Dialectic and Dialogue

This book considers the emergence of dialectic out of the spirit of dialogue and traces the relation between the two. It moves from Plato, for whom dialectic is necessary to destroy incorrect theses and attain thinkable being, to Cusanus, to modern philosophers--Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher and Gadamer, for whom dialectic becomes the driving force behind the constitution of a rational philosophical system. Conceived as a logical enterprise, dialectic strives to liberate itself from dialogue, which it views as merely accidental and even disruptive of thought, in order to become a systematic or scientific method. The Cartesian autonomous and universal yet utterly monological and lonely subject requires dialectic alone to reason correctly, yet dialogue, despite its unfinalizable and interruptive nature, is what constitutes the human condition.

Author: Dmitri Nikulin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 06/11/2010
Pages: 183
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780804770163

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2011

About the Author
Dmitri Nikulin is Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. His most recent books are Matter, Imagination and Geometry: Ontology, Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Plotinus, Proclus, and Descartes (2002), and On Dialogue (2006).