from the editor

Dialogue, the popular-academic undergraduate essay journal of Boston College, features accessible and stimulating essays that tie clear intellectual thought to everyday experience in a variety of cross-disciplinary topics. The journal provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to compose and publish non-formal essays, with the aim of fostering intellectual conversation and discussion among members of the undergraduate community at Boston College.

Legend has it that late one night at the turn of the 16th century Raphael crept into the Sistine Chapel, climbed the scaffolding assembled there, and beheld Michelangelo's unfinished ceiling by candlelight. So impressed was he by the marvelous statuesque forms which he glimpsed amongst the flickering shadows that he decided to rework his current composition in deference to his brother artist. Thus was added to The School of Athens that marvelous figure of Heraclites leaning upon a block in the foreground, a figure whose features are Michelangelo's in a double sense: Raphael employed both the physical attributes and the voluminous style of Michelangelo in tribute to his fellow master. These two Renaissance masters, easily among the greatest artists of all time, shaped the course not only of their own age, but also of centuries to come, through an artistic dialogue which sought ever better ways to appreciate and portray beauty.

Over a century after Raphael completed The School of Athens, Michel de Montaigne retreated from years of public service to the Cháteau de Montaigne with a singular purpose: to test himself in writing. Over the course of the next twenty years he created a new literary form, one characterized by a process of self-reflection which results in a discernable presence of the author in the writing. Although he had locked himself away to test himself, not even Montaigne existed or wrote in a vacuum. Though he sought no Michelangelo of his own age with whom he could discourse, nevertheless Montaigne's candlelight fell upon an equally inspiring partner for dialogue: his own voluminous library. It was with the classical thinkers that Montaigne dialogued, and with living thoughts bound in books that he discoursed. The result of this dialogue was the birth of the essay.

The essay as a literary form is nearly impossible to define: it is something about everything. Some essayists are characterized by personal reflection, composing short autobiographical pieces which are almost exclusively introspective. Others wield the essay as a precise tool, one which seems particularly suited to the investigation and detailed analysis of a specific topic. Still others eschew an overly analytical approach, preferring instead to make use of the essay to point beyond itself, inviting the reader to aspire to great universal insights. Yet all of these varied forms which the essay may take are united by a common method: the essayist, in the very act of composition, is searching for true insight. If the essay is successful, then the result is a transformation of both the writer and the reader for although the essayist seeks to test himself, his work is a failure if the reader is left outside as a mere observer of another's thoughts. The aim of each and every essay is to draw the reader into the writer's world of understanding in order that the reader might enlarge his own. In short, the essay is but one small part of the Great Conversation which echoes down through history.

Raphael's splendid fresco which adorns the cover of this inaugural issue of Dialogue captures magnificently the spirit of conversation which animates the journal. Here are teachers and pupils, mathematicians and philosophers; here the truly wise stand and discourse on truth, while the merely sophistic lounge and promulgate their theories; here the idealist and the cynic, the realist and the skeptic enter together in the perennial dialogue. And, of course, at the very heart of the academy stand Plato and Aristotle, those twin giants whom Raphael has captured so marvelously in the midst of their own part of the Great Conversation: Plato points upwards towards the heavenly realm of the Ideas; Aristotle gestures down, insisting upon an empirical study of this world. Here the poet and the scientist, the idealist and the realist, are brought together in dialogue.

It is in light of this Great Conversation that Boston College continues to foster an intellectual community defined by its commitment to a liberal arts education. The fourteen essays found in this first issue of Dialogue, selected by the editors from over fifty submissions, reflect an ongoing contribution to such discourse at BC in the pursuit of what is true, good, and beautiful. These essays are meant to be invitations into further inquiry and discussion; whether presenting an intriguing new idea, sparking controversy, or providing an unexpected perspective, they are meant to lead you, the reader, to consider new questions, reconsider old ones, and to wrestle with truly important ideas. Often enough, it is the very boldness of these essays in their confrontational assertions and decisive conclusions that exhorts the reader to rise up and adopt a position amenable to discourse and debate.

Dialogue enjoins its readers to listen to and heed the train of tradition running through the Great Conversation, but also insists that all people, by daring bold claims and audacious arguments, feed the fire that will drive it through this century. And this, in the end, is precisely the animating purpose of The School of Athens, of the Academy which it depicts, and of its realization at Boston College: the passionate and communal search for truth, goodness, and beauty, a search which can only attain its end (if at all in this life) through a vibrant and dynamic dialogue. It is our hope that Dialogue will make some small but genuine contribution to this great enterprise.