Page:Mortimer J. Adler - Dialectic.pdf/4

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
vi
Preface

or quarrel with its doctrine. Whatever be their manner of dealing with the theory of dialectic, it seems to me that they must acknowledge it as a method in order to dispute or confirm it. If I have described what are the essential processes by which theoretical differences are met and settled, the way in which ideas are translated into one another for purposes of clarification and understanding, then I have nothing to fear from whatever opposition the fundamental theses of this book provoke. My opponent must be a dialectician in order to argue with me, and I shall not be disturbed if in that argument we succeed in understanding one another better, though that imply some correction or alternation of the theory herein advanced. Any change, if it be wrought dialectically, will not harm the theory which suffers it,

It has been my purpose to exhibit dialectic at once as being the technique of ordinary conversation when it is confronted by the conflict of opinions, and as being the essential form of philosophical thought. A familiar fact about the discussions in which men indulge is that they become philosophical. Philosophy is net an esoteric profession. It is immanent in any conversation which resorts to definition and analysis instead of to experience; it is incumbent upon any mind which enters into discourse to understand rather than to believe. Philosophy, it seems to me, is nothing more or less than dialectic. It is a method and an intellectual attitude, not a special subject-matter or a system.

Here again I am compelled by the nature of my theory to face disagreement with indifference. I do not fail to perceive that the doctrine I have developed can be translated into the terms of other theories, therein subordinated and given a different signification, But such treatment would itself be an instance of dialectic, another repetition of the traditional manner in which philosophers, as all other men, have confronted divergences in opinion. The only other alternative would be dogmatic denial. That, I should say, is the only way in which a theory

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.