Dialogical Virtues and Why We Need Them

Sophistry and improper argumentation can creep into everyday conversations.

Although most of my teaching work focuses on fighting the problem of sophistry in a courtroom setting, tricky rhetoric, forceful language, and false arguments also often happen in everyday conversations. That is why I make portions of my public speaking courses focused on interpersonal communication and small group communication. Specifically, I try to encourage students to learn a set of virtues long practiced in the Western Tradition that seek to foster genuine dialogue and an understanding of another person.

A picture of Raphael's "School of Athens," a fresco in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican

The tradition of focusing on how one engages in dialogue perhaps begins with Plato and his dialogues where he portrays the character Socrates reasoning with a wide range of Athenian citizens on topics like piety (Euthyphro), justice (Republic), courage (Laches), or love (Symposium). Many authors and philosophers (St. Augustine, Denis Diderot, etc.) continued this tradition of writing dialogues, but Plato's collection of dialogues is still one of the best places to go if one wants to see examples of practicing dialogical virtues.

Although these are but three of the many dialogical virtues, they show the spirit of the dialogical virtues:

1. Listen: When you speak to another person, read a text, or watch film, practice active engagement and attentive listening. Understand the other person's term, definitions, and arguments instead of interpreting their communication in your own predetermined categories and ideas

2. Speak Concisely: In his dialog Protagoras, the character Socrates chides the sophist rhetor Protagoras for giving such long speeches that nobody could respond to what he was saying. Learning to speak in a concise manner allows one's interlocutors to actually join one in conversation.

3. Define and Reason: Humans are rational beings. The first act of the intellect makes terms and definitions, the second act produces propositions, and the third act yields syllogistic reasoning. But one can never proceed to the higher forms of reasoning without setting terms and definitions during a conversation.

Are you curious to know what fighting while wearing a suit of armor has to do with conversing well, learning, and interacting with other people? Then read one of my working papers that covers the dialogical virtues in greater detail than this article:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xvGhAPg7NrFW8njMK6F1uTopEbY-_5iE/view?usp=sharing

Acknowledgements:

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