Philosophy of Dialogue
= related to the work of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, and his book, Out of Revolution:
Discussion
Marc Huessy and Freya von Moltke:
"1914 was a shattering experience. In one of his letters Rosenzweig wrote: “Around us the theater of this world has broken down.” National states that took themselves as absolutes, for four years struggled against each other over life and death, as if they had not been already for a long timepart of one Europe. Rosenstock-Huessy later said that already in the trenches of Verdun he had a vision of the ground plan of his book Die Europäischen Revolutionen (1931). In this book, as in the English-language sequel, Out of Revolution (1938), he presented European history as an ongoing dialogue between different national traditions, even if the countries did not like each other and it was unwitting. As part of this history they cannot take themselves anymore as absolutes, and they have something to say to each other of lasting value. That is the better option. That is what language does: people following the course of their own monologue are turned around to face each other and opened up to the discourse of the Other. Where people and traditions lack a common denominator, and violence lurks around the corner, language offers an escape. When we cannot deal with each other in any way anymore, we have to talk to escape violence. Whoever makes that discovery, discovers the peace-creating dimension of language, and it is this discovery that evokes the question: What is actually happening when people talk toeach other? What kind of a something is that, talk, speech? Of course this also raises the question of speech in the conversations of this group offriends, of which Rosenstock-Huessy was a part. If people really speak to each other, in one wayor another such a dialogue produces change. Speech is not in the first place simply the disclosure of information that is to be processed in our brains. Instead it is the word seeking an entry, via theear, to our hearts. In the correspondence of Rosenstock-Huessy and Rosenzweig during the First World War, at one point Rosenzweig posed the question: Where are our languages coming from?To this question Rosenstock-Huessy provides an answer, quite extensively. That answer is the kernel of this text. The manuscript was in 1916 sent as a letter from the Western front of the German army by Rosenstock-Huessy to his friend and partner in dialogue Franz Rosenzweig, stationed at the Eastern front in the Balkans. It is the oldest document of what later, thanks to Martin Buber who also belonged to this circle of friends, became known as the philosophy of dialogue. It had a decisive impact on the coming to birth of Der Stern der Erlösung. Rosenstock-Huessy reworked it and added to it, and for the first time it was published in 1924 under the title Angewandte Seelenkunde. The standard title for the English version is Practical Knowledge of the Soul. The new Dutch translation has the title The Language of the Soul (De taal van de ziel, 2014).
Source: (PDF) Introduction to Practical Knowledge of the Soul, by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, translated by Marc Huessy and Freya von Moltke, Wipf & Stock ix-xxxvi. Available from: