Art of friendly dialogue and mediation

Programmed teaching along the lines of Socrates and Skinner is exposed in The book of new teaching methods, by W.R. Fuchs (1689). It is interesting to notice, as this book by Fuchs shows -Pérez Álvarez, 1996 tells us- that the Socratic dialogue becomes a precedent of the instruction programmed and verbal shaping (it is interesting to note this, because all psychological approaches –psychoanalytic, Adlerian, phenomenological and existential, humanist in psychotherapy, cognitive, cognitive-behavioral and the contextual approach - like to be affiliated with Socrates, but none shows how, and Fuchs in his book -p. 55 to 68- proves it).

The author intends something similar with mediation: rescue the existential philosophical concept of "Dialogic Life" by Martin Buber (1878-1965) as a theoretical model to support mediation.

• Related article: "What is social psychology?"

The raison d'être of mediation

Dialogue has often been a form of philosophical or scientific-philosophical expression; Examples in this regard are found in Plato, Saint Augustine, Cicero, Galileo, Berkeley,

hume and, as we have already mentioned, Socrates (via Plato).

Mediation tries to correct and restore the continuous discourse of the people who need to mediate, which is a hidden form of dialogue. This is how it is seen in Plotinus, who frequently asks and answers himself in a “dialogical” way: he begins by posing a question of a traditional problem, then continues with a scientific development of the subject, and finally a call for persuasion through images and metaphors, which end -in Plotinus- in an exhortation to rise towards the most spiritual, but that, -in the mid-, the exhortation is earthly.

"Art of friendly dialogue", a felicitous expression of the Swiss mathematician A. Speiser in sympathy with the philosopher Socrates who serves us to introduce the brilliant and yet kind, dialectical method of mediation that without ignoring his impartiality, neutrality, freedom and voluntariness, which perfectly corroborates the fact that, seriously dialectic that precedes it, the mediator is driven to adopt an attitude that the mediate can almost experience as one of friendship and camaraderie. The mediator acts as a friendly interlocutor, not as a technician –which he undoubtedly is-, much less as his adversary with an air of superiority. The way in which the mediator behaves during the session with the mediated gives rise to a good “atmosphere” of dialogue.

"I open my eye or my ear, I extend my hand, and I feel inseparably at the same instant: You and I, I and You" (Jacobi, Ueber Recht und Gewalt, 1781), and from then on a fruitful path opens up that goes from Feuerbach and Kierkegaard to Cohen, Rosenzweig, Rosenstock, Ehrenberg, Gagarten, Marcel, etc. being Martín Buber who systematized that intuition in the most brilliant, concise and profound way, where phenomenology and personalism and the "new thought" makes its way: in front of the door of the informative session, and once crossed the lintel, the mediation.

Now, You and I, I and You, "we" -in the sense of Kunkel, 1940- are here, in the mediation room. It is, at that moment and, with "everyone present", when the "Friendly Dialogue" that pursues correct the "duality" of our guests: the alteration of Experienced time and space Vivid. Failed temporality and disabled spatiality. Duality, which, overcoming distances and reducing the temporality of the process, wants to "arrive" at a fruitful and restorative solution.

Ferrater Mora (2001), teaches us that the concept of mediation was used, explicitly or implicitly, by various ancient philosophers when they needed to find a way to relate two elements –“duality” in Buber's sense-; In this sense, mediation was understood as the activity of a mediating agent who was at the same time an "intermediate" reality: Plato's controversial worker demiurge, the conception of that there are intermediaries between the One and the Soul, are examples of mediation as it was also in Christianity Jesus -conceived as a perfect mediator -Rodríguez M., 1984- and María -Alonso, 1984-.

The communication problem

At the center of Martin Buber's detailed exposition of existentialist philosophy are his two major writings Daniel –Gespräche von der Verwirklichung (appeared in 1913) and Ich und Du (appeared in 1923). With both texts begins the exposition of the dialogic philosophy of Buber's "I and You" (2013).

Martín Buber stands out, in contemporary times, for the interest shown in issues of a "dialogical" nature, by worrying about the problem of communication in an existential sense and the so-called "problem of the other". Silence can be part of the dialogue. But it is necessary to distinguish between authentic and false dialogue –essential for a good mediator-. "Authentic dialogue -Ferrater Mora tells us- (whether or not it implies communication through words) is one in which a living relationship is established between people as people". False dialogue (qualified as "monologue") is one in which people believe they are communicating with each other, when all they really do is walk away from each other. “A form of dialogue that is not authentic –according to Ferrater-, but admissible, is the “technical dialogue” –as for example, the judicialized-, in which there is only communication of objective knowledge" (in the world of "It").

We read in Ferrater Mora: "Buber has referred to the question of dialogue in many of his works, but the volume entitled Dialogisches Leben, 1947 (dialogic life), which includes Yo y Tú and various minor writers. Maurice S. Friedman -writes- in the book Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (1955), ch. XIV: "There is for Buber a sphere of the -between- (of the -between-human- or inter-human". The participation of both members -mediated for our purpose- is the indispensable principle for this sphere, even if the reciprocity is completely effective as if it is directly capable of being carried out through complementation or intensification –in our case, with the participation of the mediators-. The development of this sphere of the “between” is precisely what Buber calls “the dialogic”..

The field of mediation, understood metaphysically, results from an idea of ​​contemporary social reality and of the "concrete relationships" that are manifested in the people as a rationally articulated and explicable dialectical process and the "dialogical" -by the hand of Buber-, the exercise of that dialogue proper to the relationship between the I and the you, ceases to be a purely dialectical doctrine and resonates like a psalm of pain and hope.