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The Evolution of the Philosophical Dialogue in Relation to its Cultural Context
Gabriel Johnson
History of Philosophy
Throughout the quarter, our studies have sampled philosophers from a wide range of times and places in history, from Socrates living in ancient Greece 500 years before Christ, to Rene Descartes, who carried out his studies in the seventeenth century AD in a variety of places across Europe. One of the main themes of the course, as impressed upon our class at the beginning of the quarter, was the theme of dialogue and the central role it plays in Western philosophy. As we studied each of our subjects, Socrates, Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, we focused on various aspects of their dialogue, including their methodology, their interlocutors, and the time period and place in which these dialogues originally occurred. It is the latter of these aspects, the cultural context, which I would like to focus on in this paper.
Cultural context influences the ways in which everyone communicates, philosophers not excluded. I suspect that the philosophers we studied during our quarter were chosen not only because of their ideas, but also because each of them had a unique dialogical method that appears, to me, to be a symptom of the time and place in which they lived.
Socrates
Art plays an iconic role in our modern composite image of ancient Greek culture and society. From sculptures and architecture to various forms of literature, Greece's “Classical Period”, occurring between 490 and 330 BC (Greece), is characterized as being “regarded in antiquity and in modern times as an authoritative cultural standard” (Greece), and is what comes to mind when most people think of ancient Greece. The Classic Greek statue was “carved on temples, other civic buildings, tombs, and commemorative plaques” (Greek Art and Architecture, Classical), and buildings themselves stood as beautiful monuments of exceptional artistic mastery (Greek Art and Architecture, Classical) to the gods and as symbols of might and sophistication at the height of Greece's dominance in the Mediterranean. Literature literally took stage in the public forum, as “Drama, tragedies and comedies [were] performed as part of religious festivals, [and] became a major literary form during this time” (Greece), and bards recited epic poems, such as Homer's “The Odyssey”, on a regular basis at prominent religious festivals (Homer Biography). Taking these facts into account, one might note that classic Greek art was very much in the public eye, and just happened to be so during the time in which Socrates lived (469-399 BC)(Five Dialogues).
Art serves many functions, one of which is to make a statement, and in doing so provoking conversation. Placing art in the streets of ancient Athens thus created a public forum, the perfect place for a man such as Socrates to carry out his life's work.
Socrates’ theory of recollection is directly related to his search for the truths that would later be recognized as Plato's “Theory of Forms”. Socrates’ theory of recollection states that humans naturally possess absolute knowledge, but lose this knowledge through the stresses of the birthing process. (Five dialogues 110-115) However, we are able to recollect this knowledge, most easily through the process of questioning and examination. Socrates therefore took up this business of conversation in the public places of Athens: “...if you hear me making my defense in the same language I am accustomed to use in the marketplace by the banker's tables, where many of you have heard me, and elsewhere, do not create a disturbance on that account” (Five Dialogues 22).
This quotation is a fine example of the variety of the public places Socrates used to his advantage in his pursuit of knowledge for two reasons. First, Socrates comes out and tells us upfront that he normally conducts his conversations in the marketplace (Five Dialogues 22). Though a simple statement, his choosing to hold many of his conversations in the marketplace, a location familiar to virtually everyone in Athens, relays an important aspect of his dialogical style: His topics vary from love to death, justice, piety, and so on, and he converses with any interested. In other words, the variety of topics Socrates chooses to discuss are as varied as items available for purchase at a marketplace, and the clientele is the same.
“...And elsewhere” (Five Dialogues 22), Socrates mentions, is his other place of business. Though vague, the context of this quote can provide us with information that helps paint a clearer picture of how Socrates’ choosing to conduct his business in public is both practical and self-aware. The above quote is taken from Plato’s “Apology” in which Socrates stands trial and defends himself against a jury of 501 Athenian men on false accounts brought against him by three normal citizens of Athens. In this dialogue, this jury of 501 men serves as his interlocutor, so it seems fitting that Socrates uses “the same language I am accustomed to [using]” at the marketplace place for his discussion with the men of Athens at the courthouse. This clever and carefully formulated statement stands as a shining example of Socrates’ cleverness and sets the stage for the rapier wit Socrates uses throughout the rest of his defense in Apology.
Considering the subtlety and clever craftsmanship of Socrates’ dialogues in conjunction with the physical setting in which they take place, Socrates’ work perfectly embodies the theme of public art that was so prominent in the time and place in which he lived.
Augustine
Augustine was born in 354 AD, into what is referred to as the Dark Age, or Middle Age in Western history. This age is characterized by 1100 years (Middle Ages) of stagnation in areas artistic, intellectual, and scientific endeavor in Western culture, hence the period’s foreboding name. The Middle ages might be more specifically characterized by contrasting its transition into the Renaissance: “The transition from the medieval to the modern world was foreshadowed by economic expansion, political centralization, and secularization. A money economy weakened serfdom, and an inquiring spirit stimulated the age of exploration. Banking, the bourgeois class, and secular ideals flourished in the growing towns and lent support to the expanding monarchies. The church was weakened by internal conflicts as well as by quarrels between church and state… A forerunner of intellectual modernity was the new humanism of the Renaissance.” (Middle Ages) That is to say, The Middle Age of Western culture was characterized largely by struggling efforts to unify politically and socially separate societies by the Catholic church, who ironically repressed the collective conscious of the same Europe it sought to unify through militant efforts to standardize this conscience into a strictly Christian philosophy of life; This repression created a collective conscience subconsciously focused on stagnation. Though the Papal leadership of Europe snuffed much cultural and social development, to say that the period was completely devoid of any historically significant advancements would indeed be untrue.
The work of Augustine shines as a beacon in the Dark, and his work goes recognized as monumental in philosophical, metaphysical, and Christian areas of scholarship.
Augustine was offspring of a pagan father and a Christian mother, and grew up in northern Africa. The life he led as a young man in undoubtedly resonates with the lives of countless young people across the globe and through time, all the way up to our very own time of existence: “At one time in my adolescence I was burning to find satisfaction in hellish pleasure. I ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures. ‘My beauty wasted away and in your sight I became putrid’ (Dan. 10:8), by pleasing myself and by being ambitious to win human approval.” (Confessions 25) Augustine’s meditations on the metaphysical also satisfy an intellectual thirst so much craved for in the Dark Age.
Though a simple title, as one reads through Confessions, one realizes the necessity for the name of Augustine’s meditation. It is a confession of his life to the people, his faith to the church, and his intellect to the Dark Age itself. It is a confession in the most beautiful and multi-faceted sense of the word, but this is not the most beautiful aspect of the prayer.
What made Augustine’s work so relevant and such a classic that rose to popularity during the age in which he published it and remains popular today is the fact that he wrote it down and published it at all. In a period that contrasted heavily to the classic Greek era, relevant ideas were rarely published, not to mention widely circulated; Gutenberg was to be born centuries later, and so was his printing press. But Augustine had the intellect to write and the resources to Confess to the masses.
Augustine’s ideas were not only relevant, but in a period saturated by overzealous Christianity, Augustine’s down-to-earth, real-life confession that won so many people over, served the purposes of his role in the church, and served to unify through publication. Augustine’s Confessions serves as the embodiment of what the Church sought to accomplish, centuries ahead of its time.
Descartes
Europe’s turbulent Middle Age lasted for 1100 years until it became a born-again citizen of the world in the Renaissance, which literally translates from French to English as “rebirth”. To once again quote the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, the Renaissance was characterized by “The transition from the medieval to the modern world was foreshadowed by economic expansion, political centralization, and secularization. A money economy weakened serfdom, and an inquiring spirit stimulated the age of exploration. Banking, the bourgeois class, and secular ideals flourished in the growing towns and lent support to the expanding monarchies. The church was weakened by internal conflicts as well as by quarrels between church and state… A forerunner of intellectual modernity was the new humanism of the Renaissance.” This was the age of Descartes.
Descartes was born on March 31st, 1596 (Discourse on Method vii), straight into the period of rebirth. Descartes had a privileged upbringing and was sent by his father to “[Jesuit] College Henri IV at La Fleche, a newly formed school which was soon to become the showcase of Jesuit education and one of the outstanding centers for academic training in Europe.” (Discourse on Method iiv). After completion of college at Henri IV and completing a baccalaureate and licentiate degree in law at Poitiers (Discourse on Method iiv), he “joined the army of Price Maurice of Nassau as an unpaid volunteer, but apparently never saw combat. He seems to have been more interested in using military service as a means of seeing the world.” (Discourse on Method iiv), a symptom he was able to enjoy in a newly unified Europe. Another symptom of a newer, more easily accessible and unified Europe was the creation of what would evolve in to a postal courier service (Communications Historical Timeline: 1600s). This is crucial to Descartes’ method of dialogue. As the story goes, Descartes found himself in the dead of the winter of November of 1619, in solitary confinement in a stove-heated room, with nothing but his thoughts to occupy himself with. As it turns out, he pondered the concept of truth and the role of truth in his own life, and thus ended up rebuilding from the ground up the structure of his own life philosophy with a precursor to the modern scientific method.
This gave way to Descartes’ famed Discourse on the Method for Conducting One’s Reason Well and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, a work that he was able to publish and widely distribute as an almost direct result of the technological innovations of the Renaissance. Descartes’ famous concept, the Cartesian Dualism of mind and body, emerged from this work. Cogito Ergo Sum: “I think, Therefore I am” (Discourse on Method 18); a seed planted in the fertile soil setting of the renaissance in the 17th century, this dualism gave way to countless revolutions in science and metaphysics, which we directly benefit from today.
Whatever the weight of the original concept, it was only compounded through the achievement of wide distribution and postal correspondence, with whom he was engaged in with other top thinkers of the time. After emerging from the Middle Ages, the Common Era had come full circle embody to Descartes’ dualism; the age of darkness had given way to the age of enlightenment and revolution.
Contemporary Examples and Conclusion
Dialogue is essential to the role of Western philosophy and has gone through multiple revolutions and evolutions throughout the ages. In the twenty-first century, the Western world finds itself in the information age, a new age of communicative advancement with a highly advanced and efficient infrastructure, featuring developments such as the internet, cell phones, video conferencing, high-speed travel, and the freedom to think what it wants to think and share ideas without oppression, all affordably and in the blink of an eye.
Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian-born philosopher and psychoanalyst is one of the most prominent philosophers alive today, and I argue that this is because has taken the propagation of his ideas to a level that fits today’s cultural standards.
Author of multiple books that have been published in a wide variety of languages, creator and star of multiple documentary films, intercontinental globe-trotter and lecturer, Zizek perhaps most importantly uses his critiques on popular culture as a means to expound his ideas on a world that is centered around and fascinated with the subject of “pop” culture more and more with each passing moment, while using contemporary methods of pop culture propagation to distribute his ideas. The genius behind this method of dialogue lies in the irony of his work, as indirectly noted above: using the very capitalist/consumer, pop-culture-obsessed society as a vehicle for his ideas requires a relevant and fiercely up-to-date awareness of pop culture. Zizek brilliantly uses this awareness as his thesis and vehicle, thus placing himself in the annals of popular culture, where his ideas are able to gain the most visibility and popularity possible. It is in this light that his given title of “the rock star of philosophy” (Zizek!) is irrefutably validated.
To be certain, we find ourselves in a new age of public forum, a veritable marketplace on a global scale. Communications and human intellect will continue to advance until the next Dark Age, if there ever is such a thing. In observing the historical evolution of dialogue in conjunction to its cultural context, it is not far-fetched to hypothesize that the day that the next dark-age hits will indeed be a dark one: the day that ideas cease to propagate will be the day ideas run out.
Sources cited
* Augustine. Confessions (Oxford World's Classics). Trans. Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford UP, USA, 1998. Print.
* "Communications Historical Timeline: 1600s." Oracle ThinkQuest Library. Web. 5 Dec. 2009. .
* Descartes, René. Discourse on the method for conducting one's reason well and for seeking truth in the sciences. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett Pub. Co., 1998. Print.
* "Homer Biography." ENotes.com. Web. 09 Dec. 2009.
* Kahn, Charles H. "A New Interpretation of Plato's Socratic Dialogues." The Harvard Review of Philosophy Spring (1995): 26-35. Print.
* Neil Asher Silberman, John H. Oakley, Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell, Robin Francis Rhodes "Greek Art and Architecture, Classical" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan, ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Washington. 5 December 2009
* Neil Asher Silberman, John K. Papadopoulos, Ian Morris, H. A. Shapiro, Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell, Frank Holt, Timothy E. Gregory "Greece" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan, ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Washington. 9 December 2009
* The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. Dir. Sophie Feinnes. Perf. Slavoj Zizek. Lone Star Films, 2006. DVD.
* Plato. Five Dialogues. Trans. G. M. A. Grube. Boston: Hackett Company, 2002. Print.
* Middle Ages. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition; 10/1/2009, p1-2, 2p
* Zizek! Dir. Astra Taylor. Perf. Slovoj Zizek. Zeitgeist Films, 2006. DVD.
The Evolution of the Philosophical Dialogue in Relation to its Cultural Context
Gabriel Johnson
History of Philosophy
Throughout the quarter, our studies have sampled philosophers from a wide range of times and places in history, from Socrates living in ancient Greece 500 years before Christ, to Rene Descartes, who carried out his studies in the seventeenth century AD in a variety of places across Europe. One of the main themes of the course, as impressed upon our class at the beginning of the quarter, was the theme of dialogue and the central role it plays in Western philosophy. As we studied each of our subjects, Socrates, Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, we focused on various aspects of their dialogue, including their methodology, their interlocutors, and the time period and place in which these dialogues originally occurred. It is the latter of these aspects, the cultural context, which I would like to focus on in this paper.
Cultural context influences the ways in which everyone communicates, philosophers not excluded. I suspect that the philosophers we studied during our quarter were chosen not only because of their ideas, but also because each of them had a unique dialogical method that appears, to me, to be a symptom of the time and place in which they lived.
Socrates
Art plays an iconic role in our modern composite image of ancient Greek culture and society. From sculptures and architecture to various forms of literature, Greece's “Classical Period”, occurring between 490 and 330 BC (Greece), is characterized as being “regarded in antiquity and in modern times as an authoritative cultural standard” (Greece), and is what comes to mind when most people think of ancient Greece. The Classic Greek statue was “carved on temples, other civic buildings, tombs, and commemorative plaques” (Greek Art and Architecture, Classical), and buildings themselves stood as beautiful monuments of exceptional artistic mastery (Greek Art and Architecture, Classical) to the gods and as symbols of might and sophistication at the height of Greece's dominance in the Mediterranean. Literature literally took stage in the public forum, as “Drama, tragedies and comedies [were] performed as part of religious festivals, [and] became a major literary form during this time” (Greece), and bards recited epic poems, such as Homer's “The Odyssey”, on a regular basis at prominent religious festivals (Homer Biography). Taking these facts into account, one might note that classic Greek art was very much in the public eye, and just happened to be so during the time in which Socrates lived (469-399 BC)(Five Dialogues).
Art serves many functions, one of which is to make a statement, and in doing so provoking conversation. Placing art in the streets of ancient Athens thus created a public forum, the perfect place for a man such as Socrates to carry out his life's work.
Socrates’ theory of recollection is directly related to his search for the truths that would later be recognized as Plato's “Theory of Forms”. Socrates’ theory of recollection states that humans naturally possess absolute knowledge, but lose this knowledge through the stresses of the birthing process. (Five dialogues 110-115) However, we are able to recollect this knowledge, most easily through the process of questioning and examination. Socrates therefore took up this business of conversation in the public places of Athens: “...if you hear me making my defense in the same language I am accustomed to use in the marketplace by the banker's tables, where many of you have heard me, and elsewhere, do not create a disturbance on that account” (Five Dialogues 22).
This quotation is a fine example of the variety of the public places Socrates used to his advantage in his pursuit of knowledge for two reasons. First, Socrates comes out and tells us upfront that he normally conducts his conversations in the marketplace (Five Dialogues 22). Though a simple statement, his choosing to hold many of his conversations in the marketplace, a location familiar to virtually everyone in Athens, relays an important aspect of his dialogical style: His topics vary from love to death, justice, piety, and so on, and he converses with any interested. In other words, the variety of topics Socrates chooses to discuss are as varied as items available for purchase at a marketplace, and the clientele is the same.
“...And elsewhere” (Five Dialogues 22), Socrates mentions, is his other place of business. Though vague, the context of this quote can provide us with information that helps paint a clearer picture of how Socrates’ choosing to conduct his business in public is both practical and self-aware. The above quote is taken from Plato’s “Apology” in which Socrates stands trial and defends himself against a jury of 501 Athenian men on false accounts brought against him by three normal citizens of Athens. In this dialogue, this jury of 501 men serves as his interlocutor, so it seems fitting that Socrates uses “the same language I am accustomed to [using]” at the marketplace place for his discussion with the men of Athens at the courthouse. This clever and carefully formulated statement stands as a shining example of Socrates’ cleverness and sets the stage for the rapier wit Socrates uses throughout the rest of his defense in Apology.
Considering the subtlety and clever craftsmanship of Socrates’ dialogues in conjunction with the physical setting in which they take place, Socrates’ work perfectly embodies the theme of public art that was so prominent in the time and place in which he lived.
Augustine
Augustine was born in 354 AD, into what is referred to as the Dark Age, or Middle Age in Western history. This age is characterized by 1100 years (Middle Ages) of stagnation in areas artistic, intellectual, and scientific endeavor in Western culture, hence the period’s foreboding name. The Middle ages might be more specifically characterized by contrasting its transition into the Renaissance: “The transition from the medieval to the modern world was foreshadowed by economic expansion, political centralization, and secularization. A money economy weakened serfdom, and an inquiring spirit stimulated the age of exploration. Banking, the bourgeois class, and secular ideals flourished in the growing towns and lent support to the expanding monarchies. The church was weakened by internal conflicts as well as by quarrels between church and state… A forerunner of intellectual modernity was the new humanism of the Renaissance.” (Middle Ages) That is to say, The Middle Age of Western culture was characterized largely by struggling efforts to unify politically and socially separate societies by the Catholic church, who ironically repressed the collective conscious of the same Europe it sought to unify through militant efforts to standardize this conscience into a strictly Christian philosophy of life; This repression created a collective conscience subconsciously focused on stagnation. Though the Papal leadership of Europe snuffed much cultural and social development, to say that the period was completely devoid of any historically significant advancements would indeed be untrue.
The work of Augustine shines as a beacon in the Dark, and his work goes recognized as monumental in philosophical, metaphysical, and Christian areas of scholarship.
Augustine was offspring of a pagan father and a Christian mother, and grew up in northern Africa. The life he led as a young man in undoubtedly resonates with the lives of countless young people across the globe and through time, all the way up to our very own time of existence: “At one time in my adolescence I was burning to find satisfaction in hellish pleasure. I ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures. ‘My beauty wasted away and in your sight I became putrid’ (Dan. 10:8), by pleasing myself and by being ambitious to win human approval.” (Confessions 25) Augustine’s meditations on the metaphysical also satisfy an intellectual thirst so much craved for in the Dark Age.
Though a simple title, as one reads through Confessions, one realizes the necessity for the name of Augustine’s meditation. It is a confession of his life to the people, his faith to the church, and his intellect to the Dark Age itself. It is a confession in the most beautiful and multi-faceted sense of the word, but this is not the most beautiful aspect of the prayer.
What made Augustine’s work so relevant and such a classic that rose to popularity during the age in which he published it and remains popular today is the fact that he wrote it down and published it at all. In a period that contrasted heavily to the classic Greek era, relevant ideas were rarely published, not to mention widely circulated; Gutenberg was to be born centuries later, and so was his printing press. But Augustine had the intellect to write and the resources to Confess to the masses.
Augustine’s ideas were not only relevant, but in a period saturated by overzealous Christianity, Augustine’s down-to-earth, real-life confession that won so many people over, served the purposes of his role in the church, and served to unify through publication. Augustine’s Confessions serves as the embodiment of what the Church sought to accomplish, centuries ahead of its time.
Descartes
Europe’s turbulent Middle Age lasted for 1100 years until it became a born-again citizen of the world in the Renaissance, which literally translates from French to English as “rebirth”. To once again quote the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, the Renaissance was characterized by “The transition from the medieval to the modern world was foreshadowed by economic expansion, political centralization, and secularization. A money economy weakened serfdom, and an inquiring spirit stimulated the age of exploration. Banking, the bourgeois class, and secular ideals flourished in the growing towns and lent support to the expanding monarchies. The church was weakened by internal conflicts as well as by quarrels between church and state… A forerunner of intellectual modernity was the new humanism of the Renaissance.” This was the age of Descartes.
Descartes was born on March 31st, 1596 (Discourse on Method vii), straight into the period of rebirth. Descartes had a privileged upbringing and was sent by his father to “[Jesuit] College Henri IV at La Fleche, a newly formed school which was soon to become the showcase of Jesuit education and one of the outstanding centers for academic training in Europe.” (Discourse on Method iiv). After completion of college at Henri IV and completing a baccalaureate and licentiate degree in law at Poitiers (Discourse on Method iiv), he “joined the army of Price Maurice of Nassau as an unpaid volunteer, but apparently never saw combat. He seems to have been more interested in using military service as a means of seeing the world.” (Discourse on Method iiv), a symptom he was able to enjoy in a newly unified Europe. Another symptom of a newer, more easily accessible and unified Europe was the creation of what would evolve in to a postal courier service (Communications Historical Timeline: 1600s). This is crucial to Descartes’ method of dialogue. As the story goes, Descartes found himself in the dead of the winter of November of 1619, in solitary confinement in a stove-heated room, with nothing but his thoughts to occupy himself with. As it turns out, he pondered the concept of truth and the role of truth in his own life, and thus ended up rebuilding from the ground up the structure of his own life philosophy with a precursor to the modern scientific method.
This gave way to Descartes’ famed Discourse on the Method for Conducting One’s Reason Well and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, a work that he was able to publish and widely distribute as an almost direct result of the technological innovations of the Renaissance. Descartes’ famous concept, the Cartesian Dualism of mind and body, emerged from this work. Cogito Ergo Sum: “I think, Therefore I am” (Discourse on Method 18); a seed planted in the fertile soil setting of the renaissance in the 17th century, this dualism gave way to countless revolutions in science and metaphysics, which we directly benefit from today.
Whatever the weight of the original concept, it was only compounded through the achievement of wide distribution and postal correspondence, with whom he was engaged in with other top thinkers of the time. After emerging from the Middle Ages, the Common Era had come full circle embody to Descartes’ dualism; the age of darkness had given way to the age of enlightenment and revolution.
Contemporary Examples and Conclusion
Dialogue is essential to the role of Western philosophy and has gone through multiple revolutions and evolutions throughout the ages. In the twenty-first century, the Western world finds itself in the information age, a new age of communicative advancement with a highly advanced and efficient infrastructure, featuring developments such as the internet, cell phones, video conferencing, high-speed travel, and the freedom to think what it wants to think and share ideas without oppression, all affordably and in the blink of an eye.
Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian-born philosopher and psychoanalyst is one of the most prominent philosophers alive today, and I argue that this is because has taken the propagation of his ideas to a level that fits today’s cultural standards.
Author of multiple books that have been published in a wide variety of languages, creator and star of multiple documentary films, intercontinental globe-trotter and lecturer, Zizek perhaps most importantly uses his critiques on popular culture as a means to expound his ideas on a world that is centered around and fascinated with the subject of “pop” culture more and more with each passing moment, while using contemporary methods of pop culture propagation to distribute his ideas. The genius behind this method of dialogue lies in the irony of his work, as indirectly noted above: using the very capitalist/consumer, pop-culture-obsessed society as a vehicle for his ideas requires a relevant and fiercely up-to-date awareness of pop culture. Zizek brilliantly uses this awareness as his thesis and vehicle, thus placing himself in the annals of popular culture, where his ideas are able to gain the most visibility and popularity possible. It is in this light that his given title of “the rock star of philosophy” (Zizek!) is irrefutably validated.
To be certain, we find ourselves in a new age of public forum, a veritable marketplace on a global scale. Communications and human intellect will continue to advance until the next Dark Age, if there ever is such a thing. In observing the historical evolution of dialogue in conjunction to its cultural context, it is not far-fetched to hypothesize that the day that the next dark-age hits will indeed be a dark one: the day that ideas cease to propagate will be the day ideas run out.
Sources cited
* Augustine. Confessions (Oxford World's Classics). Trans. Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford UP, USA, 1998. Print.
* "Communications Historical Timeline: 1600s." Oracle ThinkQuest Library. Web. 5 Dec. 2009. .
* Descartes, René. Discourse on the method for conducting one's reason well and for seeking truth in the sciences. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett Pub. Co., 1998. Print.
* "Homer Biography." ENotes.com. Web. 09 Dec. 2009.
* Kahn, Charles H. "A New Interpretation of Plato's Socratic Dialogues." The Harvard Review of Philosophy Spring (1995): 26-35. Print.
* Neil Asher Silberman, John H. Oakley, Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell, Robin Francis Rhodes "Greek Art and Architecture, Classical" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan, ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Washington. 5 December 2009
* Neil Asher Silberman, John K. Papadopoulos, Ian Morris, H. A. Shapiro, Mark D. Stansbury-O'Donnell, Frank Holt, Timothy E. Gregory "Greece" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan, ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Washington. 9 December 2009
* The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. Dir. Sophie Feinnes. Perf. Slavoj Zizek. Lone Star Films, 2006. DVD.
* Plato. Five Dialogues. Trans. G. M. A. Grube. Boston: Hackett Company, 2002. Print.
* Middle Ages. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition; 10/1/2009, p1-2, 2p
* Zizek! Dir. Astra Taylor. Perf. Slovoj Zizek. Zeitgeist Films, 2006. DVD.