| This paper provides the background and analysis for the rise of interculturalism as an emergent discourse and examines the concept and the main forms of dialogue within the Western philosophical tradition. First, it reviews the history of the concept of ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and universalism. We argue that strategically, ethical and practically ethnocentrism is the major presumption and problematic of interculturalism and intercultural understanding and education. Dialogue, the most venerable pedagogical form for philosophical discourse in the West, has taken many different forms since Socrates first defined dialectics and the dialogical method of argumentation. They form a complex skein that follow ontological, epistemological, ethical and political lines of inquiry: dialogue as argument, dialogue as an existential encounter with the Other, dialogue as communion, dialogue as hermeneutics (interpretation), dialogue communication action, as the rational means for redeeming validity claims inherent in ordinary discourse, dialogue as a pedagogical means for cultural action, dialogue as the dialogical imagination, and dialogue as conversation and the seat of liberal learning and the basis for interculturalism. |