Browsing by Subject "filosofisk praktik"

Socratic Dialogue is a method developed and used for conducting philosophical discussions in a group setting where the participants, assisted by a facilitator, together reflect upon and examine a specific and philosophically interesting topic. The examination is grounded on and proceeds from the participants own personal experiences. The discussion follows a strictly regulated procedure. The method dates back to 20th century Germany to philosophers Leonard Nelson and, later, Gustav Heckmann both of whom acknowledge Socrates and Kant as the main sources of inspiration for the development of their socratic method. Today Socratic Dialogue is commnly taken to be a neutral method, i.e. as being applicable in a theoretically independent and unbiased way. This view, and the implications it has, are challenged and thoroughly discussed in the current study. The aim of my thesis is to deepen and sharpen the understanding of Socratic Dialogue as a form of philosophical practice through expressing and examining fundamental metaquestions concerning the metaphysical and epistemological premisses, conditions and limits of this practice as well as unveiling any possible unclarities they might hold. The origin and the practical implementation of Socratic Dialogue are described and analyzed, and a few different variations of the method - in the manner they are used today - are presented. A large part of the study is devoted to the recognition and critical examination of and the comparison between the different paradigms the method can be coupled with, and to the discussion of questions that thus emerge. The central topics include (i) the epistemological premisses of the method, (ii) the role of truth as a regulative ideal in Socratic Dialogue, (iii) the question of how the nature of philosophical insight and the aim of philosophizing is to be understood in exactly this context and (iv) Socratic Dialogue in relation to theoretical, academic philosophy. Three different paradigms of Socratic Dialogue (the transcendental paradigm, the paradigm of everyday philosophizing and the transformative paradigm) are considered, examined and compared. The latter one builds strongly on the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein, and of the three alternatives it is judged to be the one best suited for Socratic Dialogue. The application of the transformative paradigm could possibly overcome many of the immanent problems the other two paradigms are likely to give rise to. The examination results, as expected, in greater clarity concerning the way the practice in question can be seen as tied to – or to renounce and distance itself from – different fundamental theoretical-philosophical premisses, and the kind of philosophical problems these affiliations might generate. A more suprising outcome is that these links and the problems they cause might be less significant for the dialogical practice than was initially assumed to be the case. This finding is connected with another one, i.e. the gradually deepening insight that practice does not equal 'doing theory'.