di Silvia Ferrero

One of the great obstacle to good human relations and understanding between different worlds is not being aware of the fact that all we think, state, do or propose rests not only on more or less explicit assumptions which differ but on presuppositions of which we are not aware, and which are not necessarily the same as those of our interlocutors.

The distinction between presuppositions and assumptions seems to be of capital importance. An assumption is a principle I set at the basis of my thinking process in a more or less explicit way. A presupposition, on the other hand, is something I uncritically and unreflectively take for granted. It belongs to the myth in which I live and out of which I draw raw material to feed my thinking. Myth here is to be understood as that in which we believe without believing that we believe in it. Myth, in other words, is the horizon of intelligibility and of meaning. Yet it is precisely what escapes our awareness. It is the un-though. The moment we become aware of it, it disappears and ‘re-mysthicises’ itself. The moment a presupposition is known as the basis of thought or the starting point of an intellectual process, it ceases to be a pre-supposition. Now only another person -or myself in a second reflective moment- can make me aware of my presuppositions. This causes a crisis. Yet in the case of native and non-native relations, for instance, not only we give different answers to the concrete fundamental questions that are asked, but we do not generally ask the same questions, nor do we have the same concrete aspirations. Now, to be constantly aware of the fact that our assertions and our lives always rest respectively on presuppositions is a very important condition for an authentic and open dialogue and understanding. This insures an attitude of listening on both sides, not only to what the other says and thinks he/she is, but to what he/she does not say or think, but is. It also insures an attitude of listening to the unsaid and un-thought dimension of ourselves.

We must therefore become aware that we all have presuppositions of which we are not aware. Thus, we cannot perceive them, we can only recognise them. This we cannot do alone. We need the other to unveil them. It is the other who uncovers my myth, my horizon of intelligibility, the convictions that are at the basis of my expressed beliefs. This is the line of thinking of philosopher linguist Mikhail Bakthin, which he expressed so vividly in his writings. Hence, we are more or less aware of our assumptions, that is, the axioms or convictions from which we begin and which we use as the foundations of our respective views. But these assumptions themselves rest on presuppositions that we take for granted. This is not necessarily the case for our interlocutors who will draw our attention to these presuppositions and bring them out into the open form of analysis and discussion. One of the great discoveries and certainly the most troubling, and at the same time the most liberating, is that there is no absolute, i.e. no universal and perfectly valid criteria by which we can judge and analyse everything under the sun.

On such an account any dialogue and anthropological analysis are doomed to failure if they start from positivist pretensions. For reality is not graspable in its ‘entirety’. Yet, there is an opportunity of dialogue and understanding of ‘others’. This is the ability and willingness to understand ‘otherness’, to create a dialogue that is a ‘dialogical’ dialogue, and to enhance a reciprocal growth between those who talk each other.

Hence, I invite the reader to go beyond (not to negate or refuse) the purely rational, objective, notion of culture currently adopted by modern sciences (or post-modern) adopt, because that notion, it seems to me, cannot be an adequate framework for any interpersonal dialogue and any discovery of the ‘other’. For modern science is one world among many. It has its language, its culture. At the same time, however, it has a strong reductionist bent, that one of reducing knowledge to modern science, reality to the rational and scientific order, words to terms. It had accustomed us to demand objectivity: i.e. objective clear, precise notions where subjective, personal considerations do not enter. One seeks structures, models, types, typologies, cultural invariant and universal concepts translatable everywhere. If one situates oneself only in the conceptual epistemological order one will speak only with concepts, terms clear definition. If one, however, situates oneself also in the mythico-symbolic order, one acknowledges a deeper level that puts him/her in more direct contact with existential and experiential reality. For every culture is an existential, experiential and personal reality.

I am proposing here to do away with our myths (our western myths which are based upon history, science and reason) and to approach the meeting between us and the ‘other’, primarily not in a ‘rational and civilised’ dialogue namely in objective, scientific, clear concepts and definitions. I am here proposing the ‘dialogical dialogue’ by Bakthin, that as I will explain later on, does not necessarily belongs to dialectics, and that does not exist as a method to know the other. On the contrary, it means fundamentally opening myself to another so that he might speak and reveal my myths, and my presuppositions. It is a way of knowing myself and disentangling my own point of view from other viewpoints and from me. To call for a reawakening to the mythical dimension of reality is not an invitation to return to irrationalism, blind faith, and the so-called obsolete idealism. Of course the notion of myth that I am proposing here is not the one defined by modern science. It comes from a deeper level of reality of human consciousness and hence it is more universal than the level of reason, of philosophies.

When I speak of myth I am not speaking of our epistemic sign, such as metaphor, an intelligible content. I am speaking of reality in itself as it manifests itself, at a level that expresses openness, and anthropological willingness to encounter and embrace the other in his/her entirety and wholeness. If, for instance, we want to focus our attention on interactions between human beings and nature, to understand the ‘principles of behaviour’ which regulate human beings and their social and natural environment, we might infer that our western epistemology is based upon a concept of nature (inherited by Greek philosophy) which causes us to be incapable of understanding other cultural systems where plants and animals are regarded as fundamental parts of the environment. A system where the hierarchical ordering of life-forms are made by cultures that do not make use of dichotomy between nature and society. Whorf’s anthropological studies on the Hopi Indians, to cite one example amongst the many, widely demonstrated the existence of cultures where there is no dichotomy between nature and society.

How, then, is it possible to understand, and build up dialogue without being trapped into our own western epistemological schemata? Here comes the epistemological problem for western rational thinking. As heirs of the Platonic illusion that a realm of pure intelligibility exists, any attempt to grasp and master experience, knowledge, life, culture obeys the drive towards the mastery of nature by reason. It is our mind that helps us to understand and unveil the secrets of life. Hence, the western intellectual consciousness and awareness has been always the predominant approach to reality. This approach is based philosophically on the polarity ‘being is thinking’. The dogma here is to try to discover reality through thinking. All the words used such as apprehend, grasp, represent, and reflect have one sole preoccupation, namely not escape the control of thinking. However, one must have also another consciousness: here is not thinking that discovers being, but is a matter of letting being spoken. Here one opens up to reality, to the other, to the self, not by capturing it or comprehending it but letting it challenge our selves, our frameworks, our models. In all this, the very capacity to have consciousness is based on otherness. Bakthin said ‘For in order to see our selves, we must appropriate the vision of the other’. The self exists ‘because’, ‘for’, and ‘thanks to’ the other. On such an account any relation with the self and the other, where the other means completeness in terms of his/her time and space categories, implies a dialogue. Yet, one more clarification is needed.

The dialogical dialogue I here propose supposes that we are believing and relational being, and that reality need not be dialectical, coherent, logical, and objective. Interlocutors are both human beings who know in a never-ending, indefinite process. One must not, however, take dialogical dialogue for ‘dialectical’ dialogue. Dialectical dialogue supposes that we are rational beings, and that our knowledge and awareness are governed above all by the principle of non-contradiction. It is easy today think of the term ‘dialectical’ as something that refers to a close relation between thinking and being, hence as a technique where the power of judgement is strengthened. In a dialectical dialogue the affirmation of reason, and the evaluation of other people’s life prevail. A dialogical dialogue, for its beauty and the grace of its principles, requires many efforts. It requires a willingness to go beyond categories, concepts and stereotypes that are the predominant foundations of our western culture.