Reflection 19
THE POLYPHONIC DIALOGUE
I sometimes receive interesting reactions to my writings, and I am glad that the writers voice their understandings in a different way from mine. After all, my own philosophical voice is only one voice. It comes from the life-experience of one single person. It expresses the way human reality speaks through my particular life, but not through other ways of being. Without other voices, my voice would be one-sided, incomplete.
I therefore regard the different voices of my fellow philosophical practitioners not as contrary to my voice, but as complementing my voice. They join me to create a fuller understanding, a richer music like different voices in a choir. My single voice is never sufficient to express the richness of human reality—just as a single flute would never give voice to a symphony.
For this reason I don’t like to argue about my reflections. I enjoy hearing other people’s reactions, but I am not very interested in whether or not they agree with me. The aim of my reflections is not to convince, but to arouse and inspire—and be inspired. My intention is not to state a universal truth, but to be a single voice in a larger choir. My hope is that other voices would resonate with me, respond to me just as a soprano singer responds to a tenor, and thus enrich the philosophical music.
This kind of philosophical interaction can be called ‘a polyphonic dialogue' (I owe this name to my friend Stefano Zampieri). It is very different from the ‘I-am-right-you-are-wrong’ model that is common in orthodox philosophy. The basic thought here is not: ‘If we think differently, then one of us must be wrong about reality,’ but rather: ‘If we think differently, then together we can express more of reality’– just as a duet can often express more than a solo.
In a polyphonic dialogue my aim is not to silence you by proving you wrong, but to inspire you to voice your best qualities, and likewise to be inspired by you. If I use arguments and counter-arguments, then it is not in order to force you to think like me, but in order that we may be able to help each other clarify and sharpen the ideas that speak in us. Because our common aim is to give voice to the richness of our reality. Our different philosophical voices, if they are faithful to what moves them, if they are precise and coherent, can add up to a multi-dimensional philosophical choir precisely because they are different.
The idea of philosophizing as a polyphonic dialogue might seem strange. After all, the goal of philosophy is to understand—to get in touch with the truth about reality. How can we accept two philosophical statements that are different? If your idea is true, then how can my contradictory idea be true as well?
Furthermore, doesn’t polyphonic philo-sophia mean that we must give up the ideal of truth? Doesn’t it lead to extreme relativism or subjectivism, where there is no right or wrong, where everything is relative, where everything is equally true?
The problem with this objection is that it makes a significant assumption—about what it means to be in touch with truth. We often think of truth as ‘descriptive truth’ or ‘theoretical truth’: Presumably, truth means that we talk accurately about reality. It means that we capture reality with descriptions or theories.
However, there is no reason to limit ourselves to this orthodox assumption. We can seek reality in other ways—for example, by taking part in it, or by giving voice to it. From this alternative perspective, understanding reality means that I assume a certain way of being and I open myself to reality. It is a way of being, not something I capture with words. The role of words is, then, not to define, to enclose, to fix an opinion, but to open me beyond opinions in the companionship of others.
For these reasons, I am sometimes perplexed when people talk to me about ‘my approach’ to philosophical practice, or about ‘my opinions’ on philosophical issues. Do I really have a philosophical approach? Do I have philosophical views?
It is true that sometimes my words sound like categorical statements—about the nature of wisdom, or about the goal of philo-sophia, or (as in this reflection) about the philosophical dialogue. And sometimes I sound argumentative, especially when I discuss orthodox philosophy.
And yet, I don’t have philosophical opinions that I wish to defend as universally true. I write ideas, not truths. I give voice to the words that speak in me, to flashes of realization, bubbles, observations, or in short, to musical sentences in an ongoing symphony. What I say is not intended to be a bottom line, but a phrase in a developing song. Because in philo-sophia there are no final words, only ever-developing music.
And even this reflection, which seems to say something definitive about the meaning of philosophical dialogues, is only a line in an ongoing music.
Why, then, do my reflections often sound like categorical statements?
One reason is that this is my way to inspire—I write in a strong and provocative language in order to stimulate the reader. Also, sometimes I criticize orthodox philosophy in order to encourage us to examine non-orthodox roads. My assertions are intended to question the monopoly which orthodoxy has, and thus to open the door for alternative ways of philosophizing.
But a third reason is much more important: because of the limitations of grammar. That’s the problem with the rules of language, that when we combine a subject and a predicate and construct a grammatical sentence, the result sounds like a categorical statement.
I wish there was another way to construct sentences. I wish there was a special linguistic conjugation, or a special grammatical tense, which could express ideas without making them into statements. We could call it ‘the philosophical tense,’ or ‘the reflective tense’: past tense, present tense, future tense… and reflective tense.
Perhaps we should invent it…
But there is a fourth reason why my reflections often sound like final statements. I said earlier that I don’t have philosophical opinions, and that I don’t intend my words to be universally true. Well, this is inaccurate. In fact, many times I am carried away and I make declarations about what is right and what is wrong, how philosophy should be and how it shouldn’t be.
I admit it. And yet, it is only one part of me that is speaking. It is only part of me that is playing the game of orthodox philosophy, the game of trying to capture the universal truth. I sometimes lose myself to the game, but as I suggested in the previous reflection, the person who plays a game is also greater than the game. The chess-player who is absorbed in playing is also aware that it is only a game. The person who watches a movie knows in the back of her mind that it she is sitting in a movie theater.
In the same way, only part of me plays the game of categorical statements. I am a human being; I cannot be free of all games. I have my cognitive mechanisms and psychological patterns and cultural conditionings and biological programming. They have their function and value, but they also tempt me to pretend that my words are the universal truth, that my single voice is the entire music, that my little chess-board is the entire world. And yet, even during those moments when I play by the rules of categorical statements and theoretical truth, I also know in the back of my mind that this is only a limited way of relating to reality.
In a sense, therefore, while my narrow self is preoccupied with its theoretical games, my broader understanding contemplates beyond the bounds of theories. It thus reaches out to those horizons of human existence which no single universal theory can capture.
This, I suggest, is the philosopher in me (and in us): the understanding which is broader than my normal boundaries, and which is a witness to the vast realm of human reality: to the variety of human games and limitations, as well as to what lies beyond them.
