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Dialogue in philosophical practices
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John Benjamins
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Luca Bertolino
Dialogue in philosophical practices
1. Philosophical practices1
In the Italian specialised literature, the deliberately plural term philosophical
practices (“pratiche filosofiche”) and its introduction in the international
philosophical debate are claimed by Alessandro Volpone (2004, p. 25). Indeed, in the early 2000s, when some Italian scholars started to express interest for the Philosophische Praxis (usually translated as “philosophical practice” or “philosophical counselling”, sometimes as “philosophical consulting” or “philosophical consultancy”), Volpone suggested using the label “philosophical practices” to indicate
intellectual and practical philosophical perspectives of eminently group nature, in which every single participant meets ideas, transcending the self within a dialectic process that originates from the irreducibleness of the real world and constantly re-discovers, through critical reflection, the same world. (…) Philosophical practices (…) can refer to a
1 The first two sections have already appeared in Bertolino (2016, pp. 89–93). I here present
semantic general area overcoming single philosophical practices, such as philosophy for children, cafe-philo, socratic dialogue, philosophical
counselling, management philosophy, etc. That is to say an all inclusive
area which represents all of them and properly belongs to the universal philosophic terminology. Under the diversity of specific perspectives, in fact, the common element of what we can define as the current movement of the philosophical practices is the social and cultural practice of the philosophy, like a modus vivendi and with political valence – in the ancient Greek sense (2000; now 2004, p. 35).
In a subsequent reformulation – albeit still consciously “generic” – of this definition, Volpone described philosophical practices as
a variegated set of philosophical perspectives and methods with a
practical purpose that can be applied in the several dimensions of the
contemporary world (education, work, private life, free time, etc.) and more generally in everyday life. These socio-cultural activities were established, in most cases independently from one another, in the second half of the twentieth century. Beneath their apparent heterogeneity of objectives and procedures, they all reveal a
fundamentally operative conception of the philosophical exercise, with an extensive, popular, fully autonomous and situational value, and with a public use of critical and (in various degrees) abstract reflection aimed
at promoting it and/or (re)enhancing it in the context of concrete existence (2002, pp. 17–18).
I mentioned these definitions for several reasons. First of all, they marked the historical beginning, in Italy, of a structured attempt at clarifying and analysing the theoretical and methodological assumptions of philosophical practices, as well as trying to find a commonly shared way to exercise them: this beginning dates back to the establishment of the Associazione Italiana Counseling Filosofico (AICF) in 1999, and since then this professional research and practice, although not always in a collaborative manner, has spread until today, long after the dissolution of the aforementioned association in 2001. These definitions also show the credit that goes to Volpone and the promoters of that association, for their theoretical effort to think of philosophical practices as a set in which it is possible to find elements of homogeneity. Volpone identifies these common features as: (1) the operative nature of philosophising, namely the concreteness of “doing by thinking” (Regina, 2006); (2) the exercise and promotion of
philosophical reflection in places traditionally not assigned to such disciplinary production (or to academic reproduction – to put it
polemically), connected to both the private and the public spheres of the individual – who is always related, even if by exclusion or self-exclusion, to a social context; (3) the construction of a philosophical way of life that constantly challenges one’s personal Weltanschauung and, at the same time,
that of one’s cultural environment. Finally, the most recent definition highlights that philosophical methods with a practical orientation can today be applied in various areas of society, which thus become possible
classification criteria for the philosophical practices themselves. In fact, philosophy is practised, among other places, in social and medical structures, in schools, in prisons, in work organisations, in private offices and in counselling offices, in cafés and other recreational venues. A significant recognition of the “plurality of philosophical practices” came with the publication of a study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on the state of the art of teaching philosophy in the world, with a special section dedicated to them (UNESCO, 2007, pp. 161–177).
Among the various philosophical practices, I have to mention at least a few that, throughout the twentieth century, have given rise to a consistent diffusion of practised philosophy or philosophy in practice, thus becoming North stars in the latter’s current constellation. First of all, the Sokratische
Methode or Sokratisches Gespräch (“Socratic method” or “Socratic
dialogue”). This approach was proposed in the twenties by the Neo-Friesian Leonard Nelson (1929/2004) and developed, with political-pedagogical purposes, by his pupils Minna Specht and Gustav Heckmann in the
Landerziehungsheim Walkemühle, a residential school active in Melsungen from 1923 until its closure in 1933 due to National Socialism. Secondly, the P4C or philosophy for children, with openly educational objectives,
established in the seventies at Montclair State College (now University) by the Deweyan Matthew Lipman, together with Ann Margaret Sharp and Frederick Oscanyan (1980). Thirdly, the already mentioned Philosophische
Praxis, understood both as a professional activity (“philosophical practice”)
and as the place in which it is carried out (“philosophical office”), launched in 1981 in Bergisch Gladbach by Gerd B. Achenbach (1987) and aimed primarily at individuals. Finally, the markedly recreational ludic café-philo (“philosophical café”), promoted by Marc Sautet (1995) in the early nineties at the Café des Phares, in Place de la Bastille, Paris.
2. Defining philosophical practices
The definition of the lowest common denominator of philosophical
practices is widely debated: what is the philosophical core that allows us to distinguish them from other activities, for example psychoanalysis and psychotherapies, spiritual guidance, education or conversations in
intellectual circles? Also, is it possible to identify a methodical peculiarity in philosophical practices, with respect to which one can be trained and should even ask for a remuneration for the services provided?
In order to bring out the common elements shared by philosophical practices, both on the theoretical level and with reference to their claim to apply to life, I propose to use the notion of “philosophical practice”, in the
singular, as a conceptual macro-category. Philosophical practice is a philosophical professional service with no therapeutic purposes where a practitioner with expertise in philosophy addresses thought contents and processes with one or more individuals, based on their own requests or those made by a third party on their behalf. This definition is certainly still vague and inevitably problematic, especially in view of the positions sustained by authoritative representatives of the world of philosophical counselling, who increasingly see the latter as a way of personal and
community life (see, above all, Lahav, 2016a, 2016b). The exclusion of any therapeutic purpose is to be understood in the technical sense of the term, to avoid that the philosophical counsellor may incur in the abusive practice of the medical profession and that the client may have misunderstandings or illusions. But I especially want to highlight the professional dimension, underlined by the term “practice” and by the counsellor’s experience in philosophy, because it represents an essential element of philosophical practices, even if carried out free of charge. Of course, the point is to justify the philosophical nature of a given profession: in other words, to identify the “what is it?” (τί ἐστι) of philosophical counselling, its philosophical specificity, understanding how to decline the philosophical method in a given practice (on this, see Bertolino, 2008).
Philosophical practices, addressing people of all ages, are each characterised by a philosophical method. This holds even for the
refuse any methodical rigidity when he stresses that “philosophy does not work with methods, but rather on methods”, and that “obedience to the method is appropriate for the sciences, not for philosophy” (1999/2010a, p. 16). Indeed, the criticism of methods, which Achenbach calls “practising metatheory” (1983/2010b, p. 38), is itself a typical feature of the
philosophical method in general. Rather, if one really wants to underline the peculiarity of Achenbach’s approach, summed up by Shlomit Schuster as “‘beyond-method’ method” (1999, p. 39), it must be sought in his refusal of a precise methodology, understood as the ordered application of one or more methods or as one particular technique, or even more modestly as a praxis that has not achieved the completeness of a method. Unlike philosophical counselling, or better, unlike the various forms of philosophical counselling (as Terence’s maxim “quot homines tot sententiae”, Phormio, v. 454, also applies to this specific philosophical practice), both Nelson’s Sokratisches Gespräch and P4C are in fact
characterised by theoretically more structured methodologies, for example in their reference to the “regressive method of abstraction”, aimed at
isolating “rational truths” from “empirical judgements” (Nelson, 1929/2004, pp. 134–135), or to the “community of inquiry” in which to implement an “education for the improvement of thinking”, in its multidimensional nature as “critical”, “creative” and “caring” thinking (Lipman, 2003, esp. chaps. 4, 9–12). Furthermore, like the café-philo (cf. Phillips, 2002, pp. 234–239; Blanchard, 2004), they are philosophical practices characterised by
procedural rules, by which the facilitator and the participants in the sessions are called to abide (cf. respectively Saran & Neisser, 2004, pp. 171–173; Kessels, Boers, & Mostert, 2008/2009, pp. 41–45, and the instructional manuals accompanying the P4C curriculum).
The characteristic trait of philosophical practice, taken as a macro-category, is ultimately a work of thinking on thought: to be precise, it is a philosophical work on the given concepts under examination, with the aim of clarifying them. The goal, however, is not only to shed light on a concept from a problem-solving standpoint, but also, and especially, to achieve a deeper understanding of the concept itself so as to widen one’s theoretical perspectives: almost paradoxically, this is a disinterested speculative activity that finds in itself its own raison d’être and fulfilment. The
philosophical counsellor, for example, helps the clients untangle their twine of ideas, bringing their obscure and confused thoughts to clarity and
distinctness. According to the degree of conceptual turbidity expressed by the clients, the counsellor stirs the material offered to him or her with specific questions, filters it through interpretative grids deduced from the history of philosophy, lets it decant, refines it by defining it, and adds reacting ideas to it; he or she may also take into consideration the emotional dimension connected to the concepts under discussion, translating it into feelings that will then be the object of shared reflection.
It is a work of abstraction, which positively distracts (as is a typical experience of those who study philosophy) and perhaps produces existential
relief, certainly leading to awareness about one’s human condition, and sometimes – often, philosophical counsellors claim – to a more or less significant change in the clients’ Weltanschauungen, which can also have an effect on the way they act and imply a different attitude in their approach to reality. Above all – and this is a common feature to all philosophical
practices, widely recognised in the specialised literature – it is critical thinking: in fact, philosophical practice seeks to avoid the operationalism of reason in its instrumental use, rather cultivating its capacity to “give
account” (λόγον διδόναι), practising the deconstruction and reconstruction of paradigms that constitutes, sic et simpliciter, the core of philosophy.
3. Διαλέγεσθαι: practising the philosophical λόγος
From the present perspective, the lowest common denominator of
philosophical practices lies in a philosophical expert’s thinking by concepts. More often, both in specialist literature and in personal reports, many philosophical practitioners describe the philosophical specificity of their professional activity as dialogue (see, significantly, Curnow, 2001). This statement, which appears borderline naive (“after all, philosophical
counselling is nothing but talking with people” – I have heard some say), is obviously somewhat problematic, especially because the dialogical practice characterises several professions related to psychological aid. However,
philosophical practitioners stress the philosophical λόγος of their dialogue, albeit with different variations, as can be easily seen by examining the main philosophical practices mentioned above.
3.1. Socratic dialogue
In a way that strongly recalls Kant’s teaching (1787/1998, A 837 / B 865, p. 669), Nelson insists on the fact that “the Socratic Method (…) is the art of teaching not philosophy but philosophising”, an “instruction in doing one’s own thinking; more precisely, in the independent practice of the art of abstraction” (Nelson, 1929/2004, pp. 126, 136). Of course, he is fully aware of the monologic and rhetorically coercive character of the Socratic
interlocution in the Platonic dialogues, as well as of Plato’s acuity in
following the reactions of the reader in the construction of his texts. Indeed, such reactions can be mirrored in the participants in the Socratic dialogue, but nevertheless Plato firmly supports the positive nature of the master’s endeavour and teaching. The core of the latter mainly lies in the exercise of questioning, through which Socrates gets close to his interlocutors and above all forces their minds to be free, and to emancipate themselves from prejudice. In other words, he commands them – to use a motto of the Enlightenment – “Sapere aude! Have courage to make use your own understanding!” (Kant, 1784/1996, p. 17):
by his questioning he [Socrates] leads his pupils to confess their ignorance und thus cuts through the roots of their dogmatism. This result (…) discloses the significance of the dialogue as an instrument of instruction. The lecture, too, can stimulate spontaneous thinking, particularly in more mature students; but no matter what allure such stimulus may possess, it is not irresistible. Only persistent pressure to speak one’s mind, to meet every counter-question, and to state the reasons for every assertion transforms the power of that allure into an irresistible compulsion (Nelson, 1929/2004, p. 139).
Secondly, through dialogue, Socrates teaches how to switch from the
particularity of daily observation and personal experience to general rational truths. However, this is to be understood not in the inferential sense of the inductive method (unlike Aristotle, Metaphysics, M, 4, 1078 b 27–29; trans. 1976, p. 97), but rather in the sense of regressively abstracting or re-flecting, that is, becoming aware of the knowledge that one already possesses.
Thereby
Socrates was the first to combine with confidence in the ability of the human mind to recognise philosophical truth the conviction that this truth is not arrived at through occasional bright ideas or mechanical teaching but that only planned, unremitting, and consistent thinking lead us from darkness into its light. Therein lies Socrates’ greatness as a
philosopher. His greatness as a pedagogue is based on another
innovation: he made his pupils do their own thinking and introduced the interchange of ideas as a safeguard against self-deception.
In the light of this evaluation, the Socratic Method (…) remains the only method for teaching philosophy. Conversely, all philosophical instruction is fruitless if it conflicts with Socrates’ basic methodic requirements (Nelson, 1929/2004, pp. 140–141).
For Nelson, ultimately, the Socratic dialogue not only promotes conceptual clarification and discussion about the relationships between concepts, both necessary but not sufficient to grasp the truths one seeks, but above all imposes a critical awareness that from knowing of not knowing leads to knowing what one do not know that one knows. This last passage, according to the Nelsonian revisitation of Socrates’s method, is made possible by the legacy of the Kantian transcendental deduction, in the subjective
interpretation given of it by Jacob Friedrich Fries (1807, vol. 1, pp. 278– 285). Indeed, with it, it is possible to justify – which does not amount to syllogistically proving or to intuitively demonstrating – the principles underlying empirical judgments, which are the object of analysis in the regressive abstraction of the Socratic dialogue.
3.2. Philosophy for children
A very different philosophical horizon is that of the P4C dialogue. In fact, although Lipman explicitly acknowledges that Kant advocated a society in which people think for themselves, supporting the idea of educating children in that sense, he distinguishes between Kantian rationality – in his view characterised by being a “voluntary obedience of each individual to universally generalizable principles” (Lipman, 2003, p. 12) – and
reasonableness, understood as “rationality tempered by judgment” (p. 11), which should be promoted by restructuring the educational practice.2 This
can only happen by
“converting the classroom into a community of inquiry” in which students listen to one another with respect, build on one another’s ideas, challenge one another to supply reasons for otherwise unsupported opinions, assist each other in drawing inferences from what has been said, and seek to identify one another’s assumptions. A community of inquiry attempts to follow the inquiry where it leads rather than be
2 To avoid any misunderstandings, I would like to point out that by “practice” Lipman does
not mean the professional dimension referred to in the previous paragraph, but simply “any methodical activity. It can also be described as customary, habitual, traditional, and unreflective, but these do not convey as well as the term methodical the fact that practice is not random, unsystematic, or disorganized” (Lipman, 2003, pp. 14–15). His consideration about the methodical awareness required of the educator, however, seems to me to justify the incorporation of the P4C into the macro-category of “philosophical practice”.
penned in by the boundary lines of existing disciplines. A dialogue that tries to conform to logic, it moves forward indirectly like a boat tacking into the wind, but in the process its progress comes to resemble that of thinking itself. Consequently, when this process is internalized or introjected by the participants, they come to think in moves that resemble its procedures. They come to think as the process thinks (pp. 20–21).
The epistemological and methodological roots of the community of inquiry – an expression that Lipman attributes to Charles Sanders Peirce (1877, although on closer inspection he speaks only of “method of inquiry”, p. 12; the notion is in any case relevant to the author, who uses the terms
“community” and “inquiry” referring to the method by which scientists work together to reach shared results) – must be traced back to the works of John Dewey. In particular, it is important to consider his works on the formation of habits of reflective thought (1910); on philosophy as critical thinking, i.e. as “criticism of criticisms” (1929, p. 398); on the identification of logic with the methodology of scientific research (1938); and on the close link between democracy and education, especially when the latter is
structured on the model of scientific research and aims to train thinking individuals (1916).
The long passage cited, in addition to outlining some interactions that happen in the P4C community of inquiry, makes it possible to clarify the
way in which Lipman understands philosophical dialogue. He too
demonstrates that he has the Socratic-Platonic model in mind, taking cue especially from the “dictum (…) that one must follow the argument where it leads in the dialogue” (thus Mead, 1910, p. 691, quoted by Lipman, 2003, p. 85, sums up Plato, Republic, III, 394 d; trans. 2013a, p. 255). However, he mainly insists on the contextual situation within which dialogue takes place, because in his view it indicates a general direction to the community of inquiry, giving relevance to the research carried out by the latter. Only in this way, in fact, can there be an intellectual movement that is actually fruitful, and not because it insistently seeks a solution or an answer, but because it teaches to fully appreciate “the kind of transformation that philosophy provides – not giving a new answer to an old question, but transforming all the questions” (Lipman, 2003, p. 87). This ability to inhabit the problem also translates into an authentic education to thinking, because the participants in P4C dialogue become increasingly accustomed to going along with the movement of thought, to making it their own, that is – to recall the Lipmanian metaphor – to going full sail, tacking into the wind.
There is another aspect that deserves to be noted here: the comparison that Lipman makes between conversation and dialogue. In an inversely proportional way, in fact, “in conversation (…) the personal note is strong but the logical thread is weak, whereas in dialogue just the reverse is the case” (ibid.); conversation implies stability, taking turns in talking but keeping the discourse substantially still (one could say, to refer to its Latin
etymology conversari, that the protagonists “keep company with each other”), while dialogue implies a structural imbalance, with continuous arguments and counterarguments that produce the dynamism of λόγος in research. In this sense, the exemplary images used by Lipman are very meaningful:
those who converse with one another do so cooperatively, like tennis players volleying genially and interminably as they practice. Those who engage in dialogue do so collaboratively, like law enforcement officers working together on the same case. The aim of those who volley is to extend the rally for as long as possible. The aim of the officers is to resolve the case in as short a time as possible (p. 88).
The comparison with the thesis of H. Paul Grice and Ruth L. Saw also helps Lipman to focus some characteristics of dialogue in P4C. It is governed much more markedly by the same logic of conversation, especially by the “implicature” theorised by Grice. The latter corresponds to what is intended by the speaker in addition to the sentence uttered and is made possible by the “cooperative principle”, i.e. by the participants’ sharing of “the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which [they] are engaged” (Grice, 1967/1975, p. 45). The dialogue of the community of inquiry – which, from a pragmatist standpoint, is connoted as a verbal act aimed at a purpose – distances itself from the non-manipulative and autotelic character
– as if it were a pure art form – that according to Saw (1962) distinguishes the conversation, which always implies a symmetrical cooperation. Now, there is no doubt that in P4C the dialogue is aimed at a shared research that goes where the argument leads, and it is also possible that participants use rhetoric to convince others about the correctness of their arguments. However, it is equally certain that the ethical requirement of equality indicated by Saw is always applied: as Lipman says in the words of Martin Buber, “each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being, and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them” (Buber, 1929/1947, p. 19, quoted by Lipman, 2003, p. 91).
3.3. Philosophical counselling
The question of equality in the relationship with the client is the subject of wide debate also among philosophical counsellors, depending on their different ways of understanding the dialogue put in place during their professional activity. The plurality of theoretical positions in this regard can be schematically brought back to two main poles, in relation to the objective pursued and to the method adopted in philosophical counselling. These approaches are virtually the extremes of a linear segment along which is possible to place the different theoreticians and practitioners of
definition: the positions that can be identified along it, even when very far away from each other, are still related to some element that is specific to the alternative position. What I am about to outline, in short, should not be understood as a clear-cut distinction.
On the one hand it is possible to observe philosophical counselling as a profession in the strong sense, focused so much on the problem posed by the client that it takes the latter, along with the client’s well-being, as its main objective. Indeed, there is no lack of philosophical counsellors who claim to exercise a form of therapy, intended as a treatment aimed at healing a given pathology, although the latter is to be understood sui generis. This is the case, for example, with philosophical midwifery, a dialectical-relational psychotherapy theorised by Pierre Grimes and clinically applied by him together with Regina L. Uliana (1998), or with logic-based therapy (LBT), a cognitive approach to philosophical counselling developed and practised by Elliot D. Cohen (2013), or else with Tim LeBon’s wise therapy (2001), which aims to help clients on topics such as right and wrong, emotions and reason, the meaning of life. In these philosophical practices what prevails is an exercise of the λόγος as critical thinking, where the philosophical
counsellor offers essentially logical tools: among other things, this
counselling unmasks and corrects argumentative fallacies and false beliefs (the “pathologos” – as Grimes and Uliana call them), it analyses concepts and the assumptions that found them, formulates correct (that is, rationally justified) judgments, invites the client to embrace them on a noetic level and
to confirm them in experience. Cohen summarises the highlights of his professional practice as follows:
LBT regards critical thinking as therapeutic. It distinguishes between repressed thoughts rooted in the subconscious and suppressed premised assumed in enthymematic emotional reasoning. It embraces a dynamic process that identifies emotional and behavioral disturbances deduced from irrational rules and/or reports; uncovers and exposes troublesome, suppressed premises; refutes self-destructive emotional reasoning; constructs corrective antidotal reasoning; and overcomes the inertia of cognitive dissonance through cultivation and rational exercise of willpower (2003, p. 47).
It is evident that in such a philosophical-consultative perspective, dialogue can only be considered asymmetrical, directive, oriented towards the pursuit of a goal that, although shared with the client, mainly acts as a guiding light for the counsellor. In this sense, the particular position expressed by Peter B. Raabe deserves to be pointed out. His four-stage method, in fact, after an initial “free-floating” where the philosophical counsellor practices a
“maieutic listening (…) in such a way that it helps the one being listened to ‘give birth’ to her thoughts and ideas” (2001, pp. 129–130), provides not only the “immediate problem resolution” (p. 136), but also – something almost unique in the specialised literature – the teaching of “critical thinking
skills, ethical decision-making strategies, philosophical analyses” “as an intentional act” (pp. 150, 146). The author believes that in this third stage, in which the dialogical relationship would be more directive but also more collaborative and reciprocal, the client can discover and learn “processes, techniques, and strategies of philosophical inquiry”, in other words “critical thinking skills” (p. 154): ultimately, the client manages to handle the
philosophical λόγος.
The fourth stage of Raabe’s method, the “transcendence” (p. 158) – which he compares to the contemplation of forms in the Platonic myth of the cave (cf. Plato, Republic, VII, 516 a–c; trans. 2013b, pp. 111–113) – allows me to introduce the analysis of the second pole and to confirm its relationship, if not complementarity – at least in Raabe’s case – with the first. On the other side of the virtual segment, in fact, there is philosophical counselling as a way of life, aimed at transformation and
self-development, as well as at the attainment of wisdom. In the words of Pierre Hadot, a reference point for many philosophical counsellors, the latter is “a state of complete liberation from the passions, utter lucidity, knowledge of ourselves and of the world” (1995, p. 103). The philosophical dialogue between the counsellor and his or her guest or visitor thus presents itself as a “free and rational conversation (…) [that is] necessarily non-therapeutic” (Achenbach, 1982/2010c, p. 130): the two people do not interact based on specific roles and the following authority principle; the difference in their competences is deemed irrelevant, because their human dignity – rational
and ethical – is the same. What happens is that two people share a time and a space in which they can clarify problems with a cognitive interest that is never submitted to any type of pre-established goal. In this regard,
Achenbach says that he addresses – and usually with success – the “thing in itself” (die Sache selbst), which “proves contradictory and starts moving and developing further: the thing becomes ‘dialectic’. (…) It is the hermeneutic eros, which ‘penetrates’ the thing and transmits to it the impulse to self-explication” (p. 134).
Critical thinking is still part of this pole, but the focus here is on personal Weltanschauung and on ideas about universal and fundamental life-issues, openly discussed from a philosophical standpoint. Ran Lahav is the representative of this position par excellence, and the direction he has been following in the past few years is revealing. He has been promoting
philosophical companionship as an ἀγορά for philosophical practitioners (in
the broad sense, without distinguishing between counsellors and clients) aspiring to go beyond the surface of things, i.e. to deep philosophy:
they think and interact not from a limited or superficial part of
themselves – from their thinking patterns, from their opinions, or from their analytic mind. Rather, they attempt to give voice to their
inwardness. (…) Companions think and converse in togetherness. Instead of thinking about each other’s ideas, they think with each other. (…) Metaphorically, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, instead of facing
each other with their separate opinions. (…) Companions are also in togetherness with the philosophical text or idea. They resonate with it instead of agreeing or disagreeing with it (2016a, p. 16).
Thus philosophical dialogue, in an experientially and ethically authentic sense, becomes a way of “listening from our inner silence”, “giving voice”, “condensed speech”, “resonating with other” (p. 53), because what matters is indeed the polyphony of ideas and philosophical views that people can produce, much like the musicians of a jazz band. In short, this is the almost paradoxical situation of a philosophical dialogue where the dynamic is not directed by anyone in particular, but it itself leads the people along the path of the λόγος, between the voices and silences that mark thought when it takes the shape of words.
3.4. Café-philo
In the café-philo it is also possible to see a progressive movement of thinking, both collective and individual (especially when the participants become habitués), but it is always guided, or at least supported, by the facilitator. The latter tunes up the philosophical dialogue and harmonizes it, juggling between the risk of intellectualism and that of chitchat, and – which is even more dangerous – that of “falling into the public disclosure of personal problems” (Sautet, 1995, p. 30). Often, in fact, dialogue starts from
the experiences of the participants and winds through them, as they are required to justify a judgment or to support a statement, but it is always the facilitator who manages the interventions, reformulating them and
commenting on them mostly on the basis of his or her own system of thought and knowledge. The facilitator identifies the concepts and principles, clarifies the meaning of the terms, structures the issues under discussion, establishes links between ideas, requires supporting arguments, questions common opinions and ideologies, introduces
historical-philosophical notions, etc.: in other words, he or she makes full use of his or her philosophical tools.
The facilitator, with his or her unique skills, shapes the dialogue that unfolds in the café-philo, to the point that the latter can be interpreted differently according to the moderator, similarly to what happens with philosophical counselling. Moreover, some wonder if the café-philo should be seen as the “improvisation” of a “one-person show”, whose protagonist is comparable to a jazz musician or a “conductor who knows the score, the instruments and the interpreters”, with the latter therefore being at his service (Blanchard, 2004). This improvisation, which is inevitable when the subject is chosen by the patrons at the café, also has the benefit – says Sautet – of putting the facilitator on the same level as the participants, since “the topics of reflection (...) are imposed [on him] just as they are imposed on others, in everyday life” (1995, p. 40). This does not mean, however, that the facilitator is caught off guard, because he or she always plays smart and
brings the question back under discussion, aiming to go deeper into it rather than to solve it.
Whatever the facilitator’s style, the dialogue in the café-philo offers the interlocutors the opportunity to fully experience some dimensions of
philosophising, drawing from it, last but not least, distraction or even entertainment. In this regard, I would refer the reader to an essay I wrote together with Guido Brivio (2016), in which we examined the specific characteristics of dialogue in the café-philo both from a theoretical point of view and based on the results of the experimental research
“café-philo@DIDEROT” (http://www.diderot.unito.it/) conducted within the Progetto Diderot of the Fondazione CRT. The characteristics we noted include: (1) discursive rationality and the harmonious play of the faculties, supported and given purpose by the λογιστικόν, able to comprehend them, that is, to gather them and keep them together; (2) the critical exercise of λόγον διδόναι (see supra, p. 9); (3) the search and attribution of meaning structuring the Weltanschauung of single participants, which should be considered – si parva licet – as their individual philosophical baggage; (4) and even a philosophical way of life, since the dialogical practice of café-philo rediscovers a café-philosophy of and for the living subject, favouring its actual understanding, beyond mere intellectual cognition.
4. Διάλογος: transcendentality and transcendence of “between”
To conclude, I would like to highlight, albeit fleetingly, the διά, the
Zwischen, the “between” of dialogue: this dimension is central to dialogical
philosophy – especially to that of Martin Buber, a thinker often referred to by philosophical counsellors (see, for example, Schuster 1999, pp. 95–101; daVenza Tillmanns, 2005; Lahav, 2008). This dimension, which is not granted adequate value in the specialised literature (with the exception of Lindseth, 2005, pp. 33–66; Gutknecht, 2017), offers the possibility of further focusing on the dialogue that characterises philosophical practices as a whole.
The “between” of dialogue imposes the recognition of a relationship that is transcendentally constitutive of the subjects that are in it, because it is condition of their possibility. In fact, only in the relationship can the other be truly known rather than simply objectified and instrumentalised. The people in the relationship are not anonymous subjects who are facing each other, either opposed or falsely together, but people with a name, present to one another. Only in the relationship is the word full communion rather than simple communication. Although it may seem paradoxical, there could even be word without words, for example in the silence of people jointly
considering a given concept: not speech, but indeed a dialogical relationship.
his own instruments available to the interlocutors, in view of a common search for meaning. The important aspect is that this work of shared philosophical inquiry shows that one is continually referred back to that dialogic relational principle – the “between”. The latter applies on the anthropological as well as on the epistemological level, because
philosophical practices teach us both that we cannot do without the other to understand the λόγος and that we are always transcended by the necessity of a foundation.
On the one hand, in fact, as can be seen from a locus classicus of the philosophical tradition,
thought [διάνοια] and speech [λόγος] are the same; only the former, which is a silent inner conversation [διάλογος, dialogue] of the soul with itself, has been given the special name of thought. (…) But the stream that flows from the soul in vocal utterance through the mouth has the name of speech (Plato, Sophist, 263 e; trans. 1921, p. 441).
That is to say: if from a linguistic standpoint λόγος is the primary term and διάλογος is its derivative, it is only from the latter that it is possible to understand the meaning of the former qua living and animated word (see Plato, Phaedrus, 276 a; trans. 1913, p. 567). Dialogue is therefore intrinsic to the identity of thought, and every discourse can only demonstrate and ultimately be this very dialogue. In this sense, thought and speech, qua
dialogue, imply a structural alterity within them, which in philosophical practices is made explicit by the interlocution with the other.
On the other hand, moreover, in dialogue one has the possibility of recognising the transcendence of the same and of its truth – whatever form it may be conceived in – with respect to the single dialoguing subjects and their individual truths. In the “between” of dialogue, in fact, the subject can grasp, sometimes even unconsciously, that there is something that
transcends him and transfigures the I and the Thou. The individual subject is thus transcended, and this becomes the discovery of a transcendental
subject, one that is shared, immanent to dialogical singularities and at the same time capable of transcending them.
Therefore, this is the right perspective from which to understand the dialogue of philosophical practices: this dialogue is called to recognise and preserve individual otherness and, at the same time, to open up to a supra-personal transcendence, offering to philosophical practitioners (in a broad sense) the possibility of experiencing a transcendent immanence and, conversely, an immanent transcendence.
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