This method of applying to the contents of Revelation the logical forms of rational discussion was called "the dialectic method of theology". In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, rational speculation was applied to theology not merely for the purpose of proving the praeambula fidei, but also for the purpose of analysing, illustrating and showing forth the beauty and the suitability of the mysteries of the Christian Faith. During the intervening and earlier centuries, although the writers and Fathers of the Church had always recognized the right and duty of natural reason to establish those truths preparatory to faith, the existence of God and the fact of revelation, those praeambula fidei which form the motives of credibility of the Christian religion and so make the profession of the Christian Faith a rationabile obsequium, a "reasonable service", still their attitude inclined more to the Crede ut intelligas (Believe that you may understand) than to the Intellige ut credas (understand that you may believe) and their theology was a positive exegesis of the contents of Scripture and tradition. Augustine in the fifth century, was thus raised again by St. The perennial problem of the relation of reason to faith, already ably discussed by St. The traditional logic, or dialectic, of Aristotle's "Organon"-the science and art of (mainly deductive) reasoning-found its proper application in exploring the domain of purely natural truth, but in the early Middle Ages it began to be applied by some Catholic theologians to the elucidation of the supernatural truths of the Christian Revelation. Thus Kant describes as "transcendental dialectic" his criticism of the (to him futile) attempts of speculative human reason to attain to a knowledge of such ultimate realities as the soul, the universe, and the Deity while the monistic system, in which Hegel identified thought with being and logic with metaphysics, is commonly known as the "Hegelian dialectic". It is, however, not quite synonymous with the latter in the objective sense of the science of real being, abstracting from the thought processes by which this real being is known, but rather in the more subjective sense in which it denotes the study of being in connection with the mind, the science of knowledge in relation to its object, the critical investigation of the origin and validity of knowledge as pursued in psychology and epistemology. with reality, it was natural that the term dialectic should be again extended from function to object, from thought to thing and so, even as early as Plato, it had come to signify the whole science of reality, both as to method and as to content, thus nearly approaching what has been from a somewhat later period universally known as metaphysics. (3) Further, the aim of all argumentation being presumably the acquisition of truth or knowledge about reality, and the process of cognition being inseparably bound up with its content or object, i.e. It has always, moreover, connoted special aptitude or acuteness in reasoning, "dialectical skill" and it was because of this characteristic of Zeno's polemic against the reality of motion or change that this philosopher is said to have been styled by Aristotle the master or founder of dialectic. In this sense it is synonymous with logic. (2) But as the process of reasoning is more fundamental than its oral expression, the term dialectic came to denote primarily the art of inference or argument. The word dialectics still retains this meaning in the theory of education. (1) In Greek philosophy the word originally signified "investigation by dialogue", instruction by question and answer, as in the heuristic method of Socrates and the dialogues of Plato. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99. Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download.
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