viewpoints rather than acting as mouthpieces for an author.
Plato did not develop a systematic terminology let alone a formal doctrine of dialectic. However this etymology shows us, as explored below, how Plato conceived of ‘dialectics’ as the art or technique of discourse as a rational question-and-answer seeking the essence of a concept as part of the philosophical search for truth, as far as possible stripped of emotion (which can harm our judgement) and rhetoric (the art of oratory, aimed at persuading an audience regardless of truth).
For Plato, this search proceeds by way of three key concepts: elenchus, aporia and maieutics. I will discuss these in turn.
Elenchus
Plato modelled his version of dialectic on his mentor Socrates’ famous practice of sitting in the agora or town square in Athens, bending the ear in public of anyone who would talk to him. In the discussion below, ‘Socrates’ refers to Plato’s fictional characterisation, whose similarity to the historical figure is hard to assess. Thus the true inventor of Platonic dialectic was the historical Socrates, upon whose purely oral practice Plato based his own written philosophical corpus. Other ancient writers also wrote dialogues based on Socrates’ method – known as logoi sokratikoi, mentioned in passing by Aristotle in his Poetics – but with the exception of Xenophon these are lost, so comparison is impossible.
As Nikulin notes, while dialogue provides the opportunity for a question-and-answer exchange, dialectic leads the questioning (p16). Socrates’ method follows the same principle as a legal cross-examination, wherein the opponent puts questions to a witness try and expose them. The dialectician is defined in Cratylus as ‘someone who knows how to ask and answer questions’ (390c) and dialectic is defined in the Theaetetus as ‘examining and trying to refute each other’s appearances and judgments’ (161e, paraphrased). The point is to seek the truth by clarifying concepts: a concept is defined, the definition is challenged, and a contradiction emerges. Socrates, claiming no knowledge of the subject, interrogates someone who claims he (and it is always ‘he’) does have knowledge. What Socrates’ intense questioning usually reveals is that the other person’s understanding is inadequate. A new definition is proposed, then that in turn is interrogated, a contradiction found, and so on.
Thus Diogenes:
Dialectic is the art of discourse by which we either refute or establish some proposition by means of question and answer on the part of the interlocutors.
This technique, which can be found in Plato’s earlier dialogues, is known as elenchus (the commonly used Latin version of the Greek elenkhos = ἔλεγχος, verb elenkhein, adjective ‘elenctic’), which means ‘scrutiny’ or ‘refutation’. I’ll prefer the Latin here just because it is well-established usage. Elenchus is often defined loosely as the Socratic method, although the term predates Socrates e.g. in the poem of Parmenides. According to James H. Lesher, ‘elenchus’ meant ‘shame’ (e.g. in Homer), but the word later came to also mean a ‘test’ to reveal the true nature of a thing or person (akin to an ‘acid test’), and thence a kind of cross-examination; from this emerged further senses of elenchus as either a ‘proof’ or ‘refutation’ depending on how the test went. [6] This sense of cross-examination or testing is inherited by (Plato’s) Socrates, and the word ‘elenchus’ has become a standard label for what he does. The principle is that through rigorous interrogation of our concepts, we can expose and refute half-baked or insufficiently examined claims, arguments and beliefs.
First, something to bear in mind: we live in a material reality comprised of an infinite number of unique particulars, and as humans we form abstract concepts in order to put phenomena into groups (universals) to make it possible to talk and think about them using language. So what Socrates is interrogating is, more specifically, not reality directly but the concepts we form about reality and through which we try to articulate an understanding of it.
It’s debatable whether Socrates has a consistent procedure, but the pattern goes something like this:
- Socrates requests a definition and the other person makes a claim (the thesis).
- Socrates posits further, convincing claims entailed by the original claim and gets the person to agree to them.
- Socrates demonstrates that the further claims contradict or negate the thesis.
- The claim is thus refuted, and the person is forced to realise they doesn’t know what they thought they knew.
One might continue this process exhaustively, but Socrates doesn’t actually do this. Topics scrutinised by him in various dialogues include virtue/excellence, courage, justice, friendship, poetry, and self-control. An example is an early exchange in the dialogue Euthyphro in which Socrates asks the titular prophet to define ‘piety’ or ‘holiness’. Euthyphro says ‘what is dear to the gods is pious, what is not is impious’ (7a). Socrates elicits his agreement that 1) what is pious cannot also be impious and 2) there is discord among the gods; he then points out that there must therefore be things that some gods love but other gods hate, which would mean there are things that are both pious and impious. If Socrates’ line of argument is sound, then Euthyphro’s definition of piety must be wrong or at least inadequate.
Socrates is not satisfied with mere examples, such as Euthyphro’s ‘prosecuting a wrongdoer’ (5d) as an example of piety. He wants a coherent definition or essence that can define what all particular instances have in common, as when he chides Euthyphro:
I did not bid you tell me one or two of the many pious actions but that form itself that makes all pious actions pious. (6d)
An essence is the property or properties a thing must have in order to be what it is (as opposed to properties that are merely ‘accidental’ or non-essential, e.g. a red car is still a car if someone paints it blue, so the redness is not part of the essence of ‘car’). Once we have defined this essence, we can use it as a reference to judge whether any given person or action possesses that quality or has knowledge of it. Aristotle observed in his Metaphysics that Socrates was the first to ‘fix thought on definitions’ (Book I, ch.6). This approach reflects Plato’s interest in universals, from which arose his theory of Forms (see below). Elenchus often establishes that the proposed essence is in fact wrong and that we must attempt to define a new one.
Plato, then, uses dialectic as ‘a method for grasping the truth’ (Nikulin p3). Its probing character makes it a formidable tool for confronting weak and sloppy ideas. Its immediate effect is destructive, in that it tears down beliefs, and the ‘truth’ is usually not discovered – even Socrates, a veteran of many such conversations and who normally appears to be a few steps ahead and steering the discussion, claims to know nothing. As he says in Charmides:
You are talking to me as though I professed to know the answers to my own questions and as though I could agree with you if I really wished. This is not the case – rather,because of my own ignorance, I am continually investigating in your company whatever is put forward. (165b)
We can compare the Socratic method with the didactic method where one person is assumed to know the correct position and simply conveys it to the other – this is the traditional lecture format in pedagogy.
We can also compare it to the eristic method (a term coined by Plato after eris meaning ‘strife’, see e.g. Sophist 231e) ascribed to the Sophists, a breed of fee-charging philosophers and teachers active in Greece in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Today the term ‘sophistry’ has negative connotations (i.e. superficially plausible but fallacious argument) thanks in part to the sustained hostility of Plato – in his view the Sophists were only interested in winning their exchanges through cleverness and persuasive rhetoric, regardless of whether their propositions were true. Notoriously, they used their rhetorical skills to make ‘the worse argument appear the stronger’ (Socrates himself was accused of this by his enemies, e.g. Apology 18b, 19b); their sin, as Fiona Leigh has pointed out, was that they were a ‘willing deceiver’. [7] It is therefore important to debate what people actually believe rather than positions adopted contingently or cynically: ‘Please don’t answer contrary to what you believe,’ Socrates implores Thrasymachus in Republic 346a. Plato explores this tension between rhetoric and truth in several dialogues, such as the Gorgias and Phaedrus. He devotes the Gorgias to exploring the distinction between Sophism and proper philosophy as furthered by the elenchus. For Socrates the purpose of discussion is not formal victory for its own sake, but the philosophical search for truth (according to reality not opinion, see Republic 534c) – he has no interest whatever in trying to overturn true beliefs. As Theodor Adorno put it in his introductory lectures on dialectics, dialectic for Plato is ‘a disciplined form of thought which is meant to protect us from all sophistic manipulation’. [8]
There is an echo of Heraclitus in this procedure through opposites: a question, and an answer, both of which are indispensible to the dialectical whole. The discourse becomes an arena in which opposites create a permanent possibility of contradiction. This takes its concrete form through the agonistic or competitive character of a debate (in ancient Greece an agon or ἀγών was a struggle or contest) in which two adversaries, i.e. characters in the dialogue, try to refute one another.
A note of caution: we mustn’t pretend the concept of elenchus is more rigorous than Plato actually makes it. As Gary Alan Scott points out, the concept of ‘elenchus’ must itself be interrogated:
It is fundamentally unclear whether ‘the elenchus’ is supposed to refer to a process (in which case it could mean ‘to cross-examine,’ ‘to put to the test,’ ‘to put to the proof,’ or ‘to indicate’) or a result (in which case it could mean ‘to shame,’ ‘to refute,’ or ‘to prove’). In short, there is no general agreement about ‘the elenchus,’ and therefore no consensus either about its employment in the dialogues. (p4)
The word elenchus is not used by Socrates as a formal title for his method, in the way modern scholarship tends to use it (and as I have here). Whether it means something specific or refers more generally to any kind of philosophical interrogation is disputed – Socrates ranges across a variety of strategies. Nor does Socrates propose a system with the sort of logical and terminological rigour demanded by modern analytic philosophers – Plato is an ancient Greek writing literary-philosophical dramas and simply does not have that sort of framework in mind.
Aporia
The elenchus is only one stage of the journey. The discussion (as in Plato’s early dialogues) typically ends in an impasse or state of puzzlement known in Greek as aporia (ἀπορία). This is well captured by Meno after being grilled by Socrates on the definition of virtue/excellence (aretē).
I think you are bewitching and beguiling me, simply putting me under a spell, so that I am quite perplexed… my mind and my tongue are numb, and I have no answer to give you. (Meno 80a-b)
He likens Socrates to a stingray that numbs its victim: despite having made many public speeches on virtue, Meno no longer knows what it even is.
This outcome makes the elenchus seem negative. Pointing out contradictions does not by itself show where the mistake has been made, or provide an answer to the problem. But the elenchus is not merely destructive. Firstly, it teaches us humility. As Socrates remarks in the Apology, comparing himself to a supposedly wise man:
[I] thought to myself: ‘I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.’ (21d)
This awareness is a step forward: instead of being merely ignorant, we at least realise we are ignorant and can search for a way to escape the dead end. The definition under discussion has been found wanting, but it is not necessarily useless, and the conditions have been created for a new, better definition. The elenchus’ positive aspect is to bring problems to our attention so we can reflect upon them. It should, as Richard Robinson points out, goad people out of what Kant later called ‘dogmatic slumbers’ and into ‘genuine intellectual curiosity.’ [9] Aporetic confusion is not itself the final goal. Socrates clearly believes the aporia is beneficial, as he explains in the Meno after interrogating the slave boy:
SOCRATES: Do you think that before he would have tried to find out that which he thought he knew though he did not, before he fell into perplexity and realised he did not know and longed to know?
MENO: I do not think so, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Has he then benefitted from being numbed?
MENO: I think so. (84c)
Realising the inadequacy of our knowledge on a topic should motivate us to seek the truth of the matter. In a sense, establishing this atmosphere of open-ended philosophical inquiry is more important than reaching a final answer in every case.
Of course, a Socratic interrogation can also create bad will, as it exposes not only a point of view but the person who holds it. This doesn’t have to be humiliating, e.g. in the Crito when Socrates uses his method to explain to a good friend why he won’t try to escape from gaol. However, Socrates does embarrass Euthyphro on piety, Ion on poetry, Laches on courage, and so on. It can be hard in such a situation not to take things personally. Being shown up as ignorant of the thing you are supposed to be expert in, in public, challenges not only people’s beliefs but their sense of self, and this can make them angry.
So too can Socrates’ arguably dishonest technique of ‘playing dumb’ to draw people into the interrogative trap. This pretence is known as Socratic irony (eirōneia) – it’s ‘irony’ because what’s presented on the surface, who he’s pretending to be, is different to the reality, who he really is. This dishonesty isn’t simply hypocritical because in a sense Socrates really does feel he knows nothing. Wearing a mask allows him to move from position to position in the dialectical agon.
Rather than embrace the opportunity to become wiser and set forth to seek enlightenment, his interlocutors are more likely to make excuses to escape, or get cross, exacerbating the state of aporia. They don’t really renounce their original position even when its problems have been exposed to them. When they are socially and politically important, incurring their anger can be dangerous – as Socrates found at the cost of his life when resentful Athenians put him on trial.
Maieutics
The Platonic dialectic has another aspect known as the maieutic, from Greek (maieutikós = μαιευτικός, ‘obstetric’, relating to childbirth). Socrates argues that knowledge is already in the person him- or herself and the philosopher’s task is to skilfully bring it forth, like a midwife helping a mother to deliver a child. He makes the analogy to midwifery in the Theaetetus: when Theaetetus is struggling to find a definition of knowledge, Socrates says he is in labour, pregnant with an idea, a metaphor first floated in Plato’s earlier Symposium. (Feminists have much to say about imagery of male pregnancy, but we won’t investigate that here.) Socrates offers his services to help Theaetetus deliver this spiritual ‘child’.
Now my art of midwifery is just like [midwives’] in most respects. The difference is that I attend men and not women, and that I watch over the labour of their souls, not of their bodies. And the most important thing about my art is the ability to apply all possible tests to the offspring, to determine whether the young mind is being delivered of a phantom, that is, an error, or a fertile truth. For one thing which I have in common with the ordinary midwives is that I myself am barren of wisdom... But with those who associate with me it is different. At first some of them may give the impression of being ignorant and stupid; but as time goes on and our association continues, all whom God permits are seen to make progress – a progress which is amazing both to other people and to themselves. And yet it is clear that this is not due to anything they have learned from me; it is that they discover within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light. But it is I, with God’s help, who deliver them of this offspring. (Theaetetus 150b-150d)
Socrates claims he is unable to ‘give birth’ himself, but can help other men do so. This process of bringing forth knowledge through dialectical question-and-answer draws in this passage upon Plato’s theory of recollection, outlined in the Meno, which assumes that we already have all knowledge within us thanks to our eternal souls and merely need help recovering it – it’s not clear how committed Plato is to that obviously mistaken theory and we needn’t be diverted by it.
The point of maieutics is that it illustrates a positive process of the dialectic. Whereas the elenchus is largely negative (a search for contradictions to challenge claims to knowledge), maieutics is positive (an attempt to discover knowledge). Maieutics assumes that the interlocutor already knows the answers to our philosophical problems and that these can be coaxed out by skillful application of dialectic. Again, it is only through association with Socrates’ dialectical method that truth can be brought forth.
Moral education
Since the elenchus operates upon an individual and their self-knowledge, it has a moral potential that goes beyond the search for logical consistency. By challenging a person’s beliefs and sense of themselves, it can encourage them to question their life and values, as observed by the Athenian general Nicias in the Laches:
Whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and associates with him in conversation must necessarily, even if he began by conversing about something quite different in the first place, keep on being led about by the man’s arguments until he submits to answering questions about himself concerning both his present manner of life and the life he has lived hitherto. (187e)
In the Sophist, Plato has a character refer to the elenchus as a sort of purging:
We have to say that refutation is the principal and most important kind of cleansing. Conversely we have to think that even the king of Persia, if he remains unrefuted, is uncleansed in the most important respect. He’s also uneducated and ugly, in just the ways that anyone who is going to be really happy has to be completely clean and beautiful. (230d-230e)
It is a form of education, aimed – as Socrates says at the close of the Apology – at making us as good as possible. The concern of Socrates (i.e. Plato) is aretē (virtue, quality, excellence), and how one should live a good life. To be virtuous, and good, it is necessary to know what virtue and goodness are: therefore the critical self-examination provoked by the elenchus is a means to moral improvement.
Approaching the ideal
Since the search for truth or knowledge is inextricable from a concept’s relation to its object, it becomes metaphysical, i.e. dialectic is not a mere abstract method but an attempt to understand how the world is. It is built upon the tension between our concepts and the things they attempt to describe – between thought and matter.
The Socratic method can be applied to any subject, but Plato values dialectic as an inquiry into eternal and unchanging universal ‘Ideas’ – his theory of Forms, which was his (unconvincing) attempt to understand the tension between universals and particulars. For Plato, what is really true is not the sensible world (i.e. sense-able, discovered through the senses, which is merely a shadowy copy), but the ‘intelligible’ world (i.e. discovered through the intellect, which can be apprehended only by reflection). A particular flower in our world is a transitory copy of an eternal flower that never fades. This theory of Forms is an attempt to explain universals: to explain what all instances of a category (all chairs, all cats, etc) have in common. If we can discover the Form, we will have found both the definition of that concept, and the cause of its instances.
Elenchus makes us aware of the difference between opinion (obtained by the senses) and truth (obtained by reason), and dialectic is an attempt to rise beyond the former to the latter. In Diotima’s speech in the Symposium, Plato depicts the approach to truth as a ladder, whereby the philosopher gradually rises step by step from the lower illusory world to the higher transcendent world: towards the absolute eternal first principle, namely the Beautiful, or the Good, which guarantees the truth of all we can know.
This is why Adorno comments:
Platonic dialectic is a doctrine which enables us to order our concepts correctly, to ascend from the concrete to the level of the highest and most universal. [10]
Once we have clarity of concepts, we can ascend, as laid out by Diotima, from the everyday level of the world to the (for Plato) transcendent level of the universal.
This is laid out clearly in Book VII of the Republic. Socrates opens with the famous image of the cave, in which the visible realm of sense and opinion is likened to a prison in which we see only shadows that we mistake for the sole reality, and the intelligible realm of intellect and truth is the dazzling world revealed by philosophy to those who make the ‘ascent’ out of the cave. He introduces the sun as a metaphor for the form of the Good (‘the brightest thing that is’):
In the knowable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding. (517b-c)
Education turns us away from the cave and directs our mind towards its appropriate object, the light of the Good. People who have seen this light should self-sacrificingly return to the common life in the shadows as they will ‘see vastly better than the people there’, like ‘people who are awake rather than dreaming’, and by virtue of their greater education, understanding and grasp of the truth should ‘guard and care for the others’ – Plato’s ideal city would be governed by philosophers.
The path to attaining this ascent, says Socrates, requires the study of mathematics, geometry and astronomy (which deal with things that are always true, and thus draw the soul upwards towards truth). Yet there remains another, even more important component, namely dialectic:
whenever someone tries through argument and apart from all sense perceptions to find the being itself of each thing and doesn’t give up until he grasps the good itself with understanding itself, he reaches the end of the intelligible. (532a)
Forms are essential causes of things, and the dialectician seeks to know the Forms as first principles. Dialectic has the power ‘to awaken the best part of the soul and lead it upward to the study of the best among the things that are’ (532c). It can reveal this ultimate truth only to someone who has studied maths, geometry and astronomy, but those subjects are insufficient in themselves, as one must also be able to challenge and define the concepts they deploy. The dialectician is able to ‘give an account of the being of each thing’ (534b) and aims to give an account of the Good that can survive all refutation. Thus Socrates describes dialectic as placed ‘at the top of the other subjects like a coping stone and… no other subject can rightly be placed above it’ (534e).
Plato wants to establish a first principle, and then proceed from this principle to make other claims. Socrates describes the figures made and drawn by geometers as mere images or ‘hypotheses’, distinct from the underlying abstract concepts they take after. Reason, by the power of dialectic,
does not consider these hypotheses as first principles but truly as hypotheses – but as stepping stones to take off from, enabling it to reach the unhypothetical first principle of everything. Having grasped this principle, it reverses itself and, keeping hold of what follows from it, comes down to a conclusion without making use of anything visible at all, but only of forms themselves, moving on from forms to forms, and ending in forms. (Book 6, 511b-c)
Dialectic therefore is an abstract philosophical inquiry. Nikulin concludes that ‘Plato portrays dialectic as capable of obtaining true knowledge and establishing science: dialectic becomes the pattern of strict reasoning.’ Though this isn’t science as we know it today: it is truth attained by thought rather than empirical experimentation. The exact process by which this leads to truth is left vague, and Plato seems to assume it’s inevitable that studying the Good will make the philosopher good too. But in the Republic, dialectic is the centre-point of the education of philosopher-kings.
Of course, aporia confronts us with dialectic’s repeated failure to achieve this sort of clarity. It’s possible that dialectic will not be enough to get us close to the Truth. Will dialectic always lead to a correct definition? Is it able to produce a definition so robust that it can no longer be refuted? Plato gives no clear answer. It seems clear that for him, we will not attain truth without dialectic to clarify our thought. However, if dialectic can refute any claim we can propose, it would follow that the search for knowledge is futile, and the dialectician becomes a mere Sophist, or sceptic – negatively questioning and undermining everything, or deliberately arguing from the opposing side, so that nothing can ever be proven. (Philosophy does feel that way sometimes.) This Plato certainly does not want.
Later conceptions
Perhaps to escape the spectre of scepticism, in Plato’s later dialogues the elements of elenchus and aporia lose importance, and we find new perspectives on dialectics. He drops the combative, ironical elenchus with its emphasis on refutation and becomes more interested in putting forth a positive position. Thus his dialectic shifts away from interrogative conversations and towards a kind of logical thinking.
One perspective emphasises a double process of collection and division. Socrates expounds this two-step process simply enough in the Phaedrus:
The first consists in seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give. (265d)
Another includes one of Plato’s most famous images:
This, in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do. In just this way, our two speeches placed all mental derangements into one common kind. (265e)
Socrates goes on to define the dialectician as someone who is ‘capable of discerning a single thing that is also by nature capable of encompassing many’ (266b). He says he follows such a person like a god, which gives an idea of the esteem he accords them.
This is really about the relationships between ideas. To examine a question, we 1) gather together the things that belong under a concept to find a definition they have in common that matches naturally to the generic form of the thing (highest universal concept), and 2) divide it properly into its parts (lower, particular concepts). Another way of thinking of it is collecting the things that belong to a genus, then dividing the genus into its species. As Socrates sums it up:
You must know the truth concerning everything you are speaking or writing about; you must learn how to define each thing in itself; and, having defined it, you must know how to divide it into kinds until you reach something indivisible. (277b)
Thus if dialectic can help us to clarify concepts, it can also help us to organise them. This must not be achieved, as Adorno observes, ‘in a coercive way’, i.e. by forcing a philosophical scheme of our own upon the things our concepts try to describe. Rather, the dialectician ‘carves nature at its joints’, as it’s often paraphrased: we should try to match our conceptual thought to the given objects we encounter in the world. Dialectic for Plato is not a purely abstract construct but should map onto reality.
It is we human beings who define and impose concepts on the things of the world. As Adorno notes, it is important that our concepts ‘properly express what it is they grasp’. The opposition or contradiction between thought and being/nature throws up problems; we must therefore constantly reflect upon how our conceptual thinking relates to its objects. This for Adorno is the ‘vital nerve of dialectical thinking’: the tension between thought and the objects it tries to comprehend.
Where we find continuity with the earlier dialogues is that collection/division or genus/species is a proposal for providing the sort of rigorous answers that elenchus is largely unsuccessful in hunting down.
Talmud
A similar method of adversarial conversation is used in the Jewish Talmud, a collection of rabbinic commentaries written across hundreds of years. These follow a principle known as ifcha mistabra – Aramaic for ‘the opposite conjecture’ – that says the opposite point of view might make more sense. Positions are contradicted and opposing positions put forward: by this give-and-take a better understanding is attained. This isn’t the same as in ancient Greek philosophy: the Talmud is concerned with concrete laws and cases, not abstractions (though Plato would say he’s seeking how things really are), and its dialectic is less formal and more open-ended. But it has the same spirit of adversarial intellectual engagement and not taking meanings for granted.
Conclusion
To have absolute knowledge is to be a god. We can never obtain full knowledge of anything; this is simply a part of the human condition. Dialectic is one of the techniques humans have developed to try to overcome our ungodlike limitations by imposing a step-by-step (i.e. ‘discursive’) system on our fumbling attempts to understand what is, and why it is.
If we frame Plato’s version of dialectic as two people with viewpoints in contradiction that result in a new, more advanced viewpoint, we can see an anticipation of the Hegelian dialectic. However this subjection of beliefs to rational examination is different to dialectics as it came to be thought in the wake of Hegel and Marx, when it became a structure not only of thought but of the world itself. Platonic dialectics can be seen as a means of approaching a reified absolute fixed value that exists beyond the material world, which from the point of view of later dialecticians may look un-dialectical as it has change and contradiction blasted out of it. Later dialecticians like Adorno stressed that since things are in fact constantly changing, our thinking of them must also change.
Another criticism is that Plato’s dialogues are artificial constructions that flatten the range of possibilities. What I mean by this is that a real conversation – such as the oral dialectic practiced by the historical Socrates – could flower in a multitude of ways, but Plato shows us one conversation that proceeds in one direction heavily structured by Socrates’ leading questions. When rendered as a written text, a dialogue that in real life would be free-flowing and unpredictable becomes flattened and fixed, and other paths it might have taken, such as more robust or creative replies by Socrates’ interlocutors, are erased. Plato shows in the Phaedrus that he was aware of limitations of this sort:
You’d think [writings] were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. (275e)
A written text can be read and misinterpreted by anyone who can get a copy, and unlike a person it cannot answer questions or defend itself. By articulating his philosophy through fictional conversations rather than speaking directly, Plato takes a step back, presenting us with opinions for debate rather than dictats; it is hard to say to what extent Socrates speaks for him. Nonetheless, in the dialogues the apparently logical outcome has been stage-managed. Plato wants to steer our thought in a certain direction: e.g. to seeking ideal Forms. The method is more vibrant when conducted between real antagonists (like in a Socratic circle). As Plato observes, what matters most is the ‘living, breathing discourse of the man who knows, of which the written one can be fairly called a [mere] image’ (276a). Dialectic conducted by one author or thinker loses the ‘other’ that is indispensable for true dialogue.
More positively however, as Fiona Leigh has pointed out [11], the literary form of dialogue – the staging of opposing voices – encourages the reader to critically examine what is being said, and not said. If Plato had wanted to write didactic treatises in a single, authoritative voice, he could have done so. But he was aware that few if any conclusions are indefeasible, i.e. immune to being overturned. Although a written dialogue has limitations, the conversation continues afterward – unflattened, unfixed – in the mind of the reader. The number of competing interpretations of the dialogues offered by a mountain of Plato scholarship proves this. Each reader must compare the dialogue’s claims with his or her own, seek contradictions, and weigh up possible solutions. This is how, Leigh argues, Plato’s work practices maieutics: it brings us to the point where we, the reader, are able to ‘give birth’.
We may see the Platonic dialectic as an honest project to ensure clear thinking, to achieve that ‘disciplined form of thought’, by rigorously testing whether we know the truth about the things we talk about. Dialectics would never lose this role, right to the present day. As Leigh puts it:
Plato provides a model of inquiry designed to indirectly instruct the reader in active learning, critical thinking and active open-mindedness, by stimulating the reader to engage in these modes of thought.
Unless we question our assumptions and concepts, our knowledge stands still. If we question them and discover contradictions, we have more knowledge than before – the interrogative, clarifying process of dialectic enables us to make forward steps toward the ever-elusive truth.
Footnotes
[1] See David M. Timmerman and Edward Schiappa, Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse (2010), p36.[2] David Roochnik, Beautiful City (2003), p133.
[3] Robert Burch, ‘Dialectic’, English Studies in Canada Volume 30, Issue 4, December 2004.
[4] Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book III.
[5] Dmitri Nikulin, Dialectic and Dialogue (2010), p2.
[6] See Gary Alan Scott (ed.), Does Socrates Have a Method: Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond (2002), Chapter 1.
[7] Fiona Leigh, ‘Platonic Dialogue, Maieutic Method and Critical Thinking’ (2007).
[8] Theodor Adorno, An Introduction to Dialectics (2010), lecture 1.
[9] Richard Robinson, Plato’s Earlier Dialectic (1953).
[10] Adorno, op. cit.
[11] Fiona Leigh, op. cit.
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