Okay, here's the deal;

I advanced in the main quest up untill Sky Haven temple, then I talked to Parthuunax..

After that I finished the companions quests and some side-quests..

I then returned to Delphine and recruited 3 members for the blades, she then sent me to talk to Esbern about dragon lairs..


The Problem: Esbern will not talk to me, he just gives me some generic lines about being deaf in one of his ears.. Fus Ro Da in that ear did not solve the problem.

Is there anything that can be done about this ( reloading an earlier save would mean I'd lose everything I did in the past 3 days).

I have the same problem. In my case Esbern is stuck in a rock on a mountain slope near High Hrothgar. Moving him down the mountain didn't help He just keeps saying 'Did you say something?'

Patch 1.4 didn't help. Still bugged...

Update!

I managed to solve this by going to the Sky Haven Temple courtyard and using the console command "player.placeatme 00013358" without quotations (the number is Esbern's BaseID) and Esbern appeared and the dialogue for dragon lairs was now available.

However, after killing the first dragon with the Blades Esbern was again near High Hrothgar so I had to do the console thing all over again to get the dialogue for bringing him dragon scales and bones.