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Dialogic Ethics
Edited by Ronald C. Arnett and François Cooren
[Dialogue Studies 30] 2018
► pp. 265–282

Dialogic ethics

A pragmatic hope for this hour

Communication ethics conventions commence with locality: historical, social, cultural, and psychological situatedness. Dialogic ethics, as instantiation of communication ethics, does not rest in provinciality alone; dialogic ethics incorporates Immanuel Kant’s and Hannah Arendt’s emphasis on enlarged mentality, which limits provinciality as one seeks a world greater than immediate proximity. Dialogic ethics invites revelatory possibilities of learning from difference, functioning as pragmatic resistance to imposed answers. Dialogic ethics is “hope for this hour” (Buber 1967/1952), in an era constituted by ethical conflict. Dialogic ethics demands an enlarged mentality that refuses to dismiss the unique characteristics of another’s local home. This essay assumes a pragmatic conviction: dialogic ethics is the primary communicative hope in an era defined by ethical contention and conflict.

Keywords: dialogic ethics, conflict, communication ethics, enlarged mentality, hope
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Macro advice from history
  • 3.A good name no more
  • 4.A pragmatic turn to hope
    • 4.1Background: A unity of contraries
    • 4.2Foreground: Proper names
    • 4.3Dialogic ethics: The language of responsive gestalt
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 June 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.30.11arn
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