A concrete example of dialectic:

One person insists he is looking at a vase (thesis). The other insists he is looking at two faces (antithesis). In talking to one another, each party realizes together that both are seeing an optical illusion (synthesis), which is a kind of being whose essence is to accommodate apparently contradictory but valid ways of seeing.

The deeper understanding of the synthesis comprehends both views as valid-as-far-as-they-go (each can now see either a vase or two faces), but it also sees the incompleteness of each view as it excludes the other.

The assertion that the image is of a vase, and the assertion that the image is of two faces — these assertions are at the same ontological (being) level. The manner in which the image is (the “being” of the picture) is the same in each case: depiction of a thing. The assertion that the image is an optical illusion, however, is ontologically deeper. The being of an illusion is different in kind from the being of a depiction of a thing, and it accommodates both its own being and the being of depiction and holds them in relation to one another.

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It’s a lot easier to help someone see an optical illusion if he’s seen one before. We can appeal to his own prior experience.

Imagine how a description of “seeing” an optical illusion would sound to someone who has never seen an optical illusion. “You are going to turn this vase into a pair of faces? Are you some kind of sorcerer?”

They’re “ontologically blind”, which means they simply have no place in their thinking for the optical illusion’s mode of being. If they try to explain it to themselves or to others it will be described in terms of what they do already know. They’ll use “ontic” terms — the manner of existence that physical objects have.

Until they figure out what you’re trying to show them, they’ve got several options:

1. They can miss the possibility that they might not understand yet, and simply declare your claim — as they misunderstand it — to be false or true.
2. They can reduce what you are saying to something they do grasp, and consider the matter settled. (It’s some sort of poetic expression, or a vague moral lesson of some kind, a truth refracted through an unfamiliar culture, an uncannily resonant hallucination, etc.)
3. They can admit they don’t know what you’re talking about and not worry about it.
4. They can admit they don’t know what you’re talking about, but let their non-understanding bother them until they see for themselves what you mean.

The situation we are in, if we wish to live dialectically: We are aware that are constantly falling into attitude #2, but if we stay aware of that fact, we can find our way back to attitude #4.

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A moral dialectic:

Thesis: One should maintain his psychic constancy, and be someone to himself and others (or to put it negatively, one should resist akrasia, moral incontinence).

Antithesis: One should be responsive to the voices of others, which means to be open to change (or to put it negatively, one should avoid ideology and hubris).

Synthesis: One should be prepared to dialectically deepen.

This means to pursue authentic understanding of others by extending oneself to them. Rather than simply shift one’s perspective, one retains his perspective, but learns to see it from an ever-broadening vantage that includes the perspectives of others. One “can go” over to the validity of the other, and one can go back over to where he was, but his perspective also moves vertically, and sees the whole landscape of differing perspective from an overview. The lower perspectives are seen as valid from within (“emic”), but are also interrelated from without (“etic”) within a greater emic view. This greater emic view will certainly someday be grasped from an etic view when it is dialectically surpassed and grasped from without, but until that day, it is universally true. This fact does not transport us into infinitude, it only places us in relation with it, and shows us that we are in blessed, eternally-futile pursuit, and it is this futility that is immortality.