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The Dialogical Path to Wisdom Education  

Maya Levanon

ABSTRACT: In the following pages, I make an argument on behalf of “wisdom education,” i.e., an approach to edu-
cation that emphasizes the development of better thinking skills as well as socialization and the development of students’ 
sense-of-self.  Wisdom education can best be facilitated through dialogical interactions that encourage critical reflection and 
modification of one’s presuppositions. This account presupposes that wisdom is given to dialectical forces. While the paper 
is primarily theoretical, it touches upon my work as a teachers’ educator, which almost always utilizes dialogical pedagogies 
in the belief that these pedagogies are potent platforms for better learning and thinking and thus are more meaningful and 
transformative.  

The idea that dialogical interaction can be a most potent facilitating apparatus for authentic learning and 
transformative education can be traced back to Plato’s dialogues, which illustrate how dialogue, understood 

as a pragmatic manifestation of the dialectical method (Gonzales, 1988),  actually works.  We see how Socrates 
creates spaces where the interlocutor has to pause, reflect, doubt, and then, ideally, reconstruct his or her ideas.  
By so doing, Socrates doesn’t brutally defeat his interlocutors for the petty purpose of “winning” an argument. 
Instead, he gradually disrupt their assumptions by using logical cross-examination until they find their beginner 
mind—a position from which they are able to receive new ideas—or rather re-find their innate, a priori knowl-
edge that precedes but also enables our interactions with other minds, what I am referring to as “wisdom.”  A 
close reading of Plato reveals that dialogue is a way to epitomize dialectic as a method in which the interlocutor 
represents the thesis, that is, existing beliefs and assumptions, and upon hearing these from another person’s 
perspective, recognizes potential antitheses.  After all, “[it] is easier […] if you do not have to invent the arguments 
against your prejudices yourself, but have them presented to you by a person who believes in them” (Russell, 
1968, p. 23).  Finally, a synthesis is formed.  If we recall that dialogue means dia-logos or “through words,” we can 
see that practicing genuine dialogue means putting our thoughts into words so we can articulate our own innate 
wisdom, then  assisting our counterparts in doing the same, and finally working together to assign meanings and 
actual applications to these findings.  This is where the idea of wisdom comes full circle:  it is innate but can 
only count as wisdom once it is being applied and used in the actual world, where human interactions and the 
overall process of construing meanings take place.   

Translating our Thoughts to Others  

I have always loved words; I have trusted them to deliver my thoughts, ideas and feelings to others.  As I have 
grown older, however, I have learned that words should be taken with a grain of salt: their fuzziness, mirroring 
the fuzziness of life, can cause great problems. Words, after all, once vocalized, are no longer private but rather 
move into the public sphere, where actual events and human interactions co-exist, and it is in this very sphere 
that words can often be misunderstood. Indeed, as some of the world’s great wisdom-systems have suggested, 
words are capable of both creating and destroying, healing or bringing evil (Dein, 2002; Gaster, 1971). In Gen-
esis, for example, we read that the world was created by the means of speech: “And God said,1 Let there be light.… 
And God called the light Day…” (1:3-10). For the Greeks too, Logos, i.e., “words,” was the animating force of the 
universe (Beck, 2004). And later, in the Gospel of John (1:1), we read that “[i]n the beginning was the Word, and 



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the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”2  Within these traditions, divine forces are capable of creating 
and manipulating the world with words, and humans can do so as well. In Jewish mythology, for example, we 
find the famous story of the Golem from Prague, a clay-made creature who came to life when the Maharal3 put 
a word on his forehead. Then, by taking one letter away (and subsequently creating a different Hebrew word), 
he took the Golem’s life. 

 Words are the very building blocks of understanding.  From our early stages of development we learn to 
articulate our experiences with gradually increasing levels of complexity until we are able to construct a highly 
developed cultural matrix in which we integrate different ideas and experiences into a shared narrative. The 
process of integration inevitably happens through ongoing dialogue.  Being part of this collective process, we 
need to learn how to make our thoughts sufficiently available to others, and for that to happen, we must un-
derstand the nature of our own thoughts and accept ownership of them. In that sense, through the collective 
process of exchanging ideas, we not only participate in the dynamics of creating meanings, but also improve our 
own thinking. Articulating our thoughts forces us to slow down and reflect, and to trace our patterns of thought 
and thereby see them more clearly. The dialogical act is essential, then, for our development as individuals and 
of the community. which is formed when individuals truly come together.     

From Individuality to Interdependence     

As a collaborative engagement, dialogue is based on a few suppositions. First, the meanings we give to our 
ideas are communal and accumulative, in the sense that meanings expand and shift as more individuals contrib-
ute.  Second, these individuals contribute to the much richer process of construing meanings by sharing their di-
verse ideas, experiences, and thinking styles (Dewey, 1938, 1997).  For these reasons, differences in a dialogue are 
valued when they are understood as a means to advance the inquiry. Despite the differences among individual 
perspectives, some values appear and reappear enough to be ubiquitous.  Realizing this enables participants to 
see beyond moments of difference, which in turn creates the safe-space that is necessary for a collective inquiry 
to thrive. 

Je est un Autre

Written by the nineteen-century visionary French poet Arthur Rimbaud, these words remind us that “oth-
erness” is relative and transient:  just as “you” (or “s/he”) is an-other to me, I am an-other to everyone else but 
me.  Failure to apprehend otherness within, in the form of contested meanings within the self, often results in 
the establishment of a partial sense of self.  We are so accustomed to the paradigm of dualistic thinking, accord-
ing to which something, e.g., darkness, can be known only in relation to its opposite, e.g., light. This paradigm 
has taken over the very way we think of ourselves: we constantly compare ourselves and subsequently feel good 
or bad about who we are in relation to how good or bad others are. But since we cannot really control others, 
we develop an existential anxiety, thanks to which we irrationally and on an unconscious level fear for our own 
existence in the midst of so many competing perspectives. Using this comparative, dualistic paradigm, hoping it 
will help us establish a valid sense-of-self, in fact takes us further away from who we are. As mentioned earlier, 
we begin to overcome this existential anxiety only when we feel confident enough to embrace differences and 
contradictions, especially within ourselves.  Having a more complex, “imperfect” sense-of-self is a reflection of 
the dialectical nature that is at the heart of our very existence: Yes, we aspire to create and live with a balance, but 
we know every balance is temporary, till the next thought/feeling/perception/event occurs and creates a new, 
but also temporary, state of disequilibria. In other words, fully accepting ourselves depends on whether or not 
we learn to operate dialectically instead of dualistically. 

What we see, then, is that for a genuine dialogue to take place, participants need to first bring themselves 
fully to the public place of inquiry, and then to identify otherness and allow it to exist—by refraining from trying 
to change others, and also by practicing turning our own self into an-other. The beauty is that without realizing 



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it, these acts open up for us the possibility of accepting ourselves. By learning to feel safe with others and with 
otherness in general, we slowly learn to feel safe with our inner dichotomies and paradoxes.

Indeed, as ever-changing beings, once we become familiar with the dialectical model, we derive comfort from 
it rather than anxiety, because it reflects a productive way of being-in-the-world. Investigating the world with a 
method of inquiry that reflects what we are, i.e., dialectical creatures, can provide us with ontological security 
–the sense that we are part of and able to embrace the world as it is, which is a necessary condition to entering 
relationships fearlessly, authentically and compassionately. This happens when we understand that though we 
do affect each other, it is not through structures of opposition that put us in relationships of comparison and 
contrast, but rather through a process that binds us to, and calls upon us to take responsibility for, one another 
(Levinas, 2000).  

In order to meet the challenges of wisdom education, even in an inconsistent, ever-changing world, we need 
to overcome the dualism mentioned earlier, which also finds expression within the self through its persona, 
that is, the “face” we choose to present to the public, as opposed to one’s  authentic self. In order to create a 
healthy dialogical environment, founded on genuine responsibility, sensitivity, and care, we need to cultivate an 
integrated self.  In order to maximize the chances of this happening, we need to bring dialogical practices into 
the classroom, at as early an age as possible. In the classroom, the facilitator should also model authenticity and 
integrity while working within a supportive, safe environment. 

Facilitation 

 In his dialogues, Plato illustrated how, although wisdom is within us, we need someone to facilitate our “rec-
ollection” of it.  Because the dialogical journey can be challenging, it requires a chameleon-like facilitator, who 
can alternate roles and responsibilities and mirror the different phases of inquiry.  Ideally, though, the facilitator 
eventually becomes invisible, and the learning community can facilitate itself. This signifies an authentic inter-
nalization of the dialogical process and the capacity of learners to apply it in different contexts.  

By being exposed to different narratives and discourses, learners are given an opportunity to broaden their 
spectrum of possible orientations. This is the beginning of learners’ personal transformation. Further transfor-
mation can occur after the dialogue, where participants can congregate to discuss and share both lived experi-
ences and their interactions with the curriculum.  In this multi-layered, ongoing activity, meanings are allocated 
and the act of learning becomes meaningful.  

Dialogue and Wisdom Education  

Like many other dialogical practitioners, I also owe a great deal to the Platonic noesis, according to which 
dialogue enables us to access our inner self, where wisdom resides. In the current educational system, however, 
this model of what we today refer to as “Socratic Dialogue” is not always feasible.  For dialogue to assist us in 
the delicate process of recollection, we need to remind ourselves and our students that in wisdom-education, it 
is not about winning a position but about coming together to help each other access our innate wisdom  and 
then creating meanings together.  The result is what Bohm (1998) describes as a “win-win” situation. We want 
students to leave behind the model of competition and choosing sides that is currently so dominant, and instead 
to adopt dialogue as a way of thinking and learning that is both ancient and new, both internally and externally 
directed.  

Understanding life in terms of ongoing change and cooperation, those committed to dialogue construe 
meanings collectively, while letting go of the comparative paradigm. Participants in the dialogue can do that 
because they come to realize that they can question and unpack almost any concept or set of beliefs; this, after 



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all, is what the philosophical tradition stands for.  At the same time, after practicing dialogical learning for some 
time, participants come to see that even when it seems that discussions are caught in a tangle of repetition and 
inconclusiveness, if they listen for the gentle sound of dialogue, they can detect progress even in an inquiry that 
seems deadlocked,4 and also develop personally by listening to new views and new ways of thinking to supple-
ment and complicate their own.  

When learners truly listen, they go through both cognitive and social development (Dewey, 1997). According 
to Vygotsky (2002), we develop both social and cognitive skills through social practices. What first may appear 
as a cognitive crisis—when we recognize the limitations on our own perspective and the presence of other selves 
and different views—is in fact where the individual builds new, stronger thinking skills. Internalizing new cogni-
tive “voices” requires a context that allows, even celebrates, new ways of thinking, communicating, and learning.  
Dialogical settings do just that, because dialogue is intrinsically social. As in other social activities, participants 
tend first to play roles based on a particular understanding of their own beliefs and inclinations. Nevertheless, in 
an authentic dialogue, participants are encouraged to switch roles and expand their epistemological repertoires 
so they can employ new styles of thinking and knowing.  In his discussion of learning-communities, Grinberg 
(2005) speaks about respect and trust, which are the premises but also the results of learning through informal 
camaraderie.  Palmer (2003) suggests that mutual respect and trust among teachers, students, parents and princi-
pals is necessary for an approach to education that encourages exchange of ideas and expression of feelings.  For 
this to occur, we must learn the practice of “listening for” (Lipman, 2003). Like a meditative practice, “listening 
for” is about attending quietly while suspending judgments and presuppositions.  It requires participants to slow 
down and carefully analyze their own ideas and beliefs as they apprehend and probe the ideas and beliefs of 
others.     

We see how dialogue facilitates individual and communal development, and as such it is distanced from 
a regular conversation among friends, where the flow of ideas is often spontaneous and therefore tends to be 
loose. Although in such conversations changes within or among participants may occur, and perhaps even some 
progress in the inquiry, these occurrences are often random.  Dialogical engagement, on the other hand, focuses 
on inquiry as its objective. 

The Inquiry  

Some thinkers suggest that dialogue, when it is facilitated spontaneously using techniques such as free as-
sociation, cannot assume a pre-determined objective (Bohm, 1998; Burbules, 1993; Kennedy, 1999). According 
to this approach, true dialogue aims at understanding participants’ ongoing inner processes and nuances and, 
therefore, cannot have a predefined purpose other than seeking a mutual understanding through exploration of 
the participants’ thoughts and feelings while in the dialogue. 

In my view, however, based on professional-educational experience, a well-structured dialogue needs to have 
a direction and goal.  Otherwise, it risks becoming a chat, where there is a danger that no process of inquiring 
together will take place, or worse, that more dominant participants will exert undue influence on the discussion. 
Furthermore, as a form of inquiry and a tool for construing meanings, a genuine dialogue will aim at having a 
better understanding of the question/concept at hand, as conceived in terms of participants’ interests. In prac-
tice, it is usually helpful to begin a dialogical gathering by asking participants questions such as “Why are you 
here?” or “What do you hope to learn, achieve, or improve through this process?” Because the answers to these 
questions usually change throughout the dialogical process, participants take notice when they digress to a side-
conversation that may or may not be found relevant to the inquiry-at-hand. 

Although the philosophical method of inquiry is indeed systematic, it is nonetheless flexible. Dialogical in-
quiry, as noted earlier, is the manifestation of dialectics, and as such is at the core of the philosophical method. 
When invested in a dialogical inquiry, we can take different directions and approaches, sometimes digressing in 



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order to reach a better understanding of a particular concept.  Yet, we keep in mind our preliminary question or 
goal, and keep our awareness of the shifts as these occur.  Although digressions often occur during the dialogical 
process, participants and their facilitator are obliged to look for a direction, for relations among statements and 
arguments to take shape. In that sense, inquiry is like a person: when one goes through changes, one often feels 
as if one’s sense-of-self has been lost. With the realization that the self can be fluid and transient, however, one 
can re-gain confidence. Likewise, a dialogical inquiry can appear to fall victim to a digression from the inquiry-
at-hand, but through an effective facilitation and reflective participation, it is brought back into focus. 

Conclusion 

There is indeed more than one path to wisdom, and one of these is dialogue, the path of brotherhood (Zo-
har & Marshall, 2000). It is especially useful if we want to transform the educational experience of our students 
into one based on the values of wisdom, authenticity and interconnectedness, rather than competition and the 
achievement of statistical benchmarks representing “achievement.” Dialogue is an ancient way to approach the 
deepest questions of life, in which, through hearing others, the wise mind learns to understand its own limita-
tions and flexibility.  

In this paper, I have attempted to illustrate how dialogue has the potential to advance philosophical think-
ing, social and ethical virtues, and authenticity, which together constitute wisdom.  I examined the ongoing 
nature of reflective questioning in a group as a practice with the potential to advance a deeper understanding of 
the world.  By appreciating the learning process as an ongoing journey in which questions are as important as 
answers, educators and parents can interpret children’s critical-reflective questions as indications of the kind of 
cognitive development that enables independent thinking. 

At a time of increased calls to “spiritualize” our educational system –that is to make it a more effective ve-
hicle for promoting values beyond mere knowledge—it is helpful to recall that what characterize the dialogical 
approach are virtues such as empathy, tolerance, gratitude, and humility. With that in mind, we might want to 
practice more of this pedagogy with our students at all levels of life and education, and hopefully create future 
generations who are better thinkers and also better persons:  compassionate, tolerant and humble. These quali-
ties suggest some of the many facets of wisdom.  

Endnotes
1 Italics are mine.
2 All biblical quotes are taken from the King James Bible.
3 Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525-1609) was an important Talmudic scholar who served as a leading rabbi in 

Prague.
4 In the Hebrew script of laws (Gemara), when the sages try to resolve an issue, they often end a discussion 

declaring “Teko” (deadlocked). This doesn’t imply they gave trying to resolve the issue. Instead, they leave it 
open for future generations of sages to add layers of interpretations.

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Address Correspondences to:

 Maya Levanon
 Interdisciplinary Studies in Curriculum and Instruction Dept. of Integrated Studies in Teaching, 
 Technology & Inquiry
 National-Louis University, Milwaukee Campus
 Maya.Levanon@nl.edu


