The Arts of Dialogue: Finding Self

The essays contained in my book entitled “Dialogue” comprise the second improved and somewhat changed edition under the same title that appeared in 2015, which was an extended version of the book entitled “The Phenomenology of Dialogue” that appeared in 2008.1 The reader familiar with the previous editions may be attracted by the fact that many extensive fragments concerning the history of philosophy, and in particular personalism, phenomenology or philosophy of Dialogue are not included in this edition. These changes are dictated by the fact that at that time, these contexts fulfilled the role of a certain guidepost for the topic of dialogical personalism. In it, we attempted to unite the ideas of personalism and a reflection on the philosophy of Dialogue, which we wrote about in the language of phenomenology while referring to its sources and studying the possibilities that their compositions present, yet all this would not be possible without an extensive (as far as this was necessary) discussion on these philosophical issues.

Presently, from the perspective of the deeper and greater precision of our reflections,2 the historical context introducing personalism is no longer needed as such, but it has been replaced by deeper thoughts and solutions that were not present in the first edition of the book.

We did something similar with other contexts, at least from the historical perspective of phenomenology. That is why the present edition of the book entitled “The Phenomenology of Dialogue” presents us these very issues and is really a continuation, or maybe a better and more precise or in depth look at the issues in the previous editions, which comprised a unique outline for the present edition. Meanwhile, they were simply intuitions and certain reflections on Emmanuel Mounier’s or Edmund Husserl’s meditations, yet now we attempt to more clearly, as far as this is possible, to sketch the framework of the issue of Dialogue and the person. Thus, despite serious changes made in the text, the fruits of our thoughts on the assumptions of dialogical personalism, our intention to write this book and its first edition has remained the same. Our goal is to primarily attempt to grasp the meaning of interpersonal dialogical relationships and the way to understand them, and to highlight the meaning that they have in the perspective of the revelation of the subjectivity of one’s person.

In the face of numerous doubts and questions in this regard, which appeared as a result of the first presentation of the discussed issue, we also expanded the scope of our reflections, and as a result its form was also somewhat changed. Let’s begin with the first mentioned aspect: the philosophy of Dialogue that appears in Western philosophy is perhaps simultaneous with the birth of the reflections on man, which we presently call philosophical anthropology. This way of performing philosophy, associated with Socrates, the first to undertake reflections on man and the meaning of humanity in this way, is what we wish to also include along with our reflections.3

This brings up a second aspect concerning our book: each sketch discussing a new problem of Dialogue from a phenomenological perspective, which we will try to define accordingly, is at the same time an attempt to answer the question that came up as a result of the previous sketch. We can say that the question constitutes a compilation of doubts which each sketch leads us into, thus opening up another meditation and so on.

This kind of philosophical approach is well known and has been practiced since ancient times, and although in later centuries it was often overlooked for the benefit of empirical indoctrination or some type of sophistic judgments, it still remains the most reflective form.

What is so certain in the intentional sense to the extent that we can begin our meditations on the topic of subjectivity and its relationships?

It seems that every meditation concerning every perspective, not just necessarily the issue of intentionality or Dialogue,5 should start from something that is known to be certain and upon which we can support our further arguments. It seems that what is certain becomes certain at the moment when Descartes’ maxim

Cogito ergo sum6