Everyone who has ever plucked an eyebrow knows how it is that we can suddenly ‘see’ - by virtue of a new angle, a more favorable light, or a little magnification - what was right in front of us all along, but invisible only an instant earlier.
Such is the power of metaphor.
Aristotle once observed:
“The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.”(Poetics, 1459a4)
My daughter is a master of this art, and has often brought vision to my blind eyes with her poignant observations.
Ancient literature “is studded with metaphors that are designed to awaken us to the realms of gold that are hidden in the depths of our being,” says renowned religious historian, Huston Smith. “Most minds need pictures, almost, to provide traction,” and those who practiced oral traditions knew (in a way that those of us today tend to forget) that this way of thinking and talking contributes to a living understanding, which is far superior to a dead belief.
Without understanding, “We are like kings who, falling victim to amnesia, wander our kingdoms in tatters… We are like a lover who, in his dream, searches the wide world in despair for his beloved, oblivious of the fact that she is lying at his side.”[1] For “the infinite ocean of life’s creative power,” is something “we carry…within us…but it is deeply hidden.”[2]
This power of the imagination does not compete with rational thought, but goes hand and hand with it. For instance, "[Plato] believed as a philosopher that the world is pervaded by Reason, and that its beauty is an outward manifestation of its ultimate nature. The dialogue form permitted him to lead men to this insight... The dialogue therefore is the dialectic, a skillfully directed technique of questioning. For this reason he described the dialectician as the midwife tending us in the act, in the ‘labor,’ of knowing. To change the metaphor, the dialectician is like the gardener who aids his plants but is unable to do for them what they must do themselves. ... Its effectiveness lies in the effort it demands on the part of the participants, and its achievement, as in the case of the plant, is fulfillment. In fact, the essence of Platonism may be said to be the realization that we can and must know, not by trial and error, which teaches too late, if indeed it teaches much at all, but by coming to see what is possible, and what is not possible, in the world in which we live."(Plato, Collected Dialogues, p. xiv-xv)
They captured this divine skill by way of careful reasoning, but also by way of metaphors (such as that there are many paths to he same summit), and parables and mythology, because these served as effective stimulants to insight and aids for memory.
By way of stories, “All these cultural metaphors of proper behavior are activated in our minds.” (OI, * Martinez, et.al.,100
(*connect stories…seeds)
If we want to “awaken and sustain the learning spirit” in each person, especially our young, “to ‘ignite the sparkle’ of our own learning,” so we can learn and teach better, then we must examine our own learning process, which “requires a self-inquiring process”…using the strengths and recognizing the weaknesses of the ‘rational mind,’” for we must relearn before we can teach. “This requires using both the ‘rational’ and the ‘metaphorical’ mind – the latter being the foundation of native science.(Gregory Cajete, from Native Science – Natural Laws of Interdependence (Sante Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), 28. (see OI, 338) Indigenous Peoples understand, as did the ancient Chinese did, that “the heart has a mental function.”((I Ching, 268) The “Chinese consider the heart to be equivalent to the mind.”(I Ching, p.270)
Likewise rational and metaphorical thinking can and must work together, “those two strains can live together and compliment one another harmoniously.” (OI, Mohawk, 49) “on the one hand there are dreams and visions and on the other hand there’s a responsibility to maintain a clean vision of reality. Those two streams of thoughts and reactions have to live cooperatively together.” (OI, Mohawk, 49)
Plato also tells a story to illustrate the wisdom of such enlightened self-interest. As he’d learned from his hero, Socrates, “everyone wants what’s good for them, but not everyone knows what that is.”(*) Which is why the stories we hear as children ought to be designed to bring out the good in us.
Plato recalls a conversation between Socrates and Plato’s older brothers, Glaucon and Adiamentus. They were discussing how it is that we can be happy in old age. Another friend had suggested that wealth was an essential ingredient, but Socrates pressed the old man on whether it mattered how one got one’s wealth. For there are different senses of this word, after all, and material wealth alone might not be enough to make a person happy. Socrates suggests that intrinsic wealth, or justice in the soul, is necessary for one to be able to enjoy the benefits of extrinsic riches.
Glaucon says he likes this idea, but presses Socrates to convince them that this is true, that justice has intrinsic worth, besides merely the benefits it brings in the eyes of others. For this is a nice sounding idea, easy to both say and believe, but no one had ever made a convincing case that justice is essential to happiness.
Glaucon tells a story about a shepherd named Gyges, who finds a magic ring, to illustrate what most people believe – that it is enough to create the appearance of being just in the eyes of others, but not necessary to actually become so, if one can get away with being unjust. Gyges does not know the ring is magic until, sitting around the fire one night he turns it inward to his palm, and discovers that suddenly his friends begin talking about him as if he were not there. *
Socrates illuminates the parallels between the physical (visible/material) and psychological (invisible/spiritual) realm by way of analogy between the sun and the good. The sun is to the visible world of sense and physical objects what the good is to the invisible world of truth and the objects of knowledge – it not only makes the things we see visible, but also brings them into existence and give them growth and nourishment. And just as it is difficult for the eyes to adjust when going from the dark of a cave into the light of day, so it is difficult for the soul to adjust when turning toward the light of the Good. Which is why we can no more look directly at the good than we can look directly at the sun.(Rep VI 508) But we can see by way of its light the many benefits it causes.
“The Sun not only makes the things we see visible, but also brings them into existence and gives them growth and nourishment.” Likewise, “the Good…gives to the objects of knowledge their truth and to him who knows them his power of knowing." [RepC p.220] "...the Sun is not vision, but it is the cause of vision and also is seen by the vision it causes... so knowledge and truth are both seen and caused by the Good.[RepC4.427, p.119]
This analogy suggests that we must understand physical nature if we hope to understand psychological nature, that is, the nature of the mind, because the same laws apply to the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’ world, that is, the physical world and that of the psyche, the eye and the mind’s eye. In other words, it stands to reason, that what holds true in one will hold true in the other. So, for instance, just as it is true that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” in the physical realm, so it will hold true in the metaphysical realm. (We might extend this metaphor laterally and consider whether we might need the Socratic method to supplement the scientific method, at least if the whole truth is our goal.)
Socrates describes the dialectic philosopher as “the midwife tending us in the act, in the ‘labor,’” as we give birth to ideas we carry within. Or, “To change the metaphor, the dialectician is like the gardener who aids his plants but is unable to do for them what they must do themselves.”
Dialectic philosophy, in this sense, is “a skillfully directed technique of questioning,” one that “permitted [Socrates] to lead men to [the] insight” that “the world is pervaded by Reason, and that its beauty is an outward manifestation of its ultimate nature.” The effectiveness of dialogue “lies in the effort it demands on the part of the participants, and its achievement, as in the case of the plant, is fulfillment. In fact, the essence of Platonism may be said to be the realization that we can and must know, not by trial and error, which teaches too late, if indeed it teaches much at all, but by coming to see what is possible, and what is not possible, in the world in which we live."[i]
They understood reasoning to be a skill we are born with the potential for, but we are responsible for developing and using it well. It is a gift, an inheritance, if you will, one that must be invested to grow. Or, perhaps it is a tool we can sharpen, a muscle we must exercise -- pick your metaphor. It is nothing short of the highest function of the human mind. And it is not, contrary to what many tend to think today, something apart from the metaphorical thinking to which many assign an inferior status, but rather, it incorporates that vision and insight into its processes.
This taught their young tolerance, appreciation and mutual understanding by way of another powerful metaphors. All religions and wisdom traditions, they told them, are like “many paths to the same summit.”
“At first this may seem surprising; if there is one goal, should there not be one path to it? This might be the case if we all started from the same point, but in actuality people approach the goal from different angles, so multiple paths are needed… The result is a recognition...that there are multiple paths to god, each calling for a distinctive mode of approach.”[4]
In modern times, we have learned to think of many of these traditions as religions, taken them literally, rather than laterally, and thus tend to see them as competing, in a sense, as if the claim that any one of them is ‘right’ or ‘true’ seems naturally to imply that the others must be ‘wrong’ or ‘false.’ So it’s important to for us to come to see that they, by and large, did not see themselves this way.
This metaphor embodies the notion that “Truth is one; sages call it by different names.”[5]
“All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself.” So while it may be true that, “One can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion,” as one Hindu sage put it, but “It is in ignorance that people say, ‘My religion is the only one, my religion is the best’.”[6]
This may be among the most fruitful conceptions that ancient cultures offer up, for it embodies the notion that we all see the same world, but differently. Since we are each born in different places, with different skills and talents of our own, and different challenges and opportunities as we go, we thus have very different experiences in this life, and so see through different eyes. We learn different lessons, develop different perspectives, face different moral dilemmas, and thus follow different paths toward the single end we have in common with all living things -- that of reaching our own highest potential, whatever that might mean - what the ancient called simply our good.[Sym 205]
We might let another metaphor illuminate our understanding of human likeness and difference. For just:
“As a growing snowflake falls to earth, typically floating in the wind for an hour or more, the choices made by the branching tips at any instant depend sensitively on such things as temperature, the humidity, and the presence of impurities in the atmosphere... [so] any pair of snowflakes will experience very different paths...[and] the final flake records the history of all the changing weather conditions it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite."[Gleick, p. 311]
Likewise, the choices made by a growing human being at any instant depend sensitively on many things, and thus, any pair of human beings, even those who share quite similar initial conditions, will experience very different paths. The final person records the history of all the changing conditions and choices it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite.
So it stands to reason that we are each entitled to our unique path through life. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, the only way, it does not exist.”
Nonetheless, and for this reason, we will have much to learn from one another, especially those who have been up and down the mountain a few times by way of paths we cannot possibly all have traveled in the course of single life. It stands to reason then, as we’ve said, that one person will know what’s in another person's blind spot, and so our worst enemy may very well be our very best teacher.
To be fair, we might rightly operate on the premise, quite foreign to us these days, that everyone’s point of view matters, and serves to round out the whole picture. Truth, in this sense, is cumulative, and found only in a balance to be struck between opposing views. For the only truth worth pursuing is the whole truth, after all, to which each new point of view adds depth, just as a second eye adds depth to what can be seen with only one.
So it also stands to reason that, life being too short, the whole truth will never fully be attainable - but is an ideal or target that we approached by gradual and continual learning, and only then, to the degree that we listen to understand one another. As Smith says,
Hence, the need for dialogue in our learning, and the reason that ancient cultures tended to appreciate all of their ancestors, with due respect. For we may all see the world differently, but it is nonetheless the same world. So it is “as if all lines of discourse converge on the same center? (as Plato conspicuously notes in the first pages of his masterwork, The Republic).[7] And perhaps this is why, over the door of Plato’s Academy, there was said to be the inscription, “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.”
Recognizing this dialectic complementarity in our perspectives then becomes incentive to learn, for no one ever completely understands anything by this view, and there is always more to be understood, more perspective to be gained -- even and most especially about those things we are fairly sure we 'know.'
So it is that the great insights of all the wisdom traditions are illuminated best in the dialogue between them. And it is by way of this insight that the ancient dialectic art gives rise to the potential for conflict resolution, reconciliation, and mutual understanding – much needed in our war-wrought world.
So it follows from all this then that reality is not as ‘clear and distinct’ as many moderns have thought, but is something more like a ‘multiplicity in unity,’ as the ancients understood. For there are indeed, as anyone who considers the metaphor will conclude, an infinite number of perspectives from which any object of knowledge might be viewed. And so if it is the whole truth we wish to discover, then we must consider all the things we think we know from as many points of view as are possible.
What's more, if the object of our study is itself a subject, that is, living and conscious, then they have their own point of view as well, from inside looking out, which the whole truth must also include. All these perspectives then – infinity, plus one! - must be taken into account before we can claim to really know any living subject.
Still, we can understand others without complete knowledge of them, simply by looking into ourselves. Arguably, this is the task for all of us, for recognizing this intrinsic diversity of perspectives gives immediate import to the need, not only for dialogue, but at the very least, for empathy.
Dialectic thinking is a process of coming to understand that encourages all of these, dialogue, empathy, perspective, self-knowledge humility, curiosity, appreciation, and many other virtues of the mind. For in better understanding ourselves, we can better put ourselves in others shoes, stretch our minds to see how their path looks to them, and why they see the world differently than we do, which can gradually reveal to us ever more of the whole truth about the whole world.
"It took an exceptional individual like Diogenes to exclaim, 'I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.' Today we must all be struggling to make those words our own. Anyone who is only…American, only Oriental or Occidental, is but half human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be awakened." (Smith, p.13)
[1] (Smith n.d., 25)
[2] (Smith, 26)
[3] (Smith n.d., 50)
[4] (Smith, 26)
[5] (Smith, p.56)
[6] (Smith, p.56)
[7] (Republic, p.1)
[i](Plato, Collected Dialogues, p. xiv-xv)
Such is the power of metaphor.
Aristotle once observed:
“The greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.”(Poetics, 1459a4)
My daughter is a master of this art, and has often brought vision to my blind eyes with her poignant observations.
Ancient literature “is studded with metaphors that are designed to awaken us to the realms of gold that are hidden in the depths of our being,” says renowned religious historian, Huston Smith. “Most minds need pictures, almost, to provide traction,” and those who practiced oral traditions knew (in a way that those of us today tend to forget) that this way of thinking and talking contributes to a living understanding, which is far superior to a dead belief.
Without understanding, “We are like kings who, falling victim to amnesia, wander our kingdoms in tatters… We are like a lover who, in his dream, searches the wide world in despair for his beloved, oblivious of the fact that she is lying at his side.”[1] For “the infinite ocean of life’s creative power,” is something “we carry…within us…but it is deeply hidden.”[2]
This power of the imagination does not compete with rational thought, but goes hand and hand with it. For instance, "[Plato] believed as a philosopher that the world is pervaded by Reason, and that its beauty is an outward manifestation of its ultimate nature. The dialogue form permitted him to lead men to this insight... The dialogue therefore is the dialectic, a skillfully directed technique of questioning. For this reason he described the dialectician as the midwife tending us in the act, in the ‘labor,’ of knowing. To change the metaphor, the dialectician is like the gardener who aids his plants but is unable to do for them what they must do themselves. ... Its effectiveness lies in the effort it demands on the part of the participants, and its achievement, as in the case of the plant, is fulfillment. In fact, the essence of Platonism may be said to be the realization that we can and must know, not by trial and error, which teaches too late, if indeed it teaches much at all, but by coming to see what is possible, and what is not possible, in the world in which we live."(Plato, Collected Dialogues, p. xiv-xv)
They captured this divine skill by way of careful reasoning, but also by way of metaphors (such as that there are many paths to he same summit), and parables and mythology, because these served as effective stimulants to insight and aids for memory.
By way of stories, “All these cultural metaphors of proper behavior are activated in our minds.” (OI, * Martinez, et.al.,100
(*connect stories…seeds)
If we want to “awaken and sustain the learning spirit” in each person, especially our young, “to ‘ignite the sparkle’ of our own learning,” so we can learn and teach better, then we must examine our own learning process, which “requires a self-inquiring process”…using the strengths and recognizing the weaknesses of the ‘rational mind,’” for we must relearn before we can teach. “This requires using both the ‘rational’ and the ‘metaphorical’ mind – the latter being the foundation of native science.(Gregory Cajete, from Native Science – Natural Laws of Interdependence (Sante Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), 28. (see OI, 338) Indigenous Peoples understand, as did the ancient Chinese did, that “the heart has a mental function.”((I Ching, 268) The “Chinese consider the heart to be equivalent to the mind.”(I Ching, p.270)
Likewise rational and metaphorical thinking can and must work together, “those two strains can live together and compliment one another harmoniously.” (OI, Mohawk, 49) “on the one hand there are dreams and visions and on the other hand there’s a responsibility to maintain a clean vision of reality. Those two streams of thoughts and reactions have to live cooperatively together.” (OI, Mohawk, 49)
Plato also tells a story to illustrate the wisdom of such enlightened self-interest. As he’d learned from his hero, Socrates, “everyone wants what’s good for them, but not everyone knows what that is.”(*) Which is why the stories we hear as children ought to be designed to bring out the good in us.
Plato recalls a conversation between Socrates and Plato’s older brothers, Glaucon and Adiamentus. They were discussing how it is that we can be happy in old age. Another friend had suggested that wealth was an essential ingredient, but Socrates pressed the old man on whether it mattered how one got one’s wealth. For there are different senses of this word, after all, and material wealth alone might not be enough to make a person happy. Socrates suggests that intrinsic wealth, or justice in the soul, is necessary for one to be able to enjoy the benefits of extrinsic riches.
Glaucon says he likes this idea, but presses Socrates to convince them that this is true, that justice has intrinsic worth, besides merely the benefits it brings in the eyes of others. For this is a nice sounding idea, easy to both say and believe, but no one had ever made a convincing case that justice is essential to happiness.
Glaucon tells a story about a shepherd named Gyges, who finds a magic ring, to illustrate what most people believe – that it is enough to create the appearance of being just in the eyes of others, but not necessary to actually become so, if one can get away with being unjust. Gyges does not know the ring is magic until, sitting around the fire one night he turns it inward to his palm, and discovers that suddenly his friends begin talking about him as if he were not there. *
Socrates illuminates the parallels between the physical (visible/material) and psychological (invisible/spiritual) realm by way of analogy between the sun and the good. The sun is to the visible world of sense and physical objects what the good is to the invisible world of truth and the objects of knowledge – it not only makes the things we see visible, but also brings them into existence and give them growth and nourishment. And just as it is difficult for the eyes to adjust when going from the dark of a cave into the light of day, so it is difficult for the soul to adjust when turning toward the light of the Good. Which is why we can no more look directly at the good than we can look directly at the sun.(Rep VI 508) But we can see by way of its light the many benefits it causes.
“The Sun not only makes the things we see visible, but also brings them into existence and gives them growth and nourishment.” Likewise, “the Good…gives to the objects of knowledge their truth and to him who knows them his power of knowing." [RepC p.220] "...the Sun is not vision, but it is the cause of vision and also is seen by the vision it causes... so knowledge and truth are both seen and caused by the Good.[RepC4.427, p.119]
This analogy suggests that we must understand physical nature if we hope to understand psychological nature, that is, the nature of the mind, because the same laws apply to the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’ world, that is, the physical world and that of the psyche, the eye and the mind’s eye. In other words, it stands to reason, that what holds true in one will hold true in the other. So, for instance, just as it is true that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” in the physical realm, so it will hold true in the metaphysical realm. (We might extend this metaphor laterally and consider whether we might need the Socratic method to supplement the scientific method, at least if the whole truth is our goal.)
Socrates describes the dialectic philosopher as “the midwife tending us in the act, in the ‘labor,’” as we give birth to ideas we carry within. Or, “To change the metaphor, the dialectician is like the gardener who aids his plants but is unable to do for them what they must do themselves.”
Dialectic philosophy, in this sense, is “a skillfully directed technique of questioning,” one that “permitted [Socrates] to lead men to [the] insight” that “the world is pervaded by Reason, and that its beauty is an outward manifestation of its ultimate nature.” The effectiveness of dialogue “lies in the effort it demands on the part of the participants, and its achievement, as in the case of the plant, is fulfillment. In fact, the essence of Platonism may be said to be the realization that we can and must know, not by trial and error, which teaches too late, if indeed it teaches much at all, but by coming to see what is possible, and what is not possible, in the world in which we live."[i]
They understood reasoning to be a skill we are born with the potential for, but we are responsible for developing and using it well. It is a gift, an inheritance, if you will, one that must be invested to grow. Or, perhaps it is a tool we can sharpen, a muscle we must exercise -- pick your metaphor. It is nothing short of the highest function of the human mind. And it is not, contrary to what many tend to think today, something apart from the metaphorical thinking to which many assign an inferior status, but rather, it incorporates that vision and insight into its processes.
This taught their young tolerance, appreciation and mutual understanding by way of another powerful metaphors. All religions and wisdom traditions, they told them, are like “many paths to the same summit.”
“At first this may seem surprising; if there is one goal, should there not be one path to it? This might be the case if we all started from the same point, but in actuality people approach the goal from different angles, so multiple paths are needed… The result is a recognition...that there are multiple paths to god, each calling for a distinctive mode of approach.”[4]
In modern times, we have learned to think of many of these traditions as religions, taken them literally, rather than laterally, and thus tend to see them as competing, in a sense, as if the claim that any one of them is ‘right’ or ‘true’ seems naturally to imply that the others must be ‘wrong’ or ‘false.’ So it’s important to for us to come to see that they, by and large, did not see themselves this way.
This metaphor embodies the notion that “Truth is one; sages call it by different names.”[5]
“All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself.” So while it may be true that, “One can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion,” as one Hindu sage put it, but “It is in ignorance that people say, ‘My religion is the only one, my religion is the best’.”[6]
This may be among the most fruitful conceptions that ancient cultures offer up, for it embodies the notion that we all see the same world, but differently. Since we are each born in different places, with different skills and talents of our own, and different challenges and opportunities as we go, we thus have very different experiences in this life, and so see through different eyes. We learn different lessons, develop different perspectives, face different moral dilemmas, and thus follow different paths toward the single end we have in common with all living things -- that of reaching our own highest potential, whatever that might mean - what the ancient called simply our good.[Sym 205]
We might let another metaphor illuminate our understanding of human likeness and difference. For just:
“As a growing snowflake falls to earth, typically floating in the wind for an hour or more, the choices made by the branching tips at any instant depend sensitively on such things as temperature, the humidity, and the presence of impurities in the atmosphere... [so] any pair of snowflakes will experience very different paths...[and] the final flake records the history of all the changing weather conditions it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite."[Gleick, p. 311]
Likewise, the choices made by a growing human being at any instant depend sensitively on many things, and thus, any pair of human beings, even those who share quite similar initial conditions, will experience very different paths. The final person records the history of all the changing conditions and choices it has experienced, and the combinations may well be infinite.
So it stands to reason that we are each entitled to our unique path through life. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, the only way, it does not exist.”
Nonetheless, and for this reason, we will have much to learn from one another, especially those who have been up and down the mountain a few times by way of paths we cannot possibly all have traveled in the course of single life. It stands to reason then, as we’ve said, that one person will know what’s in another person's blind spot, and so our worst enemy may very well be our very best teacher.
To be fair, we might rightly operate on the premise, quite foreign to us these days, that everyone’s point of view matters, and serves to round out the whole picture. Truth, in this sense, is cumulative, and found only in a balance to be struck between opposing views. For the only truth worth pursuing is the whole truth, after all, to which each new point of view adds depth, just as a second eye adds depth to what can be seen with only one.
So it also stands to reason that, life being too short, the whole truth will never fully be attainable - but is an ideal or target that we approached by gradual and continual learning, and only then, to the degree that we listen to understand one another. As Smith says,
Hence, the need for dialogue in our learning, and the reason that ancient cultures tended to appreciate all of their ancestors, with due respect. For we may all see the world differently, but it is nonetheless the same world. So it is “as if all lines of discourse converge on the same center? (as Plato conspicuously notes in the first pages of his masterwork, The Republic).[7] And perhaps this is why, over the door of Plato’s Academy, there was said to be the inscription, “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.”
Recognizing this dialectic complementarity in our perspectives then becomes incentive to learn, for no one ever completely understands anything by this view, and there is always more to be understood, more perspective to be gained -- even and most especially about those things we are fairly sure we 'know.'
So it is that the great insights of all the wisdom traditions are illuminated best in the dialogue between them. And it is by way of this insight that the ancient dialectic art gives rise to the potential for conflict resolution, reconciliation, and mutual understanding – much needed in our war-wrought world.
So it follows from all this then that reality is not as ‘clear and distinct’ as many moderns have thought, but is something more like a ‘multiplicity in unity,’ as the ancients understood. For there are indeed, as anyone who considers the metaphor will conclude, an infinite number of perspectives from which any object of knowledge might be viewed. And so if it is the whole truth we wish to discover, then we must consider all the things we think we know from as many points of view as are possible.
What's more, if the object of our study is itself a subject, that is, living and conscious, then they have their own point of view as well, from inside looking out, which the whole truth must also include. All these perspectives then – infinity, plus one! - must be taken into account before we can claim to really know any living subject.
Still, we can understand others without complete knowledge of them, simply by looking into ourselves. Arguably, this is the task for all of us, for recognizing this intrinsic diversity of perspectives gives immediate import to the need, not only for dialogue, but at the very least, for empathy.
Dialectic thinking is a process of coming to understand that encourages all of these, dialogue, empathy, perspective, self-knowledge humility, curiosity, appreciation, and many other virtues of the mind. For in better understanding ourselves, we can better put ourselves in others shoes, stretch our minds to see how their path looks to them, and why they see the world differently than we do, which can gradually reveal to us ever more of the whole truth about the whole world.
"It took an exceptional individual like Diogenes to exclaim, 'I am not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world.' Today we must all be struggling to make those words our own. Anyone who is only…American, only Oriental or Occidental, is but half human. The other half that beats with the pulse of all humanity has yet to be awakened." (Smith, p.13)
[1] (Smith n.d., 25)
[2] (Smith, 26)
[3] (Smith n.d., 50)
[4] (Smith, 26)
[5] (Smith, p.56)
[6] (Smith, p.56)
[7] (Republic, p.1)
[i](Plato, Collected Dialogues, p. xiv-xv)