Actually the story of Medieval Logic is pretty cool.

Dialectic was the Platonic form of logic, and that of the Stoics and
the Skeptics and most other Greek and Hellenistics, but Aristotle and
Euclid, used very monological styles even in the Ancient world.  

Right before the collapse of Rome, there was a form of heresy called
Arianism, that became a big threat to the authorities in Rome, and
Arians loved using Aristotle, so Clement of Alexandria decided to make
it a policy to teach all Christian priests just enough Aristotlean logic
to be able to oppose the Arians.  When Rome fell, the Stoic and
Skeptical arts of dialectic were mostly lost, and what survived was
Aristotelian logic, and a fair bit of Plato (via Boethius).

The medievals rebuilt a style of dialogue based argumentation on their
own, that had little to do with the older dialectic forms (it was
probably partly based on Roman legal practices).  This medieval
"dialectic" was the 2nd part of the trivium, and part of the education
off all educated medievals.  Aquinas, and the other philosophers and
theologians, are intensely dialectical in their style, but not at all in
the way the Stoics were.  And it had lots of interesting developments
(see  http://www.pvspade.com/Logic/ for lots of detailed downloadables
on medieval dialectics).  Also the medieval faux-dialogues, are often
edited versions of real dialogues called quodlibets, that were ancestors
to the modern thesis defense, rather than hypothetical dialogues.  The
Black Plague killed off this stuff, and later humanists developed
Topical logics, and then Term logics that were quite different.  From
1350-1800's European logics are not very dialectical. 

Kant re-introduces the notion of the dialectic, which for him means "a
logic of appearances" rather than a logic of how things actually are
(related to Aristotle's grudging use).  Hegel, knows enough history of
logic to recognize the Kantian, Medieval, and Platonic notions and try
to play with them all.  He's drawing on Christian stuff (both mystical
types like Boehm, and non-mystics like Ockham) and Deist stuff like
Kant, and older pagan stuff like Socrates or Plato (but probably not
folks like Sextus or Chrysippus).

>>> Sharon Stravaigne <[log in to unmask]> 4/14/2007 11:06 AM
>>>

In a message dated 4/14/2007 7:59:12 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

Presumably the Hegelian  dialectic is part of that classical (pagan) 
tradition -??
 i'm assuming that  'dialectic' was not such 
a strong part of the  christian tradition??
 
bb
 
mogg



 
        Both styles seem to have  been in use in early Christian times,
though
        in one case it may have  been an actual conversation recalled,
they
        weren't much on fiction  until later. 
 
        The monograph style  dominated later I think, but there is
something
        I noticed which may be a  kind of hybrid, or you could view it
as left
        over from dialog style.  This is where in a monograph, the
speaker
        says, "but if someone  should say blah blah, then I would
answer
        blah blah." This is almost  like a dialogue but one that is
obviously
        hypothetical instead of  presented as if real like in a play,
and then
        of course you have the  arguments between people writing
letters
        and yelling at each other  in debates.
 
        I haven't read all of it, I  glanced at Aquinas years ago, and
I 
recall
        that in his presentation of  all the arguments pro and con on
every
        conceivable matter, which  was tedious, I suppose you could
say
        that he dialectized on both  sides.
 
        Sharon



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