![]() ![]() In this image from the fourteenth-century manuscript Karlruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, St.Peter perg. It also became a key element of the university curriculum: every student was thoroughly trained in the skill of dialectical reasoning with the disputatio, a formal game of two opponents reasoning against each other. Dialectica became a crucial element in theological debate. These skills were needed for many purposes: to speak well is an art needed to get your message across and to convince people, to be able to argue is important for a proper understanding of texts, for using them in debates and for deciding in cases of disagreement. New York: Springer.After a pupil had learnt how to read and write in Latin ( grammatica), it was time for a next level of knowledge of the language: learning how to speak well and effectively ( rhetorica) and how to build arguments and reason well ( dialectica). Hwang (Eds.), Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context (pp. Naive dialecticism and the Tao of Chinese thought. Peng, K., Spencer-Rodgers, J., & Nian, Z. The geography of thought: How Asians and Westerners think differently and why. Therefore, "清" "算" "鬥" "爭" (many bad consequences happened in the height of Chinese communism in the name of "struggle of classes") may be blamed on the Western Marxist/Lenin dialecticism rather than Chinese naive dialecticism. (I wish that scholars had coined a different term for Chinese pattern of thought, because Western dialecticism is so ingrained in people's mind when the term dialects is used.) Ironically, Chinese communism follows the Western Marxist dialectic rather than Chinese traditional dialectic. Therefore, Chinese (naive) dialecticism is very different from the commonly known Western dialecticism. Equilibrium and harmony are only temporary conflict, contradiction, and the struggle of opposing tendencies are permanent." As Lenin wrote in the Philosophical Notebooks, the unity of opposites is only temporary, transitory, and conditional. Western dialectical thougt, particularly the Marxist dialectic, treats contradiction as antagonistic. The key difference is that Chinese naive dialecticism does not regard contradiction as illogical and tends to accept the harmonious unity of opposites. Western dialectical thinking is fundamentally consistent with the laws of formal logic, and aggressive in the sense that contradiction requires synthesis rather than mere acceptance. Importantly, Chinese naive dialecticism is different from all three types of Western dialectical thought. In Western intellectual domains, dialectical thinking usually refers to three levels of analysis, including dialectic dynamic at the societal level (e.g., Hegelian or Marxist dialectics (馬克思)), dialectic argumentation at the level of interpersonal discourse, and dialectical integration at intrapsychic level. "However, we have to point out that there is a fundamental difference between Chinese naive dialecticism and the commonly understood dialectical thinking in Western thought. Similarly, as written by Kaiping Peng and his colleagues (2006) in "Naive Dialecticism and the Tao of Chinese Thought" (p. It is the Middle Way that is the goal of reasoning." To think about an object or event in isolation and apply abstract rules to it (as in Western intellectual tradition) is to invite extreme and mistaken conclusions. It seeks not to decontextualize but to see things in their appropriate contexts: Events do not occur in isolation from other events, but are always embeded in a meaningful whole in which the elements are constantly changing and rearranging themselves. ("物極必反") Dialectical thoght (Chinese version) is in some ways the opposite of logical thought. On the contrary, in the spirit of the Tao (道) or yin-yang principle, A can actually imply that not-A is also the case, or at any rate soon will be the case. In the Chinese intellectual tradition there is no necessary incompatibility between the belief that A is the case and the belief that not-A is the case. The Chinese dialectic instead uses contradiction to understand relations among objects or events, to transcend or integrate apparent oppositions, or even to embrace clashing but instructive viewpoints. That is not quite the same as the Hegelian (or Western) dialectic in which thesis is followed by antithesis, which is resolved by synthesis, and which is "agressive" in the sense that the ultimate goal of reasoning is to resolve contradiction. ![]() "In place of logic, the Chinese developed a type of dialecticism. Western StyleĪs written by Richard Nisbett (2003) in "The Geography of Thought" (p. The contradiction between two conflicting forces viewed as the determining factor in their continuing interaction. A method of argument or exposition that systematically weighs contradictory facts or ideas with a view to the resolution of their real or apparent contradictions. ![]()
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