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Aristotle on Dialectic

D. W. Hamlyn

Philosophy / Volume 65 / Issue 254 / October 1990, pp 465 - 476

DOI: 10.1017/S003181910006469X, Published online: 30 January 2009

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Aristotle on Dialectic
D . W. H A M L Y N

There have in recent years been at least two important attempts to get to
grips with Aristotle's conception of dialectic. I have in mind those by
Martha C. Nussbaum in 'Saving Aristotle's appearances', which is
chapter 8 of her The Fragility of Goodness1, and by Terence H. Irwin in
his important, though in my opinion somewhat misguided, book Aris-
totle's First Principles2. There is a sense in which both of these writers
are reacting to the work of G. E. L. Owen on cognate matters, par-
ticularly his well-known paper 'Tithenai ta phainomena'1. Owen him-
self was in part reacting to what I suppose is the traditional view of how
Aristotle regarded dialectic, as revealed in Topics I. 1. On that view
dialectic is for Aristotle a lesser way of proceeding than is demonstra-
tion, the method of science. For demonstration proceeds from premises
which are accepted as true in themselves (that is to say that they are
essentially and thus in some sense necessarily true) and moves from
them to conclusions which follow necessarily from those premises; and
the middle term of such a demonstrative syllogism then provides the
'reason why' for the truth of the conclusion. Dialectic proceeds from
premises which are accepted on a lesser basis 'by everyone or by the
majority or by the wise, i.e. by all, or by the majority, or by the most
notable and reputable of them' {Topics I . I , 100b21-3), and proceeds
deductively from them to further conclusions.
That way of putting the matter does not, strictly speaking, assert that
because of it dialectic is inferior to demonstration, but it has often been
taken as so by commentators. What is clear is that if the premises of an
argument are true in themselves and the argument from them is deduc-
tive and valid then the conclusions must be accepted. But it is of some
importance that the issue is about what is or is not to be accepted, not
simply one about what is or is not true. There must be some connection
between Aristotle's conception of dialectic and Plato's. While Aristotle

1
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
2
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
3
Originally in S. Mansion (ed.), Aristote et les problemes de methode
(Louvain: Symposium Aristotelicum, 1961), 83-103, and reprinted in J. M.
E. Moravcsik (ed.), Aristotle (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 167-190 and in
Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield and Richard Sorabji (eds), Articles on
Aristotle, Vol. 1, 113-126.

Philosophy 65 1990 465

D. W. Hamlyn

was opposed to Plato in many ways, he was a member of the Academy

for twenty years and must have inherited much from him intellectually.
One problem about that in the present regard, however, is that Plato
was not totally clear in his dialogues as to what dialectic essentially
involved; there are different suggestions in different places. Neverthe-
less, what Aristotle says about dialectic in the Topics certainly fits to a
large extent with what Plato exhibits as Socratic practice in the earlier
dialogues. Moreover, when Plato himself comes to theorize about that
practice, as he does in Phaedo lOObff., though in specific relation to the
Theory of Forms, the most plausible account of the culmination of the
method of hypothesis, the hypothesizing of higher hypotheses until one
comes to 'something adequate' (ti hikanon), is that that 'something
adequate' is what is enough for the purposes of the discussion, what
would be agreed by all parties to that discussion. If that is so, the main
issue is not the truth as such, but what will be accepted as such. It is
acceptance that Aristotle emphasises in the Topics account of dialectic.
It is indeed there in the account of science and demonstration too; but if
something is true in itself it has to be accepted, and that is not so even
where a proposition is accepted as true by everyone, but not because of
the proposition's intrinsic or essential truth.
Gilbert Ryle once suggested (in his 'Dialectic in the Academy')4, in
the course of an analogous argument for a continuity between Plato's
and Aristotle's conceptions of dialectic and also between these and
other, 'eristic', conceptions of how to proceed, that for the Greeks
winning the argument was as important, if not more so, than arriving at
the truth. At the same time, he recognized that philosophy as dialectic
could be concerned with important and not merely contentious issues.
He saw the source of this importance in the fact that aporiai are the
driving force of philosophical, as distinct from scientific thinking (p.
66), and also attributed to both Plato and Aristotle the crediting of
'dialectic with the task of discovering some very important trans-
departmental principles which hinge on the ubiquitous, non-specialist,
or "common concepts'" (p. 60). While I applaud in this the emphasis
on a continuity between the more serious uses of dialectic and eristic (as
a result of which rivals to the philosophers in the field of education,
such as Isocrates, could maintain that it was all logic-chopping, as do
critics of philosophy today), Ryle does seem to presuppose a dichotomy
of 'either winning or the discovery of truth'. There is a third possibility,
implicit in what I said earlier, that the aim of the exercise could be to
bring about the acceptance of what is presumed by the arguer to be the
truth. That and its implications are points to which I shall return.

4
In Renford Bambrough (ed.), New Essays on Plato and Aristotle
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965).

466
 Aristotle on Dialectic

Let us first turn to Owen. What is it to tithenai taphainotnena (to set

out what appears to be so), asNicomachean Ethics VII. 1, 1145b3, puts
it in a passage which is given central importance by Martha Nussbaum
too? It was a cardinal point of Owen's argument that by 'phainomena'
Aristotle meant not just the phenomena evident to experience, but, as is
clear from Aristotle's actual scientific practice, opinions also, and not
always opinions of established worth. They are the endoxa to which the
Topics refers in its account of dialectic. Hence, in Owen's view, there is
not a sharp distinction between science and dialectic, induction is itself
essentially dialectical, whatever happens thereafter in the use of dem-
onstration based on the results of induction. I have myself presented a
thesis about induction, combined with an interpretation of the last
chapter of the Posterior Analytics, elsewhere.5 While I am fairly unre-
pentant, despite criticisms, about the central argument of that paper, I
shall not repeat it here. There remains a question how Aristotle saw
himself as proceeding from the endoxa laid out as preliminaries to the
pursuit of a science. What are the principles for the use of such
material? It is such questions and the lack of answers to them which
motivate what Martha Nussbaum has to say in Chapter 8 of her book.
There she points out that Owen was forced to attribute to Aristotle an
equivocation over what phainomena are—sometimes opinions, but at
other times the evidence of our senses. The view that knowledge must
ultimately be based on the latter she sees as a form of Baconianism, and
it is the attribution of such a view to Aristotle that she rightly wishes to
reject. Phainomena, she suggests, constitute a loose notion, but not an
ambiguous one, simply because Aristotle does not have the notion of a
foundation for knowledge as the Baconian view suggests, and does not
reject the sceptic by appeal to supposed items of certain knowledge, as
later post-Aristotelians were to do. All this seems to me correct.5 But, so
far it does not reveal exactly what Aristotle thought that one ought to do
with phainomena, except that by the end of the day it was desirable to
save as many of them as possible; and while that outlines a philosophi-
cal perspective it scarcely describes a philosophical method.
Martha Nussbaum's point of departure for a discussion of these
issues is what Aristotle has to say at the beginning of Nicomachean
Ethics VII before his discussion of the problem of akrasia. It is from
this passage that the phrase 'tithenai ta phainomena' and the sub-
sequent reference to the idea of saving the appearances are taken. It has
to be said that Aristotle does not explicitly claim to be giving an account

5
In my 'Aristotelian Epagoge', Phronesis XXI, 1976, 167-184.
6
See, for example, my 'Aristotle: Standards, not Criteria' in The Criterion of
Truth, eds Pamela Huby and Gordon Neal (Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 1989), 93-106.

467
D. W. Hamlyn

of scientific method in general here, nor indeed an account of dialectic.

Rather, the observations which he makes are primarily concerned with
how one should tackle the problems over the possibility of akrasia,
something that is especially pertinent, as Aristotle goes on to make
clear, in view of Socrates' apparent denial of that possibility. However,
it must be admitted that Aristotle does say that here, as in all other
cases, we must set down the appearances, and go on to save as many as
possible of them, having dealt with the puzzles which they raise. So,
there are grounds for a generalization from what is said here, although
the remarks referred to provide only the perspective which I have
mentioned, not a detailed account of a method.
I do not think that anything that Martha Nussbaum goes on to say
provides such an account. Rather, she offers an explanation of why any
method that is followed should involve the saving of appearances. That
explanation entails attributing to Aristotle the doctrine that Hilary
Putnam has called internal realism, while accepting that these are not
terms which Aristotle would have recognized. Internal realism is,
roughly, the doctrine that what is real and what is not can be deter-
mined only within some theory or description, an already accepted
body of beliefs, and not in any independent or 'external' way. Hilary
Putnam so defines it in his Reason, Truth and History'1', pp. 49ff.; it is a
view of which he later (p. 60) sees Kant as the originator. While I think
that Aristotle sometimes employs arguments which are akin in some
ways to those of Kant, 8 especially in his reactions to forms of scepti-
cism, such as that in effect put forward by Protagoras, I cannot believe
that he embraced any such wholesale doctrine as internal realism.
Aristotle was undoubtedly a realist of some sort, but internal realism is
a very refined theory of that kind, and it is unlikely that it would have
been conceived of by a philosopher who had not firmly embraced a
general distinction between appearance and reality as two distinct
realms and then sought to make our ordinary distinctions between what
is real and what is not within the realm of appearance, as in effect Kant
did. •
Martha Nussbaum does suggest (p. 241) that a distinction between
the two realms of appearance and reality is to be found among pre-
Aristotelian Greeks, particularly Plato. I do not believe this. Plato, for
example, does not normally say that the world of sense-experience is a
realm of mere appearance by contrast with the real world of the Forms,
despite what is often said of him. He may say, as he does for example at
Phaedo 83b, that what the soul 'views through other means and as
different things' it should consider as 'nothing true'. So what the senses
7
Cambridge University Press, 1981.
8
See my 'Aristotle: Standards, not Criteria', 99ff.
468
 Aristotle on Dialectic

tell us is not true; but that does not make the objects of the senses into
what is metaphysically a realm quite distinct from reality—different
from the Forms, yes, but not thereby a realm of appearance distinct
from reality. If we suppose otherwise, we read back into Plato the kind
of thinking that is presupposed by idealism in the post-Cartesian world.
For reasons which have been spelled out by Myles Burnyeat in his
'Idealism and Greek Philosophy: what Descartes saw and Berkeley
missed',9 this is impossible, in that the step which is necessary for
making that two-realm distinction and which was made by Descartes in
his 'Cogito' had not yet been taken. If that is so, it cannot be correct that
Aristotle thought that what was real was to be found within, if not
totally to be identified with, a realm of appearances coincident with
what 'we', to the extent that we are experts on this and that, believe and
say.
Nor can dialectic be identified with a form of argument in such a
context which starts from endoxa so specified. The argument which
Aristotle uses in Metaphysics IV to refute those who dispute the
Principle of Non-Contradiction, considered as a metaphysical principle
about 'what is', is generally and quite rightly regarded as the example
par excellence of Aristotelian dialectic used with a serious purpose. It
might be characterized as presenting the sceptic with a dilemma: either
he speaks or he does not; if he does he must presuppose the principle; if
he does not he cannot deny it; so he must accept it. Martha Nussbaum
points out (p. 212) that Aristotle says that sceptics demand a demon-
stration 'out of apaideusia', and she goes on to say that the response to
the sceptic involves 'giving him thepaideia he lacks, a kind of initiation
into the way we do things'. {Apaideusia is a lack of education, to be
made good by paideia, education.) Apart from the fact that this would
be a very weak response (she admits that sometimes the opponent will
not listen), the apaideusia in question is not simply a matter of
unfamiliarity with 'the fundamental role this principle plays in all our
practices, all our discourse', as she suggests; it is a matter of asking for a
demonstration where none can be provided. The argument for the
principle is not a demonstration certainly, in Aristotle's sense, but it is
an argument all the same, and not just a reminder of how we do things.
If I am right it should now be apparent why I do not think that what
Martha Nussbaum has to say about the 'saving of appearances' deals
with the problems which she herself rightly identifies in Owen's
account of what is in effect the assimilation of science to dialectic. Why
should a science begin and proceed from an appeal to endoxa, as Owen
points out seems to be the Aristotelian practice? Why should one begin
9
In Idealism Past and Present, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 13,
ed. G. N. A. Vesey (Cambridge University Press, 1982), 19-50.

469
D. W. Hamlyn

such a science by setting out thephainomena, and how, if one does, can
true knowledge be distinguished from mere supposition, from indeed
'old wives' tales'? For this purpose one does not need a delimitation of
the realm or field which constitutes reality, whether this presupposes
an internal or an external conception of reality. One needs a method for
the determination of the truth, or at least, given what I said earlier, a
method for determining what should be accepted as true.
With this in mind let us turn to Terence Irwin's thinking on these
matters. He differs from Martha Nussbaum on two important points.
First, he thinks that Aristotle's theory of science and knowledge is, in
general, foundationalist in the sense presupposed in much contempor-
ary American epistemology, in that it is sought to show how the body of
knowledge we have has foundations in some epistemologically priv-
ileged truths. Foundationalism may break down when we come to
principles such as that of Non-Contradiction, but it holds, he thinks, in
science, in that science starts from necessarily true first principles.
Second, and this is another point of difference from Martha
Nussbaum, he thinks that Aristotle accepts metaphysical (that is to say
a form of external) realism. I do not wish here to discuss the second
claim in any detail. As I said earlier, it is clear that Aristotle is a realist in
some sense in his metaphysics, and I do not think that it is plausible to
attribute to him an internal realism as Martha Nussbaum does. So let us
by all means agree that he was a metaphysical realist as long as this does
not entail attributing to him a recognition of and a rejection of any thesis
akin to the anti-realism that is at present so much in fashion.
As far as concerns the first thesis, it presumes that Aristotle's account
of science is a philosophical epistemology in that it provides a frame-
work for understanding how claims to knowledge of the world can be
justified. It has been argued by Myles Burnyeat (and the thesis has been
accepted by others) in a paper 'Aristotle on understanding Know-
ledge',10 that Aristotle was not putting forward a theory of knowledge
but rather a theory of understanding, the latter being the proper
translation of 'episteme' in Aristotle. This view seems to me partly right
and partly wrong. It is right in what it says or implies about Aristotle's
lack of concern with the issues of classical epistemology, with its
demand for a justification of knowledge claims in general in the face of
sceptical arguments to the effect that knowledge is not possible. It is
right in saying that the prime concern of the Posterior Analytics is with
an understanding of the world, through the provision of reasons why
things are so. But to understand, say, thunder is to know what thunder
is. As Aristotle often says, we think that we have episteme of something

10
In Aristotle on Science: The 'Posterior Analytics', Studia Aristotelica 9,
ed. E. Berti (Padova: Antenore, 1981), 97-139.

470
 Aristotle on Dialectic

when we know its cause or the reason for it. That is to say that it is under
these conditions that we know it. There is no real distinction here
between understanding and knowledge, as long as we recognize the
conditions for knowledge of a thing. As far as that goes, therefore, the
Posterior Analytics might justifiably be regarded as providing a theory
of knowledge of some kind.
Does it, however, set out a framework within which scientific know-
ledge can be seen to be resting on firm foundations? According to Irwin
as I interpret him, yes. Those foundations are provided by the intuition
of the first principles of each science, and since intuition is, prima facie,
a form of knowledge, even if not episteme, the foundations are epis-
temic. Along with the thesis, already discussed, that the episteme which
is derived from the first principles by demonstration is really under-
standing, it is sometimes claimed that nous, the intuition of the first
principles themselves, is a form of understanding, and that that is how
nous ought to be understood. That, however, is not the message of the
last chapter of the Posterior Analytics, although it is certainly said there
that nous is different from episteme. But that is, asNicomachean Ethics
VI, 6 and 11 makes clear, because episteme presupposes demonstration
so that it is inapplicable to undemonstrable first principles. One can
only see, as it were, that they hold good (and the parallel with yet
difference from perception is emphasised in Nicomachean Ethics VI,
11). Hence 'intuition' is not far wrong as a translation of 'nous'.
It does not follow from this that intuition provides the foundation for
knowledge in the sense that foundationalist epistemological theories
require, and in the sense therefore presupposed by Irwin. He puts some
weight on the claim set out at the beginning of the Physics, at 184a 18,
that 'the natural course is to proceed from what is clearer and more
knowable to us, to what is more knowable and clear by nature'
(Charlton's translation). He assumes that the transition from first
principles known by intuition to scientific truths demonstrated from
them and therefore the object of episteme is that same transition. More
than that, he assumes that these are the same transitions when that from
nous to episteme is interpreted in his terms. (For, as I shall indicate
later, there may be another interpretation under which the two transi-
tions may indeed be identified.) What this means, therefore, is that the
intuition of first principles, whatever they are, is a matter of a form of
knowledge in which we are confronted with what is 'clearer and more
knowable to us'. Demonstration provides us with 'what is more know-
able and clear by nature' in that, presumably, we then know not only
the facts but the reason for them. Even so, it is not exactly clear why
what we are confronted with then is something 'clear by nature'. One
might indeed think that the reverse is true and that it is by means of
intuition that we are given what is clear by nature, and that it is because

471
D. W. Hamlyn
1
it is of this kind that we have the intuition in question. That of course
assumes that there is anything which is clear by nature, for that notion,
which is akin, I think, to what some modern philosophers have had in
mind in appealing to sense-data, is, to say the least, problematic.11 In a
relative sense, however, one might well agree that there is a recogniz-
able transition from what seems clear to us to what is actually clear
because it constitutes genuine knowledge, and I suspect that it is in fact
something like this which Aristotle had in mind. But if that genuine
knowledge is episteme, then, as Aristotle repeatedly says, it must
involve knowledge of the reason why, and that is provided only via
demonstration, which itself involves a transition from intuited first
principles.
What, though, are first principles? Irwin here adopts the traditional
view that they are the axioms, as it were, of the science in question, a
view which presupposes that we are concerned with the completed and
formally laid out theory of the science. The question then arises as to
how we arrive at those first principles. Aristotle of course says 'by
induction', but what he means by that is not entirely unproblematic.
Irwin agrees, however, with Owen in thinking that induction is of a part
with dialectic, and that the intuition of the first principles may presup-
pose a dialectical argument which has that intuition as its outcome.
That it does so is, of course, a matter of psychology, not of logic.
Nothing prevents an intuition just occurring without any background
of argument or research, and nothing in such a background affects the
standing of the intuition as an intuition. That ought perhaps to give
pause to anyone who claims that all this story is a chapter in a story in
classical epistemology presented by Aristotle. Nevertheless, one may
recognize that intuition of first principles is normally facilitated by
argument which is dialectical.
But we are now confronted with the same problem as that which
concerned Martha Nussbaum. How should dialectic proceed if it starts
from endoxa but is to result in an intuition of the truth ? On what valid
basis can mere opinions lead to truth about an objective reality? Irwin
recognizes the force of the question and in trying to deal with it makes a
distinction between weak and strong dialectic. Weak dialectic is just any
old argument from endoxa, and is weak just because it has no criteria of
validity. Strong dialectic, though Irwin is not entirely clear about this,
is typified by the argument for the Principle of Non-Contradiction in
Metaphysics IV. Since this argument is one in which the sceptic is
shown as presupposing what he denies, it does not simply proceed from
sure premises to valid conclusion and does not thus conform to the
pattern of foundationalism. So, even if the theory of science presup-
11
See again my 'Aristotelian Epagoge'.

472
 Aristotle on Dialectic

poses foundationalism, this is not the case of a science of being-qua-

being, which is arguably what is at stake with the Principle of Non-
Contradiction. Nevertheless, Irwin thinks that what holds good of that
Principle carries over to discussion of other things which are part of
what we should call 'metaphysics', the discussion of substance etc., and
from that to its applications in psychology and ethics. This is a very
large claim and one which is too complex to deal with here. Let us
confine our attention to the distinction between strong and weak dialec-
tic itself.
First, it is not at all clear that Aristotle himself makes such a distinc-
tion, although it is evident that the argument for the Principle of Non-
Contradiction is quite a different sort of argument from any which
moves directly from endoxa to the first principles of the sciences.
Hence, if both sorts of argument are dialectical, there is certainly a
distinction to be made between different kinds of dialectical argument.
The question remains how general in its application the argument
which Irwin calls 'strong dialectic' is. Second, and perhaps more perti-
nent for present purposes, science is left with weak dialectic only to
provide its basis, and weak dialectic has little if anything in the way of
criteria of validity. However, intuitions are presumably self-verify ing.
If one has an intuition of something it must be true, and in consequence
it does not matter for its validity how it is arrived at. Indeed, that is
what makes a system based on intuitions so conceived foundationalist.
If it were only a matter of psychology what counts as an intuition, that is
to say if it were only a matter of how we felt about the supposed truths
on which the science is based, intuition would provide no foundation
for knowledge objectively speaking. Intuitions must then, for this
purpose, be true and seen to be so. To that end weak dialectic, indeed
any kind of dialectic, is unimportant, even irrelevant. It may be part of
the psychology of scientific discovery and theory-building; it is not part
of its logic, nor of any relevance to its epistemology.
On this basis, the answer to the question why Aristotle appeals to
endoxa of a variety of kinds in scientific practice must be that it is
psychologically useful—but no more. It is not even something that
must be assumed to be useful to everyone. Perhaps some people can go
straight to the truth without any preliminaries. However valid this is, it
is not very satisfactory as an account of a method for scientific discov-
ery. Let me therefore propose another approach to the subject.
The views which I have been surveying all see Aristotle's account of
science as an account of the pursuit of truth, a branch of la recherche de
la verite. Or if it is not that, it is an account of the structure of truths
already arrived at, which thereby furnish an understanding of nature.
If dialectic and science are to be brought close together, as Owen rightly
argued they should, something similar must hold for dialectic too.

473
D. W. Hamlyn

Although it proceeds from what is less than essentially so, even from
endoxa, and although it does not employ demonstration, it must, on
the views under consideration, constitute a method for arriving at the
truth. But it is that very idea which generates the problem. For by what
principles can endoxa be used to ascertain the truth? As I have tried to
suggest, Martha Nussbaum in the end gives no clear answer to that
question, while Terence Irwin gives something of an answer in the case
of what he calls strong dialectic, but not in the case of weak dialectic, if
there is such a distinction.
As I said earlier, however, what may be important for Aristotle's
purposes is not the truth but the acceptance of the truth. Jonathan
Barnes suggested in his 'Aristotle's Theory of Demonstration',12 that
the Posterior Analytics offered an account of the teaching of science.
That is not quite right. But teaching is one way, although only one way,
of bringing about the acceptance of truth. Perhaps the issue can be
looked at in the following way: Let us take it as read that the world is
such that things have essences and that there are truths which hold
essentially of them. How are we to get others to see that this is so, and
how and why it is so? If they cannot see that this is so in a particular case
and cannot be got to see it by accidental means (which would be a most
unreliable means in any case), the only rational procedure is to demon-
strate that this is so. This is rational because, by contrast with merely
incidental or accidental means of getting people to see that something
must be so, demonstration can get someone to see not only that it must
be so but also why it is so. So, if I am trying to get you to accept certain
essential truths about the world, the obvious way is for me to try to
demonstrate to you that they are so. But demonstration has to start
from somewhere—ultimately from first principles, which are first
because they are the starting-points for such a demonstration. But that
means that they are not first in some absolute sense, but first relative to
the task in question. They are the truths which can be accepted as so
without further demonstration.13
That they can be so accepted does not entail, however, that they are
necessarily so accepted. Those with whom we are arguing may have to
be got to accept these truths as the premises for subsequent demonstra-
tion. So, we may appeal to various considerations—the evidence of our
senses, what we ordinarily believe, what the wise or other authorities
believe, and so on—in a word to endoxa. Sometimes indeed it may be
pointed out that we have to accept these things if we are to accept other

12
Phmnesis 14, 1969, 123-152 (reprinted in revised form in Articles on
Aristotle, Vol. I, eds Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield and Richard Sorabji
(London: Duckworth, 1975), 65-87.
13
Cf. the 'something suitable' of Phaedo lOlel.

474
 Aristotle on Dialectic

things, or, as is the case with the Principle of Non-Contradiction, if we

are to engage in the business or practice of arguing or asserting things at
all. There is a great variety of things to which appeal can be made, but it
is as well, when our concern is to present for ultimate acceptance a
whole structure of theory in a given domain, that we should provide a
fairly catholic survey of the endoxa which seem relevant. And that is
what Aristotle characteristically does. It is not that these things are
presented as evidence for the truth. If they were, there would have to be
principles and criteria for the use of such evidence, and that is what is so
evidently lacking in Aristotle's scientific practice, a matter which has
caused all the trouble in the views which I have been surveying.
We must, in getting to grips with the Aristotelian conception of
science (and dialectic too), get away from the superficial modern
picture of a science involving simply the pursuit of truth, the end-
product of which will be the systematic setting out of the body of
knowledge in question. The picture is a superficial one even for modern
science, since it is important for that not only that the truth should be
arrived at but that it should be recognized as such by the scientific
community. We should be less optimistic than Aristotle perhaps about
the ability to provide demonstrations to that end. But given the con-
ception of a world involving real essences and objective essential truths
demonstration is a rational procedure to invoke for these purposes. The
word 'science' is in any case simply the traditional translation of the
term 'episteme' as Aristotle uses it, and that, as he so often says, is
knowing the reason why, which can be provided through emphasis on
the middle term of a demonstrative syllogism.
But the understanding involved in knowing the reason why is relative
to what else the person concerned understands. That is to say that, in
the context of demonstration, it is relative to the place which the
propositions giving the reason why have in the chain of syllogisms going
back to whatever is the starting-point, the archai or first principles for
that particular chain of demonstration. Where the exercise is simply
one of dialogue, whereby one person attempts to bring about that
understanding in another by discussion and argument, the archai must
be whatever is mutually accepted as such a starting-point. But when the
exposition of the subject-matter is done in, say, a treatise, assumptions
will have to be made by the author as to what the readers are likely to
accept as such a starting-point. This is where dialectic comes in again.
Aristotle will set out the endoxa and then say in effect 'So don't you see .
. . , and given that, doesn't it follow t h a t . . . ? ' . The appeal toendoxa is,
as it were, a setting of the scene, providing the context for argument out
of which, it is hoped, will emerge the insights from which demonstra-
tion and thus further understanding can follow.

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But if we look to the Aristotelian works to see how far and how often
this activity occurs, we should not necessarily look for the formulation
in these terms of the whole subject-matter of an inquiry into some part
or aspect of nature. Aristotle, like Plato, may have hoped for something
of this kind. In Plato's case, the grander the scale the less is the precision
and definiteness of what is supposed to take place.14 No doubt the same
is true of Aristotle. But for some knowledge of the reason why it is not
necessary to have complete understanding of the subject matter. A
more limited exercise will suffice for many purposes, if only because
understanding is a matter of degree. What one does need is some
assurance that insight is attainable—and that is what Aristotle sets out
to provide in the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics. But that is a
story which I have tried to tell elsewhere (in my 'Aristotelian
Epagoge').
What, to sum up, is dialectic for Aristotle? The answer is that, as
with Socrates, it is a form of argument starting from whatever agree-
ment is available and seeking to produce some insight {nous, intuition)
as to the truths from which demonstration can possibly start, so-called
first principles, thereby furnishing an understanding of why things are
necessarily as they are. But nothing can be laid down as to where that
agreement is to be found. What is involved is at best what has been
called 'inference to the best explanation'. At any rate, at least one part of
what may be involved is that, an appeal to whatever is available that
may lead to acceptance as true of that from which can be derived an
adequate understanding of why things are so. But dialectic is not part of
a search for truth itself. What is produced is indeed 'clearer and more
knowable by us'; for that—its being so for us—is all that something
which is very close to being persuasion can produce. But if an account
of a part of nature can be derived from that in a way which seems to
show that things are necessarily so and also why they are so, then indeed
one might say that one has arrived at what is 'more knowable and clear
by nature'. At least, that is the hope.15

Birkbeck College, London

14
Cf. Republic VI and VII's account of dialectic vis-a-vis the more limited
account of the argument in the passages of the Phaedo already noted.
15
Since the writing of this paper I have read with profit Victor Kal's On
Intuition and Discursive Reasoning in Aristotle (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988).
There is some agreement between what he says in Part I of that book about
Aristotle's view of intuition and what I have to say here—although there are
differences too.

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