The Role of Dialectics

In the work Aristotle and His Children, Richard Rubenstein makes a compelling case that appreciation for Aristotelian analysis leads to prosperity. History seems to present a series of awakenings where a group realizes the power of logic. The society would have a Renaissance of culture and would suddenly find itself dominating the world.

This Renaissance is not unique to Western culture. The Islamic world had a brief flirtation with Aristotelian style logic and became the dominant player in the Middle East and North Africa.

Unfortunately, in most cases, the flirtation ended when the ruling class realized that there was no logical justification for their domination of the people. In an effort to kick the ladder behind them, the ruling class would repress logical thought, and the society would fall into decline.

I believe that America found the way out of the cycle by granting liberty to the people. Unfortunately, as people are prone to fall for vacuous calls for nebulous change, I believe that we could very well lose our edge.

The NEA and American Left was instrumental is removing logic from the Public School curriculum. We should be extremely angry. The low quality education being pushed by the leftist thugs dominating the public schools could well push America into a state of mediocrity!!!!!!!! The ongoing attack on reason by the progressive left and reactionary right is preceisely what happened in each of the major declines in civilizations.

Ranting aside, I just added a section to my profile of Aristotle titled The Dialectical Argument.

In my opinion, one of the key elements to the success of Aristotelian thinking is the placement of the dialectical argument. Dialectics is used to clarify definition and to hone propositions. Dialectics is no longer the central focus of reason.

The game of the thugs of the world (Hegel, Marx, Dewey, Chomsky, Hitler, Stalin, Lakoff, Soros, Russell, etc.) is to force dialectical arguments into the center of reason.

In classical thought, Aristotle was not a revolutionary replacement of Plato. Aristotle's logic built upon what came before. The classical ideal believed in a gradual improvement of knowledge, and not the thrashing between extremes which people is encouraged in the present day.