Questions to Which There Are No Answers: The Method Behind Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Dialogue

Abstract

The mystic and ‘thinker’ Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) engaged in numerous group conversations and one-on-one dialogues with a great diversity of discussants, including disciples, scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and theologians. Behind these dialogues, I suggest, there is a distinctive method, which I term the Krishnamurti dialogue. This method, whose existence has evaded Krishnamurti’s followers and scholars alike, is as innovative as what has become widely known as the Socratic method and should be considered Krishnamurti’s greatest contribution to the field of religious thought. In this article, I aim to unveil the persistent methodology that enables Krishnamurti’s dialogue to accomplish its transformative goals. Based on Pierre Hadot’s hermeneutic approach, I scrutinize the early development of Krishnamurti’s dialogical methodology as well as recurring structures in two sample dialogues. Most of my attention will be devoted to what I deem his two most revolutionary tools of investigation: an unconventional use of questions and an innovative employment of the mystical principle of negation, or the via negativa.

Keywords

• jiddu krishnamurti
• socratic method
• via negativa
• philosophical dialogue