Imaginary Philosophical Dialogues

How would Plato have responded if his student Aristotle had ever challenged his idea that our senses perceive nothing more than the shadows cast upon a wall by a true world of perfect ideals? What would Charles Darwin have said to Karl Marx about his claim that dialectical materialism is a scientific theory of evolution? How would Jean-Paul Sartre have reacted to Simone de Beauvoir’s claim that the Marquis de Sade was a philosopher worthy of serious attention? This light-hearted book proposes answers to such questions by imagining dialogues between thirty-three pairs of philosophical sages who were alive at the same time. Sometime famous sages get a much rougher handling than usual, as when Adam Smith beards Immanuel Kant in his Konigsberg den. Sometimes neglected or maligned sages get a chance to say what they really believed, as when Epicurus explains that he wasn’t epicurean. Sometimes the dialogues are about the origins of modern concepts, as when Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat discuss their invention of probability, or when John Nash and John von Neumann discuss the creation of game theory. Even in these scientific cases, the intention is that the protagonists come across as fallible human beings like the rest of us, rather than the intellectual paragons of philosophical textbooks.

This book comprises the fruits of much deep thinking for decades on the issues discussed. The book is very largely a summation of the author's philosophical reading, probing, analyzing, and creative thinking involved in critiquing much philosophical literature, and deeply contemplating the implications of all that reading and analyzing. This philosophical work touches on a great variety of philosophical questions; however, the most diligent and persistent analyses revolve around questions concerning the nature of language (where reference and meaning reside), the nature of human (and animal) consciousness, and how it is that we human beings can know anything at all. Studiosus and Scepticus are the two interlocutors (debaters) in this very lively discussion. Throughout the book, they take aim at each other's worldview, and they passionately debate the pros and cons of each issue under the fires of critical analysis. The debates sometimes get into great technical detail, but they never get dull, dry or pedantic. The intellectual passions of each debater see to it that the dialogue never gets unduly bogged down in tedious details and analyses. When Scepticus and Studiosus debate, it never gets dull for very long. However, they do come head-on concerning some very difficult and deep philosophical probing and analysis. Therefore, the reader should be prepared to do some critical thinking, even if this thinking can be kept colorful and exciting.

'Intellectual Entertainments' consists of eight philosophical dialogues, each with five participants, some living, some imaginary and some dead. The dialogues take place either in Elysium or in an imaginary Oxford Common Room. Each historical figure speaks in his own idiom with a distinctive turn of phrase. The imaginary figures speak in the accent and idiom of their respective countries (English, Scottish, American, Australian). The themes are the nature of the mind and the relation between mind and body; the nature of consciousness and its demystification; the nature of thought and its relation to speech; and the objectivity or subjectivity of perceptual qualities such as colour, sound, smell, taste and warmth. Each participant presents a different point of view and defends his position against the arguments of the others. No philosophical knowledge is presupposed.

This philosophical work records an imaginary dialogue by British thinker George Berkeley on the subject of materialism. It is one of the most important philosophical discussions of the eighteenth century.

This captivating book contains a unique mix of dialogues and poems. The dialogues are fictional conversations between historical figures, such as Queen Elizabeth and Cecil, Essex and Spenser, Diogenes and Plato, Dante and Beatrice, and even Oliver Cromwell and Sir Oliver Cromwell. The poems cover a range of topics and include titles like 'Fiesole Idyl', 'To Charles Dickens', and 'The Lover'.

Hosle covers the development of the philosophical dialogue beginning with Plato to the late twentieth century, providing a taxonomy and doctrine of categories.

The essays in this volume provide exemplary readings of dialogical texts in English literature and philosophy, combining literary, linguistic, and philosophical scholarship. Plato's and other ancient writers' use of dialogue as literary form inspired many writers from Thomas More, George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift and Bernard Mandeville to Walter Savage Landor, W. H. Mallock, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Samuel Beckett, Philip Roth or Roger Scruton. From Early Modern literature and philosophy to the periods of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, this volume stresses the importance of imaginary dialogues by providing wide-ranging overviews and detailed textual analyses. Discussions of the dialogical form in Victorianism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism further extend the study to more recent major examples of the multiple functions of imaginary dialogues. Drawing on a wealth of material, this book will appeal to everyone with an interest in the complexities of literary and philosophical dialogues. The volume contains contributions by Christoph Ehland, Till Kinzel, Anja Merbitz, Jurgen Meyer, Jarmila Mildorf, Heinz-Joachim Mullenbrock, Virgil Nemoianu, Christoph Schubert, Hans Ulrich Seeber, Horst Seidl, Michael Szczekalla, and Bronwen Thomas.

The work of Michèle Le Dœuff creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The conversations in this book explore how this philosophy can be enacted and explored, and show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking. Introduced and curated by the late philosopher, Pamela Sue Anderson, In Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff explores themes like contemporary feminism, joy in philosophy, memory, the significance of friendship to thinking and a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary. Le Dœuff's interlocutors, including Penelope Deutscher, Elizabeth Fallaize and Meenda Dhanda, are some of the most significant thinkers in the fields of feminism and continental thought and provide insights and ways into considering philosophy as a profoundly dialogical exercise.