Jowett: dialectic

Soc. But I would much rather ask you, if you are disposed to answer : for I see, from the few words which Polus has uttered, that he has attended more to the art which is called rhetoric than to dialectic. GORGIAS

Soc. I am charmed with his doctrine, that what appears is to each one, but I wonder that he did not begin his book on Truth with a declaration that a pig or a dog-faced baboon, or some other yet stranger monster which has sensation, is the measure of all things ; then he might have shown a magnificent contempt for our opinion of him by informing us at the outset that while we were reverencing him like a God for his wisdom he was no better than a tadpole, not to speak of his fellow-men — would not this have produced an over-powering effect ? For if truth is only sensation, and no man can discern another’s feelings better than he, or has any superior right to determine whether his opinion is true or false, but each, as we have several times repeated, is to himself the sole judge, and everything that he judges is true and right, why, my friend, should Protagoras be preferred to the place of wisdom and instruction, and deserve to be well paid, and we poor ignoramuses have to go to him, if each one is the measure of his own wisdom ? Must he not be talking ad captandum in all this ? I say nothing of the ridiculous predicament in which my own midwifery and the whole art of dialectic is placed ; for the attempt to supervise or refute the notions or opinions of others would be a tedious and enormous piece of folly, if to each man his own are right ; and this must be the case if Protagoras Truth is the real truth, and the philosopher is not merely amusing himself by giving oracles out of the shrine of his book. THEAETETUS  

Theod. Not I, Socrates  , but rather Callias, the son of Hipponicus, is guardian of his orphans. I was too soon diverted from the abstractions of dialectic to geometry. Nevertheless, I shall be grateful to you if you assist him. THEAETETUS

And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no existence ; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which appear and are to a man, into goods which are and appear to him. And I would beg you not to my words in the letter, but to take the meaning of them as I will explain them. Remember what has been already said, — that to the sick man his food appears to be and is bitter, and to the man in health the opposite of bitter. Now I cannot conceive that one of these men can be or ought to be made wiser than the other : nor can you assert that the sick man because he has one impression is foolish, and the healthy man because he has another is wise ; but the one state requires to be changed into the other, the worse into the better. As in education, a change of state has to be effected, and the sophist accomplishes by words the change which the physician works by the aid of drugs. Not that any one ever made another think truly, who previously thought falsely. For no one can think what is not, or think anything different from that which he feels ; and this is always true. But as the inferior habit of mind has thoughts of kindred nature, so I conceive that a good mind causes men to have good thoughts ; and these which the inexperienced call true, I maintain to be only better, and not truer than others. And, O my dear Socrates, I do not call wise men tadpoles : far from it ; I say that they are the physicians of the human body, and the husbandmen of plants — for the husbandmen also take away the evil and disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy sensations — aye and true ones ; and the wise and good rhetoricians make the good instead of the evil to seem just to states ; for whatever appears to a state to be just and fair, so long as it is regarded as such, is just and fair to it ; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality. And in like manner the Sophist who is able to train his pupils in this spirit is a wise man, and deserves to be well paid by them. And so one man is wiser than another ; and no one thinks falsely, and you, whether you will or not, must endure to be a measure. On these foundations the argument stands firm, which you, Socrates, may, if you please, overthrow by an opposite argument, or if you like you may put questions to me — a method to which no intelligent person will object, quite the reverse. But I must beg you to put fair questions : for there is great inconsistency in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic : the disputer may trip up his opponent as often as he likes, and make fun ; but the dialectician will be in earnest, and only correct his adversary when necessary, telling him the errors into which he has fallen through his own fault, or that of the company which he has previously kept. If you do so, your adversary will lay the blame of his own confusion and perplexity on himself, and not on you ; will follow and love you, and will hate himself, and escape from himself into philosophy, in order that he may become different from what he was. But the other mode of arguing, which is practised by the many, will have just the opposite effect upon him ; and as he grows older, instead of turning philosopher, he will come to hate philosophy. I would recommend you, therefore, as I said before, not to encourage yourself in this polemical and controversial temper, but to find out, in a friendly and congenial spirit, what we really mean when we say that all things are in motion, and that to every individual and state what appears, is. In this manner you will consider whether knowledge and sensation are the same or different, but you will not argue, as you were just now doing, from the customary use of names and words, which the vulgar pervert in all sorts of ways, causing infinite perplexity to one another. THEAETETUS

Soc. I could not, being the man I am. The case would be different if I were a true hero of dialectic : and O that such an one were present ! for he would have told us to avoid the use of these terms ; at the same time he would not have spared in you and me the faults which I have noted. But, seeing that we are no great wits, shall I venture to say what knowing is ? for I think that the attempt may be worth making. THEAETETUS

Soc. And thus, after going a long way round, we are once more face to face with our original difficulty. The hero of dialectic will retort upon us : — "O my excellent friends, he will say, laughing, if a man knows the form of ignorance and the form of knowledge, can he think that one of them which he knows is the other which he knows ? or, if he knows neither of them, can he think that the one which he knows not is another which he knows not ? or, if he knows one and not the other, can he think the one which he knows to be the one which he does not know ? or the one which he does not know to be the one which he knows ? or will you tell me that there are other forms of knowledge which distinguish the right and wrong birds, and which the owner keeps in some other aviaries or graven on waxen blocks according to your foolish images, and which he may be said to know while he possesses them, even though he have them not at hand in his mind ? And thus, in a perpetual circle, you will be compelled to go round and round, and you will make no progress." What are we to say in reply, Theaetetus ? THEAETETUS

Str. There can be no doubt that they are thought ridiculous, Theaetetus ; but then the dialectical art never considers whether the benefit to be derived from the purge is greater or less than that to be derived from the sponge, and has not more interest in the one than in the other ; her endeavour is to know what is and is not kindred in all arts, with a view to the acquisition of intelligence ; and having this in view, she honours them all alike, and when she makes comparisons, she counts one of them not a whit more ridiculous than another ; nor does she esteem him who adduces as his example of hunting, the general’s art, at all more decorous than another who cites that of the vermin-destroyer, but only as the greater pretender of the two. And as to your question concerning the name which was to comprehend all these arts of purification, whether of animate or inanimate bodies, the art of dialectic is in no wise particular about fine words, if she maybe only allowed to have a general name for all other purifications, binding them up together and separating them off from the purification of the soul or intellect. For this is the purification at which she wants to arrive, and this we should understand to be her aim. SOPHIST

Str. And the art of dialectic would be attributed by you only to the philosopher pure and true ? SOPHIST

Soc. A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods tossed among men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and therewith a blaze of light ; and the ancients, who were our betters and nearer the gods than we are, handed down the tradition, that whatever things are said to be are composed of one and many, and have the finite, and infinite implanted in them : seeing, then, that such is the order of the world, we too ought in every enquiry to begin by laying down one idea of that which is the subject of enquiry ; this unity we shall find in everything. Having found it, we may next proceed to look for two, if there be two, or, if not, then for three or some other number, subdividing each of these units, until at last the unity with which we began is seen not only to be one and many and infinite, but also a definite number ; the infinite must not be suffered to approach the many until the entire number of the species intermediate between unity and infinity has been discovered — then, and not till then, we may, rest from division, and without further troubling ourselves about the endless individuals may allow them to drop into infinity. This, as I was saying, is the way of considering and learning and teaching one another, which the gods have handed down to us. But the wise men of our time are either too quick or too slow, in conceiving plurality in unity. Having no method, they make their one and many anyhow, and from unity pass at once to infinity ; the intermediate steps never occur to them. And this, I repeat, is what makes the difference between the mere art of disputation and true dialectic. PHILEBUS  

Soc. And yet, Protarchus, dialectic will refuse to acknowledge us, if we do not award to her the first place. PHILEBUS

Pro. And pray, what is dialectic ? PHILEBUS

So much, then, for that. You were surprised at my sending Polyxenus to you ; but now as of old I repeat [2.314d] the same statement about Lycophron also and the others you have with you, that, as respects dialectic, you are far superior to them all both in natural intelligence and in argumentative ability ; and I maintain that if any of them is beaten in argument, this defeat is not voluntary, as some imagine, but involuntary. All the same, it appears that you treat them with the greatest consideration and make them presents. So much, then, about these men ; too much, indeed, about such as they ! As for Philistion, if you are making use of him yourself by all means do so ; [2.314e] but if not, lend him if possible to Speusippus and send him home. Speusippus, too, begs you to do so ; and Philistion also promised me, that, if you would release him, he would gladly come to Athens. Many thanks for releasing the man in the stone-quarries ; and my request with regard to his household and Hegesippus, the son of Ariston, is no hard matter ; for in your letter you said that should anyone wrong him or them and you come to know of it you would not allow it. It is proper for me also to say what is true [2.315a] about Lysicleides ; for of all those who have come to Athens from Sicily he is the only one who has not misrepresented your association with me ; on the contrary, he always speaks nicely about past events and puts the best construction on them. LETTERS LETTER II

At present, I said, the students of philosophy are quite young ; beginning when they are hardly past childhood, they devote only the time saved from money-making and housekeeping to such pursuits ; and even those of them who are reputed to have most of the philosophic spirit, when they come within sight of the great difficulty of the subject, I mean dialectic, take themselves off. In after life, when invited by someone else, they may, perhaps, go and hear a lecture, and about this they make much ado, for philosophy is not considered by them to be their proper business : at last, when they grow old, in most cases they are extinguished more truly than Heracleitus’s sun, inasmuch as they never light up again. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK VI

And when I speak of the other division of the intelligible, you will understand me to speak of that other sort of knowledge which reason herself attains by the power of dialectic, using the hypotheses not as first principles, but only as hypotheses — that is to say, as steps and points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole ; and clinging to this and then to that which depends on this, by successive steps she descends again without the aid of any sensible object, from ideas, through ideas, and in ideas she ends. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

I understand you, he replied ; not perfectly, for you seem to me to be describing a task which is really tremendous ; but, at any rate, I understand you to say that knowledge and being, which the science of dialectic contemplates, are clearer than the notions of the arts, as they are termed, which proceed from hypotheses only : these are also contemplated by the understanding, and not by the senses : yet, because they start from hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle, those who contemplate them appear to you not to exercise the higher reason upon them, although when a first principle is added to them they are cognizable by the higher reason. And the habit which is concerned with geometry and the cognate sciences I suppose that you would term understanding, and not reason, as being intermediate between opinion and reason. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VI

And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate ; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic ; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Then this is the progress which you call dialectic ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

I agree in what you are saying, he replied, which may be hard to believe, yet, from another point of view, is harder still to deny. This, however, is not a theme to be treated of in passing only, but will have to be discussed again and again. And so, whether our conclusion be true or false, let us assume all this, and proceed at once from the prelude or preamble to the chief strain, and describe that in like manner. Say, then, what is the nature and what are the divisions of dialectic, and what are the paths which lead thither ; for these paths will also lead to our final rest. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

But I must also remind you that the power of dialectic alone can reveal this, and only to one who is a disciple of the previous sciences. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Then dialectic, and dialectic alone, goes directly to the first principle and is the only science which does away with hypotheses in order to make her ground secure ; the eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an outlandish slough, is by her gentle aid lifted upward ; and she uses as handmaids and helpers in the work of conversion, the sciences which we have been discussing. Custom terms them sciences, but they ought to have some other name, implying greater clearness than opinion and less clearness than science : and this, in our previous sketch, was called understanding. But why should we dispute about names when we have realities of such importance to consider ? Why, indeed, he said, when any name will do which expresses the thought of the mind with clearness ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

And, therefore, calculation and geometry and all the other elements of instruction, which are a preparation for dialectic, should be presented to the mind in childhood ; not, however, under any notion of forcing our system of education. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

These, I said, are the points which you must consider ; and those who have most of this comprehension, and who are most steadfast in their learning, and in their military and other appointed duties, when they have arrived at the age of thirty will have to be chosen by you out of the select class, and elevated to higher honor ; and you will have to prove them by the help of dialectic, in order to learn which of them is able to give up the use of sight and the other senses, and in company with truth to attain absolute being : And here, my friend, great caution is required. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Do you not remark, I said, how great is the evil which dialectic has introduced ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII

Therefore, that your feelings may not be moved to pity about our citizens who are now thirty years of age, every care must be taken in introducing them to dialectic. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VII