Pragmatist and hermeneutic reflections on the internal conversations that we are

All thinking is essentially dialogical. Even when we are writing texts, we are always thinking with and talking to others. Whether these others are our predecessors, contemporaries or successors, to use Schütz’s typifications, whether they are past writers, future readers, or a bit of both, as is the case with the author who reads what he writes while he thinks, they are always somehow there as members of a virtual, potentially universal audience we are addressing in thought when we are writing. Consequently, our texts are not really texts, but contributions to an ongoing conversation that we inherit from our predecessors, address to our contemporaries and transmit to our successors.