In Praise of Real Dialog

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The ancient way of Socrates is new - again:

On the Importance of Learning to Argue - Heterodox Academy

 

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How the piece begins:

"Commentators from across the political spectrum decry the corrosion of conversation, the disintegration of dialogue, the barometric pressure of hostility that seems to rise ever more precipitously with each news cycle. We have lost, they declaim, the capacity for civil discourse.

They are not wrong to do so. We have become a society hobbled by antipathy. We huddle like troops in trenches, eyeing one another circumspectly across a heavily-mined no-man’s land, knowing that to venture forth is to put oneself in peril. It is better to keep one’s head down.

Civility is indeed radically important. We need to be civil so that, in an immensely variegated society, we can live beside one another. But living beside one another is not the end of society. The end, the telos, of society is to flourish (eudaimonia). A truce might allow us to live in proximity to one another. It will not allow us to thrive, however.

In order to flourish, we must engage in truly civil discourse. We must learn to argue."