Buber’s “Dialogue”—More Than Just a Chat

 

The word “dialogue” originates from the Greek roots, dia (“across,” “between”) and legein (“to speak, pick out words”). The common definition of “dialogue” equates it with conversation. Both dialogue and conversation generally mean an informal exchange of thoughts and sentiments between two or more persons by spoken words. In the field of drama, the word is used to refer to scripted conversations. Yet in the general meaning of the term the speaking between persons is unscripted, spontaneous, unstructured, and open-ended.

Buber would distinguish this general sense of dialogue from the focus of his concern. His distinction between I-It and I–Thou helps to show his focus. Dialogue in the I-It mode involves a verbal exchange that takes place with a partial or even superficial involvement of the participant. One engages in such dialogue to get or achieve some predetermined goal, to pass the time, or to make a superficial connection, but it involves no little or no risk or transparency, and thus no significant potential for change to oneself or the other.

By contrast, the dialogue that is Buber’s focus is dialogue in the I-Thou mode. In such dialogue, the participant turns to the dialogue partner bringing the whole self to each moment of interaction in full openness, self-disclosure, and risk, being fully present to the present moment. With this openness, the participant is fully present to the shaping power of the dialogue as well. Each moment is “unforeseen, unprecedented, unmediated, ever anew.”

Dialogue in such terms is a fluid, very dynamic interaction from which the person who has entered into it can emerge to a greater or lesser degree changed. It is by full participation in such dialogue that “the bread of self-being is passed from one person to another in mutual acceptance, affirmation, and confirmation” (Buber, “Distance and Relation,” 71; see Turning to the Other 150).

Thus the reality of dialogue as Buber envisions it is not just “having a neighborly chat.” Dialogue in Buber’s terms involves such a complete “turning to the other” that it resonates to the very depths of one’s being.