Human Dialogue by Michael H. Mitias (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Human Dialogue by Michael H. Mitias
• Mark Ellingsen

Michael H. Mitias, Human Dialogue, Towards a Universal Civilization 5. Berlin, Bern, and New York: Peter Lang, 2023. Pp. 202. $56.95, cloth or e-book.

Philosopher Michael Mitias has written a book about the character of human dialogue, which of course is a topic of interest for all ecumenists. In Mitias’s thinking, dialogue is fundamental to human nature (p. 9). He contends that human beings are rational and that reason is conversational (pp. 12 and 17ff.). In the spirit of Hegel, he contends that comprehension is a dialogue since, because objects are a part of reality, even objects are rational (pp. 53–54 and 64). My (Augustinian) concern with Mitias at this point is that he seems to think that reason provides values not driven merely by social convention or the survival instinct but are rooted in preemptory urges of human nature (p. 116). This seems to rule out the possibility that (on this side of the Fall into sin) even these values might still be tinged with self-centeredness, that even reason is fallen (p. 129). [End Page 149]

The author’s stress on the communal character of human nature, of our being both an entity and a radiance (pp. 38 and 114) nicely accords with Quantum Physics’ findings about human beings as both matter and waves. However, his use of the insights of Quantum Physics and its Principle of Uncertainty to justify his relativist conclusion that the mind shapes/changes observed data (pp. 56 and 182) is a distortion of Werner Heisenberg, who, in fact, claimed that introducing an observer to data does not entail that subjectivity is introduced in the description of nature.

Mitias apparently qualifies his relativist tendencies in claiming that the truth that emerges in dialogue is objective, and that truth is arrived at in community (p. 183), but he does not reconcile these comments with his previous claim noted above concerning the mind’s role in shaping data. Nor, as we shall see, does he apply this openness to objective truth to his proposal for conducting ecumenical dialogues. The grounds for the possibility of interreligious dialogue that he posits are debatable.

He contends that the differences among religions are the result of different revelations of the same supreme being (pp. 138, 141, 142, and 171). Though it is by no means clear that this definition fits the Eastern faiths, it is also worth asking whether all Jews, Muslims, and Christians can or even should accept the idea that they worship the same God as the other spiritual offspring of Abraham. It is also not clearly established, as Mitias contends, that, in order for such a dialogue to proceed, participants must grant the truth of other revelations besides one’s own (p. 141). This fits his relativistic epistemology already noted, but many readers might join me in challenging him that the way to do ecumenical dialogue is not to relativize theological differences as he seems to have done.

An alternative vision for ecumenical dialogue seems to me evident in the suppositions of Heisenberg and Quantum Physics, which Mitias seems to have misinterpreted. In his comments, he overlooked their concept of complementarity—the idea that logically distinct alternatives may be discerned to be compatible, as just different ways of describing the same phenomena with different agendas in view. This has effectively been the way in which many of the ecumenical dialogue convergence statements have been constructed, seeking “reconciled diversity” among participants. With but one exception, these documents are not part of Mitias’ bibliography, so they seem not to have informed his reflections. In fact, at that point, he criticizes these ecumenical documents that have focused on only a particular problem or doctrine (the very approach used in most ecumenical dialogue documents; p. 187). Contending as he does that this [End Page 150] approach does not lead to an understanding of the other dialogue partner strikes me as unrealistic, as if to say that you need to learn everything about your partner on a first date in order to get into a love affair. This is not the way dating and courtship (or dialogue) work...