The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue

ISBN-13: 9783031400735 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Shai Tubali

Opis

This book explores dialogue as a transformative form of philosophical practice by unveiling the method behind the unique dialogue developed by mystic and thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986). While Krishnamurti himself generally rejected the cultivation of systems and techniques, Shai Tubali argues that there are easily identifiable patterns through which Krishnamurti strove to realize his dialogical aims. For this reason, he refers to this method, whose existence has evaded Krishnamurti’s followers and scholars alike, as the Krishnamurti dialogue. He suggests that these discursive patterns serve to broaden our understanding of the possibilities of philosophical and religious dialogues and further illuminate established forms of dynamic discourse, such as the Socratic method.   Inspired by Pierre Hadot’s revolutionary reading of the classical Greco-Roman texts, the author centers his attention on Plato’s Socratic dialogues and the guru–disciple conversations in the Hindu Upanishads, which fall within the scope of what may be termed ‘the transformative dialogue’: dialogues that have been written with the intention of bringing about a transformation in the mind of the interlocutor and reader and reorienting their way of life. This text appeals to students as well as researchers and suggests that the Krishnamurti dialogue is not only a continuation and development of the transformative dialogue, but that it also amalgamates ingredients of classical Western philosophy and South Asian mysticism. Moreover, this type of dialogue encourages readers to revisit the lost practice of transformative philosophy, in that it reveals new pathways of philosophical and religious inquiry that bear thought-provoking practical implications. 

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Introduction

The dialogical disposition of Krishnamurti’s work

Hadot and the classical philosophical dialogue

Understanding Krishnamurti through the Hadotian lens

The Krishnamurti dialogue and multicultural philosophy

The journey ahead

Part I: The classical philosophical dialogue 

Chapter 2 ‘Know thyself’: Hadot and the conception of transformative philosophy

The ‘organized totality’ of classical philosophy

Transformative philosophy

The communal dimension of transformative philosophy

Sages or philosophers? 

Chapter 3 ‘You have dispelled my doubts and delusions’: Dialogue in classical India and classical Greece  

The dialogical dimension of Indian philosophies

The conversational nature of Greek philosophy

The beginnings of the transformative dialogue

Chapter 4 ‘When people are questioned, and the questions are well put’: Transformative dialogue in the Upaniṣads and in Plato 

Dialogue as transformation

The teacher as a midwife

The two types of transformation

Chapter 5 Dialogues of life and death: Transformative dialogue in Plato’s Phaedo and in the Kaṭhopaniṣad  

Death as an opportunity

Soul-liberation in the Phaedo

‘Know thyself to be pure and immortal!’

Where mysticism diverges from transformative philosophy

Complete and incomplete endings

Part II: The Krishnamurti dialogue

Chapter 6 ‘We are inquiring together’: The dialogical nature of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s work

Krishnamurti as a rebel

The awakening of intelligence

Krishnamurti’s teachings as a living praxis

Chapter 7 ‘Questions to which there are no answers’: The method behind the Krishnamurti dialogue

The birth of a new method

First dialogue analysis

Second dialogue analysis

On Krishnamurti’s question and negation

Chapter 8 ‘The thunder of insight’: The final destination of Krishnamurti’s dialogue

First stage: The method

Second stage: The preparatory stage

Third stage: The shift of insight

Fourth stage: The ultimate state

Chapter 9 ‘Come and join me’: Krishnamurti in dialogue with scholars

Krishnamurti and the life of the mind

Murdoch–Krishnamurti: Trying to ‘build up structures’

Needleman–Krishnamurti: Looking beyond the self’s barbed-wire fence

Understanding Krishnamurti

Part III: Krishnamurti and the classical philosophical dialogue 

Chapter 10 Socrates, kōan, Krishnamurti: Questions as a spiritual exercise

Socrates: Refutation as cleansing

Kōan: Rooting out the entire mind

Krishnamurti: The answer is in the question

Chapter 11 Nāgārjuna, Śaṅkara, Krishnamurti: Negation as a spiritual exercise

Nāgārjuna: The relinquishing of all views

Śaṅkara: ātman is left unnegated

Krishnamurti: The denial of knowledge

Chapter 12 Conclusions and Implications

Main conclusions

Transformative philosophy or mysticism?

Implementing the Krishnamurti dialogue

Bibliography

O autorze

Shai Tubali is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, UK. He has a doctorate in philosophy of religion from the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds. He is the author of the monograph Cosmos and Camus: Science Fiction Film and the Absurd (Peter Lang) and a contributor to the upcoming Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature and a prolific published author since 1996, who has written more than twenty books, including award-winning and bestselling titles, which have appeared in 12 languages. Among his diverse publications, one can find prose, poetry, practical books on meditation and self-development, as well as philosophical treatises on South-Asian philosophy and classical Greek philosophy.