Читать книгу A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy онлайн

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Two classes of men, with an importance hitherto unknown, appear in Greek history,—the rhetoricians and the dialecticians. Rhetoric was public oratory, necessary for the public defense of one’s rights, or for the maintenance of one’s dignity, or for the gratification of one’s ambition. The dialectic was, on the other hand, argument employed in private between two persons, usually friends, to unravel an obscurity, to reduce an opponent to silence, to exercise one’s self in the mastery of a subject, or to sift evidence. The dialectic, therefore, became a distinct mental pursuit for men who had a natural defect in public speaking or rhetoric. Besides rhetoric and dialectic, there grew up somewhat later what was called the eristic. Eristic was polemical argument consisting of catch-phrases and logical subtleties. It was taught as an art of adroit argument.

The great Greek tragedies occupy a place in the development of the dialectic and the satisfying of the need of knowledge. Science, through the drama, transformed the old religious views and brought its new interpretation to the common people. The development of the fifth-century drama out of the epic of the sixth century was not merely a change in architectonic, but a transformation of its ethical and religious spirit. The germ was in the previous ethics, lyrics, and gnomics, yet it was fully amplified in the drama. Instead of a summary of deeds the tragic poet makes his characters talk, defend, refute, accuse, lament, etc. This gives rise to exigencies that require the dialectic. In the conflicting duties and in the justification of the wrong done by the wrong suffered, dialectical skill is called for in the drama to weigh the ethical motives in a manner that the epic does not demand. Thus the drama of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides was a link between the lyric and gnomic poetry of the sixth century B.C. and the dialogue literature of Plato.15