This weblog is a spin off from Gary's philosophy.com, which endeavours to reconnect philosophy with everyday life. This post is just to kick things off.

Philosophical conversations is envisioned as a vehicle for an ongoing discussion of selected philosophical texts. At this stage it is not clear what those texts will be. It is expected that most of the material will be sourced from continental rather than analytic philosophy. Though there is a lot of material on continental philosophy posted on the web, there is little online discussion of that material. There is a vacuum in discussing the ideas within their philosophical context. That vacuum is felt keenly in Adelaide, Australia.

The roots of a philosophical conversation lie in the academic philosophy seminar, a "postmodern" philosophy reading group in Adelaide run by myself, Trevor and Ivan a couple of years ago and the current philosophy jammm in Adelaide. What comes out of these roots is a structured small-group dialogue format that gives participants ample opportunity to express their own ideas within the conventions of a philosophical discussion. Those conventions include a loose argument structure through which others get to challenge your ideas just as you get to challenge the ideas of others. The small group dialogue presupposes that participants are capable of autonomous thinking and have a capacity to interpret texts in a philosophical way.

The idea of philosophical conversations as a weblog was suggested by Trevor Maddock. It comes out of his experiences and involvement with cafe philosophy in Adelaide. An organic development if you like. Trevor has said that he will write about this.

The ethos of conversation refers to kicking those ideas around that initially spring from a text or paper; to the subsequent discussion that takes place between those interested, and to the further exploring for related texts undertaken by particular individuals. The emphasis is more on the conversation than the academic debate with its conception of battle, winning and defending a position from an enemy attack. That is a picture of philosophy that has held many academic philosophers captive: gaining philosophical truth through getting the argument correct.

In contrast, a conversation is more an exploring of ideas, an opening up new ways of doing philosophy, understanding what philosophers were trying to do within the philosophical tradition they work within, inventing new styles of thinking.

It is doing philosophy under the sign of difference.

The tech stuff that underpins philosophical conversations needs working on, and it will be tweaked over the following month. Many thanks to Scott Wickstein for getting philosophical conversations up and running. Thanks to Bonyton for help in tweaking the stylesheet template and getting a bit of color.

This post by Jon Husband sums up my feelings about the tech stuff:

"I wish I knew more HTML, I wish I was more a techie geek kind of person, I wish I knew how to do all the cool things I see on other blogs and sites, I wish I remembered all of what I have read and observed over the years, I wish I could remember and explain all the good, pithy soundbites I've come up with that made great sense (to me) at the time, I wish I was smarter and could keep up with all the cool bloggers whose intellect and spirit I admire, I wish..."

We shouldn't worry too much about the tech stuff. There is a toy, mirror, art pattern to technological development. As Jon Husband says, the IT infrastructure is in place and now the emphasis is on what people do with it.

The real challenge is how to make all this online technology work for the people it is intended to serve; and that is fundamentally a social and cultural issue. The cultural issue is a pressing one in Australia. We need lots of new ideas to loosen things up about what it is to be and think.

Philosophical conversations is one way we can start to use computers and online technologies as tools to augment our social and cultural interaction and so counter the way that technology enframes our lives and shapes our subjectivities.

At the moment the format of philosophical conversations is envisioned to centre around be posted a paper/article, and then various people will contribute to its discussion of the paper. After a while the conversation will die away. A new paper/article will be posted.

At this stage it is unclear who will contribute to the conversation. It is envisioned that it will be open to those who want to nurture the philosophical conversation.

The ethos of philosophical conversations is a critical one. The historical context of the critical mode is the hegemony of Anglo-American philosophy in Australian universities and the repression of continental philosophy by those working in the analytic tradition. The critical ethos is critical of the academic style of continental philosophy that has found a niche in the academy, and the divorce of professional philosophy from everyday life. Philosophical conversations accepts that we work within the philosophical tradition and the categories that philosophy has helped to create, articulate and refine; but it takes a critical position in relation to these categories, to philosophy's method of inquiry and its modern metaphor of the tree of knowledge.

Hence it is firmly located within Gadamer's conception of the give and take of dialogic understanding and the openness to the possibilities of developing my situated perspective through an engagement with other participants.

Hence philosophical conversations is located within the ongoing critique of, or confrontation with, the philosophical tradition. That confrontation has historically read the philosophical tradition and academic discipline of philosophy in terms of the presupposed political and social values sedimented in the various dichotomies (mind/body, inner/outer, subject/object, nature/culture, reason/passion etc ) that divide the world up in terms of categories. These dichotomies are taken for granted in our culture and they are usually assumed to be neutral and universal. They underpin the dominant modes of interpretation of social life.

Philosophy renews itself through critique. That is enough to get philosophical conversations started.