Culture and Interreligious Understanding According to the Romanian Philosopher Lucian Blaga

Culture affects how we interpret our experiences and the way we construct our world. It also affects our ability to communicate with one another. The late Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga developed a systematic philosophy of culture that explores and explains how culture challenges and at the same time facilitates interideological communication. This article introduces and explains these aspects of Blaga's philosophy and then applies them to the issue of interreligious dialogue. It concludes that Blaga's philosophy of culture promotes a high regard for culture and cultural distinctness and at the same time vindicates, enables, and promotes efforts at interreligious understanding.