Newsletter Dialogische Kultur | March 2024

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your interest in the newly established Research Center for Dialogical Culture!

The impetus for developing Dialogical Culture at the then Hardenberg Institute some 30 years ago was the challenges arising from fundamental changes in the world of work. From the outset, the aim was to pave the way for independent individuals to collaborate "for the greater good."

Since then, conditions have changed rapidly, extending into everyday life. This presents us with even greater challenges in several respects and necessitates the further development of Dialogical Culture.

We have therefore established a special research unit dedicated to this issue, which aims to address it from two perspectives:

1. Internal Conditions and Social Effectiveness of a Dialogical Culture
(K.-M. Dietz)

2. Compassion in Intellectual History – A Blind Spot of Individualism
(A. Sandtmann)

 

About project 1:

The first project further develops the Dialogical Culture against the backdrop of two major changes in living conditions. Firstly, the need for increasingly close global collaboration is growing. Even in smaller companies and organizations, there is currently hardly any area where factors extending far beyond Europe do not play a role. This becomes painfully apparent, for example, when urgently needed medications suddenly become unavailable due to disruptions in raw material supplies – or when craft businesses close down because not only is there a lack of skilled workers, but also the necessary materials have become scarce. Similar phenomena demonstrate in many areas that we cannot cope with individual events if we do not constantly consider the broader context.

We must consider the big picture in order to shape the details. But where does the whole begin? Where does it end? And above all: What makes the whole a whole? What is its intrinsic quality? – This is no longer an abstract question of interest only to "theoretical minds." Rather, questions of this kind require our daily attention.

Furthermore, many people experience their living conditions as increasingly unpredictable, indecipherable, and incomprehensible – the keyword being the "VUCA world." For the economy, this means, for example, that more and more companies are facing the problem of no longer being able to plan with certainty. Unexpected uncertainties of various kinds are massively challenging the traditional understanding of "leadership."

The usual processes from the emergence of a challenge to the decision in the executive suite and back again to implementation are taking up too much time. It has long been recognized that those who try to lead according to conventional models achieve very little. Some decisions are already obsolete before they are even made!

To address this problem, "agile" methods have recently been developed, leading to faster processes. However, the question remains: How can those working on the ground effectively manage the unfamiliar situations they constantly encounter? This question, which the culture has long grappled with, remains a challenge.

 

About project 2:

The second project addresses the question of how the now undeniable downsides of a one-sided understanding of individualism can be overcome without losing its achievements. Modern societies are founded, as a matter of course, on the autonomous personality, the independent individual – a valuable legacy of the Enlightenment that has even found its way into the constitutions of liberal democratic states. The Enlightenment motto, often quoted in the Kant anniversary year, "Have the courage to use your own understanding!", proves highly relevant in light of the media manipulations and subtle influences of all kinds to which we are regularly exposed.

At the same time, however, it can be observed that this courage often gives way to an arrogance with which one defiantly insists on one's own point of view and becomes deaf to the perspectives of others. Does such isolation perhaps constitute a kind of social self-isolation, the gradual preparation of which can be observed in intellectual history? Language habits such as… The word "environment," for example, illustrates how strongly we tend to see ourselves primarily as individuals: We quite naturally place ourselves at the center and distance ourselves from our "environment"—the world as mere surroundings. Only with the growing awareness of ecological consciousness has the use of this word been questioned, and it is now sometimes replaced by "shared world." In the intellectual history of the West, it is striking that while much has been developed to cultivate a differentiated relationship between humans and themselves, comparatively little has been done to understand humans as relational beings.

What approaches exist to overcoming this self-isolation without abandoning the individual? Significant insights can be found, for example, in the work of Martin Buber: "The fundamental fact of human existence is humankind with one another," not humankind for itself. In this project, other thinkers besides Buber will be given a voice.

In future issues of the newsletter, we will present the projects in more detail and also provide a preview of publications from the research center that are currently in preparation. If you, our readers, have any questions that you would like us to address in the newsletter, please feel free to contact us by email at info@dialogischekultur.de or via the contact form on the website.

Sincerely, on behalf of the team at the research center
Karl-Martin Dietz       Angelika Sandtmann



Forschungsstelle Dialogische Kultur gemeinnützige GmbH
Hauptstraße 59, 69117 Heidelberg
Tel. 06221-618991, E-Mail: info@dialogischekultur.de
www.dialogischekultur.de