The dialectic form — thesis, antithesis and the resolution of the opposition — is a fundamental form of philosophical truth, but it is functionally useless. The dialectic form is severely constrained and as powerless as Cassandra. The dialectic is entirely retrospective: it is both radically non-predictive and radically postdictive.

Those who have lived out dialectical truth know the strange transfiguration of anxious, opaque nonsense into crystalline vision.

The dialectic as such is not an answer: it promises an answer if you grapple faithfully with the anxiety of the present question. It reassures: the anxiety in the face of opaque chaos is not the symptoms of a disease but the necessary birth-pangs of insight. It teases: if you already knew the answer, it wouldn’t be a question.

The dialectic is a kind of faith. It is the form and the assurance that spurs the pursuit of the presently unseen.