This dialectic possesses an intrinsic tendency toward seeing, disclosing. One will therefore not understand dialectic by distinguishing intuition and thinking and placing dialectic on the side of thinking. Dialectic is not something like a higher level of what is known as thinking, in opposition to so-called mere intuition, but, quite to the contrary, the only meaning and the only intention of dialectic is to prepare and to develop a genuine original intuition, passing through what is merely said.5 The fact that Plato did not advance far enough so as ultimately to see beings themselves and in a certain sense to overcome dialectic is a deficiency included in his own dialectical procedure, and it determines certain moments of his dialectic, e.g., the much discussed κοινωνία τῶν γενῶν, the association, the keeping company together, of the kinds. These characteristics are not merits and are not determinations of a superior philosophical method but are indications of a fundamental confusion and unclarity, which, as I have already said, is founded in the difficulty of the matters themselves, the difficulty of such first foundational research.
b) Critique of the traditional conception of dialectic.
Dialectic: not a technique of thinking but a preliminary
stage of νοεῖν. Aristotle's position with regard to dialectic.
The domination of λόγος, produces later—as is the case still today—a repercussion, specifically in the "theoretical" in general and in the "logical." The history of philosophy and dialectically-oriented philosophical reflection took from this Platonic dialectic their first ideal and saw in it a superior kind of philosophizing. In connection with this, a wonderful technique of philosophical thinking has been devised, a technique of thinking embodying a dialectical movement to and fro, a method which runs best when it is as unencumbered as possible with substantive knowledge and to which nothing else pertains than an understanding that has become wild and lost in emptiness. What for Plato was an inner need, namely to get at the matters at issue, has here been made into a principle to play with them. Plato's concern in the dialectic runs precisely in the opposite direction, namely to see the ὃν ἀληθινόν, that which is. The obverse of this misunderstanding of the meaning of Platonic dialectic, and perhaps of dialectic in general, is a denigrating judgment on the position of Aristotle as regards dialectic. It has become a commonplace in the history of philosophy that Aristotle no longer understood Plato's dialectic and downgraded it to a mere technique of deductive thinking.6
5. AH: Knowledge—cf. Being and Time—and intuition. Hegel in the background as well.
6. See the appendix.