Notes and What I Learned From: Philosophy as a Way of Life - the essay "Spiritual Exercises" part 2: Learning to Dialogue

This is part 2 of 4 of my review of the essay "Spiritual Exercises" from the book "Philosophy as a Way of Life" by Pierre Hadot.

Learning to Dialogue

Entering dialogue with others and with ourselves is another spiritual exercise.  The process and journey of the dialogue, are perhaps, more important than the answers produced from the questions.

As with most of philosophy, the role model to which we turn our attention is Socrates.  His goal was "the living call to awaken our moral consciousness" (p. 89).  And he accomplished this goal with dialogue.  This interaction felt like harassment to many, hence he was call a gadfly.  His mission is more fully fleshed out when he said:

I did not care for the things that most people care about - making money, having a comfortable home, high military or civil rank, and all other activities, political appointments, secret societies, party organizations, which go on in our city ... I set myself to do you - each one of you, individually and in private - what I hold to be the greatest possible service.  I tried to persuade each one of you to concern himself less with what he has than what he is, so as to render himself as excellent and as rational as possible (p. 90)

He accomplished his mission with dialogue.  Hadot called this "a kind of communal spiritual exercise ... as [an] examination of conscience and attention to oneself."  And not only can we practice this spiritual exercise with others, we can practice it with ourselves.  This will take "extraordinary mental concentration" not unlike when Socrates was so deep in thought, he arrived late to a party once and on another occasion "remained standing all day and all night, 'lost in his thoughts'" (p. 90).  Hadot later calls this dialogue with oneself "meditation" (p. 91).

For good dialogue to exist, the dialogue must keep "an itinerary ... by the constantly maintained accord between questioner and respondent" (p. 91)  By doing so, it forces the dialogue to be "concrete" and "practical" similar to friendly, but real combat.

While an itinerary must be maintained, it can still be a complex one.

Dialectic must skillfully choose a tortuous path - or rather, a series of apparently divergent, but nevertheless convergent, paths - in order to bring the interlocutor to discover the contradictions of his own position, or to admit an unforeseen conclusion.  All the circles, detours, endless divisions, digressions, and subtitles which make the modern reader of Plato's Dialogues so uncomfortable are destined to make ancient readers and interlocutors travel a specific path.  Thanks to these detours, "with a great deal of effort, one rubs names, definitions, visions and sensations against one another"; one "spends a long time in the company of these questions"; one "lives with them" until the light blazes forth.  Yet one keeps on practicing, since "for reasonable people, the measure of listening to such discussions is the whole of life." (p. 92)

Finally, another hallmark for good dialogue is to ensure the participants are willing to be changed in points of view and attitudes.  Therefore, good persuasion is needed - for the "seducing of souls" (p. 92).