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II. A
Practical
"Functional" View
of
Socratic Dialogue
The second source for the rediscovery of deep Socratic Dialogue (now
called DEPTH Dialogue) comes from Plato's depictions, in his Dialogues,
of the activity of doing the Dialectic.
The
practice
of Dialectic, or Socratic Dialogue, has extensive background, both from
the ancient documents (Plato's Dialogues) and from my research
in re-discovering its practical essence. I will be presenting a lot more
of
this background here in the future.
Experience
in the Classical World
For now, briefly, the functional interpretation of Socratic Dialogue is
based on highly reputable academic research into ancient Greek mind,
culture and language. In this view there was in the Greek consciousness
that
created Plato's Dialogues no notion of a duality of mind and
body. The idea of a non-bodily mind separate from a body seen as an
object is entirely a modern creation stemming from a tradition that
started after the classical period. Other such dualities that the
modern world takes for granted simply did not exist either.
(For a more detailed, scholarly discussion of this go here.)
No
"Mind-Body Split"
What this means for the practice of Socratic Dialogue is that it cannot
be merely either a mental/psychological process nor a purely physical
or mechanistic process. To be true to its source it must be a seamless
holistic process that has no assumption of a disembodied, "spiritual"
mind separate from
an object called the body.
In fact, all our modern assumptions about
mind, psychology and bodies just won't do. Going back to the original
source leads us to develop a practice that is deeply and radically
different from any practice or theory based on the assumptions of the
modern world.
Radical
Source-Knowledge
DEPTH Dialogue comes in part from a deep exploration
of Socratic Dialogue in the light of this radical source-knowledge.
This
is one of the factors that has allowed it to develop into a practice
that transcends all modern views on what is possible in personal growth
and transformation.
Beyond The
Functional View
The functional view of Socratic dialogue allows us to go more deeply
into just what Socrates was doing when he did what he called his
Dialectic. But this view is only on the level of the reading and
interpretation of Plato's Dialogues. Finding out how to actually DO the
Dialectic means that we have to move into the actual inner dynamics of
it. It means that the functional view has to somehow be deepened into
functional experience. This
is what the modern experiential functional learning methods allow us to
do.
When we have gone deeply enough beyond the functional view into
functional experiencing we will then be able to recover the true inner
action of the Dialectic - of deep Socratic Dialogue.
The next section on The Inner Dynamics Of Modern Experiential Learning Methods shows exactly how this is don e.
Beyond Drama
The functional view of Socratic dialogue is an interpretation of it as
dramatic action. This is a large, important step beyond the traditional
doctrinal interpretations but it does not go as far as needed. The
functional experiential view looks on Dialectic not as drama
but as a form of action that transcends drama. Just as the stages of
development that DEPTH Dialogue guides you into are steps beyond the
formal operations level (see the Overview section for an explanation of that),
deep inner Socratic dialogue is an inner movement that takes you into many levels
of functioning beyond drama and all its forms of enactment.
A schematic look at the development to and then beyond drama would be something like the following:
1. "Sensory-Motor" level - experiencing just the raw data of
experience from the senses, including the proprioceptive,
kinesthetic and body feeling senses. This is, in general, a kind of
hallucinatory consciousness, with very little cognitive organization
in the experiences. Cognitive faculties have not yet been
developed at this stage and experience is a kind of primordial
soup of swirling energies and sense impressions.
2. "Concrete Operations" level - narrative story-telling as a
way of organizing and "working up" the raw data of the senses.
Narration means simply relating the facts. This is either plain
story-telling, as in, for instance, a documentary film, or the
myths, fairytales and legends that characterize childish magical
thinking. This is a leap beyond the previous level of raw
experiencing with little or no cognitive organizing, but it is not
yet the fully rational, conceptualized organization of experience
that we find at the next level.
3. "Formal Operations" level - drama
(tragedy, comedy, etc.) as a way of organizing experience. This is
again a leap beyond the previous level (that of of narrative
organization of experience.) Drama is an "action method" of
experiencing, in which the raw data of experience are seen not just
as facts to be related (narrated) or as magical objects
that seem to bestow a kind of power, but as dynamic forces acting
with and upon one another. The factors and forces of experience thus
come into either conflict (tragedy) or into odd and unusual
juxtapositions (comedy), or combinations and permutations of those
two modes.
A major hallmark of this
level is the unique, self-conscious individual as the central character of the action
events of the conflict (tragedy) or of the incongruous juxtosition (comedy.) Another is
that the action proceeds by a kind of inevitable logic of development from
inception to conclusion - in the same way as
a proposition of formal logic or a mathematical proof.
4. "Creative Generativity" level - dialectic (DEPTH Dialogue
practice) as a way of organizing experience. As with previous levels
this is a leap beyond the level immediately preceding it, which both
builds on that level and transcends it. Dialectic, like drama, is an
"action method" in which factors and forces act with and on one
another. But the mode of acting is different. Whereas drama organizes
experience around conflict or juxtapositions of (seeming) opposites,
thereby assuming a polarization of elements in a sort of experiential
two-valued logic, dialectic re-organizes the same factors and
forces in a very different way.
The operative element in dialectic is not conflict of elements, as in
tragedy, or juxtaposition of elements, as in comedy, both of which
result in dramatic resolutions through emotional purgings. It is irony.
Dialectical irony is the multi-layered, multi-faceted simultaneity
of elements, and its action impels the deeper feelings to resolve the
dynamic tension of the elements through a kind of blending of elements
that spontaneously creates entirely new forms of experience, seemingly
out of the blue. This explains the sometimes almost surrealistic array
of disparate elements and factors all coming at you at once in many
Socratic dialogues. The famous Socratic irony is not inscrutable. It is
purposeful. And that purpose is the disarming nudge of confusion caused
by the playful churning of elements, leading you unawares to entirely
new ways of organizing your experience.
Instead of the two-valued experiential
logic of polarities, dialectic uses a multi-valued and multi-faceted
experiential logic of creative play. This means that instead of a
linear logic of discreet elements proceeding in discrete linear time
(beginning, middle, end, played out as backstory, conflict, crisis,
climax and resolution) dialectic turns attention back to the elements
themselves (as first experienced at the "concrete operations" level)
and examines them carefully (through experiential focusing, as
explained elsewhere)
so as to spread out and open up this most basic level of
experiencing to subtle discriminating awareness. This then allows for a
way of playing with the elements in a sort of simultaneous kaleidescope
of multiply displayed elements all at once.
The formal logic and fixed
linear dramatic structure of experience is broken down, opening up
space for new forms of experience to spontaneously emerge in the
further action of the creative play with the now reconstituted
elements. [You could look on this as a form of post-modern
"deconstructionism" if you wish, but DEPTH Dialogue is unlike this
because it is practically and positively focused. Dialectic uses any or
all the elements of drama, not to construct new dramas but to
deconstruct the whole way of organizing experience that drama creates.]
5. "Spontaneous Emergence" level - deep dialectic (more expansive and subtle DEPTH Dialogue practice) as a way of organizing experience. Refer to the Overview
section of the Introduction for an explanation of this level. Here the
creative play of basic dialectic is transcended. Instead of working on
and working with the elements of experience, as in basic dialectic,
here the experiencing and the play of elements becomes more
spontaneous.
An analogy is that basic dialectic is like playing sheet
music, and deep dialectic is like jazz improvisation. Or, basic
dialectic is like learning to play a difficult game that has a lot of
rules, plays, etc. while deep dialectic is when you have mastered that
level and now you are playing for the sheer fun and joy of it. Deep
dialectic is about sheer fun and joy in your experiencing, and
developing a spontaneous flow of creativity in all your experiencing
and actions.
6. "Dynamic Radiant Beingness" level - transcendent dialectic as a way of organizing your experiencing. Refer to the Overview
section of the Introduction for a deeper explanation of this level.
Where deep dialectic is the spontaneous play of creativity in
experiencing, transcendent dialectic is the beingness, the wholeness
and the dynamic flow of creativity itself, in and of itself, with or
without focus on the forms of seeming outer experience. If basic
dialectic is like playing sheet music and deep dialectic is like jazz
improvisation, transcendent dialectic is oneness with the music itself,
both at its source and in its expression.
Whereas deep dialectic operates
at a subtler and more expansive level than basic dialectic,
transcendent dialectic operates even beyond this, solely at what could
be called the "psychic," "intuitive" and "spiritual" levels (although
these terms are not adequate because they come from a language that
assumes "mind-body" dualism, which is not the case here) and completely without conscious direction or intention. There is no
need for or use of words, thoughts, imagination or focusing of
attention at this level. It is operating at the level that Plato called
(in classical Greek) "nous." This is roughly translated as transcendent
intuitive intelligence, which he says is the goal of dialectic and the
highest form of human functioning, resulting in the highest human
happiness.
Drama As Worldview
The way that Western
culture got stuck on the drama level of two-valued linear logic is a
direct result of the adoption of a wordview based on the philosophy of
Aristotle. This wordview has shaped just about every level and aspect
of Western culture. Even though hardly anyone in the modern world takes
Aristotle seriously or even studies his works, the basic underlying
assumptions of the modern world are thoroughly from Aristotle. The
nature of basic underlying assumptions is that they are mostly if not
entirely unconscious. Therefore it does not make any difference if
Aristotle's philosophy is know or acknowledged. It is powerful anyway,
even the more so for being so unconsciously accepted.
Going even further, Aristotle himself has basic assumptions. These
assumptions underly his whole philosophy. Like most basic assumptions
they are not explicit but they nevertheless pervade every aspect of
what arises from them. Since Aristotle's philosophy underlies all of
customary Western culture, his basic assumptions underly it more deeply
than any other factor, and therefore form it more fully than any other
factor or influence, even though these basic assumptions are generally
unknown and unstated.
Origins Of This Worldview
This is important because, very tellingly, Aristotle's basic
assumptions, that inform and give rise to his entire philosophy, are dramatic!!
If we look at not what he says but at the basic metaphor than
structures what he says we find that the most basic image set that
gives form and structure to everything else that he says is in his
Poetics.
The Poetics is not about poetry. It is about the form and
structure of drama. It is in the Poetics that the whole set of ideas
about dramatic structure that we have even until this day are first
laid out. It is there that the ideas of beginning, middle, end, and of
conflict, crisis, climax and resolution come from. It is there that the
central idea of modern psychotherapy adopted and perpetuated to this
day by Freud and his followers is found, namely, the idea that the
dramatic enactment and spectacle of emotions in drama purges the viewer
of this enactment from these emotions. Thus, catharsis through pain
became a basic tenet of the Western world.
Whereas this is probably a correct and insightful characterization of
the classical dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and thereby
helped to cement the cognitive and emotional leap beyond the narrative
form of Homer and Hesiod, it is not adequate as an interpretation of
the form of action in Plato's Dialogues. Although Aristotle does not
give us commentaries on Plato he does characterize dialectic. And his
characterization is entirely based on his dramatic worldview.
The Drama Of Logic
The dramatic worldview presented in the Poetics results in a linear
two-valued logic. The connection is that the basic dramatic metaphor
says "beginning, middle, end" and the basic logic of Aristotle
says A,B then C. (This is oversimplifying for the sake of space
here, but this could be spelled out in detail.) His "excluded middle"
(something cannot be both A and not-A) is just a variation on the theme
of dramatic conflict (some dramatic factor or character discretely
opposes some other factor or character, but can never be the same, or
even somewhat ambiguous, etc.)
So when it comes to analyzing dialectic he puts it into this drama
interpretation machine and reduces it to a linear two-valued logical
procedure. He says it is a method for the discovery of knowledge by
trial and error. According to him, it is simply a kind of formal logic,
a specific kind of linear logic, this being his highest ideal
(concealing the drama assumption, which is the real highest ideal, the
real most basic underlying form.)
Consequences Of This
All the other branches of knowledge attributed to Aristotle come from
this same source in this same manner. These include mathematics,
biology, physics, political science, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and psychology. The modern disciplines
that go by these names are radically different from Aristotle's sciences but the underlying
(drama) assumptions of all of them remains intact. Every aspect of
customary Western culture to this day is thoroughly Aristotelean, in
this sense.
What matters most here is not these sciences and forms of culture
themselves but the basic error in interpreting dialectic as a kind of
formal logic (without stating it explicitly, but this being based on
the formal linear interpretation of drama.) Plato's dialectic was, and
is, a level of viewing and experiencing (and working practically with)
human action that transcends drama (as explained earlier in this
section.) By reducing dialectic to formal drama logic Aristotle blocked
the way for dialectic to bring cognitive and emotional consciousness
beyond drama. The adoption of Aristotle's assumptions by the modern
world has blocked this way for the whole modern world.
Stuck Education And Stuck Psychology
This is most disturbing in the fields of education and psychology
because these impact humans and human action right where we live.
Dialectic is an educational practice that as surely takes a person to a
leap beyond the "formal operations" drama level of organizing action and
experience, as formal operations takes a person beyond "concrete
operations." The incorrect reduction of dialectic to a kind of formal
linear logic has thus deprived the whole human race of levels of
creativity, expressiveness, freedom and happiness that could have
easily been attained. Instead of this, we now have a world based on
cognitively and emotionally objectifying experience into discrete
"things," elements, factors or forces that come into conflict or
juxtaposition with one another. This is a worldview of conflict,
violence, exploitation and viewing one another as objects to be
manipulated.
All of the violence, exploitation and alienation in the world goes
unabated because of the unavailability of the true dialectic of Plato.
Modern cultural critiques which vividly and correctly point out these
horrors of our modern world and their sources, labor under the same
distortion of dialectic that started with Aristotle. Namely, Hegel took
up Aristotle's view of dialectic and expanded on it, making it a
worldview of the actions inherent in history and nature. Marx and
Engels then took this and "turned it on its head" to make it a
centerpiece of their materialistic cultural and economic critiques.
More modern proponents of "critical theory" (cultural critique based on
Marx and Freud, such as in Marcuse) have taken off from there. All of these critiques have
validity but have had little or no effect in changing anything that
they critiqued. That is because the dialectical understanding that they
adopted was basically and fatally flawed, as explained above.
Freud's Dramatic Assumptions
More poignant is the distortion in psychology, and especially in its
practical application in modern psychotherapy. Freud is the source of
all modern psychodynamic psychotherapies, even among those who oppose
or denounce him. This if for the same reason as stated above in
relation to culture in general. The basic assumptions of all modern
psychotherapy come from Freud. These are not generally stated or even
known. Again, as above, this is because basic assumptions are almost
never known or stated. They are too basic to even be noticed. They are assumed, not known or stated. They are unexamined underlying basic beliefs that inform everything else.
Freud's basic assumptions are from Aristotle!! This
may seem surprising to some, but read him carefully. His basic theories
come from the Greek drama! Consider Oedipus - Freud's Oedipus complex,
and all that flows from that in his psychology and its practice. Even
more to the point is his theory of catharsis. Note in the discussion
above that one of Aristotle's basic doctrines in his Poetics is about
the purging of emotions being the primary intent of drama. Freud made
the purging emotions the main event and purpose of the form of dramatic
enactment that he invented (or re-invented, from Sophocles?)
When
looking at its basic assumptions psychoanalysis can be seen as a form
of Aristotelean drama interpretation. The various schools of
psychotherapy that arose from Freud, as products of either disciples or of
heretics, all work with this basic form in one way or another. Some
have made it more analytical and others have leaned more toward the
drama enactment, but they all have the same basic assumptions, and these
can be found in Aristotle's Poetics.
The Drama In Psychotherapy
What this means for psychotherapy is that people have been dramatized
into various types of conflict-enactments instead of being put into a
much-needed higher mode of true dialectic in which the whole formal
operations conflicted story-world is transcended into creative play.
People have been asked to purge their emotions in the manner of Oedipus
At Colonus instead of transcending into higher and freer levels of
functioning in the manner of Plato's Dialogues. Much suffering has
thereby been kept in place by a basically flawed and ineffectual
practice.
Not only this. Suffering has been needlessly increased by ideas of the
necessity of playing out inner conflicts through all their pain in
order to get from conflict to crisis to dramatic resolution. This is
just needless pain. Putting all that attention and intention on pain
mostly just increases the pain, never leading to a resolution. In one
of his movies Woody Allen tells his girlfriend that he has been in
analysis for 15 years, but that he is going to give it another year,
then he is going to Lourdes. Freud himself referred to "interminable
analysis." Pain and suffering just have no end. Drama is the perpetual
cycle of suffering. In the East they call it "karma." It goes on the
same forever and ever and ....
Dialectic As Psychotherapy Beyond Drama
Plato referred to his dialectic as "psyches therapeia" - psychotherapy
as true care for the "soul" into self-realization. The functional view
of dialectic might put this into practice as some kind of psycho-drama
because it interprets dialectic as drama. But, as explained above, the
dramatic view of dialectic is not adequate. Plato's true dialectic is
not a form of drama but a leap beyond it which both builds on it and
transcends it.
So, the functional view of Plato that says it is a form of dramatic
action is better than previous interpretations in that it sees
dialectic as an "action method." But we must go one step beyond the
functional view to a functional experiential view where
dialectic is seen not only as an action method but as a very specific
kind of action that is not drama. Then "care for the soul" becomes
something that entirely transcends the whole array of problems and
suffering in the modern world, and is a form of "psychotherapy" that
does not require suffering, struggle or pious expiation to the "gods"
of the predominant culture.
(Only CYA or they may offer you the hemlock again.)
To
continue, go back to Where It Comes From.
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