Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, Aristotle and Georg W.F.Hegel

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11 ideas

2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
It is the role of dialectic to survey syllogisms [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It belongs to dialectic to survey equally all kinds of syllogism.
     From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1355a08)
     A reaction: Since dialectic is central to philosophy, this implies that philosophers ought to be students of logic. This duty seems to me to be taken more seriously in the analytical tradition than in the 'continental' tradition.
Dialectic aims to start from generally accepted opinions, and lead to a contradiction [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Dialectical arguments are those which, starting from generally accepted opinions, reason to establish a contradiction.
     From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 165b03)
Dialectic starts from generally accepted opinions [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Reasoning is dialectical which reasons from generally accepted opinions.
     From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 100a30)
     A reaction: This is right at the heart of Aristotle's philosophical method, and Greek thinking generally. There are nice modern debates about 'folk' understanding, derived from science (e.g. quantum theory) which suggest that starting from normal views is a bad idea.
Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: Hegel's 'dialectic' is often characterised in terms of the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is, however, not the way he presents it. The core of the dialectic is rather what Hegel terms the 'negation of the negation'.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy
     A reaction: Interestingly, this connects it to debates about intuitionist logic, which denies that double-negation necessarily makes a positive. Presumably Marx emphasised the first reading.
Dialectic is the instability of thoughts generating their opposite, and then new more complex thoughts [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: The dialectical principle, for Hegel, is the principle whereby apparently stable thoughts reveal their inherent instability by turning into their opposites and then into new, more complex thoughts (as being turns to nothing, and then becoming).
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: Houlgate says this is unique to Hegel, and is NOT the familiar thesis-antithesis-synthesis idea of dialectic, found in Kant and Engels. Hegelian idea shares the Greek idea of insights arising from oppositions.
Hegel's dialectic is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but usually negation of negation of the negation [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
     Full Idea: The dialectic is often described in terms of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis - though this is not a Hegelian way of speaking. Hegel himself sometimes describes it in terms of negation and negation of the negation.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], I.i.i.C(c) p.150) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4
     A reaction: A footnote says the first form of description only occurs once in Hegel's work. I am guessing that Marx is responsible for the standard misrepresentation.
Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The older metaphysics became dogmatism because, given the nature of finite determinations, it had to assume that of two opposed assertions (of the kind that those propositions were) one must be true and the other false.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §32)
     A reaction: While dialethism in logic looks very dubious to me, I have every sympathy with Hegel when it comes to the reasonings of ordinary language. There it is much harder to know whether you are addressing truly opposed assertions.
Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In the domain of individual ethics, we find the consciousness of dialectic in those universally familiar proverbs 'pride goes before a fall' and 'too much wit outwits itself'. ...Joy relieves itself in tears, and melancholy can be revealed in a smile.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: 'Too clever by half' is the English version. Hegel's dialectic suggests that each concept somehow implies its opposite, rather than a mere mercurial drift from one extreme to the other. Most pride doesn't lead to a fall.
Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The dialectical constitutes the moving soul of scientific progression, and it is the principle through which alone immanent coherence and necessity enter into the content of science. ..[Add 1] It is the principle of all motion, of all life.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81)
Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is in the Platonic philosophy that dialectic first occurs in a form which is freely scientific, and hence also objective. With Socrates, dialectical thinking still has a predominantly subjective shape, consistent with his irony.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81 Add1)
     A reaction: I don't understand how dialectic can be 'objective', given that it is a method rather than a belief. Plato certainly seems to elevate dialectic into something almost mystical, because of what is said to be within its power.
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 3. Eristic
Competitive argument aims at refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism or repetition [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Those who compete and contend in argument aim at five objects: refutation, fallacy, paradox, solecism, and the reduction of one's opponent to a state of babbling, that is, making him say the same thing over and over again.
     From: Aristotle (Sophistical Refutations [c.331 BCE], 165b15)