Abstract

In various essays examined in previous chapters, the linkage between dialogue and unification is explicitly asserted. However, it is not justified by an argument. In this chapter, we reconstruct such an argument by dividing the assertion into two claims. The first, treated in sections “(1) and (2)”, is that a dialogic act is necessarily carried out by a unified self. In section “(1)”, we demonstrate it through a thought experiment of a dialogic meeting at a Café; and in section “(2)”, through the analysis of Buber’s concept of exclusivity (Ausschließlichkeit). The second claim, treated in sections “(3) and (4)”, is that an action by a unified self is necessarily a dialogic one. In section “(3)”, we do so by introducing Buber’s notion of reflection (Rückbiegung), which—he holds—necessarily accompanies all non-dialogic acts, thus dividing the ‘I’ into a doer and an observer. In section “(4)”, we explain why only through a dialogic act, does one escape the predicament of the doer-observer divide.