Beyond Dialogue: Communication Ethics between Interpersonal and Impersonal

Abstract

This paper seeks to rethink communication ethics beyond dialogue by advancing the notion of thirdness as its basis. Taking Ronald C. Arnett’s idea of dialogic civility as a starting point, the discussion proceeds to reveal the inseparability and interconnectedness of the interpersonal and the impersonal, the particular and the universal. It then considers Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics as triadic rather than dialogic, as exposed to the call of the immediate Other while always haunted by the calls of the third party, of other Others. From this, a new understating of mediation arises—ethical mediation—one that does not culminate in transcending its elements but in attending, each time again, to their difference.