Fred Dallmayr has long been an advocate of intercultural philosophical dialogue as part of his concern for promoting peaceful political engagement. His new book Horizons of Difference: Engaging with Others is a continuation of themes that have defined his approach. The book is a collection of essays that aim to elaborate a broad argument against the perceived irreconcilability of religious and secular ideas to support peaceful cross-cultural engagement. The argument is fleshed out by establishing, in part I of the book, that multiple and cross-cutting attachments require serious attention. In other words, abstract universalism cannot hope to address the problem of dialogue. In part II, the aim is to flesh out the hermeneutic and interpretive strategies that might facilitate this negotiation of difference so urgently needed, especially if we dispense with the abstract universalism advocated in the first part.

Each part of the book consists of six chapters, some published previously as book chapters and journal articles. Chapter 1 raises the question that the rest of the collection seeks to address from different angles. Presenting the tower of Babel as a metaphor for abstract universalism or equally a “global superstate,” Dallmayr contends that the pressing political realities of rising material inequalities and the less material, but no less troubling, loss of a sense of responsibility toward others are not addressed directly by either abstract visions of peace or a global superstate. What then can be done? In chapter 2, by reflecting on the work of Jacques Maritain, the Catholic philosopher, as well as Heidegger, Dallmayr starts fleshing out an answer to this question. The answer is not new for readers of Dallmayr’s work. He has argued in the past, as he does so again here, for a move beyond dualism. Here Dallmayr contends that self and other are mutually constitutive and thus cannot be read only in each other’s negation.

This interest in “holism” is addressed from a different angle as we move, in chapter 3, to a discussion of the Catalonian Indian philosopher Panikkar’s “grim” assessment of modern secular culture (p. 39). Working through the modalities of Pannikar’s proposal for a sacred secularity, Dallmayr argues that such seemingly contradictory formulations might point a way beyond exclusionary totalities that Heidegger and Adorno had already identified as deeply flawed elements of modernity. Chapters 4–6 discuss the Greek Orthodox writer Chistos Yannaras’s ideas regarding relationality, Gandhi’s visions of “heart unity” across religious divides, and Confucian philosophies of public relations infused with ethical commitments, respectively. What emerges from part I is a deep anxiety regarding the loss of an ethical dimension to public life.

Part II turns toward practical concerns and modes of engagement with the “others.” Chapters 10–12 seem to draw at least in part on Dallmayr’s own experiences with the United Nation’s Dialogue of Civilizations. These chapters attend also to practical problems such as power differentials between interlocutors. Turning in large part to Gadamer, as he has done in the past, in chapters 7 and 9 Dallmayr fleshes out the possibilities of a hermeneutical approach that does not seek to reject or reduce alterity. This acceptance of and engagement with difference produce not a “fusion of horizons” as Gadamer might be seen as proposing but something else entirely: “not so much a fusion in the sense of convergence but rather an unlimited openness to horizons, in such a manner that interpretive understanding can never be fully stabilized or completed” (p. 150). This openness and willingness to engage in a conversation are at the heart of Dallmayr’s intellectual and political project. Toward the end of the book he reiterates that dialogue has “intrinsic ethical value by transforming us into more educated and human beings” (p. 204).

Given these expansive aspirations, as well as his repeated and very earnestly stated pleas for dialogical engagement, it seems somewhat churlish to ask this question of Dallmayr: Who are the “others” that he has engaged with here? If Gandhi, Panikkar, and Confucian thought more generally are the others, then it is not clear why they must be so. Where are the white supremacists and apologists for colonialism that are much closer to home? Surely, they present much more of a challenge to Dallmayr’s ethical and intellectual commitments than Gandhi might. At the end of the book, he states that we “live today in a world that is not very hospitable to this kind of dialogue. We live in many ways in a very grim context full of disputes and festering hostilities” (p. 204). We might be forgiven at this point for imaging that he speaks here of the United States and the sharp differences in values, beliefs, and culture that made themselves felt very dramatically again before the book went to press. Yet, we would be mistaken in coming to such a conclusion. Instead, we are told that we must think of “the present scenario in Syria, the problems of the Middle East, [and] Iran. In all these areas and elsewhere, there is a great potential for conflict, and ultimately, warfare” (p. 204).

Dallmayr articulates concerns about racism, nationalism, and religious extremism in several instances (for example, on pp. 10, 169, 191). Yet, the others always seem geographically distant. If somebody like Gandhi is the other with whom Dallmayr engages in cross-cultural dialogue, then it would be helpful for readers to know exactly what constitutes the difference that is being bridged here: Is it religion, class, race, or political position? Lack of attention to the differences, as well as similarities, allows Gandhi to be produced as another supporter of intercultural dialogue without requiring Dallmayr to question anything in his own framework. The quest for similarity can slip easily into intellectual triumphalism. Here, Dallmayr’s reading of Gandhi flattens the complexity of Gandhi’s thought on caste relations, arguably another religious group that he had to contend with beyond the Muslim question.

Dallmayr might respond to this by stating that his aim in the book is to make the resources available for engaging in dialogue, not to demonstrate the mechanics of the dialogue itself. There is no doubt much to value in such an approach. It is a remarkable feature of this book and of much of Dallmayr’s writing that there is no foil for his argument, no adversary whose arguments he must demolish to establish the value of his own. One can see this as part of his larger commitment to avoiding confrontational engagement. Yet, this expansiveness runs the risk of reproducing the very same abstract universals that Dallmayr critiques in the first chapter of his book. Without engaging with the specificity of the difference and its political valence, the ideas that underpin these differences, and the practices they legitimize, we are left with little direction and few tools. Surely, Dallmayr would agree: the most vital cues for carrying out a successful dialogue are often hidden in processes through which the other became the other.