ABSTRACT
And so in dialogue, as in society at large, the good of individual persons is the good of others returned as the good of each, a minimal condition of which is social solidarity – the international of all who bear a human countenance, as Ernst Bloch has it. A precondition of dialogue is, therefore, an acknowledgement of the other as a person whose presence, as Emmanuel Levinas says, makes a demand on us even as we hold our own practical concerns in abeyance in order to gain access to that otherness. To clarify how dialogue reaches back through the layers of language, the author have drawn especially on the magisterial work of Robert W. Bellah and Merlin Donald, dealing with the rich interweave, both biological and cultural, that makes up the story of Homo sapiens. Dialogue is a response to listening, and it continues through a mutual (even if often tacit) understanding that listening remains the indispensable underpinning.
