29.07.09
Logic, dialectic, and triadic thinking…
A passage, page 24, from Volume I of The Dramatic Universe.
I tried to consider how to summarize and/or leapfrog the methodology constructed by Bennett.
It is a very problematical set of ideas, for reasons that suddenly become obvious if we consider the following passage:
Logical Thinking
When a measure of discipline is introduced into the associative process, thinking tends to become logical. Since ancient times, logic has come to be identified with the rules according to which we make judgments as to the truth or falsity of propositions. These latter are the verbal forms in which ideas are confronted in pairs, whereas in ordinary associative processes there is no effectual confrontation. Logical thinking therefore represents an important step forward from automatic association. A special effort, requiring either an unusual stimulus or a long training is needed before a man is able effectually to entertain two complete in- dependent ideas at once and to see their mutual bearing. The result goes beyond the content of the ideas as they are immediately presented and can be called polar thinking. Two ideas, in so far as they are in¬dependent and ri-J.utually exclusive, form a dipole with its own field of force. Through the ability to experience this force-field, the trained logical thinker can make synthetic judgments within the limits of the ideas he is able to formulate. The difference between synthetic judg¬ments and automatic association consists in the presence of polar experience. For example, the words ‘being’ and ‘nothing’ stand for two independent concepts that, when entertained as one single act of con¬sciousness, appear at once both compatible and incompatible. The mental process whereby the two give ~ise to a third idea that harmonizes them without destroying their separate significance is called the dialectic. Hegel, for example, sees in ‘becoming’ a concept that reconciles ‘being’ and ‘nothing’.”" Any pair of independent ideas can be treated as a polar dyad. Thus ‘kingship’ and ‘liberty’ can be reconciled through the idea of ‘responsibility’, which can apply to both and yet is different from either.
Dialectical thinking is certainly of a different order from that which consists in the automatic association and comparison of ideas. Though difficult in its exercise, this form of thought is, nevertheless, extremely limited in its scope. Experience has shown that it is inadequate for finding answers to the practical problems of life, and, indeed, the great exponents of the dialectic-from Plato to Hegel and Marx-have proved unsatisfactory guides to practical life, whether private or public. The dialectic leads also to a defective linguistic form. Our usual language, though full of inconsistencies and ambiguities, can be adapted to the description of two-term systems. When the meanings of words and sentences are defined with special care, a logic is constructed that turns out to be the law of two-term systems. The procedure by which language is made to conform to these rules is, however, an unavoidable im¬poverishment. The ambiguities and inconsistencies of our ordinary speech are not a defect, and recognition of them is a reminder that experience has more dimensions than logic. Analytical and sceptical philosophers have, during a hundred generations, exposed the barrenness of two-term thinking, and it becomes necessary to examine the possi¬bilities latent in higher modes of thought. In seeking tb go beyond logic, we run the risk of falling from serious inquiry into fantastical speculation; but it is more profitable to make the attempt than to remain condemned to the sterility that has overcome philosophy through using forms of
• Cf. Hegel, Logic, trans. Wm. Wallace (Oxford, 1892), pp. 158-64.
thought that are inherently incapable of discovering anything that is new.
( c) Supra-logical Thinking
Supra-logical thinking is both relative and transcendental. It therefore requires more categories than the simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ of logic-. The need to go beyond the ‘pairs of opposites’ is a recurrent theme of Eastern scriptures. P. D. Ouspensky, in his remarkable book Tertium Organum, called supra-logical thinking the ‘third canon of thought’, which, in the next epoch, was to supersede the logical dualism of the preceding age. The dialectic is at best a halfway-house to creative thought, for which at least three independent ideas must be entertained. Such triadic think¬ing, however, is beyond the ordinary power of the instrument with
<;which man has been endowed by nature. '*'
. Contemplation of the triad is not merely recognizing a third idea as the reconciliation of two contradictories,-but rather seeing in the union of the three an exemplification of the fu.ndamental relationship by which all experience is governed. So long as nothing more is at work than the primitive associating mechanism, to speak of the 'unity of the triad' conveys little meaning. In order to perceive this unity directly, a power _ of attention is required that comes only with a change of consciousness.
. :;;.;.-
Such a change occurs so rarely, and in so few people, that, in the usual
studies of man and his nature, it is not taken into account.
Through failure to recognize either the extreme rarity or the extra..: ordinary power of triadic thinking, the usual histories of human thought cannot account for the authentic innovations that do, from time to time, occur in human understanding of the universal order.
Bennett unwittingly exposes one the deepest problems that haunts most spiritual movements and their concept structures.
By being systematic and thinking in terms of numerical systems (based on ordinal series) he constructs an interesting, if implicit, historical narrative, and shows why everyone is stymied by the result.
Human spirituality suffers a dilemma: man can only deal with logical thinking, while he is constantly being induced to transcend that for something larger. The results are invariably confusion.
Bennett constructs a complete numerology of ordinal series number, from the monad to the dodecad.
The result is intriguing, but never quite seems to work.
Bennett has actually made clear why: he speaks of three-term, four-term, etc, systems, but even the triadic level is vexed. Even the dialectic, pace Hegel, is confused. The distinction between the dialectic and the triadic, however, shows the cogency of Bennett’s attempt to be systematic. Students of Gurdjieff’s ‘law of three’ or Hegel’s dialectic are all confused, the reason being clear from Bennett’s misleading discussion.
The point here is that by the time Bennett reaches the dodecad, given the shaky foundations of the dialectic, or triadic, the results are mythological fantasy in a kind of science fiction.