The Dialogical Form of Philosophical Practice: Structuring the Discursive Flow in Socratic Dialogue

Abstract

"Based on the transcript of a fragment from a philosophical practice session carried by Oscar Brenifier, I flesh out several aspects of this dialogical form of philosophical practice. First, it is a form of interaction grounded in the interlocutors’ interaffection. Second, the main mechanism of carrying through the dialogic interaction is the practitioner’s repeating the other’s words, writing them down, and then questioning them, thus extracting them from the other’s discursive flow and making them shared objects for an intersubjective gaze. Third, this form of dialogue is asymmetrical: while the other is providing the “content”, the practitioner is responsible for explicating it. Keywords: Socratic Dialogue; Philosophical Practice; Dis-cursive Flow; Discourse Analysis; Intersubjectiv-ity "