andrew low - the return of dialectic to its place in intelectual life

7/27/2019 Andrew Low - The Return of Dialectic to Its Place in Intelectual Life

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The Return of Dialectic to Its Place in Intellectual LifeAuthor(s): Andrew LowSource: Rhetoric Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring, 1997), pp. 365-381Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465649

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ANDREW LOWClemsonUniversity

The Return of Dialectic to Its Place in Intellectual Life

In this essay I argue that the truth-versus-playdichotomysometimes usedto characterize the nature and scope of rhetoric is a reification, and Irecommend dialectic as an alternative model for the type of discourseappropriateo academic disciplines in the humanities.To show what is at stakein these competing discursive models and to clarify the problems that thenotion of dialectic is in a position to solve, I then distinguish dialectic fromdialogism, which has also been proposed as a model for academic discourse,and attemptto demonstratewhy dialogism is unsatisfactory n this function.Abriefhistoricalsurveysketches some reasonswhy the dialectical model fell intorelative disuse and shows how it tended to dissolve into the reified dichotomiessetting science or philosophy or truth in opposition to rhetoric and play.Finally, a model of dialectic suggested by C. S. Peirce is outlined as a usefulalternative.The Problem with Rhetoric

In the (modestly titled)essay "Rhetoric," tanleyFishprovidesa readingofWestern cultural history as a struggle between the "serious" and the"rhetorical." hese categorieshe derives from RichardLanham,who used themto tag the poles of a dichotomythat set being against seeming, personalidentityagainst acted roles, sincerity against opportunisticmanipulation,universalismagainstpluralistic localism. Fish expands the subheadingsof this dichotomyina more philosophical direction but leaves it essentially intact: The inner isopposed to the outer, depth to surface, necessity to contingency, thestraightforward o the angled, the abiding to the fleeting, reason to passion,things to words, and facts to opinions. This manner of classifying intellectualallegiances is a Platonic inheritance; Fish, of course, inverts the Platonicrankingand sides with its sophist opponents.Still, by assenting to this account of the alternatives, Fish and Lanhamremain Platonists, in a sense. They invoke the timeless purity of remoteessences in order to deny it: Rhetoric,as they conceive it, can be understoodonly as the antithesis of such austere remoteness.Whatever ts local usefulness,this dichotomy seems misleading as a passkey to Western thought. ThoughGeorg Lukacs intended "reification"as a diagnosis of modernity, it seemsalready implicit in the radicallyopposed alternativesthat Plato bequeathedus,

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andindeed, in a first sketchof the concept of reification n Theoryof theNovel,Lukaicshimself sees the subjectivism of Greek lyric on one hand, and theobjectivismof Greekphilosophyon the other, as representingalreadya sort ofproto-modern ragmentation, he loss of Homeric wholeness. This is essentiallythe pattern of reification: "Serious" hought assumes the form of an utterlyalienatedregularityand uniformity,as an objectified"nature"s posited that isstrippedof any human context, while an irreduciblehuman residue, excludedby its irregularity rom the categoryof serious thought,is conceived as simply"mood" ("play" is in this context a synonym), free-floating and withoutresponsibilitytowardanythingoutside itself.Though "totality,"he oppositeof reification,may seem to sound a Platonicnote of purityand universality, n Lukaicst is in fact intended as a rejectionofthe Platonic categories altogether. It signifies a dialectic that integrates thesubjective and the objectiverealms: At the same time as it refuses to subjectnature or truth to the presumptionof a decontextualizedregularity, t submitsthe subjectivityof mood to a responsibilityto a world of which it remains apart. Thus, to agree that the Lanham-Fishcategoryof the "serious"might beconsidered a reified one is not to urge the stance of rhetoricalplay as the onlyalternative; romLukacs'perspective,such a conceptionof rhetoric s not reallyan alternative at all but simply another manifestation of reification. Hisargument is one version of a tradition of dialectical thought, continued atpresent by JiirgenHabermasand Karl-OttoApel, among others, that seeks toavoid the problems associated with both sides of Fish's antithesis, for bothterms in thatdichotomymiss somethingimportant.The blindness to humancontext thatcharacterizes he thinkingof "serious"types, and the philosophical and political difficulties this kind of thinkingoccasions, have frequentlybeen rehearsed,not leastby Fish himself, and can begranted here without further comment. Some of the problemsconnected withthe rhetoricalperspective ought, however, to be considered.In his recent bookPluralism: Against the Demandfor Consensus, Nicholas Rescher attemptstowork out (from outside the dialectical tradition-much of his argument isdirected against Habermas)a kind of middle path between the serious andrhetorical points of view. The pluralism of his title is thus unlike that ofLanhamor Fish: Reschercarefullydistinguisheswhat he considers a defensiblepluralismfrom a numberof its wrong-headedcousins.The first of the bad pluralismsis skepticism, which holds that "no singleposition [is] at all justified; the alternatives simply cancel one another out"(80). The main defect Rescher discovers in skepticism is that it is morbidlyrisk-averse;out of fear of error, t impedes minds fromdoing what minds mustdo: "The demand for understanding,for a cognitive accommodationto one'senvironment-for 'knowingone's way about'-is one of the most fundamentalrequirementsof the human condition"(87). In this accountskepticismseems to

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be a kind of hypochondria hat inhibits proper engagementwith the world. Asecond version of pluralism, also unsatisfactory, is called "syncretism,"accordingto which "allthe alternativesshould be accepted:all those seeminglydiscordantpositionsare in factjustified;they must, somehow,be conjoinedandjuxtaposed"(80). Though syncretism is redolent of the "generousspirit ofliberalism," t underminesitself, for it must assent to alternativesthat excludeit. Moreover, it leads to, or is the expression of, sloppy mental habits: It isnecessarilyuncritical, ailing to treat"cognitivebusiness with care and caution"(90).

Finally, "indifferentist relativism" maintains that "only one alternativeshould be accepted, but this acceptancecannot be based on rationally cogentgrounds but emerges from considerations that themselves lack any rationalbasis-as a matter of taste, 'personal nclination,'or social tradition,or somesuch"(80). Accordingto Rescher,the defect of indifferentistrelativism s thatitreduces "authenticvalues"to "meretastes and preferences,"and shrinks fromthe disciplineof impersonalcogency, of giving reasonsfor one's claims(103).Fish himself is quitecriticalof the broadlymanifestsyncretisturge (thoughhe does not use the term). In this he differs from Lanham, for whom therhetoricaltradition,while reminding us of "theinevitablecircumstantialityofall human judgment," provides a syncretist "lesson in toleration and self-understanding" hat is necessary to a democracy, by requiringthat the sameperson argue both sides of an issue (Lanham 111). For Fish, the rhetoricallysavvy personmustremaincontentwith the lesson aboutthe circumstantialityofjudgment, for the claim that rhetoric, or anything else, can lead one into a"liberal utopia of enlarged sympathies and nonjudgmental . . . mentalprocesses"rests upon an illusion (There's25). This illusion Fish discovers inthe pretensions of interdisciplinarity and in the self-understanding ofliberalism; against it he urges an awareness of the unavoidability ofperspectival imitationand the unavailabilityof fundamentalpresuppositions orational scrutiny and conscious modification. In Rescher's terms, then, heopposes an indifferentistrelativism to syncretism.In some important respects, however, these alternatives do not providemuch to choose between. Rescher argues that both positions are insofar self-defeatingas they must abstainfromany claims to being rationallypreferable oother positions. To make or defend a choice on rationallyirrelevantgrounds,that is, in the absence of a conviction of its rationalsuperiority,can seem astrivializing of the process of choosing as a syncretistrefusal to choose at all.Both put "the prospect of advancing a seriously intended, rationally cogentclaim beyond one's reach"(104). Rescher calls his own version of pluralism"perspectivalrationalism,"accordingto which we are entitled, indeed obliged,to see to it that "ourown (rationallyadopted)standards[are] superiorto theavailable alternatives" 102); nevertheless,we must acknowledgethat, due to

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differencesin cognitive situation, others might come to different conclusionsaboutwhat is most rational.The adequacyof Rescher's own conception is not the issue in this essay,thoughone may question whether he has really provideda distinct alternativeto indifferentistrelativism. The point now is thathis list of the faulty pluralismsthat haunt the rhetorical tradition constitutes a nosology of dialogues as well.One can see skepticism, syncretism, and relativism not just as individualpositionsbut as viruses that infect discussions:Once stricken,they fail properlyto engage. A dialogue pursuedunder the aegis of skepticism lacks purpose;under hat of syncretism,it lacks critical focus, andunderthat of relativism,thesense that dialogue representsa common enterprise.Even a relativist can still,of course, employ a dialogue simply to attemptto persuade partnersof his orher own position, but that is simply to reinterpretdialogue as a kind of publicspeaking, as rhetoric. What is specific to dialogue is suppressed, namely theunderstanding hat the conversantscan, and have reasonto, respond criticallyto each other's argumentsin a mutual testing of conclusions, and even (paceFish)of presuppositions.Dialogue conceived as such a mutual testing, for which the discipline ofdialecticis competent,is a genuine alternativeto the more reified categoriesofrhetoric and its variously titled "serious" alternative. Dialogue embraces itshumancontext; words are not unfortunate irrelevancies or hindrances strewnalong the path to truth, but are the medium in which we have our being andthroughwhich truthappears o us. Nevertheless, this commitment to verbalismdoes not imply a license for manipulative play or the absence of responsibility:One has to be preparedto be called to account for one's positions by one'spartners in dialogue. It is this moment that rhetoric, which oversees thepersuasion of largely passive audiences that are necessarily less capable ofarticulatingandvoicing immediateresponses,generally neglects. A rhetoricallysavvy listener is certainly alert to tricks, but only in order (skeptically,syncretistically,or relativistically) to discount them and the arguments theypropel.Dialectic, however, is not a matterof taking it or leaving it: It seeks toamend propositions in the direction of unforced, unmanipulated, that is,rationalconsensus.A False Alternative: Dialogism

The twentieth centuryhas been a boom time for rhetoric,but the closelyrelated field of dialectic has not fared as well, despite the charge of piety that"dialogue" njoys. Pragmatismand hermeneuticshave appropriated nd so keptalive much thatbelongedto the ancient discipline, but have not always insistedupon some of its more characteristicfeatures, notably its directedness towardtruthand towardagreementamong interlocutorsconcerningit.

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Among the successor disciplines of dialectic is a "dialogics"derived fromthe work of Bakhtin. It has been positionedas a middle groundbetween reifiedextremes, appropriateas a model for academic disciplines in the humanities,just as I am arguingnow on behalf of dialectic. In fact, however, dialogics isless an alternativeto than a reformulationof rhetoric. Don Bialostosky,to givean example,outlineshis interpretation f dialogics as follows: whereas dialecticaims at discovering the truth of ideas or theses, rhetoric atdetermining the decisions of people . . . , dialogics [aims] atarticulatingthe meaning of people's ideas, our own and those ofothers. [It] strives for comprehensive responsiveness andresponsibilityto the consequentialperson-ideasof a time, culture,community, or discipline-that is, for the fullest articulation ofsomeone'sideaswith the actual andpossible ideas of others. (789)

People and ideas are thus fused into "voices," dialectic and rhetoric into"dialogics."Muchof the Bakhtinianpathossurvives even in this brief characterization:The appealto the warm dignity of specific human beings in specific situationsis opposedto the icy imperialism of a simplifying and generalizing formalism,now expressly appliedto dialectic. Rhetoric,on the otherhand, is implied to bebrutally manipulative-personal enough, but a kind of bullying. SinceBialostosky is proposing dialogics here specifically as a model for literarycriticism, it has the advantageof obviatingthe search for agreement,elusive inthis field, and of providing a humane-seeming justification for an endlessproductionof text, as an alternative to coolerpoststructuralist nes. Criticism isto be understood as a "series of voices differentiating themselves from oneanother and open to new voices" (790); since neither truth nor agreement,hereimplicitly opposed to "openness," are aimed at, but "meaning," whichproliferatesas voices confront one another,the aim of discourse is to producefurtherdiscourse.

It remains, however, in this presentationrather unclear how or to whatextent these voices work upon each other. Since ideas are not to be treatedautonomously,but in fusion with persons, to seek to refute one is not clearlydistinguishablefromattackingthe other.Evento mediate diverse claims can beperceivedas a threat to the identities of those who hold them: Participants n adialogue are to be appreciated n their "radicalotherness";otherwise, they are"reduced" o an "as yet unsolved problem"(794). But this notion of radicalotherness is of religious provenance-the "whollyother" is central to RudolfOtto'sclassic phenomenologicalaccount of religious awe-and not particularlyuseful as a basis for human conversation,excluding as it does sharedlanguageand experience as preconditionsfor or results of conversation.A form of this

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radical otherness turns up also in Fish's insistence upon the absoluteinaccessibility of "forms of preknowledge"to rational critique: Members ofdifferentinterpretivecommunities arein this respect utterlyalien to each other.For Bialostosky, the goal of dialogue is to recognize the necessarydifferences between conversants and to try to characterizethem, "openingoneself at the same time to being characterizedby the other in terms alien tothose one might be pleased to acknowledge"(794). It is in this context thatOtto's numenous and Bialostosky's dialogic otherness seem to merge: "thesurpriseand wonder and awe those moments hold cannot be separated rom thevulnerability .. they reveal"(Bialostosky794). Why this type of recognitionofthe self as other than it seemed is preferableto those self-alienationsthat areattendant upon the mutual search for truth or agreement is unclear. Thereligious language serves to hide a structural similarity between these"characterizations"nd something like name-calling-certainly Bakhtin'sowncelebrationof the carnivalesque s in a lower register.Despite Bialostosky, it seems moreplausible to see this dialogics not as analternative o rhetoric,but as a version of it. Certainly StanleyFish understandsBakhtin this way, observing that "his contrast of monologic to dialogic andheteroglossic discourse sums up .. . many strands in the rhetoricaltradition"(Doing 500). The radical otherness of alien perspectives or "voices," anindifferentist relativism that links perspectives not to rational choice but toidentity and location, and the infinite, ultimately directionless nature ofconversation are characteristics of both Fish's rhetoric and Bialostosky'sdialogism. It is true that dialogism reflects a cultivatedopennesswhereasFishargues that "openness to revision and transformationare not methodologicalprogramsany individual can determinedlyand self-consciouslyenact"(There's251); this, however, does not establish a boundary between rhetoric anddialogism, but simply reflects an argumentbetween relativism and a relativist-syncretist hybridwithin rhetoric tself.A similar account, and defense, of a Bakhtinian dialogism is supplied inGregory Clark's Dialogue, Dialectic and Conversation. Dialogism is setagainst monologism, the defining characteristicof which is seen as a failure toacknowledgethe necessary incompletenessand inescapable ocatedness of anyclaim. An agreement-seeking dialectics, though inevitably situated amongconversants and in time, is to be considered monologic, and authoritarianaswell: It denies that "thereexists outside of it anotherconsciousness,with thesame rights and capable of respondingon an equal footing, anotherand equalI"(10). Consensus is

essentially coercive because it requires that alternative beliefs,values, or actions be considered inherently incorrect,denying the

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possibilityof conflict by situating . . . exchange in a closed contextwhere disagreementsare eithersuppressedor ignored.(54)Clarkunderstandsdialogismas the mode of conversationappropriateo liberalpluralism, which requires that "the conversations that sustain a communityproceed not toward agreements that would end the exchange but toward theexposure of disagreements" (57); a residual, formal consensus survives,however:that,namely, to allow the endless conversationto continue.The implicationthatthe only alternativeto dialogism is the suppressionorignoring of disagreementsis, however, clearly false. Classical conceptions ofdialectic require competing undemonstrableclaims as starting points; if theythen seek to work through disagreements, this is quite different either fromignoring or suppressingthem. The formulation,accordingto which the aim ofdialogics is to expose difference, is a particularly weak and uninterestingone-little work is usuallyrequired or such exposure,and little enoughbenefitto be anticipated rom it.The association of dialogism with democracyis a very common one-wehave seen Lanham's closely related version of rhetoric-as-democracyabove-but it is tenuous, nonetheless;it is not at all clear how one is to applythe model of an open-ended, consensus-repelling dialogue to any exercise ofdemocracy,which might ratherbe conceived to rest preciselyon the abilityof acommunity freely to reach and act upon agreement. In the constraints of realsituations, moreover, the agonism lingering in dialectics, which dialogicswished to transcend, reappears:Again, since every idea is tied to a specificpersonand location, everyissue that comes before a communityis unavoidablyframedas merely a personal nterest.With its tendency to impede majoritarian democratic action, politicaldialogismmight be understoodas the principle not so much of democracyas ofliberalism.If so, it is a liberalism of a curious kind. Though he was opposedtoliberalism,the Rightist, Weimar-era egal philosopher Carl Schmitt accuratelyformulated ts principle, economic as well as political: that harmonyis to beachievedthroughfree competition.Parliament s the political counterparto themarketplace-it "is the place where one deliberates, that is, where a relativetruth is achieved through discourse, in the discussion of argument andcounterargument"46). Where this process does not function-and he felt thisto be the case in WeimarGermany-parliament loses its rationaleand becomesa facade, its power assumedby others. For his part, Schmitt favored a kind ofdemocraticdictatorship, sensing that parliamentarydialogue had become anirrelevance.It seems that a Bakhtiniandialogism, when formalizedand appliedbeyondthe sphere of literary texts and aestheticized social forms like carnival,encourages essentially the same unsatisfactory pluralisms as the reified

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interpretations of rhetoric, and that these are unsatisfactory not just oncognitive, but on political groundsas well.To summarize: The interpretationof rhetoricimplicit in the Lanham-Fishoppositionbetween serious truthand rhetoricalplay is a reification. Dialectic isan alternativeto this reification that avoids the unsatisfactorypluralismsthatfollow in its wake, while a dialogicsbased on Bakhtinianprinciplesis not.Why Classical Dialectic Declined

Though classical dialectic inoculates against the diseases of dialogue thatpreventit from undertakinga systematicand mutualtestingof positions with aview to achieving a consensus about theirtruth, t oughtnot to be understoodasaiming at the hubris of an absolutelyclosed certainty. According to GregoryVlastos, Socratic dialectic was adversative,not intended to produceskepticism,but to discover truth somewhere within the belief system of the interlocutorsthemselves, and finally, not infallible, but directed instead at the kind ofvulnerable knowledge demonstratedby a statement like "I know my friendwon't lie to me" (114). Vlastos goes on to show how the Socrates of laterdialogues, reflecting Plato'sgrowing fascinationwith the simpler certaintyofgeometry,aspires to a harderand neater,nondialecticalknowledge-hence thereifiedcategorieswith whichthis essay began.It is the same preference n modern times that is largelyresponsiblefor thedecline of the discipline, which looks too sloppily subjectiveto scientists andtoo impersonal-objectiveto poets. It is this middle ground that Aristotle'sdialecticsoccupies:While not a science, in that it cannot itself directly providea correct account of reality, it nevertheless does not remain on the level ofindividual opinions at which it starts.Accordingto the formulationof J. D. G.Evans,

we must startwith the objectsas each is presented o our individualfaculties, objects which will differ with the individuals whoapprehend them. The faculties are engaged scientifically whenthese differences between individuals have been eliminated and theobject is the same for all faculties which are directed towards it.Dialectic is the activity which effects the passage from the pre-scientific to the scientific use of the faculties. (6)

This turns a Bakhtiniandialogics on its head, in that it attemptsmethodicallyto separate concepts from their particularlocations; because it must start bytaking account of these particularities,however, it remainsan art, and cannotby itself supply the unqualifiedknowledge of a demonstration.

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In Aristotelian ethics, dialectic is more central yet. Martha Nussbaumformulates ts role so:When, throughwork on the alternativesand through dialogue withone another, [people] have arrived at a harmoniousadjustmentoftheir beliefs . . . this will be the ethical truth, on the Aristotelianunderstandingof truth: a truth that is anthropocentric,but notrelativistic. ("I believe," she interjectson her own account, "thatthis positionis substantiallycorrect.") 11)

It is preciselythe loss of this integratingvantage, "anthropocentric,ut notrelativistic,"that constitutes Lukaics' risis of reification: False objectivities inthe scientific and economic realms are matchedby equally false subjectivitieselsewhere (e.g., in literatureand ethics). Most conceptionsof dialectic share aconcern to maintainlinks between the subjectiveand objectivedomains,whichappearto fly apart nto irreconcilablyhostile campswhen the notion of dialecticdissolves. A briefsurveyof several of the critical momentsin the decline of thedialectical traditionwill show how this tradition s situated between the termsof Fish's reified opposition, and that the forces behind its modern dissolutionhave been those to which Lukaicshas drawn attention:opposed, but mutuallydetermining tendencies toward fetishized objectification and the solipsisticcultivationof mood. To reestablishdialectic as the model for a type of dialoguethat is neither scientific nor rhetorical requires an understanding of thepressures tendingto subvertit.A narrativeof the moderndecayof dialecticmight start with WalterOng'saccountof the depredationsvisited upon the disciplineby Ramism. Ong showshow both rhetoric and dialectic were not so much asphyxiated in theintellectualatmosphere hatbroodedover the earliest manifestationsof modernscience, as inclined, rather, obligingly to reformulate themselves toaccommodate them. Ramism spatialized the verbal arts after the model ofgeometryinto lists, graphs, and schematic representations,useful originally aspedagogical devices for very young students,but soon usurping control of thefoundational metaphors of the disciplines. So dialectic becomes the art"disserendi";while this term still maintainsa crucial connection with the oralsphere, it invokes not so much a dialogue as a classroomlecture, and impliesmnemonic treatmentsof the classical "topics." t is in the humdrumrunningthroughof such schematizationsratherthan in a Cartesian concern for logicalhygiene that Ong situates the origin of a reified modern conception of"method."He surveysthe damageto dialectic as follows:

Ramist dialectic has lost all sense of Socratic dialogue and evenmost sense of scholastic dispute. The Ramist arts of discourse are

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monologuearts.... This orientation s very profoundand of a piecewith the orientationof Ramism towardan objectworld (associatedwith visual perception) rather than toward a person world(associatedwith voice andauditoryperception).(287)Ramism is thus a source of the tendencyof "serious"discourse to associatetruth with a certain wordlessness. To this assault upon dialectic from an

allegianceto the mute "objectworld"corresponds wo centuries later a series ofattacks from the opposite quarter, namely a Romantic sense of beleagueredsubjectivity. In some of its forms it, too, is suspicious of words. WhenRousseau, n the Second Discourse, contraststhe happysavage with the servileEuropeanofficial, he sums up the primarydistinctions as follows: "Thesavagelives withinhimself;the sociableman, always outsideof himself, knows how tolive only in the opinion of others; and it is, so to speak, from their judgmentalone that he draws the sentiment of his own existence" (179). Though he isfamouslyambivalenton just this point-for later, in the Social Contract,it willbe only within the bonds of a tight republicthat full humanityis conceived aspossible-this fundamental suspicion of sociability as the source ofunauthenticity casts dialectic in a dubious light. The educational regimedepicted n Rousseau'sEmile, for example, is remarkable or its paucityof opendiscussion, consisting rather of a series of contrived mimes and laconic objectlessons: Pedagogy is to be an authentic unfolding of inner being,uncontaminated, s far as this is possible, by the words of others.German Romanticism is particularlyrich in reflection upon the role ofdialectic. Though FriedrichSchleiermacher,the primary theological voice ofGerman Romanticism, is himself the author of a formidableDialektik, hisearliest and most popular works, On Religion: Speeches to its CulturedDespisers, and Soliloquies, in their representativelyRomantic focus on theclaims of individuality, are also wary of all but the most carefully prunedversions of dialectic. To open oneself up to dialogue is to endanger one'sidentity, and to impoverish the world as well, since it encourages a grayuniformity of consensus. A founder of liberal Christian theology,Schleiermacherdownplaysthe truthvalue of religious statements,taking theminstead as expressionsof emotion,which he understands o be the proper stagefor religiouslife. In this context,what remains of discussion is self-expression.In the Soliloquies he sounds the note of "plenitude" hat one associateswith Lovejoy'sGreatChain:"[E]achman is meant to representhumanityin hisown way, combining its elementsuniquely, so that it may reveal itself in everymode, and all that can issue from its womb be made actual in the fullness ofunending space and time" (31). This uniqueness seeks recognition, socommunication s necessary,but it is not dialectical:

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[E]ven while engaged in meditation, in contemplation, or in theassimilation of anything new, I need the presence of some lovedone, so that the inner event may immediately be communicated,and I may forthwith make my account with the world throughthesweet andeasy mediationof friendship. 37)It is, perhaps,not surprisingin a work titled "Soliloquies" hat the doublenessof dialogue should be so muted: Friendship strips otherness of the awfulremoteness that Bialostosky attributedto it and replaces the contest of truth-seeking with a loose, syncretisticharmony.Outside this harmony, opinions canbe threatening:

My late awakenedspirit, rememberinghow long it bore an alienyoke [i.e., a strict religious education], fears lest it be subjectedagain to the domination of some alien opinion, and whenever astrange objectdiscloses a new aspect of life, my first step is to risein arms against it, in order to fight for freedom. .... As soon,however, as I have won my distinctive point of view, the time forstrife is over, and I gladly suffer each other view to take its placebeside my own; my mind in peace completes the work ofpenetratingandinterpretingeach otherstandpoint.(41)

The harmonyenvisioned is not, then, a consensus: Schleiermacher,and behindhim Rousseau and Herder, are sponsors of "gorgeous mosaic" forms ofmulticulturalism,which in a sense invoke dialogue in order to limit it. Thisgives rise not to dialectics but to a kind of erotics:Differences are not mediatedand overcome,but let stand, after the threat of their initial challenge has beenovercome and they have been properly situated; variety is objectified andsavored. The pluralismsof relativism and syncretism, rhetoricalor dialogical,have much in common with this view. They do not share Rousseau'sdistrustofsociability,but one might be able to find in them a trace of Schleiermacher'sfear of contagionby alien opinion, and the pleasure in diversitythat sociabilityprovidesis seen to derive more from new additions of discrete voices than fromthe bending or transformingof opinions that have been opened up to eachother, which transformationscan be seen as sources of the heteronymousandunauthentic. Moreover,in each case, claims are not to be tested so much asinterpreted: One seeks meaning rather than validity. To "penetrate"alienopinion appears to entail attempting to work oneself into the place that itholds-a kind of simultaneous acknowledging and discounting that is notentirelydifferentin form from patronization.

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These pluralisms codify the Romantic reluctanceto sacrifice the self totruth, and can be seen as a kind of failure of nerve: One hesitates to put one'sown attitudesand opinions to a dialecticaltest, but rationalizes this hesitationas a requirementof tolerance. Gadamermakes a similar criticism of a relatedappearance,the kind of historicismthat approachestexts from the past simplyas exotica to be classified:

In our understandingwe have as it were, withdrawn from thesituation of trying to reach agreement. [The researcher]himselfcannot be reached. By including from the beginning the otherperson's standpointin what he is saying to us, we are making ourown standpointsafely unattainable.(270)

This seems the inevitable result of treating arguments primarilyas Romanticself-expressions or Bakhtinian "voices," or that is precisely what it means to"include the other person's standpointin what he is saying to us"-Bakhtinpresses no point as insistently as this.After the passingof some of his Romanticenthusiasms,and afterextensivework on Plato, Schleiermacherreturns, n his lectures on dialectic, with muchmore sympathy to the question of its nature and function. There, followingPlato, he begins by noting the structural dentity of thinking and conversing,maintaining that the development of an idea within an individual mind isessentially the equivalentof its development n a dialogue. He then supplies atypologyof dialogues accordingto theirrespectiveends. "Free" onversation san aesthetic form driven by a simple pleasure in sociability, and ischaracterized by a relative unconcern with the precise relationship of theexpressions among themselves, and so with the presence of contradiction.Having no aim outside itself, free conversationends only when the pleasuredoes. "Business"conversationis the pragmaticattemptto establish a workingconsensus and frequentlyrelies upon the art of rhetoric.Pure or "authentic"conversation aims at knowledge; it is the proper home of dialectic, whichdistinguishes itself from simple demonstration n that its course is rougher.Itmust confrontobstacles,occasions for doubt and disagreement hat preventthesmooth and strictlylogical developmentof an idea.Schleiermacher maintains that dialectic can emerge only when free oraesthetic conversationis kept clearlydistinct from the pure or authenticsort.Because aesthetic conversation simply celebrates sociability, it interpretsdisagreementas the naturalresultof differencesin place or personality;becauseone cannot be expectedto be someone other than one is, attemptsat mediationmake no sense. This position is a variant of the one defended inSchleiermacher's own earlier work; here it is marginalized, as he positssomethingin thought-a directedness owardwhat exists-that is unaffectedby

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individual difference, and that has knowledge ratherthan pleasurefor its aim.A community of thought is now seen as possible and desirable, anddisagreement, though an engine of progress, is something that is properlyconceived as removableby means of dialectic. Heretoo, however, a distinctionis made between what issues from dialectic and something like "objective"truth: Communities of thought are equated with national linguisticcommunities,within which, but not among which, the possibilityof consensuscan be presupposed.The world that Schleiermacher'sdialectic seeks to disclose thus appearstoprecede any sharp division between the subjective and objective: Languageinfuses it inseparably.It seems that at the level of the Volk,some of the sameideas are repeatedthat were earlier applied to individuals,but this time moresecure against charges of solipsism. Bakhtin provides a convenient foil here.The historical moments that most fascinate him-imperial Rome and theRenaissance, for example-are precisely those in which different languagesconfront and put each other into question: He is most interested in thoseoccasions when agreementis least to be expected. His "polyglossia" s not acapacityto assimilate foreign languages and traditions,as, say, the Germanictribes assimilated classical-Christian culture, but a state of constantcontestedness:

the world becomes polyglot, once and for all and irreversibly.Theperiodof nationallanguages,coexisting but closed and deaf to eachother, comes to an end. ... A multitude of different languages,cultures and times became available to Europe,and this became adecisive factor in its life andthought.(12)

For what, exactly, does this "multitude of different languages, cultures andtimes" become available?Simplyfor the sensibilitynecessaryfor the creation ofthe novel, apparently. Schleiermacher would doubtless argue that thiscelebration of the dissolution of a community of thought, instead ofemancipating, simply fences us into the hollow relativism-syncretism ofaestheticizing dialogue.An early friend of Schleiermachersuggested an influential variant form of"aesthetic"dialogue: According to Friedrich Schlegel's famous definition ofRomanticismin the 116thAthendmsfragment,he dialoguethat is Romanticismis necessarily open-ended.Classicism prized the formal perfectionof closure;Romanticismdenies its possibility. Schlegel's notion of Romanticirony is theapplicationto the self-conceptionof the artist of this infinite dialogue: ratherthan providing occasion for the expression of a unique self, this new form ofaestheticdialogue opens the self up to endless transformations.

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A similar view is formulated by another associate of Schleiermacher:While few have matched Wilhelm von Humboldt's enthusiasm for thecultivation of individuality,and indeed the vigor with which he defends theprimacy of this concern has made him the prototypeof what one might call"lifestyle liberals,"he could not share the slightly misanthropic anxiety ofinfluence of Rousseau and the young Schleiermacher.In his lecture "On theDual," he explains the existence of the dual forms in some languages(particularlyGreek)by pointingout both the centralityof doublenessin humanexperience, and the common tendency to reintegrate experienced doublenessinto a kind of unity.As examples,he cites the general proclivityof language tomake sense of the world by means of paired opposites, and adduces as an evenmore fundamental fact of language that it necessarily manifests itself indialogue:

Thought itself is essentially accompaniedby the desire for a socialexistence: human beings want, apart from all physical andemotionalrelationships,even for the sake of pure thought, a Thouto correspond o each I. A conceptassumes its clarityand certaintyonly as it appearsin the reflection of an alien power to think: itemerges by pulling itself out of a heaving mass of representations,and in the face of a subject, forms itself into an object. (25,translationmy own)

The dialectical journey of the concept toward clarity and certainty via anobjectification hat remainsa mode of intersubjectivitys arrestingly ormulatedhere.

Humboldt, and John Stuart Mill, whom he strongly influenced in thisrespect,hold that it is preciselythe cultivation of individualitythatrequires theproliferationof conversation;alien influence is not to be avoided but soughtout, for varietyarises out of a multiplicityof influences and modifications. Thestate should be kept minimal because of its capacity, throughvarious forms ofintimidation, to restrain free associations. Here, again as in Mill, therequirementsof dialogue are explicitly made the criteriathat are to determinethe shape of public life: A form of dialectic becomes the chief concern ofgovernment. This conversation, though, aims at Bildung, at a richness offormative experience, not at consensus about truth. However, the richness ofexperience that comes from variety of influence also squelches any concernabout strict individual authenticity.In this Humboldt and Mill turn Rousseauand Schleiermacherneatlyon their heads.

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The Peirceian AlternativeA dialectical model supplied by C. S. Peirce, similar in some respects tothe one Mill proposesin OnLiberty,but in my view an improvement,seems agood stopping place. It offers a kind of compromise between dialectic and

dialogics:Like the formerit tends towardthe impersonaland is directedtowardthe truthaboutthe world,butlike the latterit provides for no actual conclusion.This is Peirce's definition of the real:The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information andreasoning would finally result in, and which is thereforeindependentof the vagariesof me and you. Thus, the very origin ofthe conception of reality shows that this conception essentiallyinvolves the notion of a community, without definite limits, andcapableof a definiteincrease of knowledge. (247)

"Information"ndependent of the "vagaries of me and you" suggests theacknowledgementof a responsibility o something "out here,"though preciselywhat that something is is left hypothetical and for the future to determine."Reasoning" suggests the methodicalness of a discipline, although the"communitywithout definite limits" leaves the specific method without finaldetermination.This open conversation does not imply skepticism, for it iscapable of "a definite increase of knowledge," but neither does it allow theillusion of finality. Peirce's model may never have the literary resonance ofBakhtin'sdialogism or Lanham'srhetoricalplay, but if acceptedas appropriatefor a certain kind of discussion-a kind well suited to academic disciplines inthe humanities-it can work, in its sphere, against a common aesthetic short-circuitingof dialogue.Lanham has proposeda sort of panrhetoricismas the primarysubstanceofa lower-division curriculum.At the heart of a liberal arts education lies, heclaims, the game of rhetoric,and at the basis of a tolerantdemocracylies therhetoricalcapacity to argue all sides of a question. Lanham's case takes afamiliarpath: Of rhetoricalexchange he claims that "theonly true absolute, ina secular democraticeducation,is the obligationto keep that oscillation going"(114); "all arguments are constructed with a purpose, to serve an interest"(110); "[r]hetoricpersuades by taking for its engine our evolutionary heritageas primates-our need for pure play"(110). The competition among positionsis, once again, simply to be savored. What gets lost in this aestheticizationispreciselywhat a Peirceian dialectic would cultivate:a readinessto submit one'sideas to the modificationrequiredby rational criticism and to work toward anagreementthat is not victory or defeat in a game, but the proper result of a

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responsibility both to one's dialectical community and to what exists"independentof the vagaries of me and you" (whateverthat should turn outpreciselyto be). A revival of dialecticalongPeirceian ines (as has begun in thework of Karl-Otto Apel and Jiirgen Habermas) is therefore much to bewelcomed.Note1 would like to thankRR reviewersAlan Gross and KathleenWelch for their nsightfulcritiquesandsuggestions.

Works CitedApel,Karl-Otto.Der Denkwegvon Charles S. Peirce. Frankfurt:uhrkamp, 975.. "Fallibilismus, Konsenstheorie der Wahrheit und Letztbegriindung."Philosophie undBegriindung.Frankfurt: uhrkamp,1987.Bakhtin,M. M. TheDialogic Imagination.Austin:U of TexasP, 1982.. ProblemsofDostoevsky'sPoetics. Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1984.Bialostosky,Don H. "Dialogicsas an Artof Discourse n LiteraryCriticism." MLA101 (1986): 788-97.Clark,Gregory.Dialogue, Dialectic, and Conversation:A Social Perspective on the Function ofWriting.Carbondale: outhern llinoisUP, 1990.Evans,J.D. G.Aristotle'sConcept of Dialectic. Cambridge:CambridgeUP, 1978.Feuerbach,Ludwig.TheEssence of Christianity.New York:Harper,1957.Fish, Stanley. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric,and the Practice of Theory inLiteraryandLegal Studies.Durham:DukeUP, 1989.. There'sNo Such ThingAs Free SpeechAnd Its A Good Thing,Too. New York:OxfordUP,1994.Gadamer,Hans-Georg.Truthand Method.New York:Crossroad, 982.Habermas, iirgen.ThePhilosophicalDiscourse of Modernity.Cambridge:MIT,1990.Humboldt,Wilhelmvon. The Limitsof StateAction.Indianapolis: ibertyFund,1993.-. SchriftenzurSprache. Stuttgart:Reclam,1980.Lanham,Richard. The Electronic Word:Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. Chicago: U ofChicagoP, 1993.Lukiacs,Georg. History and Class Consciousness. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge:MIT,

1971.-. TheTheoryof the Novel. Trans.Anna Bostock.Cambridge:MIT,1971.Mill, John Stuart.OnLiberty, in TheEnglish PhilosophersFrom Bacon ToMill.New York: ModernLibrary,1939.Nussbaum,MarthaC. TheFragility of Goodness:Luck andEthics in GreekTragedyand Philosophy.Cambridge:CambridgeUP, 1986.Ong,WalterJ. Ramus:Method and theDecay ofDialogue. Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1958.Otto,Rudolf. The Idea of theHoly. Trans.JohnHarvey.London:Oxford,1950.Peirce,C. S. Philosophical Writings.New York:Dover, 1955.Rescher,Nicholas.Pluralism:Against the Demand or Consensus.Oxford:Clarendon, 995.Rousseau,Jean-Jacques.The First and Second Discourses. Trans.RogerD. Masters.New York: St.Martin's,1964.Schlegel,Friedrich.KritischeSchriften.Miinchen:HanserVerlag,n.d.Schleiermacher,riedrich.Dialektik.Leipzig:HinrichsVerlag,1942.. OnReligion: Speeches to Its CulturedDespisers.Trans.JohnOman.New York:Harper,1958.. Soliloquies.A New Year'sGift.n.p.,n.d.Schmitt,Carl. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Trans. Ellen Kennedy. Cambridge:MIT,1988.Vlastos,Gregory.Socrates,Ironistand MoralPhilosopher.Ithaca:CornellUP, 1991.

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Andrew Low is AssistantProfessorof Englishand Humanitiesat ClemsonUniversity,and haspublishedn the areaof literature ndethics.

Imagery and Composition:Classrooms, Curriculum, and LivesCoeditorsKristieFleckenstein,Linda Calendrillo,and DemetriceWorley solicit essays thatinvestigatemental imageryin contexts that impingeon the teachingof writingand reading.In ourliterateWesternculture,wherelanguagefunctionsas the most visible tool of culturalnegotiationandlegitimation,mental magery n all its sensoryrichness s marginalized,ts role in thecreationof cultureand consciousnessneglected.Thegoal of thiscollection s to redress hat imbalanceacrosscompositionstudies.We urgesubmitters o focus theiressayson the intersectionof theoryandteaching.Submit 3 copies of a 3000-5000 word essay (15-20 pages, includingbibliography)n MLAformatby June 30, 1997 to Linda T. Calendrillo,Departmentof English,EasternIllinoisUniversity,Charleston,L 61920.

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andrew low - the return of dialectic to its place in intelectual life

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