Dialogue beyond Agreement: Understanding, Humility, and Human Flourishing in Polarized Times
How can we live together when we fundamentally disagree? And can dialogue help us without requiring us to reach agreement?
In his valedictory speech, professor of Ethics Dirk-Martin Grube argues that it can. At a time of increasing polarization, he calls for a different understanding of dialogue: one aimed not primarily at convincing opponents or finding consensus, but at understanding people whose views genuinely differ from our own. He calls them hermeneutic dialogues.
Their function is to de-polarize disagreements. The aim of hermeneutic dialogues is not to overcome disagreement, but to change the way we approach it. Dialogue can detoxicate disagreements and our relationships with those who disagree with us. By encountering perspectives that challenge our own, we may become more aware of our assumptions and blind spots, develop an open mind, and learn to hold our convictions with greater humility.
Drawing on interreligious dialogue, Grube shows how engaging with another tradition can enrich our understanding of our own without requiring us to abandon our convictions. Academia has a particular responsibility here. By fostering careful reading, empathetic listening, and reflection on our own positionality, they can help create spaces that de-polarize disagreements, nurture understanding, and contribute to human flourishing.
Grube suggests that universities, churches and other societal players form dialogue-agoras, public spaces in which hermeneutic dialogues can flourish. Such dialogues can help us understand otherness, deepen our self-understanding, and learn to live together constructively, even when fundamental disagreements remain.