Dialectic and Dialogue

Preface

In conversation and dialogue with others, we discuss things that often seem trifling and insignificant, as well as things that appear important and even sublime. We are; we exist dialogically as beings that communicate with one another at the very moment that we are talking with others. But when we arrive at a conclusion by accepting some arguments and rejecting others, we are using an implicit method or set of methods of reasoning traditionally called dialectic. One can be in dialogue about dialectic; one can be in dialogue without using dialectic; and one can use dialectic outside of dialogue. The main questions discussed in this book are: What are dialogue and dialectic? And how are they related to one another? This is not, however, a systematic dialectical argument about dialectic; nor is it a historical reconstruction of dialectic and its development, where each historical stage might constitute a necessary step in a logical sequence of stages. It is also not a dialogue on dialogue. Rather, what follows is a story: one that discusses a tradition of philosophizing through dialogue while practicing dialectic. It is a story about the birth of dialectic out of the spirit of dialogue. Once dialectic is dissociated from dialogue, it understands (and misunderstands) itself in many different ways: as an art of conversing about any given thing, a universal method of correct reasoning, and even the completion of philosophy. However, all of these characterizations still seem to point toward the origin of dialectic as that of an unassuming simple conversation and oral dialogical exchange.

The consideration of dialectic and dialogue in their mutual relation is complicated by the fact that it is not ultimately clear where each of them belongs in the traditional division of philosophy, the sciences, and art. Despite its codification in literature and philosophy, dialogue is primarily live conversation. As such, it is spontaneous, which means that in dialogue every interlocutor is free. Therefore the outcome of a conversation can never be predicted in advance. Hence there is no science of dialogue. On the one hand, despite its being capable of self-description and self-reflection, dialogue is not a theory. Nor can there be a theory of dialogue, because dialogue can always be continued in a different way; that is, a person can express herself differently every time she is in dialogue. Yet despite dialogue’s being both spontaneous and alive, it is always possible to discern traits of consistency within dialogue, but only after it has happened. On the other hand, dialogue also bears a resemblance to art. Indeed, dialogue requires conversational and communicative skills, and in this sense its consideration may belong to aesthetics. Moreover, dialogue embodies aisthēsis or the sense perception of a minimal corporeality, namely that of the voice. Thus dialogue can also be understood as the art of being—that is, the art of being together with other human beings or the art of being human. In the case of imitative, written dialogue, dialogue evolves into the dramatic literary art of presenting persons as characters, of asking the appropriate questions, and of making the proper dialogical move to and with another interlocutor. However, dialogue as oral conversation with the other neither imitates nor produces anything. Rather, dialogue allows interlocutors to be in communication with each other. Hence dialogue is not properly an art insofar as being only is and is not produced.

Dialectic comes about as the written record, fixation, and reflection of an initially unstructured and seemingly disorganized oral dialogical exchange. Yet dialectic emerges only after the act of a live oral dialogical event. As such, dialectic turns out to be the formalized and finalized product of the monoconscious disintegration of an original dialogue, which, despite its unsystematic nature and seeming lack of universality, is nevertheless a universal human phenomenon. Dialogue proceeds by means of mutual interruption, whereas dialectic moves by grappling with opposites, particularly at the moment of their alleged coincidence. Dialogue’s purpose, which lies within itself, is to continue the activity of conversation and (well-)being with the other. Yet dialogue is not just a form of communication: dialogue constitutes the very conditio humana, because to be is to be in dialogue with one’s dialogical partner(s). As such, dialogue is always meaningful and complete, even if it is not finalized at any moment.

The unpredictability of dialogue cannot but irritate the mind looking for a reliable method in search of regularities and propositional universal truths. Dialectic is suspicious of dialogue, in which dialectic sees too much chance and disorder. Although dialectic originates in dialogue, dialectic wants to liberate itself from its own origin, to forget it, obliterate the vestiges of the dialogical within itself, and thus become a strict science and method. Dialectic, then, intends to eradicate all accidentality from reasoning, or at least to channel dialogical conversation onto a course that would produce a proof or argument through joint deliberation. In this way, dialectic hopes to get rid of any dependence on the dialogical other, and thus it becomes monological. Dialectic builds itself up as a logical enterprise, as the art and method of constructing correct philosophical arguments in accordance with certain rules, and of choosing the right presuppositions as starting points.

In its various manifestations throughout history, dialectic takes many forms and assumes many faces, each unlike the other. A common ground for reasoning about dialectic in modernity—in Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Gadamer, all of whom take dialectic to be a major constituent in their inquiries—appears to be the understanding of dialectic as it is epitomized in Plato and Aristotle. Plato takes dialectic to be necessary for the destruction of incorrect theses. It is possible that a correct thesis is not reachable by a discursive dialectical procedure, but the correct thesis cannot be accepted as known or rationally justified without dialectical justification and argumentation. Dialectic grows out of simple, yet not simplistic, discussions about what and how things are, about those things with which we are constantly engaged in (making) the world, such as politics, love, and so on. As a method of rational justification, dialectic is based on spelling out the contradictions that arise in dialogical investigations of our common opinions about things. As the practice of questioning what a thing is by reference to opposites that occur as yes and no responses in dialogical exchange, dialectic is perhaps a kind of art. When Plato writes his dialogues, which both imitate and reconstruct real conversations, he is very much aware of the origin of dialectic within live dialogical exchange, but wants to elevate dialectic to a logically ordered and ordering way of conceiving the true in an ascent from primary assumptions to their undemonstrable grounds and the ultimate good. When Aristotle places dialectic within a logical system of elaborate and subtle distinctions, syllogisms, and tropes, he takes the project of dialectic to be an artificial systematization of his teacher’s and predecessors’ insights about correct thinking, which are already implicit within a seemingly casual and unsystematic dialogical conversation. Later philosophy, however, wants to eliminate altogether the haphazardness of conversational exchange by elaborating a sure art and method for coining universal, and not accidental, propositions.

Dialogue, too, assumes a variety of forms and appearances: among them, conversations in the streets and squares of Athens; guided school discussions; idle chat; symposia; Kant’s after-dinner courteous table talk; salon bon mot conversation. There are an unlimited number of dialogic genres, and each can be renewed in an original way. In each of its forms, however, dialogue is always engaging and unpredictable yet non-contingent. The engagement is mutual because it occurs in conversation between interlocutors, and it is further reinforced by the untainted enjoyment of being with the other and the interlocutors’ attending to each other, even though, at times, this may not be easy.

With its appearance in the works of Plato and his immediate predecessors, dialogue played a central role in both philosophy and literature, for at that time the two were not considered separate. Written dialogue became a favorite dramatic form for revealing not only universal ideas, but also unique human characters and irreversible events. Dialogical narrative can be understood as an alternative to dialectical restorations of prior events. This sort of narration is capable of weaving complex networks for understanding human relations by showing, sometimes indirectly through hints and associations, how things are or were, as it does in a detective novel, for instance. Literary artificial dialogue, then, combines features of dialectic with the art of narrative and uses methods of persuasion that are found in both.

In modern philosophy, however, dialogue is ousted by the advent of the Cartesian, self-centered, autonomous, and universal subject, who develops its dialectic of philosophical analysis as the method of correct reasoning. When this all-permeating author’s ego (subjectivity) attempts to suspend itself and thereby protect itself from itself and from its own intrusion into things, it mostly fails. Even if the author—who usurps the privileged position of reasoning and being able to see what is real as real—does not want to be the voice in an invented dialogue and constructed dialectical argument, he is still unable to commit literary suicide and get rid of himself either through fragmentation or by using various writing techniques, such as automatic writing. For this reason, today (which is but the lengthy day of modernity) we seem to be experiencing a crisis of dialogue due to the solitariness of a single, self-isolating autonomous subject. Such solitude is often just loneliness among other lonely subjects, all of whom strive for, yet cannot achieve, a simple conversation with the other, for which they substitute an anonymous exchange of no one’s opinions.

The fixed form of written dialogue occurs as an attempt to both artfully preserve and skillfully imitate oral dialogue. However, because dialogue is elusive and ever changing, it is difficult to pin it down in writing. Therefore one must invent artificial means and techniques, including that of written dialectical dialogue, in order to reproduce oral dialogue, thereby substituting for oral dialogue what is not oral dialogue. It is not by chance, then, that certain criticisms of writing began to occur at the same time as and together with the appearance of dialectic and written dialogue. One such critique that can be traced back to the enlightened Sophists (particularly Alcidamas) and Plato is that written speeches are similar to painted statues that mimic humans to an awe-inspiring degree, yet cannot talk back when asked a question, cannot defend themselves, and cannot be other than they are. Thus, even if the purpose of composing beautiful speeches where characters seem to talk to one another is to preserve their original discussions, imitative literary dialogue is still only an improper substitution for memory with a reminder that is incapable either of saving the things and conversations of the past, or of communicating them to the reader.

Perhaps one should not write, after all. Yet we do write, so perhaps it is just a (bad) habit. Writing is premeditated and fixed, and as such lacks both the flexibility of oral dialogue and the capacity to answer the question; neither can it grasp and hear all the subtleties and ramifications of the response. Although it is not possible for oral dialogue to follow all of the possible paths that are opened up with each new rejoinder in a discussion, oral dialogue is still capable of choosing a path. Even if it is not always the most appropriate choice, it is at least unique to the discussion. Written dialogue and its distillation into dialectic, on the contrary, have only one path that they have already realized and chosen to follow forever.

CHAPTER ONE

In the Beginning: Dialogue and Dialectic in Plato

Dialectic and Dialogue in Plato. In certain periods of antiquity, Plato and Demosthenes were considered the prose writers who set the standards of writing for later imitations and commentaries. That Demosthenes was a rhetorician and Plato a philosopher did not really matter in this regard, because literature had not yet been rigidly separated from philosophy or rhetoric, just as fiction had not yet been separated from strict (in terms of its logic) or persuasive (in its seductive beauty) speech.

As a writer, Plato composed dialogues, which in turn established written dialogue as the first prosaic literary genre accessible to the general public: Plato’s dialogues were often published on the occasion of a large communal celebration in Athens. Before Plato, philosophers often wrote poems about nature to present their views (e.g., Parmenides’ poem Peri physeōs), as they also did much later in antiquity (e.g., Lucretius’ De rerum natura). Tragedy and comedy, which use dramatic dialogue, were also written in metric verse during Plato’s lifetime. Dialogues were probably composed before Plato (tradition points to Zeno of Elea, or to a certain Alexamenus), but Plato was the first to use prosaic written dialogue systematically for the purposes of showing and constructing what is thought about a given thing through speech, moving from presuppositions to a conclusion and aided by the mutual effort of interlocutors.

Plato’s logos, or speech, is unique in that it uses the achievements of Socratic oral dialogical conversations in a constant and conscious opposition to Sophistic monological speeches, which establish their superiority not by demonstration or proof, but by persuasion. No doubt there is more of an affinity and similarity between the Socratic and Sophistic methods than their supporters assert, insofar as both belong to the first historically documented Enlightenment. Yet the Socratic claim is that there is something within us that is nevertheless independent of us and has its own logos, whereas the Sophistic claim in its Protagorean version is to make the weakest speech the strongest, regardless of whether it is true or false by itself, since speech, logos, does not appear to possess anything in and of itself, independent of our intentions.¹

In Plato we have a rare case where we can actually identify the beginning of a genre: that of dialogue, which is intimately bound to the practice of dialectic. Thus, in the beginning was Plato’s logos of dialectic and dialogue. In what follows, I outline the main features of dialogue in Plato, and then trace dialogue’s relationship with dialectic. My main claim regarding Plato’s dialogical dialectic is that 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.

Plato was the first writer to use dialectic systematically and to reflect on this usage and the limits of dialectic in his dialogues. In fact, he invented the very term dialectic.² Plato’s dialectic, however, is inseparable from the form in which he chooses to publicly present his deliberations—written dialogue. Plato’s dialogues are complemented by a letter (the Seventh Letter), in which he describes the evolution of his political views and the failed attempts to embody them in the political constitution of Syracuse. The letter is addressed to someone; that is, it either presupposes an answer, or it could itself be an answer and therefore may be considered as the preserved part of an otherwise now lost epistolary dialogical exchange. Moreover, Plato appears to have been developing a set of more systematic teachings that were not published by him in written form and are known mostly from other testimonies (e.g., from Aristotle’s Physics, the lecture On the Good, referred to by Aristotle, Theophrastus, and the later tradition) and from some hints within the Platonic dialogues themselves.³ These apparently systematic doctrines of a mathematical ontology are dialectical investigations reflecting oral dialogical discussions within the Academy.

Addressing various ethical, political, and theoretical problems, Plato refines the method of dialectic in his written dialogues as a philosophical appropriation of oral dialogical logos, embodied by Socrates’ speaking with the people in the streets and squares of Athens. Through Plato, the genre of Socratic reasoning or discourse, Sōkratikos logos, soon becomes an established literary form. It is also used by many of Plato’s contemporaries, including Aeschines and Antisthenes the Cynic, who themselves were disciples of Socrates and the latter of whom wrote dialogues against Plato.

Platonic Dialogue. The ancient aesthetic ideal is art as the imitation of being. Art is a skillful reproduction of the beautiful, which itself belongs to becoming. Spontaneous and alive, beautiful being escapes fixation in images and words. In this sense, Platonic dialogue is an art because it is an artful and artificial imitation of spontaneous Socratic discourse—that is, of an oral logos or conversation that follows its own logic instead of the one that an artist or a philosopher imposes on it. Attempting to grasp being or what is in conversation and thought, Plato develops an art of reasoning that strives to be more than an art—namely, a method of grasping the truth of a subject.

Plato thus deliberately uses Socratic dialogue both philosophically and dramatically, by dialogically rendering philosophy as dialectical and using dramatic effects that imitate oral discourse. As Bakhtin notices, among all of the genres, written dialogue is eventually reduced to either philosophical or dramatic dialogue, and yet neither of them is capable of retaining the multi-voiced polyphony of live dialogue. Of course, Plato did not invent dialectic as such. Socratic oral discourse is already elenchic; that is, it implies the proof of a point and the refutation of an opponent’s claim by demonstrating the meaningfulness of its opposite. Plato’s philosophical agenda consists, on the one hand, in rendering philosophy as a strict thinking that utilizes and constructs proofs and refutations. On the other hand, he strives to make philosophical reasoning appear true to life, as well as true to the very process of thinking and its history, through the dramatic depiction of characters who interact in a commonly voiced discussion. For this reason, Plato confined the use of dialogue to two genres: the dialectical and the dramatic, and has produced unsurpassed examples of both, the influence of which has been enormous and enduring. Plato’s published dialogues became a sui generis scripture for antiquity—the text to be learned from and commented on.

In an ancient testimony, when presenting the characters of his dialogues, Plato imitated the mimes of Sophron, a Sicilian poet.⁴ This testimony is not well confirmed by other sources, and in general there is not a great deal known about ancient mime as a genre—its possible relation to a cult, or its connection with other literary genres of which we sometimes know only the names (e.g., hilarody or lysiody). Nevertheless, it appears that mimes were short dramatic pieces imitative of ordinary situations and characters in everyday language, which is stressed by their abundant use of proverbs. Mimes were written for at least two characters, and as such may have contributed to the presentation of alternating voices in the genre of dialogue.

The ambiguity of Plato’s dialogues is deliberate and perhaps ironic, in that he refuses to opt univocally for either the dialectical or the dramatic. Why? Because Plato seems to recognize clearly the richness of oral discourse, with all its nuances and paths of reasoning that are possible at any moment; and yet, insofar as reasoning is discursive and thus can go only one way at a time, it cannot fully fit into a constructed dialogue. Hardly anyone else within the philosophical tradition has been capable of preserving the delicate balance between these two components of philosophy made real. Even contemporary philosophy does not withstand this temptation: whole traditions choose to present themselves, according to the standards of reasoning, as either strictly scientific (i.e., analytical), or literary (i.e., Continental). One might say, however, that bare argument, which lacks any context or historical background, is dry and thus empty of sense. Contrary to such argument, the sheer dramatic imitation of thinking is not binding for our thought, and in this sense is fictional and makes no claim of presenting things as they are.

Dialogue, Dialectic. A later Greek writer, Diogenes Laertius, who preserved stories and anecdotes about illustrious thinkers of the past, characterizes dialogue in Plato as follows: "A dialogue [dialogos] is a discourse, or speech [logos], consisting of questions and answers on a philosophical or political subject, with due regard to the characters of the persons introduced and the choice of diction."⁵