"Dialectic" and Classical Education

Continuing on the theme of the “Trivium” subjects, I want to state at the outset that these three elements of language, that is grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, are inseparable in any context. While we can break them down as individual subjects and study them, the fact remains that any communication is going to contain elements of all three, so we cannot view them as anything except an interconnected unity.

Grammatical correctness and proper knowledge of the world and of literature are our first foundation, but we will absorb our knowledge of logic and rhetoric from this organic process of reading and learning through compelling narratives and well-constructed language. There is no such thing as “pure grammar” any more than there is “pure rhetoric.” Every piece of writing is going to have elements of all three Trivium elements operating in tandem.

For this article, I will focus on “dialectic” or “logic.”

What is “dialectic?” (It is also sometimes called “logic” but I maintain that these are not necessarily interchangeable terms). Maybe you’ve heard “the logic stage” used in conversations about the Trivium. Some advocates of classical education will talk about children in the “logic stage” as the age when children are starting to make connections between all the things they have learned so far. That is true, insofar as these things go, but that’s not quite what it meant in centuries past of educational theory.

“Logic” and/or “Dialectic” is another hot-potato term that is tossed around in the classical education world, and its frequent usage often leaves people feeling more confused than enlightened. There are a few reasons for this confusion. One is the apparent confusion of the dialectians who profess to practice the art and only make it seem like one must be initiated into it like one must join the Eleusinian Mysteries before they can learn its secrets. Another reason is that the term “dialectic” is laden with Hegelian baggage perhaps best understood by Hegel himself.

But I will hopefully be able to explain a little bit about what is going on with these terms. I think there is a more helpful way to understand the difference between “dialectic” and “logic.”

The term “dialectic” comes from the Greek word διαλεκτικός which means simply “conversation,” and comes to refer to a philosophical methodology. Aristotle closely associates it with the “syllogism” in the Topica (100a22), and a “syllogism” is a type of deductive reasoning.

I will return to the original topic of “dialectic” at this point. Dialectic is a conversation between two or more parties seeking to arrive at a conclusion on a philosophical question (perhaps this is most clear in Plato where we see characters enacting these dialogues). The process of questioning and answering helps refine terminology. The idea is that we see all sides of a question and move towards gradual refinement. Dialectic relies on logic to move towards its conclusions, and it tries to avoid rhetorical sleight-of-hand in the interest of discovering the truth about a particular question. Dialectic relies on logic as a helper, but does not seem quite synonymous with logic.

It may be helpful to notice now that the “Socratic method” seems generally synonymous with “dialectic,” which is that question-answer discussion of a philosophical question. Socrates mostly reserves this form of dialectic for people who consider themselves his equals or superiors. Some examples of this would be the Ion or the Euthyphro or Book 1 of the Republic when Socrates confronts the agitator Thrasymachus on the question of what justice is.

The concept of “dialectic” undergoes more development after Plato in the works of Aristotle, and scholars do not agree on exactly what Aristotle means when he uses the term, so it seems we tend to stick with the Platonic picture of it. For some more scholarly debate on the difficulties of understanding what Aristotle means by “dialectic” one can read this article. I bring this up to suggest that the topic is complex and not even something that has full agreement amongst experts as to its very nature.

As best as I can understand the modern definition of “dialectic” in modern philosophy (a la Hegel) is that it no longer refers to literal dialogue between two parties as they refine terms and approach greater clarity, but an internal process of overcoming contradictions in ideas and its aim is merging the contradictions into a unity. Marx and Engels used this to create what is called “dialectical materialism” which forms part of the backbone of Marxist historical theory (part of this idea is that two opposing forces can be resolved using dialectical analysis and eventually merge together - this is part of why there is such a strong “utopian” streak in the followers of Marxism; they believe that with the right “dialectical analysis” we can eventually make opposing ideas agree and come to harmony). For more, here’s a short book on the topic available on Archive.org.

Perhaps part of our modern “baggage” around the term dialectic may in part be due to the way the term has been morphed by Marxist philosophy, as you will be able to see in the book I linked above. It’s not an individualistic process of ratiocination a la Sherlock Holmes but a collective act for various political purposes.

For now, it may be more helpful to hang onto this more Platonic definition of dialogue between two (or sometimes more) parties on a philosophical question which depends on using reasoned questions and answers to arrive at a conclusion. This tends to be the mental picture most people have in mind when this comes up in classical education discussions. Whether we should be trying to implement this in schools is another question entirely that I will not address right now.

So what role does “logic” play into this? Aristotle’s Organon, his body of works on logic, is dedicated to exploring logic simply as patterns of thinking and to systematizing good and bad ways of thinking and arriving at conclusions.

One thing that we moderns tend to believe is that whatever happens inside our heads is invioliate or even “safe,” not realizing that our minds must also be trained. We are perfectly willing to accept whatever strength and conditioning training soccer and volleyball coaches require of us, but we tend to balk at doing the same thing for our minds.

The fact is that our minds also need training in good and bad patterns of thinking, and whatever we think in our heads is not necessarily right or safe.

As a subset of dialectic, logic simply represents the underlying patterns to which reality adheres, including abstract reality. Part of what it means to be human is to discern these underlying patterns and use our knowledge of those patterns to interpret reality around us. This is why we lean so heavily on ideas like “The Law of Non-Contradiction.” Things cannot be true and false at the same time in the same relationship. That is one observable pattern about reality represented logically and linguistically as “the law of non-contradiction.”

Pure logic, however, has its limits. Logic can be a useful servant but it is a terrible master, for the simple reason that our human capacities are limited and we certainly do apprehend that there are things that exist well beyond our ability to grasp. The experience of the numinous and the metaphysical is something that our logic cannot fully comprehend, and this is where we find ourselves discovering that logic is a better servant than a master because it simply cannot serve us quite as well in other aspects of human experience, or in relationship to God who exists as the Creator of logic and therefore outside of it. In addition to that, accepting the reality of the Fall and the corruption of our intellectual faculties, we soon run into all kinds of faults with how we use our logic.

But, returning to the mundane realm, logic also cannot work without a basis of knowledge first. We must apply logic to what we know. Dialectic cannot function without the grammatical (i.e. literary) foundation of knowledge first.

What seems to work better as a basis of knowledge is a strong foundation in narratives that allow us to put what we know into a patterned form. Narratives provide us with that patterning. Narratives (i.e. good stories) have their own logical patterns that they must follow in order for them to be effective, and so we must be aware of how the grammatical and logical foundations of education run on parallel tracks. They revolve around patterns. Once we know a pattern, we can make all the necessary connections between things that all conform to these known patterns.

We gain our knowledge of the world better from acquainting ourselves with the best our literature has to offer: poems, good stories, fairy tales and legends (especially for the important early recognition that the numinous certainly exists and how we ought to relate to it), well-told historical narratives, good speeches, etc. If we want our food to be whole and organic, we should also aspire for our grammatical education to be whole and organic as well.

Hugh of St. Victor writes:

We see here that a medieval understanding of dialectic sees it in union with the other three members of the Trivium, and is a subset of the other disciplines. They are interconnected and interdependent.

To conclude this segment, I will appeal to one of the giants on whose shoulders I, dwarf-like, stand. I appeal to him if for no other reason than to prove that I do not stand on my own authority, but on that of others greater than I could ever hope to be.

The Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye writes in Anatomy of Criticism: