the philosophical dialogue and the forcing of truth

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The Philosophical Dialogue and theForcing of Truth

Daniel Brewer

Western philosophy has its beginnings in dialogue. It is in and

through dialogue that Plato consolidates a technique of argumen-tation, a method of reasoning, and a philosophical system, seeking

to disengage philosophy from what is now called literature, andto

fashion a philosophical discourse that would be proper, distinct,and effective. Yet like all beginnings, this moment in philosophy'sdiscursive history does not mark the sudden, unprecedented ap-pearance of an integral and autonomous form. In attempting to

appropriate dialogue, the discourse of philosophy takes over a formwith a past. Its lineage is suspect, at least as far as the desire fortruth is concerned, for it comprises the Sophists, Menippean satireand the Greek carnival. To turn dialogue into the vehicle for whatMikhail Bakhtin calls philosophy's "official monologue," the at-tempt was made to eliminate the more threatening aspects of itsdiscursive genealogy.' For philosophy to begin, its other and pre-vious beginnings had to be eradicated, effaced, and silenced. Most

notably, that formidable adversary the Sophist had to be barredfrom the stage of philosophy. It is he, through his manipulationof logic, language, and his listener, who undermines the end of

philosophy by exposing its means. For the Sophist, truth is not an

absolute, unmediated by language; rather, it is a by-product oflanguage, the result of a discursive encounter that sets two dis-courses into opposition (as in Protagoras' notion of the dia-logoi),and in which rhetoric serves as an amoral set of powerful discursive

techniques designed to force an adversary into agreement. Philos-

ophy's response to this threat is evident in the moral strictures

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placed upon 'sophisticated' discursive techniques, the distinction

between a 'good' and a 'bad' rhetoric, and the beginning of a re-stricted rhetoric, which by the eighteenth and nineteenth centurieswould be reduced to little more than the classification of tropes.2

If the philosophical dialogue's suspect past can be forgotten, itsgeneric ambiguity or hybrid character remains a problem. In hisdiscursive taxonomy Plato characterizes the dialogue as didacticdiscourse, yet it is the only type of didactic discourse he classes

among the poetic genres. This exception, in fact a major conces-sion, suggests that the dialogue form can never be tamed and nat-uralized once and for all, its poetic function reduced to a didactictechnique. In conceding the dialogue's hybrid nature, its link tomimesis and the poetic genres, Plato points up the way dialogueposes a constant threat to the ideal linguistic purity that philo-sophical discourse would claim for itself. For according to the con-ventions of the philosophical dialogue, in order to speak of truththe philosopher must first stage a fictional conversation. This isthe dialogue's literary-fictional-mimetic side, one of its aspects that

French literary theoreticians of the seventeenth and eighteenthcentury could not accept without strong reservations and limita-tions. At another moment in philosophy's discursive history, whichone could call the beginnings of rationalism, once again the phil-osophical dialogue's hybrid nature was perceived as a threat to the

integrity and purity of philosophical discourse.3 To gauge thisthreat, let us consider Rene Descartes' only-and unfinished-dia-

logue, La Recherche de la verite'.

Containinga conventional

apologyfor

dialogue,the narrative

introduction to La Recherche presents the formal elements of the

dialogue that follows, and at the same time seeks to limit the im-

portance of having chosen this particular form.

Pour cet effet [de rendre les verites que je dirai egalement utiles a tousles hommes], je n'ai point trouve de style plus commode, que celui deces conversations honnetes, ofu chacun decouvre familierement a cesamis ce qu'il a de meilleur en sa pensee, et sous les noms d'Eudoxe, dePoliandre et

Epistemon, e suppose qu'unhomme de mediocre

esprit,mais duquel le jugement n'est perverti par aucune fausse creance, etqui possede toute la raison selon la purete de sa nature, est visitS, enune maison de campagne ou il demeure, par deux des plus rares espritset des plus curieux de ce siecle, l'un desquels n'ajamais etudie, et l'autre,au contraire, salt exactement tout ce qui se peut apprendre dans lesecoles.4







M L N 1237

to do, by supposing it, by subordinating it and placing it in an

inferior position with respect to the philosophical and conceptualdiscourse of La Recherche. We should not be too quick to grantmaximal transparency to the language of the philosophical dia-

logue. To say that Descartes sub-poses iction, placing it beneath thediscourse of truth, suggests that it is upon the discursive act of

producing a fiction that the Cartesian discourse of truth rests. Sucha supposition implies that in Descartes, the stating of truth (le vrai)is inextricably bound up with the staging of an imaginary scene (levraisemblable). The reading of Descartes' text towards which thislatter supposition points would, at the very least, require that were-examine the credibility of this self-styled "honnete homme." Forin supposing (subordinating, discounting) fiction in the name of

philosophy, Descartes commits an act of deception, exposed byRobert. Supposer. (XVIe s.). Vx. "Mettre une chose a la place d'une autrepar fraude et tromperie" Furetiere). V. Substituer, supposition (II). "Ondira a l'audience qu'elle a suppose son enfant" (Cf. Intimider, cit. 1, Se-

vigne).

As far as the philosophical dialogue is concerned, questioningthe rhetorical function of the dialogue's fiction necessarily blurs

any clear-cut distinction between literary and philosophical dis-course. In Descartes' case, this risks turning his text on the questfor truth into a fable, a type of discourse he criticizes in the Discoursde la methode because it causes one to "imaginer plusieurs evene-ments comme possibles qui ne le sont point" (p. 129). This criticismof fables is of course consistent with Descartes' often repeated re-

jectionof

probable knowledgein favor of

thingsthat are

perfectlywell known and cannot be doubted, as well as with his critique ofthe schoolmen and rhetors, who with their "machines de guerredes syllogismes probables" can teach or persuade of only what is

probable ("vraisemblable"), never what is true. Yet this only ag-gravates the problem of the philosophical dialogue, for from a

simply stylistic convention-reference to speakers and place-weare led not to truth but to a discursive and rhetorical practice akinto that of the fabulist and the rhetor, a practice that calls into

question the integrity of the narrative and philosophical subject,the "I" of Descartes' discourse.

The "I" of the narrative introduction to La Recherche refers notto a character of dialogue but to the narrator, the writing subjectof the text. Or rather, the dialogical relation marked by the nar-







1238 DANIEL BREWER

rative "I" is one that involves reader and text. This relation is made

explicit:Ce queje tacherai de vous faire voir ici par une suite de raisons si claireset si communes, que chacun jugera que ce n'etait que faute de jeterplus t6t les yeux du bon c6te, et d'arreter sa pensee sur les memesconsiderations que j'ai fait, s'il ne remarquait pas les memes choses.

(p.880)

It could be argued that the way Descartes is read depends entirelyon how his readers understand the term faire voir. What in Carte-

sian discourse is being shown?What are we made to see? How can

discourse make things be, or be visible, or be visible to us? In LeMonde, for example, Descartes' mechanistic explanation of the or-

igin and workings of the cosmos, he shows that scholastic cosmog-ony is superfluous by showing us a fable, the fiction of a "mondefeint."

Il me reste ici encore beaucoup d'autres choses a expliquer, etje seraimeme bien aise d'y ajouter quelques raisons pour rendre mes opinions

plus vraisemblables. Mais afin que la longueur de ce discours vous soitmoins ennuyeuse, 'en veux envelopper une partie dans l'invention d'unefable, au travers de laquelle j'espere que la verite ne laissera pas deparaitre suffisamment, et qu'elle ne sera pas moins agreable a voir quesije l'exposais toute nue.5

Also in the Discours de la methode Descartes shows more than he

proves. "Mon dessein n'est pas d'enseigner ici la methode que cha-cun doit suivre pour bien conduire sa raison, mais seulement defaire voir en

quelle sortej'aitache de conduire la mienne"

(Discours,p. 127). His design is not to teach but to show, to "faire voir, ence discours, quels sont les chemins quej'ai suivis, et d'y representerma vie comme en un tableau, afin que chacun en puisse juger, et

qu'apprenant du bruit commun les opinions qu'on en aura, ce soitun nouveau moyen de m'instruire que j'ajouterai a ceux dont j'aicoutume de me servir" (ibid.). Descartes' discourse on method issupported by another fiction, its author's strategic self-portrayal,his dessein/dessin. It is here, as Jean-Luc Nancy notes, in Descartes'refusal of the authoritative argument in favor of the authorial ar-gument, that we find the Cartesian model for the communicationof truth: "ce dont je suis seul l'auteur ne peut s'imposer qu'aujugement que chaque je en pourra faire."6 The discursive set-upof the Discours allows Descartes to sidestep the issue of authorityand the requirement of authoritative demonstration, a form of







M L N 1239

argumentation that can be refuted most successfully simply by re-

fusing to recognize the power and legitimacy of authority. Therhetorical strategy for obtaining certitude in the Discours, a certi-tude not entirely free from a certain dependency on others (onthe viewers of his 'life portrayed,' on the readers of his text), re-

quires only that Descartes portray himself, not prove his self, justas the rhetorical strategy of persuasion in Le Monde allows him tofabricate a fabulous world only, without having to prove the work-

ings of a real one.What Descartes wants to show readers of La Recherche are truths

so true they require no master teacher, truths to be sought for with

only "la lumiere naturelle," as the dialogue's sub-title indicates. "Ceque je tacherai de vous faire voir ici par une suite de raisons siclaires et si communes, que chacun jugera que ce n'etait que fautede jeter plus tot les yeux du bon cote...." If, however, we askwhat Descartes wants his readers not to see, turning our eyes fromthe bedazzling clarity of Cartesian chains of reasons and castingour gaze instead on the 'wrong side' of the text, we see a darker

fiction. According to the fictional set-up of La Recherche, the dia-logue is motivated by Eudoxe's desire to justify Epistemon's "highopinion of him, the latter's opinion that he must possess "une sci-ence ... beaucoup plus parfaite que celle des autres" (p. 883). Once

again Cartesian method takes up the challenge to prove itself,7 andto do so it must silence its adversaries.8 In order for the carefreeand untrained Poliandre, "une personne neutre," to be brought toreason, "[range] du bon cote," the schoolman Epistemon must re-

main silent ("sans qu'Epistemonnous

interrompe").Scholastic

knowledge (episteme) must be discarded if good and proper judg-ments (eu doxa) are to have their effect on men in numbers (polyandro). Etymology recapitulates Descartes' claim for method, made

throughout his works. But the silencing of the figure of the ad-

versary, which takes place here in and through fiction, should giveus pause. What of Descartes' position itself? Do the judgments(doxa) of his "science" hold because they are proper, or are theygood because they obtain by decree (doxa), by force? In the fictional

set-up of La Recherche, he dialogue ends at precisely that momentwhen Poliandre, the "joyeux compagnon," becomes no more thanthe dummy for the ventriloquist Eudoxe:

Il y a tant de choses contenues dans 1'idee d'une chose qui pense, qu'ilfaudrait des jours entiers pour les expliquer. Pour le moment, noustraiterons seulement des principales et de celles qui servent a rendre







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bury. At one point in The Moralists Shaftesbury asks why the dia-

logue genre has fallen from favor and appears so "insipid" to "usmoderns." His answer is a standard one: the form's improbabilityand artificiality.9 Elsewhere, Shaftesbury's discussion of dialogue ismore nuanced and of greater interest. In Advice to an Author hetraces the dialogue's genealogy, relating it to a type of poetic writ-ing that antedates both philosophy and dramatic imitation. Theearliest dialogues were forceful texts, he suggests, their force stem-ming less from what they related than from how they represented.These

dialogues' powerwas not

diegeticin nature but mimetic.

"Twas not enough that these pieces treated fundamentally of mor-als ... they exhibited them alive, and set the countenances and

complexions of men plainly in view. And by this means they not

only taught us to know others, but, what was principal and of high-est virtue in them, they taught us to know ourselves" (I, 127-28).

Shaftesbury's desire to find in dialogue the capacity to engenderself-knowledge seems to reflect the traditional humanistic valori-zation of 'open' forms of exchange and inquiry. By its very struc-ture, dialogue would belong more readily than other genres to anintellectual tradition that "accentuates the value of a relatively free,manipulable, dynamic discourse, open to the play of interrogation,objection, digression, and improvization."'0 An understanding ofform, whether 'open' or 'closed,' cannot be separated from its force,from the use to which a particular form is put, in short from the

type of reading it promotes. The formal relation between inter-locutors in the dialogue text, which is the genre's chief trait, is part

of a dialogical relation far more crucial for understanding dia-logue, namely, that between text and reader. Shaftesbury contin-ues, claiming that through the philosophical dialogue,

we might ... as in a looking glass, discover ourselves. . .. By constantand long inspection, the parties accustomed to the practice [of self-inspection engendered by dialogue] would acquire a peculiar speculativehabit, so as virtually to carry about with them a sort of pocket-mirror,always ready and in use.... Whatever we were employed in ... if oncewe had

acquiredthe habit of this mirror we should, by virtue of this

double reflection, istinguish ourselves into two different parties. And inthis dramatic method, the work of self-inspection would proceed withadmirable success.

(Ibid., my emphasis)

The philosophical dialogue is a form of "mirror-writing," provid-ing a reflection of the self and society. Moreover, it is because

Shaftesbury reads the dialogue as mirror, granting it a supremely







1242 DANIEL BREWER

mimetic function, that he finds it an impossible modern genre. Likethe painter, the modern writer of dialogues must strive for resem-blance, presenting his characters "in their proper manners, genius,behaviour and manner." But this leads to an apparently unsolubledilemma. If the writer of dialogues avoids the "ceremony" andbienseances of a "modern" society, his characters will be unnatural,yet if he represents his "fellow-moderns" "as we naturally are," theresult will be a distasteful and unbearable portrait too true to life.And finding no public approval, the writer of dialogue must aban-don his craft. "No more designing after the life; no more mirror-

writing or personal representation of any kind whatever. Thusdialogue is at an end. The ancients could see their own faces, butwe cannot. And why this? Why, but because we have less beauty;for so our looking glass can inform us. Ugly instrument And forthis reason to be hated" (I, 134).

Shaftesbury's discussion of dialogue is part of the classical debatebetween Ancients and Moderns regarding realism and verisimili-tude. If, however, we apply slightly more interpretative pressure

to his text, we see that Shaftesbury's rejectionof

dialogue (howeverironic) pertains to more than the esthetics of a certain classicism.His critique of dialogue is based not only on the form's ability toreflect the supposed decadence of the age, but more importantlyon a doubly mimetic power he attributes to dialogue. The dialoguecan reflect too much. It can contain a kind of mimesis en trop, whichinvolves not only particular concepts of philosophy (such as the no-ble, the beautiful, the true) but also the rhetorical functioning of

philosophical discourse in general, the mechanisms of the literarytext and the relation between text and reader. Shaftesbury too iscaught up in the age-old struggle to keep the philosophical dia-

logue a pure discourse of truth, and the tactics he adopts are re-

vealing.Raising the question of the subject of philosophical discourse,

Shaftesbury would do away with all reference to a writing subject.He sharply criticizes the author who writes "in his own person,"equating him with the author of love-letters, who has "the privilege

of talking eternally of himself, dressing and sprucing himself up,whilst he is making diligent court, and working upon the humourof the party to whom he addresses" (I, 131). Is Shaftesbury merelycriticizing the "coquetry" of modern writers? Perhaps, yet his cri-ticism is made in the name of a writing whose purity is that of anauthorless discourse. He will praise the memoir style of the ancients,







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because "even when they writ at any time concerning themselves,

there was neither the I nor thou throughout the whole work. Sothat all this pretty amour and intercourse of carresses between theauthor and reader was thus entirely taken away" (I, 132). It is in

dialogue, he claims, that this authorless discourse, this completeelimination of reference to a writing as well as reading subject, canbe realized: "for here the author is annihilated, and the reader,being no way applied to, stands for nobody. The self-interestingparties both vanish at once. The scene presents itself as by chanceand undesigned. You are not only left to judge cooly and withindifference of the sense delivered, but of the character, genius,elocution, and manner of the persons who deliver it" (ibid.).

At issue here is less the dialogue form's didactic capacity to leadits reader to clear-headed judgments than whether the purity and

power of this particular discursive form depend precisely on the"annihilation" or rather dissimulation of the writing subject. In thissense the Socratic dialogues are all the more powerful and per-suasive because "the scene presents itself as if by chance and unde-

signed," that is, because a certain discursive position, that of thewriter Plato, is dissimulated. If it is to be effective and its truths

unquestioned, the improper mimetic function of the philosophicaldialogue must be checked. The dialogue may relate the truths of

philosophy, but it must not represent itself. It must not reveal itselfas a discursive machine for silencing the voice of the other, as amechanism of interlocutionary force exerted upon the addresseeof discourse. For this force, which characterizes a rhetorical prac-tice of

language,would determine the truth of discourse as an

effect of reception. Such a truth would be the product of a readingthat had entered into complicity with a discursive mastery thatconceals itself in (the name of) fiction. Moreover, to say that thephilosophical dialogue should be authorless is to say that the dis-course of philosophy must be subjectless, that it cannot allow to be

represented any other philosophical subject than one whose pri-macy over language is total, whose consciousness of self is reflectedin discourse instead of being its effect, and whose texts are designedto mirror the truth of an inalienable subject rather than force aprecarious mastery over others.

To write philosophical dialogues is always to restage the end-

lessly same struggle between philosophy and its (literary) other.

Although our discussion of Descartes and Shaftesbury helps to un-derstand this conflict, writing on philosophical dialogue from a







1246 DANIEL BREWER

if we its readers fail to read this classical form against itself, remain-

ing unaware or silent regarding our own always unfulfilled criticaldesire for closure, stability, and meaning. The philosophical dia-logue exemplifies one of the most rigorous types of cognitive dis-course. Yet it can lead us securely from word to concept, fromdiscourse to epistemology, from language to truth, only if we chooseto read classically.

In the indeterminable middle ground between literature and

philosophy the philosophical dialogue may finally have run itscourse. Yet this does not mean that the question it poses as a spe-

cific type of discourse has been resolved. Rather, that question hasbeen displaced. If we have discussed the philosophical dialogue interms of a constitutive yet threatening alterity that philosophicaldiscourse both contains and seeks to contain, it is because in abroader sense this same problematic can be extended to includeall philosophical and, inevitably, literary texts. The philosophicaldialogue is but one response to a situation confronted by all usersof language, poets and philosophers alike, namely, being able to

posita

meaning yet remaining powerlessto

impose meaningab-

solutely. To believe otherwise is to desire a restored classicism anda timeless unity of true meaning, and perhaps even a guiltlessrepression of all that would threaten them. The last of the masterdialoguers-Diderot, Valery, Blanchot-for whom the distinctionbetween philosophy and literature has little importance, all seek

by means of dialogue not to silence the other but to give it voice,or at least mark its position, without precipitating the dialogue'sfall into monologue. Their texts attempt to maintain an irreducible

difference, or at least postpone the moment of its foreclosure. Forus, today, the pertinence of analyzing the dialogue form is to bemeasured in the extent to which it allows us to grapple effectivelywith instances of monologic, centralizing, centripetal force,'4 toconfront a broader crisis of legitimation and a struggle for au-

thority that defines "the post-modern condition."'5 In the processwe must inevitably come to terms with the critical enterprise itself,questioning the goals, desire, and strategies involved in our read-

ing and interpretation of texts in general.Cornell University

NOTES

I Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevski's Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor:Ardis, 1973). For other analyses of this moment in philosophy's discursive history,





the philosophical dialogue and the forcing of truth

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