ABSTRACT
We saw in the last chapter how teaching was carried out in the universities of the Middle Ages, and particularly in the arts faculty. The branches of learning were not taught objectively, independently and for their own sake; teaching was limited to commenting upon one or a handful of books which dealt with this branch of learning. Sometimes the goal of this method of teaching was to retrace, in a positive way, the logical progression of the thought of some authoritative author; sometimes the book simply provided the opportunity for instituting a methodical controversy in front of the pupils on one of the problems dealt with in the work which was being analysed. In both forms the goal of the teaching was the same. It was a question above all of training the pupils in the practice of dialectic. In the former case they were confronted with the thought of a great master and the internal dialectic of his arguments was explained to them; this was why the teacher, so to speak, dismantled the arguments, broke them down into their simplest constituent elements; and in order that the logical framework might become more apparent all the argumentation was put in the form of a syllogism. What the pupil learned in this way was a passive form of dialectic whereby thought revealed and unfolded itself in conformity with itself and without concerning itself directly with objections and arguments which might be raised against it. In the second case, by contrast, it was a vital and vigorous form of dialectic into which the pupil was initiated through the method of controversy; he was shown the importance of setting one opinion against another, one argument against another; and how from the clash of contradictory arguments truth can emerge. The dialectic of peace-time and the dialect of war, the dialectic of exposition and the dialectic of debate; these more than anything else were what was taught, far more than any particular doctrine or set of doctrines.
