The philosophical foundations lying at the base of intercultural communication and education reject the idea of instrumental reason and look for inspiration in Critical Theory or Gadamer's hermeneutics. The aim of this paper is to show how the idea of dialogue as developed by Bakhtin fills in the void uncovered by the afore mentioned philosophies and how problems unresolved by them can be explained on the basis of some concepts (especially the idea of dialogue, heteroglossia and border) introduced into language philosophy by Bakhtin.

The role of education nowadays is not focused on one particular aspect of human development but more on the holistic idea of educating the whole man. Therefore, philosophical foundations, such as Critical Theory or Gadamer's hermeneutics, standing behind Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) are extended over the field of general pedagogy of man rather than over a narrow stretch of language education. Since the aim of language education is the wellbeing of the whole person and influencing her/his worldviews and attitudes towards others, it is also perceived as the one that contributes to the language pedagogy. Philosophies in question offer new solutions to these educational needs by focusing on the development of critical thinking as in Critical Theory or on Bildung as in Gadamer's hermeneutics. Reflexivity or rejection of a biased attitude in one's attempt to reach understanding are the assets of critical thinking, and they were adopted for the purpose of developing ICC.