Journal of Dialogue Studies, Vol 2 No 1

The purpose of this paper is to construct and critique the Dalai Lama’s conception and practices related to dialogue. I shall attempt to construct his ‘theory’ by simultaneously looking at both his practice and his writings. I will then offer a critique of his views. I hope to be able to show that His Holiness offers a profound understanding of dialogue-which, if put into practice, offers a number of fruitful consequences. The central thesis of this paper is that one of the best ways to understand and make sense of the Dalai Lama’s approach to dialogue is to see his beliefs and practices as particular instantiations of broader Buddhist teachings. In other words, one way of thinking about the Dalai Lama’s approach to dialogue is to see his practices as instances of some basic Buddhist beliefs. Without going into an exhaustive account of these various beliefs, I want to suggest that four of them, in particular, are useful for understanding His Holiness’s approach to dialogue. The four are: meditative practice, interdependent arising, compassion, and expedient or skillful means.

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In this chapter, I will offer both an appreciative and critical examination of David Bohm’s vision and practice of dialogue and how it relates to the field of dialogue studies. Bohm’s conception of dialogue was ground-breaking  in its time due to its emphasis on consciousness and unfolding a fundamentally different order of communication mediated by collective awareness  and insight into the nature of thought and the dialogue process as a whole. Bohm’s conception and process aspired to bring the human project of sharing meaning, values and learning forward by introducing practices or ways of being with the dialogue process that interrupted conventional practice at that time. In this paper, I examine key contributions of Bohm’s work as well as a number of critiques and limitations of the practice. Finally, I comment briefly on the feasibility of Bohm’s practice as a transformative approach to dialogue.

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This paper specifically concerns an aspect of the central place given to dialogue in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. Though   understanding  is  presented  as  the  unquestioned achievement of dialogue, there is scant attention to a prior question:  ‘What  draws us into dialogue in the first place?’ Gadamer’s treatment of dialogical understanding  as an event tends to obscure the necessary pre-conditions of its emergence. He correctly assumes that texts, artworks, literature speaks directly to us, even disarm us by their address. Yet, what disposes us to listen? Even if we hear nothing in a dialogical claim, what impels us to listen again or more closely to what might be being said? The paper attempts to answer this question and throw light on this, an obscurer aspect of Gadamer’s thinking. We will argue in the vein of philosophical hermeneutics and seek an answer to the question its approach to dialogical understanding  supposes but seems neither to ask nor answer. Our central argument is that within the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, the importance of dialogical exchange lies not in what is transmitted between interlocutors but in the respective hermeneutic  effects of that exchange. In dialogue there is no literal ex-change of ‘hermeneutic content’ between one speaker and another. We shall argue that it is not what is literally exchanged that matters but, rather, what participation in that exchange can unexpectedly bring about within the understanding of each speaker and often contrary to their willing and doing.

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The idea of dialogue occupies arguably the most central position in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer 1960/1989). Dialogue is here not understood merely as the conversation between two subjects about something of common interest in a shared medium of understanding, but rather as the foundational phenomenon within which objects and themes, subjects and perspectives, and common interest and shared understanding are grounded. The foundational character of dialogue derives from the fact that all experience is understood to be linguistically mediated, while language as a medium exists in its true and essential form as dialogue. The strongest support for this approach comes from a phenomenological perspective on understanding, i.e. on what really happens when we understand something, when we make sense of something by interpreting it. Bringing together the encompassing and foundational role of dialogue with its concrete origin in the act of interpretation will yield, as I will show, a post- metaphysical concept of understanding as dialogue. Gadamer’s own philosophical-hermeneutic conception of dialogue both suggests and yet misses its full articulation, as our analysis of the idea of dialogue in philosophical hermeneutics, the question of the metaphysical grounds of understanding in language, and the issue of the epistemological significance of dialogue will show.

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Both dialogue studies and the field of community development are reasonably well developed ‘communities of practice’, however, there has been little direct interplay between the two whereby a theory of dialogue for community development is articulated. This article then attempts to break new ground, setting up a ‘dialogue’, so to speak, between dialogue studies and community development theory and practice.

The article consists of a systematic exploration of some of the crucial work on dialogue that the author has concluded is relevant for community development theory and practice. The perspective taken draws on the work of leading thinkers from different places and disciplines, including Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Buber, David Bohm, Paulo Freire and Mikhail Bakhtin. Each contributes insights that enhance an approach to community development that centres dialogue within its theory and practice.

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This paper shares our experiences and reflections on a training programme  which seeks to build capacity, across the public research sector in Scotland, for developing and facilitating dialogic approaches to public engagement. We came to an interest in dialogue and deliberation by different routes, but got the opportunity to collaborate on this thanks to institutional funding for culture change around public engagement in the sector. The analytical framework from which we developed the training focuses especially on the micro-politics of communication patterns in deliberative and dialogic engagement processes. The training programme thus sought both to raise awareness of the principles and practices of dialogue, and to build skills in the demanding craft of facilitation. Our training approach has two key features: it integrates theory and practice; and it endeavours to make the general themes of dialogue and deliberation relevant to the specific context of public engagement  activities in universities and research institutes. Feedback from participants over four years indicates that this approach is working: awareness and skills are growing in quite concrete ways. In addition, there are encouraging signs of shifts and reflection over the ‘expert culture’ in this community of practice.

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