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Logic<br>Roots in the Sky<br>The Dialectic of Essay Writing and Truth<br>Jun 10, 2026
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Sunrise on Lake Wanaka and view of That Wanaka Tree by AJMANDELL1<br>I. The Funnel of the Dialectic
There is a great deal on the dialectic, whether that be the Socratic or the Hegelian. So much that the push-and-pull of thesis and antithesis feels like a deeply, exclusively Western invention.<br>Are there some Eastern Traditions on the Dialectic? It is so deeply ingrained in the West.<br>At first glance, looking through a Confucian lens, the answer seems to be no. The Eastern teacher-student relationship feels entirely different from the conversational equals we see in a Socratic dialogue. Even if Socrates usually held the upper hand, there was a volley. In the Confucian model, there is no catch and return. There is no active challenge.<br>But stopping there would be a lazy, orientalist framing of the East. Digging deeper, we find that the universality of the dialectic actually gets stronger. There are examples in Buddhist thought. Whether it be Tibetan monastic debate, or Nagarjuna’s philosophical carving of the Middle Way, the dialectic is clearly there.<br>Why is the dynamic so universal? Why two?<br>There cannot be any words without a writer. That eliminates zero. With only a single viewpoint, a monologue, the universe becomes solipsistic. Therefore, two is the necessary minimum for any real intellectual friction.<br>But what if there are more than two? For any larger number of viewpoints, we can preserve the dynamic by pairing them into two distinct groups, reducing the noise back down to a binary. Granted, not every web of ideas can be immediately reduced to a bipartite graph. We might have to reduce it in stages. But eventually, if we keep distilling, we arrive back at that core collision of two opposing forces.<br>How, then, does this apply to something as mundane as writing an essay? Should an essay be considered a single phrase within this intellectual discourse?<br>Perhaps, but that doesn’t give much guidance on how to write an essay. Telling someone they are writing a “single phrase in the intellectual discourse” is like telling a bricklayer they are building a cathedral; it’s inspiring, but it doesn’t tell them how to mix the mortar.<br>If an essay is just a stubborn defense of a pre-determined thesis, it’s nothing more than a monologue. It reverts back to that rigid teacher-student dynamic. But if we try to construct the essay as an internal dialectic, suddenly we have a roadmap.<br>The writer posits a thought (the thesis). Then they actively hunt down and introduce the best possible objection to their own thought (the antithesis). Finally, they have to wrestle those two competing ideas into a new position (the synthesis). Taking inspiration from Hegelian theory, this process destroys the contradiction between the two ideas, but preserves the underlying truth of both.<br>When approached this way, through the funnel of the dialectic, the essay becomes a microcosm of the universe.<br>II. To Attempt to Write
It helps to remember the origins of the form. When Michel de Montaigne coined the term, he derived it from the French essayer—to try, or to attempt. An essay was never meant to be a definitive decree delivered from a mountaintop. Rather, it is the record of a mind trying to figure something out.<br>An essay of course can be many things. It has practical utilities that are best discussed in context. The sort of essay we are discussing is not one defined by external usefulness, that would require input of the context and in many ways is far closer to a monologue or even an artifact of pure accident where the writer is an accessory.<br>(As proof of “accident” and “accessory,” I will offer the suggestion that a tightly defined context is enough for such an essay to be produced by an AI stochastically)<br>Instead, the desire here is to clarify one’s own internal landscape. This aligns with Montaigne’s ethos: the value lies in showing your work.<br>If an essay is genuinely an attempt to figure things out, we arrive at a paradox regarding the audience. Standardizing our language to make an essay palatable for a general readership might actually destroy the very friction the writer needs to reach a breakthrough. Instead of leaning on sanitized, standard arguments, the essayist must make explicit the deeply idiosyncratic nature of their own thinking. To an outside observer, this deeply personal lexicon might make the essay more difficult to follow.<br>Yet, if there is value in the extra work the reader must put in, it is because these idiosyncrasies carry vital, hidden information. They shed light on an architecture that lives entirely above the specific argument being made.<br>Consider the connections a writer draws to construct their metaphors. There is no logical necessity in comparing a philosophical concept to a biological ecosystem or a financial market. To apply formal logic to a...