The balcony is the world: Vilém Flusser and the comprehensive thought

Abstract

This paper discusses the concepts in the work of the Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), regarding the terms dialogue and discourse in the communication processes and it questions how these notions could be a resource for the study and the practice of comprehension. Based on the author’s autobiography (FLUSSER, 2007), published with the German title Bodenlos (with no ground or no foundation), this work investigates Flusser’s autodidactic background, which took a major influence in his life and in his work when in dialogue with a group of interlocutors, being eleven of them mentioned in the aforementioned book. This paper also includes the notions behind the (tense and comprehensive) dialogue with the world one lives in, the essay as a means to express ideas and speaking and writing as options for engagement. As well as Flusser’s goal was to provoke new thoughts and to amplify conversations; this text presents how his concepts could collaborate to a comprehensive epistemology of the Communication’s universe.