Robert M. Pirsig Quotes on Dialectic
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Dialectic generally means 'of the nature of the dialogue,' which is a conversation between two persons. Nowadays it means logical argumentation. It involves a technique of cross-examination, by which truth is arrived at.
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Socrates is not using dialectic to understand rhetoric, he is using it to destroy it, or at least to bring it into disrepute, and so his questions are not real questions at all... they are just word-traps which Gorgias and his fellow rhetoricians fall into.
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Once it's stated that 'the dialectic comes before anything else,' this statement itself becomes a dialectical entity, subject to dialectical question.