Playful Seriousness: The Virtue of Eutrapelia in Dialogue

In Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle identified three moral spheres associated with human communication: speaking with decorum, conversation, and social conduct. Each sphere has a corresponding virtue. The virtue in speaking with decorum is truthfulness, the virtue in conversation is eutrapelia (refined, playful wit), and the virtue in social conduct is friendliness. Eutrapelia is gained in part by education and in part by personal experience. One learns to habituate oneself in conversation to avoid the excessive vice of bomolochos and the deficient vice of agroikos. A communicator enacts phronesis to deliberate good communicative choices, relying on one’s awareness of ethics, tact, and ingeniousness. Eutrapelia functions in dialogue to reveal unexpected connections in language, to open new interpretations in linguistic speculation, to negotiate meaning in the play of language, and to potentially shift one’s horizon of understanding about the content under consideration. Enacting eutrapelos as both refined humor and keen insight offers a place of respite that allows one to engage in the playful seriousness that is the hermeneutic work of dialogue.