The Debate as a Mono-Dialogue – Comments on the Question of Philosophical Discourse

Abstract

It is almost a trite to say that in philosophy, questions matter most of all. Every question begets another question. Its questions are more essential than its answers as Jaspers say. Plato writes about a very important principle in his famous Seventh Letter, namely, the purpose of a debate. The idea of unwritten doctrine has been meaningful for centuries: The ceaseless work referred to here is nothing other than ceaseless discourse, or ceaseless debate. This debate has been interpreted in many ways in philosophy. This lecture analyses the forms of indirect and direct communication (based on the Sophists) and the essence of revelation (Schelling), and concludes that a new form of communication, which we might call mono-dialogue, emerged in the 19th century. Primarily found in the works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, it was not called this way by these authors. Keywords: dialogue, mono-dialogue, revelation, sophists, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard