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C H A P T E R 4 DIALECTICAL PLURALISM: TRUTH, THE OTHER, AND THE PRAXIS OF SOLIDARITY To live with another, to live as the other of the other, this basic task of human beings applies in the smallest and in larger contexts.1 Reflecting on chapter 3, we must note an intrinsic double play between the necessity of a framework of orientation in dwelling together and the unavoidable presence of differences that crisscross within it and destablize it. To be sure, conversation is galvanized by the interaction of genuine differences; yet the contrast of difference is recognized as such only within the interpretive sway of a field of semantic power. Just as there is no identity that forms itself without reference to a commonly forged horizon of values, there is no difference not related to some background of common recognition.2 For we must stand somewhere , and where we stand influences what we see as significant. We don’t encounter what is alien in the mode of cognitive neutrality; we interpret it via the productive force of the traditions we inherit. Otherwise, difference becomes unintelligible and a matter of indifference. It is its sense of likeness and resemblance to what we already know, then, which renders difference meaningful. To know the other is to recognize similarity in it by way of a certain analogy to ourselves. As Aristotle points out, “knowledge is of the like by the like.”3 But, still, genuine discordance and dissimilarity must be there—in some original sense—if the other’s difference is to affect us, grab our attention, and call for response. For utter similarity or likeness is a matter of triviality. Conversation is as equally neutralized by equivocated sameness as it is by sheer difference. How, then, are we to understand the circularity here? It seems that we must steer a tenuous course between drawing-together and letting-be, between the one and the many, between identity/sameness and difference/contrast. The key to traversing such a middle path, I suggest, is continuing to think dialectically, holding 101 the two sides in a fruitful tension. The previous discussion of Hans-Georg Gadamer was aimed at providing the raw material for such an endeavor. Now, however, we are faced with the task of developing this into a productive vision of pluralism, one that has both theoretical plausibility and ethical relevance. The overall task, then, is not merely to acknowledge the fact of difference, but to thematize and underscore the positive value of difference, cultivating communities that are opened toward greater and more inclusive shapes of conversation. Building upon the analysis of chapter 3, this chapter argues that the selfother entwinement contains within itself a normative pulse pointing toward disclosure over closure. For the very pulse of conversation engenders the possibility of a translocal space of pluralistic solidarity. Such solidarity is what I shall call, drawing from Anselm Kyongsuk Min, “dialectical pluralism.”4 Dialectical pluralism is a form of dwelling together that is both an “always already” and a “not yet,” on the one hand a fact, and on the other a task stretching indefinitely forward, intimating the ever-deferred possibility of a maximally inclusive horizon of conversational solidarity among differences. All localized dwelling is not only open to, but of its own accord calls for, further supplementation. No community is an island. There is, however, an additional element to this process that grants it ethical heft. I shall uncover this element in several steps. First, the human concern for truth reflects a will-to-community that affirms existence as trustworthy and worthwhile. This, in turn, suggests that the character of being-with is an event radiating with surplus value. Relation is an invocation, an opening toward the promise of further possibility. From where does this possibility arise? From the singularity of the other’s presence, which summons response. And from this arises a double imperative that lets-be and at the same time draws-near the other’s difference. Accordingly, we can discern, embedded in conversation, certain anticipatory presumptions as ethical signposts. Precisely these presumptions offer the means by which we may retrieve critical reason in a dialogical modality—that is, as a dialogical rationality that can advance the cause of solidarity among differences , exposing and resisting deformations. Dialectical pluralism must be informed by an analysis of the conditions of being-with if it is to promote a global form of sharing. This is my proposal for a path out of the...

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