Beyond Deep Disagreement: A Path Towards Achieving Understanding Across a Cultural Divide

Achieving genuine engagement and understanding between communities with radically divergent worldviews is challenging. If there is no common ground on which to stand and have a discussion, the likely outcomes of an apparent intercultural disagreement are a stalemate, the (sometimes colonialist) imposition of a single worldview, or a kind of relativistic tolerance that falls short of genuine engagement. In this paper, we suggest a way forward that takes as its starting point the philosophical discussion of deep disagreement, using the example of taniwha – in te ao Māori (the Māori world/worldview), powerful water beings that must be treated with respect – to outline a strategy for building intercultural understanding and enabling constructive intercultural dialogue.