Title
Dialogue Among Faiths: The Dignity of Religious Difference
Presenter
Fred R. Dallmayr
Abstract
Dallmayr will argue that dialogue among faiths involves two kinds of relations: a "vertical" relation (between humans and God or the divine) and a lateral or "horizontal" relation (between humans). The two relations can also be expressed in terms of the intertwining of transcendence and immanence. Additionally, the presentation will examine challenges to this idea of dialogue: especially the radical claim that dialogue is basically destructive of genuine faith. The final section utilizes arguments of William Connolly and Jonathan Sasks to show how this claim can be countered or defeated.
Biography
Fred R. Dallmayr is Packey J. Dee Professor in the departments of philosophy and political science at the University of Notre Dame. He holds a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Munich (1955) and a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University (1960). He has been a visiting professor at Hamburg University in Germany and at the New School for Social Research in New York, and a Fellow at Nuffield College in Oxford. He has been teaching at Notre Dame University since 1978. During 1991-92 he was in India on a Fulbright research grant. Among his recent publications are: Between Freiburg And Frankfurt (1991); The Other Heidegger (1993); Beyond Orientalism: Essays On Cross-Cultural Encounter (1996; Japanese translation 2001); Alternative Visions: Paths In The Global Village (1998: Persian translation 2005); Achieving Our World: Toward a Global and Plural Democracy (2001); Dialogue Among Civilizations: Some Exemplary Voices (2002; Italian translation forthcoming); Hegel: Modernity And Politics (new ed. 2002); Peace Talks - Who Will Listen (2004); Small Wonder: Global Power and Its Discontents (2005) and In Search of the Good Life: A Pedagogy for Troubled Times (2007). He is past president of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP). He is also a member of the International Coordinating Committee of "World Public Forum - Dialogue of Civilizations", and of the Scientific Committee of "RESET - Dialogue on Civilizations."
