Inter-Religious Dialogue and Postmodernity

A Dialogue with Gianni Vattimo

Abstract

This essay thinks about how postmodernity can be understood as a propitious time for the constitution of inter-religious dialogue. It is our goal to investigate the two concepts together by underlining how there are resonances in the understanding of both. To this end, we begin our discussion by reflecting on the conceptual aspects of dialogue, considering its requirements of openness to otherness, its epistemological assumptions and its importance for the promotion of coexistence between religions, having as reference the thoughts of Roberlei Panasiewicz and Faustino Teixeira. Secondly, we investigate the idea of postmodernity in Gianni Vattimo, underlining its contours in relation to the modern era and its philosophy of history. Finally, we seek to demonstrate the correspondence between the concept of interreligious dialogue and postmodernity, defending the hypothesis of a convergence between ideas, so that postmodernity would be a kind of Kairos for inter-religious dialogue. With this, we intend to contribute to the discussions on inter-religious dialogue and to the studies that receive the work of Gianni Vattimo in religious studies in Brazil.