By the ancients, Logic and Dialectic were used as synonymous terms;
although [Greek: logizesthai], "to think over, to consider, to
calculate," and [Greek: dialegesthai], "to converse," are two very
different things.
The name Dialectic was, as we are informed by Diogenes Laertius, first
used by Plato; and in the _Phaedrus, Sophist, Republic_, bk. vii., and
elsewhere, we find that by Dialectic he means the regular employment
of the reason, and skill in the practice of it. Aristotle also uses
the word in this sense; but, according to Laurentius Valla, he was
the first to use Logic too in a similar way.[1] Dialectic, therefore,
seems to be an older word than Logic. Cicero and Quintilian use the
words in the same general signification.[2]
[Footnote 1: He speaks of [Greek: dyscherelai logicai], that is,
"difficult points," [Greek: protasis logicae aporia logicae]]
[Footnote 2: Cic. _in Lucullo: Dialecticam inventam esse, veri et
falsi quasi disceptatricem. Topica_, c. 2: _Stoici enim judicandi vias
diligenter persecuti sunt, ea scientia, quam_ Dialecticen _appellant_.
Quint., lib. ii., 12: _Itaque haec pars dialecticae, sive illam
disputatricem dicere malimus_; and with him this latter word appears
to be the Latin equivalent for Dialectic. (So far according to "Petri
Rami dialectica, Audomari Talaei praelectionibus illustrata." 1569.)]
This use of the words and synonymous terms lasted through the Middle
Ages into modern times; in fact, until the present day. But more
recently, and in particular by Kant, Dialectic has often been employed
in a bad sense, as meaning "the art of sophistical controversy";
and hence Logic has been preferred, as of the two the more innocent
designation. Nevertheless, both originally meant the same thing; and
in the last few years they have again been recognised as synonymous.
It is a pity that the words have thus been used from of old, and that
I am not quite at liberty to distinguish their meanings. Otherwise, I
should have preferred to define _Logic_ (from [Greek: logos], "word"
and "reason," which are inseparable) as "the science of the laws of
thought, that is, of the method of reason"; and _Dialectic_ (from
[Greek: dialegesthai], "to converse"--and every conversation
communicates either facts or opinions, that is to say, it is
historical or deliberative) as "the art of disputation," in the modern
sense of the word. It it clear, then, that Logic deals with a subject
of a purely _à priori_ character, separable in definition from
experience, namely, the laws of thought, the process of reason or the
[Greek: logos], the laws, that is, which reason follows when it is
left to itself and not hindered, as in the case of solitary thought on
the part of a rational being who is in no way misled. Dialectic, on
the other hand, would treat of the intercourse between two rational
beings who, because they are rational, ought to think in common, but
who, as soon as they cease to agree like two clocks keeping exactly
the same time, create a disputation, or intellectual contest. Regarded
as purely rational beings, the individuals would, I say, necessarily
be in agreement, and their variation springs from the difference
essential to individuality; in other words, it is drawn from
experience.
Logic, therefore, as the science of thought, or the science of the
process of pure reason, should be capable of being constructed _à
priori_. Dialectic, for the most part, can be constructed only _à
posteriori_; that is to say, we may learn its rules by an experiential
knowledge of the disturbance which pure thought suffers through the
difference of individuality manifested in the intercourse between
two rational beings, and also by acquaintance with the means which
disputants adopt in order to make good against one another their own
individual thought, and to show that it is pure and objective. For
human nature is such that if A. and B. are engaged in thinking in
common, and are communicating their opinions to one another on any
subject, so long as it is not a mere fact of history, and A. perceives
that B.'s thoughts on one and the same subject are not the same as his
own, he does not begin by revising his own process of thinking, so as
to discover any mistake which he may have made, but he assumes that
the mistake has occurred in B.'s. In other words, man is naturally
obstinate; and this quality in him is attended with certain results,
treated of in the branch of knowledge which I should like to call
Dialectic, but which, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I shall call
Controversial or Eristical Dialectic. Accordingly, it is the branch
of knowledge which treats of the obstinacy natural to man. Eristic is
only a harsher name for the same thing.
Controversial Dialectic is the art of disputing, and of disputing in
such a way as to hold one's own, whether one is in the right or the
wrong--_per fas et nefas_.[1] A man may be objectively in the right,
and nevertheless in the eyes of bystanders, and sometimes in his own,
he may come off worst. For example, I may advance a proof of some
assertion, and my adversary may refute the proof, and thus appear to
have refuted the assertion, for which there may, nevertheless, be
other proofs. In this case, of course, my adversary and I change
places: he comes off best, although, as a matter of fact, he is in the
wrong.
[Footnote 1: According to Diogenes Laertius, v., 28, Aristotle put
Rhetoric and Dialectic together, as aiming at persuasion, [Greek: to
pithanon]; and Analytic and Philosophy as aiming at truth. Aristotle
does, indeed, distinguish between (1) _Logic_, or Analytic, as the
theory or method of arriving at true or apodeictic conclusions; and
(2) _Dialectic_ as the method of arriving at conclusions that are
accepted or pass current as true, [Greek: endoxa] _probabilia_;
conclusions in regard to which it is not taken for granted that they
are false, and also not taken for granted that they are true in
themselves, since that is not the point. What is this but the art of
being in the right, whether one has any reason for being so or not, in
other words, the art of attaining the appearance of truth, regardless
of its substance? That is, then, as I put it above.
Aristotle divides all conclusions into logical and dialectical, in the
manner described, and then into eristical. (3) _Eristic_ is the method
by which the form of the conclusion is correct, but the premisses, the
materials from which it is drawn, are not true, but only appear to be
true. Finally (4) _Sophistic_ is the method in which the form of the
conclusion is false, although it seems correct. These three last
properly belong to the art of Controversial Dialectic, as they have
no objective truth in view, but only the appearance of it, and pay
no regard to truth itself; that is to say, they aim at victory.
Aristotle's book on _Sophistic Conclusions_ was edited apart from the
others, and at a later date. It was the last book of his _Dialectic_.]
If the reader asks how this is, I reply that it is simply the
natural baseness of human nature. If human nature were not base, but
thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim
than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether
the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by
expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should
regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary
consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our
innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our
intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first
position was wrong and our adversary's right. The way out of this
difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a
correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke.
But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and
innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they
may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert
is false, they want it to seem the contrary. The interest in truth,
which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated
the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of
vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false,
and what is false must seem true.
However, this very dishonesty, this persistence in a proposition which
seems false even to ourselves, has something to be said for it. It
often happens that we begin with the firm conviction of the truth
of our statement; but our opponent's argument appears to refute it.
Should we abandon our position at once, we may discover later on
that we were right after all; the proof we offered was false, but
nevertheless there was a proof for our statement which was true. The
argument which would have been our salvation did not occur to us at
the moment. Hence we make it a rule to attack a counter-argument, even
though to all appearances it is true and forcible, in the belief that
its truth is only superficial, and that in the course of the dispute
another argument will occur to us by which we may upset it, or succeed
in confirming the truth of our statement. In this way we are almost
compelled to become dishonest; or, at any rate, the temptation to do
so is very great. Thus it is that the weakness of our intellect and
the perversity of our will lend each other mutual support; and that,
generally, a disputant fights not for truth, but for his proposition,
as though it were a battle _pro aris et focis_. He sets to work _per
fas et nefas_; nay, as we have seen, he cannot easily do otherwise.
As a rule, then, every man will insist on maintaining whatever he
has said, even though for the moment he may consider it false or
doubtful.[1]
[Footnote 1: Machiavelli recommends his Prince to make use of every
moment that his neighbour is weak, in order to attack him; as
otherwise his neighbour may do the same. If honour and fidelity
prevailed in the world, it would be a different matter; but as these
are qualities not to be expected, a man must not practise them
himself, because he will meet with a bad return. It is just the same
in a dispute: if I allow that my opponent is right as soon as he seems
to be so, it is scarcely probable that he will do the same when the
position is reversed; and as he acts wrongly, I am compelled to act
wrongly too. It is easy to say that we must yield to truth, without
any prepossession in favour of our own statements; but we cannot
assume that our opponent will do it, and therefore we cannot do
it either. Nay, if I were to abandon the position on which I had
previously bestowed much thought, as soon as it appeared that he was
right, it might easily happen that I might be misled by a momentary
impression, and give up the truth in order to accept an error.]
To some extent every man is armed against such a procedure by his own
cunning and villainy. He learns by daily experience, and thus comes
to have his own _natural Dialectic_, just as he has his own _natural
Logic_. But his Dialectic is by no means as safe a guide as his Logic.
It is not so easy for any one to think or draw an inference contrary
to the laws of Logic; false judgments are frequent, false conclusions
very rare. A man cannot easily be deficient in natural Logic, but he
may very easily be deficient in natural Dialectic, which is a gift
apportioned in unequal measure. In so far natural Dialectic resembles
the faculty of judgment, which differs in degree with every man; while
reason, strictly speaking, is the same. For it often happens that in
a matter in which a man is really in the right, he is confounded or
refuted by merely superficial arguments; and if he emerges victorious
from a contest, he owes it very often not so much to the correctness
of his judgment in stating his proposition, as to the cunning and
address with which he defended it.
Here, as in all other cases, the best gifts are born with a man;
nevertheless, much may be done to make him a master of this art by
practice, and also by a consideration of the tactics which may be used
to defeat an opponent, or which he uses himself for a similar purpose.
Therefore, even though Logic may be of no very real, practical use,
Dialectic may certainly be so; and Aristotle, too, seems to me to
have drawn up his Logic proper, or Analytic, as a foundation and
preparation for his Dialectic, and to have made this his chief
business. Logic is concerned with the mere form of propositions;
Dialectic, with their contents or matter--in a word, with their
substance. It was proper, therefore, to consider the general form of
all propositions before proceeding to particulars.
Aristotle does not define the object of Dialectic as exactly as I
have done it here; for while he allows that its principal object
is disputation, he declares at the same time that it is also the
discovery of truth.[1] Again, he says, later on, that if, from the
philosophical point of view, propositions are dealt with according to
their truth, Dialectic regards them according to their plausibility,
or the measure in which they will win the approval and assent of
others.[2] He is aware that the objective truth of a proposition must
be distinguished and separated from the way in which it is pressed
home, and approbation won for it; but he fails to draw a sufficiently
sharp distinction between these two aspects of the matter, so as to
reserve Dialectic for the latter alone.[3] The rules which he often
gives for Dialectic contain some of those which properly belong to
Logic; and hence it appears to me that he has not provided a clear
solution of the problem.
[Footnote 1: _Topica_, bk. i., 2.]
[Footnote 2: _Ib_., 12.]
[Footnote 3: On the other hand, in his book _De Sophisticis Elenchis_,
he takes too much trouble to separate _Dialectic_ from _Sophistic_
and _Eristic_, where the distinction is said to consist in this, that
dialectical conclusions are true in their form and their contents,
while sophistical and eristical conclusions are false.
Eristic so far differs from Sophistic that, while the master of
Eristic aims at mere victory, the Sophist looks to the reputation,
and with it, the monetary rewards which he will gain. But whether a
proposition is true in respect of its contents is far too uncertain a
matter to form the foundation of the distinction in question; and
it is a matter on which the disputant least of all can arrive at
certainty; nor is it disclosed in any very sure form even by the
result of the disputation. Therefore, when Aristotle speaks of
_Dialectic_, we must include in it Sophistic, Eristic, and Peirastic,
and define it as "the art of getting the best of it in a dispute," in
which, unquestionably, the safest plan is to be in the right to begin
with; but this in itself is not enough in the existing disposition
of mankind, and, on the other hand, with the weakness of the human
intellect, it is not altogether necessary. Other expedients are
required, which, just because they are unnecessary to the attainment
of objective truth, may also be used when a man is objectively in the
wrong; and whether or not this is the case, is hardly ever a matter of
complete certainty.
I am of opinion, therefore, that a sharper distinction should be drawn
between Dialectic and Logic than Aristotle has given us; that to Logic
we should assign objective truth as far as it is merely formal, and
that Dialectic should be confined to the art of gaining one's point,
and contrarily, that Sophistic and Eristic should not be distinguished
from Dialectic in Aristotle's fashion, since the difference which he
draws rests on objective and material truth; and in regard to what
this is, we cannot attain any clear certainty before discussion; but
we are compelled, with Pilate, to ask, _What is truth_? For truth
is in the depths, [Greek: en butho hae halaetheia] (a saying of
Democritus, _Diog. Laert_., ix., 72). Two men often engage in a warm
dispute, and then return to their homes each of the other's opinion,
which he has exchanged for his own. It is easy to say that in every
dispute we should have no other aim than the advancement of truth; but
before dispute no one knows where it is, and through his opponent's
arguments and his own a man is misled.]
We must always keep the subject of one branch of knowledge quite
distinct from that of any other. To form a clear idea of the province
of Dialectic, we must pay no attention to objective truth, which is an
affair of Logic; we must regard it simply as _the art of getting the
best of it in a dispute_, which, as we have seen, is all the easier if
we are actually in the right. In itself Dialectic has nothing to do
but to show how a man may defend himself against attacks of every
kind, and especially against dishonest attacks; and, in the
same fashion, how he may attack another man's statement without
contradicting himself, or generally without being defeated. The
discovery of objective truth must be separated from the art of winning
acceptance for propositions; for objective truth is an entirely
different matter: it is the business of sound judgment, reflection and
experience, for which there is no special art.
Such, then, is the aim of Dialectic. It has been defined as the Logic
of appearance; but the definition is a wrong one, as in that case it
could only be used to repel false propositions. But even when a man
has the right on his side, he needs Dialectic in order to defend and
maintain it; he must know what the dishonest tricks are, in order to
meet them; nay, he must often make use of them himself, so as to beat
the enemy with his own weapons.
Accordingly, in a dialectical contest we must put objective truth
aside, or, rather, we must regard it as an accidental circumstance,
and look only to the defence of our own position and the refutation of
our opponent's.
In following out the rules to this end, no respect should be paid to
objective truth, because we usually do not know where the truth lies.
As I have said, a man often does not himself know whether he is in the
right or not; he often believes it, and is mistaken: both sides often
believe it. Truth is in the depths. At the beginning of a contest each
man believes, as a rule, that right is on his side; in the course of
it, both become doubtful, and the truth is not determined or confirmed
until the close.
Dialectic, then, need have nothing to do with truth, as little as the
fencing master considers who is in the right when a dispute leads to a
duel. Thrust and parry is the whole business. Dialectic is the art of
intellectual fencing; and it is only when we so regard it that we can
erect it into a branch of knowledge. For if we take purely objective
truth as our aim, we are reduced to mere Logic; if we take the
maintenance of false propositions, it is mere Sophistic; and in either
case it would have to be assumed that we were aware of what was true
and what was false; and it is seldom that we have any clear idea of
the truth beforehand. The true conception of Dialectic is, then, that
which we have formed: it is the art of intellectual fencing used for
the purpose of getting the best of it in a dispute; and, although the
name _Eristic_ would be more suitable, it is more correct to call it
controversial Dialectic, _Dialectica eristica_.
Dialectic in this sense of the word has no other aim but to reduce
to a regular system and collect and exhibit the arts which most men
employ when they observe, in a dispute, that truth is not on their
side, and still attempt to gain the day. Hence, it would be very
inexpedient to pay any regard to objective truth or its advancement in
a science of Dialectic; since this is not done in that original and
natural Dialectic innate in men, where they strive for nothing but
victory. The science of Dialectic, in one sense of the word, is mainly
concerned to tabulate and analyse dishonest stratagems, in order that
in a real debate they may be at once recognised and defeated. It is
for this very reason that Dialectic must admittedly take victory, and
not objective truth, for its aim and purpose.
I am not aware that anything has been done in this direction,
although I have made inquiries far and wide.[1] It is, therefore, an
uncultivated soil. To accomplish our purpose, we must draw from our
experience; we must observe how in the debates which often arise in
our intercourse with our fellow-men this or that stratagem is employed
by one side or the other. By finding out the common elements in tricks
repeated in different forms, we shall be enabled to exhibit certain
general stratagems which may be advantageous, as well for our own use,
as for frustrating others if they use them.
[Footnote 1: Diogenes Laertes tells us that among the numerous
writings on Rhetoric by Theophrastus, all of which have been lost,
there was one entitled [Greek: Agonistikon taes peri tous eristikous
gogous theorias.] That would have been just what we want.]
What follows is to be regarded as a first attempt.