The Negative Aha-Moment, or: Anticipating the Need for Dialogical Tolerance

Abstract

Kippbild hermeneutics, developed on the basis of Wittgenstein’s model of Kippbilder, can be understood as a specific postmodern method of coping with (religious) conflicts by relativizing their differences as different ways as seeing as. While it would at first seem that Kippbild hermeneutics enables a relativistic understanding of religious differences, I would like to show that it entangles us ever deeper in the moment in which we understand that the hidden assumption of our (“humanist”, “liberal”, “postmodern”) tolerant superiority towards other groups (e.g., religions) is precisely the moment when we conform to the image we have of the other group. This uncanny experience is what I call a negative aha-moment, and I claim that it could be a means to anticipate the very need for what Paul Mendes-Flohr calls “dialogical tolerance”.