Reflections on Dialectical Thinking

Jun 27

“Dialectical thinking” is a way of thinking in which 2 opposing perspectives/ideas are in “dialogue” with each other and truth emerges from the interaction between the two. It’s a paradoxical way of thinking, with sees truth in both extremes. Rather than striving for an “either/or,” it generously accepts a “both/and.”

I actually first heard the word “dialectical” used in terms of “dialectical behavioral therapy” (DBT), which teaches that 2 seemingly opposing things can both be true, such as:

“I accept myself as I am, and I want to improve.”
“My mother causes me pain, and she cares about me.”
“I forgive my friend, and I need to set boundaries with him.”
“I can take care of myself, and I need help from others.”

We can see that on a very practical level, dialectical thinking helps us to live better! It is a hallmark of development into a more rational agent (one who dynamically and effectively “rations” their time, energy, & attention… vs irrational actors who only see things one way — their way). But the practical level is just the tip of the dialectical iceberg. Existence itself is, all the way down, made up of dialectics!

So let’s go deeper. The word “dialectic” comes from two Greek words: “dia” (meaning: two) and “logos” (meaning: word, reason, purpose, idea, discourse). It’s the same two words from which we get “dialogue.” True dialogue is an excellent example of dialectical thinking. When people engage in dialogue (if it’s a proper dia-logos), they are acknowledging that they each have different perspectives, and that it is a worthy endeavor for these perspectives to engage with each other, because truth will emerge from the relationship between the perspectives. The emergent truth would not have been accessible without the interaction between the two perspectives. In other words, the primary goal of dialogue is not to persuade the other of a position, but to learn with the other person, trusting that something unique (and valuable!) occurs when different perspectives engage with each other (in good faith).

This is synergy! For the result of the dialogue is more than the sum of its parts. One perspective plus one perspective doesn’t equal two… but at least three! And this sort of synergistic relationship is found everywhere throughout the universe! …hydrogen and oxygen, when in a certain “discourse” with each other, come together not to just be 2 gases, but to synergistically create a liquid! (This synergistic dynamic can be seen all the way down to the tiniest particle… and all the way up to stars and galaxies!)

If this is already sounding hard to wrap your head around, buckle-up, cause this ride is about to get crazier. We’re going to call into question the identity principle (the idea that one thing isn’t another thing)… perhaps even the law of non-contradiction! We’re going to be talking about paradox!

You see, paradoxes are essential to dialectical thinking! Paradox is when something seems to be a contradiction, but is actually true. It applies to the soft-paradoxes of the DBT statements (like “I can take care of myself and I need help from others”) and it applies to harder paradoxes like math paradoxes or identity paradoxes.1 For instance, the fact that something (eg: a book) seems to be a unity yet is actually just a collection of parts. I say “just a collection of parts,” yet why should we ontologically prioritize the lower level? For the reverse is equally true: what seems to be individual parts (eg: my car, a forest, China, the Atlantic Ocean), is actually just a unity (our planet). As it turns out everything is both a unity and a collection of parts! 🤯 (Where then does “identity” reside?) Even time is both an infinitely divisible set of moments (each infinitesimally small), yell all are inseparable from the unity of the single “time.” Related to the unity-part dialectic is the relation-independence dialectic: everything has a clear independent identity, yet everything also is only defined by its relation to outside things. The truth is found in the acknowledgement of both, and the push and pull between the two sides.

“But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

This may require a new mental skillset that many “Westerners” struggle to hold space for: Mystery. The West loves to define things (which is great!), but lack-of-definition is just as important as definition! Lack-of-definition provides ambiguity which affords flexibility, and mystery which affords wonder and awe! Dialectical thinking requires the ability to accept and trust the mystery. And that mystery is often expressed in paradox — that multiple can be one — that there is always yin in the yang — that I’m simultaneously right and wrong.

Dialectical thinking is also ever-expanding. It doesn’t stop with having “figured things out” but is always learning — always humble. Humility is a key part of dialectical thinking! For if I have my ego invested in my own idea about something, how can I authentically dialogue? How can I accept the emergent truth? How can I accept that I’m wrong (even when I’m right)? The truth is that even if I’m right, there’s still more to learn. Humility grants this flexibility to grow and develop — to move between two ends of a dialectic — to take on the perspective of the other without being afraid to lose my own.

I’m lucky that in my Christian upbringing, I was primed for this sort of thinking. There are plenty of Christian doctrines which exemplify paradox and dialectic with a generous “both/and:”

Christ’s is Full-Divine and Fully-Human (2 natures)
God is Three and One (the Trinity)
Humanity is made up of dirt (אֲדָמָה: adamah) and breath (נְשָׁמָה: neshama), which gives rise to our self (נֶפֶשׁ: nefesh)
Scripture is Divinely and Humanly authored, inspired by the Spirit and written/edited/compiled by humans
The salvation-life is already and not-yet (we, and the cosmos, are somehow delivered, while still suffering brokenness)
Christ died and resurrected (descending to the lowest regions of hell and ascending to the heights of heaven — and thus “fills all things!”)
The Eucharist is bread and wine, yet also Christ’s body and blood (Christianity has struggled with articulating this one, coming to various conceptualizations. No surprises that my personal favorite are the ones which most maintain the both-and!) “Then he took a loaf of bread… saying, ‘This is my body.’”
As Paul says, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me (Gl2:20) (union with the Divine presents some interesting blurred-lines between who we are and who God is)
Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient, yet we cooperate in salvation
We have free will yet are predestined by God
Scripture and Tradition are pillars of authority (and reciprocally informing — we wouldn’t have scripture without a tradition to birth it — and all Christian tradition is informed by scripture)
The life of salvation depends on Faith and Works (Eph2:8-9, Jam2:24-26)
Yeah, and that’s just a few…

Why does Christian theology insist on so many things that seem like blatant contradictions? A skeptic may say it’s a poor attempt to reconcile inconsistencies. But I’d rather think it’s a wise attempt to break our categories, and teach us the point: That truth is not ultimately defined by logical propositions… it’s defined by something more…

…and the title of this blog might give it away…

Remember how I said we’d question the identity principle? Well, CS Lewis describes how love itself requires we throw out this principle! (For context of this quote, it’s a demon speaking…)

“The whole philosophy of hell rests on the recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing. And especially that one’s self is not another self. My good is my good and yours is yours. What one gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies…. To be means to be in competition! …Now the enemy’s [God’s] philosophy is nothing more or less than one continued attempt to evade this very obvious truth. He aims at a contradiction — things are to be many, yet somehow also one! The good of oneself is to be the good of another. This impossibility, he calls love. …He claims to be 3 as well as 1 in order that this nonsense about love may find a foothold in his own nature.”

— CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter 14, 1:08

Thank you as always CSL! That’s exactly right. The truth of the universe is love. And love is not a logically sound proposition, but rather a paradox or dialectic which must be lived-out and participated in to be understood.

Love is unity in diversity! For at its most basic, love is when two things choose to become one — giving themselves to one another in a gift-of-self relationship that synergistically affords new emergence! Unity-in-diversity is self-sacrificial, empathetic, receptive, and fruitful… its beauty found across every level of our reality:

Differentiated atoms come together to form a unity (of a molecule), and differentiated molecules come together to form a unity (in a compound), and many differentiated compounds, molecules, and particles give themselves to each other within the unity of a cell to form what we call life, and each differentiated cell gives itself into the collective of many others to form a unified organ, and all the diverse organs, bones, and muscles of the human body must give themselves to one another in love to afford a healthy human body, and many differentiated humans give themselves to each other in families, which if functioning harmoniously, give themselves to communities, which come together to form nations, and all the nations of the world form the body of humanity, which lives in health when all its differentiated parts are working together in love, giving themselves to each other. And humanity is one of many species which participate in the unity of an ecosystem, and every ecosystem gives itself over to the ever-shifting balance of planet earth, which participates in a solar system, which participates in a galaxy, which participates in networks of galaxies that span the entire, diversly unified, universe!!

This unity in diversity is true of both the physical universe and the spiritual universe. Consider that I as a human don’t just participate in physical ecosystems, but in spiritual ecosystems, which include values, concepts, and ideals. I give myself to activities/causes — to my profession, to political activism, to my societal roles, to my hobbies — and these different activities find their cohesive unity when all sourced from the same character traits and directed towards harmonious goals — when they all express my responsibility, loyalty, productivity, authenticity, and generosity — and all of these traits and goals find their harmonious unity when oriented towards higher values — to justice, to peace, to compassion, to freedom — and each value must be balanced with the other values, some receiving higher priority than others, such that each value gives itself over to higher and higher values… until every value finds its full integration and diverse unity in the final value and greatest good of Love Itself!

Thus all the cosmos is made out of diversity in unity — the paradox of Love which makes life, and emergence, possible! The universe is birthed out of Love, destined to Love, and existing in Love.

And we can participate more deeply in this Love the more we give ourselves into higher unities (oneness, yin), while at the same time more fully developing our unique identity (differentiation, yang), in a way which gives rise to new and better things (relation, yin-yang)!

So yes, dialectics are everywhere… for our universe is based upon (and living in) the most fundamental of all dialectics… that of Love. Every religion points to this dialectical nature of the universe in some way, whether it’s the Yin and Yang, the Dark and Light, the Chaos and Order. One does not make sense without the other — and in some way they are dependent upon each other — yet they are opposites! Our reality is a tension between Being and Becoming, between Determinism and Possibility, between Persistence and Change, and life only emerges when the two sides are in an appropriate relationship with each other! Each one of us finds our needs are met only in the balance of dialectics.

In beginning to conclude my thoughts on dialectical thinking, I want to acknowledge that thinking this way is not easy. Most of us are not trained to think this way, and “learning” how to think dialectically is done just as much through experience as it is through thought. I wouldn’t have been able to progress in this kind of thinking without lots of self-awareness work, growth in empathy, noticing my body, meditation and prayer practices, the grace of God’s presence, and being in close loving relationship with people who see the world differently than me.

The Spiral Dynamics model proposes a natural progression through different kinds of thought, and dialectical thinking doesn’t really “turn-on” until Yellow. We start with Beige instinctual-thought, move to Purple tribal-thinking (accepting whatever my family/tribe thinks), move to Red independent-thinking (I believe whatever is good for me), then (if we keep going) move to Blue black-and-white thought. Blue thought is nice in that absolute morality turns-on — things can be right or wrong according to some higher standard (not Red’s might-makes-right or whatever-I-think). Orange thinking then nuances Blue’s absolute morality into shades of grey, acknowledging exceptions and complexities. Green thinking rejects the Black-White spectrum completely, often turning to a very subjective form of post-modern thought where everyone’s individual thinking is equally valid, or where truth is entirely individually or socially constructed. Finally, in Yellow, all the previous ways of thinking are integrated, which requires holding space for mystery and paradox. Yellow knows that black-and-white thinking is true, and so is shades-of-grey thinking, and so is relativistic thinking — each contains the others… each is in tension with the others… and each is part of the unity of the truth! (And Turquoise is the experience of that unity in diversity which transcends any language used to describe it.)