Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Thinking; intellectual; of or pertaining to the discursive faculty.
  • noun That part of logic winch treats of ratiocination.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Metaph.) Pertaining to the discursive faculty, its acts or products.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Pertaining to reason or thinking; intellectual.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective proceeding to a conclusion by reason or argument rather than intuition

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek διανοητικός (dianoētikos, "pertaining to thinking"), from διανοητός (dianoētos), verbal adjective of διανοέεσθαι (dianoeesthai, "to think"), from δια- (dia-, "through") + νοέειν (noeein, "to think, suppose").

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Examples

  • But the aim is after all the life of the intellect, and the "dianoetic" virtues are superior to the practical.

    A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy Isaac Husik 1907

  • Descending the line furnishes justification for the claims of the dianoetic sciences and beliefs about the material world, including the states of affairs in actual cities.

    Plato's Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology Silverman, Allan 2008

  • Judgment or arrangement was likewise dichotomized into axiomatic judgment (enunciations) and dianoetic judgment (reasoning processes).

    RAMISM WALTER JACKSON ONG 1968

  • Consequently, for Aristotle the highest happiness is to be found not in the ethical virtues of the active life, but in the contemplative or philosophic life of speculation, in which the dianoetic virtues of understanding, science, and wisdom are exercised.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 7: Gregory XII-Infallability 1840-1916 1913

  • Virtues are divided into ethical and intellectual (dianoetic); and so are the contrary vices.

    A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy Isaac Husik 1907

  • Rare jargon we made of it; talking of cosmothetie idealism or hypothetical dualism, of noetic and dianoetic principles, of hylozoism and hypostasis, and demonstrating the most undemonstrable propositions by appeals to the law of contradiction or of excluded middle.

    Beulah 1872

  • The correlatives _noetic_ and _dianoetic_, says Hamilton, would afford the best philosophic designation of these two faculties; the knowledge attained by the former is an "intuitive principle" -- a truth at first hand; that obtained by the latter is a "demonstrative proposition" -- a truth at second hand.

    Christianity and Greek Philosophy or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles 1852

  • This intelligence then, either derives the principles of reasoning from intellect, which principles are axioms, and then through the dianoetic power produces demonstrative reasoning, the conclusions of which are always true and never false.

    Works Aristotle, Thomas Taylor 1812

Comments

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  • discursive

    August 28, 2008

  • The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethical laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout - Haw! - so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs – silence please - at that which is unhappy.

    - Samuel Beckett, Watt

    August 28, 2008

  • 2nd def. in the Century Dictionary states "That part of logic winch treats of ratiocination."

    July 5, 2010