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by Mortimer J.
Adler
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By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
The words "dialectical" and "dialectician" are currently used more often in a derogatory than in a descriptive sense. The person who criticizes an argument by saying, "It's just a matter of definition" is also apt to say, "That may be true dialectically, but . . . " or "You're just being dialectical." Implied in such remarks is dispraise of reasoning which, however excellent or skillful it may be as reasoning, stands condemned for being out of touch with fact or experience. It is a commonplace that men differ on fundamental subjects. They differ in their beliefs about God, in their conceptions of man and his place in nature, and in their views of the cosmos. They differ in their opinions about the goals men should seek and the way they should behave, in their standards for judging political institutions or economic policies, and in their evaluation of forms of government. They differ about the meaning of justice, the nature and uses of freedom, the limits of knowledge, the attainability of truth, the purport of history, and the destiny of the human race. Most of us have been involved in such differences of opinion with our friends and acquaintances. But few of us feel satisfied with our experience of the discussions that resulted. We too frequently have been left in doubt about who agrees or disagrees with whom; and even when a disagreement has seemed plain enough at the beginning, we have been left in the dark as the argument proceeded. We have found ourselves and other men talking together, but not thinking together, because we have been talking without listening and arguing without responding to arguments. Yet we realize that the reason why we are engaged in discussion -- the fact that we do not all think alike -- is the very reason why we should try to think together. Schopenhauer, in his Art of Controversy, offers the following advice: When you are involved in a discussion, he says, do not allow yourself to be distracted by listening to your opponent's argument, but utilize the time to collect your thoughts and to plan what you are going to say when he has finished speaking. What Schopenhauer intended as irony is, unfortunately, the general practice of men. Our discussions of serious and difficult themes tend to take the form of alternating monologues. Whatever pleasure we may derive from soliloquizing in public, we can hardly learn much from listening only to ourselves. We cannot profit intellectually, as we might from good conversation. We cannot hope to get nearer to the truth unless discussion has something of the character of rational debate. When we are serious about our fundamental beliefs or convictions, we are concerned with their truth. That is why we are also seriously concerned about agreement and disagreement. Anyone who claims truth for the opinions he holds must wish to persuade others; and if he regards his opinions as reasonable, he should be willing to offer reasons why others ought to agree with him. Anyone who does not regard himself as infallible should also be open to persuasion by those who disagree with him; he should be willing and anxious to hear the reasons that might be offered by those who claim truth for contrary opinions. Discussion takes the form of rational debate when reasonable men talk to one another in the hope of persuading those who disagree, yet with a willingness to be persuaded by them. The first step toward such efforts at thinking together about what is true may take the form of conversation that merely explores the differences of opinion, in order to determine the points of agreement and disagreement. But once disagreements are discovered, the course of further conversation should be controlled by the issues on which men hold clearly opposed views. Aware that a good discussion of basic issues frequently ends without agreement, we are prepared to admit that disagreement about fundamental matters will probably continue to prevail. Yet we expect a good discussion to clarify our differences, even when it fails to resolve them, and to bring about mutual understanding and a finer interplay of minds. When our deepest convictions are at stake, we can hardly be satisfied with conversation that is just an exchange of opinions. Such talk tends to be desultory, even when it is about trivial matters. Who is not familiar with the experience described by the painter Degas? "We exchanged some ideas," he said, "and now I feel quite dull." Our discussions of questions about freedom, justice, and the principles of conduct usually leave us with an uneasy sense of failure. The arguments get us nowhere, we say; nor has there even been a meeting of minds. We know, however, that these and many other fundamental questions have been discussed by the greatest thinkers in Western history. They, we assume, at least understood one another and conducted their disputes with clarity and precision. This assumption is shared by scholars and laymen alike. Histories of thought in any field -- philosophy, religion, science, politics, economics -- take it for granted that the great writers throughout the centuries joined issue and carried on an intelligible dispute of their differences. Though in most cases they never met or talked with one another, and were separated in time and place and by the barriers of nationality, language and culture, they are nevertheless not regarded as isolated figures, indulging in lonely and magnificent self-expression. On the contrary, historians in any field of thought picture the great thinkers as if they were in communication, even about matters on which they did not explicitly refer to one another. They are placed side by side in agreement, or on opposite sides in disagreement, with respect to the fundamental issues which every century and every generation must face. Thus portrayed, the history of thought appears to be a history of controversy which, whatever its faults, presents us with the best example of men discussing their differences. It was Scott Buchanan who, in 1927, first proposed that the diverse philosophies of the West be conceived "as if they were voices in the great conversation that has been going on for the last three thousand years."[1] He expressed an idea that others had had before, but the phrase "the great conversation" conveys in a striking manner what all of us have in mind when we imagine the history of thought as a magnificent debate. It epitomizes Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy's insight that "dialogue, discussion, the pursuit of truth through the interaction of two or more minds -- this is the very essence of [the] method"[2] by which men must think about basic ideas. This continuing process Professor E. A. Burtt has described as "the sociable enterprise of philosophic debate."[3] The idea of the great conversation provides us with a bold but inspiring view of the cultural heritage which liberal education tries to transmit from generation to generation. In terms of it, we can see that the cultural pluralism of the West -- its tolerance of a variety of beliefs about fundamental subjects -- need not destroy our sense of its unity. As the prime contributors to Western thought, those who participated in the great conversation discoursed on the common themes or problems that have been persistent topics of that conversation across the centuries. By regarding these topics as the meeting places of minds that differ, we can find one continuous and coherent tradition in the history of Western thought, in spite of all the disagreements it contains. The threads of the great conversation supply the unifying warp through which intellectual differences have woven an intelligible and coherent pattern. If a great debate has been going on in the great books of Western thought, each generation can find there the instruction it needs concerning the basic issues that confront men in every age, as well as the starting points for its own original thinking about those issues. What better way is there for us to take account of both the unity and the diversity of our culture, and to reap the intellectual heritage it affords us? Hence the proposal that the reading and discussion of the great books should be an essential part of liberal education for everyone, in school and after. The idea behind that proposal was the conception of the great conversation -- as something to be listened to first, and then participated in. When, in 1952, the Encyclopaedia Britannica published Great Books of the Western World as an instrument of liberal education, it was highly appropriate that the first of the fifty-four volumes should be an introductory essay on the great conversation.[4] It was no less appropriate that the second and third volumes should be an effort to make the great conversation more accessible to readers by providing them with something like a map of the ideas, the problems, and the issues that the Great Books discussed. These two volumes, which I edited, were called The Great Ideas or Syntopicon. The Syntopicon, as the name suggests, consists of an orderly collection of topics, each a subject of discussion by the great writers of the West. We found writers in all centuries discussing the same fundamental themes, even writers as dissimilar as Dostoevsky and Thomas Aquinas, or Freud and Plato. The variety of those themes can be briefly indicated by listing some of the ideas under which they fall: art, beauty, chance, constitution, democracy, duty, God, good and evil, government, happiness, honor, immortality, justice, knowledge, labor, law, liberty, love, man, matter, mind, nature, opinion, pleasure and pain, progress, religion, sin, slavery, state, time, truth, virtue and vice, war and peace, wealth, wisdom, world. To the questions raised by such ideas, the Great Books and other books of signal importance in the Western tradition offer a wide variety of answers, which are indexed in the Syntopicon. The relevance of these answers to one another seems to be as plain as their diversity. When, after eight years of work, in which a large research staff cooperated, we completed the Syntopicon, I felt that we had demonstrated the existence of the great conversation. "If the notion of the great conversation had been a myth," I wrote, "the Syntopicon could not have been constructed at all. To say that these two volumes of The Great Ideas make possible a syntopical reading of the great books, is to say also that they bear witness to the actuality of the great conversation."[5] In the great conversation, there are many controversies, many disputed issues. These controversies can be constructed out of the raw materials to be found in the Syntopicon. The method to be employed in contrasting them and appraising the truth to be found in them is dialectic. In order to understand this method, we must first consider the nature of dialectical truth, then what is involved in dialectical neutrality, and finally the idea of dialectic itself. But before we do that, it is proper to state, in summary fashion, the aim we pursue by such a method, and the result that can be achieved by a successful employment of it. Through dialectical inquiry, regarded in the most comprehensive terms, we can appraise ourselves of the extent and character of the agreements that are possible among men who disagree about what is true. That is our aim, briefly stated, and the result we seek to produce. Let us first, in showing how this can be done, consider the nature of dialectical truth -- in particular, and by way of illustration, the discussion of law. When the dialectician succeeds in constructing the controversies about law, both special and general, which he finds implicit in the literature of that subject, he knows from his formulations the points of an issue, or the matters about which conflicting claims of truth are made. For example, the legal naturalists who claim truth for their views about law are opposed by the legal positivists who make a similar claim for their contrary views. The dialectician knows that certain authors are in nonagreement simply because they do not discuss the same subject; and that other authors, who can be construed as taking the same side of this or that issue, are in categorical agreement. Together they claim truth for the same views about law. If we overlook for a moment such categorical agreements, it would appear that the chief effect of the dialectician's construction of a controversy is to indicate how men are divided, either in their disagreement about what is true in fact or in their nonagreement about the subject to be considered. But that is far from being the whole story. Before a controversy was made to emerge by a dialectical clarification of the discussion of law, that discussion showed how men are divided by the diversity of their conceptions or views. The constructed controversy not only shows more plainly how they are divided, but in addition it also shows how they are united. It reveals the things they can agree about in spite of all the things they do not agree about. They can agree on the description of the subjects about which they disagree in various ways. They can agree about the questions at issue on which they take opposite sides. They can agree about the content of the issues -- the statement of the positions that are opposed. They can even agree about the connection of one issue with another, though in debating these issues they may argue against one another, as each reasons from the position he takes on the one to the position he takes on the other. Their agreement on all these matters still permits them to disagree categorically about what is true in fact; more than that, they could not disagree at all unless they were in agreement in at least the first three of these four ways. But when men disagree, we regard them as differing about what is true. So, too, we must regard them as sharing some truth when they agree. What, then, is the nature of the truth they share when they agree in every way short of agreeing categorically on what is true in fact about the subject under discussion? The answer is that such agreements are about what is dialectically true of the subject under discussion, in contradistinction to what is doctrinally true about that subject. The naturalists' doctrine of law contradicts the positivists' doctrine of law at many points. On those points, one doctrine must be true in fact and the other false. Whichever is true as a doctrine is true in the sense that it accords with the facts or realities of the subject -- in this case law. But, divided as they are by their conflicting claims of truth for opposed doctrines, legal naturalists and positivists can together affirm such dialectical truths as the following: (i) that human law as the subject under consideration can be described as a body of violable man-made rules of conduct enforceable by the state through sanctions for disobedience; (ii) that the question "Should positive law be based on natural law?" is a question to be answered; (iii) that taking opposite sides on the issue raised by this question has a bearing on the position to be taken on other issues about human law, such as the issues about its sanctions, its justice, its authority, etc. The truth of these statements about law, to which the disputants can agree, is unaffected by whether or not the naturalists' or the positivists' doctrine of law is true. The foregoing exemplifies the general relation that obtains between (a) the dialectical truths to which disputants in a controversy can agree, and (b) the soundness or accuracy of the dialectician's construction of that controversy. If the dialectician's hypothesis about the discussion of law is tenable or, better, is the hypothesis most probable in the light of the observable facts of that discussion, then the soundness or accuracy of each of his constructive statements indicates a dialectical truth about law that can be shared by those who disagree doctrinally about it. Though he adds not one iota to the doctrinal truth about law, the dialectician can be credited with uncovering a large number of dialectical truths about it when he has succeeded in constructing a generally acceptable hypothesis about the discussion of that subject.[6] The reason for this relation is not far to seek. The dialectician's constructive statements indicate the dialectical truths on which the disputants in a controversy can agree, precisely because his formulations are neutral with respect to the truth and falsity of opposed doctrines or theories. Only to the extent that the dialectician's constructions accommodate, without prejudice or embarrassment, the variety of doctrines that appear in a discussion, do they have the neutrality requisite for uncovering dialectical truth. Endnotes 1. Scott Buchanan, Possibility (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1927), pp, 180-81. 2. "On Some Conditions of Progress in Philosophical Inquiry," Presidential Address before the American Philosophical Association in 1916, published in The Philosophical Review 26 (March 1917): pp. 123-63. 3. ''The Generic Definition of Philosophic Terms." In The Philosophical Review 62 (January 1953): pp, 42-44, "The fact that this debate goes steadily on, and that philosophers of all schools and convictions engage in it, is easily forgotten," Professor Burtt declares, "because of its ubiquitous presence." 4. The Great Conversation was written by Robert M. Hutchins, who was also editor in chief of Great Books of the Western World, "The goal toward which Western society moves," Hutchins declared, "is the Civilization of the Dialogue. The spirit of Western civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the Logos. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined. The exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the realization of the potentialities of the race" (op. cit., p, 1). Alfred North Whitehead once said that the history of Western thought can be viewed as a series of footnotes to Plato. To regard the West as the Civilization of the Dialogue, Hutchins suggested, is to conceive it as the ever-expanding conversation that was initiated in the West by the dialogues of Plato. 6. Thus seen as able to discover dialectical truth about a subject, the method of the dialectician does more than transform the diversity it finds in an extended and elaborate discussion. It not only turns that diversity into clear-cut disagreements and nonagreements, but it also reveals the unity that underlies the diversity. The extent and character of that unity is made explicit by the indicated agreements on dialectical truth, just as the extent and character of the initial diversity is made explicit by the formulated disagreements and nonagreements about what is doctrinally true. Because it is based on the sharing of dialectical truth, we can speak of such unity as "dialectical unity." It is a dialectical unity that makes the whole intellectual tradition of the West the tradition of one culture, in spite of all its doctrinal diversity. It may even be that enough dialectical truth can be discovered to unify the diverse cultures of mankind.
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