/lit/ - Literature

>Dialectics is a science which makes us capable of reasoning about each thing.
To identify and isolate each thing from others, in what it resembles, whether it is one or many, whether it is being; as well as how many beings there, and which contain nonentity instead of veritable essence.
>Dialectics is above opinion. It is established in the intelligible world and from there concentrates its attention on this world.
It saves our soul from deceit. It makes use of the Platonic method of division to discern ideas, to define each object, to rise to the several kinds of essences as Plato thought.
>After going through the domain of the intelligible, dialectics reverses, turning to the very Principle from whence it first started out. It is only here that it can find rest.
This is its arrival at unity, its fugue from multiplicity.
>Logic is an art subordinate to dialectics just as writing is subordinate to discursive thought.
Dialectics is the noblest use of our faculties; and it is the highest part of philosophy. It is not, as Aristotle thought, merely an instrument for philosophy, nor, as Epicurus thought, made up of pure speculations and abstract rules.
>Error and sophism in dialectics is produced by foreign principle.
Dialectics, however, does not care for propositions which seem only mere groupings of letters to it; but because it knows the truth, it also understands propositions.
>Physics, ethics, and the other branches of philosophy are crowned by dialectics.
Prudence, which is the most universal application of wisdom, is under a general and immaterial form furnished with its principles by dialectics.
>Without dialectics lower knowledge would be imperfect.
Though the true sage no longer needs these inferior things, he would never have become such without them; the other arts precede dialectics, and they progress through dialectics.
>Just as the possessor of natural virtues may, through the use of wisdom, rise to perfect virtues.
Wisdom is the central and perfecting principle of morals, dialectics of knowledge.