Defining dialogue : from Socrates to the Internet / Geoffrey Rockwell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rockwell, Geoffrey, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dialogue.

Physical Description:

230 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Amherst, N.Y. : Humanity Books, 2003.

Summary:

This original cross-disciplinary work examines the crucial role of dialogue in philosophy from the oral dialogues of Socrates, through the written dialogues of Plato, Cicero, Lucian, Valla, Hume, and Heidegger, to the present ubiquitous form of dialogue on the Internet. Geoffrey Rockwell's main point is that in dialogue, be it oral, written, or electronic, there is a common mode of persuasion at work. The dialogue is an orchestrated event meant to be overheard. While the author is absent, the readers of the dialogue are in a sense present as eavesdroppers on a conversation scripted to encourage them to judge between the characters and the philosophical positions they represent. Relying heavily on Italian Renaissance theories of dialogue, Rockwell builds on Sperone Speroni's comparison of dialogue to comedy in which there is a mixture of voices, each with its own form and content. He then looks to the essays of M. M. Bakhtin to propose a working definition of dialogue as a unity of diverse voices. This definition is used to show how one can interpret dialogues and their particular rhetoric. Dialogue is many things, but it is principally a designed conversation where opinions articulated in different ways come together into a culture of character in thought. The ideas exchanged can range from philosophical arguments to leisurely digressions on conversation itself. It is a genre suited to presenting how people discuss ideas and how positions are related to character, and suited to surveying positions that can be taken on a subject. In a world increasingly connected by the Internet, there is no more appropriate genre for study.

Contents:

1. The Danger of Dialogue 25

2. The Orality of Dialogue 51

3. The Reader of Dialogue 91

4. The Writing of Dialogue 115

5. The Definition of Dialogue 153.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-221) and index.

ISBN:

1573929549

OCLC:

49711643