The Communicative Relationship Between Dialogue and Care By Mari ...

coupled with the textured view of dialogue presented by Buber. Dialogue, labor, and care as seen through the following chapters each independently engage the “mud of everyday life” and come together to offer hope for walking through this mud as people living in relation to others. When joined together, they frame a communicative ethic, “a picture of a world that we can try to invite” (Arnett, 1986, p. 2). This communicative ethic is dialogue as the labor of care.

In this introductory chapter, the conversation is initiated in two ways: through a discussion of the problems presented by the postmodern moment and an introduction to the problems facing the concept and application of care. First, an examination of metanarrative decline, existential mistrust, individualism, and the demise of the ethical illuminate why we have difficulty communicatively enacting care in what is deemed postmodernity. Next, the discussion moves beyond postmodernity and focuses on the current communicative problems within caring itself, namely the devaluation of caring and the changes that have occurred in recent times that demand us to reengage the concept of care. The end of this introduction weaves the two together in a forward look at the rest of this book in order to thread the seminal ideas into the larger tapestry that is dialogue as the labor of care. The conversation begins by considering the need for a communicative ethic such as the one proposed at the end of this work. Here, dialogue as the labor of care is rooted in the reality of life, a unity of contraries, as it is lived out in communication.

Hope for This Hour

The contemporary postmodern historical moment communicates a need for humankind to find a way to live that will fulfill its humanity. Over fifty years ago, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber described such a moment and called for hope. Reading his words today, one sees that the moments are much the same and there is still a need for hope. Through the engagement of dialogue as the labor of care, our project is an endeavor to examine the spheres of dialogue and care and the coming together of the two in the work of Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt.