This preface to the 1985 volume Life and Word: Essays II reflects on the attempts to revive philosophical and theological dialogue within the contemporary intellectual landscape. The author analyzes the failure of the Volumes for Dialogue series, attributing it not to a lack of intellectual productivity but to the profound isolation of individuals and groups. Originally enforced by external circumstances, this isolation became internalized, resulting in closed intellectual sects that avoid genuine polemics and critical engagement with differing viewpoints. The text emphasizes that the unity of the collected essays is not found in a shared subject matter or object, but rather in their orientation toward non-objectivity. Drawing on Kosík’s concept of a thing that is not a thing, the author identifies the common ground of these writings as non-objectual thinking and reality. Consequently, the preface serves both as an introduction to the collection and as a critical diagnosis of the disintegration of a vibrant intellectual atmosphere in normalized Czechoslovakia.