On Dialogue

by Dmitri Nikulin

Overview

Drawing from the works of Plato and more contemporary philosophers such as Bakhtin, Buber, Taylor, and Gadamer, On Dialogue explores the necessity of dialogue to being. Author Dmitri Nikulin argues that dialogue is not just a form of communication, but it is the very conditio humana. Nikulin provides a systematic account of dialogue and its role in philosophy, literature, and oral discourse. Exploring the notion of human unfinalizability in dialogical communication, which does not always come to a consensus but is always carried on further in order to express one's self as one's personal other, On Dialogue argues that the human is a dialogical being in perpetual conversation with the other. By offering clues a better understanding of the being, Nikulin's work makes a significant contribution not only to the field of philosophy, but also to the study of anthropology and ontology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739111390
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/14/2005
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Dmitri Nikulin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at New School for Social Research, New York.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Dialogue in the Past and Extant Tradition
Chapter 2 Voice
Chapter 3 Incompleteness and Unfinalizability
Chapter 4 Eidema
Chapter 5 Other
Chapter 6 Dialogue
Chapter 7 Monologue
Chapter 8 Concesus, Dissensus, and Allosensus
Chapter 9 Being

Editorial Reviews

"Since the Bakhtin Boom in the 1980s, 'dialogue' has been everywhere present as a word and too often absent as a disciplined philosophical relation. Nikulin provides the concept with a history, a psychology, and an inventory of its pitfalls, dead-ends, and challenges. But he does more. In devising his own bridge categories to help us flourish in dialogue, he sheds light on its most confounding paradoxes: how I can owe my being to dialogue and yet recognizably cohere and persist over time; and how I am at any moment complete, but at no time finalized. An erudite and inspiring book."

Caryl Emerson Caryl Emerson

"Since the Bakhtin Boom in the 1980s, 'dialogue' has been everywhere present as a word and too often absent as a disciplined philosophical relation. Nikulin provides the concept with a history, a psychology, and an inventory of its pitfalls, dead-ends, and challenges. But he does more. In devising his own bridge categories to help us flourish in dialogue, he sheds light on its most confounding paradoxes: how I can owe my being to dialogue and yet recognizably cohere and persist over time; and how I am at any moment complete, but at no time finalized. An erudite and inspiring book."

Caryl Emerson

"Since the Bakhtin Boom in the 1980s, 'dialogue' has been everywhere present as a word and too often absent as a disciplined philosophical relation. Nikulin provides the concept with a history, a psychology, and an inventory of its pitfalls, dead-ends, and challenges. But he does more. In devising his own bridge categories to help us flourish in dialogue, he sheds light on its most confounding paradoxes: how I can owe my being to dialogue and yet recognizably cohere and persist over time; and how I am at any moment complete, but at no time finalized. An erudite and inspiring book."--Caryl Emerson, Princeton University

Dialogue is a ubiquitous term in everyday experience and increasingly in recent philosophy. Combining diverse approaches from the history of philosophy, phenomenolongy and the insights of Mikhail Bakhtin, Dimitri Nikulin gives us a clear and illuminating account of dialogues as process, event, and interaction in the world.--Seyla Benhabib

This wonderful book covers the phenomenon of dialogue from our everyday experience to the philosophical disourses as the manifestation of the uniqueness of each and every single individual.--Agnes Heller, Professor Emeritus, New School for Social Research, New York

From the Publisher

Dialogue is a ubiquitous term in everyday experience and increasingly in recent philosophy. Combining diverse approaches from the history of philosophy, phenomenolongy and the insights of Mikhail Bakhtin, Dimitri Nikulin gives us a clear and illuminating account of dialogues as process, event, and interaction in the world.

Seyla Benhabib

This wonderful book covers the phenomenon of dialogue from our everyday experience to the philosophical disourses as the manifestation of the uniqueness of each and every single individual.

Agnes Heller