Description

Otto Kroesen:

"In the modern world we employ different types of discourse: cultural, national, even professional. There are warnings of a clash between cultures (Huntington 1996) and the values fostered by different traditions. The use of reason is not sufficient to set priorities between them. Various postmodern philosophies of the twentieth century have suggested that reason itself is not much more than a set of institutionalized discourses (Bauman 1993). How then to find common ground? Where there is no common ground, human speech might have the power to create common ground. But that will require that speech lift us out of our hardened worldviews and value sets. It should take us beyond ourselves. It is this capacity for speaking and listening that was explored by Rosenstock-Huessy and aclose circle of friends gathered in the so-called Patmos group during the First World War. This war was a worldwide crisis caused by nation-states each of them considering themselves as superior to the others. The Patmos circle was in the forefront of understanding the potential of speech to create common ground between diverse national, religious, and cultural discourses. The power of speech as revealed in the grammatical method proposed by Rosenstock-Huessy still remains an important key for intercultural cooperation, management, and dialogue. Especially in the sphere of politics and economics we cannot afford to leave intercultural dialogue on the level simply of mutual respect and understanding. Perhaps wecan do so if we are only moving around as tourists between different cultures. But when we are serious, we have to establish priorities, accept trade-offs, and decide the tricky question: Whose priorities in terms of values must be followed in order to maintain or create peace and maintain and increase the required level of economic production?

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273485959_Towards_Planetary_Society_The_Institutionalisation_of_Love_in_the_Work_of_Rosenstock-Huessy_Rosenzweig_and_Levinas)