Dlaczego polityka okalecza rozmowę. Pesymistyczna analiza porównawcza z optymistyczną konkluzją
Why Politics Mutilates Conversation: A Pessimistic Comparative Analysis with an Optimistic Conclusion

Summary/Abstract: Contemporary political discourse often refers to dialogue and conversation as an important, if not the most important, element of a healthy democracy. Improving communication between public authorities and citizens, as well as between citizens themselves, is the goal of numerous practical democratic innovations. In the article, the historical perspective is used to argue that there is at least one obstacle which impedes a reliable democratic dialogue. The obstacle in question is the loss of dialectical competence, the causes of which I analyze referring to ancient philosophical debates on the role of the word in politics. Dialectic had been seen as the art of wise conversation since antiquity, but it soon fell victim to intellectual battles among philosophers, who saw it, at best, as a method of reaching the truth, and sophists, for whom dialectic was mainly a tool to creatively manipulate opinions of others. The unique political value of dialectic had been neglected over time and thus the dialogue itself became mutilated: deprived of the important prefix ‘dia-’ and reduced to the possibility of mere articulation of one’s opinions and interests. I argue that the restoration of genuine dialogue in a democracy requires a deeper understanding of the nature of dialectical opinions engaged in political conversation, and the correct application of the dialectical method in the Aristotelian sense of the term.

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