Let's Talk About Conversation

Conversation: A History of a Declining Art by Stephen Miller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Miller traces the history of the "conversible world" of friends and acquaintances who discussed the big ideas of their day and how they shaped their world. The ancient world gets short shrift, but the 18th c. British  coffee houses get their due. Miller covers the likes of Samuel Johnson and David Hume and their discussion partners and contrasts this golden age of conversation with the lack of meaningful conversation happening today. Miller argues that the conversible world has shrunk. People no longer visit coffee houses for conversation but to use the wifi. We prefer friends at out fingertips rather than face time for important issues. Contrast this with the world of Johnson and Hume who made face time with friends one of the greatest joys of their intellectual lives.  


Johnson and Hume work well as about the only value they shared in common was a love of conversation. It would have been quite a spectacle had they ever met for coffee. Hume was the consummate skeptic who despised people who thought they were the most interesting topic of conversation. Miller agrees as he makes Rousseau the villain of this history. Rousseau thought his life worthy of a "Confessions" not written to God, like Augustine's Confessions, but to his fellow man. Rousseau's audience was evidently supposed to think that Rousseau's Confessions were some sort of anti-septic for all his questionable deeds.


Johnson sought out conversation to cure his melancholy. Recent research (not from Miller) has shown that it is a natural drug more helpful than any anti-depressant, though the anti-depressant can help get you out of the pit and back into the coffee house. Johnson and Miller like raillery and badinage instead of preoccupation with the self. Raillery is the jocular intellectual dueling that isn't underhanded but usually so over the top that it's just good clean fun for those who don't take themselves too seriously. Badinage is playful conversation that is usually refined by intellectual and experiential knowledge. It reminds me of GK Chesterton's tremendous trifles.


Miller's book is never dull, despite what other reviewers have said on Goodreads, and is a veritable gold mine of wisdom for learning the ropes of good conversation. If you want a practical guide for avoiding boredom and conversation stoppers and stimulating community then Miller's book is a great place to start. From a worldview perspective, Miller is a secularist who values religion for the issues it raises for rational discussion. He finds his religious friends, even those who accept the authority of the Bible, to be great discussion partners.


Miller however, never addresses the challenge that secularism poses to substantive conversation. Secularism promotes the idea that people must check their ultimate commitments at the door of public debate. This is the real conversation stopper and the greatest weakness of the book. Miller's work does serve as a good reminder that curiosity is born in conversation which demands a conversing community of honest intellectuals. This is a declining ideal.


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