Key Arguments

• Dialectic is 'that strain which is of the intellect only'.
• Analogy with vision: as sight ends with the sun, dialectic ends with the Good.
• Method: 'when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense... he arrives at the perception of the absolute good.'

Source Quotes

Neither can this be supposed. And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself.

And so, Glaucon, I said, we have at last arrived at the hymn of dialectic. This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible.

This is that strain which is of the intellect only, but which the faculty of sight will nevertheless be found to imitate; for sight, as you may remember, was imagined by us after a while to behold the real animals and stars, and last of all the sun himself. And so with dialectic; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible. Exactly, he said.

Key Concepts

• the hymn of dialectic
• that strain which is of the intellect only
• by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good

Context

Marks the transition from mathematical propaedeutic to dialectic, linking back to the Sun and Cave imagery.

Perspectives

Plato

Affirms dialectic as the culminating science that reaches the Good, fulfilling the ascent depicted in the Sun and Cave analogies.

Socrates

Frames dialectic as the definitive path from hypotheses and sensibles to unhypothetical insight into the Good.