The Five Communities

Abstract

Introduction:  Those of us who have experienced the joy and terror of the intensive formation of a philosophical community of inquiry (COI) over an extended period, understand intuitively that it is a process of development which has certain characteristic structures and patterns.  These can be glossed in a number of ways, all of which will be metaphors, if only because any given moment within the life of the COI is an instant of vertiginous freedom.