In order to foster genuine dialogue and understanding, it’s essential to approach others with openness. Openness forms a moral bond and involves taking the other seriously and learning from them.

However, scientific, psychological, and sophistic approaches to the other involve closedness, distance, and domination, ultimately destroying the moral bond and degrading dialogue-play.

The scientific approach to the other involves treating them as an object or a specimen to be observed and examined from a distance. This approach is problematic as it immediately closes one’s ears to the other’s claim to truth and blocks the conversation necessary for a mutual understanding to develop.

By approaching the other as a thing rather than as a person, one blocks the conversation and prevents a mutual understanding from developing. This approach is particularly prevalent in fields such as medicine, the job market, education, sports, the military, and marketing strategies.

The psychological approach to the other is a derivative of the scientific approach. While it appears to treat the other as a human being, it really just treats the other as a peculiar kind of object – a ‘psychological thing.’ In this approach, one hears what the other says as a meaningful statement but takes it as an expression of their personal biography or childhood trauma.

The problem with the psychological approach is that it doesn’t take what the other says seriously as a potential truth that could transform the way one thinks and acts. Instead, it’s an attempt to know and diagnose the other’s psyche, often claiming to know the other better than they know themselves.

The sophistic approach to the other involves argumentative ‘attack and conquer.’ The goal is to overpower the other in a debate and to ‘win’ for the purpose of acquiring reputation, power, votes, money, or some other award. This approach is also problematic as it doesn’t take seriously what the other has to say and truly engage with them.

Gadamer highlights that genuine dialogue is not about trying to discover the weakness of what is said by another but about bringing out its real strength by referring to the subject matter. Genuine dialogue for Gadamer is a cooperative and collaborative, truth-seeking engagement with the other.

We must recognize that these approaches have become cultural norms and are forms of human interaction characterized by closedness, distance, control, and domination. When we objectify the other, treat their psyche as a specimen to be analyzed and known, or try to out-argue the other to win a debate, we break the mutuality of human-to-human relations and destroy the moral bond necessary for genuine connection, learning, and growth.

Gadamer emphasizes that we must approach the other with respect and a good will to understand, rather than trying to silence them, refute them, or make them believe our own point of view. We must also be ready and willing to risk our own prejudgments, have them tested and challenged, find out that our prior beliefs were incomplete, narrow, or wrong in some way, and revise them based on what we learn from the other.

Gadamer refers to this approach as ‘openness to the other.’ It’s an approach that forms a ‘genuine human bond’ or moral connection between human beings, which he contrasts with the scientific, psychological, and sophistic approaches that have become quite popular in our culture.