Philosophy and the Habits of Conversation

I've been thinking lately about why it is difficult for people to confront and reconsider their views about the world.  Plato depicts a Socrates who confronted this problem when he encountered sophists who were less intent on exploring together with Socrates what the truth might be and more intent on using logic and rhetoric to support positions they already held.  The difference seems to be between elenchus, where we let the logos have an effect on how we think, and eristic, where we defend what we already think for the sake of winning.  Again and again, Plato shows us a Socrates who leads his interlocutor to the brink of an insight that the interlocutor's position cannot be defended, and again and again, the interlocutor walks away continuing down the same road he had begun when he started the conversation with Socrates.  The problem of using our reason to support positions we already hold rather than following the logos to see what position or insight it will lead us to remains at work in American politics, where most Americans watch news sources they already agree with.  Perhaps some have done the careful work of thinking about why they agree with those sources and are now moving from that position, but the numbers make us wonder whether people are only looking for ways to support the views they already hold rather than to examine them. Plato has Socrates raise this question in the Republic, where Socrates and Adiemantus look at the philosophical nature that is corrupted and is used for the advantage of others.  Such a character ceases to strive after knowing what is true and good and only uses her techniques as tools to support the views of those by whom she is employed.  

What then would it take to develop a character that was willing to think differently, to encounter ideas in a way that allows them to change our minds under real consideration rather than with a predisposition to reject certain positions and accept only those we already agree with?  Aristotle might be a helpful guide here because Aristotle thinks of character in two important ways that bear on this conversation: as cultivated through habit and as affected by emotion.  One thing that seems to keep us from having genuine conversation, where that means a willingness to reconsider our own position, is the emotional response that makes us defensive when we encounter a position that we have been cultivated to reject.  For Aristotle, what we habituate when we habituate ourselves to live virtuously is our affective life, the way that we feel.  So if we can habituate ourselves to empathize with other positions, to stand in someone else's position, to suppose that there might be real reasons and forceful ideas behind another person's perspective, we might possibly become interlocutors who don't just use the logos as a weapon to justify ourselves and thus keep it from ever really considering our commitments, as Nicias does in the Laches.  Of course, this is not easy because it means that we have to let go of being right - another Socratic commitment - and we have to practice having conversation differently than we have up to this point been habituated talk to one another.  But what might come from this change would be the possibility of real conversation with people we disagree with over issues that matter.   Be careful.  You might have to change.  

Philosophy in the Public Square

Since its early days, philosophy has found itself in a complicated and often fraught relationship with public life. In Plato's Apology, Plato has Socrates challenge the leaders of Athens to see that they do not know what they think they know and they accuse him of impiety and corrupting the youth. In defense, Socrates argues that he alone cares for the city and its youth. In response, the Athenians convict and execute him. Decades later, when Aristotle is in danger of being tried by the Athenians, he goes into exile saying, as the story goes, that he wanted to prevent Athens from sinning against philosophy twice. Aristotle himself becomes the tutor to the future emperor, Alexander the Great. Plato went to the court of Dion of Syracuse of advise him and Plato's Seventh Letter is addressed to him. Plato's Republic seems to show that the entire city needs to be reorganized to be run by the philosopher if the city is to be safe for philosophers. But perhaps the question is also how to make the city safe from philosophers. Hannah Arendt suggests in her article, Philosophy and Politics, that the reason philosophy and politics are at odds is that philosophy is the place for the concern with truth, while politics is the site of doxa, or appearances.  Plato, she argues, tries to bring order to the city by placing truth above doxa or opinion, but really, we are all still, as embodied beings within doxa, seeing only our point of view and building that position with the addition of the multiple points of view that a city brings.  For Arendt, the multiplicity of the city makes us better able to see what is since each of us by ourselves may only bring a part, our own view of how the world appears. So if even the philosopher sees only what appears to her, what then is the importance, relevance and possibility of bringing philosophy to the public square?

In the first half of the Spring semester 2014, the senior philosophy majors at Wabash will think through this question by reading the efforts of other philosophy bloggers and creating their own blogposts that bring philosophy into the public sphere. Stay tuned!