Thinking about Thinking: What Kind of Conversation is Philosophy?

Preface

vii preface Living with philosophy implies many hours of reflection about the conditions and connections of the life one lives and the thinking (or rethinking) one performs. How does the practice of thinking relate to a philosopher’s life, and what sort of questions emerge from the alliance between a driven life and thinking thoughts? The metaphilosophical fragments gathered in this collection present a few aspects of the philosophical practice that deserve special emphasis, given that they do not often receive the attention due to all of philosophy’s essential conditions. The selection of perspectives I adopt here does not claim to be exhaustive, nor do I pretend to deduce them as necessary components of a supreme or all-encompassing viewpoint, method, or master plan. Instead, these chapters suggest a more empirical—and thus more existential—approach to some basic questions, which should neither be skipped nor forgotten during further —argumentative, dialectical, speculative, or otherwise logical— meditations. A certain, albeit provisional and incomplete, coherence of the following chapters can be sketched, however, by, for example, connecting all of them to the mutually implicative phenomena of conversation (as supported by mutual trust) and faith (as the basic form of trust implied in all varieties of dialogue and conversation). While chapters 1 to 6 focus on the dialogical character of philosophy in its thematic and historical operations, particularly emphasizing the contexts of philosophical education, friendship, and twosome inti- viii Preface macy, the role of faith and trust remains largely implicit in them. In chapters 7 to 10, the dialogical character of thought is not silenced, but trust, as communicative trust, and especially its religious dimension , takes center stage. Other commonalities between the ten chapters could be underlined, but their explication would lead to similar configurations of trust-supported dialogue. The essays published here have been written, revised, and rewritten over the last twenty-five years, with the generous help of many present and past—and much admired—students. I am deeply grateful to all of them, and especially to Catriona Hanley, Aron Reppmann, Laurel Madison, Jean Tan, Marjolein Oele, Aaron Bunch, Stacy Bautista, Maggie Ann Labinski, Bryan Kibbe, Robert Duncan, and Giancarlo Tarantino. All of them have assisted me with unselfish and skillful patience while beautifully realizing indispensable features of an ideal that has continued to fascinate me since Plato seduced me to philosophy . To them this book is dedicated as a token of my gratitude and admiration. ...