Quelques réflexions sur la dialectique des anciens philosophes grecs

Abstract

The investigation which we propose is concerned with the analysis of the concept of dialectics at sophists, at Socrates in the dialogs of Plato and at Aristotle. As art of controversy (at sophists), as methods of discovering the truth together with the interlocutors (at Socrates), as theory of the commonplaces of the predicables which help us carry out the debates well (at Aristotle), dialectics posed an interest from a theoretical perspective (How it is possible to understand the influencing of others to adhere to our own ideas?), but also from the perspective of discursive practice (How it is possible to succeed in determining others to adhere to our own ideas?). Each of these three important moments of Classical Greek dialectics brings some particularities which reveals the virtues, but also the limits of this art, of which Schopenhauer thought that it can make us “be always right”.

Keywords

• dialectics
• controversy
• predicables
• debates
• eristics