Convergencias y divergencias dialécticas en la Antigüedad griega: Platón y Aristóteles frente a los estoicos

Abstract

For Plato, philosophy is essentially dialectical, that is, for the philosopher of Athens, philosophy and dialectic are interchangeable terms. Likewise, the dialectical activity implies in Plato a specific way of carrying on dialogue as a philosophical conversation which requires a method in order to be developed properly that is, scientifically. The Socratic-Platonic originality resides in the fact that with this idea of dialectic is made explicit the essence of the act of philosophizing as a dialogic act par excellence, that is, as a loving and unselfish search for truth which is made jointly and in a transpersonal way.Aristotle shows us a radically different idea of dialectic in relation to his master, because hereduces its importance and we can even say that he demotes it. For the Stagirite, dialectic will be, at the very best, a non-scientific procedure for searching the truth, with no demonstrativecharacter and it will have the purpose of providing general principles to sciences, but it will not be a synonymous with philosophy and therefore of the highest science anymore. Equally, dialogic interchanges based on questions and answers will not be essential at all, neither for particular sciences nor for philosophy itself.The Stoics have a Socratic-Platonic and Aristotelian influence in relation to their idea ofdialectic, but they have their own coinage and they will develop, on this matter, a properproject. For the Stoics, dialectic will be a virtue itself and one cannot become a wise manif one is not a dialectician. Even more: dialectic will play a pivotal and agglutinative rolein the Stoic system as a whole. Thus the central purpose of this article will be to show thesimilarities and differences that the Stoics have in relation to their Socratic-Platonic andAristotelian antecedents regarding the dialectical topic and where do their originality andproper deploys reside.