852 words, 4 minute read.
Is it possible to dialogue with someone whose views are incompatible with my own? Am I to put the truth that I already possess at risk? Am I to waste my time by engaging with ideas I know to be false? What, for example, could I possibly gain from a flat-earther? Could I sincerely dialogue with someone like that or would it just be an exercise in politeness but without openness to the risk of an authentic, potentially belief-altering exchange of ideas? Can there be dialogue with someone whose position I firmly believe to be false? Could I dialogue with anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, white supremacists or Young Earth creationists?
Questions like these imply certain ideas about what the truth is, how we relate to it and what the subjects of dialogue are. One such view that could underlie questions like these is a conception of the truth as being ownable, possessable by a person and of dialogue being an exchange, confrontation or competition among ideas. In other words, a dynamic where ideas are the protagonists and where what is at stake is ownership of the truth.
I would like to suggest a different framing.
Starting from myself, I believe – with Plato – that the truth is not something I can possess but that it is like a landscape I traverse. The truth is to be approached, understood, gotten closer to, inhabited, but it remains beyond me and contains me. I also believe – with St. Paul – that for now we see the truth through a glass, darkly. This is neither a relativist position (I believe there to be one landscape) nor one that obviates efforts to heighten one’s understanding of the truth (not all ideas about the one landscape are equally good representations).
Going beyond myself, I believe the subjects of dialogue to be persons and its aim to be reciprocal love. A person who holds views opposed to my own and a person whose views coincide with mine are to be loved equally. I believe – with Jesus – that we are all called to be one. This makes dialogue with everyone an imperative. And what about that white supremacist? Also with them. But, importantly, it is dialogue with a person who, among other things, holds white supremacist views and not dialogue with the idea of white supremacy.
What does it mean for me to dialogue with such a person? First there needs to be the desire for dialogue, for greater mutual understanding, in both of us. If that is missing, dialogue is very unlikely and I need to accept that pain and seek to love them in other ways. It also means that I need to keep taking the risk of attempts at dialogue failing, I need to keep initiating dialogue even when chances for it are slim.
If, however, that desire for dialogue is there, then I first need to empty myself of my own ideas and receive the other’s as a gift to me. Having received them into my own emptiness, I then also need to share my understanding with them and do it such that it becomes a gift for them. I believe – with Zanghì – that this mutual welcoming the other’s ideas into oneself and giving one’s ideas (that now contain the other’s too) as a gift to the other is what constitutes true dialogue.
Does that mean that I need to agree with the other person, to subscribe to their ideas? No. Sharing an opposing view can be as much a gift as declaring agreement, just like both can be done for false motives. Dialogue is not oriented at agreement, but at mutual love, which heightens mutual understanding. Assuming that we inhabit the same, one landscape, and given that we are part of that landscape too, I believe – with Leibniz (and notwithstanding Black’s ingenious counterexample) – that we are necessarily seeing that landscape from different perspectives. Sharing these with each other sincerely and with the desire of mutual self-giving and other-receiving has to be enriching no matter how distorted our individual perspectives may be.
And what about the truth? It’s unicity is what allows for freedom to fuel that mutual self-giving and other-receiving. I believe – with Benedict XVI – that truth is to be pursued without fear of it threatening one’s identity. I can open myself to the other in pursuit of truth without fear of loosing the relationship I already have with it.
eyebeleave 