Some thoughts on dialogue...

I recently read an interesting quote in one of the course books we use for the Human Rights program. It was a valuable comment made by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas on how a meaningful dialogue can be formed. Read it below and tell me what you think.

"Struggling with the difficulties of understanding, people must, step by step, wider their original perspectives and ultimately bring them together. And they can succeed in such a "fusion of horizons" by virtue of their peculiar capacity to take up the roles of "speaker" and "hearer". Taking up these roles in dialogue, they engage in a fundamental symmetry, which, at bottom, all speech situations require. [...] And in the course of mutual perspective-taking there can develop a common horizon of background assumptions in which both sides accomplish an interpretation that is not ethnocentrically adopted or converted but, rather, intersubjectively shared."

He makes a really good (and well, somewhat obvious) point on how relating intersubjectively relies on how well both parties identify themselves with the role of "speaker" as well as "hearer". Easier said than done, I know and something tells me the latter is more difficult. But, I still think he formulates the process of dialogue very well for us.