在《形而上学》[i]中,亚里士多德将辩证师与诡辩术士一道拒之于哲学家的门外,他说:“辩证师与诡辩者都同样地假扮成哲学家,对于诡辩者来说,他们所使用的是看似智慧的外表,而辩证法师则用他们的辩证法去拥抱一切,他们会讲对一切都一样的存在;辩证法拥抱这些话题是因为它们都是哲学所要探索的。-诡辩术与辩证法都转向哲学所关心的东西,但辩证法在所需能力的本质上不同于哲学而诡辩术在人生的目标上有别于哲学。辩证法仅仅是在哲学已经知道的内容上表现出具有批判的能力,而诡辩术则想表现为哲学但其实不是。(dialecticians and sophists assume the same guise as the philosopher, for sophistic is Wisdom which exists only in semblance, and dialecticians embrace all things in their dialectic, and being is common to all things; but evidently their dialectic embraces these subjects because these are proper to philosophy.-For sophistic and dialectic turn on the same class of things as philosophy, but this differs from dialectic in the nature of the faculty required and from sophistic in respect of the purpose of the philosophic life. Dialectic is merely critical where philosophy claims to know, and sophistic is what appears to be philosophy but is not.)”
亚里士多德来对辩证法的看法就是他在《论诡辩之辩驳[ii](On Sophistical Refutations)》一书中指出的,“辩证的争辩就是从人们所接受的一般前提出发,得出相反的结论(dialectical arguments are those that reason from premisses generally accepted, to the contradictory of a given thesis)”。
而康德对于辩证法的态度[iii]是很奇怪的,他一方面时不时地表现出对辩证法的不屑,声称自古辩证法就是“关于错觉的逻辑的名字(a name for the logic of illusion—that and nothing else)”,“是一套为无知甚至有目的之诡计制造出真理之烟幕的刁钻技巧,它滑稽地模仿逻辑通常具有的方法上的缜密,并运用它的技术性的手段来美化每一种空洞的吹嘘。(a tricky set of techniques for giving an air of truth to ignorance and even to intentional tricks, which it does by aping the methodical thoroughness that logic always prescribes, and using its technical paraphernalia to prettify every empty pretension.)”
而康德又把误将纯逻辑(canon)用作完整的理性思维系统(organon)的状况分为两种:1) “运用一般逻辑时出现的误用(When general logic is misused in this way as an organon, it is called ‘dialectic’.)”;2)“误将超验分析进行综合性的运用,从而基于单纯的理解来对对象做出一般性的判断(a misuse to let it count as the organon of a general and unrestricted use •of the
understanding•,and to judge synthetically, to assert, and to decide about objects in general, on the basis of nothing but the pure understanding.)”。
所以,他认为“哲学的第一要务便是,通过堵住错误的源头,来一劳永逸地除去辩证中的不良影响。(So the first and most important task of philosophy is to deprive dialectic of its bad influence, once and for all, by blocking off the source of the errors.)”
但另一方面,他又似乎对辩证法这个名字爱的很深,以至于要将他对于纯粹理性的检视的论述命名为辩证法。
他一方面觉得辩证法是不可能被避免的,因为“辩证对于理性来说是一种自然的存在(because dialectic is natural to reason)”,但另一方面又强调“理性产生的想法本身绝不会是辩证的,只有当理性被误用时才会产生欺骗性的幻觉(The ideas of pure reason can’t ever be dialectical in themselves; any deceptive illusion involving them must be due solely to their misuse.)”,“纯理性产生的想法只有在误解中才变得辩证(a precise account of what the ideas of pure reason are ultimately for—ideas that become dialectical only through careless misunderstandings.)”
基于对辩证法之不屑使他认为辩证法“是配不上哲学之高贵的,因而我们不需要‘辩证’或任何其它的词汇来为这样一种坏东西命名。(quite unworthy of the dignity of philosophy, ·and we don’t need ‘dialectic’ or any other word to name something so bad·. )”但他又舍不得辩证法这个名字。他说:“所以我宁可用‘辩证’这个名词来表示对于前述的辩证错觉的审视;这样一种审视不属于逻辑的一部分,这就是‘辩证’在我的这项工作中的意义。(So I prefer to use the noun ‘dialectic’ to stand for a critique of dialectical illusion; such a critique does count as part of logic, and that’s how ‘dialectic’ is to be understood in the present work. )”,也就是说他决定重新定义辩证法,在他的工作中赋予辩证法一词与(他认为的)传统上的辩证法不同的意思。他认为这样做了之后他的超验辩证法(transcendental dialectic)便可帮助 “揭示超验判断的虚幻,从而使我们不被它所欺骗(content itself with exposing the illusion of transcendent judgments, while also keeping us from being deceived by it.)”可见他所谓的“一劳永逸地除去辩证中的不良影响”并不是除去他所认为的传统意义上的辩证本身中的不良因素,而是找到帮助克服该不良因素的影响的方法,并将该方法命名为辩证法。
[i] Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Provided by The Internet Classics Archive. Available online at http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/metaphysics.html
[ii] Aristotle. On Sophistical Refutations. Translated by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge. Provided by The Internet Classics Archive. Available online at http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/sophist_refut.html
[iii] Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Jonathan Bennett.