Thinking about Thinking What Kind of Conversation Is Philosophy [Hardcover]

Thinking about Thinking examines philosophy from a variety of perspectives as a practice realized by persons who communicate with one another while reflecting about the meaning of human life and thought.

Without forgetting the logical and methodological conditions of systematic thought, the author insists on the intimate connections that tie all philosophical texts and conversations to the lives from which they emerge. As product of an individual thinker, who, thanks to individual teachers, has been familiarized with particular traditions of a particular culture, each philosophy is unique. If it is a good one, it is also revealing for manyperhaps even for allother philosophers. At the same time, all thinking is addressed to individual interlocutors, each of whom responds to it by transforming it into a different philosophy. This fact invites us to explore the dialogical dimension of thinking, which, in turn, refers us to the communitarian and historical contexts from which solitude, as well as solidarity, competition, alliances, and friendships in thought, emerge.

This essay in metaphilosophy aims at showing that philosophy is indeed a conversation by clarifying many, if not all, features that determine the philosophical practice as provocative, responsive, dialogical, communitarian, educational, and transformative. Since philosophical thought is also rooted in a dimension of faith, this basic relation is made explicit and concretized through analyses of a particular form of interaction between faith and philosophy. Thinking about Thinking comprises a set of meditations about the dialogical nature of philosophy and the philosophical life. The fruit of twenty-five years of teaching by a gifted and spirit-filled philosopher, these ten meditations gather around the themes of trust and faith in its several forms, including religious faith and Hegels faith in reason. As dialogical, philosophizing entails the receiver who is also a responder. Its focus ilÓC