The Interaction of Continental and Analytical Philosophy in the Development of the Philosophy of Dialogue

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is very erudite, provides highly important exposition of the field of inquiry and offers innovative insights by juxtaposing and comparing fields traditionally seeing each other as disconnected. 

The essay draws parallels between the analytical "dialogical logic" and continental "philosophy of dialogue." In this, the essay contributes to the ongoing discussions of the relationships between continental and analytical traditions in philosophy, in modernity. Modernity is qualified here respectively as philosophy of subjectivity and philosophy of personality. In the both, the subject is associated with a person -- primarily with the first person "I", in the continental philosophy, and with the array of three persons in singular and in the plural, in the analytical philosophy. In both traditions, the transition to modernity consists in ascribing to subject, a traditional Aristotelian notion without any reference to either activity or receptivity/passivity, the new status of agent, who now also becomes the bearer (the subject in the old sense) of actions, which are now, in modernity, understood as ascribed to him/her/them. In analytical tradition this ascription of action to subject takes shape of ascribing the action to a person -- in the whole spectrum of persona: the person becomes suitable to be a bearer of his/her/their "own" action by virtue of communication (transmutation, transposition) of the first, second, and third persons, as if the three were fully translatable one into another. Without that no personal responsibility for the person's action would be ever possible. By contrast, in continental philosophical tradition the priveleged subject-agent becomes and remains to be the "I", which is therefore also assumed as the core of all other subjects-agents in any other persons (you, they, we, etc.). 

Analytical dialogue-theory is a negotiation of the "language game" between three persona as an intrinsic part of the possibility of any personality. Such a game remains to be the core of what person as responsible for his/her/their actions is. By contrast, the philosophy of dialogue attempts to reach beyond the confines of the subjectivity of the subject-agent, attempting, instead, to ascribe the second and the third person properties that are not translatable to or reducible to or communicable with the first person of "I" or "we."

One of the points of significance of the essay at hand is to extend the scope of these modern developments by placing them in the context of medieval scholastic grammar in Hebraic and Arabic versions, where neither "I" nor any other person is central. Instead, as the author helpfully highlights, the "grammatical" notions of 1) the speaker/speaking/the-underfined-one-who-is-speaking; 2) the one (again undefined by person) who/which is present, i.e. to which/whom the speaking directs itself, and 3) the hidden (absent). This medieval Hebraic and Arabic context allows to highlight the radical change in modernity, when subject-agent, and person responsible for her/his/their actions enters the scene. In that medival  medieval grammar, the defined or definable person, if any is the only one "present", and this is the one to whom/to what speaking directs itself. (Importantly, the speaking is not associated with the "first person" -- it is not a person that/who speaks, it is the speaking that directs itself towards the one who is thereby, due to the power of speaking becomes present -- the thou or you, in the modern term, and the -- only -- "present" in the medieval Hebraic and Arabic grammatical terms.

Lost to the modern notions of subjectivity and person, this medieval understanding of speaking as always directed to the present and always concerned with the "absent" is coming back through and despite the language of the tree persona. This coming back happens differently in dialogue theory and in philosophy of dialogue. Yet the common -- and largerly lost -- medieval ground is what explains the hidden commonality of the dialogue theory and philosophy of dialogue. The present essay does the very important work of recovering this commonality in the modern terms, those of persona, while also gesturing towards the elided medieval Hebraic-Arabic ground of both continental subjectivity and analytical personality. In this I see the most important contribution of this essay.

In my opinon, the author may chose to consider articulating this connection with and disconnection from the medieval grammar more prominently in the essay, but this is only a suggestion, not a recommendation.

In therms of the essay composition, the most innovative part of the essay are part 6 and Conclusion, which the earlier parts of the essay provide necessary general exposition and contextualization. Once again, that contextualization remains modern -- with one crucial exception which, as explained above, might be elaborated: a contextualization of both philosophy of dialogue and dialogue theory in relation and in distinction from the medieval Hebraic and Arabic grammar that employs only one person, and not the first one! Once again, this is to remain the discretion of the author. 

I do have some specific, technical recommendations though, which I indicate by line-numbers.

45: should be "I offer a brief overview"

74: ". and" needs to be fixed.

150 "for all" does not need apostroph after "all"

153 close space between "specific" and "reality"

167 Italicize the title Tractatus etc. 

281-282 delete paragraph brake

289 reference needed

316 Explicate "the limitations that Aristotle himself knew"

329 -- the term subject is used in the old, premodern sense, unlike everywhere else in the essay. Consider replacing "subject" with "matter" or "concern" or "goal" ????

337 reference of "him" is not clear, replace the pronoun with noun, or explain. 

382 the same 

426 -- an elaboration on how Bachtin is similar to Lorenz in this quote can help a lot. 

435 "which consistent" needs to become "which is consistent"

 

 

 

 

  

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The article is very erudite, provides highly important exposition of the field and offers innovative insights by juxtaposing and comparing fields traditionally seeing each other as disconnected. 

Author Response

Letter to the editor

Dear colleagues,

Many thanks for working with my article. Special thanks to the reviewers for their valuable comments! Below are my responses to the reviewers m(italic) and additions to the text of the article (fragments in quotation marks).

In a separate file I provide a new version of the article.

Reviewer 1 notes the importance of comparing analytical and continental philosophy of dialogue in the context of the discussion of their relationship within contemporary philosophy and in terms of their complementarity. In response, I would like to make the following additions to the article:

 

Fragm. 1: “Two ways of understanding dialogue have much in common (2), and they have been developing independently of each other.”

 

Fragm. 2: ”The fact that dialogic ideas developed in the 20th century in parallel independently of each other in analytical and continental philosophy confirm relevance of the philosophy of dialogue. Simultaneous development of this philosophy point to urgent need of such an approach. Independent development of dialogic ideas in two competing directions of 20th century philosophy testifies to their ability to respond to current problems. Thus, we see growing importance of combining the continental and analytical foundations of the philosophy of dialogue. This is the most important task of this article”.

The review emphasizes the difference in the development of the concept of subjectivity in continental and analytical philosophy. In this regard, the following remark is inserted into the text of the article:

 

Fragm. 3: “Common to continental and analytical philosophy is the change in the status of the subject compared to classical ancient philosophy. In analytical philosophy, the subject is no longer passive and becomes an agent of human action. In continental philosophy, the subject, through the persons I, Thou, He, acquires personality. Considering that activity and personality are expression of will and ethical orientation of dialogue, both positions are can be combined.”

The reviewer rightly notes that the appeal to medieval Arabic and Hebrew grammatical traditions is not only a convenient technical device, but also an important philosophical approach.

In this regard, note 13 was added.

The reviewer draws attention to the fact that medieval thought and modern philosophy develop the topic of the third hidden person in different ways. He invites the author to consider this issue in more detail, but does not insist that this should be done in this work. Indeed, I devoted a very detailed article to this topic [51], which was published in Russian. I specifically devoted an article to the problem of the hidden person [52], which was published in English. I provide a link to these works in the text of this article.

 

The technical recommendations of the reviewer have been accepted and the text of the article has been amended accordingly. Including:

 

316 Explicate "the limitations that Aristotle himself knew"

This topic is discussed in detail in my work "Hermeneutics of Aristotle and Hermeneutics of Sophists in Terms of Dialogue Philosophy". But I did not refer to it, so as not to clutter up the already large bibliography, and limited myself to Note 12

(12) “As I noted above, in other works (Topics, Rhetoric, Poetics) Aristotle goes beyond his hermeneutics of propositional speech”.

426 -- an elaboration on how Bachtin is similar to Lorenz in this quote can help a lot.

Regarding line 426, I included the following phrase:

“M. Bakhtin also considers the world as a whole not set of external objects, but the implementation of participative existence expressed in act:

“The world in which an act or deed actually proceeds, in which it is actually accomplished, is a unitary and unique world that is xperienced concretely: it is a world that is seen, heard, touched, and thought, a world permeated in its entirety with the motional-volitional tones of the affirmed validity of values” [15] (p. 56)”.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

More references to modern literature in German, English, and Hebrew needs to be made. This is a highly researched topic and the author needs to explain what the state of the research is and how is article aims to contribute. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English only needs minor improvements. 

Author Response

Dear colleagues,

Many thanks for working with my article. Special thanks to the reviewers for their valuable comments! Below are my responses to the reviewers m(italic) and additions to the text of the article (fragments in quotation marks).

In a separate file I provide a new version of the article.

Reviewer 2

In response to the comments of reviewer 2, the author has made a number of important comments regarding contemporary research and continental and analytical philosophy of dialogue and has significantly expanded the bibliography. Of course, it is impossible to cite the entire vast literature on the philosophy of Buber, Rosenzweig, Levinas, Wittgenstein and Lorenz. Therefore, the article cites only materials directly related to the topic under consideration.

 

New notes:

Note 1 There are many studies that compare analytical and continental philosophy, explore the history of their split and points of convergence. But, as a rule, these works do not sufficiently compare the specifics of  language and do not take into account the study of dialogue. As an example, we can cite a solid monograph [2] which compares analytical and continental philosophy, but ignores the concept of dialogism.

Note 2: Putnam shows that between Wittgenstein and continental philosophers of dialogue, such as Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas, there is the common desire to overcome metaphysics and to move from the study of essence to the description of act, event, way of life [3] (p. 13). This happens within study of language, but each of the these thinkers does it in his own way [3] (p. 30).

Note 3: Proximity of thought was obvious to the creators of the philosophy of dialogue. Rosenzweig wrote about it as early as 1925 [4], Buber wrote a special study, “On the History of the Dialogic Principle,” at the end of his life [5]. However, it was only in the 1970s that it became clear to researchers that the philosophy of dialogue was born in Germany as a holistic philosophical movement [6].

Note 4 Russia has its own roots in dialogism, and the central figure here is Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s relationship with German philosophers of dialogue, especially with Buber, is striking [7] (pp. 13–18). However, before the publication of Bakhtin’s early philosophical works, the connection between his teaching and the philosophy of dialogue in Germany wasn’t clear. In this regard, studies of the relationship between early Bakhtin and Cohen are very important [8]. But only recently Bakhtin has come to be considered not only as an original indigenous thinker, but as the contributor to the philosophy of dialogue from Buber to Levinas. [9] (S 65).

Note 5 Dialogical ideas of Gabriel Marcel was already mentioned by Buber[5] (p. 217). But dialogism underwent its most important development in the philosophy of Levinas.

Note 6 One of the classics of the philosophy of dialogue, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, moved to the United States in 1933. Under his influence the correlation of the “German” and “Russian” schools of dialogism took place. A striking example of such proximity are the works of his follower Clinton C. Gardner. See, for example, [10].

Note 7 In 1938, Martin Buber settled in Jerusalem and became the initiator of the philosophy of dialogue in Israel. Since the publication of Samuel Hugo Bergman's book in Hebrew in 1986 and in English in 1991 [11], popularity of the philosophy of dialogue in Israel has grown.

Note 8 Connection between different directions and conceptual integrity of the continental philosophy of dialogue are considered in the works [12, 13].

Note 9 (2)

Note 10 (3)

Note 11 (4)

Note 12 As I noted above, in other works (Topics, Rhetoric, Poetics) Aristotle goes beyond his hermeneutics of propositional speech.

Note 13 As Habermas notes, although Rosenzweig and Buber also participated in the turn to language along with analytical philosophers, Buber is closer to Wittgenstein in opposition of interpersonal relations to subject-object relations [47] (p. 15-16). One can agree with this statement. But Rosenzweig's version of philosophy of dialogue significantly enriches Wittgenstein's concept, since it makes visible that "thereof one must be silent" [48] (p. 90). Such an awareness of significance of hidden third person is absent in Buber’s thought.

Note 14 The medieval concept of persons develops independently of the European concept of subjectivity, which arose many centuries later. Therefore, the relationship between persons as between subject and object is alien to this concept. This, nevertheless, is compensated by the awareness of dynamics of relationships between persons within the framework of mystical practice. Thus, the modern and medieval understanding of relationship between persons complement each other.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf