ACTION

"If you permit appeals to unity to bring an end to criticism, you endanger not only our liberty, but even its future existence.”--Robert Taft

“It was the Sophists, as opposed to Aristotle, who placed a higher value on whether a statement is useful to the speaker than whether it is an accurate description of reality.”---John D. Mueller

“…a contemptuous and over-confident person derives too little benefit from a speaker, an enthusiastic and guileless admirer derives too much injury.”---Plutarch

Integrity in the pursuit of truth means that one must submit oneself to dialogue with others to find out whether one is right. The purpose of dialogue then, properly pursued, isn’t to undermine the truth in order to find common ground in order to make converts. Neither is approval of a partner’s preconceived notions a prerequisite for entering into dialogue.

Effective dialogue has many variations. For John Adams it was to confront, argue, shout, rant, and then to embrace, intimacy-trumping ideology. For Thomas Jefferson it was to evade, maintain pretenses, to avoid debate, then convinced himself that all was well, letting ideology trump intimacy.

The concept of dialogue in practice often has the effect of leaving all questions permanently unresolved and relatively meager results.  But friends are those who love each other in the truth and seek mutual growth in the truth. We typically don't look for what is, we look for how do I do it. So it helps to make friends with people in order to be able to discuss things with them, because sometimes you have to say things that are uncomfortable, and if you don't have that friendship, the discussion doesn't work.

Those who are truly interested in engaging in honest/effective dialogue instead, in order to seek truths about our world, are going to need a lot more fortitude than many of the well intentioned platitudes about dialogue imply(1). They’re going to have to be ready to hear things that make them uncomfortable, to have courage and patience and they’re going to have to “take offense” a lot less often (“taking offense” being the usual response du jour for nearly everything that challenges one’s assumptions, presuppositions and current views). To recognize that the mere presence of a particular rhetoric cannot automatically be used to impugn theoretical and factual truths.  Only when there is such a shared love of truth can there be a true dialogue.

For when we deny our opponents a forum to honestly speak, we haven’t defeated their arguments or changed their minds, we’ve merely forced their views underground. Replacing the evaluation of an argument on its intrinsic merits of evidence with ad hominem attacks is a form to primitive intellectual tribalism, where knowledge and reason degenerate into a riot of subjectivism and absurdities. Such action is the hallmark of the self-assertion of the Nietzscheian will, with nothing to pursue but the satisfaction of its own appetites and power. And power such obtained easily devolves into a lawless attempt at domination.

The correct path then is to treat humans as beings of both intellect and appetite, fallen yes but, capable of great understanding, in need of guidance in the disciplines necessary to the virtue of truth.  In the words of Pope Benedict then, from his Caritas in Veritate: Truth needs to be sought, found and expressed within the economy of charity, but charity in turn needs to be understood, confirmed and practiced in the light of truth...a matter of no small account today, in a social and cultural context which relativizes truth, often paying little heed to it and showing reluctance to acknowledge its existence. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality…an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way…It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions…to the point where it comes to mean the opposite...of little relevance.”

In dialectic dialogue the student will get training in thinking.

“My intention is not to prove that I was right but to find out whether I was right.”---Bertolt Brecht

"If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" --John Adams

“The ‘discussion’ method of decision making allows extended debate, further experiment, a weighting of costs and benefits, conflicts of expert opinion, successive resort to different political jurisdictions each with the authority to effect or obstruct change, or plead for reconsideration.” --N. Rosenberg

“The people who don’t think are the ones who never listen.”—Bruce Kasenoff

1. “Censorship’s the strongest drive in human nature; sex’s a weak second.”---Nat  Hentoff

Supplemental Info:

In New Haven, it’s not free speech if you hurt someone’s feelings