Listening-Through-Conversation(alism): Navigating as Porous Listening Bodies (In)Between Meaningful Silences

Abstract

The interplay between listening and questioning, and its implications for philosophising, has been grappled with only in passing. Although listening and questioning are often cast as mutually exclusive, preserving the tension between them remains crucial for a philosophically attuned engagement with others. Conversational philosophy, I argue, provides fresh insights into maintaining and methodising this tension. When considering the encounter between conversational partners as constitutive to philosophising, the (re-)conceptualisation of both listening and the role of productive silences that emerge as (in-)between spaces in conversation becomes crucial. The conversational partners become integral collaborators in cultivating philosophy, creating novel concepts, and sustaining the conversation. But more fundamentally, it allows silence to bloom (echo, reverberate) and for conversational partners to listen attentively. This article argues that the productive tension between listening and questioning can be maintained by rooting the conversation in a novel framework of porous listening bodies. Philosophical counselling, a contemporary movement in practical philosophy, becomes an important conduit for concretising the principles of conversational philosophy, especially through the method of conversationalism. Crucially, this article thus introduces a praxis of listening-through-conversation(alism). Listening and productive silences are repositioned as dynamic, philosophically relevant, and fundamentally constitutive, particularly in collaborative efforts to cultivate philosophy and create new concepts.