 Welcome back, everyone. And now it's time for our keynote lectures. And it's my great pleasure to introduce our first keynote lecturer, Luca Di Blasi, who is professor of philosophy at the Theological Faculty of the University of Bern in Switzerland. And his research focuses on theoretical approaches to religion and the religious dimension of philosophy. And other fields of research include modern continental philosophy, political theology, and cultural theory. Among his many publications, let me just emphasize three that are particularly relevant for our seminar today. Namely, a paper called Resuming Conflict, Benedict's Grace and Vocation and the Limit of Dialogue, that recently appeared in the Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence. And a book that you can see on the slides, Dezentrierungen, Beiträge zur Religion der Philosophie in 20. Jahrhundert. And another paper with a title, Vielfalt und Verschiedenheit zur Gegenstrebigkeit der Diversität in Diversity Trouble. Maybe we can resolve some of the trouble through a dialogue today. Yeah, and the title of his lecture today is Questioning One's Own Epistemic Superiority. And let me also introduce our next speaker so that we immediately after the first keynote lecture will have the second keynote lecture and then a dialogue between the two and then questions and discussion also with the audience. Yeah, our second keynote lecture is Elad Lapidot, who is professor for Hebraic Studies at the Université de Lille. He has taught philosophy to his thought and Talmud at many universities. For instance, also University of Bern, where he has been a colleague to Luca. And the Humboldt Universität in Berlin and also the Freie Universität. His research focuses on questions concerning the relation between knowledge and politics. And let me just mention three publications relevant for our seminar today, namely, Choose Out of the Question, a Critique of Anti-Semitism. Heidegger and Jewish Thought, Difficult Others. This is an edited volume. And Etre Sommodir, La Logique de Sein und Zeit. The title of his lecture today is On the Ethics of Not Speaking. And I'm so much looking forward to your lectures and discussions, Luca and Elad. I will stop screen sharing now so that we have, so that we can upload your slides. And now I give the word to Luca. Thank you very much, Claudia. And I'm going to pose for the organization of this meeting and for inviting me to come here. So thank you, Claudia. Thank you, Esi. Now I would like to say something about my topic. So actually, the title has changed slightly. It's now questioning, if you can see, one's own epistemic superiority and its limits. So if it's two small changes, and now I can just explain something about this. Epistemic arrogance understood as an unquestioned and uncritical understanding of one's own epistemic superiority towards others could be called an epistemic lies. Accordingly, questioning one's own epistemic superiority should be an epistemic virtue. And this virtue now, so it's first element here regarding our conference. And the second is that this virtue seems to me to be a good precondition of dialogue. If you are used to question the superiority of your truth claims, it might be less arrogant, and it might be easier to be curious and open towards others. And in consequence, to maybe get in a productive, what we call productive dialogue with them. That is why I choose questioning one's own epistemic superiority as a topic for this meeting. And I put epistemic in brackets because I noticed that actually, my examples sometimes are broader than just epistemic. It's also questioning their own moral superiority. And so I don't want to limit my talk to the specific or historical. If you think that you are in historical progress in regarding others, it's all the kind of superiority, but it's not so clear whether it can be called epistemic. So actually, I'm not so much interested in this kind of discussions, but I just wanted to make it clear. So second, in my talk, I would like to investigate this question by means of one of my favorite hermeneutical figures, the kippit, or the ambiguous figure, my disabled figure, sometimes called. But actually, I like the term, the germ term, kippit. It's very nice, and I will mostly use this term. And I will do this in three steps. Firstly, I would like to show that the kippit enables a specific hermeneutic, kippit hermeneutics, which already makes possible to relativize one's own claims of superiority insofar as for this questioning of what was previously unreflectively taken for granted is fundamental. What at first appeared to be an image turns out to be a mere aspect. What was seeing turns out to be seeing us. For this shift, the so-called aha moment is the central prerequisite. The counter figures are accordingly those who are closed-minded, who seem unable, naive, or unwilling, ignorant in a moral sense, to see things in another way to perform an aspect change. In a second step, I want to show that self-realization of one way of seeing as seeing as gives birth to a new and more hidden form of epistemic superiority. The implicit assumption of an epistemic superiority is related to the fact that the relativization of the own seeing as seeing as is accompanied by the perception of a new aspect. And this offers the possibility to see the matter from the other side as well. My aim is to present a possibility to become aware of this superiority through the very same kippert. It consists in noticing that by assuming our epistemic superiority, we align ourselves precisely with those from whom we thought we were positively distinct. Instead of a new aspect appearing that differentiates one image into two aspects, in the case of the aha moment, the difference between me and the picture that I made of the other disappears. Instead of an aha moment, I speak therefore of a negative aha moment. In a third and final step, I would like to question this question. There are three kinds of questions in a certain sense. How far can we go in questioning our own epistemic or moral or political superiority? Are there situations like the current one in Eastern Europe in which the willingness to engage in moral and epistemic self-questioning ceases to be a virtue and turns the state into a kind of vice, a weakening towards violence, for example? Do we bump up against the limits of self-questioning in the face of existential threats, like a war? And this actually is also a question which came out of a dialogue with you and Claudia. And so I'm curious to hear what you think about my answer. So first, the aha moment. This is my first part. Some words about Kipildar and Biggest Figures because I'm not sure whether I can just presuppose that everybody is familiar with them. In 1932, the Swiss naturalist Louis Albert Necker, so he's often regarded as a scientific discoverer of the ambiguous image. Of course, even if you read some history of philosophy, you will see that it's not that true. And I was just for two months in Rome. And in the Museo Nazionale Romano, I discovered for some of this beautiful mosaic, where you have clear this arc, this ambiguous figure, so you can see they can switch, so to speak, from one perspective to the other. So at least the figure was known and I cannot imagine that it was not only also somehow reflected. But this is not important for us. I also want to indicate that actually that different Kipildar, to speak of Kipildar minutics or the Kipildar, or the ambiguous figures, is already a kind of abstraction which doesn't, it's not very correct. Actually, it doesn't take, it's not mixed, how to say, give justice to the phenomenon because if you analyze different Kipildar more accurately, you will see that they have important differences. For example, even the difference that you think that the multistability or the instability of a Kipild is just a binary one, that it can be seen in one way or the other is somehow not necessarily a necessary condition for a Kipildar. At least one can question this because there are multistable figures which permit to see them in a much more complex way. It depends on how you define Kipild in order then to indicate whether this is, for example here, a Kipildar or not. You can also, there's another possibility if you are familiar with Malevich, the black square in white, I think, so it's a black in white barmen or something, it can be seen as a Kipild. You can see, because you can play with the foreground and background, you can switch then instead of a black square, you see a kind of dark background and then there's a kind of window, for example. You can go back and forth. This is possible with many, many things. But this is maybe not a Kipild because it is, so this is something which seemed to be relevant for the Kipild is that this is what I just mentioned and this is why I call this chapter here, aha, a moment. It has to be something, one feature which already Necla in his publication emphasized and why it became a phenomenon for him, why it appeared to him. And this is the sadness and involuntariness of this phenomenon. So it, there's a moment precisely, these characteristics are what made it a phenomenon since it is through them that the ambiguous figure appeared to him and made him want to explain it and to get control of it. So if you read the paper of Necla, you can see that he discovered this cube now. And then from, in a moment he saw it that it could change the, no, you can see it can change them. It can be the foreground and the background can change. And in the moment it happens, you are, aha, now I see it. Now this is the moment where it, if this is the first time at least, involuntary, more or less. I think you cannot just, you have no control about this but later on then you gain some kind of control and this is specific I think for the cube build. And this is maybe not clearly the case here and in this case it's not that clear whether you have a similar moment because in a certain sense it's too complex. The binary differences fits better with this sudden moment when you have many, many possibilities to see and you, then this strong difference disappears. And now I want to go more deep in my specific amni-neutics and in this, for this I need a specific keyboard. It's this keyboard, it is famous one, the dark rabbit one, is, so to speak fit is can be used, is more useful from my specific approach because here what happens is that the new aspect appears out of an image, which is not that case in the mecha cube. You can, or other the Rubin ways, the famous one, that specific, yeah, this is another, more different, more difficult, actually more complex but this here is clear. Now you have a, you see in the first, the first moment, maybe a duck and then suddenly you, ah, no, now I see the rabbit or vice versa. So what happens here? Now in a naive sense you could say, okay, you had first one aspect and then you saw the others. And this is very often described but it is not accurate because you had initially, you had no abscess. This is my point that I made in, already 10 years ago in my book and this was also published in my book, Decentrierungen, in the beginning you have an image. You see a duck or image of a duck. And out of this image when you suddenly see the rabbit, the rabbit is from the very beginning, it's an aspect because you saw already the duck before and retrospectively this new aspect as spectralizes or relativizes the form of picture in an aspect. Now it's just an aspect but it was not from the beginning. You don't see immediately. And I had here quite technical actually introduction to the Kippel by Wittgenstein. So I skipped it away but I thought it's maybe less dialogical if I start with a more technical thing. But you can always discuss about this. But if you are interested, this is what is specific for the Kippel. What I was very much interested in is this difference between something that you see where you used to, you think this is reality. So to speak and then out of the blue, it comes something new from where everything appears differently. Kuhn would probably have said it's a new paradigm where you see that the world is different. And you know, for example, you are used to think that the sun is turning around the world and they are us. And then if you manage to see it the other way around everything is different, no? And now you cannot, but my point is actually that there is still a difference between these two aspects because you're very used to the first one. And if you use the Kippel as a hermeneutical tool to understand such more, let's say existential habits or cultural habits, then it becomes interesting because then you can say it makes a difference when you saw first the earth as stable. Even though you didn't reflect on it, you had no, not in the second order perspective on your own perspective. You're so just, it is clear, the sun is moving. And it is a different one. Then the second step, you see, no, it's the other way around because still you are still used to see it in a specific way. And so this is what you then you can reflect. Actually, I wanted to also to mention it. I think that for your project, this could be interesting to reflect the difference between second person and second order. Because this is a difference, no? And it's not the same. You can also be the second order of your own observations, but you are not a second person. I would suggest that this could be also fruitful for our dialogue. Yeah, we would see that it's probably there, people who are already in going with it. Okay, what is interesting here is that what in regarding my own talk is that in a certain sense, what happens is a fundamental relativization of what appeared to be just was unquestioned. Was unquestioned that it was a duck. And then after this was big occurrence, the appearance of something new, you have in a certain sense to relativize this apparent stable knowledge. Now you become aware that actually it could be seen in a different way. And this of course can be then developed, that you can say, actually we get used to kind of second order perspective where we can question everything we see as, maybe probably something that we see as, and probably you can see it in a different way. So you relativize your own stability of your own perspectives and are at the same time helped more, maybe trained to deal with differences. And not only that you can accept that someone else has a different view, but you're even embrace new perspectives. Oh, wow, great. And now I see even there's not a possibility. And this maybe could be a reason why this keep that became especially in post-modern times. So popular, not only Kuhn, but Wittgenstein are major figures for post-modern thought. And because I think it fits quite well with the kind of embracement of diversity, of plurality of perspectives in opposition to a modality which was seen more in a certain sense, narrow-minded in that sense. Okay, I skip now the whole more technical part regarding keep-builder and also my own reflection. But if you're interested in a kind of deepening this approach, you can of course also read my article on this. And now I skip to a new thing which is actually was not brand new. I developed this last year in this for the conference which a lot has already mentioned that thing here or no in the private discussion, but it was, it's not, it's quite new and this is the negative moment, I think. So the relativization and aspectualization of seeing has a counter figure and this is instead of the one who is called by Wittgenstein aspect blind, aspect blind. The term itself expresses already a certain devaluation and blindness is a classic and certainly not unproblematic. Example of privation, not privation, the lack of the good that is expected. So if you're not familiar with this term, the stone is cannot see, but it's not blind. It's not a privation if the stone doesn't see because it's not to speak in the essence of the stone, it's not this other while for a dog for example or an animal which is assumed to be able to see when it is cannot see is called blind. This is a privation. And accordingly the expression aspect blindness articulates the non-existence of a skill that is expected to exist, namely to be able to see different aspects or to perform this aspect change. Even though the first aspect change at least happens as I said, somehow involuntarily and can therefore not be completely blinded. You cannot just, but you have to see. The direct is difficult, but still this notion of aspect blindness implies at least a kind of possibility that we should be able to perform this. By understanding the inability to perform an aspect change, to be able to, and to be able to relativize the own perception as privation, as deficiency, it can easily become a symbol for an epistemic vice, for a narrow-minded dogmatism. And as such, this assumed inability to see other aspects can also be seen as politically. Now I come to my slide here, the picture, my cartoon. So quite, did you notice someone already know this cartoon? I think it's quite, I thought it's quite famous but actually I noticed that many people don't know it actually is better for me so you can just have fun with this cartoon from the New Yorker from 2014, you can read it now. I don't need to, do I need to have to read it, the title? But I say that there can be no peace until they renounce their rabbit god and accept our duck god. The ambiguous image, the kid bit serves here to represent a political theological conflict between two disputants. The connection to the field of religion is striking here. One is tempted to think of medieval crusaders and Islamic holy warriors and to see them as representatives of current conflicts between Christian Christians and Islamic fundamentalists. Both sides seem to conflict with each other because they do not see what the observer can see because they each see only one aspect, one viewpoint. Because they do not see this, they overestimate difference and thereby idolize one sidenstance which turns them into the intolerant god warriors of their absolutized aspect. The picture thus seems to belong enlightenment tradition in which religious is quickly equated with dogmatic and fanatic. If we look at the problem from the point of view of a kid bit amniotic, does it not consist exactly in the fact that as Wittgenstein would say two diametrically opposed forms of aspect lightens collide with each other here whereby one side cannot see the picture object rabbit the other the picture object duck. A political kid bit amniotic would accordingly conceptualize the conflict of the two disputants in Paul Norse cartoon as a conflict between two instances of aspect blindness as a consequence of two limitations and try to show the parties or to demonstrate the parties that they are not able to recognize their seeing as such and thus to realize it that they do not recognize that in what they dogmatically misunderstood as seeing an objective fact and thinking and interpreting is inscribed inseparately but undistinguishably from this thing. As soon as on the other hand, the relativization succeeds and the way to an affirmation of diversity is open opened in which the others seeing as is recognized as not threatening one's own seeing as but instead as enrichment. This indicates the possible solution to the conflict. Neither of the two parties to the dispute is right nor is a possible third party. The solution might rather lie in the fact that the disputing parties change aspects and thereby realize that they confused and absolutized their respective relative seeing as with an objective perception. The solution here seems to be the relativization of the respective aspects just as Nils Bohr in the famous lecture of 1927, published one year later tried to settle wave particle realism by through the principle of complementarity. So the principle of complementarities has a set of kind of similarity with this. Keep that thing in the sense that you acknowledge that there are two possibilities. They seem to exclude each other but you need both for a better explanation to speak of the phenomenon. So it's not the complementarity in the sense of Bohr it's not just two, it's not the classical understanding of two things that complement each other. They are in a certain sense intention to that makes it more interesting. But if you take a closer look, we see that the basis of this interpretation is wrong. The issue here is not the clash between two sides each with aspect blindness between two sorts of aspect blindness for the cartoon whether the author intended it or not obviously goes beyond such an arrogant relativism. Here or pluralism or if there were indeed two forms of complementary aspect blindness here, how could the armies recognize that the other were fighting under the banner of another God? Would they not necessarily recognize their own God in the banner of the other if they were aspect blind? And thus be unable to recognize the others as enemies. So in a certain sense one could even make the point that aspect blindness would be the best form of not having a conflict because they don't even see that the other sees something in a different way. As a view of the cartoon at least the general of the army you can see him with the in front of the picture on the left side. In the foreground knows very well that the others worship another God under the same banner. See the duck rabbit as something different. So he is not at all more stupid in this than the aspect seeing cartoon viewer. The obvious aggressiveness goes out here from exactly that one who is without doubt capable of the aspect change. Confusingly it thus turns out that the one who relativized himself or was able to relativize his own view comes close to the one he thought he could devalue as an aspect blind panetic. So this is my major point here. In the moment we understand that actually we have not two forms of aspect blindness but the most aggressive figure here is able and capable of seeing the other side as well. We ourselves have to then to reflect our own epistemic superiority as viewer of this cartoon and we become much closer to this figure here to the most aggressive one because we thought ourselves to be superior to these stupid armies here, medieval armies. We were in a similar situation actually than the general here who apparently seems to be to think himself as superior to the opposite side. So while here in the cartoon we have an army in front of him we have two armies in front of us but it's the same. We are superior, we are able to, we thought we were able to something which we thought they were not able. So the observer comes to recognize herself exactly at that other at whom she had just smiled in superior and mocking fashion that is as it's double. This is what makes this insight uncanny. Instead of a new aspect appearing here in a ha moment and introducing a difference, a split, one could say a picture class in the image, here is exactly the other way around. A difference disappears. I recognize the similarity between me and the devalued image I made of the other. And this is what I call because this disappearance of an image and a sort of a difference which was introduced by the aspect change but a ha movement I speak of a negative ha moment. And by this alignment it becomes recognizable that I regarded the other side, the aspect blind, religious fanatics, no less as potential enemies than to the general in the cartoon regarded the others. Or with other words, the observer is in the battlefield, not beyond. I would like to point out that the cartoon also articulates a remarkable claim of one's own historical superiority of the observer of the cartoon and implicit thinking of progress as was the case again and again in modernity but which is perhaps already inherent in Christian superstitionism. This claim lies in the assumption that it was the other who were arrested in a friendful thinking and that they were thus still in the Middle Ages and in a religious mindset. The so-called return of religion appears here as an enormous non-simultaneity, not with the term in Asblok, ungleichseitigkeit, the technical term. And so I think here is, you see the kind of coming, the return of religion but in a kind of ungleichseitigkeit of the strange and simultaneity from a specific perspective. You may object now that this is only a cartoon and that I exaggerate its importance a little bit but doesn't something similar occur again and again, isn't the impression of non-simultaneity, ungleichseitigkeit, associated with the feeling of one's own historical advancement in an unusual way in the West to react to something unexpected. Even regarding the Ukraine war, you can find this topos of historical superiority. The idea that Putin is waging an anachronistic imperial war in the style of the 19th century or the 20th century is very common among Western intellectuals and even the Ukrainians often understood as being caught up in an outdated nationalism and adhered to our more advanced post-heroic and post-national Western society. This was precisely this attitude that Jürgen Habermas articulated quite clearly in his much discussed text on the war in the Ukraine. So you can see this quote but I will not read it and I also will not read the... But I just wanted to mention this interesting that is somehow ironic actually, that the one who can be understood as the spiritual director of that Frankfurt school from where Habermas arrived criticized in front of another war precisely the concept of history that is effective here. And I just also give you an... Maybe I just read the last sentence here. The current amazement that the thing we are experiencing still possible in the 20th century is not a philosophical one. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable. Unfortunately now because of time I cannot go deeper but we can maybe the discussion also reflect this specific historical superiority. Now I come to my last point. But I said I have to read it. It's called questioning the questioning of one's own epistemic superiority. We all have experienced moments where the free play of interpretations is blocked. The appearance of an aspect can abruptly interrupt the game of interpretations. A spot on a computer tomography scan can mean an infinite numbers of things but as soon as it might also mean malignant tumor, the free play of interpretations of possibilities of seeing something as something already set in motion by the possibility of danger anyway abruptly changes its character. Here one aspect takes the upper hand interrupting the free play. This is not because the other possibilities no longer exist because suddenly one becomes aspect blind but because one kind of seeing as gains so much more existential weight than all others which thus fade away so to speak and the perception narrows down and fixes itself on one possibility that seems relevant. And isn't that exactly what we are experiencing in view of Russia's war on Ukraine? Again in this background the question arises whether questioning the own superiority could perhaps go too far in specific situations at least. Whoever experiences this war as an existential threat not only for Ukraine but also for us whoever sees here the outlines of a danger for freedom and for democracy will have little understanding for someone who remains in the mode of self-critical questioning even the face of the most obvious violence and justice and danger. One could even say our impatience regarding the Putin-Fashteya, the understander is a kind of hint of this. Understander is normally something good. We would like to understand to see to have more perspective on the war now but in specific moments we seem to see as a kind of danger now. You understand too much. The understander should speak a kind of counter figure of the denier. In this moment you are the denier. You deny that you could see things all in another way. I could record or talk about this. And even more, doesn't the attitude of questioning oneself even chance to become an epistemic or moral vice doesn't epistemic modesty ultimately weaken our morale and thereby supports the aggressor? That's in other words, the present situation in which we find ourselves in Europe not clearly show a limit to this self-questioning but it's not that simple. First of all, by questioning self-questioning the attitude of our praxis of self-questioning of critical of critics in a certain sense the very same praxis is not thereby terminated but applied to itself. So it is thus not simply a termination but also a confirmation of self-questioning. More importantly, questioning one's own superiority is not relativistic or even nihilistic and in itself. It is based on an implicit implicit normative precondition the fight against hierarchies between human beings only based on a fundamental notion or value if you want or I don't know of equality if the questioning of unreflective and unfounded assumptions of superiority meaningful at all. In other words, the precondition of questioning superiority is a kind of negative understanding of hierarchies. You question this and this is why the question of superiority is a kind of negative understanding and you question this and this is why you do so. So in this reflection has therefore consequences for conflicts like the present one. It would be self-contradictory if self-questioning went so far as to question the opposition between authoritarianism and democracy questioning the superiority of equality against suppression. In other words, here it is a clear and orienting limit and thus it is in no way contradictory to practice of questioning one's own moral, epistemic, political superiority to know oneself in a struggle with an opponent who violates the very equality behind it. It wasn't that exactly what I was saying before related to the negative aha moment here we recognize that we no longer recognize ourselves as superior observers but as partisan in a dispute even in that field of struggle in which we previously saw the other comprehended. We ourselves are subject to that friend for logic in a certain sense which we had previously attributed to the other. We are as non-simultaneously not simultaneous as we perceive them. However in political conflicts we rarely deal with the mere juxtaposition of contradictory opposites like democracy versus tyranny peacefulness versus bellicosity and so on. So in principle this is we have this clear contrast while war can bring such contrasts more clearly to light part of the conflict of war. This is a famous note and termed by Carl von Klauswitz is perhaps the fact in the course of such conflicts the parties tend too easily to see each others as representatives of such principles and to fail to recognize that the principled opposites are not so clearly distributed. On the contrary the same conflict that brings contradictions to light also leads usually to an alignment of the two parties and the opposites become confused. Escalating conflicts have the tendency toward what René Girard called violent imitation which makes adversaries more and more alike. And at the same time a billingness or ability to recognize or acknowledge this increasing similarity. Exactly this very tendency is addressed in the negative aha moment and might be an antidote to such escalation almost in the end of my talk more generally against the tendency to conform to the negative image one head of the other this is a critical reflection of one's own assumptions of superiority seems absurd. We, the political we that constitutes itself in conflicts like the current one should therefore not stop questioning the own implicit or explicit claims for superiority. It is for example certainly true what Uttarish said I quote there is one thing that is true and obvious but no argument can change we have not Ukrainian troops in the territory of the Russian Federation but we have Russian troops in the territory of Ukraine but we should not forget how often our western troops were and still are in other countries. The initial question about self questioning and its limit is less answered by reflecting on its normative supposition we arrive at a clear limit of self questioning it becomes self contradictory to question the very basis and motivation of this very question at the same time self questioning must not stop precisely if we do not want to fall back in an unreflected and unjustified claim of superiority conform to the negative image we have of the other and violate the egalitarian principle as well. I would like to end with a quotation by Karl Barth formulated in a slightly similar situation like the current one quite interesting text because he paid attention I think in a certain sense to both dimensions that I just mentioned he wrote this system the German Nazism can only deny the charge but also the charge can only deny this system but it would be good if you as Christians and theologians are now also interested in the fact that Europe by retreating step by step from the dictatorship of myths by bowing to its methods and making them its own is about to become a madhouse thank you thank you Lukas and then we will have the next keynote Elat Diary as you will see I'm going to refer to one of the texts that we discussed earlier the Heidegger I begin with hermanutics namely by referring my beginning to another beginning by positing my talk within an already ongoing conversation ours we are talking about the systemic virtues and the practice of dialogue this is the name theme and beginning of our current conversation I begin by reading this title inaugural speech systemic virtues and practice of dialogue is speaking the relation between knowledge and language both understood as praxis, as performances knowledge is a matter of virtue language is practice of dialogue the underline hinted it rather than explicit question so I read the title is practical not only in the sense that it concerns praxis but because it concerns normativity virtue, namely it concerns the ethics of knowledge and language the ethical question revolves around the practice of dialogue the notion of dialogue here is today an evident ethical moral significance within epistemology dialogue names a certain contemporary ethics of knowledge and thought more specifically the notion of dialogue is intimately related to the normative idea of epistemic difference namely the idea of knowledge practice of knowledge which resists unity and totality resists the totalization of knowledge both in theory and in politics to use the terms of our conversation the practice of dialogue in contemporary discourse stands for the epistemic virtue of difference otherness diversity, pluralism dialogue the logos that is more than one dual or plural both guarantees and performs pluralism within knowledge in this sense dialogue is a logo epistemic practice that counters other monolithic and totalizing practices such as monologue dialectics or logics my basic epistemological attempt is to think about dialogue within the broader perspective of what may be called the break or rupture of logos as a contemporary epistemic device which is not vice but virtue we can talk about a contemporary practice of as I already said logoclasm and normative breaking of the logos I suggest to situate the ethical epistemic question of dialogue within a broader contemporary discourse concerning the practice or ethics also the politics of resistance to logos a resistance to the practice of logos namely to login to speaking it is in this precise sense that I speak of not speaking can we speak of dialogue as a practice of not speaking I do think the notion of dialogue and of dialogical thinking are currently deployed within a logoclastic discourse nonetheless does dialogue really counter low gain isn't dialogue gain the very performance and dissemination of logos and if so wouldn't dialogue not so much contradict monologue as complement or perfected is dialogue really the guarantee of epistemic difference wouldn't the existence of dialogue already signify the fundamental overcoming of difference the reproduction of logos in dia logos isn't dialogue be enactment of speaking as establishing the coherence of logos the unity of language wouldn't the encounter with real difference with real alterity deep epistemic linguistic cultural alterity imply in contrast the impossibility of dialogue the end of speaking wouldn't therefore the embrace of epistemic difference require something like what I called an ethics of not speaking a logoclastic practice of silence I will now reflect on these questions hermeneutically once again by intervening on an in an already going conversation by entering a dialogue with a dialogue of sorts or more precisely by sticking with a gishpres what I refer to is high-degrees text that we discussed earlier that was offered as a source for our own discussion from the Sprache zwischen einem Japaner und einem Ragen I will now suggest a reading of this text as a logoclastic exercise as an attempted enactment of not speaking in the name and for the sake of epistemic difference this is how I'm going to read this text in a nutshell my claim is that this attempt ultimately bails high-degrees attempt at logoclasm bails yet at the same time before the ultimate before the eschaton it does provide valuable insights into what may be called the practice of logoclastic speech a first logoclastic speech that arises from the inter-linguistic performance of high-degrees text is its English translation by Peter Herbs as we shall see the English title a dialogue on language both renders and distorts namely erases and silences the German title aus einem gishpres von der Sprache from a conversation of language translation as silence by speech but as I said high-degrees own speech act his own text is a logoclastic performance a staging of not speaking a fundamental element of silence lies already in the staging that constitutes the literary genre of dialogue the philosophical text the logos is not delivered directly is a conceptual immediacy but mediated through individual speakers broken in particular bodies namely non-logical non-liguistic entities the dialogue is not only an exchange of words but the happening that takes place between and through persons a drama a play which consists in silent acts in this is a central world in this entire text gestures the drama of high-degrees text is a performance of difference and encounter between individuals that embody different cultures as we say today or different epistemes as I suggest or as high-digger writes different worlds languages and Sprache geists different thinking and designs the text is a fiction inspired by a real meeting that took place apparently in the mid 50s between high-digger and the Japanese professor Tomio Tezuka the two different epistemes that the two interlocutors represent are identified in the text as on the one hand European or sometimes Argentinian that is Occidental or Western never German and on the other hand Japanese or East Asian note in passing that this specific constellation of difference within a post World War two German text already signifies within a historical political cultural and even scientific logos in which Europe East Asian other is deployed as alternative replacement and effacement of Europe's other other namely the West Asian the semi the more explicit European German framing of the conversation Swedish and Japanese beyond the obvious fact that it takes place in German is also evident in the identification vis-à-vis the Japanese speaker of the European speaker namely high-digger himself not as a European but as Luca already pointed out as an inquirer or questionnaire whereas the Japanese is a particular cultural identity the questioner Fragende is a mode of logos a general form of speech finally not with studying the symmetrical form of the dialogical exchange the dramatic event of this intercultural encounter is clearly driven and moved by the European the inquirer the verb whereas the named Japanese is mostly moved responding reacting the basic plot as I wish now to show is the collapse of logos in the inter-epistemic difference what I will call the first act of the play I look at it as a theatrical event features the logo classic event the end of speaking that is the break or the death of the dialogue the second act features something like resurrection we are never far here from theology indeed the entire text offers a sort of eschatology a discourse of absence in view of an ultimate presence more precisely a conversation between different languages in the absence of common logos but in view of its coming I quote as a motto the messianic epistemological vision that Heidegger the inquirer formulates at one point of the exchange when he wonders I quote whether in the end which would also be the beginning an essence of language can arrive in the thinking experience and offer the assurance that European Western saying asian saying will enter into a conversation to sing something that wells up from a single source act one death of a dialogue the inquirer's conversation with the Japanese fashions itself as a memory commemoration or andenken of another earlier conversation between Heidegger and another Japanese thinker Count Shuzo Kuki who in 1933 published the first Japanese book on Heidegger the exchange begins symbolically with the contemplation of Kuki's death which announces the demise or failure in retrospect of the Japanese's historical dialogue with Heidegger Kuki's inter-epistemic attempt in approaching Heidegger we are told was to conceptualize the essence of Japanese art which he designated by the Japanese word Ikki by using European aesthetics it is this project, this historical dialogue that Heidegger now 20 years later in the 50s harshly criticizes aesthetics he says both the name and what it names originate in European thought in philosophy and reason Heidegger says aesthetical contemplation must remain fundamentally foreign to East Asian thought any attempt to understand Japanese art with European aesthetics must fail the problem is not just aesthetics Heidegger's critique concerns the very foundation of dialogue namely language conversation between European and East Asian thought is impossible not only because they have different aesthetics but because they speak different languages to understand the problem we must recall Heidegger's conception of language which resists a common understanding of language as a system of arbitrary signs or non-linguistic reality and instead conceives language to use Heidegger's famous phrase as the house of being namely language is the matrix of our world note that Heidegger's conception is in fact not attached to the perception of language as a specific system of signs German, French, English, Japanese etc. but refers to the system of signified meanings at one point he writes which defines not a system of signs but a system of existence of being a world a culture civilization which may be common to multiple semantic systems the problem in Kookie's attempt to dialogue was not the semantic or grammatical differences between Japanese and German times rather it was the epistemic categorical gap between the European and the East Asian discourses in worlds between their different houses of being we European Heidegger says probably live in a completely different house than the East Asian man end of quote the houses, the languages are most fundamentally different in their understanding of what is at all language of the essence or being the basin of language the different languages are therefore different in their very existence in their being language European language either argues arises from the basic European epistem metaphysics European language is based on the metaphysical distinction between sensuous and super sensuous namely between the material physical sign the sound, the script and the ideal metaphysical signification since the European and East Asian languages are not just semantically but existentially ontologically different Heidegger concludes a conversation from house to house remains almost almost impossible this impossibility of intercultural dialogue is not merely theoretical but ethical the attempt to enter into this almost impossible conversation is not only doomed to fail it is also dangerous the inquirer's the Japanese is imbued with the sense of danger and the feeling of fear and apprehension namely from some catastrophe some destruction some death the danger lies in the conversation itself in the impossible but nonetheless attempt to dialogue between the ontologically different European and East Asian languages Count Schuzokouki's exchanges with Heidegger were held in German in European language accordingly so Heidegger's hindsight that I quote language of the conversation destroyed the possibility of saying what was spoken of namely the essence of Japanese art icky the dialogue did not simply fail to bring to light what was discussed it actively pushed it into oblivion concealed and erased silence dialogue is silence Kouki's silencing speech like an act of translation had effaced the Japanese essence of icky by understanding the tension between its two elements Iro and Kou as the metaphysical tension between sensures and supracentures the first act of the between Heidegger and the Japanese therefore consists in a devastating critique and self-critique of the earlier between Heidegger and the Japanese as an event of destruction and obliteration of Japan by Europe note that the conversation explicitly contextualizes this interpersonal drama within the history of European colonialism the encounter between the East Asian and European world albeit dangerous and destructive has become at the same time the Japanese interlocutor indicates inescapable due to the total Europeanization of the earth and the human Europeanization is the imperial colonial intercultural encounter in which the uninterrupted progress of the dialogues simultaneously spreads destruction and silence more concretely the text speaks of a quote modern technologization and industrialization through which the non-European takes the shape adopts the language of Europe just like Kuki erased Ikki by presenting it in the terms of western aesthetics the film Roshubon they speak about it wiped out the Japanese world by rendering it visible as the object of photography act one brings forth therefore the logo clasm the death of dialogue the death of his dialogue the climax of this act is the actual enactment of the logo clastic moment the enactment of silence within the dialogue the enactment takes place as Heidegger the inquirer having contemplated the disaster of his earlier dialogue with Kuki nonetheless attempts to review the European East Asian conversation by putting an interpistemic question to the Japanese which addresses the contentious matter that is the essence of language like quote do you have in your language a word for what we call language after all that has been said by Heidegger about the impossibility danger and destructiveness of historical European East Asian conversation the Japanese cannot but be taken aback by this new and direct question he begs for some moments of reflection and then stops talking the silence is inscribed in the text as the cessation of the direct dialogical exchange and the conversation breaking into silent individual non-communicative gestures which are rendered like stage directions in a parenthetical external and distant voice in parenthesis I quote the Japanese closes his eyes lowers his head and sinks into a long reflection the inquirer waits until his guest resumes the conversation end of quote act 2 cookie resurrected the question concerning the essence of language which brings to light the epistemic different silences the logos yet the inquirer waits until his guest resumes the conversation as already noted Heidegger tells not just the story of death but of resurrection we already heard the logo eschatology I quote again whether in the end which would also be the beginning an essence of language can arrive in the thinking experience and offer the assurance that European Western saying and East Asian saying will enter into a conversation to sing something that was up from a single source end of quote it is precisely this messianic vision this end of the end the break of silence but voices joined in song which act 2 of the drama now sets out to stage to the silent Japanese interlocutor rendered apprehensive speechless by Heidegger's threats of destruction and the memory of Count Cookie's failure in act 1 Heidegger in act 2 offers a way out a salvation or redemption in the form of a losing this vote a solving saving liberating word a word to redeem the conversation from silence without breaking the silence a word from a conversation of silence the saving word that Heidegger offers is think that is a hinting gesture a wave or a nod a speechless saying it is in fact by a series of gestures that the dialogue between the Japanese and the inquirer is resurrected the first redeeming gesture is the very question that brings forth the silence namely the inquirer's question about the Japanese word for language to which the Japanese withholds his answer this withholding this non-speech however is itself already an answer a response a communicative reaction to the inquirer's question which notwithstanding the failure of the previous dialogue with Count Cookie now gestures the possibility of recommencing the European East Asian exchange the Japanese's silent response to this prompt is accordingly inscribed in Heidegger's text as a new moment in the dialogue the Japanese closes his eyes lowers his head and sinks into a lower reflection the inquirer waits until his guest resumes the conversation the second redeeming gesture is offered by the inquirer the Heidegger persona in view of the Japanese's hesitation to answer the question on Japanese language by regaining agency over the exchange and switching the direction of the inquiry such as the inquirer becomes now the respondent in an attempt to unburden the Japanese from the responsibility of resuming a conversation with the European thought that Heidegger just argued is disastrous Heidegger suggests that the fiasco of Count Cookie's project of translating Japanese icky into metaphysical terms nonetheless arouse from a more fundamental more genuine question that had originally driven Cookie to Heidegger and which is still open still alive to overcome the death of the dialogue in Heidegger's question to the Japanese Heidegger rehabilitates the memory of the late Count Cookie by resuscitating the Japanese's original question to Heidegger and by offering an answer as he turns out Japan's original question to the German philosopher concerned the meaning of hermeneutics hermeneutics Heidegger now explains is Europe's theologically inspired reflection on the relation between the word and the being that is Europe's reflection on the essence of language it thus transpires that Heidegger's question to the Japanese about the essence of Japanese language is the same as the Japanese's original question to Heidegger Heidegger's third gesture is to offer an answer to what now transpires as the common European East Asian question on the essence of language the main thrust of the conception of language offered by Heidegger to the Japanese is that it is not metaphysical it is not based on the distinction between material sign and ideal meaning it is not originally a language of signs in which speaking is separated from being in which we speak about or on being Heidegger's non-metaphysical language not Sparer but Zager consists in speaking that is being namely in saying not through signs and ciphers but through gestures such as nods and waves saying in Winken in a revealing moment of the conversation which announces the coming redemption the Japanese indicates the manifestation of Heidegger's non-metaphysical language of gestures in Japanese traditional no theater an indication that is once again inscribed in the text in the form of a parenthetical description of a silent gesture that you put also on the board the Japanese raises his hand and holds it in the described manner the inquirer's gesture towards the Japanese thus consists in signaling an internal European self-critique and disengagement from the language of metaphysics this gesture is extended by Heidegger's signaling to his Japanese interlocutor his own logoclastic situation within the European conversation namely Heidegger's own inner European silence or conditions of not speaking this inner logoclasm appears both in the confusion of Western thinkers with respect to Heidegger's language in his use of words such as nits or being the break of logos is also enacted actively by Heidegger himself in his reluctance so he tells the Japanese to publish his famous lecture on language precisely due to his fear which the existing English translation confirms that it will be read metaphysically as speaking on language what Heidegger would like to offer in contrast as the inquirer explains to the silent Japanese his non-metaphysical vision consists in speaking of language in speech that arises from and enacts or performs being such speaking of language can only take place as an explicit event of in in conversation which must remain an ongoing event must remain note the messianic verb in coming for a conversation to remain in coming so Heidegger's gesture to the silent Japanese it must consist in more silence than talk or as the Japanese immediately adds in silence on silence this series of gestures offered by the inquirer the Japanese was reduced to silence by the radical alienation affected by the opening act and now senses in the non-metaphysical thinking of Heidegger as he says I quote a deeply concealed kinship with our own thinking precisely because your Heidegger path of thinking and its language are so wholly other end of quote the reassured Japanese now finds the confidence to finally answer the inquirer's question as to the Japanese name and essence of language the Japanese word that He offers is kotoba which He translates as the leaves or petals of the event of the message of grace the Japanese essence of language would consist in the living beauty arising from the event of speech inseparably intertwining speaking and being word and flesh similarly to Heidegger's theologically inspired hermeneutics Heidegger's eschatological vision whether in the end which would also be the beginning an essence of language can arrive in the thinking experience and offer the assurance that European Western saying and East Asian saying will enter into a conversation to sing something that wells up from a single source this vision is thus materialized the dialogical thinking experience arrives at the common European East Asian non-metaphysical conception of language and this harmony expresses itself in the conversation itself in a number of key moments toward the end when the two interlocutors complete each other phrases in perfect continuity such that the dialogical exchange transforms into a monologue a duet singing I quote one of the last moment the Japanese says saying then is not the name for human speaking and immediately the inquire but for the essential being to which your Japanese word kotoba waves the zagen after the fabulous and immediately the Japanese and in whose waving I only now through our conversation have come to be at home so that now I also see more clearly how well advised Count Cookie was when he under your guidance tried to reflect his way through hermeneutics I conclude by pointing out how the conversation with Heidegger brings the Japanese back to himself to the original intention of Count Cookie and to Japanese language and thought what begins as a logoclasm a sober break of dialog with anti-colonial tones ends with a romantic almost pathetic hymn of postcolonial redemption where Europe once again plays the savior ultimately one gets the impression that in the text the Japanese similarly to Heldelin or Anaximandel is just another literary figure in Heidegger's internal monologue more precisely a figure of Heidegger's own quest of breaking with metaphysics and his alleged alienation from European philosophy nonetheless I do find important Heidegger's acute sense of the epistemopolitical danger of intercultural and inter-epistemic conversation and his ensuing formulation and performance of logoclastic communicative action most particularly I highlight in this text the formative notion of speechless speech a conversation of silences which could be a model for something like an inter-epistemic ethics of not speaking thank you thank you so much to all of you look how would you like to see what's to in that the dialogue between you and then we open up to the whole audience I actually I'm not sure I ask myself often the question of what is the perform the genre perform conversation dialogues what does it precisely do because it's a very specific job with which I admitted I've never felt quite comfortable in all this kind of discussion and where you are invited to talk with someone about something especially someone that you know like in our situation where you talk a lot and then the question is what happened when it's kind of a performance where you're supposed not to talk so to speak to each other but also we know through you so to speak speaking to others I'm not so sure about it I I I imagine that it it puts some kind of a obligation of the conversation to be more articulate and perhaps you would usually do would you speak to each other and perhaps in a sense it you become so to speak for me just a channel to speak to a a filter to speak to others so just this is maybe this is a kind of reflection on you know I would like just to jump in your presentation in the case of Heidegger I think what he is performing here in conversation with another Eastern Asian is something he performed with his own country his own training to question their own terms making them more problematic in front of maybe a tradition so in other words is it not in your presentation you also use this distinction between dialogue and monologue but is it accurate to make this distinction is it not constantly in a dialogue is what we call monologue always a kind of dialogue I think it is in this direction well I I guess would you push it further any movement of your knowledge or more specifically of your mind to whatever direction without complete collapse of your psyche which would be imaginable would be said to remain within some kind of the general framework that that maintains the mono and perhaps this is I also go in the high post direction in this transcendental one that has to be some kind of precondition for any kind of even a very radical kind of conversation so I guess it would always go in this direction and we have the wonderful philosopher Hegel who basically that was the physis right the entire development of all the possible positions in the history of thinking and knowledge would be presented as the movement of one guys that alienates itself from itself sees itself as something completely different is surprised by itself and so forth and so forth but always remains nonetheless nonetheless the same so to some extent it would always argue this I nonetheless I take very seriously different conversations of this view that the type try to present models in which in which there is some kind of a serious otherness that that in a sense does present a threat to the to the wholeness of the psyche or the civilization in which you're in and in this sense I think when Hegel speaks about danger I think he understands what he means it's not just you know you understand something new interesting you found out a new way of cooking pasta or something like that you know we learn you grow or something like that he speaks about something that on the individual level yes might break your psyche some kind of understanding that is essentially life changing perhaps devastating and on cultural civilization level it may represent some kind of an apocalypse a catastrophe the messianic moment is not just a happy moment but is constitute the coming revolution and catastrophe that can be something very violent so in this sense it would no longer than be a monologue but something that is really maybe also not a dialogue is what I mean not a log that's something that breaks it maybe the last thing I had regarding Heidegger you mentioned this catastrophe you know with this professor and the non-understanding and so on but of course if you read if you deal with Heidegger there's another catastrophe you know and there was another bird which was missing but it was his own bird regarding Auschwitz which was missing which everybody was requesting from him and he didn't actually even if they asked him so he denied to answer in the sense but in the sense of but I don't want to go in this direction but when I was reading the Schwarz-Helft at the black notebooks I had even made a document about what he's speaking about the Asiatic so I have here all gathering of what he says about the Asiatic and this is so to speak terrible it's really terrible I don't want to go in but it's almost always negative grauenhafter as jeder Asiatische Wildheit I don't want to go in this direction but it is full of negatives so but this is the other even the dangerous other the term biggest dangers comes here very often the Asiatic is so to speak the enemy and what I found interesting regarding this move to the post war text is first of all and kind of something is still the same it's the other but now it's it's seen in the less German in fact this is not a thing I want to tell you just of course it was interesting to notice that these are both the users of the second work coming to the center together so this is not just something which is far away but in a certain setting they have a similar experience regarding the west of world regarding the closeness here and this makes everything much more ambiguous maybe more ambivalent yeah yeah no it's interesting so about the Asian this is why I said it's interesting that he insists on the East Asian in contradistinction to the what to the non East Asian who nonetheless still Asian namely the West Asian namely the Semitic and it's this is why I only gestured in this direction but definitely this is why I said it's inscribed within an entire tradition 1918 or the 18th 19th century this whole movement of trying to locate the real essence of Europe Christianity not in the west Asia so it's not a Semitic origin but precisely the East so this entire going back there is a whole literature of going to the Buddha this is the real this is the real Christ the Buddha and many other tropes of course the Indo-European so it's an old trope within which this conversation definitely should be read and I agree with you that it's it's in this sense it doesn't enact so much a break with a war period but actually also a certain continuity and this comes out of the dialogues so it's a productive dialogue and it's very term hypnotic which is so crucial here for the early for the high deck of the trenches this was also a notion which which informed him or which was important for a historical for the for his understanding of historicity because we're in a musical sorry coming from Diltai and this was exactly against the our historicity of the Asiatic for him the Asiatic she doesn't think American terms in the 20s that is in other words this the crucial term here of hypnotics is also a term which was which was crucial for a deep evaluating or for the biggest danger perceived by the European by the German actually as the confrontation with the world which loses historicity at the same time in using this is one of the only texts or one of the few texts in which Heidegger makes a positive or direct also reference to the Bible and here through her she makes it specifically I came to the theology where you had to all the time think about relations between systematic theology for the more conceptual and scripture to the text so this is one of the actually places where you can actually go back to theology and even Judeo-Christian somewhat tradition I just want to highlight one thing that you said that's interesting and I want to emphasize it is interesting perhaps feeling that Heidegger incorporates of post-war Germany of being the other within the west the other of the west which is an interesting thing the inner post-colonial understanding of Germans after the war