In a Conversation the Participants Are Not Engaged in an Inquiry Michael Oakeshott

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In a conversation the participants are not engaged in an inquiry or a debate; there is no ‘truth’ to be discovered, no proposition to be proved, no conclusion sought.

They are not concerned to inform, to persuade, or to refute one another, and therefore the cogency of their utterances does not depend upon their all speaking in the same idiom; they may differ without disagreeing.

Of course, a conversation may have passages of argument and a speaker is not forbidden to be demonstrative; but reasoning is neither sovereign nor alone, and the conversation itself does not compose an argument.

Credit: Michael Oakeshott

Source: The Voice of Poetry in The Conversation of Mankind

Posts where this quotation is embeddedQuotations: Michael Oakeshott (2)


Tags: argument (33) | conversation (188) | Michael Oakeshott (6) | persuasion (11) | refutation (4)

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Conversational Leadership Workshop
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We are living and working in conditions of uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change. This week-long workshop with David Gurteen and John Hovell offers a space to practise Conversational Leadership as a shared, lived experience.


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This quotation is part of a  blook on Conversational Leadership. It is one of many quotations that have influenced my thinking on the subject. Parts of this blook have restricted access. You may browse the pages open to you, but you will need to register and be approved before you can login and access the full site. When you register, you may also sign-up to receive a quotation of the day by email.

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