dialectic

Degenaar in Dialogue: An Essay in Four Parts  Part Four: What Remains? Degenaar’s last years Johan Degenaar died on 22 July 2015, at the age of eighty-nine. He had withdrawn from public life a decade or more before. This withdrawal was probably not a conscious decision on his part, but the result of his increasing frailty and deteriorating eyesight, and the increasing frailty of his wife Jetty, to whom he was devoted. Degenaar continued to publish academic and popular articles regularly until 2000, engaging vigorously with a range of contemporary issues. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Stellenbosch University In 2002. He took part in a biographical interview with Pieter Duvenage in 2005. [1] In what may have been his final public contribution in his own voice, he did a short interview with Anton van Niekerk in 2006, looking back on his career on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. [2] In 2007, the Degenaars moved from their house in Stellenbosch, where they had lived f...

Degenaar in Dialogue: An Essay in Four Parts  Part Three: Dialogue as a Philosophical Art Changing contexts of Degenaar’s dialogue From the beginning of his academic career, and probably even before that, Degenaar was committed to dialogue. What drew him to philosophy, and away from theology, was the figure of Socrates and the practice of Socratic dialogue. Dialogue was thwarted at times, but not his commitment to it. His unsettling prayers, in the first years of his appointment, may have seemed to his students to be provoking God; but it’s just as likely he was seeking a response from pious, but anxious, admissante . This commitment to dialogue set Degenaar apart as a teacher. His lectures were not intended to provide a one-way transmission of established knowledge. He was seeking to invite, stimulate or provoke some kind of response and then to engage with that response. Just as he was in dialogue with his students when his prayers in the classroom provoked them, he was in dialog...