The Art of Conversation: A Virtuous or Inmoral Delight?

Abstract

Recent linguistic pragmatics has emphasized that talking is acting. Action, however, belongs to the field of ethics. Hence, of what nature is the relationship that exists between the norms of ethics and the rules of conversation? The question is easy to answer on particular cases, for example, when asking about the permissibility of lying and deception. The matter, however, becomes more complex, when comparing the field of ethics to the rules of conversation, so it will be studied first. Then, the forms of regulated existence in society and conversation are correlated with those in politics and state. This raises the question of the extent to which the society that comes together in sociable conversation is to be seen in analogy to the society of state, so that parallels between the political theory and the theory of sociability can be found. Due to the special significance of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in the Late Scholasticism of the Spanish Golden Age, we take the Aristotelian ethics and politics as the starting point for this investigation.

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