Programmed teaching along the lines of Socrates and Skinner is set out in The book of new teaching methods, by WR Fuchs (1689). It is interesting to note, as this book by Fuchs shows – Pérez Álvarez, 1996 tells us – that Socratic dialogue becomes an antecedent of programmed instruction and verbal molding (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 – they like to affiliate themselves with Socrates, but none shows how, and Fuchs in his book – pages 55 to 68 – demonstrates it).
The author intends something similar with mediation: rescue the existential philosophical concept of “Dialogical Life” by Martín Buber (1878-1965) as a theoretical model on which to support mediation.
Dialogue has frequently been a form of philosophical or scientific-philosophical expression; Examples of this are found in Plato, Saint Augustine, Cicero, Galileo, Berkeley, Hume and, as we have already mentioned, Socrates (through Plato).
Mediation tries to correct and restore the continuous discourse of the people who need to mediate which is a form of hidden dialogue. This 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 topic, and finally moves on to a call to persuasion through images and metaphors, which end – in Plotinus – in an exhortation to rise towards the most spiritual, but – in the middle – the exhortation is earthly.
“Art of friendly dialogue”, a happy expression of the Swiss mathematician A. Speiser in sympathy with the philosopher Socrates that serves to introduce the brilliant and yet kind, dialectical method of mediation that without ignoring its impartiality, neutrality, freedom and voluntariness, which perfectly corroborates the fact that, in the dialectical seriousness that precedes it, the mediator is driven to adopt an attitude that the mediators can almost experience as one of friendship and camaraderie. The mediator acts as a friendly interlocutor, not as a technician – which he undoubtedly is – and much less as his adversary with an air of superiority. The way the mediator behaves during the session with the mediators creates a good “atmosphere” of dialogue
“I open my eye or my ear, I extend my hand, and I feel inseparably at the same moment: 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. Martín Buber was the one who most brilliantly, concisely and profoundly systematized that intuition, where phenomenology and personalism converge and the “new thought” makes its way: in front of the door of the briefing session, and once the lintel has been crossed, the mediation begins.
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” begins that seeks to correct the “duality” of our guests: the alteration of the Experienced time and the Lived space. Failed temporality and disabled spatiality. Duality, which by 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 several 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 demiurge worker, the conception that there are intermediaries between the One and the Soul, are examples of mediation. as was also the case in Christianity with Jesus – conceived as a perfect mediator –Rodríguez M., 1984- and María –Alonso, 1984-.
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 expressed 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 we must distinguish between authentic dialogue and false dialogue – essential for a good mediator. “Authentic dialogue – Ferrater Mora tells us – (whether or not it involves communication through words) is one in which a living relationship is established between people as people.” False dialogue (called “monologue”) is that in which people believe they are communicating with each other, when all they are really doing is distancing themselves from each other. “A form of inauthentic dialogue –according to Ferrater-, but admissible, is “technical dialogue” –such as, for example, judicialized dialogue-, in which there is only communication of objective knowledge” (in the world of the “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 is especially appropriate in this regard (dialogic life), which includes Yo y Tú and several minor writers. Maurice S. Friedman –writes- in the book Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue (1955), chap. XIV: “for Buber there exists a sphere of –between- (of the –between-human- or inter-human.” The participation of both members –mediated for our purposes- is the indispensable principle for this sphere, whether 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 mediators. The development of this sphere of the “between” is what Buber calls precisely “the dialogic.”
The terrain of mediation, understood metaphysically, results from an idea of contemporary social reality and the “concrete relationships” that manifest in people as a rationally articulable and explainable dialectical process and the “dialogical” –from the hand of Buber- , the exercise of that dialogue typical of the relationship between I and the youceases to be a purely dialectical doctrine and resonates like a psalm of pain and hope.
