Dialógus és vita a nyugati filozófiában. Töredékes feljegyzések
Dialogue and Debate in Western Philosophy

Summary/Abstract: This paper offers an overview of the way the literary genres of dialogue and debate see the history of Western philosophy through. It starts out from Plato’s astonishing use of the dialogue form to recall the teachings of his master, Socrates, without ever relating it to his own way of thinking. Plato’s debate with poets, rhetors and sophists is the other pillar of the narrative, showing that, from its starting moment, Western philosophy relied on this more agonistic form of human communication as well. It relates the two genres to the form of political discussion in the Athenian agora, claiming that the nature of philosophical thought is just as controversial structurally as the Athenian innovation of democracy. Further examples will be scholastic philosophy in the medieval university and humanistic rhetoric in the Renaissance Italian city-states. The final section of the paper recalls the reflexive nature of philosophy as one of the reasons for the dialogic relationship between its authors, and the need to distinguish between agonistic debate and culture war.

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