The efforts to explain the other constantly fail. The creation of images reveals the presence of the other who appears both as an excess of any explanation and as a condition for the understanding of the diver- sity of such images. Even in its denial, such presence demands a dialogical dimension which includes both the explainer and the other. The birth of Western civilization, in its Socratic mode, was profoundly dia- logical. Various trends, such as scientism and theology, shifted discourse to monological doctrines. Regard- less of the kind of monologue, each claimed to subsume the other in its own logic, depriving the other of equal voice. Yet what is significant is that such a voice was always present – even in its denial. Good examples come from cultural conquests, racisms and colonialisms. Yet the most pronounced monological logic is scientific reductionism to a single ontological base: the fragmenting logic of materialism.
Key Words: the other, monological tradition, dialogical tradition, Ancient Greece, Christianity, identity
