Probably my favourite class from undergrad was Plato and the Roots of Western Philosophy; and consequently, if anyone ever asks where to start with philosophy, I tell them to start by reading Plato. This is not because I think Plato’s ideas are absolutely right. (In fact, not one year after I finished that course I wrote an essay that argued against some of his most fundamental ideas.) No; rather, it is the way Plato demonstrates philosophising in his dialogues using a method that you may have heard called “Socratic” but which may equally be called “dialectical”.

This precise terminology may sound more intimidating than it really is, so allow me to explain. In Plato’s day, dialectic would have referred to a dialogue held between two different people who hold contradictory views. It differs from the Socratic method in that it is less to do with posing questions and more to do with the rational contest of opposites, almost like a debate. (This is a subtle difference, but perhaps it is a difference worth noting.) However, the term “dialectic” has acquired different meanings since the times of ancient Greece. The philosopher Hegel, for example, described “dialectics” as an internal dialogue through which internal contradictions in one form of thought morph into another so as to overcome the force of those contradictions. This was famously appropriated by Marx and Engels, whose dialectical materialism understood dialectics more concretely as a force in history, and it is partly with this understanding of history that they predicted the eventual overthrow of capitalism. So, we might understand dialectics as something that might be both idealistic and observable. Above all, however, I would say that dialectics are eminently experiential. Rather than a mere abstraction, one takes part in “living” dialectically, be it in dialogue with others or within oneself. In both these external and internal realms, we are dialectically in pursuit of wholeness; and it is this aspect of philosophy that I believe Plato describes masterfully in his dialogues.

But rather than Plato, the other day I was in fact reminded of this love for dialectic by another: Alan Watts. Several times in a series of lectures on Buddhism (found in the book Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion), he presents Buddha’s own method as one that I would describe as dialectical. If one person said, “Hot,” Buddha would say, “Cold.” If they said, “Nay,” he would say, “Yea.” That is to say, Buddha would set himself up as the antithesis to whatever his interlocutors were saying; and not because he was an extremist or contrarian but because then they could work towards finding the middle way. This is not only a fundamental principle of Buddha’s teachings but may be found in the philosophies of many individuals from around the world, such as Aristotle and Confucius with their Golden Means. However, it is perhaps in Buddha most clearly that we can see this kind of dialectical philosophy most clearly as a spiritual practice. For while Socrates certainly made use of dialectic on his own spiritual-philosophical quest, his ends were not salvific as Buddha’s were.

That said, it was not only with respect to the Golden Mean that dialectic is found in Buddhism, for Watts describes Buddhism itself as a non-religion of dialogue, using the Teacher-Student relationship that is prominent in Zen as a proof. Religion is commonly thought of as rule or belief-based. Indeed, the term “religare” (from which our word religion is derived) means “to bind” like a rule or dogma does. According to Watts, however, Buddhism’s teachings are not binding as one might suppose they are. Rather, they are the beginning of a dialogue—a dialectic, if you will—to take place over the course of one’s spiritual journey. I think this is perhaps what I love most about Buddhism: more than any other religion, I would argue, it allows for one to apply a dialectic method—one that I fell in awe of as a student of philosophy—to the spiritual life. The binds of religion are challenged, changed, and undone as they were in the west by philosophers of the Enlightenment; only, instead of God’s funeral, we discover a profound integration of philosophical inquiry and human religious-ness (in the loose sense of the term). Nothing is off-limits, and this was an attitude that my old philosophy teacher would have applauded; for his final exhortation to our class was rather like Buddha’s last works to his disciples:

Behold, O monks, this is my last advice to you. All component things in the world are changeable. They are not lasting. Work hard to gain your own salvation.