By Richard A. Beauchamp
Christopher Newport University

Dialogue is the paradigmatic form of philosophical activity. Even when dialogical form is not as explicit as it is in Plato, Berkeley, and Hume, it is always implicit, with argument and counter-argument comprising the warp and woof of the work. In giving the art of dialogue to the world, philosophy bestows a civilizing gift to humankind, for the capacities implicit in dialogue, intellectual openness, imagination, and the capacity for self-criticism, are necessary features of a humane civil order. Embarrassingly late in my teaching career it became clear to me that an essential part of teaching philosophy should be inculcating dialogical competence by building structured dialogical experiences into my courses. In what follows I will briefly describe how I have been doing this in my introductory courses.

I start by setting forth a general philosophy of education which informs both the study of philosophy and the way in which that study will be pursued in the course. In the introductory paragraph of the syllabus, I claim that to be a human being is to be an active member of a "community of interpretation." While that concept has explicit roots in Josiah Royce, and indeed is a shorthand description of Socrates' philosophical activity, it makes a kind of self-evident sense to philosophical novices. It suggests that philosophical activity (critical dialogue with sustained focus) is related to a basic view of personhood (participation in multiple communities of interpretation) and to the purpose of education (inculcating interpretive competence in multiple communities, e.g., personal, civic, professional). This general perspective suggests that learning in philosophy must go beyond simply acquiring information about philosophical ideas to active engagement with them.

In order to nudge students into the interpretive community, and to encourage the development of their own philosophical voices, I have used "interpretive exercises" in the form of dialogues as the major form of testing in introductory courses. I should explain that our introductory course is taught historically, emphasizing how each major philosopher was mindful of how he/she differed from his or her predecessors and contemporaries. The historical development of philosophical thought is therefore a natural showcase for the conversational/dialogical perspective, as in Plato vs. the sophists, Hobbes vs. Descartes, and Kant vs. Hume.

But the dialogues have more than pure historical interest. In most cases they present issues that are still relevant and vital to current experience. One of the explicit goals of our general education program, of which introductory philosophy is a part, is the development of historical perspective. No small part of that learning is the discovery that tapping into historical conversations can be a tapping into contemporary concerns, that some questions are perennial and have a rich history from which we can gain valuable insights.

Here's how the exercise works. I write the beginning of a dialogue that sets up an issue or question and indicates how two philosophers whom we have recently studied would begin to approach it and how they might disagree with one another. Several examples from ancient and modern philosophy are given below. They all stop (dialogicus interruptus!) after focusing an issue and staking out initial positions, and ask the students how they think the dialogue might continue and how they would interject their own voices into the conversation had they been present. I hand out the dialogues to the class and read through them in the class session before they are to write out their completion. They have a day to study and formulate their own version of the dialogue's most likely development. Their "studying" is thus focused on drawing out the meaning of ideas rather than simply on storing information about the philosophers and their thought. On the test day, they are allowed to bring an outline of their response, limited to one side of a sheet of paper, but are required to write out their full response in the class session.

To give the students some guidance about what is important in their construction of the dialogue, I indicate three things that they should focus on, and that will be the basis of my grading of their work. First, they should make their representations of the ideas of the particular philosophers in the dialogue historically accurate. Their continuation of the dialogue should show a sharp grasp of the philosopher's views and how they bear on the issue that is central to the dialogue. Second, they should make sure that the dialogue actually moves beyond the point that my beginning has taken it, and not get stuck at one place, saying the same thing in different ways. This does not mean that the focal issue must be resolved in the dialogue, but that it should be explored in ways the views of the philosophers in question make at least plausible, and perhaps compelling. Third, they should interject their own voice as an explicit part of the dialogue so that it becomes a trialogue. Moreover, their voice should make a constructive contribution, and not merely play a passive "straight man" that is only a sounding board for the views of the others. In short, the students are to assume the role of philosophers among philosophers.

In the two years that I have used this technique I have had c. 400 students in my classes. My reading of the dialogues they have produced shows that the vast majority of the students have had fun with the exercises once they have "gotten into" them, i.e., overcome their initial trepidation. Their verbal reports on this method of testing have been overwhelmingly positive, appreciative of being called on to do something more than learn "about" what philosophers said in the past. Incidentally, I refer to this endeavor as "interpretive exercises," not as "tests." This underscores the basic view on which my course is explicitly premised, that education is about enhancing our ability to participate more widely and intelligently in ongoing communities of interpretation, not just about "knocking down" grades on "tests."

Of course, I do grade the exercises based on the three criteria mentioned earlier. It is much like grading essays, though more interesting because I can see that the students, for the most part, have become quite engaged in the exercise and are having fun with it. I think that students can do more than they think they can, and, more importantly, more than many professors think they can. CNU is largely a commuter school serving a largely regional student population. The average SAT of entering freshmen is currently around 1050, so there is plenty of justification for assuming that philosophical dialogue is beyond them, especially at the introductory level. My experience has shown that assumption to be false. When students fail an exercise, it is because they obviously have not prepared. Most students perform between the C and A range. True, the quality of writing, clarity of thought, and sophistication of understanding varies considerably, but the exercise gets students engaged in developing these skills, which is precisely what I want the course to accomplish. In short, I have found that students rise to our expectations, if those expectations are reasonable in the sense of having a clear supporting rationale and stretching their current abilities just enough to present an interesting challenge. Since the first exercise produces the most trepidation, I recently announced that I would use it as a "practice exercise," dropping the grade on it in the computation of their final grade if it decreased their final average, but retaining it if it helped their final average. That takes some of the foreboding out of the initial exercise.

Finally, I have found the dialogues fun to compose, and more interesting to read and grade than traditional essays. This is no small benefit when there are lots of papers to grade. It's evident in the majority of papers that students are also having fun and using more of their creative capacity than in more traditional testing methods.

Here are some samples of dialogues that I have used in both ancient and modern philosophy. The first example from ancient philosophy sets up the controversy between Socrates and Protagoras in ways that are pertinent to contemporary discussions between "foundationalist" and "anti-foundationalist" thinking.

1. Socrates and Protagoras on "Man the Measure"

The scene is the "place where souls go" after death, and Socrates discovers to his great pleasure that there are all kinds of people to talk to. Protagoras is among them, and it is he who initiates the conversation upon noting Socrates' arrival.

Protagoras (P): Socrates, I'm so glad you've arrived, not because I wished you dead to the world, but because I've been aware of your activities in Athens for these many years since I left flesh and blood behind, and quite frankly I think you've gone off the deep end. If someone like Plato were to take you seriously there's no end to the damage he could do by developing the ideas you were moving towards. I hope you'll be man enough face up to my criticisms and smart enough to acknowledge the error of your ways!

Socrates (S): I'd like nothing more, Protagoras, than to hear your challenge, but I'll only acknowledge errors that I can genuinely see as such. If I refused on earth to accept stories of the gods just because they allegedly came from an inspired poet, I'll certainly not accept beliefs in this place just because you hold them. But surely you wouldn't expect that from someone who, like you, was dedicated to the rational exploration of important questions. But tell me, what specifically do you want to talk about?

P: Well, Socrates, I fear that you've set back the rule of reason hundreds of years by undercutting the great principle on which it is based. I expressed it by saying "man is the measure of all things; of things that are, that they are, and things that are not, that they are not." The only way that man can be the measure is to develop his own understanding, not merely accept tradition. This is the only way that critical intelligence can get a foothold in human affairs and provide a foundation for freedom of thought and action. The Athens of my day provided an opportunity for that great humanistic impulse to enter history and civilize its development. But you, I'm afraid, have cut it off even as you pretended to be its friend.

S. You must have me confused with someone else, Protagoras! Ask Laches, Xenophon, or anyone else who knew me, and you'll see that I was dedicated to the use of critical reason, that I exhibited this openly for years even to the point of neglecting household affairs and becoming poor (something, by the way that you never did!). It's not stretching the point to say that my dedication even cost me my life, as I, unlike you, did not leave Athens to save my neck!

P: Socrates, calm down! I'm not impugning your integrity; I'm questioning your philosophy. The force of your arguments undercuts the principle that man is the measure by substituting for it the belief the "God is the measure" or "Truth is the measure" or "Essences are the measure", but that in any case "Something other than man is the measure." When you pressed Euthyphro to define the essence of piety, you implied that piety is something other than what we say it is by common agreement, almost as if the meaning of the word were a part of nature, like the earth, air, fire, and water of older philosophers. But, Socrates, don't you see that you're regressing to the older nature philosophies with that line of thought, not progressing with a liberated human reason? I fear for any future civilization that takes your ideas seriously!

S: Now I see your problem, Protagoras. It is really in wanting to hold onto a mushy understanding of what it is about man that enables him to be the "measure." If you are going to give such importance to reason, you need to understand it more deeply than your cryptic comments suggest. I think that I really advanced your idea rather than setting it back, and I provided a way to keep it from becoming an excuse for living from one whim to the next… (How do you think this conversation might have continued, and how would you have participated?)

2. Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius on the Proper Attitude Towards Death

On the evening following a day of fierce battle on the Germanic frontier of the Roman Empire, after having written a meditation on how to face death like a true Stoic, Marcus Aurelius (MA) has a dream in which the ghost of Epicurus (Ep) appears and announces his intention to correct Marcus's views about the correct way to regard death. The conversation starts like this.

Ep: Well Marcus, I'm glad you survived the battle. You're doing a good job as Emperor and will perhaps go down in history as the greatest "philosopher king" of all time. That's why I'm here. I think your philosophy needs a little help when it comes to the appropriate attitude towards death.

MA: Hail philosophical comrade! It is much more congenial to my nature to do philosophical battle than to do military battle, though I accept my fate in the latter regard with firm resolve to play the part that nature has given me. But I must confess, my heart is more gladdened by the prospect of clarifying my ideas. So let's proceed. As it happens, I have just written a meditation on facing death. I see no other way of gaining courage to face it than to learn to love all the deliverances that come from nature, our source and ultimate home. What do you find wrong with that viewpoint?

Ep: The problem is that it's so high-minded (high-brow, "high-falutin", whatever) that most people simply can't relate to it. To be a Stoic you have to give up your love of life and be willing to surrender it gladly to the dictates of an impersonal nature, and you're just whistling in the dark (maybe you should have written your Meditations in the daytime!) to think that anyone other than other kooks will agree with you. Of course, we all die, and we must come to grips with that, but your way of doing it calls for an attitude that takes the joy out of life even before we lose it.

MA: Epicurus, you're too pessimistic about the potential nobility of ordinary people. If you think that your well-known counsel, to regard death as "nothing" since death is the absence of sensation or experience, will really take the sting out of death, you are the deluded one. The reality of death cannot be fended off by logical tricks, which is what your counsel amounts to. At least I appreciate the gravity of death in the mind of the ordinary person, and I propose a radical spiritual deepening as the only way to face our most radical spiritual challenge. Surely that's a more "practical" approach than yours! (How might this conversation have continued, and what would YOU contribute to its progress?)

The following two dialogues are, of course, from modern philosophy.

3. Hobbes and Descartes on God

The scene of this dialogues is a café in Paris where Hobbes is in refuge from Cromwell and Descartes is en route to Sweden to be Queen Christina's tutor in philosophy.

Hobbes (H): Monsieur Descartes! What good fortune it is to discover you here, especially since I have just been reading your Meditations. An admirable work, to be sure, but full of questionable thinking. Would you be good enough to discuss it with me?

Descartes (D): Gladly. I do not leave Paris until tomorrow and can think of no better use of my time than to show you the veracity of my thoughts on how to reach truth.

H: Splendid! What puzzles me is mainly is why you found it necessary to spend so much of your time arguing for the existence of God. You sound positively medieval in your preoccupation with religious belief, and even use the medieval argument of Anselm from the 12th century. That's quite odd for someone who announces that he wants to find a new beginning for establishing knowledge! I'm afraid that you're not really "modern" at all.

D: I'm glad you got right to the point because it shows how little you understand of what I was doing. A careful reading of my Meditations shows that my concern is only indirectly with God, but directly with new foundations for knowledge, foundations that undercut even the most radical skepticism. The arguments for the existence of God are logically compelling, as they must be for my purposes, but best of all they allow me (and all clear thinkers) to be released from doubts based on the possibility of an evil deceiver. Perhaps you should re-read my writings with a bit more discernment!

H: No need to be condescending, René! I understood your strategy the first time I read your work But it's a medieval strategy! And that's the point that you seem oblivious to. Look, you can have certainty in demonstrations of reasoning without a religious foundation, as Euclid showed in his geometrical proofs. My philosophy is based on that. Starting from a self-evident axiom—all reality is bodies in motion—I demonstrate with certainty many more practical things than you ever get around to at all, things like how to bring peace to human society. And religious belief is not necessary. (How might this conversation have continued, and what would you inject into the discussion?)

4. Hume and Kant on the Theory of Knowledge (Epistemology)

The scene of this dialogue is heaven where Hume (who had arrived first) notes Kant's arrival, and takes the initiative to welcome him and begin a discussion

HUME: I say, Herr Kant. Welcome to your new and final home. I assumed you'd join me sooner or later, though while on earth I had no real knowledge that this place existed, only hearsay. It was good of you to give me credit for awakening you from your dogmatic slumbers, but in truth I wish you had kept on napping. For what you claim to be a breakthrough in saving epistemology from radical skepticism is nothing but heavy-handed, high-minded, abstruse Prussian double-talk! Your philosophy no more gets our minds in possession of the real world than mine or anybody else's. You end up by consigning reality to the mysterious "noumena" which our ideas do not accurately mirror at all. That is even a more skeptical conclusion that I had reached in my program of tracing all ideas back to their impressions. At least I allowed that the mind can copy simple impressions, and you even deny that much real knowledge. So I must insist that you have not really advanced the epistemological quandary between rationalism and empiricism at all. What do you have to say to that?

KANT: My dear David, perhaps from this heavenly perspective you have not been able to read my writings with close enough attention. There is a big difference between my account of knowledge and yours. I must give credit where it is due—your philosophy did indeed make clear how philosophically bankrupt the simple subject-object dualism was in coming to understand what we call knowledge. But you did not get out of bankruptcy! I showed the way to get out of that bereft condition with a new understanding of how any kind of idea can be formed and the basis for different kinds of truth-claims. In doing so, I explored new philosophical territory that never occurred to you. For instance,… (How might Kant have proceeded, and how might the conversation have progressed thereafter, including your input?)