(for 3 Quarks Daily)
“The constant direct mode of address was a chore. No one will enjoy having this read to them.” Quoting from a referee report on the Nicomachean Ethics misses the point of James Warren’s hilarious rejection letter, but I looked it up because I remember thinking that the fictional critic was onto something, and not just about Aristotle. “I had the impression at times that some kind of conversational or dialectical background was being assumed but this is not at all marked in the text.” Indeed! Why hide the fun part?
I owe several very happy moments to well-executed philosophical dialogues: Imre Lakatos’ Proofs and Refutations, Larry Laudan’s Science and Relativism, and Aristotle’s former supervisor come to mind. I will be ever so grateful to anybody who can point me to similarly exciting conversations. The dialogue form draws and holds the attention: it can let worldviews clash in the abstract, but it can simultaneously delve into matters of detail without becoming boring – these details having been established, after all, to flow not just from the idiosyncratic preoccupations of one contingent mind, but from larger intellectual interests common to at least two separate perspectives.
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