Gábor CsepregiAfter this year's end-of-year ceremony at MCC, two fellow teachers, several students, and I sat together at a table on the terrace and engaged in a casual conversation. We asked one another questions, exchanged our opinions, and supported our differing views with arguments. I enjoyed following the clear and precisely worded questions and responses late into the evening.
I was pleased to see that MCC students – and many of their peers – are capable of engaging in meaningful conversation. Over the past few years, they have mastered the art of dialogue, enabling them to articulate their views clearly, listen empathetically to other’s perspectives, and patiently and thoughtfully consider the beliefs of people who see and interpret the events affecting them in ways that differ from their own.
Over the past four years, I have had the opportunity to meet many students in Budapest and at MCC centers throughout Hungary. When asked which skills students practice and develop through MCC’s programs, I would place the art of conversation first.
They seem eager to follow Jonathan Sacks’s advice: “We must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges not, as in Socratic dialogues, by the refutation of falsehood, but from the quite different process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act, and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own.”
What are the building blocks of the art of conversation? Conversation is a varied yet structured exchange of ideas, information, and arguments through speaking and listening It becomes lively and engaging when questions and answers follow one another freely and naturally, when participants move with ease between serious and lighter topics, and when they are even able to enrich the exchange with a touch of humor.
There is no real conversation without the ability to examine and clarify the validity of opinions through questioning. Questions help us acquire new knowledge, while answers enable us to reassess knowledge we have already acquired. Questions may open perspectives on matters that previously appeared fixed and closed to further inquiry.
At the same time, the varied nature of the discussion allows students to step outside their own perspectives and view the issue from a new angle. Only by maintaining a distance from both the given situation and their own assumptions can they formulate questions and, in doing so, acquire new knowledge. Such objective distance from a given problem is essential for the development of creative thinking.
When students are willing to see the world around them and their own understanding of it in a new light, they can emerge from a conversation transformed and enriched – even if that transformation is, at times, unsettling.
Let me mention one important virtue that conversation helps cultivate: tact. Václav Havel highlighted its importance in his insightful essay Politics, Morality, and Politeness. Whether in politics, business, education, scientific research, diplomatic negotiations, or everyday life, a conversation is truly successful when its participants demonstrate tact and good taste in their conduct. Tact is a subtle ability to discern what constitutes appropriate speech and behavior in a given situation. It is the capacity to know how to converse with another person even in the absence of general guidelines.
Tact is often paired with another virtue that classical ethics referred to as benevolence or friendliness (benignitas). This virtue stems from the recognition that simply communicating a thought or an opinion is not enough. Participants in a conversation also pay attention to the manner in which they express themselves, showing the utmost respect for the personality of their interlocutor. Their choice of words, the polite tone, and the ability to create a friendly atmosphere – adapted to both their interlocutors and the circumstances – are often more important to the other person than the topic of the conversation itself.
“There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk…” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. If an institution can foster this ambition in young people, it may be rendering one of the greatest services to the political and social life of Hungary.
