Abstract

The history of philosophy is replete with philosophers who used dialogue form: Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Berkeley, Cicero, Galileo, Mandeville, Fichte, and Heidegger come to mind. Yet even though there has been much research done on dialogue as a literary form of writing, there has been relatively little research on dialogue as a philosophical form, especially by philosophers. What generally distinguishes the latter type of study from the former is that it attempts to link the structure and dramatic detail of the dialogue in a philosophically significant way to its content. Part of the dearth of interest in the topic by philosophers can be attributed to the general attitude that the form philosophical writing takes has little relevance to its content. This collection of essays by three contemporary philosophers should move some to reconsider this attitude by showing how and why Plato, Hume, and Wittgenstein use form in philosophically relevant ways.