Have you ever noticed how often people fail to respond to questions? Questions in the broadest sense — not only literal questions, but also remarks of self-disclosure, proposals, and even accusations (!).

– It infuriates me that you caved in to the head office and succumbed to their pressure, even though we had agreed that during the call we would defend the production department’s position!

– Listen, we work for the same corporation, and we…

This is such a widespread feature of everyday interaction, yet for philosophical dialogue it is a forbidden move. And indeed for any dialogue at all. For a non-response to a question signifies the rupture of the dialogue (if one existed) and the enthronement of monologue. For the person is not simply failing to answer the interlocutor’s question; they are answering some other question — their own.

– Did you like my presentation? 

– Listen, I learned so much new from it — I didn't know that...

It is rather amusing to check whether the person is actually in dialogue with you. After you have asked a question, you can wait a minute or two and then ask what question they are answering. Often they cannot even recall the original question. Yet they can formulate — either on their own or with your help — the “working” question, the concern, the consideration, the narrative that is actually occupying them.

– Would you like to go on holiday to Italy?

– Listen, I don’t think it’s a good idea right now; it’s hard to get a visa, and money is tight at the moment…

Of course, people are not obliged to answer questions. Sometimes, in order to preserve the dialogue, one must refrain from answering directly — especially trick questions such as “Have you stopped drinking cognac in the mornings?” Moreover, what is often expected is not an answer to the stated question but to its presupposition. For example, “Do you have the time?” In the end, the questioner themselves may not fully realise the true substance of their question or that it has been formulated poorly (too narrow, too broad, too abstract, etc.).

What we are talking about, however, is something else: that which has nothing to do with the question at all. What was important to the author of the question — what they laid on the common table — is ignored and consciously or unconsciously replaced by something different: sometimes superficially similar, but similar only at the level of words.

And the dialogue becomes infected with this insidious affliction. You are told (asked) that you have undermined trust, and you respond with corporate standards as mitigating circumstances. You are asked whether you liked something or not, and you shift the focus to its usefulness. You are asked about desire (do you want to or not), and you answer in the paradigm of possibility (can I or can’t I). And so on.

The conversation still seems to be a dialogue, although it long ago ceased to be one…