Special Issue: The Art of Dialogue

Arts & Humanities in Higher Education

0(0) 1–15
Bildung towards wisdom, ! The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474022216670609

dialogue in teacher ahh.sagepub.com

education
Guro Hansen Helskog
Department of Humanities and Educational Sciences, University
College South-East Norway, Norway

Abstract
In this article the author discusses the terms Bildung, wisdom, dialogue and philosophical
dialogue. The author understands Bildung as the spiritual education of the soul, involving
the existential growth and maturation of the individual in her relation to herself,
to other people, to the world and to a possible transcendent Other. The outcome of
processes involving Bildung is argued to be increased wisdom. Dialogue, especially in the
form of philosophical dialogue, is presented as a powerful way of enhancing students’
Bildung towards wisdom. The theoretical discussion is linked to a practical example from
the author’s experience of teaching a course on philosophical dialogue in international
teacher education in Norway.

Keywords
Bildung, dialogical teaching, dialogue, philosophical dialogue, philosophical practice,
teacher education, teaching, wisdom

Introduction
Bildung is a complex and widely discussed concept in European history. The con-
cept is originally German, linking back to 16th-century Pietistic theology, in which
the Christian should seek to cultivate himself in line with the image of God
(Schmidt, 1996), and further to the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart (Gadamer,
2010: 35). According to Eckhart, all human beings are created in the image of God,
capable of becoming equal to God in the process of unification and sanctification.
Eckhart’s idea was also inspired by the Platonic dialogues. The concept Bildung
flourished in the neo-humanist period 1770–1830, increasingly as a concept with

Corresponding author:
Guro Hansen Helskog, Buskerud and Vestfold University College, Grønland 58, Drammen 3045, Norway.
Email: guro.helskog@hbv.no

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cultural and political connotations (Klafki, 1985). Today we see a remarkable

return of the themes of Bildung in the cultural reflection, critique and debate con-
cerning education and politics, especially in the Nordic countries, now understood
mainly as a secular concept.
For the purpose of this paper, I choose to cut through Bildung’s different
historical meanings and connotations by understanding it as the existential and
spiritual maturation of the individual in her relation to herself, to other people, to
the world and to a possible transcendent Other.1 In other words as the spiritual
education of the soul. Education or Bildung is in this understanding essentially
dialogical and relational, oriented towards enhancing ‘the highest things’: the
good, the true and the beautiful. Understood in this way, processes of Bildung
can never be limited to enhancing one’s skills in a specific area, or of changing
one’s rational points of view, or one’s opinion about an issue. Nor can it be under-
stood as working to fulfil a pre-defined learning outcome that can be measured in
tests and exams, or as an aim that can be reached, once and for all. Rather, Bildung
involves the transformation of one’s entire being, involving emotions as well as
intellect. The ‘outcome’ of this process is increased wisdom.
Fischer (2015) has found that there are similarities in the definitions of the
concept wisdom in literature across cultures, traditions and historical time and
place. For instance, propositions such as ‘you should treat others as you would
like others to treat you’, ‘material things don’t bring lasting happiness’ and ‘it is
easier to point out the errors of others rather than one’s own’, are held by those
believed to be the wisest of men in different traditions. Among them are Socrates,
Jesus, Confucius and Buddha (Fischer, 2015). Moreover, a study conducted by
Jeste et al. (2010) showed a striking consensus among experts on the characteristics
of wisdom, which were also found to be remarkably similar to lay definitions of
wisdom. The experts agree that a wise person to a large degree is able to learn from
experience; is open to new experiences; is able to regulate emotions, tolerate
ambivalence and differences amongst others, and accept uncertainty in life. She
has a high degree of self-insight; a rich knowledge of life and embodies social
cognition, empathy, altruism and a sense of value relativism. She recognises
the limits of her knowledge, has a desire for learning and exercises a high degree
of self-reflection. The wise person has developed maturity through experience, is
other-centred and has a sense of a higher power.
Taking this as a definition, education or Bildung towards wisdom should involve
reflecting upon and learning from a broad range of lived life experiences, including the
experiences of others. Moreover, it should involve personal engagement with philo-
sophical and theoretical literature, guided by questions like ‘what touches me in this
text?’, ‘how can I understand myself through these concepts?’ and ‘what can I learn
personally from studying this picture?’ Moreover, it should imply engaging in collab-
orative experiential learning processes that involve emotional engagement and imagery
as well as analytical thought concerning what is happening in us and between us.
What might be the role of the teacher in such wisdom-oriented teaching and
learning? In order to answer this question, I will relate Bildung to education

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Helskog 3

understood within the framework of basic ideal-typical pedagogical models dis-

cussed by Norwegian philosopher Hans Skjervheim (1976).

The role of the teacher in teaching

for Bildung towards wisdom
Skjervheim (1976) distinguishes two basic models of pedagogy: The first is peda-
gogy understood as technique, art, craft and transmission of predefined knowledge.
The basic metaphor2 of this theory is, according to Skjervheim, ‘to affect’. The
second and apparently contradictory model is pedagogy understood as based in
a romantic, biological understanding of the human being. This model calls for the
teacher to let the child or the young person grow freely in order to realise her
innate potential, which is naturally good. The basic metaphor of this theory is
‘free growth’.
In their ideal-typical forms, both these pedagogical models are un-dialogical and
one-sided. In the first, the teacher is the subject while the student is the object,
whom the teacher can affect in the direction of specific pre-defined outcomes,
through authoritarian top-down formation of the student. The second model is
supposedly a ‘bottom-up’ model of pedagogy, in which the child or the young
person is free to develop her inner dispositions. As a pedagogical model, however,
it does not work, because pedagogical guidance of the young is necessary. Thus,
instead of being explicitly authoritarian, the ‘free growth oriented’ teacher becomes
subtly authoritarian through invasive manipulation, overruling the supposed free-
dom of the student. In the first model, the teacher openly affects and forms the
student through techniques and predefined knowledge. In the second model, the
teacher subtly affects and forms the student through manipulation, at the same time
seducing them to think they are allowed to grow freely.
Thus, none of the models grants the students the space and freedom necessary
for Bildung towards wisdom to occur. Such processes call for a third model of
pedagogy. In his paper, Skjervheim argues that the practice of Socrates as
described in the dialogues of Plato offers a third possible model, which I find
useful also in the context of this paper. In the Platonic dialogues, we meet
Socrates in philosophical conversation with men in Athens. In his practice,
Socrates simultaneously affects and lets the young develop freely. This Socratic,
dialectical model implies a basic model of pedagogy that takes into account
the difference between doxa and episteme, between mere opinion and true insight.
The dialectical pedagogical model of education is that of psychagogy, or soul guid-
ance through words, Skjervheim argues. This soul guidance can also be related to
Bildung, as I understand it in this paper: it implies the broader spiritual education
of the soul.
Concretely, how can a teacher create spaces where this third model or theory
of pedagogy can come ‘alive’, so to speak, in concrete and practical educational
situations? My hypothesis is that it becomes possible when the teacher facilitates
students’ dialogical encounters with subject matter, with co-students, with the

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world and with a possible transcendent Other. This needs to be done in ways that
make it possible for the student to transcend her present self and move towards a
higher and fuller self. When this happens, processes of Bildung towards wisdom
occur, involving active engagement of the student’s inner life. The relationship
between the teacher and the student, and between the students are here subject–
subject relationships, in which dialogue is essential. In such dialogical processes of
Bildung, the teacher recognises the students as interlocutors with a joint ownership
to insights that emerge. The teacher gives the students joint responsibility as active
partakers in dialogical interplays with the teacher, with subject material and with
co-students, based on their inner urge to learn and develop as human beings.
Through the dialogical process of Bildung, the teacher, the individual students
and the world are made into something that they were not before. How then,
might we understand dialogue, and more specifically the relationship between dia-
logue, philosophical dialogue and dialogical teaching in relation to Bildung?

Dialogue, philosophical dialogue and dialogical teaching

In his paper ‘Empowering dialogues in humanistic education’, educational philoso-
pher Nimrod Aloni (2011) has synthesised what he sees as common features of
different forms of dialogue theories. Features involved in dialogue are according to
Aloni the participants’ mutual respect and interest in the personality and world of
each other. Moreover, it includes a mutual exchange of ideas and narratives, invol-
ving attentive listening and joint thought. Dialogue might also involve personal
transformation through ‘the widening of the capacities to better understand one’s
own life, the lived-reality of the other, and the circumstances that they share’.
A teacher, who wants to enhance students’ dialogical abilities, must create a
space in which students are allowed to reflect upon experiences of listening and
being listened to, respecting and being respected, exchanging ideas and narratives
and so forth. Philosophical dialogue might offer such a space. What then is philo-
sophical dialogue?
One can understand philosophical dialogue as a special approach within a
greater family of philosophical practices. Included are practices as different as
Socratic dialogue (Heckman, 1981; Nelson, 1922); Philosophy for children
(Lipman, 2003) and the approaches of Oscar Brenifier (2009), Finn Thorbjørn
Hansen (2008) and Ran Lahav (2013). My own Dialogos approach to philosoph-
ical dialogue in education is explicitly oriented at Bildung towards wisdom (Helskog,
2015).
A common feature of most (if not all) approaches to philosophical practice is
that they claim to be inspired by Socrates, as we know his practice from the written
dialogues of Plato, even though their interpretations of these dialogues might differ
profoundly. Generally, the Socratic dialogues in Plato often develop from a con-
versation in the course of which Socrates crystalizes a question. This question is
often given in the form What is X? (see for instance the beginning of the dialogue
Meno by Plato). Interlocutors are then challenged to explore the question together

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with Socrates. The dialogues seldom end in clear answers. Often, they end in com-
plete confusion or aporia. The confusion is the point from where the interlocutors
can free themselves from their preconceived opinions (doxa) and give birth to true
insight (episteme). Thus, Socrates saw himself as a midwife, helping his interlocu-
tors to give birth to new insights.
Another common feature of philosophical practices is that the facilitator needs
to have a broad and varied theoretical and practical background, based on which
she can improvise tactfully and prudently in concrete situations, because a philo-
sophical dialogue cannot be sufficiently planned in advance. The course of a dia-
logue, or the practical interventions needed, cannot be foreseen. This makes it
impossible to talk about the relationship between the means and ends of a philo-
sophical dialogue in a direct, linear and technical manner, i.e. in the technical form
‘if I do x, I will enhance students’ wisdom’. Further, it is not possible to talk about
the development of students’ wisdom as independent of the actions of the facilita-
tor, as in the form ‘if I leave students alone, I will enhance their wisdom’. Thus,
neither the technical pedagogical metaphor of ‘affecting’ nor the metaphor of ‘free
growth’ is suitable when wanting to understand the role of the facilitator in edu-
cational activities aimed at Bildung towards wisdom. Rather, the facilitator needs to
accept the unpredictability of the dialogue, which opens for something completely
new to emerge in the process. Related to this, a third common feature of philo-
sophical dialogue is that it is oriented towards searching for new insights and truth.
An insight is, if it is true, common for all the participants in a dialogue, according
to Skjervheim (1976), who relates this to the difference between doxa (mere opin-
ion, upon which you can agree or disagree) and episteme (true insight, at which all
participants will arrive if it is true). This statement is challenging, especially in
multi-cultural and multi-religious contexts. Can we expect a Norwegian atheist,
an Italian Catholic, a Burmese Buddhist, an Iranian Muslim and an Indian
Zoroastrian to arrive at the same insights and truth? I will leave the question
open for the reader to contemplate. In this paper, I choose to hold the possibility
of reaching shared insights and truth open.
Taking into consideration the distinction between doxa and episteme, philosoph-
ical dialogue adds some features to Aloni’s understanding of dialogue. I have dis-
cussed the idea of searching for insights and truth as central to philosophical
dialogue, in addition to the mutual exchange of ideas and narratives as emphasised
by Aloni. The task of the teacher as facilitator is to help participants transcend the
level of sharing ideas and narratives, and develop shared insights. This implies
transcending the level of doxa and moving towards the level of episteme, and in
the process, towards increased wisdom. Now, what could this possibly look like in
practice?
Together with two colleagues, I am responsible for the course Intercultural
understanding and religion in the newly launched International teacher education
program for primary school (ITEPS) at University College South East Norway
(USN). The ITEPS program is offered as a collaboration between Stenden
University in the Netherlands, University College Sjælland in Denmark

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6 Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 0(0)

and USN. The students come from all over the world, the syllabus and the classes
are in English, and the program contains international perspectives on educational
issues. I am responsible for teaching a module on philosophical dialogue within this
course, and I will use this module to look closer at the following two questions:

1. How did I set up the course on philosophical dialogue in a way that could
provide a space for Bildung towards wisdom in students?
2. Did my teaching of philosophical dialogue actually enhance students’ wisdom?

This last question is a bold question to ask, and a difficult and problematic, if
not impossible, question to answer. Therefore, I do not intend to answer it in a
conclusive way. I will only point to a few possible indicators.

Bildung towards wisdom through philosophical dialogue?

Being a teacher education course, the purpose of the ITEPS course on philosoph-
ical dialogue has two dimensions that are inter-related and mutually dependent on
each other. It should contribute to the personal, existential and professional
Bildung of the individual student teacher and make the students capable of
contributing to the Bildung of their pupils, on the premise of the children them-
selves. In the ITEPS module students are therefore challenged to both participate
and facilitate, both act and reflect upon action, both lecture and be lectured to, all
as part of an overall dialogical deductive-inductive model of Bildung. Participating
in different kinds of dialogues is one thing, while facilitating dialogues is quite
another thing. By making the students do both, and reflect upon their experiences
both orally and through a written assignment, I hope to enhance their processes of
Bildung towards wisdom. My hypothesis is that participating in dialogical philo-
sophising, also on theoretical texts, opens the space where Bildung towards wisdom
can occur in a more profound way than simply listening to lectures and read-
ing literature. Further, facilitating dialogical philosophising opens this space even
more than participating, because it demands a higher level of presence and
consciousness.
The dialogue approaches practiced and taught in the course were Philosophy for
children (Lipman, 2003), Oscar Breinifier’s philosophical practice (2009), Socratic
dialogue (Heckman, 1981; Nelson, 1922) and my own Dialogos approach
(Helskog, 2015). Moreover, I drew on the perspectives of Finn Thorbjørn
Hansen (2008), who like me, is concerned with the relationship between theoretical
and practical dialogical philosophising and existential Bildung, as well as the work
of Ran Lahav (2013), who like me, is concerned with the possible self-transforma-
tional aspects of philosophy and philosophical practice. The course was thus set up
resembling the structure of the Dialogos approach (Helskog, 2015), moving from
rational, argumentative and analytical approaches and exercises towards ethical,
existential and spiritual approaches and exercises. By setting up the course in this
way, I hoped to create a space or even a path where processes of Bildung towards

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Helskog 7

wisdom could flourish. This brings us to the second question: Did my teaching of
philosophical dialogue actually enhance students’ wisdom?
In order to answer this question, I will give two examples of philosophical dia-
logues in the ITEPS course.3 The examples I have chosen to focus on are our first
and last dialogue sessions, which show different ways of working dialogically, and
which will make it possible to reflect upon the processes of Bildung towards wisdom
that had been going on between the beginning and the end of the course.

The first dialogue: What does it imply to be a friend?

The first practical dialogue session had several aims. First, I wanted the students to
experience what dialogical philosophising could be like, recognising with Nelson
(1922) that philosophical or Socratic dialogues need to be experienced, because
there is no real way to describe them conceptually. Second, I wanted the students to
be able to imagine already from the beginning how they could facilitate a similar
dialogue with their own students. Third, I figured that taking our point of depart-
ure in material that would be suitable for primary school children it would make it
easier for the students to make this imaginative leap. My choice for this introduc-
tory lesson fell upon a short animation film based on one of the fables of Aesop:
The ant and the elephant. True friends (Class teacher learner, 2014). Thus, I chose
this short animation film because I thought it could model philosophical and dia-
logical work with material in a way they could ‘copy’ and try out with their own
students later. Using a children’s story was relevant to them as future primary
school teachers. At the same time, the theme of the fable – true friendship –
could be relevant to all human beings regardless of age or background. Thus,
I was targeting the double intention of the course: to contribute to the personal
and professional development or Bildung of the individual student teacher and to
make student teachers capable of contributing to the personal development or
Bildung of their pupils.
I asked the students to take notes while watching the film, paying attention to
what came to them, so to speak ‘from the heart of the movie’. What puzzled them?
What made them wonder? What did they find interesting? We saw the film twice. In
dialogical teaching, the perspectives, horizons and initial frames of reference of the
students are drawn into the dialogue with the material from the beginning. This
challenges traditional teaching, where students are often asked to look for the
authoritative message of the material. Thus, after seeing the film, I gave them a
few minutes to write down their thoughts and associations. We then had an open,
relatively unstructured dialogue about the short film based on their notes. This
meant both letting the movie ‘speak’ to them without letting their judgement inter-
fere and a self-reflective act involving the students’ existing perspectives and frames
of reference.
The next phase of the philosophical dialogue implied a choice of focus point; in
this case a philosophical question. The focus point could also have been for instance
a statement (or two), a concept (or more) or a feeling (or two opposite feelings).

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First, I taught the students about the differences between philosophical questions,
psychological questions and empirical questions. I then asked them to individually
formulate a philosophical question based on the film and in their notes, and give a
reason for choosing this particular question. The questions were listed on the
board. My intentions were the following: When formulating a question, students
had to choose among many options, and decide on one, implying a process of
analysis, comparison, abstraction and conceptualisation, and finally formulate rea-
sons for their choices. Then I asked the students to discuss their question with
another student and to reformulate a question that could include the essence of
both their questions. Again, my intention was that the students should go back to
the content of the film, interpret it further through deeper analysis and compare
their questions and thus their different perspectives. This would lead to further
abstraction and conceptualisation, and hopefully a synthesis of their two questions.
I wrote the questions agreed upon by the pairs of students on a board for them to
be visible to all. Also, this time, students were asked to give a reason for their
choice of question. While listening to the reasons the students had formulated to
support their choice, the different perspectives of the students were revealed, open-
ing up the material even more. Now students were asked to compare the questions,
evaluate them and individually decide on which question they would like to work
with in a dialogue. Interpretations and arguments were brought into the group, and
students were striving for a new level of abstraction and conceptualisation, and
eventually an agreement on the question they wanted to work with. This might
seem like a very slow and unnecessarily detailed process. The intention is to teach
the students how to gradually move from an initially more or less intuitive encoun-
ter with content towards developing well-argued interpretations. In the process,
they also practice dialogical skills such as observing and listening carefully to the
short film, listening carefully and respectfully to each other, and listening carefully
to themselves, pointing to the criteria suggested by Aloni (2011). These first steps of
the course were linked more to developing skills than at enhancing wisdom, which
I had planned would come to the foreground more strongly later in the process,
after a series of dialogues based on different approaches. Anyhow, the first and the
later steps are mutually dependent on each other. The development of skills and
abilities was seen under the horizon of the ideal of wisdom, meaning that develop-
ing practical skills and abilities are part of an overall process of Bildung towards
wisdom, in line with my Dialogos approach.
The group chose the question ‘What does it imply to be a good friend?’ One of
the reasons they gave was the question’s relevance both to themselves and to pupils.
The question was formulated in a way that made them look at how they themselves
should behave in order to be a good friend, rather than on how their friend should
behave in order to be called a friend. I asked each of them for an example from
their own life where they had experienced being a good friend. This can be a rather
difficult task for people who are not used to relating questions or abstract concepts
to their own life experience and vice versa, but in the perspective of Bildung towards
wisdom, I would say this move is of the highest relevance. The reason is that it

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Helskog 9

bridges the subjective and the objective, the individual and the general, lived life
experience and conceptual analysis, concrete material and abstract reasoning. Did
anything happen with the students’ development of wisdom between this first dia-
logue and the last dialogue in the ITEPS course?

The last dialogue: Why am I considerate?

I facilitated the last dialogue in the course at my farmhouse in rural Norway,
thinking that this change of atmosphere would bring something different to the
dialogue and to the students than the traditional University College seminar room
could. This was also part of my philosophy of bridging the divide between the
private and the public, and thus live my philosophy. The dialogue scheduled was a
Socratic dialogue in the Nelson/Heckman tradition. The students had experienced
a Socratic dialogue in this tradition earlier during the course, and they had worked
thoroughly on this experience through theoretical and experience-based meta-
reflection in class. Moreover, they had experienced other forms of dialogical phi-
losophising exercises, including facilitating dialogues with each other and with an
inter-cultural and inter-religious primary school class. We had also worked dialo-
gically with material such as short films on the philosophy of Lao Tzu, Confucius,
Buddha and Aristotle, and with short texts on wisdom perspectives in Islam,
Christianity and Buddhism, in addition to traditional literary studies and lectures
about the same traditions. This meant that when they came to my house, they were
no longer new to dialogical philosophising in general, nor to Socratic dialogue in
particular. All the way through the course, I tried to promote dialogical attitudes
and skills in line with the criteria of Aloni, not so much in what I was saying as in
what I was doing. For instance, through my facilitation I tried to model how to
respect student’s different experiences, views and perspectives, showing how to do it
in addition to reflecting upon it. In addition, I was showing interest in the person-
ality and world of each of the students, while at the same time facilitating dialogues
in a way that encouraged them to show interest in each other. When facilitating the
exchange of ideas, I also facilitated attentive listening and joint thought. In the
dialogues, my entire way of being in the room with the students was an attempt to
model a dialogical and philosophical way of being in the world.
For this last dialogue of the course I had suggested the question ‘What is inter-
religious understanding?’, because I thought a dialogue on this topic would be a
nice closure to the entire course ‘Intercultural understanding and religion’. To my
surprise, the students had discussed the question thoroughly before arriving, con-
cluding that they found this question hard to work with. Was it even possible for
them to answer this question? How could they find a personal example that was
suitable? They argued that the concept ‘inter-religious understanding’ was far too
complex. Some of them considered themselves atheist and were not sure if they had
ever had an experience of inter-religious understanding. One of the students said
that she in general found it hard to find personal examples. It was much easier to
discuss theoretical issues or concepts in general.

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I respected the student’s doubts and difficulties. This could be a sign that
they had understood something important about the complexity of dialogical
philosophising: It is not necessarily easy to engage in philosophical dialogue.
Even though or perhaps because, in the form of philosophical dialogue I invited
them to, participants are supposed to speak from their own experience and
from their own perspectives. Moreover, concepts are often complex, demanding
thorough reflection. Finding a personal experience that can illustrate an abstract
concept is not anything like general ‘life story narration’ or associative conversa-
tion. It is in itself a demanding philosophical exercise. My experience is that people
often think they understand what a concept means, but when asked to find
a personal example that can illustrate the concept, they find it hard to do so.
Even when they can, it demands that they search through their pool of experiences
in order to find a suitable example. They have to choose between different exam-
ples, which in itself involves a preliminary analysis and evaluation of both the
concept and the examples. Finally, they are supposed to formulate the example
in a way that makes it understandable to others. When students arrived at
my house saying that they did not see how they would be able to work with
this question, it seemed like they had been struggling with all these questions,
individually and as a group.
I have argued that dialogue is essential to processes of Bildung, and that philo-
sophical dialogue is a powerful way of promoting it. This involves self-reflective,
dialogical questioning of perspectives and worldviews, whether one’s own perspec-
tive or the perspective of others, whether posed by fellow students, by me as their
teacher or in texts, art, pictures, etc. Now, when questioning the suggested ques-
tion, their Bildung or ‘wisdom’ became visible, so to speak. It indicated that at least
to some degree, the course had targeted its purpose, even though it was difficult to
tell to what degree their wisdom had increased.
I was pleased by their doubts and difficulties. The problem now was that the
doubts of the students left us in the open. How should I as a teacher proceed?
I thought I had a plan, but the students’ doubts and questions had thrown us into
an open space with no starting point and no direction. This shows the unpredict-
ability of philosophical dialogue. I was honest about my lack of a backup plan and
asked them for help. We needed to improvise. The fact did not stress me. Having
worked with different forms of philosophical dialogues, engaging with different
traditions of philosophical practice for more than a decade, I had experienced
similar incidents several times. Dialogue calls for an open, creative attitude on
behalf of the teacher. I saw this as an opportunity for showing students a possible
way to handle such a situation, once again living my philosophy. After a general
discussion, which did not really help us decide on how to proceed, I got an idea,
fetching a jar of virtue cards that had been sitting on my kitchen table for a few
years (Virtues Projects International, 2006). Each of the 100 cards represents a
virtue, such as courage, prudence, justice, and so forth. I asked the students to
pick one card each. We briefly discussed the virtues in a free, unstructured dialogue.
What came to them when reading the card? What was the heart of the concept?

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Helskog 11

Did any immediate personal experiences come to them when encountering the
virtue? Finally, they collectively decided to choose the virtue ‘hensynsfullhet’ or
consideration.
Now, I asked the individual students to formulate a question that included the
concept consideration and to give a reason for their choice of question. I wrote
down the suggestions on a flip chart, asking the students to decide on one question
to work on. Again, I asked each of them to support their choice with an argument.
The idea is that when arguing for and against formulations, students also dig into
the content of the core concept. The dialogical method here is the method of
argument or exposition that systematically weighs contradictory facts or ideas
with a view to the resolution of their real or apparent contradictions. Thus, it
becomes possible to collectively make the best choice of question. In the process,
students were striving for consensus, and they ended up with the following question
‘Why am I considerate?’
Students were then asked to find a concrete example from their own life where
they had been considerate, following the model of Socratic dialogue (Heckman,
1981). They were given some time to think individually, and now each of them was
able to find an example, which they shared with the others. Again, they were given
some time to think before individually choosing one example that they considered
the best when wanting to work on the question, and which they would like to look
at more thoroughly. To my surprise, the example chosen was an example of inter-
religious understanding as well.
The example giver student, let us call her Evelina, wrote her example on a flip
chart for everyone to see. Evelina, who is Christian, said that some time ago she got
into a conversation with a fellow female Muslim student, let us call her Aya, about
her personal life as a Muslim. Aya talked about reading the Qu’ran in her daily life,
before asking Evelina how often she read the Bible in her daily life. Evelina had
earlier told Aya she was a Christian. When Evelina said that she rarely read the
Bible, Aya was taken aback. In order not to shock Aya more than necessary,
Evelina pretended that she was more of a practicing Christian than she was.
Thus, in her opinion, she was being considerate.
I first encouraged the students to explore the example more thoroughly by
asking Evelina questions to details in the story, to better understand it and try
to see the incident from Evelina’s perspective, in accordance with the principles of
Socratic dialogue in the Nelson/Heckman tradition. How did she experience the
situation? What happened really? What did she feel? Then afterwards they were
encouraged to look more critically at the assumptions of Evelina, exploring them
together with her in an open, acknowledging way. Was she really being considerate,
or was it something else at stake in this example? Was she protecting Aya by not
saying how little a place religion had in her daily life? Was she actually lying? Was
she rather being more considerate of herself than of Aya? Together, they discovered
aspects of the story that they had not considered before. By exploring an example
like this, one is also likely to discover aspects of ones relations to oneself, to one
another, to significant people outside the dialogue and to the world.

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12 Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 0(0)

We also explored the concept ‘consideration’ on a more abstract and general

level. Finally, I encouraged the students to try to answer the question ‘Why am
I considerate?’ in one sentence. The sentences were written on the board, and a
variety of answers came up. Three examples were ‘Because I want to protect
another person from my truth’, ‘Because I want to protect myself from the judg-
ment of another person’ and ‘Because I do not want to hurt people’.
In my facilitation of the dialogue, I tried to keep to the pedagogical measures
advocated by Gustav Heckman (1981). The students knew these criteria from read-
ing and reflecting upon his paper and from their first experience with Socratic
dialogue. For instance, I let the dialogue start with concrete experience, made
sure that it remained in contact with this concrete experience and that links
between statements made and Evelina’s example were explicit in all phases of the
dialogue. I asked questions like ‘How does what you say now relate to our exam-
ple?’ and ‘Where in the example do you find something that supports what you are
saying now?’ Moreover, I was striving to secure that there was full understanding
between participants at all levels in the dialogue, in accordance with the ideal
of developing shared insight. I could ask whether someone could repeat what a
participant had just said, or I could ask students to sum up the main content of the
dialogue thus far. I could also ask students to reformulate their statements, in order
to make sure everyone understood. For instance, I could ask them to repeat what
they had just said in one sentence. This required that everyone engaged in an honest
examination of the thoughts of the others, and that they were honest in their own
statements.
When such honesty and openness towards one’s own and other participants’
feelings and thinking about a shared topic is present, then the striving for consensus
might emerge, more likely if the dialogue is facilitated wisely. Striving for consensus
is in the perspective of Skjervheim (1976) the same as striving for true insight. If
true insight (episteme) is reached, it will be the same for all, and not a matter of
different opinions (doxa), according to him. Anyhow, in a concrete dialogue, striv-
ing for consensus does not necessarily include consensus itself. The process of
striving for can be a process characterised by tension, frustration and sometimes
conflict. Participants can understand each other’s points of view and perspectives,
but not necessarily agree on the subject matter or the concept discussed. However,
even though consensus may not be reached, the process of striving for it can give
direction to the dialogue.
Because the chosen example was an example involving inter-religious under-
standing, we achieved triple outcome of the dialogue: First, students had philoso-
phised upon the character of the question ‘What is inter-religious understanding?’
originally suggested, both individually and as a group prior to our get-together at
my house, and finally in the context of the more formal session at my house. This
was indeed philosophising, but without my facilitation. Second, they had to choose
an alternative question to the abandoned question, which also implied philosoph-
ical work. Third, the abandoned original question was explored indirectly through
the example chosen.

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Helskog 13

Throughout the ITEPS course I hoped the students would experience a widening
of their capacities to better understand their own life, the lived-reality of the Other
and the circumstances that they share, in line with Aloni’s dialogue criteria. This
again could widen their general understanding and capacity for living well together
with others. In that case, the course would imply Bildung towards wisdom. By
dialogically engaging with different kinds of material, with ideas from different
periods in history and from different parts of the world, the process was not limited
to the integration of a ‘European’ perspective only. Rather, it was a perspective
that included ideas from a wide range of traditions across the globe, which they had
been working with in a philosophical and dialogical way. This resonates with the
words of Aloni in his paper (2011). He suggests that

if we want to advance our students and empower their spirits in order to realise the
ideal of an integral, rich, full and multifaceted humanity, we must take our students
out on dialogic excursions into many and varied landscapes of the spirit and culture.

Summary and final remarks

In this article I have tried to link the terms Bildung, wisdom, dialogue and philo-
sophical dialogue with an example from my own practice as a lecturer in teacher
education. I understood Bildung as the spiritual education of the soul, involving the
existential growth and maturation of the individual in her relation to herself, to
other people, to the world and to a possible transcendent Other. The outcome of
processes involving Bildung was argued to be wisdom. Wisdom was understood as
the ability to learn from experience, the ability to regulate emotions, high degrees
of self-insight, self-reflection and knowledge of life, empathy, altruism and a sense
of value relativism, amongst other things. Dialogue, especially in the form of philo-
sophical dialogue, was presented as a powerful way of enhancing processes of
Bildung towards wisdom. The theoretical discussion was linked to my experience
as responsible for a course on philosophical dialogue in international teacher edu-
cation in Norway, discussing how I set up the course, and the students’ possible
Bildung towards wisdom through the course.
I could not say for sure whether this was the case or not, but indicated that at
least to some degree, the course had targeted its purpose, even though it was dif-
ficult to tell to what degree student’s wisdom had increased. What I can say is that
in the first dialogue students were all new to dialogical philosophising. At that point
in time they were largely dependent on my facilitation as a teacher for the devel-
opment of the dialogue. In the last session at my house about three months later,
students seemed more independent of my facilitation. At this point in time, they
took charge by questioning the question I had suggested, and they were actively
taking responsibility for the further development of the session. In the last dia-
logue, students showed ability to discuss a question concerning consideration. This
question belongs under a wider conceptual umbrella, namely questions concerning

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14 Arts & Humanities in Higher Education 0(0)

what is good, i.e. how to live well or wisely, for the benefit of oneself and others.
Something had happened to the students in between the first and the last dialogue
sessions. This ‘something’ can indicate that they had enhanced their wisdom.
Learning processes aimed at Bildung towards wisdom should not be modelled
after Skjervheim’s (1976) metaphor ‘to affect’, i.e. framed by too rigid plans and
curriculums or by authoritarian teaching practices. Neither is his metaphor ‘free
growth’ sufficient. The students are dependent on the guidance from the more
experienced teacher in order to become free. Therefore, the role of the dialogical
teacher intending to enhance students’ Bildung towards wisdom is, amongst other
things, to help the students gradually become independent of her guidance.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Arzanne de Vitre for comments on the text and for proof
reading the manuscript

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

Notes
1. In accordance with the Dialogos approach to practical philosophy (Helskog, 2015).
2. Skjervheim is using the term ‘metaphor’, because, as he says, if we take them literally, we
know what they mean, but then they are useless when wanting to understand the Socratic
practice. On the other hand, if we do not take them literally, we do not know what they
mean, and then they cannot help us understand the Socratic practice.
3. The students have given their permission to refer to the dialogues, and they have had the
chance to read through an early version of the paper before publication.

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Author biography
Guro Hansen Helskog is associate professor in pedagogy at the Faculty of
Humanities and Educational Sciences at University College South East Norway.
She is the author of several books, articles and pedagogical materials, including
Dialogos, on the practice of philosophy in schools (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) and
Fortsatt Foreldre, on parental cooperation and conflict reduction after divorce, for
the sake of children (2007, 2008). She has worked with philosophical dialogues in a
variety of contexts, including intercultural and inter-religious youth education,
health care and teacher education.

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