This chapter discusses the thought of Juan Luis Vives, who was a prominent voice in sixteenth-century debates on language and learning between humanists and scholastics. The chapter shows that, like Valla, Vives presents himself as a defender of common language and common sense. The notion of “common” turns out to be ambiguous. As the chapter makes clear, in most contexts the common language is Latin, but in Vives’s attacks on what he considered the linguistic and dialectical aberrations of his scholastic opponents, common language could also mean the usage and conventions of any linguistic community. Though his critique focuses on the Latin of his opponents, the point is sometimes phrased in terms that go beyond this particular language. This critique of scholastic language is part of a wider reform of language and learning that Vives thinks is necessary. The chapter therefore examines his views on the origins of language, its functions and purposes, and the role he assigns to the topics (loci) in thinking and argumentation. It is suggested that for Vives the topics form a grid through which we structure our thought and speech.

Problems, that is ‘questions’, drive research. Without research questions there would hardly be any research at all. Research problems are not ‘given’, however; they are detected and constructed. How research problems are captured and framed drives subsequent research activities. In normal research situations, we first select a topic and then formulate a research problem within that topic. The process of constructing a research problem is not straightforward and often involves a lot of back-and-forth adjustments and refinement. In this chapter we particularly focus on how to construct and adequately capture research problems. The role of reviewing past literature to identify weaknesses and gaps is also examined.

Problems, that is ‘questions’, drive research. Without research questions there would hardly be any research at all. Research problems are not ‘given’, however; they are detected and constructed. How research problems are captured and framed drives subsequent research activities. In normal research situations, we first select a topic and then formulate a research problem within that topic. The process of constructing a research problem is not straightforward and often involves a lot of back-and-forth adjustments and refinement. In this chapter we particularly focus on how to construct and adequately capture research problems. The role of reviewing past literature to identify weaknesses and gaps is also examined.

In this chapter, I continue to follow the manner in which Alfarabi describes the historical development of scientific awareness out of the murky depths of pre-scientific activity. Towards the peak of this development is the emergence and elaboration of the dialectical art, whose uses for science is Alfarabi's special concern in what follows. Dialectic is the method to the fundamental premises of all science. For instance, the Organon itself culminates in the Topics. Even if we regard the Posterior Analytics as the supreme analytical art, we cannot help but notice the way in which Aristotle carefully points out the ultimately hypothetical character of science (episteēmeē). Because of what may be described as the hypothetical character of scientific knowledge––that is, due to the fact that so much depends on the investigator's conviction regarding the truth of those first principles that provide the foundation of science––there will be those, according to Aristotle and Alfarabi, who deny the very possibility of scientific knowledge. The difficult problems that emerge over the status of scientific knowledge force us to confront the issue concerning the proper starting points (archai) or principles from which a syllogism proceeds but which are not reached by syllogism.

The dialectical art which Alfarabi outlines in the Book of Dialectic addresses the reigning confusion surrounding the context theory, which refers to the form of Aristotle’s Organon inherited by the medieval Arab philosophers from an earlier Alexandrian tradition. I argue that Alfarabi intended to recover an understanding of science, dialectic, rhetoric, sophistry and poetics that is Platonic or Socratic in nature. Instead of (like Aristotle) understanding science, dialectic, rhetoric, sophistics and poetics as separate and somewhat exclusive compartments within the greater philosophic or scientific enterprise, Alfarabi’s considered view of science precluded such a radical sort of division. The “context theory” should then be viewed as simply a modern, shorthand way of confronting the Platonic correction of the more common ordering of the arts of logos. For the philosopher as dialectician is much too cognizant of those basic prerequisites of philosophizing (to which he must constantly return) to permit him to rest satisfied with any overly technical framework that does not do justice to those conditions. I will insist that the Alfarabi that emerges here is not a typical Platonist: he is a Socratic or rather a philosopher in that sense of the term.

In this chapter, I examine how the art of dialectic might be used to resolve (or at least bring to light) the ‘perplexities’ that surround Aristotle’s presentation of the natural world. Contemporary scholars have noticed the strange fact that Aristotle’s procedure in the Physics resembles not so much the strict progression of demonstrative proof as outlined in the Posterior Analytics but, instead, the dialectical method described in the Topics. This accords with Maimonides’ claim in the Guide of the Perplexed that Aristotle was aware of the fact that the level of argumentation in Physics and De Caelo is less than demonstrative. Now, if it is the case, as Maimonides stresses in the Guide, that the ‘true perplexity’ concerns the incompatibility of Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic astronomy, and if Aristotelian physics has been presented in dialectical form, how might dialectic be used to resolve this most profound perplexity?

If, as I have suggested from the outset, Alfarabi’s Book of Dialectic is meant to portray the very dialectical education it describes, what precisely is the student of the book to have learned by the time he or she has finished it? In order to help clarify this matter, I seek help from the commentaries on the Metaphysics by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Alexander's attentiveness to ‘form’ or formal causality in these writings points to the reason why Alfarabi's treatment of the Topics is at the same time a consideration of Platonic politics and Socrates’ famous ‘turn’ to the logos: Socrates’ dialectical method was meant to be a correction of the method of his predecessors. Just as in Chapter Three I point to the way in which Alfarabi's dialectic considers nothing less than the question concerning the creation or eternity of the world, here I take up the manner in which his treatment of the various interrogative particles (and especially the particle ma, or “what is”) is intended to point to its proper resolution. The education to which the Jadal is leading has, in the end, not a little to do with the knowledge of the essential limitations to any such resolution.

The first matter to which the reader of the Book of Dialectic must attend is the fact that Alfarabi appears to offer two distinct starting points to his commentary. The first starting point, as we will have witnessed in Chapter One, begins at something of a technical height, with Alfarabi assuming a sophisticated level of learning on the part of those he is addressing. In Chapter Two, I consider the nature of the subsequent or ‘corrected’ starting point, which mimics the Aristotle of the Philosophy of Aristotle to the extent to which Alfarabi here begins from a more obviously commonsensical position. This is at the same time, then, to recall Alfarabi’s Plato and also (and above all) his Socrates. Because the new starting point is the recollection of the pre-scientific beginnings of science, which are themselves rarely subjected to scientific scrutiny, the role of the Law in instilling decent habits comes to the fore. We are then forced to consider the character of the kind of political science that is responsible for the creation of that Law in the first place.

Expands on aspects of ‘technical sociability’, which is underpinned by principles of reciprocity and periodicity, both involving forms of binary organization. These include what I dub the gracious riposte, a recurring behavioural pattern in which assertive and conciliatory gestures are juxtaposed. The commonly applied language model, involving the interpretation of music as ‘conversational’, is reviewed, and I also discuss the rise of the sharply memorable musical motive in the music of this time. This leads to a section on thematic interaction, whereby musical materials themselves, rather than players or instruments, may be heard to ‘converse’ with each other. Sometimes, though, the contrast between them suggests less a fruitful exchange than simple incompatibility. I then consider topic theory as a means of controlling our impressions of such diversity of musical materials, noting both its positive and its limiting aspects. To conclude, I consider the encompassing term ‘variety’, a desideratum of the time, which could, once more, be accounted a virtue or a vice.

Translation

This chapter begins the text-critical study at the heart of the book. It analyzes the relationship between two different and redundant types of text-segments in the extant text, chapters (ādhyāyas) and topics (prakaraṇas). The chapters are shown to have been added at a later time. So, too, the verses that conclude each of these chapters in the extant text are shown to have been added along with the chapter segments. This chapter goes on to argue that all, or nearly all, of the verses in the text are later additions. Other additions made at the end of certain chapters are identified.