Dialog prior to dialog in Levinas' thought beyond experience

The article deals with Levinas' approach to the problem of the dialogue. The conception of the dialogue, which has been formed in the Western tradition of thought, identifies the dialogue with communication and is grounded in the ethics of the "things themselves" is analysed in the context of Levinas' criticism of the Western thought. The author focuses on the criticism of phenomenology which highlights Levinas' position. His position is analysed first of all as an opposition to phenomenology. Levinas emphasizes the moments of relation and saying that are "beyond experience" and are grounded in the "blasted intentionality". The way the question about the other raised in Husserl's phenomenology and also the trinomial structure of the dialogue (I, other and the thing in the context of the common world) realized in the early works of M. Theunissen and B. Waldenfels are questioned. The article investigates how this structure of the dialogue influences the ethics of Socratic communication about the "things themselves", which has been explicated in the works of H. G. Gadamer. Levinas' motion is understood as a shift from the concept of the dialogue as communication to the ethical relation. Author analyses how this shift is determined by violence recognized as hidden under such dialogue as cognitive communication. The dimension of saying, emphasized by Levinas, is treated as a dialogue prior to the dialogue, i.e. as the dimension of the dialogue which is left out by the theories that treat dialogue as sheer communication. The dimension of saying is approached as the proximity of the near, which enables the meaning in communication. In the end, the question is raised how this dimension of saying can be reinterpreted in the description of the dialogue. The conclusion is that Levinas' criticism of the conception of experience expands this conception; the description of the dialogue includes the ruptures of experience, and at the same time the question about the essence of the dialogue dissolves into the question about the multiplicity of the dialogue.