Saint Augustine’s Christian Dialectic

Abstract

In its most general sense, dialectic is the quest for intelligibility; it is the art of producing or of leading the mind to insight into the universal. As a thing of the mind, dialectic is not an object in any spatio-temporal sense but is, rather, a movement among universals or meanings. As a movement among, or a movement to meanings, dialectic deals with symbols the symbols belonging to a language. Symbols compose its instrument. Whether this instrument is sufficient to produce the desired insight or whether it is merely necessary as leading toward such an insight is a problem which is no part of the present task. Now, St. Augustine, if I understand him aright, was convinced that there exists a kind of natural dialectic of symbols within a language. Thus, one who enters in on the use of a language cannot but be seized by its natural dialectic, unless he be missing in some element of his natural endowment or unless he determinedly resists this impulse. Let us see how this dialectic might operate.