Dialogue and Change. The Lesson of the Cow of Hochosterwitz

This essay explores the intricate relationship between dialogue and change, moving from instrumental models of communication to their most radical and transformative expressions. Beginning with an <i>explicatio terminorum</i> that reclaims the methodological clarity of medieval scholasticism, the text examines three distinct modalities of dialogue: as transmission of information, as negotiation and compromise, and finally as <i>evental</i> dialogue.Only the third model, grounded in openness to contingency, the suspension of possessive claims, and the capacity to welcome what exceeds, enables what the author calls <i>generative change</i>: a transformation that cannot be fully planned or predicted, and that reconfigures both the communicative framework and the identities of the participants.Drawing on conceptual analysis, lived experience, and the emblematic “lesson of the cow of Hochosterwitz,” the essay argues that the most vital form of dialogue is not procedural but evental: it emerges from the unforeseen and opens unprecedented horizons of meaning.