Situating dialogue and ethics

Abstract Dialogue is important, especially when considering how our words and actions impact others. This essay situates the importance of dialogue and ethics in the pragmatics of human relationships and engagements through Ronald C. Arnett’s (1994) warning about existential homelessness, Saitya Brata Das’s (2025) aesthetic understanding of the mystery of dialogue, and Michael Mitias’s (2023) formal conditions for the possibility of dialogue. The essay then moves to a discussion that lays out one way to prepare for ethical dialogic interconnections with others advocated by Arnett, Das, and Mitias, through an active practice of leisure ( Holba 2007 ; 2013 ). This places dialogue and ethics transversally “betwixt and between” ( Schrag 1994 ) self and other as dialogue is the structure of pragmatics ( Weigand 2021 ).