“Every serious man avoids writing.” - Plato

"Comparing ideas with each other, proving them by employing questions and answers—it is by such means that there bursts out the light of intelligence and reason, and this is why every serious man carefully avoids writing." —Plato, Seventh Letter (abbr. paraph.)

Plato is getting at a worry about the written word, namely that it’s “down” and not “up” as in “up in the air.” When I write something down, the thinking goes, it’s in ink, and as such it is a completed thought. It may even be taken as a writer’s final word on a matter.

By contrast, the dialectic, that process of discovering what is True, Good, and Beautiful in conversation with others, who compare ideas by asking and answering questions of each other, leads those engage in it, closer to the sun, as it were, where there “bursts out the light.” The (“aha!”) moment of discovery, clarity and understanding happens together rather than solo.

It turns out that discovery is often more likely in conversation by participants of good will, seeking together. Writing down one’s own ideas on paper (or a blog), on the other hand, can give the impression that a writer’s thoughts are fully formed, and perhaps her final word on a subject. Writing doesn’t necessarily lend itself to mutual discovery, but to a written response, often in the form of a rebuttal. Something similar could be said of monologues or lectures.

Writing, though, does have its place, where ideas hit paper and words are seen by eyes and read by minds, which “take in” the concepts, thoughts, reasoning, and vision of a writer. A blog can perhaps allow for something of a hybrid, where the written word can be commented on, and “dialogue” can move forward, even if just an inch, in writing. That is my hope here. I’m not looking to write my “final word” on any subject, or to be too careful about “getting it right,” but rather to explore, through the written word, the Ideas in the “Great Conversation.”

M. F. Davidson