Book Review: The Carl Rogers Reader / Carl Rogers: Dialogues

Subscribers to this Journal, and indeed all philosophers with a theoretical interest in psychotherapeutic practice and therapists with a background in the phenomenology of linguistics, will find this recent book by Gemma Corradi Fiumara on 'The Philosophy of Listening' very informative and stimulating reading. Exhibiting broad and deep familiarity with the work of the many contemporary philosophers who have contributed to linguistics — Heidegger, Buber and Wittgenstein among others — Corradi Fiumara applies scholarly criteria to her choice of the ideas and of the relevant quotations that illustrate throughout twelve well integrated chapters (or 'Lezioni': the author is a professor of theoretical philosophy at Rome University) the trajectory of her enquiry.

Some might feel burdened by arguments sidetracking their attention from the main thrust of the text; yet, if they apply selective faculties to their reading — in itself a creative exercise in listening — this important book will be rewarding in conveying its message: the significance of listening as the forgotten 'other side of language' — or, more precisely, the other half of the logos. It is from the first chapter, 'Towards a Fuller Understanding of the logos', that we are provided with the crucial historical and conceptual clarifications setting the philosophical tone of the whole book; epistemology depends upon an understanding of legein that included a radical reciprocal openness to listening. "Without this kind of openness to one another," as Gadamer points out in Truth and Method, "there is no genuine human relationship. Belonging together always means being able to listen to one another."

Ernesto Spinelli