Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions, Vol. 5

Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions
Vol. 5 2008-2009 ISSN 1609-2392

______________________________________________________________

Table of Contents

Theme: Philosophy Emerging from Culture
Theme Editors: Edward J. Alam and William Sweet

Introduction.......................................................................................................7
Edward J. Alam (Lebanon) and William Sweet (Canada)

Religion, Science and the Culture of Credulity...............................................11
Jnis Ozolins (Australia)

Globalization and the Emergence of Philosophy in Southeast Asia...............31
Tran Van Doan (Taiwan)

Building Cultural Bridges in the Era of Globalization....................................47
Joseph C. A. Agbakoba (Nigeria)

Holistic Postmodernism: A New Paradigm for the Integration of the One and
the Many..........................................................................................................57
Warayuth Sriwarakuel (Thailand)

Reality Thought, Reality Lived.......................................................................71
Richard Khuri (Lebanon)

Facing the Global Crisis: The Role of Philosophy in Challenging Economic
Powers.87
Silja Graupe (Germany)

Rehabilitating Value: Questions of Meaning and Adequacy ...107
Karim Crow (Malaysia)

What Remains of Modernity? Philosophy and Culture in the Transition to a
Global Era......................................................................................................119
William Sweet (Canada)

2
Non-thematic papers

Rethinking Philosophy in an Oriental Way ..................................................137
Gholamreza Aavani (Iran)

Ordinary Language Analysis and African Philosophy: Some Comments on
Method...........................................................................................................143
Moses Oke (Nigeria)

A War on Distrust: Reinventing the Mode of Togetherness in the Age of
Conflict..........................................................................................................151
Donny Gahral Adian (Indonesia)

Human Rights, Practices, and Codes of Ethics ............................................159
David Lorenzo Izquierdo (Spain / USA)

The Argumentative Tradition in Indian Philosophy......................................173
Balaganapathi Devarakonda (India)

Book Reviews

Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh, Beyond Homelessness:
Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement...............................................187
John Hogan (USA)

Karim Douglas Crow, ed., Islam, Cultural Transformation, and the Re-
Emergence of Falsafah: Studies Honoring Professor George Francis McLean
on his Eightieth Birthday .............................................................189
Robbie Moser (Canada/USA)
CONTRIBUTORS

Gholamreza Aavani is President of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy and of
the Iranian Philosophical Society. He is also a member of the Steering
Committee of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

Donny Gahral Adian is the Secretary General of the Indonesian Philosophical
Association and a Lecturer in Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities,
University of Indonesia.

Joseph C. A. Agbakoba is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.

Karim Crow is a Principal Research Fellow at the the International Institute of
Advanced Islamic Studies, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He studied at the
Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and at the
American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

Balaganapathi Devarakonda is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the
Dravidian University, Kuppam, India.

Silja Graupe is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Economics, Alanus
University of Arts and Social Sciences, Alfter, Germany.

Richard Khuri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy,
American Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon.

David Lorenzo Izquierdo is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Political
Philosophy at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagez (Puerto Rico, USA)

Moses k is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Obafemi Awolowo
University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His areas of specialization are Epistemology,
Metaphysics, African Philosophy and Wittgenstein.

Jnis (John) Ozolins is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic
University, Melbourne, Australia.

Warayuth Sriwarakuel is Assistant Professor and Dean of Philosophy at
Assumption University, Bangkok, Thailand.

William Sweet is Professor of Philosophy at St Francis Xavier University in
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, and President of the World Union of
Catholic Philosophical Societies and of the Istituto Internazionale Jacques
Maritain.

Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions 4
Tran Van Doan is Professor of Philosophy at the National Taiwan University,
Taipei, Taiwan, and President of the Asian Association of Christian
Philosophers. Born in Vietnam, he studied in Italy, Austria, Germany, and
France, and has taught at the Universities of Vienna and Beijing.

EDITORIAL

Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions (PCT) is a publication of the World
Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies. A multi-lingual philosophical
journal, it appears annually in print format. Selected papers, along with a
supplementary volume, are published in an electronic format.
Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions draws on the important
contribution of Catholic Christianity to philosophy. Since it aims at the
fruitful exchange of ideas among philosophy and religious and cultural
traditions, it also includes studies outside the Catholic Christian traditions.
The journal publishes manuscripts in all areas of philosophy,
although each issue will contain a number of articles devoted to a specific
theme of particular philosophical interest. To encourage dialogue and
exchange, the journal will include scholars from Africa, America, Asia, and
Europe, and will represent a range of philosophical traditions.
Of course, some may ask Why another philosophy journal?
The aim of the World Union is to bring scholars from the Catholic
Christian traditions into contact and exchange with one another, but equally
with philosophers from other religious and cultural traditions. More broadly,
its aims are
(i) to initiate and develop contacts with individuals and associations
who are engaged philosophical research and study in, or in areas
related to, Catholic Christian traditions and particularly with
those who, for social or political reasons or on account of
geographical location, have not been able to do enter into close
relationship with philosophers elsewhere;
(ii) to serve as a conduit of information about meetings,
conferences, and other matters of common interest;
(iii) to help, when asked, and as far as possible, in organizing and
sponsoring lectures and educational exchanges, particularly in those
regions where there is an interest in the Catholic Christian
philosophical traditions;
(iv) to help, when asked and as far as possible, in the publicity and
organisation of conferences on themes consistent with the work of
the World Union and, especially, with world congresses of
Christian philosophers
Most philosophy journals have little interest in drawing explicitly
on religious and cultural traditions, or in pursuing exchanges of ideas
between philosophy and these traditions and some might even be said to
be opposed to this. Again, while some philosophy journals are published by
Christian philosophical organisations or through religiously-affiliated
universities, Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions aims explicitly to promote
exchanges between religious traditions and cultures, and philosophy.
Finally, to encourage the principle of exchange, Philosophy, Culture, and
Traditions will be thematic.
This orientation reflects the intentions of the encyclical Fides et
ratio, and the view that such exchange is of mutual benefit to philosophy
and religious and cultural traditions, without interfering with the proper
autonomy of the philosophical enterprise itself.
Articles appearing in the journal will be of a serious scholarly
character and more than just commentaries on issues of contemporary
concern. Nevertheless, PCT is open with regard to methodology and
approach.
The supplementary volume, published on the Internet, will include
more general articles, discussion notes, interventions, as well as a selection
of articles from the printed volume. The aim of this supplementary volume
is to provide additional opportunities for the exchange of ideas.
The World Union hopes that PCT will provide a useful means of
bringing scholars from across the globe into closer contact with one another
in a way that draws on insights and values to be found in the Catholic
Christian and other religious and cultural traditions.

William Sweet

INTRODUCTION

Some fifty years ago, while developing what may be called his philosophy
of culture, the French philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote, The unity of a
culture is determined in the first place and above all by a certain common
philosophical structure, a certain metaphysical and moral attitude, a certain
common scale of values, in a word, a certain common conception of the
universe, of man and human life, of which social, linguistic, and juridical
structures are, so to speak, the embodiment.
1
Such a formulation suggests
that culture has emerged from philosophy, not the other way around. And
yet, there seems to be little doubt that philosophy emerges from culture
that culture gives rise to the sorts of problems that philosophers pursue, that
culture seems to tell us what counts as philosophy as distinct from history
and religion, and that culture influences even the language in which
philosophical questions are expressed and answered.
2
To be sure, from
ancient times until the present, philosophy and culture have been
intertwined, but the challenge is to determine the character of this relation in
each era and to point out its consequences.
In the opening paper, Religion, Science and the Culture of
Credulity, Jnis Ozolins looks at the dominant cultures of the contemporary
West, and sees in them an increasingly deep suspicion of rational argument
and proof, and a corresponding growth of credulity. Interestingly, both
science and religion are targets of this. Reason and argument yield to
emotional appeals, empty rhetoric, and manipulation by politicians, cultural
icons, and the media. Ozolins traces this to philosophical roots to the
emphasis on autonomous choice and the primacy of the individual, which
leads to the view that all opinions are equally legitimate, and that there is no
objective way to choose among them. Ozolins calls for a return to
philosophy specifically, a philosophy in which reason plays a leading role.
In the second paper, Globalization and the Emergence of
Philosophy in Southeast Asia, Tran Van Doan looks at cultures of the East,
It has sometimes been said that philosophy, in the strict sense, does not exist
in the Asian traditions; there may be wisdom or spiritual or cultural
traditions, but not philosophy. Yet even if there is Southeast Asian
philosophy, in a world that had been increasingly globalized, there is little
chance that it will ever have a place on the world stage. Tran notes that these
views are not only widespread in the West, but are to be found in many
contemporary Asian philosophers themselves. Tran argues, however, that
this is not a consequence of globalization; globalization is simply a means of
dissemination of ideas and culture. It is true that Western ideologies and
cultures have come to dominate philosophy in Asia and throughout the
global south a movement that Tran calls mondialization but this
mondialization antedates globalization. Globalization, in fact, gives
Southeast Asian philosophers a means not only to recover their own
philosophical traditions, but to bring these philosophies into contact with,
and to contribute to, philosophy worldwide.
In Building Cultural Bridges in the Era of Globalization, Joseph
C.A. Agbakoba addresses the question, if philosophy emerges from culture,
can it cross cultures and contribute to the building of universal values?
Agbakoba notes the postmodern challenges to universalism, but signals that
these challenges are more to universalist ideologies than universal values.
He argues that there are universal values, taking the example of African
philosophies and showing how they have a reach beyond the African
context. This does not mean that any existing set of values is universal, and
Agbakoba signals the need for mechanisms to allow the development of
cross-cultural dialogue and thereby the articulation of shared values.
So-called postmodernism has often been seen as a philosophical
movement that not only underlines the rootedness of philosophy within
culture, but also the impossibility of philosophy transcending culture.
Moreover, while postmodernism is generally regarded as providing a radical
critique of the status quo, it has also been seen as profoundly relativistic,
incapable of mounting any kind of normative critique of culture and, hence,
conservative. In Holistic Postmodernism: A New Paradigm for the
Integration of the One and the Many, Warayuth Sriwarakuel reviews two
models of postmodernism, one described by Lawrence Cahoone and the
other by David Klemme, and argues that both are incapable of providing a
satisfactory response to the question of how to reconcile unity and diversity
in culture. Sriwarakuel proposes a third model of postmodernism, that
employs a new logic of both...and. This latter model, which draws on
Buddhist thought, is not only more coherent, but has potential to solve the
problem of the one and the many.
In Reality Thought, Reality Lived, Richard Khuri reminds us of
the tension between thinking about reality, and reality as it is lived. This
phenomenon is also a problem of philosophy and culture culture is real
whereas philosophy is largely just thinking about the real, and a matter of
appearance. Khuri surveys traditions from the pre-Socratic, through the
contemporary West, up to Zen Buddhism in the East. He calls on us to be
conscious of this tension, to avoid the extremes of reality and appearance,
and to see the reality in appearance.
Although philosophy can be said to emerge from culture, it is also
called on to be a critic of culture. In Facing the Global Crisis: The Role of
Philosophy in Challenging Economic Powers, Silja Graupe notes how
economic systems have come to be regarded by many today as objective
natural processes and, in this sense, are beyond critique. Graupe maintains,
however, that philosophy can not only challenge this view of economics and
of the culture that it brings with it, but can provide ways of directing or
reorienting economic life.
Postmodern challenges to culture and to philosophy often underline
their contingency and their radical uniqueness. Conceptions of value and
truth from one tradition or culture are said to be, as such, incommensurable
Introduction 9
with those of other traditions and cultures. In Rehabilitating Value:
Questions of Meaning and Adequacy, Karim Crow responds to this view. It
is clear that we have to enter into a culture, so to speak, in order to grasp its
philosophies and values, but this enables us not only to understand them, but
to bring them to bear on and to contribute to concerns outside that culture.
Crow argues that, by being attentive to language, we can find ways to cross
cultures and, thereby, achieve a unitary sense of value.
In the final paper on this theme, What Remains of Modernity?
Philosophy and Culture in the Transition to a Global Era, William Sweet
returns to the putative dichotomy between modern philosophy, with its
insistence on the independence of philosophical truth from culture, and
postmodern philosophy, with its view that philosophy is fundamentally and
inescapably rooted in culture. Both approaches recognise and articulate
legitimate concerns, and yet both also have their critics. Sweet offers a
response to this dichotomy, by suggesting a third way that includes their
insights while avoiding the challenges to them. This is based on the model of
critical history, found in late nineteenth and early twentieth century British
philosophy. Such a model, Sweet argues, may provide a way of recognising
and drawing on the diversity of culture while avoiding subjectivism, and a
way of assuring that different cultures can and ought to form common cause,
without collapsing into a monolithic universalism.
The papers in this volume, then, recognize that philosophy and
culture are intertwined, but also seek to determine the precise character of
this relation, its consequences, and its limitations. This task is daunting but
it is also crucial, for it bears on a question with which many, if not all of the
authors of these papers are concerned: the articulation and cultivation of
what may be called a new humanism.
Jacques Maritain devoted his life to the cultivation of this new
humanism and consistently approached the study of culture in this context.
Reflecting upon the way in which this new humanism could bring a new and
necessary unity to culture, he argued that it render[ed] man more truly
human and [could] manifest his original greatness by enabling him to
partake of everything in nature and in history capable of enriching him.
3

Maritain was not alone. Not a few philosophers of the last century saw this
new humanism as emerging from the ashes of and as the only alternative
to what may now be described as the in-humanism of the two world wars.
Just a few years before the end of World War II, Maritain wrote, In my
mind the notion of the present trials endured by civilization [is] inseparable
from that of a new humanism, which is in preparation in the present death
struggle of the world, and which at the same time is preparing the renewal of
civilization.
4
This renewal, as Maritain and many others realized, is not
inevitable or necessary, and must be creatively sought after and freely
chosen and discovered anew in each generation. Culture, he writes, is the
expansion of the peculiarly human life, including not only whatever material
development may be necessary and sufficient to enable us to lead an upright
life on this earth, but also and above all the moral development, the
development of the speculative and practical activities (artistic and ethical)
peculiarly worthy of being called a human development.
5
Such moral
development, of course, cannot be imposed top-down, but must be based on
convictions that are born in freedom.
A similar point has, arguably, been made by Benedict XVI in his
encyclical Saved in Hope, when he wrote, [W]e must acknowledge that
incremental progress is possible only in the material sphere. Here, amid our
growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more
advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever
greater mastery of nature. Yet in the field of ethical awareness and moral
decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the
simple reason that man's freedom is always new and he must always make
his decisions anew. These decisions can never simply be made for us in
advance by others if that were the case, we would no longer be free.
Freedom presupposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every
generation is a new beginning. Naturally, new generations can build on the
knowledge and experience of those who went before, and they can draw
upon the moral treasury of the whole of humanity. But they can also reject it,
because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions.
The moral treasury of humanity is not readily at hand like tools that we use;
it is present as an appeal to freedom and a possibility for it.
6

The papers in this thematic section all add to this moral treasury,
and were selected largely from those prepared for and presented in Seoul,
Korea, in the summer of 2008, at a conference which took place
immediately prior to the XXII World Congress of Philosophy. This
international conference, on Philosophy Emerging from Culture, was
organized by the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (CRVP)
together with the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies
(WUCPS) and the International Society for Metaphysics (ISM), and was
supported generously by Soongsil University, in Seoul.

Edward J. Alam, William Sweet
Theme Editors

NOTES

1
Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, rev. ed., trans. Joseph Evans and
Peter OReilly (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 69.
2
See W. Sweet, Culture and Pluralism in Philosophy, in Philosophy,
Culture and Pluralism, ed. W. Sweet (Aylmer, QC: Editions du scribe,
2002), pp. x-xi.
3
Maritain, The Twilight of Civilization (NY: Sheed & Ward, 1943), p. 3.
4
Maritain, The Twilight of Civilization, p. viii.
5
Maritain, Religion and Culture, in Essays in Order, ed. Christopher
Dawson and T. F. Burns (NY: Sheed & Ward, 1940), p. 8.
6
Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi 2007, section 24.
RELIGION, SCIENCE AND THE CULTURE OF CREDULITY

Jnis Ozolins

INTRODUCTION

A deep malaise seems to exist in Western culture which seems to be
characterised not by a robust and practical rationalitya legacy of the
Enlightenment, but by a deep suspicion of rationality and a rejection of a
metaphysics which claims that the world is intelligible. Post-modernity, of
course, has already rejected the possibility of truth being uncovered through
the use of reason and opens up a conceptual space which allows thought to
proceed unhindered by particular ways of thinking and unburdened by
objective theoretical structures; its open-endedness makes relativism
difficult, if not impossible, to avoid.
1
It is not, however, Post-modernity
upon which we will focus in this paper, but upon that which led to it.
Whatever the historical roots of the situation, not only do we no longer live
in a post-Christian culture in the West, but also a post-scientific culture. In
one sense, this can be seen as simply another way of saying that we live in a
post-modern world and, to some extent, that is true: we would not be
claiming that we live in a post-religious and post-scientific world, were it
not for the fact that we live in a post-modern world. It seems to me,
however, that in one sense at least, the situation is not the result of Post-
modernity, rather it is the liberalism that lies at the very foundations of
Western culture.
By exalting autonomous choice and the primacy of the individual in
all aspects of life, the condition has been provided for the descent into
credulity and superstition. If every opinion is equally valued, irrespective of
whether or not it is based on evidence or rational justification and if there is
no means of establishing independent criteria for assessing an opinion, then
whether something has been established according to rigorous scientific
method or whether it is asserted on the basis of subjective feelings does not
matter. The modern Western world, despite its technological triumphs in
many areas appears to be in a state of decline. Though much has been
written about the state of Europe and European civilisation, this is not
restricted to Europe, but at least includes its offshoots in America and
Australia. The authority of both science and religion has been replaced by
the manipulation of the population by the media and by advertising. In the
former case, the media in their unashamed quest for bigger headlines and
what will sell newspapers, magazines and advertising space, are completely
unscrupulous, in many instances playing the role of a kind of lynch mob
whose main role is to inflame the populace to react in increasingly
hysterical ways. In the latter case, advertising sees its main task as
persuasion and the creation of need and desire in people to consume the
products that they promote. Persuasion is based on emotive appeals to
vanity, to the need to feel superior, to insecurity, to sexuality: it is never on
an objective assessment of the merits of the product.
2
Reason is ignored.
There are, therefore, numerous examples of the growth in credulity.
By credulity I mean a kind of uncritical acceptance of opinions on
the basis of their popularity without any critical assessment of them. Once
the idea that the aim of intellectual activity in both the humanities and of the
sciences is a critical and reasoned reflection on the nature of our experiences
of both the inner and outer world in order to separate fact from fiction is
abandoned, credulity is all that is left. Of course, there are still scholars and
scientists who are critical realists about what they are doing, and so have not
abandoned the proposition that what they are seeking is the truth, but this is
not a view that is popular among the general population. Neither is it a
popular view among philosophers, who under the influence of Post-
modernity and the linguistic turn of the twentieth century, have abandoned
the rigours of metaphysical certainties for the comfort of relativism.
The thesis that Western civilisation suffers from a growth in
credulity is supported by a number of analyses of Western Institutions that
see them in crisis.
3
Marguerite Peeters, for example, argues that there are
clear signs that the West has begun to break down with distrust between
government and citizen, a lack of faith in the institutions of society and a
loss of democracy. Increasingly, government is by the media, who whip up
public opinion so that governments defy opinion polls at their peril. Justice,
for example, is no longer a matter for the courts, to be determined through
the sifting of evidence, but is increasingly determined by uncritical,
hysterical opinions expressed in newspapers. The use of power, unvarnished
and unapologetic, to impose a particular view is increasingly a feature of not
just government, but also of corporations, banks and other instrumentalities
which once provided a service to the public.
Peeters contends that traditional conceptions of society and the
relationships between social institutions based on the Judaeo-Christian
conception of the human person, the universality of human values and the
responsibility that human beings have for the earth, have been replaced by a
global governance paradigm which is highly ideologised, rejects traditional
values and denounces modern industrial civilization. It seeks to replace
these with new global values based on equality, sustainability and
participatory democracy. Although few would object to these values, the
problem is that the global governance movement seeks to impose a
particular view of these principles on society.
4
Whether Peeters is right or
not in her analysis or just indulging in polemic, she at least alerts us to the
malaise from which Western democracies seem to be suffering, that is, a
lack of faith in their own institutions as well as in the power of reason. The
recent debate about the new European Constitution wherein no mention is
made of Europes roots in Christianity is a further indication of a shift to a
post-modern relativism.
The pathological lack of faith by Western civilisation in its own
institutions has serious consequences. Western civilisation, according to
Religion, Science and the Culture of Credulity 13
Huntington, no longer believes in itself and this means that there is not only
no longer a belief in any universal truth or institution but also a conviction
that it is immoral to hold any such belief.
5
There is in such attitudes a
rejection, in effect, of the intelligibility of the world and so a rejection of the
view that there is any hope of finding truth. The universe is unintelligible
and so there are no standards for judging any thing, since all viewpoints
adopt a particular standpoint which ought not be accorded any privilege
over another viewpoint. The consequence of this view leads to the adoption
of some form of emotivism. Humes view that reason is the slave of
passion
6
is vindicated: feelings and emotions both determine and justify
action. Reasons role is merely to enable the realisation of our desires and
passions. As the role of reason diminishes, credulity increases.

SCIENCE AND CREDULITY

Science is venerated in modern society because of the technological
advances that have made life easier, safer and healthier, but it is also the
case that by and large the general population lacks any ability to understand
anything that scientists may have to say. The numbers of science literate
people in the population has been falling in many countries, and has
probably never been particularly high. Understanding of even basic
mathematics, for example, a key tool in science, is notably lacking in the
general population and is falling.
7
Moreover, given the rapid advances that
science has made in a great many different areas, from astronomy to
zoology, and the increasing fragmentation of science into more and more
specialisations, it is impossible for anyone to be scientifically literate in the
sense of being able to grasp what is occurring in the vanguard of scientific
research. This means that the claims made by scientists cannot be assessed
by the general public, who must rely on what they are told by experts. This
is a serious issue, because there are a significant number of scientific
questions with not only ethical implications but also economic and social
implications that require assessment and judicious decision-making.
Decreasing scientific literacy and numeracy renders this increasingly
difficult. When this problem is joined to the prevailing view that any
individual opinion is considered to be on an equal footing with a rigorously
tested and developed scientific theory, very serious problems arise. In
particular, in medical science, where the prevailing ethos is to provide
evidential support for claims that are made about the efficacy of treatments,
difficulties arise when alternative medicines and natural remedies are sought
without adequate testing of the efficacy of the treatments being prescribed.
Credulity plays a considerable part in the acceptance, without any critical
assessment, of the treatments offered by an increasingly broad range of
alternatives to Western medicine. An important element in this is a failure to
recognise any difference between conventional medical treatment and
unconventional treatment in the form of alternative therapies. This is not to
suggest that alternative therapies might not have efficacy in the treatment of
illness, but to contend that it needs to be subject to critical scrutiny in the
same way other medical and health treatments are. Alternative medicines
and therapies are big business and have moved increasingly into mainstream
health care, indicating their increasing acceptance in the community. It is
not at all clear, however, what the grounds for their acceptance are.
8

Arguably, therefore, the general public has blurred the distinctions between
evidence based medical treatments and those which are not so based and
hence accept alternatives in an uncritical and credulous manner.
9

The problem of a lack of scientific literacy and numeracy is further
exacerbated by the lack of clarity with which scientific problems are
presented. For example, we are warned that we have to do something about
climate change and global warming. It is not at all clear what is meant by
climate change. Every day, for example, since it is different from the last,
produces a different climate. Just as Heraclitus says, one cannot dip ones
toe in the same river twice. As the water flows, the river changes, as the day
goes on, the climate is changing, the temperature rises and falls, the wind
blows or stops blowing and the humidity rises and falls. Meteorologists are
likely to have a clear understanding of what they mean by climate change,
certainly they will have a more sophisticated grasp of the term and its
nuances, but this will not be so for the general public. A second example is
provided by the extravagant claims made by medical scientists about the
untold benefits that therapeutic cloning will bring, if only they are allowed
to continue their research on stem cells derived from human embryos or
from nonhuman-human hybrids. Leaving aside the very real ethical issues
involved in the destruction of human beings, the creation of nonhuman-
human hybrids and embryoids, the lack of success in this area of research
raises considerable doubt about its claims, yet both governments and the
general public seem to be prepared to believe that cures are just around the
corner. The lack of a critical ability to judge between what is pseudo-
science and what is science means that no distinction is drawn between
what is supported by evidence and what is merely speculation.
In the social sciences, where a plethora of research methods prevail
and problems may be explored using either quantitative, qualitative or
mixed methods, the ability to make a critical, rational appraisal of
knowledge claims is also much diminished.
10
Quantitative methods, heavily
based on statistics, claim that their conclusions are objective, can be
generalised to whole populations and so are superior to qualitative methods.
Qualitative methods are based on examinations of individuals lives and
experiences, using interviews, personal experiences, case studies,
observations and texts and claim that what is obtained is a more textured
understanding of the lived situations in which human beings have their
being. While it is accepted that qualitative methods do not claim to draw
generalisable conclusions of the same kind as may be drawn from
quantitative methods, nevertheless, the insights gained from the
examination of a particular state of affairs may be applicable in other
similar situations. Mixed methods attempt a middle way, using both
quantitative and qualitative methods. The problem here is that public
decision-making may be based on too slight an awareness of the limits of
the research methods and so draw unsupported conclusions.
11
The social
sciences have been criticised for failing to provide an adequate science of
human nature, but whether these criticisms are fair or not, pronouncements
are made as if there was no possible doubt about them. Worse still, few
members of the general public are sufficiently aware of the distinctions
between the methods of the social sciences or have any ability to assess
research conclusions
12
reached using these methods and so naively accept
pronouncements from social scientists with remarkable equanimity.

IS AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH REALLY INCONVENIENT?

The lack of critical ability to be able to assess evidence and to make
judgements is illustrated by the generally uncritical response to the issue of
global warming. Here the question is not usually one in which the
boundaries between science and pseudo-science are blurred, but rather a
question of how evidence is weighed and interpreted. The lack of critical
ability and a tendency towards credulity leads to an unreflective acceptance
of global warming and hysteria about how best to handle altered climate
conditions.
13
Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth, purports to show the
imminent danger that the earth faces from global warming and human
activity. Although the evidence presented in the film seems to be
overwhelming, closer scrutiny shows that some evidence has been
selectively chosen and some elements only express half truths.
14
A critical
analysis of the program exposes inaccuracies and interpretations of data that
are presented as the only possible interpretations. The point here is not that,
because there are falsehoods in Gores presentation, human beings should
not pay attention to possible environmental dangers, but that because of the
falsehoods, human beings might miss out on how to best respond to such
dangers. Popular unsupported myth may make both scientists and the
intelligent laypeople blind to different interpretations of the data.
15

Science itself suffers from a failure on the part of some of its
practitioners to take seriously its central principles. That is, some
practitioners have no qualms about falsifying results or exaggerating what
their research shows. The truth can be inconvenient. The conviction that bad
science will be exposed through others repeating experiments has not been
always vindicated. Sometimes it can be years before fraud is discovered
and, of course, there is no way of telling how much fraud has not been
discovered, given the sheer weight of scientific publication.
16
Numerous
examples abound of fraud in science and once exposed, these undermine
confidence in the pronouncements of science. Worse still, however, the lack
of a critical faculty to distinguish between science and pseudo-science and
the further general disregard for the importance of evidence allows even the
most half-baked ideas to flourish, since they are not subject to any standards
of evidence nor to the dictates of normative theory construction.
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Drees suggests that many believers dont take science seriously. Others,
such as New Age believers, accept science uncritically.
17
He says that he
regrets such attitudes and argues that religion needs to take science seriously
and adjust religious beliefs to accommodate the new discoveries of
science.
18
This is all very well, since it assumes, contrary to Aquinas, that
in any clash between science and religion, it is religion which ought to give
way. This is simplistic, since whether science or religion gives way will
depend on what is at stake. The Galileo controversy, often depicted as a
paradigmatic clash between science and religion, was in fact a clash
between different views about scientific paradigms. Likewise, the clash
between Darwin and the Bishop of Oxford was not simply a clash between
an obdurate religious faith and a progressive and plausible scientific theory.
The evidence for Darwins theory simply had not been gathered.
19
Popular
culture clearly has accepted a particular view of what occurred and so there
is a false picture of a clash between religion and science. It is not always
clear cut when religion ought to give way to science. It is possible to draw
up examples, such as the claim by fundamentalists that the universe and the
earth was created 4000 years ago and the evidence for this is the Bible, a
claim that scientists would repudiate as false. Science on the other hand,
claims that the earth is at least 6 billion years old and that it formed out of
the condensations of gases many billions of years after the Big Bang.
Deciding who to believe is not simple, since particular ways of seeing the
world take hold and, as Quine says, a total theory of the world does not fall
on the basis of one inconvenient falsification of what is held to be true.
20

Nonetheless, we want to be able to dismiss crackpot theories. For this, a
critical reflective capacity is indispensable. Credulity, however, is not
restricted to science.

RELIGION AND CREDULITY

Religion and what particular religions actually teach are often unknown to
many people. Here there is plenty of room for credulity, with the most
credulous perhaps being those who uncritically accept religious beliefs. This
is a danger for any religion, giving rise to dangerous fanatics and religious
cranks. Richard Dawkins takes aim at many of these in his most recent
book, The God Delusion.
21
The problem is that though some of his
criticisms are well aimed, his argument is virtually non-existent and his lack
of any deep understanding or knowledge about religion is disappointing. We
shall return to this below.
Unfortunately, the vacuum produced by a lack of religious
knowledge and the ability to reason has seen a rise in superstition, prejudice
and fear. This is perhaps best exemplified in the rise of interest in so-called
New Age religions and a spirituality divorced from any connection to
religion. It is plain that the religious is confused with the psychic and
spirituality with belief in the efficacy of crystals, for example, to heal our
troubled souls hence a new age spirituality that seems to identify
spirituality with some form of animism. In a world that has become
divorced from religion, the search for meaning has taken a turn towards
belief in astrology, in Tarot cards and a higher consciousness that is not
God, but a kind of realisation of full human potential. God, if God exists at
all, is not the personal God of the Abrahamic faiths. New Age religion, if it
can be called that, comes in many different forms and is not easily
categorised, though all versions seem to have in common the idea of some
kind of universal power that pervades everything and of which everything is
a part. This can be God, but equally, can be the Universe or Nature itself.
One objection to New Age religion is that it is essentially self-centred and
limits its horizon to the individual. Thus, healing crystals are used to heal
the individual; meditation to release the individual from his or her careworn
conscious states so that inner healing can occur; and divination to foretell
the future of the individual.
Not everything about New Age religion is to be rejected, for it may
lead people closer to God. There is nothing wrong with using meditation,
for example, to calm ones mind and to re-energise oneself. Equally, it is
not wrong to listen to New Age music and burn incense because this has a
calming effect on a person after a long day at work. A New Age
appreciation of the oneness of nature is not to be condemned and a search
for meaning is at least the first step towards an authentic spirituality and to
an openness to the Spirit of God; however, because it does not encourage
critical reflection and a rational understanding of what is meant by a search
for oneness, it remains simply an emotional release of some kind. Because
of this, its adherents remain prey to false beliefs, to ministration by
charlatans and frauds and in the grip of credulity.

THE DELUSIONS OF DAWKINS

A major difficulty faced by religion is that just as the general public is
largely ignorant of the creeds of the major religions, many of its critics are
also disappointingly ignorant when voicing their criticisms. This is case
with Dawkins, for example, as we have already mentioned. There have been
several books rebutting Dawkins recent diatribe against religion
22
, so his
arguments have been placed under scrutiny by a number of authors
23
and it
is not our intention to repeat these arguments here. It is, in fact, all too easy
to show that Dawkinss arguments are for the most part based on faulty
reasoning, ignorance and are lacking in sophistication. This is easily
illustrated by a consideration of a few examples; however, we shall content
ourselves with only one.
Dawkins considers various proofs that have been put forward for
the existence of God, beginning with Aquinass famous five ways. It should
be noted that prior to proposing the five ways in the Summa Theologica,
what Aquinas discusses is the place of human reason in relation to faith.
Aquinas notes that in the sciences, proofs are not offered for their basic
principles, rather argue from their basic principles to other truths, similarly,
it is possible to reach other truths by the use of human reason beginning
with what God has revealed to us. This supposes that our questioner is
prepared to accept that there are truths of revelation, that is, of Faith. If not,
Aquinas says, Si vero adversarius nihil credat eorum quae divinitus
revelantur, non remanet amplius via ad probandum articulos fidei per
rationes, sed ad solvendum rationes, si quas inducit, contra fidem. [If our
opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there remains no longer any
means of proving the articles of faith through reason, but only of answering
his objections if he has any against faith.]
24
The non-believer,
therefore, is hardly likely to believe a truth that rests on the acceptance of
premises which are articles of faith and depend on Divine revelation.
In the second question, where Aquinas considers the question of
whether Gods existence can be proved, he begins by considering whether
Gods existence is self-evident and concludes that it is not. What is salient
here is that he is responding to the assertion that Gods existence is self
evident and argues against this. His interlocutor is a believer. This is also
evident from the second Article, where the objector contends that Gods
existence cannot be demonstrated because it is an article of faith and so not
amenable to proof, secondly, since the essence of God is not known, we
cannot prove or demonstrate the existence of God, and lastly, we cannot
prove the existence of God because His effects are not commensurate with
Him as their cause. That is, because God is infinite, His effects are not
proportionate to their cause, namely, God and so His existence again cannot
be demonstrated. Aquinas argues against each of these propositions,
importantly allowing that if a person cannot follow or understand a proof,
he or she can accept the existence of God as an article of faith.
In Article three, Aquinas addresses the question of whether Gods
existence can be proved. The second objection is interesting, for it seems to
be put by a very Dawkinsesque figure, who argues that everything in the
world can be explained by reduction to nature and similarly voluntary action
to human nature or will and so there is no need to claim that God exists.
Aquinass response is to say that Gods existence can be shown and to
suggest the five ways. He says, Respondeo dicendum quod Deum esse
quinque viis probari potest. This can be translated as, I reply saying that
Gods existence can be demonstrated in five ways. The word probari
does not necessarily mean prove in the sense that it is often taken.
25

Dawkins dismisses the first three ways as being essentially the
same and though it is true that there are similarities, it is not the case that
they are the same, especially if they are considered from a scholastic or
Aristotelian point point of view. The first proof, the argument from
movement, depends on an understanding of act and potency, a very
significant part of Aquinass metaphysics. Aquinas says that it is not
possible for something to move unless it is put into motion by something
which is actually in motion already. This is perfectly sensible, since what is
potentially in motion cannot put something in motion because it is not
actually in motion. What is not in motion is not able to actualise motion in
something else. To modern ears, this suggests a modern interpretation
which assumes knowledge about the concept of momentum and also the
concept of energy. These are both modern conceptions which were not
really properly understood until the 18
th
century. As a proof beginning from
a particular metaphysical background, the proof from motion is not as easily
dismissed as Dawkins seems to think, nor does it reduce to the causal proof.
The second proof is where we find the proof from the need to stop
the infinite regress of efficient causes. Aquinas notes that nothing can be
the efficient cause of itself, since it would have to be prior to itself, which is
clearly impossible. The only solution is to postulate a first efficient cause.
This first efficient cause, however, needs some quite special properties,
since if it is to be the first efficient cause it needs to have been able to have
brought itself in to being. This proof is not based on act and potency as the
first is, but on the nature of the causes which exist in relation to one another.
If there is no first cause, then neither can we talk about an intermediate or
an ultimate cause, since the relationship between causes does not seem to
provide a coherent understanding of how one cause can be followed by a
sequence of causes. If there is no first cause, there is no way of being able to
specify what is the first cause, what are intermediate causes and what are
final or ultimate causes. This seems to me to be rather different from the
first proof.
The third proof relies on an understanding of possibility and
necessity. Again, this does not seem to be very closely related to a reduction
to a concept of an ultimate cause, though it is true that Aquinas invokes
what has already been proved (in his view) namely that if something is
necessarily caused by one thing, that thing itself needs to have been caused
by something else which itself was necessary. To break the infinite regress,
of course it is necessary to invoke the existence of something which
necessarily brings itself into existence. Aquinas is well aware of this. The
argument is not a causal argument. Aquinas says that if it was only possible
for something to exist, there would be no reason why it should be the case
that it exists at all. That is, if there was nothing, there is no reason to
suppose that this state of affairs would not continue, since nothing which
potentially exists has any means whereby it comes to exist, hence, it would
continue to not exist. But there is something in the world, so, since
something exists in the world and is necessarily caused by something else
which exists, to stop the regress we invoke the idea of something which
necessarily exists of itself. Though this is similar to the proof from efficient
causes, it is not quite the same. Again, Dawkins misses the subtle
differences which make a difference in our understanding of the proofs of
Gods existence.
Dawkins has much more to say about belief in God and its
irrationality in the remainder of his book, but, as indicated above, falls prey
to the irrationality of which he accuses believers. His attempt to show once
and for all that God does not exist falls well short of the sophisticated and
considered way in which Aquinas deals with the non-believer. The real
problem is not so much Dawkins himself, but those who would accept
Dawkinss views in the same uncritical and credulous way that he says
religious believers accept religious beliefs.

PUBLIC EDUCATION, CULTURE AND CREDULITY

One of the major sources of credulity, particularly about religion and
religious faith, is the lack of adequate religious education or even education
about religion. The distinction between these is important in countries, such
as Australia, in which the public or government education system is secular
and non-denominational. In the government education religious instruction
takes the form more usually of education about religion, rather than
religious education. Parallel to the public education system is Catholic
school system, as well as schools established by other Christian
denominations. Religious education is taught in these schools, but students
do not seem to have a strong knowledge of their faith. Within the public
(government) school system, despite the provision for religious instruction,
students seem to know very little about the Christian faith or any other faith.
In the relatively few schools of other religions, such as Muslim and Jewish
schools, it is difficult to make any general observations about the extent to
which students leaving these schools have a grasp of the key tenets of their
faith. In the main, ignorance to a large extent of what religions actually hold
and teach and why they do so grips a very large percentage of the
population.
26

Within the tertiary sector in Australia, despite the presence of
affiliations of departments and schools of theology to universities and even
of schools of theology within a few universities, their importance in terms
of their ability to make a contribution to public debate is quite muted.
27

Theological argument is rarely heard in public and a theological response to
particular public concerns and issues is seldom taken seriously. Arguments
which introduce a religious dimension to a discussion are simply dismissed
as Catholic or Christian and so having no place within the public discourse.
In some cases, views opposing politically correct secular ideas are
dismissed as the ranting of a biased lunatic. As MacIntyre argues, the idea
of an educated public with a common tradition and understanding has
vanished, so that public debate in which the protagonists are familiar with
the cultural tradition in which a debate is conducted is no longer possible.
28

This is most strikingly evidenced in the lack of understanding of basic
Christian references which were once part of the common culture. What is
worrying in the lack of consideration of theological argument is not only the
lack of an educated public which understands the subject matter of
theological argument even though it disagrees with it, but also the reversion
to faulty reasoning. Dismissing an argument on the grounds that it is
Catholic, for example, is simply an ad hominem attack and a sign of either
intellectual laziness or a lack of openness to rational argument. The latter is
a manifestation of a form of credulousness, since rationality is dismissed.
Coupled with a lack of knowledge about what religions actually
stand for is the appropriation of religious symbols as fashion accessories,
but more worryingly, is the decoupling of profoundly religious practices
from their contexts within a particular religion. A crucifix becomes merely a
fashion accessory when it has become emptied of any religious significance
and this occurs when the general public has been rendered ignorant of what
such a symbol means. Spirituality, as we have already said, has become
detached from its religious roots and as a result, has lost any connection
with the ineffable and the sacred. Wholesale ignorance leads to credulity
and, as we have already commented, the uncritical acceptance of New Age
spirituality as a substitute for a religion based on rationality simply on
emotional appeal is credulousness which can have harmful consequences.
Contemporary studies of spirituality report that there are almost as many
different definitions of spirituality as there are writers about it.
29
Without a
connection to religion, it is difficult to see in what sense what people refer
to as spirituality is connected to a conception of it within a religious
tradition. The attempt to redefine spirituality as some kind of sense of the
cosmological or a feeling of oneness with the universe empties it of content
and renders it banal. This is a serious problem because a content-less
spirituality is no spirituality at all and people are being duped.
In Australian culture and Western culture more generally, there is a
well chronicled flight from Christianity.
30
The result of abandoning, for
example, a Christian culture, also seems to give rise to a kind of privileging
of religious practices of Aboriginals or native peoples and the notion that
these religious practices can somehow capture the notion of the Divine more
ably than, say, Christianity. The Shaman is considered more of a religious
leader than the priest, if present practices are any guide. Of course, if a
Christian faith is abandoned, it has to be replaced with something else and
often this is a kind of cobbled together set of beliefs which are barely
comprehensible and often incoherent.
Benedict XVI, as Joseph Ratzinger, has argued that in Europe,
Christianity in particular has been marginalised and that this poses grave
dangers to European civilization.
31
Moreover, he writes that dishonouring
Christianity and what is sacred to Christians is not considered to be a lack of
respect, but rather, it is thought in such a case to uphold freedom of speech
to allow Christian faith to be jeered at and for sacred symbols to be shown
disrespect. Great respect, on the other hand, seems to be shown to non-
Christian religions.
32
There is some considerable evidence of this in
Australia, which is specifically hostile to Christians and Catholics in
particular. Catholic positions on various public issues, such as abortion,
euthanasia, therapeutic and reproductive cloning, gay unions and many
others, tend to be dismissed not because of faulty logic, false evidence or
unsound argument, but simply on the grounds that it is Catholic. Religion is
forbidden any role in the public domain, so that, in the case of Christian
politicians, they are attacked for taking particular positions on the grounds
that they ought not bring their religious values to bear on their decision-
making on policy matters. On the other hand, those who espouse no religion
and have only secular values are not required to similarly leave them to one
side in decision-making. It is unclear how decision-making on any policy
issue can avoid invoking the values and beliefs of individual politicians,
since their perspectives on the world will have been shaped by their
experiences, by their upbringing and their personal values.
Relativism has given rise to credulousness and it is evident from
the foregoing that ignorance, intellectual laziness, a reluctance to act
rationally and a lack of critical judgement have played a considerable part in
this. Relativism canonises no religion, but this has the effect not of freeing
individuals to construct their own religious values, but of not having any at
all. Worse still, because religion is based on a metaphysics which holds that
the universe is intelligible, is able to be understood through the power of
reason and that the truth can be learnt, the abandonment of religion
undermines any conviction that there are any absolutes at all. This is a
parlous state of affairs to be in.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, we have argued that post-modernity and liberalism, though in
many ways having a positive influence on human thought by encouraging
individuals to take responsibility for their own beliefs and values, has,
through the rise of relativism, encouraged the view that any opinion is as
good as any other across all levels of Western institutions. The Protagorean
idea that man is the measure of all things
33
has given individuals licence to
think that mere opinion is enough and that since there are no standards of
truth, there is no reason to suppose that one opinion is better than another.
Sources of information are uncritically accepted, without any assessment of
their reliability.
34
The media no longer appeal to rational argument, but
rather seeks to influence by playing on the emotions of a very credulous
public.
Credulity in the public sphere manifests itself through a reliance on
intuitions, on emotions and feelings: rarely is there an appeal to reason. This
is manifested in credulity about scientific matters, where theories are
accepted without any attempt at assessing them. Global warming and
climate change, for instance, are uncritically accepted without any recourse
to a rational assessment of any scientific arguments. This is not to suggest
that there are no serious climate issues to be faced, but simply to point out
the lack of critical judgement being shown by the general public. The same
may also be said about the promise of miracle medical cures.
35
The
overblown claims in other areas of science are also accepted without critical
scrutiny.
Religion and religious faith as a communal activity has also given
way to individualism and to a view that one faith is more or less as good as
any other. Since reason has been abandoned, this has resulted in the rise of
irrational religions, of beliefs and values which are largely cut off from any
notion of an ultimate truth which we strive to reach. Dawkins, who one
might have been inclined to praise for his spirited and outspoken polemic
against fundamentalism and so, in a misguided kind of way, defence of
truth, fails because he falls prey to the same irrationality for which he
criticises his opponents. Spirituality, for a long time the heart of
Christianity, has been appropriated by New Age gurus who peddle a
superficial spirituality which is shorn of any connection with its religious
origins and so lacks any rationality, relying heavily on feelings of oneness
and wellbeing.
It could be argued that faith in consumerism and technology has to
some extent replaced faith in religion. Technology and consumerism are not
completely unrelated, as new technology, plasma and LCD screens create
demand for consumption of these products. One can seriously question
whether religious faith has been replaced by consumerism in the capitalist
West. There is ample evidence for this; it is the logical outcome of a society
which is obsessed with gratifying individual wants and desires. There is,
however, some signs, albeit forced on the world through skyrocketing oil
prices, that there are more fundamental communal needs to be served before
individual needs.
The sudden realisation that consumerism may be driving the planet
to extinction may be one reason why there is a realisation that human beings
need to work together if they are to bequeath a world worth living in to their
children. There is, therefore, hope that reason will prevail over sectional and
personal interests and there will be realisation that though there is some
truth in Spenglers view
36
that civilisations rise and fall, nations and
communities are too closely interconnected for the fall of any civilisation,
such as the West, not to affect the rest of the world. This may herald a
return to rationality and an end to credulity and selfishness.

Australian Catholic University,
Melbourne, Australia

NOTES

1
Postmodernism, whatever else it does, rejects the view that there can be
only one interpretation of history, for example, that there is only one truth. It
denies that there are any criteria for distinguishing between so-called high
culture and mass culture, it rejects grand narratives (to use Lyotards well
known phrase), and hence any privileging of particular ways of doing
science. Religion is only one source of spirituality and one religion is as
good as any other. Although maintaining a healthy scepticism and an open
mind is important, postmodernity falls prey to relativism and it is hard to
see how it can avoid self-contradiction.

2
Baudrillard despite his postmodernism points out, rightly, that in
modern society, advertising and marketing develop a range of signs which
become the language by which we communicate. Worse than this, because
of the centrality of language (according to postmodernism) to how we
depict and understand the world, these signs structure our reality. The world
just is the way advertising and marketing says it is. See J. Baudrillard, The
System of Objects, in M. Poster (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 22. See also P. McLaren and
Z. Leonardo, Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Terrorist Pedagogy, in
M. Peters (ed.) Naming the Multiple: Poststructuralism and Education
(Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1998), p. 218. Though it is not intended
to take this up here, Baudrillards nominalism about language not
withstanding, consumerism demands consumption whether or not persons
want to consume or not. That is, people go shopping not because they need
to purchase the necessities of life, but in order to surround themselves with
objects and goods of various kinds. There is something deeply irrational
about this.
3
See, for example, M. Harrington, The Politics at Gods Funeral: The
Spiritual Crisis of Western Civilisation (New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1983); E. R. Statham, Jr., Ortega y Gassets Revolt and the
Problem of Mass Rule, Modern Age, vol. 46 (2004), pp. 219-226; David B
King,. The Crisis of Our Time: Reflections on the Course of Western
Civilisation, Past, Present and Future (Cranbury, NJ: Sasquehannna
University Press, 1988); Leo Strauss, Progress or Return? The
Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilisation, Modern Judaism, vol. 1
(1981), pp. 17-45; M. Nussbaum, The Clash Within: Democracy and the
Hindu Right, Journal of Human Development, vol. 9 (2008), pp. 357-375.
4
See M. Peeters, Hijacking Democracy: The Power Shift to the Unelected,
vol. 2-3 (2001), available at http://www.aei.org/ publications/
pubID.14879,filter./pub_detail.asp [Accessed: 30/6/08]. In essence,
Peeterss point is that various global movements, though espousing values
that most agree with, because they are removed from any connection with
the individual living in a community, seek to impose a particular view of
these from above. Global problems, because they need global solutions
which must be sought across many states, result in the diminution of
sovereignty as well as decision-making remote from the individual. The
financial crisis gripping the world is perhaps illustrative. No one nation is
capable of solving the crisis and it may be that even nations acting together
may not prevent the world sliding into recession. World leaders take their
cues from financial officials and various remedies are being tried, but the
individual worrying about his or her mortgage or indeed whether he or she
will have enough to eat, has no voice in the discussions and for the most
part is not responsible in any way for the crisis which threatens livelihoods
and blights futures.

5
See S. P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the
World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 310.
6
D. Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, edited by E.C. Mossner
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1984), Book II, Part II, p. 379. This
role of reason, as subordinate to passion, can be contrasted to Platos
tripartite analysis of the soul, in which reason is the charioteer who attempts
to control the unruly horse of passion, while guiding the good horse of
courage, prudence and ambition. Reason, according to Plato, is not
subordinate to passion, though of course may be overwhelmed by passion.
See Plato, Phaedrus, tr. and intro. C. Rowe (London: Penguin, 2005), esp.
Sectn. 246. Plato also discusses his analysis further in Republic, Book IV
and Timaeus, Sections. 69c-70a. See Plato, The Republic, tr. and intro.
H.D.P. Lee (Harmondsworth: Penguin; 1955) Plato, Timaeus [and Critias],
tr. and intro. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 1971). Reasons role is not
just to determine the best means to achieve desires, but to also determine
what desires are worth pursuing.
7
For example, in a radio broadcast, Jane Watson, a Reader in Mathematics
Education at the University of Tasmania, observed that few adults, much
less children, had any understanding of what statistics meant. The concept
of an average, for example, was ill-understood. A crucial skill to develop,
given the number of opinion polls published in the daily press. See J.
Watson, The need for statistical literacy at URL http://www.abc.net.au/
rn/science/ockham/stories/s29.htm (1997) Accessed 2/7/08. For a more
recent report on the falling levels of science literacy, see the CSIRO media
release of February 1, 2005. Declining interest in science a concern, At
URL http://www.csiro.au/news/ps2uk.html Accessed 2/7/08. On the other
hand, the PISA survey of scientific literacy, numeracy and literacy, indicated
that Australian school students are performing well in these areas.
Nevertheless, Australias relative standing against other OECD countries
has significantly declined. See S. Thomson and L. De Bortoli Exploring
Scientific Literacy: How Australia measures up. The PISA 2006 survey of
students scientific, reading and mathematical literacy skills OECD
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Paper 2 (2008). At
URL http://research.acer.edu.au/ozpisa/2 Accessed 2/7/08.
8
The difficulties of conducting research on alternative therapies should not
be underestimated, however. Nonetheless, it is problematic that there is little
or no research to support its use in the community. See E. Edzard,
Obstacles to research in complementary and alternative medicine,
Medical Journal of Australia, 179 (2003), pp. 279-280.
9
Bradley reports that there is little regulation of alternative therapists and
that the number of adverse events reported as a result of people using such
alternative treatments has risen considerably. See M. Bradley, Too many

quacks in alternative medicine, Sydney Morning Herald, May 31, 2004. At
URL http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/30/1085855438025.html
Accessed 2/7/08.
10
See, for example, J.W. Cresswell, Research Design: Qualitative,
Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches, 3
rd
ed. (London: Sage
Publications, 2008), for an outline of research methods used in the social
sciences.
11
For some discussion of the debates about quantitative and qualitative
research, see M. Hammersley, The Relationship between Quantitative and
Qualitative Research: Paradigm Loyalty versus Methodological
Eclecticism in J.T.E. Richardson, (ed.) Handbook of Qualitative Research
Methods for Psychology and the Social Sciences (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002),
pp. 159-174.
12
The remarkable ease with which contradictory conclusions on the same
question that can be reached is astonishing. In education, for example,
debate has long raged about whether single sex schools are better than
mixed sex schools without any firm conclusion being reached. One study
will show one conclusion, another, the other.
13
The perils of extrapolating data are well known. See for example, A.
Kohler, The Dangers of Mathematical Modelling, The Mathematics
Teacher, vol. 95 (2002), pp. 140-145.
14
Marshall Sahlins, however, warns that sectional interests have no qualms
about using scientific uncertainty to create doubts about what the evidence
may currently show as way of continuing to pollute and degrade the
environment. See M. Sahlins (2003) Artificially maintained controversies:
Global Warming and Fijian Cannibalism, Anthropology Today, 19, 3, 3. On
the other hand, Time magazine reports Judge Michael Burton as claiming
that there are nine significant errors in Gores film, including the claim that
sea levels will rise about 6 metres if the ice covering Western Antarctica and
Greenland were to melt. Time, Examining Gores Truths (29/10/2007),
170 (2007), pp. 14-15.
15
Data and theory are intertwined in any case. Observation is theory laden,
which means that people will see something and then interpret the
observation in a particular way. It is not uninterpreted. There are many
articles which take issue with Gores analysis. A quite interesting one is
provided by the website Junkscience.com at URL
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ Accessed 13/5/08.
16
See K. Shapiro, Lessons of the cloning scandal (Observations) (Hwang
Woo Suk), Commentary, 121 (2006), 61-65.
17
William B. Drees, Religion, Science and Naturalism (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), Preface, p. xii.
18
Ibid.
19
David Stove, for example, takes great delight in demolishing some of the
cherished views of Darwinianism. See D. Stove, Cricket versus
Republicanism and other essays, edited by J. Franklin and R.J. Stove
(Quakers Hill, NSW: Quakers Hill Press, 1995).
20
W.V.O. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, From a Logical point of
View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 41.
21
R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006).
22
Dawkins, The God Delusion.
23
See A. McGrath and J.C. McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist
Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (London: SPCK, 2007); T.
Crean, God is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins (Oxford:
Family Publications, 2007); D.R. Stone, Atheism is False: Richard Dawkins
and the Improbability of God Delusion (Lulu.com, 2007); John Haught,
God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris and
Hitchens (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008).
24
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica [hereinafter ST], tr. Fathers of
the English Dominican Province, rev. D. Sullivan (Westminster, MD:
Christian Classics, 1981), I-I, Q.1, Art.8.
25
Fergus Kerr in a discussion of the five ways argues that the five ways
ought not be taken out of a theological context in the way that many
philosophers have. It is true that the Five Ways depend on the acceptance of
certain kinds of proposition, but these are not particularly contentious
namely of the fact of ones own existence and hence, at least the possibility
of that which is the source of our existence. See F. Kerr, After Aquinas:
Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 58ff.
26
Nevertheless, studies do show that Catholic schools do make a difference.
See Thomas C. Hunt, Joseph A. Ellis, and Ronald J. Nuzzi (eds.) Catholic
Schools still make a difference: Ten years of research 1991-2000, 2
nd
ed
(Washington DC: National Catholic Educational Association, 2004).
Though this may be so, this does not mean that students are not ignorant
about major beliefs of their faith.
27
The lack of real interest in religion in Australia is indicated by the
marginalisation of religion that occurs in the Academy, where few secular
universities have thriving departments of theology. This may not be
uniformly the case all over the world. In Australia, there are quite a number
of independent providers of theological education, such as the Melbourne
College of Divinity which is affiliated with the University of Melbourne,

the Sydney College of Divinity which is affiliated with Sydney University,
Australian Catholic University, Edith Cowan University and the University
of Western Sydney, the Adelaide College of Divinity, which is affiliated
with Flinders University and the Brisbane College of Theology, soon to be
dissolved, which is presently connected with Australian Catholic University,
having previously been connected with Griffith University. Other
affiliations also exist, but it cannot be said that theology is at the heart of the
secular university in the way in which Newman envisaged theology ought to
be in his vision of what a university should be. See J.H. Newman, The Idea
of a University, ed. Frank M. Turner (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1996), Discourse IV, pp. 58-75.
28
A. MacIntyre, The Idea of the Educated Public in P. Hirst (ed.)
Education and Values (London: Institute of Education, University of
London, 1987), 15-36. MacIntyre says in an interview for Cogito, published
in the MacIntyre Reader, that instead of an ever widening educated public
we have a semi-literate television audience. See K. Knight (ed.), The
MacIntyre Reader (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998), p. 272.
29
Wilfred McSherry, Keith Cash, and Linda Ross, Meaning of spirituality:
implications for nursing practice, Journal of Clinical Nursing, vol. 13
(2004), pp. 934941 In this review of the use of the term spirituality, the
authors examined some 2000 papers and concluded that the use of the term
fell into two broad categories those that involved belief in God and those
that did not. Spirituality was identified as being about the meaning and
fulfilment of life, connectedness with others and existentialism.
30
The number of churchgoers has been in decline for a number of years, as
indicated by various census figures.
31
See J. Ratzinger, The Spiritual Roots of Europe in J. Ratzinger and M.
Pera, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, tr. M. F.
Moore (New York: Basic Books, 2007), pp. 74ff.
32
Ratzinger, The Spiritual Roots of Europe, p. 78.
33
Plato, Theaetetus, tr. Robin A. Waterfield (Harmondwsworth: Penguin,
1987). See also U. Zilioli, Protagoras and the Challenge of Relativism:
Platos Subtlest Enemy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2007).
34
For example, what is called common knowledge in many instances, since
it relies on information from the media or what is gleaned from the Internet,
from websites such as Youtube and Facebook, may be inaccurate, but is
uncritically accepted as true. Wikipedia is a very good example of a great
idea which unfortunately has gone wrong. The idea that a compendium of
information could be collected from a variety of contributors is a very good
one. The problem, it has been discovered, is that there is no one vetting the
information being placed on Wikipedia, and so no control over whether

what is placed there accords with the facts. In one sense, perhaps, in a post-
modern world it does not matter whether what is uploaded on the Web is
true or false, since the question of what is truth is arbitrarily answered.
35
A recent expos in the The Sunday Age, highlights the credulity of people
to the promises of charlatans with some modicum of scientific knowledge.
In this case, cancer sufferers were told that their cancer could be cured
through a series of expensive alternative therapies. See W. Birnbauer, Its a
cancer clinic called Hope. But critics accuse it of preying on the vulnerable
and peddling unproven treatments, for $3500 per week, The Sunday Age,
front page, 6
th
July, 2008.
36
O. Spengler, The Decline of the West, tr. and notes by Charles Francis
Atkinson (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932).
GLOBALIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF PHILOSOPHY IN
SOUTHEAST ASIA

Tran Van Doan

INTRODUCTION

Southeast Asian philosophy has never been, and is not yet, taken into
account by most Western philosophers. More curiously, it is still not even
recognized by many Asians and Southeast Asians themselves.
1
In their eyes,
such a philosophy does not exist. As a consequence, the recent effort of
Southeast Asian philosophers to build their own philosophy is often brushed
aside, considered as so much nonsense, and/or simply ignored.
2
At the
threshold of a new era, wherein globalization has become the law of
survival, the hope for a Southeast Asian philosophy seems to be as good as
dead. How could the tiny, divided and even confused local philosophy
compete with the giant system of philosophy backed by the same (Western)
world which dictates the law of globalization, prescribes its language and
commands its future?
I stand in direct opposition to such pessimism and want to argue,
rather, that Southeast Asian philosophers can use globalization to defend
their own valuable heritages and to reconstruct their own unique
philosophical traditions. It is true to some extent that, globalization could be
misused to support the claim of neo-imperialism. And there is certainly
more than one case of this in human history. One knows well that the
Enlightenment has been abused by the West to justify their insatiable lust
for power and wealth. However, it is precisely thanks to the Enlightenment
that the East can be emancipated from a self-inflicted inferiority
complex.
3
The revival of Chinese and Indian philosophy and the rise of
Japanese philosophy testify that the Enlightenment, like the sciences, is not
a Western product but a universal instrument. So, the real question is rather
that of self-awareness and wise application. Only those who well know and
wisely realize its spirit can derive benefit from it. This means that, just like
the Enlightenment, globalization could become a very effective instrument
liberating Southeast Asian philosophers from the iron cage of Western
ideology and, consequently, inspiring them to work out their own
philosophy.

THE DILEMMA OF GLOBALIZATION

The unbelievable success of the computing sciences and the irresistible
expansion of the power of informatics have given birth to the peculiar
idea of globalization.
4
Similarly, under the flag of press freedom, the
mass media, particularly cable news networks, have forcefully (and
sometimes violently) demonstrated globalizations absolute necessity.
Globalization is taken, naively, as a kind of natural law, carrying the same
weight of Newtons law of gravity. Of course, such belief remains a belief
so far, surely, not because of its not yet entirely verified status but, rather,
because of its artificiality. Globalization is a human product to satisfy
human needs (and greed).
5
It is not something a priori, like space or time.
So, any equation of globalization with natural law is erroneous and
ungrounded.
As a human artifact, globalization has been greeted with rather
mixed reactions. Optimists would glorify it as the new panacea to social,
economic, political and even scientific problems. To them, globalization
will bring equality, democracy, progress and prosperity. Against such a
view, pessimists find in it, rather, a neo-imperialism in an attractive form.
To them, the iron-cage prophesized by Max Weber is finally coming.
6

Globalization would bring disaster, far more than that caused by Hurricane
Katrina and the Indonesian tsunami of 2004: not only the loss of autonomy,
but even the collapse of any resistance.
Both camps have scored some points. However, there is little doubt
that they have intentionally simplified its complexity by reducing either its
risks or its benefits, in order to convince the ignorant. By employing the
straw-man fallacy, they brought a premature conclusion to the process. No
doubt, there is some truth in eachs view. However, that is not the whole
truth. How can one grasp the whole if globalization is an ongoing process,
still not yet final, and perhaps never ending? The firm belief in ones own
capacity of possessing the whole truth, in fact, displays either a naive
ignorance or a blind belief in ones own absolute knowledge. The logic of
reducing the whole process to a single static point is intended to back such a
claim. Since globalization comes into being, not by accident, but rather as a
continuity of the infinite process of the human quest for the better, it can be
understood only partly, and namely in the context of a certain life-world and
its relation to other worlds.
7
Thus, one can say, globalization has not been,
and is not yet, completely understood if it is treated as a simple instrument,
or if it is mistaken to be a simply human end.
Aware of the complexity of globalization, this paper argues for a
different approach. It contends that globalization is neither the aim of
human activity nor a scientific method. Globalization is rather an instrument
and, at the same time, a medium for a certain purpose, or many purposes. It
claims to widening our knowledge, deepening our understanding and
bringing us to a close encounter. It could force us to accept a certain form of
life, incompatible with our nature. And, in the final analysis, it could
pretend to be an effective medium through which human beings may be
able to express themselves freely, to overcome their own boundaries and to
enjoy life. However, globalization could betray its own claim by reducing
the human power of autonomy, or worse, by destroying human resistance
against the inhuman invasion of technology. Globalization could be misused
and this is the most fearful and real prospect by unscrupulous merchants
Globalization and the Emergence of Philosophy in Southeast Asia 33
and ambitious politicians. To them, the most scientific way (hence, the
most effective means) to enslave human fellows and to rob their neighbours
is globalization. So, the basic question is not globalization, but human
wisdom. Like any instrument, globalization would bring benefits only when
one wisely uses it.
Hence, the question here is that of a wise application. This question
requires further investigation into human awareness of the aim and the
reason of our choice of globalization. Wrong aim leads to wrong choice,
and any wrong choice would be never vindicated by any scientific
method. So, a wise application requires a full awareness of the aim, an
adequate knowledge of the method used, and deliberation in choosing the
means. In a certain sense, globalization reminds us of the Enlightenment
and its dilemma in the 18
th
century. The Enlightenment has been the force
behind human progress. It has catapulted sciences to absolute power. It has
been the main spirit behind the quest for freedom and democracy. However,
it was also the main factor behind neo-barbarism and a renewed serfdom. In
the name of reason and science, one mercilessly destroyed innumerable
cultures. In the name of reason, one arrogantly dehumanized weak races and
violently subdued less developed countries. Capitalism, colonialism,
imperialism and racism are the illegitimate children born out of the wedlock
of absolute reason and the insatiable lust for power.
8

Of course, reason is in se not responsible for all these atrocities. In
contrast, it has been and still is the main force behind human progress and
the warrant for lasting peace. One can hardly deny that the Enlightenment
has had great effects in philosophy. Thanks to it, modern philosophy and a
pluralism of philosophies flourished. For the first time, German philosophy
could claim its own status, and catapulted itself into the height of
philosophical world with great figures like Kant, Hegel, and others.
Cartesianism, the proclaimed model of modern rationalism, once dismissed
or brushed aside as a non-academic subject, became dominant and enjoyed
an unexpectedly royal reception in the academic syllabus. Thanks to it,
Italian philosophy, Spanish philosophy and even Danish, Dutch, and
Belgian philosophy caught the attention of the academic world. Spinoza,
Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche (the outsiders of academia) would be dismissed
as dead dogs if the idea of pluralism had not been on the lips of high-class
society.

SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

We begin with the fact that the above-mentioned dilemma of globalization
is no longer a fiction but a reality. However, one has to acknowledge that
such a dilemma is not the essence of globalization. It displays rather a part
of the nature of any instrument. The same instrument could either bring
great benefit or cause grave damage, depending on its users and on their
aims. So, harm and benefit come not from globalization. They are not its
direct consequence. Harm and benefit can be understood only in a web of
relations: globalization could be good for some but dangerous for others. As
such, the real problem comes from us, the users of globalization and not
from globalization itself.
To accept the essence of globalization as instrumentality means to
acknowledge the role of human. Thus, it is the question of practical wisdom
(of how and why and for what globalization is employed) that emerges and
catches our attention. Practical wisdom is known first with a full
consciousness of the subject, a full awareness of the conditions (both
material and social) and the consequences, as well as deliberation. That
means that the prerequisite conditions for any decision for globalization are
self-consciousness and full awareness, which consist of a thorough
knowledge of the nature of globalization, a deep understanding of our
purpose, as well as a full comprehension of the conditions of our life-world.
In other words, full awareness and self-consciousness are the pre-conditions
determining what Aristotle once called phronesis, i.e., practical knowledge.
This kind of knowledge combines different know-how, know-what, know-
why and the knowledge of the world in which we live. Accordingly,
globalization can fulfill its positive role only when one knows its nature
thoroughly, when one is certain of the purpose of its application, and when
one can firmly grasp the conditions of the world one wishes to change. In a
word, the dilemma of globalization can be overcome only with a full
awareness of its nature, of our purpose and our life-world.

GLOBALIZATION AS INSTRUMENTAL REASON

Enlightenment, rationalism, globalization and the like are actually only
instruments for certain purposes. Their values are restricted in its
instrumentality, or in Max Webers own jargon, instrumental reason.
9
Our
unawareness of a clear distinction, or to put it better, our laziness in
searching for the differences among different types of reason, pushes us
towards an easy and uncritical belief in the uniqueness and the omnipotence
of reason. It is this dogmatic credo that catapults simple instrumental reason
into the orbit of the ultimate ends of knowledge and consequently, of human
life. Analogously, like the Enlightenment, globalization has been one-
sidedly understood. It is wrongly believed to be omnipotent. As a
consequence, its claim of absolute power is uncontested, its replacement of
dethroned myth is ignored, and its fictitious exaggeration becomes the new
ideology of our age.
10
In short, globalization is, at the same time, the reality
of an instrument to deal with modern problems, and the fictitious claim of
being the ultimate telos and the most effective means of human life.
If globalization is, contradictorily, a reality and a fiction, a rational
way of living and a myth, then phronesis requires an urgent need for a clear
distinction between reality and fiction, between a rational way of living and
mythical thinking. Such a distinction cannot be done by a pure description
or analysis, but rather by a deep awareness of the relation between the
means (globalization) and the end (better life), and between the end and our
life-worlds. Furthermore, if globalization is not yet, or perhaps will never
be, completely understood, then the important issue for us may be neither
the theoretical question of its foundation nor the practical question of its
application (how can we practice it without an adequate understanding?),
but its impetus for self-awareness. In any case, self-awareness is the first
prerequisite for the birth of philosophy in general. The rise of modern
philosophy has been in a certain way possible thanks to the self-awareness
of thinkers like Descartes, Bacon and Locke; and its height has been
achieved precisely by philosophers like Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.
In a word, self-awareness has been the conditio sine qua non for the rise of
philosophy in general. Southeast Asian philosophy is, doubtless, not an
exception.
Self-awareness begins first with our reflection on the relation
between the subject and its world, with the calculation of the effectiveness
of the means one takes to acquire (satisfy) interests, and, then, with our
recognition of the actual and ideal conditions that the subject has to
confront.

GLOBALIZATION OR MONDIALIZATION
11
(THE SUBJECT AND
ITS WORLD)

The ideas of independence and democracy, just like the idea of equality,
freedom and fraternity, are the fruit of a long reflection on the relation
between the subject and its world, between human existence and human
existential conditions, between the actual and the ideal. In other words,
human dignity would never come to our mind if there were no self-
reflection, i.e., self-awareness of human life. The world (in which human
beings live) would be still non-human, if the ideas of transcendence and the
ideal were still strange. The human world is human so far it transcends the
animal world. That means, so long man is still enslaved, mistreated, and
robbed of his own means and conditions of living, and so long as mankind
is still living in fear and despair, then such a world is inhuman. Marx is right
here when he reiterated Hegels idea of needs and desires as basic human
nature. The human is human as long as human needs are satisfied in a just
manner.
12

There was a time when the subject was understood as the Western
world, and the life-world was identified with the Christian life-world. As we
know, the world, mundus first and later le monde, was restrictedly (and
falsely) given to Europe. Of course, Asia (notably le monde chinois and le
monde indien) was discovered by European merchants.
13
However, they
were regarded as other worlds, fully detached and incompatible with
Europe. Columbus discovery of the new world might have given to the
West a new, more complete picture of the whole world. However, it did not
change the ideology of Europe as the centre of the world. Thus, non-
European worlds cannot and are not allowed to enjoy equal status. They are
rather the objects of exploitation. In other words, the non-European worlds
are not treated as subjects, equal to Europe. Asia, just as Africa and South
America, were the objects, first of exchange, then of exploitation, and
finally, of free slavery. In this context, the term mondialization is used. It
means not the sacred mission of Westernization, i.e., bringing civilization
to the still primitive, barbarous and pagan worlds, but rather a
subjugation of the rest of the world to the West.
14
Mondialization is
indoctrinated as the sacred duty of imposing Western values (religions,
politics, civilization, etc.) on other non-Western worlds.
After the triumph of the Enlightenment, the West switched to
secular values, as seen in the proclamation of the French Revolution.
Sciences and technology, along with democracy, became their most
predominant ideologies. Of course, the switch to new values did not,
however, include a switch to a new world. The tragedy comes precisely
from human inability of differancing (to use Derridas language) the
values and the worlds (where these values are regarded as prevalent). As
the consequence of the unclear and confused identification of values
and the world, Asians have opted for an easy (or lazy) and uncritical path:
they choose to be Western.
15
Such total surrender entails a complete
abandonment of ones own values and philosophies. For what use are our
philosophies now, when our world is no longer our world? As the
consequence of our embracing of the Western world, we have no other
choice than to adopt its philosophy and to dismiss our own. In the case of
the Southeast Asia, the need for philosophy, if there is any, becomes a
fiction.
The intimate relation between the life-world and our thinking
unmistakably explains the existence, logic and form of philosophy. A
particular philosophy would rarely pop up in our mind if we had no idea of
our own life-world, our particularity and our needs. That means the idea of a
particular philosophy would never appear if we found in it no value (use,
interest) for us. This is the case of Southeast Asian philosophy. How can we
convince our people of our own values if we uncritically embrace the
Western world and its values? How could Southeast Asian philosophy come
into existence if Asians absent themselves from their own world? How
could a philosophy be authentic if it is not emancipated from the invisible
yoke of Western ideology (or Islamic ideology as in the case of Indonesia
and Malaysia), and especially from the illusion of being Western.
16

So, one can say with some confidence that, long before
globalization, Asians had already almost lost their identity due to
mondialization. Thus, the real questions for us may be neither the danger
nor the opportunity of globalization, but whether we have the capacity to
avoid the mistakes of the past (our uncritical adoption of mondialization).
The naive embracing of mondialization has not only destroyed our own
philosophies, but has even prevented the birth (or the renaissance) of any
philosophy in the future.

GLOBALIZATION AS THE MEANS AND NOT THE END

My reflection on the nature and function of reason
17
sheds some light on the
instrumentality of globalization. Globalization in se is not the end, or at
least, not the final end, of the human world. Only through its function and
its effectiveness is globalization defined, recognized and redefined. What if
globalization brings more harm than benefits, more sadness than joy? This
question seems to fall on deaf ears. However, if one poses a different
question, about its utility: What if globalization can no longer satisfy the
new ber-needs (in the same sense of ber-man) then, I am sure, we
should have second thoughts. Globalization would run out of gas and
become obsolete if it can no longer render good service. It would be thrown
away, the way old software is disposed of, once it is surpassed or a new
release is available. And it would be dammed if more harm were detected.
As a means, the first question will be its effectiveness in dealing
with certain problems. Here it is clear that globalization may be good in
dealing with certain problems, though not with all problems. The next
question would be: Which problems can globalization effectively deal with,
and which problems not? The third question would be about its life span.
Since globalization is born out of human needs, and since human problems
are growing at a never ending rate, no single means could claim to be
lastingly effective. The fourth question would be, can it be implemented, or
adjusted, or changed in order to be more effective? Due to the limits of our
discussion, I would not venture to go into the detail of each question, and
attempt to find out satisfactory answers. I would rather be content with a
general inquiry into a more fundamental question on the relation between
human needs (desires) and human problems. My arguments run as follows:

1. In a global world, human needs, and, hence, human desires are
increasing at an incredibly rapid rate. These needs (desires) are no
longer limited to the so-called basic needs (desires) the ones
pinpointed by Giambattista Vico as birth, death and religion but
extended to unimaginable, not yet born, desires and, consequently,
needs. So, human needs are no longer purely human, but far above
human. To say after Friedrich Nietzsche, human needs are now bearing
a rather divine character: the need to become bermensch, the need of
realizing the impossible (the ones we were content with in our dream),
and the need for being creative.
18

2. ber-desires
19
would stimulate our new needs, or ber-needs, i.e.
the ones we did not have in the past, and they are in some degree not
part of the basic nature of human beings (as defined by philosophers
from Aristotle to Kant).
3. Our problems, hence, consist of (1) whether these needs constitute our
human essence, (2) whether we are able to realize them, and (3)
whether they could satisfy our quest for happiness.
4. By reflecting on the urgency and primacy of human needs, one may
find that most of human ber-needs and ber-desires in the global
age are, in fact, not real but fabricated. This means that such needs
would never emerge outside the context of globalization. The point is,
globalization is the unavoidably actual fact, and our present life-world
cannot be not global even if we desperately object to it. As such, one
encounters a paradoxical dilemma: one would hardly survive in the
global age without satisfying the ber-needs which are rather
artificial, and even incompatible with human nature.

CONDITIONS OF GLOBALIZATION

In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-Franois Lyotard refers to our present
world as the post-modern world in the sense of post-industrial and the post-
rational.
20
Such a description is true to some extent. But its truth is,
paradoxically, vague and imprecise. Post-industrial is perhaps a mode of
production (that is much different from Western mass-production and the
mechanistic reaction), while post-rational refers to an attitude, a way of
living (that is no longer dictated by reason). The point we are inquiring
about is What are the conditions of so-called postmodern society?
Lyotard did not (and could not) give a clear-cut answer. He nonetheless has
pointed out one condition, at least: it is informatics or the science of
information.
21
One could hardly survive without information. In a word, if
the industrial society could not survive without reason, then postmodern
society would not be possible without the science of information. It is the
force of informatics that coerces human beings to accept global life; and it is
the force of computer sciences that decides the fate of a people, a country or
even, thought a little bit exaggerate, of our present world.
If Lyotards diagnosis is true, then the specter of a new domination
and new slavery is looming over us. The truth about the new masters, i.e.
the power-holders is no longer a suspicion: they are the masters of
informatics, the producers of the computer industry, the owners and the
super-managers of multi-concerns or large firms which command trade and
dictate the world market. They are the masterminds behind an exchange of
billions of dollars, electronically, day and night.
22

If so, then what is left over for the under-developing countries, the
pejoratively degraded Third World? What about Southeast Asia, where
the majority of its people are still suffering from hunger, illness and
illiteracy? Informatics, in general, and even the most basic hardware are
luxuries, beyond their reach. The hope for an economic miracle remains a
dream. Worse, the newly proclaimed economic order turns to be an iron
cage manufactured by the rich and the powerful to suppress the less
fortunate and less privileged. Evidently, disadvantage prevents the
Southeast Asian philosophers from any opportunity to compete with the
Western colleagues on a fair ground.

PHILOSOPHY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: THE QUESTION OF LOGIC
AND THE WAYS OF THINKING AND LIVING

If the above logic is strictly observed, then we have reason for pessimism.
Hope would vaporize. Fortunately, such logic remains pure theory, because
no logic, no rule, no law can claim absolute power. No logic, including the
almighty God himself could exercise absolute control over the human.
Human beings, due to their essence as freedom (Kant, Heidegger), could
change the law, and even the course of the Heaven.
23
(Human) logic may
not always follow the same pattern of nature, but may take a quite different
path, namely, it would stimulate a kind of revolt among the oppressed and
non-privileged, providing that the latter are conscious of their misery and
their own force. Marxs logic of revolution could be justified, and headed
down the right path if people are fully conscious of their freedom of choice,
and if they are conscious of their force and their role in deciding their own
fate.
In my opinion, however, Southeast Asian philosophers have no
need to follow revolution-logic, even if they may despise the satanic
essence of the logic of who has power, rules. A revolution may help to
acquire power, but could not warrant the birth of new ideas. The reverse is
true. Without Rousseaus ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity, without
Montesquieus ideas of power-sharing and power-control (the independence
of the juridical, legislative and executive sectors), the French Revolution
might have been a banal revolt of Parisians, tired of tyrannies. People like
Maximilien Robespierre and Jean-Paul Marat (just as Mao Zedong (Mao
Tse-Tung)) would have favored a revolution-logic to cement their power
indeed. So, one may say with confidence that a revolution-logic would
prevent the birth of any possible local philosophy if it is not nurtured by
noble ideas. Only noble ideas can contribute to the birth of an original and
progressive philosophy.
If the revolution-logic is of little help for philosophy, then
Southeast Asian philosophers have to discover their own logic. And that is
their first task in the enterprise of building their own philosophy. Their logic
should not and will not be identified with that of globalization. Precisely
thanks to their full awareness of the conditions as well as the (positive as
well as negative) consequences of globalization, and thanks to their rich
heritages, they could find a better and more suitable logic for their lives. To
be more precise, this kind of logic must be worked out from their own
traditions and from their acquired new knowledge (from the West). It must
be appropriate for Southeast Asian philosophy.
Now, what is the kind of logic that Southeast Asian philosophers
should favor? In my view, it is a kind of evolution-logic. By evolution-logic
I understand a step-by-step approach, a kind of piecemeal engineering.
24

That means philosophy is in a permanent process of formation and
transformation by means of rational selection (critique and conjectures) and
self-enrichment (Aufhebung).
25
Southeast Asian philosophy would comprise
its own traditional (selected and preserved) values and the newly acquired
Western values. It would preserve Southeast Asian heritages but also open
them for new possibilities. And at the same time, it should know how
combine them, and to produce a worthy synthesis, i.e. a new approach
that can deal precisely with their life-worlds in the global age. In other
words, Southeast Asian philosophy should seek to enrich itself dialectically.

SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

As I have dealt with the question of self-awareness in the above section,
here I would like to discuss briefly the problem of social consciousness. An
awareness of the instrumental role of globalization, and an adequate
knowledge of how to maximize its positive role in the build-up of
philosophy are, of course, the first conditions for philosophical construction.
But, it would be insufficient if one stops short here.
The rise of technology has, no doubt, diminished the meaning of
the real life-world. But, precisely thanks to modern technology, the desire
for autonomy, the desire to be the self is intensified. An awareness of the
self has long been on the agenda of Southeast Asian philosophy. However,
as I have argued, self-awareness would lead nowhere without any concrete
aim, and if our aim is centered on the self. So, what one needs is to go a step
further beyond the self. The ideas of prosperity, happiness, and security, just
as the ideals we set for our lives, are constituted not by a single individual
but by humankind. It is these ideas that motivate and push human beings
forward. As such, it is required that any self-consciousness must be at the
same time a social consciousness: humanity is conscious of the
interconnectedness, intimate relationships, non-separation among all
humankind, and between humankind and nature, humankind and its world,
humankind and its hopes. This is what I mean by social consciousness.
From this double consciousness, Southeast Asian philosophers have
to go deeply into the worlds in which they live and which constitute them.
To penetrate deeply into their worlds means a thorough investigation of the
psyche of their people, the conditions of their life, the environment where
they live, the morals and beliefs on which and according to which their
people act and think, as well as their expectation and hope for a better
future.

SEARCH FOR PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

A thorough investigation into Southeast Asian worlds consists not only in a
historical unearthing of this world, but much more, a constant search for
problems and solutions. There are the problems, long existing and hidden in
the lives of the people. There are other problems emerging only just
recently. There are also problems emerging from human multi-relationships,
or from our inability to cope with the coming new worlds. Of course, there
are the problems which are not yet existing, but which will surely pop up in
the future. In short, human problems are permanently emerging along with
our world, our life and our contact with other worlds. In order to facilitate
our discussion, I would like divide human problems into (1) the permanent,
(2) the temporal, (3) the spatial (geographical), (4) the basic and (5) the non-
essential ones. As a philosopher, one has to discover the permanent, the
basic and the most urgent problems.
The search for problems is, however, only the first step. It must be
completed by a second, no less important, step. That is the search for
solutions. If philosophy is, in its most essential form, a search for wisdom,
then it is the solution that represents wisdom best. Thus, the question posed
for us here is whether Southeast Asian philosophy could offer certain
wisdom to its people, and to humankind. Real philosophy is not a
description or an interpretation. Real philosophy must contribute some
solutions theoretical as well practical to human problems.
26
Only by
being so, can it be worthy of being called philosophy. In this sense,
Southeast Asian philosophy can be respected as genuine philosophy only if
it can offer the best solutions to its people, and furthermore, to humankind.
We know that the better solution is often more durable, more effective,
longer lasting, and more available to a great number of people.
Of course, Southeast Asian philosophy, like any other philosophy,
has to concern itself with an aesthetical dimension, human hope, aspiration,
and human ultimate ends. However, due to the limits of our discussion, I
would not venture to go into the details, and leave these problems open for
further discussions.

CONCLUSION

The question I have attempted to raise in this paper is, perhaps, the main
concern of Southeast Asian philosophers. I have no doubt about the
possibility of Southeast Asian philosophy, but I have still greater concerns
about how to realize it. Globalization may serve here as one of the best
instruments for such a purpose, if we are fully conscious of its
instrumentality and if we stay firm on our own ground.
I have so far taken the term Southeast Asian philosophy in the
singular. Here I wish to clarify the reason of my choice of the singular term,
even if I am fully conscious of its manifoldness, its complexity, and even its
inner contradiction. Southeast Asian philosophy is not a single philosophy,
or a unique system of philosophy. There is no unity of all systems of
philosophy in any history. We know that Western philosophy is loosely
referred in general in a singular term. But it is by no means a single
philosophy or a unique system of philosophy. It encompasses different
schools of philosophy, different ways of approaching reality, and diverse
methods, in the search for human problems, as well as different kinds of
solution to these problems. So, it would be too simple-minded to put all
different ways of thinking and living into a single concept. In this context, it
is foolish to claim that there is a unique Southeast Asian philosophy, just as
it would be irrational to accept only one kind of wisdom. So, I may say with
some confidence that Southeast Asian philosophy may express only a
common concern of being the self among philosophers in this region. It
would by no means reflect a common method, common purpose, common
sense, etc. Since our problems consist of the common and the particular, and
it is the particular that surpasses the common, I can say that each attempt to
approach each kind of problem would point out a peculiar school of
philosophy, and each effort in searching for solutions would show the
difference and not the commonality. For all these reasons, even when I
extensively use the term Southeast Asian philosophy, what I have in mind is
a plurality of different systems of philosophy. Globalization forces
Southeast Asian philosophers to side with Western colleagues to search for
common human problems and solutions, to change the region for the better,
and finally, to reflect on their own problems, and to discover the solutions
suitable to their own people and countries.
I have no doubt that Southeast Asian philosophy is in the process of
emergence, and that it will flourish very quickly thanks to globalization. Its
value would be acknowledged once it can offer better solutions to
humankind in general, and to the Southeast Asian people in particular.

National Taiwan University,
Taipei

NOTES

1
In almost all philosophical dictionaries or encyclopedias edited by Western
scholars, and even by Asian philosophers, one can find hardly any entries on
Southeast Asian philosophy. Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai,
Filipino, Cambodian, and Burmese philosophy are almost completely
ignored. The situation is no brighter in Vietnam, the Philippines and
Singapore, even though philosophical activities in these countries are
sometimes reported; what we find mentioned there is, rather, Chinese
(Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism) or Indian, or Western philosophy. Only
recently has their philosophy captured the attention of their own
philosophers. The first essay (Ph.D. dissertation) in Filipino philosophy, The
Filipino Mind, by the Rev. Leonardo N. Mercado, appeared in the 1990s
(thanks to the effort of Prof. George F. McLean), while the works of
Professor Kirti Bunchua (Assumption University) on Thai philosophy have
become known only in the last ten years (published in The Proceedings of
The Asian Association of Catholic Philosophers, Tokyo, 2002). Vietnamese
philosophy has been discussed as early as the 1970s by Rev. Kim Dinh, but
only among a small circle of Vietnamese intellectuals. It is dismissed by
Westernized Vietnamese as rubbish, and is completely unknown to the
Western world. See my Kim Dinhs Search for a Viet-Philosophy in
Vietnamologica, No. 5 (Toronto, 2001). Cf. Tran Van Doan Einige
berlegungen ber asiatische Theologie (Muenster, 1985); Tran Van Doan,

Konstruktiver Realismus am Beispiel chinesischer und Vietnamesischer
Sprache (Vienna, 1992); Tran Van Doan, La logique de relation
(Louvain, 1998); Tran Van Doan, Der Anti-taoist Nietszche (Zuerich,
1999). Since 1997, Professor George F. Mclean has encouraged my work
and has supported my research projects in Vietnamese philosophy, which
has resulted in the following publications: Tran Van Doan, The Idea of a
Viet-Philosophy Vol. 1. The Formation of Vietnamese Confucianism
(Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2005);
Vol. 2. The Spirit and the Form of Viet-Philosophy (forthcoming). In
addition to these publications, a volume in Vietnamese has recently been
published: Tran Van Doan, Collected Essays on Viet-Philosophy (Los
Angeles Washington DC: Vietnam University Press, 2000). Two other
volumes are presently in preparation.
2
At the XXI World Congress of Philosophy (Istanbul, 2003), there was no
session on Southeast Asian philosophy. The papers on Vietnamese
philosophy (of Prof. Nguyen Trong Chuan and Prof. Pham Van Duc of The
Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences) were arranged, rather, in a session
on a completely separate theme on the very last day of the Congress when
most of the participants had left. At the World Congress of Philosophy
(Boston, 1998), a session for Vietnamese participants was scheduled (Prof.
Nguyen Trong Chuan, Prof. Nguyen Duc Huyen, Prof. Vu Kim Chinh and
Prof. Phan Dinh Cho, with Prof. G. McLean as moderator). It must be noted
here that McLean is unique among Western philosophers in that he is most
conscious of this bias and has taken steps to overcome it. On his initiative,
many Southeast Asian philosophers have worked extensively at cultivating
and presenting their philosophies. Among these are, the Rev. Leonardo
Mercado, Prof. Manuel Dy, Prof. Leovino Garcia Ma and the Department of
Philosophy of Ateneo de Manila University, along with others in the
Philippines; Prof. Kirti Bunchua and his Institute of Philosophy and
Religions at Assumption University in Thailand; The Institute of Philosophy
in Hanoi with its (former) Director, Prof. Nguyen Trong Chuan; Prof. Chai
Heng and his collaborators in Cambodia, as well as some scholars in
Malaysia and Indonesia. Also thanks to the assistance of McLean, the
Southeast Asian Philosophical Association was formed (in Bangkok in
2001) by a group of Southeast Asian philosophers. Its core members:
Warayuth Sriwarakuel (Assumption University, Thailand), Nguyen Trong
Chuan (Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, Vietnam), Chai Heng
(Royal Academy of Cambodia), Manuel Dy Jr. (Philippines). Its Board of
Advisors: George F. McLean (CRVP), Tran Van Doan (National Taiwan
University), Vincent Shen (University of Toronto) and Kirti Bunchua (Royal
Academy of Thailand). The first volume, with the collaboration of
Southeast Asian philosophers, was published by The Council for Research
in Values and Philosophy in 2005 and distributed during the Conference on
Dialogue among Cultures and Religions at the University of Indonesia

(Jakarta, June 2005). See Warayuth Sriwarakuel, Nguyen Trong Chuan,
Manuel Dy, Chhay Yiheang, and J. Haryatmoko, eds., Cultural Tradition
and Contemporary Challenges in Southeast Asia: Hindu and Buddhist
(Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2005).
3
Chow Tse-tsung, The May-Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in
Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), and
Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China (Hong Kong: Oxford
University Press, 1976), pp. 505 ff. See also John Dewey, New Culture in
China, in Asia, XXI: 7, pp. 581 (July 1921). Mentionned by Hsu, p. 506.
4
Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition A Report on
Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978).
5
As a matter of fact, globalization has been primarily understood in terms
of economics, or more precisely, of global markets. See Iain Carson,
Survey on Manufacturing, in The Economist (January 20, 1988), p. 5. See
also Oliva Blanchette, Globalization or Humanization: A Question of
Priorities in Human Development, in O. Blanchette and T. Imamichi, eds.,
Philosophical Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization (Washington,
DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2003).
6
See the very interesting debate on Globalization between Oliva Blanchette
(Globalization or Humanization) and Gary Madison (Globalization:
Challenges and Opportunities) in Philosophical Challenges and
Opportunities of Globalization.
7
I have dealt with this thesis in another paper: The Ideals, Traditions and
Social Progress (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, June 2004, and
Hua-Dzong University Technology and Sciences, July, 2004). The Chinese
version appeared in the Journal of the Institute of National Spirit, Hua
Dzong University, Wuhan, 2005.
8
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno have warned us of the danger of a
blind belief in reason. See their work: Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944,
New York: Continuum, 1972). In Eclipse of Reason (1947, New York:
Continuum, 1954), Horkheimer wrote: If by enlightenment and intellectual
progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces,
in demons and fairies, in blind fate in short, the emancipation from fear
then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service
we can render.
9
Max Weber once developed Kants distinction of pure reason and practical
reason into more modern terms of value-reason (Wertrationalitt) and
purposive reason (Zwecksrationalitt). The latter consists of purposive and
instrumental nature. See Max Weber, Economy and Society, 3 vols., ed.
Gunther Roth and Claus Wittich (Bedminster Press, 1968).

10
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
11
The term mondialization (from mundus, le monde) has a double
meaning: (1) the process of secularization (after the French revolution), and
(2) the process of spreading and imposing the West and its culture on the
whole world. In this paper, I prefer the term mondialization
(Verweltlichung) over worldlization.
12
Marx wrote in The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848): From each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs. (Jeder nach seinen
Fhigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedrfnissen).
13
Actually, the first discoverers of the Far East, most probably, were
missionaries and not merchants. It was said that St. Thomas the Apostle
settled and built the first Christian community in India. Much earlier than
Marco Polo came the Nestorians to China, and built the first Christian
community there. However, Asia was clearly the target of merchants, and
was made known among European intellectuals and aristocrats alike,
through exotic products like silk, porcelain, pepper, and the like. Since then,
mysterious Asia has been considered a support world, providing the
European nobility and the nouveaux riches with luxurious goods (gems,
silk, pepper, noodles, etc.).
14
Note that, as early as the first century, Christians had attempted to bring
the good news to the whole world. Evangelization was the term describing
such a sacred mission. Regretfully, the term evangelization was
misleadingly changed to mondialization by unscrupulous politicians and
heartless merchants to justify their secular ambitions and quest for wealth.
15
It is not too exaggerated to say that most Asian countries are, at least
partly, mondialized. Their customs, their ways of living, their
organization, their laws, their religions and even their languages are
molded after the European models. Singapore and the Philippines are not
exceptional. Even China and Japan, the two most conservative cultures,
have imported a number of Western values and integrated them into their
own values.
16
The influx of Southeast Asians to the West is certainly not only caused by
economic need, but also by the idea of Western superiority. It is an
undeniable but sad fact that a great number of Asians (and Southeast
Asians) have alienated themselves from their own roots, even when they
know that a full integration into the Western world is almost impossible.
The tragedy of Between and Betwixt of Asian Americans is a case in
point that the Vietnamese theologian, Prof. Peter C. Phan of Georgetown
University, has depicted in his most recent publications: See Peter Phan, In
Our Own Tongues Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation
(New York: Orbis Books, 2003), Being Religious Interreligiously Asian

Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue (New York: Orbis Books, 2004),
Christianity with An Asian Face Asian American Theology in the Making
(New York: Orbis Books, 2002).
17
Cf. Tran Van Doan, Reason, Rationality, Reasonableness (New York,
1989; republished, Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and
Philosophy, 2000). See also Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, pp. 3 ff.
18
I have explored the need for being creative and for the sublime in other
papers: Tran Van Doan, The Unfinished Project, Soochow Philosophical
Journal (1999).
19
Heavily influenced by Nietzsche, postmodern writes have invented new
jargon such as ber-sexual, ber-effective, ber-beautiful, etc. By
ber-desires, I understand as the desires of transcending the actual and
real world. So, Nietzsches desire to become God, just as the artists desire
of being a sort of creator, or the desire to attain the sublime, all could be
called ber-desires.
20
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition A Report on Knowledge, pp. 1-3.
21
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, Introduction.
22
Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The
Battle that is Remaking the Modern World (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1998), p. 371f; cf. Blanchette, p. 13. According to Yergin and Stanislaw, ca.
1.3 trillion dollars is exchanged on the foreign exchange market daily.
23
The Christian emphasis on the role of the human (i.e., law is for man and
not man for law), just as the insistence on the importance of human in
Chinese and Vietnamese philosophy as seen in Mencius, and in the
Vietnamese principle of the Tao of the Heart (Tam Dao, Xua nay nhan
dinh thang Thien cung nhieu) clearly support the view of human freedom.
24
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (New York, 1968), p. 313.
25
Popper understands (the Hegelian) Aufhebung in four consecutive acts:
the act of reduction, the act of negation, the act preservation and the act of
sublimation (elevation). See Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
(New York, 1961), p. 234; Conjectures and Refutations, p. 314.
26
Marx once criticized philosophy, as Feuerbach understood it, as useless.
He insisted (in his Thesen ber Feuerbach, Thesis 11) on the active role of
philosophy as the effort of changing the world for the better.
BUILDING CULTURAL BRIDGES IN THE ERA OF
GLOBALIZATION

Joseph C. A. Agbakoba

INTRODUCTION

It is becoming increasingly clear that it is necessary for the world to have a
global ideology that would provide for and project justice and respect for
persons and communities as well as provide a basis for the minimizing and
resolving of conflicts locally and internationally. In this paper, we shall
explore the possibility of social mechanisms (interactive processes) that can
aid the development of cross-cultural dialogue and shared trans-cultural
beliefs and values (universal values), which will foster inter-communal and
international peace and harmony.
We are looking at culture here from the perspective of social action,
that is, as an instrument that transforms individuals and communities;
culture here is considered as an expression of the guiding principles of
action in a society. An expression of a popular philosophy, ideology or
world view; culture or ideology in this regard provides a common frame of
reference and legal structures for the development of knowledge, ethics,
laws, economic, and political and social institutions. To achieve our
objectives, we shall address the following questions:

1. Can we have cross-cultural dialogues that can bring about
shared or universal values?
2. What is the nature and basis of such values?
3. What challenges and problems are there in the formation and
development of universal values?

We shall also try to demonstrate concretely that we can have
positive answers to the above questions by uncovering some potentially
universalizable values and elements of African culture.

THE PROBLEMS OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS AND
UNIVERSALISM: MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

Let us begin to answer the first question by pointing out that modernism
was universalist in outlook, but much of its universalism was the
universalization and the projection of the values/ideology of a particular
class, ethnic group or culture. This constitutes one of the major critique of
modernism by postmodernists; who have pointed out that the creation of
ideas, truth and knowledge are context-based and so confined to contexts.
1
Postmodernism is deeply relativist; it undermines universalism; and, is itself
unable to provide a common frame of reference that will help in solving the
worlds problems, such as violence and conflict, and the integration of
peripheral economies into the global economy. In order to achieve one of
the major purposes of this paper (which is to answer the first question above
positively), we have to formulate universalism in a way that overcomes the
major problems and issues raised by postmodernism. We shall address the
issues raised in the second and third questions above.
One major challenge posed by postmodernist thought to the
emergence of universal values (or a universalistic ideology) centres around
the relativity of conceptual schemes, and even of truth itself, which make
universal and objective standards baseless and cross-cultural comparisons
and exchanges fruitless. The problem can be stated thus: conceptual
schemes differ; conceptual schemes determine the meaning and significance
of observations and ideas; and they do not only determine what counts as
evidence in favour of truth claims but also direct the search for such
evidence; truth, knowledge and logic thus differ according to conceptual
schemes; there are no objective standards outside conceptual schemes to
which we may appeal in order to determine the superiority of one
conceptual scheme over another.
2
However, as W.H. Newton-Smith points
out, this is based on the erroneous assumption that two people from
different cultures, holding contending and different ideologies, theories or
paradigms cannot communicate. They, however, can communicate and
understand each other via the medium of translation; and given this
communication, they should be able to agree on what they mean in respect
of a given observation or idea and, consequently, they should be able to
have a common basis for agreeing or disagreeing about the truth or falsity of
their claims, about consistency and coherence, et cetera.
3
This however
raises the problem of the accuracy and reliability of the translation of one
language, theory and paradigm into the idioms and expressions of another;
and consequently, issues of commensurability and incommensurability.

THE PROBLEM OF THE COMMENSURABILITY OR
INCOMMENSURABILITY OF IDEOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

The way that the question of commensurability or incommensurability
arises depends on whether or not the concepts, notions and beliefs of a
system can be adequately captured by the language, concepts, or notions of
another belief system. However, we need not worry too much about this
type of incommensurability. This is because language is usually sufficiently
rich and dynamic to capture the concepts and meanings of other languages.
Further, the disagreements between worldviews and ideologies are not so
much about differences in meaning, but rather about conflicting and
contrasting views.
We should, therefore, be concerned with another type of
commensurability and incommensurability; we may call this ideological
commensurability / incommensurability. Commensurability (or, as the case
may be, incommensurability) refers to whether or not a pair of
Building Cultural Bridges in the Era of Globalization 49
ideologies/belief systems agree on the kind of evidential supports required
to validate/invalidate the claims of an ideology/belief system, including
whether or not a given evidential support is required in the first instance and
the weight attached to it (for some ideologies, especially religious
ideologies, are based on unconditional claims which many classes of events
would not invalidate). Debates and disputes can be readily resolved between
commensurable systems by reference to shared standards of what counts in
support of truth and falsity, right and wrong, et cetera that is, shared views
of evidential support. Belief systems that appear very different may be
commensurable, while apparently similar ones may be incommensurable.
For example, Christianity and African Traditional Religion, which are very
different (for instance, one is monotheistic, the other polytheistic) are
commensurable to a large extent. This is because, in African Traditional
Religion, the evidence for the existence, power and prestige of a divinity
lies in the material survival and well-being of an adherent. This intersects
with the part of Christianity that says that a believer will not lack what
he/she needs for his/her material sustenance. This to some extent explains
the rapid evangelisation of certain parts of Africa, notably South Eastern
Nigeria. The missionaries brought material survival and well-being to the
people through their schools and hospitals. Education made it possible for
people to work in the modern sector of the economy and rewarded people
far more than the traditional sector, raising their status in society; hospitals
brought medicine that saved lives and restored health in cases where
traditional medical and health care were ineffective.
A situation of commensurability allows one ideology to subsume
another with minimal irreconcilable conflicts. Commensurability allows for
the universalisation of an ideology or elements of an ideology as it goes on
to subsume other ideologies. However, the world is not composed of
commensurable ideologies alone; there are incommensurable ideologies and
these pose greater challenges to the emergence of a universal ideology that
will serve humankind. The existence of this partly explains the lack of
promise of (what Plamen Makariev describes as) abstract universalism and
essentialist universalism the one projecting a set of context-free,
ahistorical values that do not actually exist; the other relying on a
metaphysical unity that is not proven and demonstrated and which does not
have any practical value in terms of accounting for or reducing, the conflict
of ideologies.
4

The real problem with incommensurable systems is that material
evidence cannot readily lead to the settlement of disputes. Thus,
convergence and agreement can only be found in the realm of reason
(reliance on intuition defined here as information/knowledge obtained
without recourse to reason or the senses will not help; because people may
have different conflicting intuitions with equal clarity and certainty; in any
case, some of the incommensurable ideologies we have, especially religious
ones, are based on conflicting intuitions or revelations, as the case may
be). We should, therefore, look at the structure of an ideology that is, its
logical or formal structure to determine: (a) The internal consistency of an
ideology and (b) The horizon or radius of consistency of an ideology.
The internal consistency of a system of thought is the basis of its
coherence, and this has been the bedrock of the coherence theory of truth.
But the internal consistency of a system is only inward looking; it looks at
the constituents of a system, not at the system as such that is, at the system
itself in relation to formal possibilities (e.g., How much of reality or
humanity, for instance, does a given system, or part of system, represent or
describe?; Is the representation or description positive or negative, or
neither positive nor negative?). When we address these logical dimensions,
we will be able to determine the radius or horizon of consistency of an
ideology and this tells us how much of reality and possible experiences
such an ideology addresses or deals with, and how much it leaves out or
tends not to address, as well as how consistent it is in dealing with reality
and possible experiences.
5

The wider the radius or horizon of the consistency of a system, the
more comprehensively coherent and true (in the sense of the coherence
theory) such a system is; the more its appeals to reason; the higher its
chances of convincing people on rational grounds. Let us note here that
even though an ideology/culture as such may not have a perfect radius of
consistency, some ideas that are a part of it or have developed within it, may
have a formal structure with a perfect horizon of consistency. Such ideas
have actual or potential universal dimensions and applicability.
It is possible to have two different systems sharing the same radius
of consistency, that is, the same formal structure but differing in their claims
and imperatives. However, it appears that if there is any such pair of
systems, they will converge on many fronts for instance, we can expect
convergence on respect of human life, stealing, conservation of the
environment, and so on. Such points of convergence could be developed to
form the basis of a universal ideology.

THE CONVERGENCE OF IDEOLOGIES AND UNIVERSALISM

As we can see from the foregoing, ideologies can converge in the march
towards a universal ideology by: (1) one ideology subsuming another in the
case of commensurability though it should be noted, that the subsuming of
one ideology by another is not usually entire, because elements of the
subsumed ideology/culture survive in the dominant one, enlarging and
diversifying some of its aspects; (2) (especially in respect of
incommensurable ideologies) rational persuasion, through embracing an
ideology that shows superior consistency in relation to another
5
; (3) locating
the compatibility of ideas in ideologies that have perfect radii of consistency
and internal consistency.
Apart from the above, the process of the convergence of ideologies
and the advancement of a universal ideology, will be enhanced by focusing
on and using values that are inherently compatible with or expressible in a
comprehensive consistent formal structure. One of the values that are
inherently expressible in this form is beneficence and, thereby, values that
directly derivable from this notion, namely, empathy, charity, solidarity and
cooperation. The more beneficence is endorsed and expressed (intensively
and extensively) by an ideology, the higher the potential for such an
ideology to provide the fabric for a global ideology. Thus, the radius of
beneficence of an ideology is a major asset in the evolution of an ideology
in the convergence process of ideologies. It should be noted that the radii of
beneficence and consistency of an ideology determine the inclusiveness and
potential for inclusiveness of an ideology, and that the strength of
inclusiveness of an ideology is a key factor in its success on the global level.
The mechanism for building a global ideology in our view is
communication. Communication, here, involves intense dialogue that will
demonstrate the radii of consistency, beneficence and inclusiveness of an
ideology/culture; that will bring out the potentially universalisable ideas that
express beneficence, inclusiveness and other notions compatible with a
global ideology; and that will cause the subsuming, conversance and fusion
of ideas. Education is part of this communication process that should aim at
the preservation, consolidation and transmission of the beneficial fruits of
dialogue and exchange of ideas. There is also a need for the transformation
and reform of customs and social institutions to provide the structural and
legal basis for the expression of universal values; where necessary.

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY AND UNIVERSAL VALUES

Let us now look at traditional African beliefs and values in the light of the
criteria set out above. Placide Tempels properly identified the ontological
conception of the world in traditional African thought in the notion of vital
force(s).
6
The world is composed of forces of different degrees of strength
and essential qualities. Hence, the universe is organised in hierarchical order
with the supreme vital force at the top and the least vital force at the bottom.
Moreover, it would appear that a higher vital force can control and direct a
lower vital force. (The Igbo express this notion of force by the word, ike,
and the notion of the variety of forces by the statement: ike di no kpu no
kpu, that is, that there are different forces with different capabilities.)
7

In addition to the belief in the existence of a variety of forces
organised in a hierarchical order, Africans tend to believe that lower order
forces share in elements of the higher order force. This is akin to John
Scotus Erigenas idea of lower order universals contained in or derivable
from higher order universals.
8

Things (both physical and non-physical) are known according to
the force they manifest, and the totality of these forces is reality in its
entirety. Although we can experience the manifestation of force physically
(for instance, we can observe a lion or a dog showing courage), the power
that makes this possible is a non-physical essence that may exist
independently of the physical thing; in order words, ultimate reality cobsists
of essences that are like Leibnizs metaphysical point active, intense,
causally efficacious, but non-local; they may however be embodied or
disembodied at any time.
9
Thus, beings in the physical world are essentially
the same as beings in the non-physical world; hence we have the saying
among the Igbo: ka o di na enu, ka o di na ani: as it is above (in the
heavenly or spiritual order) so it is below (in the earthly or material order).
The ontological view forms the foundation of the African
conception of human nature, knowledge, ethics, society, and social action.
One idea that follows from the view that for the self-conscious being like
the human being the world is made up of forces, is the conscious pursuit
of self-survival, including especially material self-survival and the pursuit
of an ever-increasing forceful manifestation of the self. The more powerful
a being manifests, the stronger and higher it is in the ontological order (for
instance, a king occupies a higher place in the ontological order than his
subjects). This leads to a highly subjective orientation in the conception of
human beings, ethics and social action; for instance, Do not kill usually
means Do not kill a member of your family or clan or community; Do not
steal, means Do not steal from a member of your community.
10
There is
no objective order as such, because things, events and social reality are from
the point of view of how they increase or decrease the vital force of a person
and his/her ability to manifest power; they are good and acceptable in so far
as they conduce to survival and the manifestation of power, bad and
unacceptable in so far as they do otherwise. We have here a highly
subjective, personalised and ego driven view of the human being and his/her
place in the scheme of things. One might well think that traditional African
thought is at its roots existentialist and Nietzschesque.
This type of ontology and conception of human nature explains the
foundation of African ethics in blood-bond as well as its particularistic
character (that is, its self-regarding focus the self here refers not simply to
the individual, but also the collective self and the community in which the
individual is anchored) and its relatively narrow radii of consistency,
beneficence and inclusiveness.
11
People from the outside group are to be
taken advantage of as one pleases and as circumstances permit; and
obviously, such persons are not to be given the same rights and respect as an
insider; they can only gain such rights and respect if they undergo some
process that will cause them to be grafted onto the family tree or the blood
line of an insider; inclusion is thus restricted and difficult.
12
In spite of the
above observations, however, there are elements of African philosophy and
values that are universalizable, and that can meet our criteria for universal
values namely social justice/welfare and collective responsibility.

UNIVERSALIZABLE AFRICAN VALUES

In the search for equity and fairness, the Igbo consider the individual as an
instance of vital force, of being, equal ontologically with other human
beings, possessing potentials that are ultimately unfathomable.
Consequently, unless there is some overriding reason (such as an office,
which gives higher responsibility and demands more expenditure), things
are shared equally among people regardless of age. For instance, in a
polygamous family (and the norm was polygamy in the traditional setting),
the distribution of a mans wages or earnings amongst his wives is done on
the basis of the equality of the wives, regardless of the number of children
each of the wives may have, or the sex of such children, or indeed whether a
wife is childless. It might appear unjust for a wife with six children to
receive the same agricultural products or money for her sustenance and that
of her children as a wife with one or no child. But it is calculated that the
woman with six children apparently needs resources while her children are
growing; she has to work extra hard and possibly depend on relatives for the
sustenance of her children. When her children are grown, however, and are
able to help on the farm, she will have more hands working in her farm than
the woman with fewer children or no child; at this time she will have many
hands contributing towards her upkeep, and she can relax and enjoy the
fruits of her labour, while the woman with fewer children or no child will
have fewer hands contributing towards her upkeep and she will endure more
hardship. It is therefore expected that a wise wife with few or no children
will use the surplus that she may have in her more youthful years to help in
bringing up the children of her co-wife who has many children, so that
when she becomes old and is in need of help, her stepsons and daughters
will look after her. The important thing here is that these women are given
their rights; they can now act freely to secure or not secure their future. The
interesting idea here is that people are given their due, regardless of
circumstances. This is interesting because the consideration of what counts
in favour of getting more than others, and vice versa, in respect of
distributive justice is frequently subjective and arbitrary. And, the
application of the wrong principle in distribution can lead to conflict as
could be seen in the Niger Delta area in Nigeria where militants are up in
arms against the Federal government for keeping the bulk of the revenue
that comes from oil and petroleum; whereas the oil producing areas should
take the bulk of the revenue that comes from their land.
In traditional Igbo society, unlike more individualistic societies,
people make demands on their relations, especially wealthy ones. A person
may expect, for instance, that his uncle should pay his school fees, not on
the grounds of charity, but as a matter of his or her right; similarly people
expect that wealthy relations should redistribute some of their wealth to
their relations and the community; the more they do so, the better. The ideas
that justify these views include: (a) that the poor could refuse to obey the
laws of the system that produced the wealthy person and, if such a system
collapses as a result, the wealthy man will collapse with it; and (b) that the
community relies to a large extent on the poor for its security in the
traditional society. The contributions of the poor in this regard were not
monetized or rewarded formally in cash or in kind; their reward came
informally, via the voluntary redistribution of wealth by the rich.
The acceptance of a social order in which there are poor who
perform invaluable security services, makes the compensation of the poor
necessary. This is not socialism but, rather, social justice; the poor should
have some compensation as a matter of right. We may compare this with
the social welfare and the welfare state of the West, which try to provide for
low income earners and the jobless, The justification given there relies more
on a watered-down form of Marxism e.g., that the people who participate
in production should be given a larger slice of the proceeds of their effort
than they received in the early days of Western capitalism and
industrialisation. Such economic arguments have little or no place in
traditional African societies. However, their reasons for social redistribution
of wealth are very important and applicable to contemporary societies.
The practice of the traditional African society above stresses the
need to discover and practice reciprocity among individuals, among groups
and among individuals and groups. These ideas are captured in the
traditional Igbo notion of: Ife kwulu, ife a kwudebie (whenever a thing
stands in a place or takes up a position, something else takes up a position
close to it or stands in a close relation to it; a thing always stands in relation
to some thing else). This saying stresses the need to look at things
holistically and in relation to other things, and as comprehensively as
possible. From this idea, one can derive the attitude of valuing all members
of a society, whether they are rich or poor and regardless of their status and
potential, because one cannot occupy the space meant for another. In
addition, the Igbo say: Mmaduka (a human being, particularly a member of
the family or clan, is greater or more important than anything else);
consequently the human being who occupies the space no one else can
occupy is invaluable.
Based on the above notions, the traditional Igbo practiced some
notion of social welfare for the poor; indeed, the word for poverty, ogbenye,
means, in English, living on the charity of the community; which comes to
the same thing as living on dole.
13
However, the idea of dole is regarded
differently in the West from that of traditional Igbo society. In Igbo society
it is loathed, because of its ontological implications, unlike in the west
where poverty is associated with displeasing the gods the result of sin or
an unfortunate destiny. All of these are to be feared, because poverty
threatens the full manifestations of a persons vital force; it even threatens
the immortality of a person, because immortality lies in having a progeny,
but poverty may prevents a person from having many wives and children,
and poverty may prevent a person from having a proper burial ceremony.
People, then, strove to be wealthy and there was a strong work ethic. If,
however, in spite of a persons efforts, including sacrifice to the gods and
other spiritual efforts, he or she remained poor, that person could count on
the charity of other members of the community. What the African notion of
social justice and social welfare point to are the universalizable ideas of the
invaluable nature of the individual, the intrinsic worth of the diverse social
roles that individuals are capable of, the value of striving and the need to
consider and look for reciprocity contextually and comprehensively,
embracing the past, present, and future as much as possible.
The drive to labour within a comprehensive social context, at least
partly accounts for the African idea of collective responsibility. The
traditional African society held the collective (the family, extended family,
clan, et cetera) responsible for the wrongdoings of all of its members; and
conversely the collective could take pride in the achievements of any of its
members. The collective, consequently, could be punished for the crimes
committed by any of its members, especially if it is a grave offence such as
murder. Collective responsibility has been criticised by individualistic
thinker and legal systems. However, the justification for collective social
responsibility lies in the fact that individuals are a product of the social
stimuli they have received. If a person turns out to be a thief, for instance, it
shows that those who were responsible for his or her upbringing did not do
their work well, and they should, where possible, receive some punishment.
Collective social responsibility gives a more accurate reflection of the
diversity and extent of our social relations.
When we apply our criteria for a global ideology, we see that
collective social responsibility is more consistent with the reality of social
existence, and we can conjecture that if a society in structured in favour of
collective social responsibility, there will be more encouragement for action
in favour of public spiritedness and the public good (and the development of
beneficence). This, apart from other benefits, will strengthen the
ideological and legal basis of the NGOs and international organisations that
have been working for the public good on a global as well as a local basis.

CONCLUSION

We have seen above that it is possible to have a basis for the integration of
the diverse cultures of the world. This integration involves the
universalization of the potentially universalizable elements in every culture;
such universalizable elements can be identified by their formal structure and
their potential for beneficence and inclusiveness. We are thus advancing
the idea of formal universalism on the grounds that any form of substantial
universalism must take the form of a universal, and that such a formal or
logical universal cannot ultimately support substantial incompatibility. This
perspective thus creates the basis for the unity or convergence of cultures
and, at the same time, tolerance and support of diversity in respect of
cultural elements that are peculiar in so far as they are not in opposition to
the universal foundations of a global ideology or culture.

University of Nigeria,
Nsukka, Nigeria

NOTES

1
Vernon Pratt, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (London: Routledge,
1978), pp. 51- 61.
2
Pratt, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences, pp. 51ff.
3
W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science (Boston: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 36.
4
Plamen Makariev, Cultural Diversity and Philosophical Universalism, a
paper presented at the International Conference, Philosophy Emerging
From Culture, held at the Soongsil University, Seoul, South Korea, 27
th

28
th
July, 2008.
5
See J. C. A .Agbakoba, Philosophy and Development: Meta-theoretical
and Methodological Considerations, in UCHE, vol. 11 (2005).
6
Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Prsence Africaine, 1959), pp.
44-74.
7
F.O.C. Njoku, Essays in African Philosophy, Thought and Theology
(Owerri: Claretian Institute of Philosophy, 2002) pp. 128-129. Njokus
objection to Tempels assertion that force is the supreme value in African
thought is wrong. We only need to look the place of force(s) in the thoughts
and works of the native doctors, who were the traditional philosophers and
wise men, to see its centrality in traditional African thought.
8
William S. Sahakian, History of Philosophy (New York: HarperCollins,
Publishers, 1968), pp. 94-96.
9
Ch. Perelman, An Historical Introduction to Philosophical Thinking, tr. K.
A. Brown (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 148-150.
10
C. Okwechime, Onitash-Ugbo Through the Centuries (Lagos: Max-
Henrie Associates, Ltd. 1994), pp. 65-73.
11
J. C. A. Agbakoba, Globalization and Religious Ideologies and Conflict:
A Critical Examination and Exploration of Alternatives in Contemporary
Philosophy, vol. XXVII, Nos. 1 and 2 (Jan/Feb & Mar/April 2006).
12
Ben N. Chukwudebe, Onitsha Quo Vadis (Owerri: B.N. Chukwudebe, 2
nd

edition, 1986), pp. 3-6.
13
J.C. Ekei, Justice in Communalism (Lagos: Realm Communications LTD,
2001), p. 142.
HOLISTIC POSTMODERNISM: A NEW PARADIGM FOR THE
INTEGRATION OF THE ONE AND THE MANY

Warayuth Sriwarakuel

INTRODUCTION

The term postmodern is widely used in the world today, even in
developing countries like Thailand. The spectre of the postmodern is
haunting not only Europe but also almost every part of the world. This
spectre has manifested itself in various forms in areas as diverse as art,
architecture, literature, music, politics, the communications media,
education, theology, history, and philosophy. It may even be seen as the
unhappy family member of intellectual movements. For some people,
postmodernism means a means of escape from the heritage of modern
European epistemology and domination. To others, it refers to an attempt to
undermine the achievements of Western civilization by a group of left-wing
intellectuals. To yet others it means just the insignificant blatherings of a
collection of obscurantist writers. All these reactions are misguided. As
Cahoone puts it,

Certainly the term postmodern, like any slogan widely used, has
been attached to so many different kinds of intellectual, social, and
artistic phenomena that it can be subjected to easy ridicule as
hopelessly ambiguous or empty. This shows only that it is a mistake
to seek a single, essential meaning applicable to all the terms
instances. As one of the inspirers of postmodernism would say, the
members of the postmodern clan resemble each other in the
overlapping way that family members do; two members may share
the same eye color, one of these may have the same ears as a third,
the third may have the same hair color as a fourth, and so on. More
important than discovering an essential commonality is recognizing
that there are some important new developments in the world that
deserve examination, that postmodern labels some of them, and that
there are some very important works, raising deep questions, that are
likewise labeled.
1

Still, when many philosophers use the term postmodernism, they have in
mind the poststructuralist movement, popular in France in the 1960s.
They usually understand that:

. . . this movement denies the possibility of realist knowledge,
objective knowledge of real world univocal (single or primary)
meaning of words and texts, the unity of the human self, even the
very notion of truth, as well as the cogency of the distinctions
between rational inquiry and political action, literal and metaphorical
meaning, and science and art. Simply put, they regard it as rejecting
most of the fundamental intellectual pillars of modern Western
civilization. They may further associate this rejection with political
movements like multiculturalism, feminism, and the critique of
Eurocentrism, which regard the rejected notions as the ideology of a
privileged sexual, ethnic, and economic group, and aim to subvert
their privilege in favour of the disenfranchised.
2

Despite the different usages of postmodern, Cahoone points out,
we may find some common characteristics such as (1) a recognition of the
pluralism and indeterminacy in the world that modern thought refused to
acknowledge as it pursued simplicity, completeness, and certainty; (2) a
new focus on representations or images or cultural signs as playing a
dominant position in social life; and (3) an acceptance of play and
fictionalization in cultural fields that earlier sought a realist truth.
3

Cahoone summarizes what postmodernism means in his own model. I will
contrast his model with that of Klemm, before I discuss the three models of
postmodernism from my own understanding.

CAHOONES UNDERSTANDING OF POSTMODERNISM

Cahoone holds that postmodernism focuses on five prominent themes:
presence or presentation (versus representation and construction), origin
(versus phenomena), unity (versus plurality), transcendence of norms
(versus their immanence), and constitutive otherness.
4

Presence refers to

the quality of immediate experience and to the objects immediately
presented. What is immediately given in experience has
traditionally been contrasted with representation and
construction. For example, sensation or sense data have been
considered as more reliable than mental contents subsequently
represented and modified by language and thought.
Postmodernism questions this distinction. Derrida denies that
there is such a thing as perception, which is an immediate,
transparent reception of the given. There is nothing outside the
text. This need not mean that there is no real external world, but that
we only encounter real referents through texts, representations, and
mediation. We can never say what is independent of all saying.
5

Origin refers to

the source of whatever is under consideration. [A return to
origin] is often considered the aim of rational inquiry. Inquiry
Holistic Postmodernism 59
into origins is an attempt to go behind or beyond phenomena in order
to reach their ultimate foundation. For modern schools of thought
about the self [such as psycho-analysis, phenomenology, and
existentialism], the attempt to discover the origin of the self is the
road to authenticity. Postmodernism denies the possibility of
returning to, recapturing, or even representing the origin, source, or
any deeper reality behind phenomena, and casts doubt on or even
denies its existence. In a sense, postmodernism is intentionally
superficial, not through eschewing rigorous analysis, but by regarding
the surface of things, the phenomena, as not requiring a reference to
anything deeper or more fundamental. Nietzsches claim that the
ancient Greeks were superficial out of profundity could be a
postmodern slogan. The saying, Every author is a dead author, is an
example of the denial of origin, because it denies that the meaning of
a text can be authoritatively revealed through reference to authorial
intentions. An authors intentions are no more relevant to
understanding the text than any other set of considerations; they are
not the origin of the text and so have no privilege over other
factors.
6

Postmodernism tries to show that what others have regarded as a
unity is plural. All things, both words and entities, are constituted by
relations to other elements.

Everything is constituted by relations to other things; hence, nothing
is simple. Since such relations are inevitably plural, the individual
in question is plural as well. The human self is not a simple unity,
hierarchically composed, solid, self-controlled; rather it is a
multiplicity of forces or elements. It would be more true to say that I
have selves, than a self.
7

The denial of the transcendence of norms is crucial to
postmodernism. Norms such as truth, goodness, beauty, rationality,
are not regarded as absolute or independent of the processes they
serve to govern or judge. [On the contrary], they are products of and
immanent in those processes. For example, where many people might
use the idea of justice to judge a social order, postmodernism regards
that idea as itself the product of the social relations that it serves to
judge: that is, the idea of justice was created at a certain time and
place to serve certain interests, and it was dependent on a certain
intellectual and social context.
8

Cahoone later says,

It is in effect the rejection of idealism, and of any dualism which
asserts that some things (e.g. norms) are independent of nature or
semiosis (sign-production) or experience or social interests. The
concept good and the act of calling something good are not
independent of things we want to call good. This leads
postmodernists to respond to the normative claims of others by
displaying the processes of thought, writing, negotiation, and power
which produced those very normative claims. It does not mean that
postmodernists fail to make their own normative claims, but that they
unleash a form of critical analysis which makes all normative claims
problematic, including their own.
9

Lastly, postmodernism typically offers an analysis of phenomena
through constitutive otherness. Postmodernists try

to use the idea of constitutive otherness in analyzing any cultural
entity. They say that all cultural units [such as words, meanings,
ideas, systems of thought, human beings, and social organizations]
are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process
of opposition, exclusion and hierarchization. [While the center] is
privileged or favoured, the other is devalued in some way.
10

As Cahoone puts it,

. . . in examining social systems characterized by class or ethnic
division, postmodernists will discover that the privileged groups must
actively produce and maintain their position by representing or
picturing themselves in thought, in literature, in law, in art as not
having the properties ascribed to the under-privileged groups, and
must represent those groups as lacking the properties of the privileged
groupsPostmodernists, especially in literary studies, turn their
attention away from the well-known, openly announced themes in a
text toward the seldom mentioned, the virtually absent, the implicitly
or explicitly devalued. For presence is constituted by absence, the real
is constituted by appearance, the ideal by the mundane. This applies
not only to the stated message or theme of a text, but to its style as
well.
11

In summary, Cahoone tries to describe postmodernism according to
five prominent themes. Four themes are objects of its criticism, and one
constitutes its positive method.

KLEMMS UNDERSTANDING OF POSTMODERNISM

Klemm depicts postmodernism through a contrastive method. He uses four
elements in his contrast: center of the paradigm, world picture, system of
thought, and self-world relation. First, Klemm points out that the
premodern, the modern, and the postmodern have different centers to their
paradigms. The center of the premodern paradigm is the manifestation of
the sacred, the center of modern paradigm is rational self-assertion, and the
center of the postmodern is the linguistic event of dialogue. Klemm says,

The life of conversation structures the postmodern paradigm.
Whereas the premodern appearance of the sacred presents an
objective reality to which the subject belongs, and the self-assertion
of the modern paradigm presents a neutralized subject, whose
projects transform the world, the event of dialogue in language cannot
be located on the objective or subjective side of a subject-object
model. Language is the middle and medium of the event of dialogue
between a self and another.
12

Second, Klemm points out that the picture of the world is different
among the premodern, the modern, and the postmodern. The premodern
picture of the world is that of the sacred cosmos, the modern picture of the
world is that of infinite universe, whereas the postmodern picture of the
world is neither the image of the sacred cosmos nor the loss of that image.
Klemm says that the postmodern world picture:

. . . is rather the image that there is no image of the whole of things.
We imagine that we have no image of the universe in which we can
see ourselves as intimately belonging or from which we see ourselves
as ultimately excluded. If Cartesian anxiety is related to the loss of
world in the modern period, the postmodern mode of existence is
marked by acceptance of the erasure of the literal world picture. The
imagelessness, and hence anonymity, of the world itself becomes a
powerful symbol of the whole. For the postmodern, the whole is not
represented as an image to vision or sight, but is disclosed in
language or word. Indeed, the postmodern thinkers hold it as
axiomatic that only through language do we have anything like a
world.
13

Third, Klemm points out that a system of thought is different
among the three categories. The premodern holds a system of myth and
ritual, whereas the modern and the postmodern hold epistemology and
hermeneutics as their view of the world respectively. Klemm agrees with
Richard Rorty who analyzes the postmodern system of thought as
hermeneutical and edifying rather than epistemological and systematic.
Klemm says,

For the postmodernist, epistemological theories of mental
representation cannot hope ultimately to distinguish true from false
pictures of objective reality. Objective reality is always already
interpreted through linguistic, hence social, preconceptions.
Heidegger formulated this postmodern insight as follows: everything
that we understand, in word, text, gesture, or action, is approached
through anticipations (or preunderstanding). These anticipations
direct our questions to the other. They make understanding of the
other possible. They situate understanding within the horizon of
anticipations that are historically effective here and now. Heidegger
calls this phenomenon the hermeneutic circle. Because of it, all
understanding is potentially and essentially a dialogue rather than a
monological mirroring of reality.
14

Finally, Klemm points out different views on self-world relation.
The premodern self-world relation is of immediate openness to the sacred,
whereas the modern self-world relation is of the subject-object split. The
postmodern self-world relation is neither openness to the world, nor the
separation of self and world. Klemm goes on to say,

The postmodern thinkerfocuses now on the content of symbolic
understanding and now on the results of critical reflection. The back
and forth movement between participation in meaning and
objectifying critique can sometimes suggest new, postcritical
interpretations. By virtue of being able to recall the direct meaning in
light of the critical view, the postmodernist can mediate the symbolic
consciousness through the critical. Ricoeur calls this relation the
second naivet.
15

In order to see Klemms analysis clearly we may put his contrast in the
following schema:

PremodernModernPostmodern
1. Center of the Paradigm The Sacred Rational SelfDialogue
2. World Picture Sacred CosmosInfinite UniverseImagelessness
3. System of Thought Myth/RitualEpistemologyHermeneutics
4. Self-World Relation Openness to theSubject-ObjectDasein
Sacred Split

At first glance, we may observe that Cahoones understanding of
postmodernism sounds like a left-wing Heideggerianism whereas
Klemms sounds like a right-wing Heideggerianism. However, both
thinkers have one thing in common. They both see postmodernism as
reflecting an intersubjective linguistic turn.

DIFFERENT MODELS OF POSTMODERNISM

In our daily lives, when we are not satisfied with the status quo, we look for
solutions and choose the best one. Life is problem-solving. Life is making
choices. Suppose we are not happy with the situation in, let us say, the
Current Jerusalem. We have at least three choices: to return to find
happiness in the Old Jerusalem, to strive ahead to find happiness in a
utopian New Jerusalem, or to try to adjust ourselves and live with the
Current Jerusalem.
When some people are dissatisfied with the current situation, they
wish to return to the past. These people may hold that postmodernism, for
them, means a romantic return to an ideal society in the past. Thus it is not
surprising that the theologian Bernard Iddings Bell used the term
postmodern in 1939 to mean the recognition of the failure of secular
modernism and a return to religion. Some people may think that it is
impossible to return to past ideals, both in principle and in practice. That is
mistaken. In fact, we can return to some past ideals through our thought and
imagination, and we can put them into practice in our present life through
reenactment. Confucius is a good example of a scholar who yearned to
return to the past. What is surprising is that what is considered as
postmodern in one society may be premodern in the other. As David
Hall puts it,

In defense of my somewhat exotic thesis I want to call attention to the
evidence for thinking that Confucianism and philosophical Taoism
share something like the problematic of postmodernism insofar as it
is shaped by the desire to find a means of thinking difference. In its
strongest and most paradoxical form my argument amounts to the
claim that classical China is in a very real sense postmodern.
16

Whereas some people yearn for a romantic return to the past, others
look ahead to the future. These people think that we cannot step back and
find happiness in the past. We need instead to find a new model. It may be
argued that it is impossible to find happiness in the future because the future
is only potential and uncertain. This is also mistaken. Even though the
future is uncertain and potential, it can influence our present actual life in
terms of established goals. When we set our goals, no matter whether they
are short, medium, or long term, they will, more or less, influence our life in
one way or another. Thus, looking forward to finding happiness with the
new model is always possible and accessible. As David Bohm puts it,

Our entire world order has, in fact, been dissolving away for well
over a century. This dissolution has tended further to erode all our
basic values on which the stability of the world order must depend.
Hence, we are now confronted with a world-wide breakdown which
is self-evident not only at the political level but also in smaller groups
and in the consciousness of the individual I suggest that if we are to
survive in a meaningful way in the face of this disintegration of the
overall world order, a truly creative movement to a new kind of
wholeness is needed, a movement that must ultimately give rise to a
new order, in the consciousness of both the individual and society.
This order will have to be as different from the modern order as was
the modern from the medieval order. We cannot go back to a
premodern order. A postmodern world must come into being before
the modern world destroys itself so thoroughly that little can be done
for a long time to come.
17

It is suggested by many psychologists and philosophers that we
should live our lives only in the present, for yesterday is just like a dream
and tomorrow may never come. Only today is real and belongs to us;
therefore, we should live with it. We should understand the present world
and learn how to adjust ourselves in order to live with it. When the
philosopher John Dewey talks about education, he says that education is
life, not preparation for life. It is true that John Dewey was a giant in
philosophy and education in the 20
th
century Charles Hartshorne wrote
that The most influential philosopher in this country is probably still John
Dewey
18
but there is a weakness in this definition of education. His
definition is just partly correct. His definition would be true only if life had
only one dimension, namely, the present dimension. But since life has three
dimensions, namely, past, present, and future, the definition of education
should also include three dimensions. Education is not just life (at present),
but also preparation for life (in the future) and retreat for life (in the past).
Dewey uses eitheror logic, and does not recognize its limits.
Turning to the first two models, we will find that both of them are
also based on eitheror logic. Postmodernism as a return to the past
follows the following argument.

Either the present or the past.
Not the present.
_______________________
Therefore, the past.

Postmodernism as a striving to the future holds the following argument.

Either the present or the future.
Not the present.
_________________________
Therefore, the future.

We can see that neither model leaves space for the present because both
employ eitheror logic and do not recognize its limits. Psychologists and
philosophers who encourage people to live only in the present, also follow
this eitheror logic. Their position includes the following arguments.

Either the present or the past.
Not the past.
_______________________
Therefore, the present.

And in addition:

Either the present or the future.
Not the future.
_________________________
Therefore, the present.

If philosophy has the only one function, namely, to understand the world,
then philosophy is as poor as Marx used to claim. In fact, we should not
only try to understand and adjust ourselves to the present world, but also try
to evaluate and change it for the better. To do so, we need to recognize the
limits of the eitheror logic, otherwise we cannot avoid throwing the
baby away with the bath-water. Thus in order to solve the problem,
especially the problem of the one and the many, I would like to propose a
third model which transcends the limits of eitheror logic. This logic
may be called bothand logic, which can integrate the present, the past,
and the future together. This integration does not include all things from the
three dimensions of life, but it takes only some from each dimension after
deep examination, evaluation and reflection. As David Ray Griffin says,

A new worldview does seem to be emerging in our time. This
worldview can be called postmodern, in that it preserves many
modern beliefs, values, and practices but places them in a larger
framework, in which many premodern truths and values can be
recovered.
19

Hans Kng is clear concerning the values from modernism and
postmodernism as follows:

The specific values of industrial modernity diligence, rationality,
order, thoroughness, punctuality, sobriety, achievement, efficiency
are not just to be done away with but to be reinterpreted in a new
constellation and combined with the new values of postmodernity:
with imagination, sensitivity, emotion, warmth, tenderness,
humanity.
20

The third model also includes premodern values such as
humbleness, honesty, openness, respect for the Supreme One, and respect
for nature. The model may be demonstrated using Venn diagrams as
follows:

THE ONE AND THE MANY: A DEFEATED CLASSIC PROBLEM

The problem of the one and the many is as old as philosophy itself.
Philosophers have long struggled to address this problem. But any attempt
to do so with eitheror logic will always fail. It seems to me that only a
both and logic and a neither nor logic can solve this problem in
other words, a logic of non-attachment. With this kind of logic, we may
solve the problem through the following model.

1A
2 Bs
3 Cs
4 Ds

1A, 2Bs, and 3Cs are at the ontological level whereas 4Ds are at the
epistemological level. 1A means that there is only one authenticity. The
ultimate reality is the One, and we are all from the One. People may call the
One different names, but in fact, it is the same One.
2Bs refer to two truths: (1) To be is to be from others, and (2) To be
is to be related to others. First, we cannot have existence without others. In
other words, others are always prior to our existence. Without our parents,
how could we be born and have existence? Without our grandparents, how
could our parents be born and have their existence? Alterity always
precedes our existence. This is the truth that no one can argue against. What
I mean by others includes not only human beings but also nature and the
One. Second, once we have our own existence, we exist among others. No
matter whether we like it or not, as soon as we come into existence, we are
always related to others. All actual entities are relational beings. Human
beings are no exception. This is another truth that no one can argue against.

Postmodern

Modern

Premodern
Therefore, a human being has two choices: to be authentic or to be
inauthentic. A person is authentic if and only if she or he recognizes the
primacy of others and appreciates the relations with others.
3Cs refer to three qualities: competency, character and care. All
people are given certain potentialities. All have a duty to actualize those
given potentialities. We become authentic if and only if we actualize our
potentialities for the sake of others. Competency is arrived at through skills,
whereas character and care can be arrived at through virtues and love
respectively.
4Ds refer to four ways of learning: audit, dialogue, dialectic and
doing. Audit is the first step of learning. Babies take approximately one year
to learn to listen. We learn to listen before we learn how to speak. As soon
as we learn how to speak, we learn how to use dialogue. After we acquire
language, we learn how to think. We can feel without language, but we
cannot think without language. Throughout the history of Western
philosophy, we have learned at least three meanings of dialectic from
Socrates, Kant, and Hegel, respectively. Dialectic from Socrates deals with
questioning and answering. Questioning is very important for self-
knowledge and all kinds of inquiry. For Kant, the dialectic implies that both
of two opposite statements may be equally true. I think that this kind of
dialectic is not something to be avoided, but something to be recognized and
respected. When there is no way to judge the truth value of the opposite
propositions or beliefs, we should respect the belief that is opposite to our
own. For Hegel, the dialectic implies the synthesis between the thesis and
the anti-thesis. In our life, we sometimes need to learn how to synthesize
between the two opposites as proposed by Hegel. Sometimes we need to
recognize the opposites as complementary as proposed by Taoism.
Sometimes we need to go beyond or transcend the two opposites as
proposed by Buddhism. After we learn how to think, we should learn how
to put things into practice. We are what we do. We cannot survive without
doing things. All four kinds of learning should lead our lives to authenticity.
We become authentic if and only if we learn to recognize the primacy of the
others and appreciate the relations with the others.

CONCLUSION

Holistic postmodernism seems to be more appropriate and more realistic in
this age because it is based on both the bothand logic and the logic of
detachment. On the one hand, with the bothand logic, we can solve the
problem of the one and the many through either synthesis or
complimentarity. With the both and logic, we can see one in many and
many in one. On the other hand, with the logic of detachment we can use
any kind of logic to solve problems in life. For example, if a waiter at the
restaurant asks, Tea or coffee, sir? We may say tea, if we would like to
have tea. We may say coffee, if we would like to have coffee. This
reflects Aristotelian logic. We may say half tea and half coffee in the same
cup This answer corresponds to Hegelian logic. We may say, both tea and
coffee in two different cups if we would like to have both of them in two
different cups. This corresponds to the Taoist logic. Or we may say,
neither if we do not want to drink either. The Buddhist logic of
detachment is flexible and applicable to all situations.
It is obvious that people in different cultures live in the same world.
In this sense we may say that many is in One. Then how can we find the one
in the many? As I note above, one is authenticity. If we would like to be
authentic, we must recognize the primacy of others and appreciate the
relations with others. In other words, to be authentic is to be grateful to
others. In the Eastern civilizations, the virtue of gratitude has been both
talked about and lived. In the Western civilizations, it has been lived rather
than talked about. From the history of philosophy we learn that what Plato
did should be emphasized as much as what he wrote. Socrates spoke a lot
about the four cardinal virtues, but he also thoroughly practiced the other
four important virtues. He talks about wisdom, courage, temperance, and
justice, while he observes self-knowledge, integrity, humbleness, and
gratitude. All the four virtues practiced by Socrates are still very important
in the global age. We need to have self-knowledge because An
unexamnined life is not worth living. We need to have integrity because it
is the foundation of all other virtues. If we do not deceive ourselves, then
we will not deceive others. If we do not deceive others, then we will have
respect for others. We need to be humble because all our knowledge is
essentially perspectival in character. Last but not least, we need to have
gratitude because we are always indebted to and dependent upon the other
in one way or another.

Assumption University
Bangkok, Thailand

NOTES

1
Lawrence E. Cahoone, ed., From Modernism to Postmodernism: An
Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 1.
2
From Modernism to Postmodernism, pp. 1-2
3
From Modernism to Postmodernism, p. 3..
4
Lawrence E. Cahoone, What Postmodernism Means, in K. Narayana
Chandran, Texts and Their Worlds II (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2005),
p. 117.
5
What Postmodernism Means, p. 117
6
What Postmodernism Means, p. 118.
7

8
What Postmodernism Means, pp. 118-119.
9
10
11
What Postmodernism Means, pp. 119-120.
12
David E. Klemm, ed., Hermeneutical Inquiry, Volume I: The
Interpretation of Texts (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), p. 22.
13
The Interpretation of Texts, p. 22.
14
The Interpretation of Texts, pp. 22-23.
15
The Interpretation of Texts, p. 23.
16
David Hall, Modern China and the Postmodern West in Lawrence E.
Cahoone, ed., From Modernism to Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers, 1996), p. 701.
17
David Bohm, Postmodern Science and a Postmodern World in Charles
Jencks, ed., The Post-Modern Reader (London: Academy Editions, 1992),
p. 384.
18
Charles Hartshorne, Reality as Social Process (New York: Hafner
Publishing Company, 1971), p. 182.
19
David Ray Griffin, Creativity and Postmodern Religion in Charles
Jencks, ed., The Post-Modern Reader (London: Academy Editions, 1992),
p. 378.
20
Hans Kng, Why We Need a Global Ethic in Charles Jencks, ed., The
Post-Modern Reader (London: Academy Editions, 1992), p. 413.

REALITY THOUGHT, REALITY LIVED

Richard K. Khuri

INTRODUCTION

Is reality what is perceived? What is found? What is lived? These three
questions define different philosophical approaches and attitudes. Within
each approach, there are many variations. Thought about reality in ancient
Greece came through lived reality. We could also say participation in
reality, but the in suggests reality as also either perceived or found, and so
it distorts the very awareness that sages like Heraclitus, Parmenides, and
Empedocles were trying to express or communicate. Thus, in Plato,
participation in reality at the highest level dissolves into something
unsayable, much as we cannot look straight into the sun. In Aristotle, it
dissolves into what makes reality as perceived and found possible in the
first place (the movement of all movement, the logic of all logic, the thought
of thought). There is tension in their philosophies between the different
attitudes and approaches, which they try to resolve in hierarchical fashion.
The higher the reality, the less it can be spoken of as perceived or found.
Plotinus would make this explicit. Not so for the pre-Socratics. Theirs was
reality entirely lived. The tension arising is ours. We want to judge
whether, for example, Parmenides devalued appearance, as Plato clearly did
afterwards. So another problem arises from one of our many dualisms:
playing off appearance and reality against one another. As we go along, we
shall examine such problems and how they are compounded.

RESOLVING BEING

The conception of reality as perceived arises naturally. Reality is readily
associated or even identified with whatever fills our perceptual field under
sound, normal conditions. In his attempt to come to terms with serious
sceptical questions about the nature of reality posed by Hume, Kant
wrought a sophisticated understanding of how our perceptual field, in
technical terms, or our world, in lay non-philosophical terms, becomes
differentiated. As Husserl and Wittgenstein would later lead us to affirm,
much in the spirit of the Kantian philosophy, the conditions of life entail a
world in which there are things that we handle in certain ways, among
which is how we organize them as we learn how to live in larger and larger
groups. Whether the resolution of an initially undifferentiated field into
distinct objects related through definite concepts and categories is an eternal
feature of the human mind, as Kant thought, or is the outcome of a long and
complex evolutionary process, as much of the scientific community
believes, or is the emergence (or actualization) of a given potential under
the right conditions, as Aristotle would imply when we adapt his philosophy
to recent intellectual developments, we do not know and need not decide as
we consider and contemplate reality. An adequate understanding of the
process by which we do resolve Being into a world with things in it related
in certain ways will surely involve a subtle and complex integration of the
foregoing three major views, possibly in combination with others. What is
indisputable is our habit to resolve Being in that way. The habit of viewing
ourselves as beings in a world with things in it leads us to conceive reality
in precisely those terms. Reality is the world and everything in it.
(Philosophers would call this nave realism, but we shall try to avoid as
many isms as we can in order to ensure that alert thinking is not
surreptitiously replaced with intellectual or even academic habit.)

LEVELS OF REALITY

At some level, all mentally healthy human beings regard the world and
everything in it as real. Just so, problems arise, which is why we can speak
legitimately of levels of reality. Heraclitus, Parmenides, Chuang Tzu, and
the ancient Hindus realized long ago that things are often not quite what
they seem. The full moon rising behind steep mountains appears far larger
than the setting sun. Dead ancestors talk to us in our dreams with a matter-
of-factness that belies their passing. Deep thought within ourselves leads us
to wonder who we are and whether the world around us might not veil
another or nothing at all. Eventually, we reason our way to the
conclusion that the sun is far larger than the moon, and we learn to
distinguish between different states of consciousness that determine how
vivid things are or how profound. However, if we are able to reason our
way to what the real is really like, is not reality then decided by reason
rather than perception or biologically grounded habit? Plato asked this
question long ago in the Theaetetus. And if we attained the awareness of
the sage, who understands the logos or becomes attuned to the Dao, are not
the world and everything in it illusion?
Hegel declared that the real is rational and the rational real.
Immediately before him, Kant had faith enough in reason for him to seek
the limits of knowledge through its means. Post-Kantians with a more
scientific bent than Hegel took this as licence to limit reality to the
knowable and thus the rational. Hegels notions of the real and rational
were broader, but to his mind rational all the same. But what about a farmer
picking blueberries? A gaucho riding his horse? A musician playing her
instrument? The warm body of a loved one? The velvet green of Roman
pines in the gardens by the Villa Borghese on a cold sunny morning in
February? Philosophers can prance all they wish about pre-philosophical
states, but these are all examples of reality, indeed of reality with greater
power than that exuded when one reasons that the sun is far larger than the
moon or acknowledges that reasoning in the work of others. Here we are
a little bit ahead of ourselves. For while reality in all five examples is
surely perceived, it is also lived.
Reality Thought, Reality Lived 73
If we persist with mere perception and quietly pass over into
reflection, before long what we perceive may begin to play tricks on us or
ask us questions we are unable to answer. Native Americans and other
aboriginal tribes, as well as ancient Hindu thinkers and mythmakers, saw a
world permeated with tricks and magic, a ruse by Coyote or a game played
by the gods. The trickster was there west of the Mississippi and in China, as
when a modern translator of Chuang Tzu wrote:

always listen out for the mocking laughter of Chuang Tzu. This
can be heard most when you start to make grand schemes out of bits,
or wondrous philosophies out of hints and jokes. For ultimately this
is not one book but a variety of voices swapping stories and bouncing
ideas off each other, with Chuang Tzu striding through the whole,
joking, laughing, arguing and interrupting.
1

Modernity, through educational structures and intellectual habits,
inculcates in many of us the expectation of finding or discovering reality, of
landing on some kind of grand and ultimate terra firma. It is ill prepared
for elusiveness, for the vanishing of what it most craves, for the intolerable
confusion between terra firma and terra incognita. In despair, it would
rather negate the issue of reality altogether, perhaps as meaningless, than
adapt to what frequently appears to be persistent trickery. The realist and
the sceptic are constant bedfellows. Both expect that kind of terra firma,
the one always believing he has found it, the other that he never will. Both
are consequently distanced from reality. Post-modern thinkers, in contrast,
enjoy the trickery to the hilt, but they rarely recognize its true significance.
Trickery shows itself in humbler settings than those that lead
toward large statements about the whole of reality. An oasis in a desert may
be a mirage. A loved one eagerly awaited at a train station may assume the
face and figure of many a passer-by before she finally shows up. The earth
we walk on seems flat and still. Iron sulphide or pyrite shines like gold.
Many plants and animals are masters of disguise. Pygmy initiates are
secretly made to hear terrifying sounds in the rain forest in order to shock
them into awareness of the beyond. The Chinese see a rabbit in the full
moon, the Aztecs and Mayans a god, or a goddess, Diana, in ancient
Greece. Sometimes we are mistaken. On closer examination, the oasis
fades back into the desert, a face turns out not to belong to our loved one,
Earth is roughly a sphere observed to rotate rapidly from outer space, and
pyrite is gold only to fools. However, can we assert that someone is
mistaken when they are deliberately led to another state of consciousness
deep within the rain forest or when they divinize a distant heavenly body?

WITTGENSTEINS CONTRIBUTION

Wittgenstein has pointed out the real error of confusing the scientific with
the magical, spiritual, or religious.
2
He does not believe that an explanation
of the suns power and astrophysical relation to Earth would supplant the
impression that the sun makes on people like the Incas still able to see it
magically.
3
A Pygmy initiate is not disappointed on learning later from his
elders that they had cleverly produced the mysterious sounds that raised his
awareness. When children discover that Santa Claus does not exist, they do
not accuse their parents of having lied to them but are, rather, sad that an
important part of an enchanted world has been erased from their lives
forever. The same reality can be seen with different attitudes, scientific,
emotional, or magical. Scientists have a complete chemical profile of water
at their disposal. Wanderers in the desert value it more than diamonds.
Ancient peoples and a few stray poets who chance upon water in forests see
it as a haven for nymphs. All have the rational ability to learn about waters
chemical profile. Not all are equally alive in their sensibility, emotions, and
spirituality:

[M]uch too little is made of the fact that we count the words soul
and spirit as part of our educated vocabulary. Compared with this,
the fact that we do not believe that our soul eats and drinks is a
trifling matter. An entire mythology is stored within our language.
4

We cannot always attribute different perceptions of reality to our
propensity for error. It is indeed an error to think of a stick refracted in
water as bent or a mirror image as a person identical to ourselves
approaching us as we walk towards it. But the desperate need for water in
the desert or the longing for a loved one awaited at a train station are all too
real, and while they lead to confusion in the physical world, they also lead
respectively to a special appreciation of water and a person standing out
emphatically in a crowd. The reality of water in a nomads life transcends
that of its chemical profile, as does that of the beloveds face its precise
anatomy. This transformation of reality can extend to the sky, the heavenly
bodies, and the entire universe. The dynamics and possibly the meaning of
such transformation were largely missed by Plato, Aristotle, and the vast
majority of their successors, a long wrong turn that has finally led
philosophers, poets and other thinkers from Blake, Hlderlin, and Hegel
onwards back to what had gone on before. If the received view has long
rested on stories about the emergence of philosophy from myth, perhaps it is
time for philosophy, if not to return to its womb, then at least for it to regain
the verve and pulse of myth. Among other things, as we shall see, openness
to myth and magic restores the balance between appearance and reality and
may help deepen our understanding of their interrelationship. Water reduced
to its chemical profile is a reality thought. Reality lived is when water is
loved for what it is, above all where it is scarce or when the abundance
springing forth wherever it is plentiful has a lush beauty that cannot fail to
enchant.

HIERARCHICAL APPROACHES TO REALITY

How did Plato, Aristotle, and much later Kant and Hegel, approach reality?
As different as they all were from each other, they all proceeded towards it
in hierarchical fashion, beginning with some ordinary, everyday, perceptual,
empirical, or pre-self-conscious attitude, and moving thence to one more
philosophical. Among them, however, only Aristotle preserved the
dignity of the perceived, even as he saw the whole of reality perfecting itself
at whatever level is appropriate to it through the eternally motivating vision
of the thought thinking itself. (Pure Actuality, in contrast with everything
else, which is some potential actualizing itself.) Otherwise, all appearance
fades before the Ideas or Forms (Plato), is transcendentally ideal (Kant), or
is the stage on which Spirit realizes itself through History (Hegel).
Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel will always be regarded as great
philosophers in part because they have understood and expressed
systematically and synthetically the increased depth with which we come to
know reality. In doing so, however, they have turned reality more into
something thought than into something that is. This is self-evident in Book
XII of Aristotles Metaphysics and in Book X of his Nicomachean Ethics.
In addition to the conception of God as a thought thinking itself, the
superiority of intellectual to moral virtue is argued for and affirmed. Ever
since, we have been saddled with what has come to be known as the
philosophers God, as theologians working within the Abrahamic faiths
point out with alacrity. To be fair, Aristotle might have been struggling
with the notion of the self-subsistent self-generative aspect of Reality, of
what in Plotinus understanding might be termed the Power to Be.
Aristotle might have been limited by the language and method to which he
had been committed, so that thought and intellect do not say all that he
had wanted to express. We are certain that thought and intellect meant
far more to Aristotle than they do in contemporary usage. Nevertheless,
even were we to instil Plotinian mysticism into the Aristotelian edifice,
following the happy accident that had led al-Farabi and Ibn Sina along that
path, for all the radiance with which all things are shot through as the One
projects Itself outwards, appearances remain downgraded just as they had
been in the philosophy of Plato. They are nothing without the One and its
first two emanations, Intellect and World Soul. Reality is shrivelled. After
all, as Porphyry reported, Plotinus was ashamed of his body.

PLATO

In Plato, we can see how the problem arises in the steps he outlines in the
Republic, Book VII, and, somewhat less explicitly with regard to the highest
level, in the Theaetetus. Like all other mortals, we initially take reality to be
what we perceive. In various ways, we come to realize that our perceptions
deceive us, are illusions. As we advance philosophically, we begin to see
that whatever reality the perceived world has is owed to a higher reality.
This advancement is not merely rational, but involves intuition, insight, and
intellect of the highest order. This higher Platonic reality is outwardly
contradictory and impossible to articulate without all sorts of logical
conundra, for it pertains at once to each particular phenomenon in the
world, be it animate or not, moral or not, as does it pertain to everything as a
whole The Sun, metaphorically, or The Form of the Good, still
somewhat metaphorically.
It is significant that whenever Plato touches on reality as such, he
resorts to simile, allegory, or myth. We need not disagree with Plotinus
mystical reading of Plato. Whenever Platos philosophy peaks, it is not so
difficult to behold something mystical and mythical about where we
have arrived. When, against all odds in an extremely noisy world full of
unprecedented distraction and ideologically motivated cultural hostility, we
somehow pass from ratiocination to contemplation, when in a flash we
become aware of reality in its fullness, radiance, and power and are
momentarily entirely at its disposal, words fail us. We are moreover unable
to pin down that reality in any way. It flickers, dissolves, vanishes. If we
strain to compress it within our rational understanding, it may even frighten
us. And we lack the mythopoetic sensibility that would instinctively find a
symbolic and narrative home for what we have risen to.
Plato lived in just that sort of environment in Athens. He had to
justify what he had risen to, whether genuinely or vicariously through
Pythagoras, Parmenides and others it does not matter. He had to find an
intellectual, argumentative, systematic, pedagogically viable structure for
his overall vision of reality, which he would then apply to every level of
reality he could conceive. And so reality was split apart, the bulk of it
downgraded and disfigured.

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle restored the dignity of what we encounter in the world in our
ordinary, non-philosophical mode. He heeded the phenomena, the given,
and worked himself slowly and relentlessly towards the ultimate source of
all movement in nature and the universe, while recognizing the sovereignty
of each individual thing (or substance) as it actualises its own potential.
The Greek words for potentiality and actuality, respectively dynamis and
energeia, immediately suggest to us through their English transpositions a
dynamic order constantly in motion. As energeia, actuality is not as static
as the English word suggests, but is rather an active state through which
something maintains itself in the neighbourhood of whatever is perfect for
it, exactly as a living organism does. This becomes abundantly clear when
Aristotle expounds upon a human beings ethical fulfilment. A life fulfilled
means a life engaged actively and persistently with whatever pursuit
demands the complete and undivided attention of the mind, which for
Aristotle is the divine aspect of humanity. A human life actualised is
constant activity at the highest level.
While Aristotles philosophy of nature is strangely static from a
historical perspective for, despite Anaximanders awareness of something
akin to evolutionary change more than two centuries before Aristotle
flourished, Aristotle froze the order of Being within a single slice of time
it was highly dynamic in two respects: Aristotle understood the movement
of organisms through birth, growth, maturity, and death better than any of
his predecessors; and the presence of natures inner movement is never
far from his scientific expositions. The biologist in him consistently saw
finely tuned complex movements at the heart of the persistence of the
phenomena. He needs no testimony on behalf of the subtlety and
sophistication of his approach. However, just as the world as it is ordinarily
lived fades before the blinding light of ultimate reality in the philosophy of
Plato, in Aristotle, ultimate reality itself comes across as somewhat
shrivelled, seemingly dry and lifeless. The reality of the world regains the
splendour and vibrancy it had lost in Plato, but its meaning barely fords the
Lethe of cold abstraction.
We shall never know whether it is only with hindsight that we can
read Aristotle more sympathetically and encounter the depth and fullness of
ultimate reality after all in the very splendour and vibrancy of the world that
Aristotle accounts for with such unremitting conviction and cogency. What
we do know is that when Muslim thinkers writing in Arabic, like al-Farabi
and Ibn Sina, and Christian thinkers after they had rediscovered Aristotle
through them, tried to restore the plenitude and majesty of ultimate reality
by merging it explicitly with the Abrahamic divinity, the world of
appearances again retreated into the darkness of Platonic demotion. It
would take a mystic like St. Francis to find joy once more in Nature and
recognize her just as she is. However, his was the proverbial exception that
confirmed the rule.

REALITYS PERENNIAL DILEMMA

The dilemma seems to be, at least so far as philosophy is concerned, a
forceful portrayal of everyday reality with the reality beyond so far in the
background as to be almost withdrawn, or ultimate reality full and
resplendent in a world of shadows. The modern dualism of Descartes,
refined by Kant, reinforces that dilemma. Kant would make great strides in
articulating the intellectual and rational apparatus through which we
organize and evaluate reality as it is given to us in our consciousness, as
Husserl would later make explicit. But the looming reality underwriting the
very viability of the Kantian enterprise, urging us further in our knowledge,
accounting for the ideals to which we rationally subscribe, filling nature
and the world with purpose, lighting them up with beauty, awing us with the
sublimeness of its presence this becomes the noumenal world, of which
nothing can be known and nothing said. In the offing, there was a retreat to
the time when the Romans, prior to their epochal encounter with the Greeks,
had lacked the imagination to bring their gods to life. Their word noumena
had encapsulated that hushed and stifled divine presence.
By the time the young Wittgenstein brazenly produced a compact
outlook on the world, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, so little could
be said about the noumenal that no word was left in use to express it. So far
had the meaning of the world been banished from the world that for many
thinkers thereafter, there could be only silence. After a few generations of
silence, oblivion followed.
Other philosophers, however, took stock when they realized how a
contemplated reality appears even as it gives way to depth, awesome to the
uninitiated, flickering, dissolving, disappearing perhaps into the realm of
myth. Romantic poetry and music in England and Germany, sudden
advances in philology and anthropology, translations from Hindu and
Buddhist writings these would also not be lost on a thinker like Nietzsche,
sometimes courtesy of Schopenhauer. What if the dilemma were not a
dilemma at all? What if it arose from the habit of thinking in terms of
appearances and the reality beyond, when in fact reality is always One,
always appears, must appear and be perfectly itself in its appearances?
What if the levels attributed to reality were in fact levels of thought, if a
lived reality did not admit of levels, but were just there, itself and whole,
everywhere the same, even as the world comes alive with such variety and
change, as Parmenides had tried to tell us so long ago? What if the mess
into which reality has been dragged through systematic thought were to
become undone by paying to attention to different levels of being? What if
it required another level of being for us to overcome the absurdity of the
self-sameness of reality through all of its appearances?

NIETZSCHES CONTRIBUTION

Plato was right in his longing to account for the reality of every single thing.
But we may question his conception of participation and, in its wake, the
ensuing abyss between the participant and what it participates in. Among
modern philosophers, it was Nietzsche who, like a Navajo shaman, would
make appearances sing, shine, and dance once more. Whatever else he
does, however he revels in existential brinkmanship and falls off cliffs time
and again, he always invites us to rejoice in the world just as it is. If he
savagely critiques certain cultural, intellectual, and spiritual developments,
it is all the more to free human beings for the deepest possible embrace of
Radiant Plenitude. If he sternly denies any notion of things-in-
themselves, it is only for surfaces to come out of their shadows and unveil
anew the primordial luminosity of appearance. If he vigorously opposes
any notion of agency, it is only because agency had shackled Reality alive
with and within Appearance. Surely the man who said the following words
never intended his celebration of surfaces and appearance as solace for the
shallow and fake:

Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! Your sound, your intoxicated ominous
sound, delights me! - from how long ago, from how far away does
your sound come to me, from a far distance, from the pools of love!
You ancient bell, you sweet lyre!
. . . An odour is secretly welling up,
a scent and odour of eternity, an odour of roseate bliss, a brown
golden wine odour of ancient happiness,
of intoxicated midnights dying happiness, which sings: The
world is deep: deeper than day can comprehend!
5

The ancient, eternal music Nietzsche heard came from Greece. It
could have come from many other places. It was the song of Parmenides
poem, as we now know. Nietzsche could not suspect this, for he was
beholden to a long tradition of ascribing changelessness and some ultimate
abstract reality quite literally to the man from Elea. He would have loved
the denouement of a story he had helped unfold. Archaeology and
philology have inspired a different interpretation of the words of
Parmenides, a different vision of his life, which confirm what Nietzsche,
Heidegger and others had bravely put forward, namely that pre-Socratic
philosophy was more alive to the nature of Reality and Being than what
would follow. In a new translation, these are some of the words of
Parmenides, the same words that had frozen Reality for ages, words that
will now help us understand precisely what Nietzsche had in mind when he
speaks of that ancient happiness in its sensuous explosiveness and of a
nocturnal depth deeper than day, far more than the common literal
interpretation that thinks no further than of an ancient culture that has
superficially passed away:

And what exists for thinking is the same as the cause of thought. For
you wont find thinking without the being in which it is uttered. For
there is nothing else and will be nothing else apart from being,
because Fate has bound it to the whole; unmoving. Its name shall be
everything every single name that mortals have invented convinced
that they are all true: birth and death, existence and non-existence,
change of place, alteration of bright colour.
6

PARMENIDES

Traditionally, it has been said that Parmenides attributed reality to Being
alone, and banished all appearance to the realm of illusion. It turns out that
a more careful (and less Platonic-Aristotelian) reading of the Greek text that
heeds the cultural and spiritual background and expectations of Parmenides
audience, in conjunction with an expanded knowledge of the ancient
language and an aptitude for what neither rationalism nor empiricism could
possibly lead to (an aptitude not so mysterious, required as it is for any
adequate performance of many works of music and so much else in our
involvement with poetry, literature, and the arts), yields the striking vision
of all appearance as full of Being. As Heidegger had recognized without
the full benefit of contemporary research and scholarship to back himself
up, Being appears, always appears, and so it must be misleading to separate
being from appearance in any way other than what pedagogy requires under
certain conditions. Metaphysics, to the degree that it has identified itself
with the being/appearance or reality/illusion duality, is radically erroneous
and thus is condemned to die.
The very same Parmenides who had denied us the reality of the
world is now seen to affirm it with the greatest possible emphasis. The
world is Reality. Everything is real. We have been given back what we had
lost. Reality does not move, not because it is some unimaginable stillness
hidden deep within or away from our lived and encountered reality, but
because its presence is everywhere, in everything, with everything. In the
odours of our world, It manifests the odours of eternity, roseate bliss, and
ancient happiness, for they are the same, just differently understood. The
sacredness of Reality lies in the reality of all things, properly lived and seen.
All things participate in Reality and, thus, become real because Reality is
alive with and within them. Reality participates in the world even as the
world participates in It, the shift more a matter of perspective than
metaphysics. With metaphysics, the shift turned into a rift.

THE DILEMMA PERSISTS

Confusion and much debate arise from the radical difference between the
principal two perspectives we have on things. Our existence in the world
sometimes gives off the effect of thrownness, as though we were moving
further and further away from the Source, especially if It be eclipsed by
certain modern attitudes and rhythms. Existential philosophy has
emphasized this sense of loss, of moving away rapidly from a Center that,
ritually denied, assumes first legendary and finally chimerical status.
Nietzsches madman imagined us to be hurtling through space in a startling
passage that first appeared in the Joyful Wisdom, 125.
7
Camus repeatedly
insisted that what we ultimately face is the Absurd. The contemporary
imagery offered by astrophysics and cosmology evokes a rapidly expanding
universe through which everything moves further away from the original
Singularity. We know Earth spins at a speed faster than sound if measured
in translation rather than rotation, a speed that would make us dizzy in a
split second were it not balanced by the effects of gravity and atmospheric
pressure, and our galaxy moves so rapidly through space we can barely
imagine its motion, all the while still struggling to come to terms with
Einsteins revelation that space is not really something that anything
moves through, but is cleared by the existence of matter.
Even when we are not driven so far from the Source, emphasis on
existence makes us regard Reality from a distance and try to make sense of
it constructively, rationally, with a longing to belong, secret or open.
Distanced from the Source, we find ourselves as appearance among
appearances having lost their reality, and so we either come to think of them
as illusion or lead illusory lives when we become bound to them in this
state. Fear of illusion makes it natural for us to look past or beyond
appearances towards whatever, so very far away, makes them real,
transcends them. Such was the motive of system builders from Plato and
Aristotle to Kant and Hegel with Ibn Sina, Aquinas, Newton, and Leibniz in
between. Systems of the world were meant to make sense of the world and
everything in it, unwittingly from the distance caused by the rift between
Appearance and Reality. If, however, the rift itself is illusory, then all such
systems also have an illusory aspect, in repetition of what Kingsley ascribes
to Parmenides goddess. Like Aphrodite, she loves and tricks us at the same
time. Faced with Reality, the systems of the world in which we find comfort
and safety give themselves away as elaborate ruses.

GABRIEL MARCELS CONTRIBUTION

However, from another perspective, that of depth, as expressed by Gabriel
Marcel with great conviction in Mystery of Being
8
, we suddenly find
ourselves within the Center looking out at the world. Heidegger had a
similar vision when struggling mightily with the inner meaning of
Parmenides poem.
9
Marcel brings depth forth as what makes our thought
debouch into a region beyond itself
10
, turns the distance we feel in the
state of thrownness to an inner distance that is suddenly dissolved as we
return to our lost homeland
11
, and bridges past and future through the
Eternal Now.
12
Depth, Marcel believes, is the only valid way in which we
can conceive the notion of essence, in the sense in which that notion is
contrasted with existence.
13
The transformation of our perspective as we
make the shift from existence to essence, from thrownness to depth, allows
us to participate so thoroughly in Reality that instead of you perceiving
reality what in fact is happening is that reality is perceiving itself through
you.
14

Still expounding upon the poem of Parmenides, Kingsley also
reminds us that the Eleatic healer and sage (which we now know him to
have been, thanks to significant archaeological findings around Velia, the
Italian name for Elea) wrote in the opening lines about being taken to a
goddess who would reveal Reality to him in a long oracle put to words with
unequalled dexterity. Among much else that she instigates according to
Parmenides, she shows us

that we are living in an illusion. But the only way for her to do this is
by entering the illusion and creating an illusory structure in it that will
help us to realize that we are surrounded by illusion. If we listen to
what she is saying . . . we will gradually start to find ourselves inside
that structure she has built able to look out at the world we used to
live in from the perspective of this structure rather than looking on at
what she is creating and desperately trying to understand it from our
old, familiar point of view.
15

The illusory structure or system is the world viewed through the
lens of traditional metaphysics, divided into appearances variously distant
from reality and then constructed according to the prevalent rationality, be it
Platonic, Aristotelian, Kantian, or Hegelian. Only in Hegel do we witness a
kind of continuity between appearance and Reality stronger than what we
had seen in Aristotle, except that the reality of appearance is always partial
and provisional, intensifying all the way to some point in the far future
when it finally progresses to the point of embodying the Real completely.
In Hegel, strictly speaking, the reality of appearance is deferred indefinitely.
But he made the transition from existence to essence, and it is no accident
that philosophers after Hegel would eventually find their way back to the
full restoration of the reality of appearance irrespective of the particulars of
history and culture.
The difference between Parmenides and metaphysicians from Plato
onwards is that the structure he presented, once one is deep within it, not
only preserves appearances but affirms their reality with a gigantic
exclamation mark, the yea-saying so ardently sought by Nietzsche, but so
tragically bogged down by intellectual encumbrances. It is a structure
built to draw us in only to abolish itself just as we attain a clear inner vision.
Kingsley argues throughout his book that so entrenched is the habit
of reading Parmenides with the lens of systematic metaphysics that we fail
to see the cunning with which a statement is transformed into its opposite.
He seems to be saying that nothing is real, except for what has been taken to
be a still, frozen, cold, unmoving oneness far removed from everything and
certainly leaving us unmoved. However, he only seems to be saying so in
order to assert that everything is real. It is the same reality we see as real or
unreal. What changes is what we see, how we see. The poem is an
initiatory incantation intended to transform our relationship with reality. It
is a poem inspired by what Parmenides had lived.

LIGHT FROM THE DEPTHS

From those depths, within the self-absorbing structure, looking out at the
world, we are able to equate what exists for thinking with the cause of
thought. Appearance, when we relate to it from the standpoint of existence,
exists for thinking. From the perspective of thrownness, our distance, not to
say our alienation, impels us towards the systematic reconstruction of
appearances according to what is thought to be their meaning. But as
Appearance, or more truthfully as Reality coming forth necessarily as
Appearance (for how else would it come forth?), we are also invited,
instigated to place our trust in a process, to follow a way that will lead us to
the standpoint of essence. From the perspective of depth, our thought
originates from within Reality, hence the same cause for thought as for all
appearance. In the mythical terms so dear to Nietzsche, we find ourselves
tasting the ambrosia feasted on by the gods. This is the blissful odour of
eternity he celebrates, pouring through the beauty and sensuous delights of
this world:

Everything we see or hear is reality, but the only problem is that we
have not yet learned to see or hear it. Every movement we are aware
of is simply the imperfect perception of something quite motionless
and still motionless not because its static and lifeless but because it
contains all movement inside it. Every desire, every sense of any
lack, is nothing but the experience of a reality too whole for us, with
our fragmented minds, to hold together; too powerful and too full for
us to bear.
16

From northern Siberia to Tierra del Fuego, from Iceland to New Zealand,
initiation ceremonies overseen by shamen transformed boys into men for
whom reality became not too powerful and too full to bear. Mysticism
East and West would preserve that transformation, with varyingly explicit
religious content. In contemporary Japan and China, where Zen originated,
enlightenment is partly characterized by the awareness that reality is there in
everything, however humble:

The idea that reality itself has no name because every single name we
ever use is only a name for it this is as outrageously paradoxical as
it happens to be beautiful.
17

ZEN

In Zen, what is outrageous from our rational perspective is completely
natural. They come to the same vision as Parmenides without the
incantation. Their predilection is for enigma, paradox, and understatement,
if not silence. And they, like the Daoists, have no name for reality. The
Dao is everywhere, and just so, it cannot be named. Styles may differ,
but the transformation in how we see our world is the same:

Go to the window and look outside. Look at the sky and the trees;
and listen. All the intellectual and mystical journeys end here, where
they began. For in spite of our blindness and deafness we are
surrounded at every moment by completeness.
18

Philosophy begins and ends with this sense of completeness.
However far it strays, it moves along the perfect circle of Reality beloved
by the ancient Greeks. And so the Aristotelian science according to which
the shape and movements of heavenly bodies are perfectly circular is
symbolic, taken literally only by later generations for whom science had
ceased to be sacred. If we understood that in Aristotle, traces of Reality as
once visited by Parmenides remained, we could read his descriptions of
nature as movements in the ambit of the Real. The problem is to restore
philosophy to its authentic movement, and thus to Reality. Again,
Heidegger played a pioneering role, goaded by Nietzsches bold but crude
groping for fateful cultural errors. One such decisive error, according to
Heidegger, resulted from the spontaneous need philosophers and others had
felt to communicate their visions of Reality.
19
. So long as communication
remains true to what one means to express, all is well with philosophy.
Once the logic of communication takes over, combined with other factors
we need not dwell on here, philosophy becomes alienated from Reality. An
obvious result is the appearance/reality dualism, which Nietzsche radically
denied. Earlier, Hegel had identified the condition of alienation and so
unleashed a variegated creative outburst that would bring about a renewed
awareness of philosophys visionary origins.
It is not necessary to practice Zen or be transported to mystical
heights in order to appreciate the completeness of which Kingsley writes in
his learned and passionate encounter with the poem of Parmenides. So far
as philosophy is concerned, one may follow what has happened since Hegel
opened so many doors, through Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and
Kingsley himself. One may remember that philosophy began as a way of
life and so look at what life itself teaches even as one tries to account for
Reality philosophically, perhaps with the help of whatever art one has the
knack and skill for. Any moment out of time can serve as a window for
what is in itself beyond time, an eternal now. What remains is to find an
adequate way to communicate without losing touch with what motivates the
communication.

PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS

The timeless moments we are gifted with unveil the other side, however
vaguely and briefly. The ancients regarded the totality of the Other Side as
the world of the dead. For them, death was simultaneously the end of life
among appearances in our modern sense, and the beginning of dwelling
within Reality. Many initiation ceremonies were therefore believed to
transport initiates to the Other Side before they returned to this world with a
full awakening to its significance. Navajo mythology and Eleusinean
ceremonies told of the mysteries of visits to the world beyond or
underworld. The journey was called katabasis in ancient Greece, and
Kingsley has produced compelling evidence that Parmenides was engaged
with that practice. Something like katabasis reverberates near the end of
Nietzsches Zarathustra, as he calls up the midnight darkness deeper (and
brighter) than day, a darkness that itself sings the Reality of the world.
Crucially, in his poetic expression of what sings, Nietzsche affirms the
dissolution of temporal boundaries. Reality sings through the individual
who is fully absorbed by it. Just as flowers and birds emerge respectively
from the darkness of seeds submerged and nested eggs, just as the fertile
soils sustaining the unequalled lushness of Javan fields were once lava and
volcanic ash, so is there a darkness on the other side of existence (in space
and time) that gives birth to, sustains, and illuminates all things. The
unimaginable brightness and fullness are lived through the mystery of
looking out from within, which our deepest lived moments and much of our
best art give flashes of. It is how millions of Chinese and Japanese find
peace and stillness amid the most intense and frenzied and often mindless
conurbations.
One of the more astonishing developments in recent decades has
been the manner in which natural science, relentlessly driven by a material
realism focused single-mindedly on Appearance in its illusory guise, has
collided with the immaterial. The analysis of matter with the help of
gigantic particle accelerators has dissolved it into an as yet undefined reality
resistant to ordinary physical categories.
20
More than two decades ago,
Bernard dEspagnat, a quantum physicist, has argued that physics will once
more need the language of myth in order to describe reality.
21
At the same
time, changes in our environment are forcing us to recognize what
effectively is the sacredness of Earth. However, it would be wise not to be
tempted by the other extreme and submerge everything in Reality. As
human beings, much of our experience will always have a non-mystical,
profane side. There is a dignity to our existence that is compromised if we
turn too severely towards Reality. The only way for us is to recognize
Reality in Appearance without negating either.
Once we awaken to Reality, it is understandable that we seek to
communicate what we have awakened to. Communication becomes more
articulate along with our social and cultural growth. When the articulation
assumes a life and logic of its own, Reality recedes. There seems to be an
inevitable rationale by which the rules and context of articulation gradually
take precedence over what was supposed to have been articulated in the first
place. Our thought and our existence both become uprooted. For more than
two hundred years, this has been acknowledged as a fundamental problem
with modernity by various thinkers from Hegel and Kierkegaard to Marcel
and Heidegger. Yet when we go too far in returning to Reality, our
existence becomes smothered. It would be strange indeed if life only
became full and radiant when viewed from the world of the dead.
We live Reality and we think about it. Parmenides recognized this
when he said that, as the old translation rendered it, thinking and being are
the same. But our reality is suspended, neither submerged in its origins in
effective denial of our existence, nor severed from them in effective denial
of our essence. Our lot is the long dance of enchantment with longing. It is
to taste depth more or less as we wander in the vast spaces of thrownness.

Lebanese American University
Beirut, Lebanon

NOTES

1
Chuang Tzu, The Book of Chuang Tzu, tr. Palmer, Breuilly, Ming, and
Ramsay (London: Penguin Books, 2006), p. xx.
2
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazers Golden Bough, Philosophical
Occasions. Ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (Indianapolis, IN and
Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 1993), p. 125.
3
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, p. 129.
4
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, p. 133.
5
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Tr. R. J. Hollingdale
(London: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 329-330.
6
Peter Kingsley, Reality (Inverness, CA: The Golden Sufi Center, 2003),
pp. 190-1.
7
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 14-5.
8
Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being: Reflection and Mystery. Tr. G. S.
Fraser. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustines Press, 2001), pp. 191-6.
9
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides. Tr. Schuwer and Rojcewicz (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 99-104.
10
Marcel, The Mystery of Being, p. 192.
11
12
13
14
Kingsley, Reality, p. 187
15
Kingsley, Reality, p. 161.
16
17
18
19
Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 64-83.
20
Robert Nadeau, and Menas Kafatos, The Non-Local Universe: the New
Physics and Matters of the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
21
Bernard DEspagnat, In Search of Reality (Berlin: Springer, 1983).

FACING THE GLOBAL CRISIS:
THE ROLE OF PHILOSOPHY IN CHALLENGING ECONOMIC
POWERS

Silja Graupe

INTRODUCTION

When attending the opening ceremony of the XXII World Congress of
Philosophy at Seoul National University, I was struck by the welcoming
words of Peter Kemp, President of the Congress:

To rethink philosophy today is to apply our philosophical capacities
to the current situation of humanity. One often forgets that the
economical, technological and military powers do not possess the
monopoly of power in the world. Philosophical argumentation and
reflection constitute a power through the word that is capable of
challenging the other powers, exposing the lies and the illusions
and proposing a better world as the habitation of humanity. In this
sense true philosophy is cosmopolitan, it is a fight to create a world
citizenship and make a new world order.
1

When Kemp spoke these words, the world stood at the brink of an economic
crisis almost unprecedented in scope and scale. Financial turmoil was about
to emerge from the United States and make itself felt in almost every corner
of our planet, causing stock markets to crash and banks to go bankrupt so as
to leave many without a job, a home, savings or a pension. But even before
the crisis hit, many people surely anticipated the potential damage that such
economic powers, of which Peter Kemp spoke, could inflict upon the world.
I suggest that the root cause of such anxiety lies in an immense lack of
understanding; we do not yet truly know the economic powers we currently
face. This is especially so because the scientific, economic knowledge, into
which many people formerly put their trust, comes to increasingly lose its
explanatory power. A New York Times article recently stated that the recent
crisis exposed severe flaws in how present day economics sees an ever more
complicated world. It turns out that, as long as we remain bound to the
latters simplistic methodological framework, we are going to remain
unable to deal with the inherent dynamics of todays interdependent global
markets. Given this, Kemp was surely right in demanding philosophy to
apply its capacities to the current economic situation. We need to nurture
the latters reflective power so that it can challenge economic powers by
first and foremost revealing their true nature. Though it seems clear to me
that philosophy cannot be said to be in the possession of any ready-made
answers, I am confident that the worlds philosophers can work together so
as to advise humanity on finding the answers and solutions needed for
dealing with todays economic problems. Above all, philosophy is to use,
by means of intense intercultural and interreligious dialogue, its whole
transformative potential so as to oppose the present days most common
(i.e., mainly Western capitalist) modes of economic thought. For this, it has
to combine the power of its various schools and traditions so that they
together can render possible new insights into the mostly forgotten
presuppositions and background assumptions of economics, as well as to
break through the limitations those presuppositions and assumptions set to
our human creative understanding.
The challenge here does not simply lie in abandoning mainstream
economics as if we could easily do away with it. Rather, we are to critically
engage it so as to overcome its most pervasive modes of thought from
without and especially from deeply within. Philosophy is to explore the
thinking of economics so as to better understand the pervasive, albeit often
implicit, influence it has in shaping how we have come to see the world and
ourselves, especially in the West. More specifically, philosophy is to assist
humanity in (a) encountering the implicit, yet very powerful modes of
limitation that economics creates with respect to our own self-
understanding, and in (b) developing the mental skills needed to break
through these modes of limitation. It is to unleash a power of innovation,
not for controlling the world in yet better or more efficient ways, but for
exploring new paths of self-transformation. During the World Congress of
Philosophy in Seoul, much progress was made in taking up these
challenges. Being an economist, I was astonished at how many
presentations and round table discussions and conversations proved
enormously helpful in clarifying my understanding of my own subject, even
when they did not explicitly deal with economic issues. This paper is an
attempt to indirectly pay tribute to the events of the World Congress by
reflecting upon the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of economic powers
in their light. More specifically, this paper seeks to gradually deepen the
understanding of these powers by exploring their objectives and their
subjective nature in order to better elucidate the experiential, creative and
dynamic nature of these powers. In the conclusion, I point to some cognitive
barriers of modern individualism currently preventing us from fully
appropriating this latter dynamic nature. Thus, I turn attention to one further
philosophical task Peter Kemp mentioned: the task of critically exposing
those hidden lies and illusions about our human nature that stifle the kind of
creativity necessary to propose a better model of the world a vision of the
world as a genuine human habitation.

MAINSTREAM ECONOMICS

During the World Congress, I noticed how many presentations, especially
those dealing with the philosophy of economics directly, remained
involuntarily bound to the objectivist metaphysics that has been the
hallmark of Western mainstream economics for more than a century.
2
I am
In the Face of Global Crisis 89
speaking of an objectivist metaphysics, here, insofar as this mainstream
mostly views the economy as an aggregation of absolute facts only, existing
independently from all mental states (feelings, wishes, desires) etc. of
humans.
3
In its attempts to develop into a real science, from the
nineteenth century onward, economics mainly sought to conceptualize the
world from the perspective of a purely objective, detached observer and
attempted to fully emulate the methods of the natural sciences or, more
precisely speaking, those of mechanics.
4
Above all, it applied mathematical
and statistical methods, which had shown such magnificent results in the
natural sciences, to the social world in general and to the economy
specifically. Because economists generally assume that the phenomena of
economic life are governed according to strict laws, like those of nature,
5

they are convinced that we have to research the laws of social cooperation
as physicists research the laws of mechanics.
6
As a result, economists
generally perceive the economy as mere outer reality, which works
according to quasi-mechanical laws independent from any subjective
perceptions. Once we buy into this conception, we come to view the
economy as nothing but an aggregation of things and events firmly standing
over and against us, consisting solely of entities such as markets,
institutions, and goods, which are interrelated according to fixed principles
and totally unconnected to our inner subjectivity. We think of the economy
as the physical or material world only and, consequently, of economic
powers as inexorable and ineluctable forces which no human ideals or
aspirations can possibly alter. These powers seem to be thrust upon us by
an anonymous source the invisible hand of the market place, to use Adam
Smiths famous expression while our own human creativity is viewed as
being essentially reactive. Borrowing a deistic metaphor from classical
economics, it seems as if economic powers could essentially be attributed to
a Great Mechanic, who guides and controls economic events from the
outside without being influenced by them in turn.
7
Thus is the economy
likened to a machine as in the following metaphor used by Adam Smith:

The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for
which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions
conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were
endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it
better. Yet we never ascribe any such desire or intention to them, but
to the watch-maker, and we know that they are put into motion by a
spring, which intends the effect is produces as little as they do.
8

Such a conception of economic powers denies the existence of any
distinctively human powers within the economy. It effectively reduces
human beings to simple molecules or atoms of the economic system.
9

Even in the face of a severe crisis, we appear to be condemned to passively
watch the market run its course and to trust in its self-healing powers. There
remains little else to do than to simply believe it will effectively guide us to
the best possible state of affairs.
10

My point here is that belief in God as the sole creator of economic
powers, a belief which the early liberal economists held, is still widespread
today. Moreover, economic policy often holds implicitly the idea of the
economy being ultimately governed by outside forces utterly beyond human
control, that is to say, by pure and wholly anonymous mechanisms of the
market.
11
It seems that many politicians, especially in the West, and
particularly those who lean towards the liberal tradition, still believe that
mankind is not free to choose. . .Things economic and social move by their
own momentum and the ensuing situations compel individuals and groups
to behave in certain ways.
12
This does not mean that such momentum
necessarily victimizes everyone. Rather, some people might be successful at
letting it work in their favor. In the same way that humankind learned to
utilize physical forces for its own advantages, it might also try to do so in
the case of economic powers. However, from an objectivist perspective, we
can never imagine ourselves as acting to truly change the character of such
powers. It is true that we might attempt to command them, but only by
obeying them.
13

THE DOMINANCE OF OBJECTIVIST METAPHYSICS IN
ECONOMICS

The problem I am primarily concerned with is not whether the broader
public in general, or even the majority of economists in particular, openly
subscribe to objectivist metaphysics. It is, rather, that we allow such
metaphysics to tacitly frame our most common modes of economic thought.
Flying below the radar of our attention, it is extremely powerful, not only
within economics departments and business schools all over the world, but
also within political economy and, even more importantly, within the modes
of our daily reasoning. Consider, for example, the fact that most
mathematical and statistical data, upon which we tend to base our factual
knowledge about the economy, are gathered by means of models and
theories that still remain firmly rooted in the paradigm of a one-dimensional
causally-ordered world, though we do not usually recognize this.
Consequently, a large number of our management and policy tools still
remain under the sway of the very same paradigm, insofar as they
uncritically utilize such knowledge, mistakenly believing it to accurately
reflect the whole of reality. In uncritically utilizing these tools for our daily
purposes, we invariably distance ourselves from the consequences of our
own economic activity. We deny being responsible for economic choices,
and incorrectly think of these choices as already determined by mechanical
market forces, as if by blind fate. We consider ourselves to simply be
responding to brute economic facts, thereby not responsible for the often
disastrous consequences such responses may have on our fellow human
beings. Unfortunately, such behavior is abundant. A well known example is
when corporate managers point to material constraints of global markets
to justify the lay-off of thousands of workers, assuming that such
constraints are simply the results of the inevitable functioning of
deterministic market forces. We may also think of governments which try
to convince us to accept the necessity of lowering social and environmental
standards for the purpose of national survival in global competitive markets.
But even in our day to day lives, we feel more and more bound to conform
to the so-called inevitable consequences of the objective values of
economic goods, money, shares and derivatives. And have we, at least from
time to time, not put our trust credulously in the hard facts presented by
economic charts, figures and calculations offered to us by the media,
politicians and bankers? Rarely, it seems, do we openly question the
metaphysical basis upon which such facts are continually conceived and
produced. It seems that many of us have silently shared the economists
dream of an economy made up of absolute facts and driven by powers
beyond our reach. In many ways, it appears to be much easier to build our
lives upon that dream, rather than trying to actively see through its
illusionary foundation and work creatively to change that foundation. Thus,
there is surely a need for philosophical dialogue in order to explore more
deeply the metaphysical basis upon which present day objective economic
arguments rest. The challenge here is not simply to find a better model or
formula to predict and control things economic, as some scholars proposed
during the World Congress. The real challenge is for philosophers and
economists to work together in order to better understand the essence of the
economic powers at play. The problem with a purely objectivist
understanding of economic powers lies, among others, in urging us to obtain
something like a Gods Eye frame of references. Such a frame does not
only affect our view of the economy, but also our own modes of self-
understanding. This frame aids in creating a highly contradictory self-
understanding, for we see ourselves as outside spectators ultimately sitting
in judgment over things economic as well as over other economic agents,
and deem ourselves capable of predicting and governing their behavior.
However, as outside spectators, we continually distance ourselves from
affecting the way things actually work. This is partially explained by
Nishitani Keiji, a modern Japanese philosopher, who argues that if one sees
not only human beings, but all things in terms of being mechanically
manipulable and pliable, then there is necessarily an absence of any face-to-
face resistance. That means the subject finds no material object outside of
himself, no being in itself, no being that resists him, or to which he could
attach himself. Moreover, this subject lacks any real relation to another, no
sense of the other thou. Everything is in the third person, is an it that may
even cease being an it when it is reduced to force or energy. We are dealing
with a frame of reference here, which grants the isolated I an extraordinary
and absolute power with no power outside this I to offer resistance. In a
world in which everything is reduced to force and energy, everything is
fundamentally arranged so as to be freely managed; and everything can be
arbitrarily manipulated. In a certain sense, what we have here is the
standpoint of a subject who has reached the peak of his development.
14

Once we entirely exploit everything around based upon the premise of mere
functionality, we are equally endangered to reduce our own self to nothing
but a function as well. We ourselves begin to feel victimized by the
anonymous forces of the market economy; forces over which we do not sit
in judgment any longer, but which are inflicted upon us. Nishitani states:

In the same gesture [in which the subject achieves his peak - S.G.]
subjectivity loses any meaning and the person is dehumanized. When
there is no longer any thou offering resistance to the I, to the point
where any thou simply vanishes so, to, vanishes the position of the
I. The I is now just the force that governs the forces of the world.
The sovereignty of humankind is nothing more than the force which
leads the world of forces. It becomes a mechanical force guiding
mechanical processes. If everything is transformed into an it and
things exist merely for control and manipulation, then subjectivity
itself slips away from us, who have fallen into the state of being mere
mechanics. Under the influence of technology, the self-consciousness
of the subject runs the danger of collapsing by and by.
15

It is obvious that these two forms of self-understanding, self-attachment and
self-estrangement,
16
are not merely incompatible, they are also
incommensurable, and cause deep division within ones personality.
17

Nevertheless, they are intimately entwined because they emanate as the two
extremes of the very same objectivist worldview. In this situation,
philosophy is to explore yet other modes of self-understanding by
fundamentally altering this worldview itself. It is to make us aware of the
fact that even though an objectivist metaphysics does in fact generate
powerful modes of self-understanding, especially in Western peoples; it
prevents other modes of self-understanding, that is to say, subjectivist
modes, which can release subjective powers. These powers can affect the
economy.

THE SUBJECTIVIST TURN

In many ways, it seems to me that the subjectivist turn, which was topical
in many presentations and discussions during the World Congress, can help
to overcome the theoretical bottleneck of the objectivist metaphysics of
economics. The task is to carefully apply important insights of such a turn
specifically to economics, rather than simply encountering it as a general
development in philosophy. We must carefully consider why subjectivist
economic powers, if recognized by economists at all, have so far been
overwhelmingly framed in terms of mere egoistic self-interest an interest
epitomized, above all, by the fictitious figure of homo oeconomicus.
18

As explained above, most economic experts until recently have firmly
believed global markets to work according to some fixed, predetermined
principles. In order to predict future developments and best utilize them,
they sought to better understand those principles by means of ever more
complicated models and statistical methods. But it never appeared to occur
to them that that the search for such principles could turn out to be illusory
as such. However, this precisely seems to be the lesson that we ought to
have learned from the recent financial turmoil. There are economic
situations possibly more than we are yet willing to admit in which our
search for any causal rules underlying change is simply of no avail, not
because we will still lack the right means for understanding such rules, but
because the economic development does not follow any causal or
mechanical pattern at all. Why is this so? Both in scientific and everyday
discourse, we often overlook that every mechanistic account of the
economic world has to presuppose the givenness of some data. More
generally speaking, any principle of causality necessarily presupposes some
conservational principle, which is no more than a special case of the more
sweeping postulate of the identity of things in time: within the flow of
change, there has to remain something unchanging, something that remains
identical with itself, unaffected by the course of events itself. Change
remains, so to speak, a priori confined to change by invariance. In the case
of stock markets, for example, most economic models have simply assumed
that share prices, in one miraculous way or the other, change against the
stable background of some true value, say that of real corporations. Such
assumptions, albeit only implicitly, remain firmly rooted in the larger
framework of a substance theory of value.
19
There is, however, no
compelling reason to believe that such a framework is accurate. This is
because there are no constant data that we could safely consider as
remaining unaffected by economic interrelationships a priori. As the
ancient philosophical saying goes, everything is in constant flux; there are
no such things as given data in the historical world. Given here means
formed.
20
Mainstream economics goes fundamentally wrong in trying to
emulate classical physics, because it thereby ignores the fact that hardly any
invariants simply exist out there in the economy as they do in nature.
Facts of the economy are, rather, constantly shaped and remodeled,
including those whose uniformity economic models take for granted.

Since a strict uniformity is nowhere to be observed at first hand in the
phenomena with which the investigator is occupied, it has to be found
by laborious interpretation of the phenomena and a diligent
abstraction . In this work of interpretation and expurgation the
investigation proceeds on a conviction of the orderliness of natural
sequence.
21

As human beings, we are free to create the foundations upon which
objective economic powers can reign or, more importantly, are equally free
to offset those conditions. Prior to any mechanical functioning of the
economy, we are at work as creative agents, our subjective powers being
capable of reshaping or even entirely altering the economys objective
appearance. Entrepreneurs, for example, often act so as to change the
fundamental data of the economic system by inventing new products and
processes. Thus, they transform the whole future course of economic events
in ways impossible to predict in principle by means of any objective
conceptualizations.
22

In a similar manner, even our most common subjective decisions
often powerfully offset any conservation principle and, as such, negate the
possibility of objective powers to reign over us in the first place. It is
plainly wrong to believe that we are simply condemned to obey and, at best,
utilize objective economic powers. To the contrary, as human beings, we
are also able to rebel against their exclusive authority, as it were, from their
foundations below. Our creative potential can in fact substantially alter the
course of the economy, not so much from the position of a distant observer
but by shaping it in truly new and unforeseeable ways from within. Once we
do so, the economy becomes characterized to some measure by
indeterminacy, which is impossible to determine within an objectivist
framework. This is to say that knowing the future in all its details becomes
utterly impossible, because it is not bound to emerge from the present in any
predictable way. Creative individual activity severs any rigid connection
between the present and the future because of its capability of truly
changing a future situation inferred from the present. True change here
means that change does not occur against the background of pregiven laws,
but includes a variance of those laws themselves. It thus lacks any kind of
mechanical accuracy as tacitly presupposed by economic objectivism.
23

THE POSSIBLE DANGERS OF SUBJECTIVISM

Unfortunately, today we are prone to conceive such true change in negative
terms only. This is because it appears to be driven by subjective economic
powers defined merely in terms of both insatiable greed and a ruthless
reckoning for ones personal advantage. At least such a conception still
serves as the point of reference for many economists of the subjective
tradition who do not seriously investigate the infinitely varied activities of
subjects, but simply take as the first principle of economics that every
agent is actuated only by self-interest.
24
Thus, economics remains stuck in
the preconception of norms and laws imposing invariants upon the
economic system. The difference here is that such invariants are not located
in the external world, as is the case in objectivism, but within individual
consciousness. Invariants are not to be seriously found out there; in a real
sense they are in here. Our very livelihoods, in the broadest possible
sense, are predicated upon invariants whose existence cannot be proven but
whose instrumentality renders our actions coherent.
25
In buying into this
conception, we become susceptible to conceiving both ourselves and our
fellow human beings in terms of a mere mechanics of self-interest,
wherein we see ourselves as pleasure machines, who mechanically work
towards nothing but our own betterment.
26
Simply put, the danger of such a
conception is that subjective economic powers are invariably considered to
be determined by certain inner traits, above all by egoistic feelings and
desires, that happen to befall us, but which we do not control in turn.
Economic forces, in a rather strange fashion, thus appear to be at work
deeply within us. They seem to hold sway over all acts of our
consciousness, as if the voice of some lawgiver was speaking within
ourselves. Put differently, we come to believe that there exists something
below the barrier of consciousness, upon which it depends, that we do not
govern and that is in as much foreign to us as is the outer nature.
27

While egoism and solipsism are indeed realities that cannot be
denied, my main point is that these are not inevitable, and thus should not
be considered as indubitable first principles in economic theory. This is
surely what has occurred, not only in methodological individualism but also
in those powerful images of individual freedom that are common to the
West, say, those associated with modern consumerism. Again, I am not
denying that egoism plays a leading role in modern market economies; there
is ample evidence to suggest that it does. Nor am I saying that
methodological individualism does not describe an important trait of our
individual nature as we live and work in modern economies; in fact, it does
but it mistakenly conflates it with the whole of our human nature.
According to the operative assumptions in such a method, there is nothing
people can do about behaving in solely egoistic ways. They might be free to
choose between goods in the world according to their presumably inborn
desires, but they remain utterly unfree when it comes to changing those
desires themselves. They do not have the choice, when it comes down to it,
over the rules by which they make their choices.
28
Those rules are seen as
being fixed a priori by our invariant and inborn nature. They are the basis
upon which humans act, but which cannot be acted upon in turn.
I consider such a narrow perspective problematic for many reasons,
the least of which is its theoretical irrelevance in the economic sphere.
Indeed, in the political sphere it erodes confidence in peoples power to
change themselves so as to make the world a better place. And this holds
true not only for advocates of free market capitalism but also for proponents
of state intervention. This is because both groups usually agree, albeit
tacitly, with the assumption that people cannot overcome their self-imposed
limitations and narrow perspectives by means of their own creativity. While
proponents of state intervention do not usually share the capitalist
conviction that such an overcoming is normatively undesirable, they
nevertheless share the conviction that it is, in any case, impossible. They
seek rather simply to keep the disastrous consequences of individualism in
check by means of ever more complicated systems of incentives, stimuli
and punishments. What they thereby attempt to do is to

alter some of the terms of the equations each man makes when he is
calculating his most profitable course of action. But this need not
affect the mainspring of the system, which is that men do calculate
their most profitable course and do employ labor, skill and resources
as that calculation dictated. The state may, so to speak, move the
hurdles in advantage of some kinds of competitors, or may change the
handicaps, without discouraging racing.
29

THE ROLE OF PHILOSOPHY

In the present situation, when politicians search for new and more efficient
control of financial markets, I wonder whether philosophers should be
questioning if such a search is illusory as such. Might we not eventually
come to the conclusion that subjective economic powers can never be fully
controlled by either market or legal forces because human beings will
always find ways to manipulate the rules of the game for their own personal
advantage? Can we, more generally put, ever be successful in wisely
utilizing egoism to create order? In Germany, there is compelling evidence
that this is not far from happening. This is because commercial egoism is
threatening to determine what the law is supposed to mean in the first place.
The interests of big business, for example, are today often seen as facts that
are not to be controlled anymore by law, but rather form the law:

The law should grasp and normativize that which in commerce,
technology and science corresponds to our human sense of right. But
this is rarely the case. Looking at decisions regarding fraud in
commerce, we have to concede that the state of the laws decisions
corresponds only to the views of the commercial class. Literally. It is
said that only that can be subjected to legal norms which does not
endanger the functioning of business. We could cite a pile of similar
formulations. The law is hardly a gadfly. . .We must admit that
technology and commerce actually determine the law, and not vice
versa.
30

The saying of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, seems to apply
here: The more rules and regulations, the more robbers and thieves.
31

Moreover,

reliance upon the application of law, far from being a means of
realizing human dignity, is fundamentally dehumanizing,
impoverishing as it does, the possibilities of mutual accommodation,
and compromising our particular responsibility to define what would
be appropriate conduct.
32

This is not to suggest that we should forsake, all at once, our efforts
to establish a better legal framework for global markets. But it seems to me
that philosophy is nevertheless able to critically investigate the fundamental
limitations of such efforts, limitations of which especially we in the West
might not have yet fully grown aware of.
33
At least, it should bring
awareness to the fact that we need to perfect the law; a task that cannot be
achieved simply by mechanical replication, restricting humans to the
passive reaction to outside stimuli as if they were constructed like
unconscious automatons. It is to unleash the powers that can bring about
such perfection, eventually allowing us to more fruitfully deal with the
distress of egoism, rather than simply to seek ever better and more refined
control. What we need to discover here is, above all, a transformative
potential, enabling us to creatively change our individualistic attitudes; this
may not be achieved by moral appeals to the individual alone. During the
World Congress I noticed how often philosophers spoke about the need to
develop a more reflective consciousness, but without considering if, and if so,
how, individuals might or could bring about such a change. More
specifically, it seems that we all too often and easily overburden ourselves
by demanding transformation to occur simply from within our own
interiority. While many moral appeals of our present times do indeed avoid
falling into the major trap of methodological individualism namely, that of
confining individuality to only certain traits of human nature they might
still remain crippled in its other important premise, namely, the fiction of an
isolated person. This is to say that they still implicitly consider each person
as the sole creator of his or her own personality a personality that only
subsequently enters into relationships rather than a personality that is
created by relationships. As result, the assumption false in my judgment
is that the ability to generate change can and should first take place solely
within our individual nature, prior to affecting any proper change in the
world around us.
One insight gained from the World Congress was that both Western
and non-Western philosophies offer still different understandings of our
subjectivity; understandings that truly break through the confines of
methodological individualism and a subjective freedom all too narrowly
defined in egoistic or solipsistic terms. Whether we discuss new
challenging directions in philosophy, the deep rationality of religions, or
the future tasks of philosophy in East Asia to name but a few titles of
certain sub-conferences at the World Congress we explored alternative
modes of subjectivity that are surely of great relevance for economics,
though we might not always have explicitly acknowledged this. I am
speaking of alternative modes here insofar as they essentially go beyond
both the conception of a pre-ordered objective world order and the
conception of a fixed individual nature so as to make us aware of the vast
richness of our lived experience, of our living in community. Especially in
the light of the worlds religious traditions, as they were insightfully
presented by many scholars during the World Congress, it became clear that
simply fighting individual subjectivity, as if to enchain it in an ever more
tightened system of incentives, rules and punishments, is not the only road
open to humanity. The more promising path, rather, is to further deepen
such subjectivity, so as to explore right below or beneath it, a yet hidden
field of lived human encounter, opening up as the true locus of humans
creative power. In what follows, I will try to shed some light on this by
turning to Japanese and Chinese philosophy.

JAPANESE AND CHINESE PHILOSOPHY

In his seminal book on ethics (rinrigaku), the Japanese philosopher Watsuji
Tetsuro fundamentally challenges the liberal assumption of the modern
solipsistic ego having grown completely independent from social
relationships. He also denies that the former can exist prior to the latter,
involuntarily eliciting it through its individualistic activities.
34
For Watsuji,
exactly the reverse is the case: society is not established by the accidental
contact of previously isolated individuals. Rather, harmonious interaction
serves as the tacit foundation of all individual action, including even the
most egotistical and distrustful. He writes:

Incidentally. . . all human relations involve trust to some extent. It is
not correct that the Gesellschaft-oriented relationship is originally
based on distrust. It is certain that it lacks the trust relationship
peculiar to Gemeinschaft. But a trust relationship peculiar to
Gesellschaft exists. Otherwise, no business relationship could arise.
Therefore, we are allowed to insist that, in any human relationship
whatsoever, makoto [intimacy, truthfulness - SG] takes place in
accordance with them. It is always at some place and on some
occasion in the complex and inexhaustible interconnections of acts
that truthfulness does not occur. However countless these places
and occasions may be, they cannot arise except that truthfulness takes
place at bottom.
35

Until quite recently, many of us might have assumed that we could
safely ground our individual economic activity upon hard economic facts,
that is, upon the objective value of money. However, as I have argued
above, todays crisis finally reveals that this belief is illusory. When trading
in money, we neither simply put our faith in pieces of paper, nor even in
authorities such as central banks. Rather, we put our faith in others, in a
delicately woven net of interrelationships with people we do not even
personally know. Prior to any specific economic transaction, mostly below
the radar of our attention, there exists the two necessarily manifold cultures
of truth and trust; these are ways of human encountering that we take for
granted prior to going about our daily business of earning or spending
money, shopping for the necessities of life, and saving for our retirement or
the future of our children. More generally said, egos grasping, be it in the
form of individual desires or of rational choice, tacitly presupposes
nondualistic experiences of interconnectedness. When I go to a supermarket
in Germany and buy groceries from nearby fields, coffee from Kenya, a
CD-player from Japan, and a shirt made in China, I inevitably find myself
connected to myriads of people as well as to the natural surroundings of
even the most remote corner of the world. Without necessarily being aware
of it, my choices are influenced by their lives and existence, while my
choices invariably influence them in turn. Even if I were to relentlessly
strive for individual profit only, in doing so I would still tacitly presuppose
that I can put my trust in others, as well as that others can put their trust in
me. It is this power of trust that we are to count as being the most
fundamental in our economic lives. If we intentionally, or unintentionally,
kill that power, we would not only sacrifice the richness of communal life,
but also the self-actualizing potential of the modern individual, including
that which we in the West all too hastily conflate with inborn human nature.
Metaphorically speaking we could say:

Just as a fist can only form out of the natural basis of an open hand,
the grasping of ego can only assert itself out of non-ego, out of
nongrasping awareness. Without this neutral nongrasping ground to
arise from and return to, egos activity could not occur.
36

To rephrase it: it is nothing but an illusion to think of ourselves as existing
in isolation from others. The betweenness of person and person, as the
Japanese psychiatrist Kimura Bin once put it, does not simply signify a
relationship between two individuals, existing first in isolation and then
subsequently in relationship to one another. The betweenness of person and
person is, rather, the locus functioning as the source from out of which both
others and I arise.
37
Right below the subjective powers of egoism there is
hiding an even richer economic power: that of our original spontaneity to
live within a nexus of experiential interrelationships. It is, as I have just
termed it, the power of trust or, more generally speaking, that of a practical
wisdom allowing us to spontaneously interact with the whole of things and
our fellow human beings. Only out of the tacit relatedness to our fellow
human beings can all the potential to enrich, change and intensify the self-
actualizing potential of individuals arise. This holds true even in modern
market societies.
The problem with modern individualism, in both its practical and
theoretical variants, is not simply that it seeks to free people from their
relatedness to others, but that it totally blinds people to discovering their
very own communal sources, insisting upon the fact that no one can become
aware of anything beyond the narrow confines of his or her individual
subjectivity. Taking the I as indubitable fact, an impermeable barrier to
consciousness, it can at best make us aware of the fact that we are tacitly
governed by certain primordial relationships. But it seems we can never
explicitly account for such domination; its effects remain utterly
unintentional. For example Friedrich von Hayek, a Nobel Laureate in
economics widely known for his defence of classical liberalism and free
market capitalism, openly claims that modern individualism does in fact
presuppose rigid rules of communal behaviour rules which every market
participant regardless of culture, tradition, or religion is to blindly accept.
We learn, says Hayek, such rules from each other by example and
imitation (or by analogy), although neither those who set the examples nor
those who learn from them may be consciously aware of the existence of the
rules which they nevertheless strictly observe.
38
Buying into this
conception, we cannot possibly make entirely fruitful the original
spontaneity of each human encounter so as to allow it to mutually transform
our personalities. We cannot come to each new situation with openness to
the other a readiness to be transformed. Neither are we willing to work
together with others so as to actively shape the rules according to which we
all are to live. Rather, we expect both ourselves and others to forever remain
imprisoned in a solipsistic mode of awareness, silently building our lives on
a common fund of experience that we all accept as nothing but blind fate.
39

We allow our personality to be passively shaped by the power of customs,
rules and regulations dictated to us by the modes of daily living in capitalist
societies. We take the laws of action as being independent of the human
will, they are primarily ontological facts rigidly restricting mans power to
act. . . [A]ny doubt of their suitableness is supererogatory and vain. They
are what they are and take care of themselves.
40
We accept, in a word, the
necessity of the individual submitting itself to the anonymous and
seemingly irrational forces of society.
41
Once more, economic powers are
conceived here as something given to humanity; something which we are
shaped and created by, but cannot shape or create in turn. And again, to
repeat once more, in order to counter such overtly static and passive
conceptions of economic powers, we must fortify the worlds rich
philosophical insights. What is needed here is an entirely new understanding
of ourselves as unique economic agents a uniqueness that is different from
the notion of an autonomous individuality that only attends the isolation of
the soul from other souls and from the outer world of things and events.
According to the Chinese tradition, for example, such uniqueness is to be
framed in irreducibly social terms, expressed in terms of ones ever
changing roles for, and ones finely-nuanced relationships to, community.
42

A presupposition of Daoist cosmology is that we are not passive
participants in our experience. The energy of transformation lies
within the world itself as an integral characteristic of the events that
constitute it. There is no appeal to some external efficient cause: no
Creator God or primordial determinative principle. In the absence of
any preordained design associated with such an external cause, this
energy of transformation is evidenced in the mutual accommodation
and co-creativity that is expressed in the relations that obtain among
things.
43

Here it becomes obvious that we should no longer presuppose the living
world of human interrelatedness as something merely given.
43
The point
here is to discontinue the tradition of blindly acting according to fixed
customs and habits, since this only amplifies the danger of a mechanization
of the Self, and the death of the species. We must be creative, from hour to
hour.
44

Mere causal necessity does not deny our soul; it must be a kind of
necessity, which penetrates into the depth of our personal Self, as
historical past. It must be a necessity, which moves us from the
depth of our soul. That which confronts us in intuition as historical
past from the standpoint of acting intuition, denies our Self, from the
depth of our life. This is what is truly given to us. That, which is
given to our personal Self in acting-intuition, is neither material, nor
does it merely deny us; it must be something that penetrates us
demonically. It is something that spurns us with abstract logic, and
deceives us under the mask of truth. In opposition to this absolute
past, pressing our personal Self in its depth, we ourselves take the
standpoint of the absolute future. We are acting-reflecting, and
thoroughly forming. We are thoroughly creative, as forming factors
of the creative world which forms itself.
45

CONCLUSION

Let me conclude by urging philosophers around the world, each in his or her
own language, culture and tradition, to clearly expose, along similar lines,
the lies and illusions that reduce the varied and rich powers of our common
economic life to nothing but mere causal necessity. Let us, in Kemps own
words, fight to create a world citizenship and a new world by resisting any
economic ideology that explicitly and implicitly demands such a limitation.
Philosophers should seek to be free to develop a wider awareness of the
deepest economic forces so as to unleash the creative potentials of our
practical wisdom. Let us actively encounter the dynamic economic powers
that are truly ours: the powers arising out of our being immanent and
embedded within a ceaseless and dynamic process of social, cultural and
natural changes; a power that we can, and in fact do, continually mold and
create while allowing ourselves to be molded and created by them in turn.
By means of sustained dialogue between the worlds cultures and religions,
philosophers are to further understand how such powers neither simply
substitute for the objective and subjective economic powers nor simply
resist them. In grounding them, rather, they unlock the potential to truly
alter the conditions upon which they are received.

Alanus University,
Alfter, Germany

NOTES

Research for this paper was made possible in part by the generous support
of Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Cologne, Germany.
1
Peter Kemp, as quoted from the program of the XXII World Congress of
Philosophy, Seoul, Korea, 2008.
2
I use the term mainstream economics here in order to refer to economics as
it is usually taught in prominent and even in not so prominent
universities around the world. It is, in this sense, closely associated with
neoclassical economics and other schools that conform to the mainstream
language of mathematical models.
3
Among the proponents of capitalism, Ayn Rand has worked out such a
metaphysics explicitly. Cp. Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
(New York: Signet, 1967). Here, however, I am rather concerned with its
implicit forms. For a more detailed analysis, see my The Basho of
Economics: An Intercultural Analysis of the Process of Economics
(Heustenstamm: Ontos, 2005), especially pp. 36-81.
4
An excellent summary of this development can be found in Philip
Mirowski. More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as
Natures Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
5
Carl Menger, Grundstze der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Wien, 1871), p. viii
6
Ludwig von Mises, Nationalkonomie: Theorie des Handelns und
Wirtschaftens (Genf, 1940), p. 2.
7
Within the liberal tradition, deistic explanations of economic powers play
an important role. See, for example, the often quoted passage from C.F.
Bastiat: I would like to show the harmony of the divine laws ruling human
society. . . I believe that he who created the material order of the cosmos has
not denied his attention to the social world order. I believe that he combined
the free force and set it in harmonic movement, like the lifeless
molecules. I believe that nothing is more necessary to the gradual and
peaceful development of mankind than that we do not cross these tendencies
and dont disturb their free motion. C.F. Bastiat, Harmonies Economiques
(Paris, 1855), citation in German in John Maynard Keynes, Das Ende des
Laisser-faire (Mnchen, 1926), p. 20.
8
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (New York: Prometheus
Books, 2000), p. 126.
9
Paul A. Samuelson, Maximum Principles in Analytical Economics. In
The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson, ed. R.C. Merton, Vol.
III (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1972), pp. 2-17.
10
See the following quotation from Adam Smith: God himself is the

immediate administrator and director. If he [manSG] is deeply impressed
with the habitual and thorough conviction that this benevolent and all-wise
Being can admit into the system of his government no partial evil which is
not necessary for the universal good, he must consider all the misfortunes
which may befall himself, his friends, his society, or his country, as
necessary for the prosperity of the universe, and, therefore, as what he ought
not only submit to with resignation, but as what he himself, if he had known
all the connections and dependencies of things, ought sincerely and
devoutly to have wished for. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, p.
346.
11
The omnipresent use of mechanical metaphors in economics is brilliantly
analyzed in K.-H. Brodbeck, Die fragwrdigen Grundlagen der konomie
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, 2000).
12
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York:
Harper Perennial, 1976), p. 129.
13
Leon Walras, Elements of Pure Economics (New York: Kelly, 1969), p.
69.
14
K. Nishitani, Modernisierung und Tradition in Japan, in Japan und der
Westen, ed/ K. Wehrhahn-Mees, Vol. 1 (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1986), p.
194.
15
Nishitani, Modernisierung und Tradition in Japan, pp. 194-95.
16
Masao Abe, The Problem of Self-Centeredness as the Root-source of
Human Suffering, Japanese Religions, vol. 15 (1989), p. 17.
17
Alasdair MacIntyre, Individual and Social Morality in Japan and the
United States: Rival Conceptions of the Self, Philosophy East & West, vol.
40 (1990), pp. 489-497.
18
Here, I am referring to subjective and behavioral economics in general
and, more specifically, to the methodological individualism underlying
them.
19
Philip Mirowski, More Heat than Light (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), chapter 4.
20
Kitar Nishida, Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness, tr.
Robert Schinzinger (Tokyo: Maruzen, 1958), p. 184.
21
Thorstein Veblen, The Place of Science in Modern Civilization (New
York: Viking, 1969), p. 162. Emphasis added.
22
Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Mineola: Dover
Publications 2006), pp. 13-21.

23
Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, pp. 313-17.
24
Francis Y. Edgeworth, Mathematical Psychics. An Essay on the
Application of Mathematics to the Moral Science (London: Kegan Paul,
1881), p. 16.
25
Mirowski, More Heat than Light, p. 138.
26
Edgeworth, Mathematical Psychics, p. 15.
27
Friedrich von Wieser, Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Tbingen: Mohr
1929), p. 18.
28
M. Baurmann, Der Markt der Tugend: Recht und Moral in der liberalen
Gesellschaf: Eine soziologische Untersuchung. (Tbingen: Mohr, 1996), p.
325.
29
C.B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), p. 58.
30
A. Baruzzi, Freiheit, Recht und Gemeinwohl, Grundfragen einer
Rechtsphilosophie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990),
pp. 205-206.
31
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 57.
32
David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth,
and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture (New York: SUNY
Press, 1998), p. 284.
33
Graupe, The Basho of Economics, pp. 246-251.
34
This, however, is precisely the credo of liberalism.
35
Tetsuro Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsuros Rinrigaku, Ethics in Japan, tr. S.
Yamamoto and R.E. Carter (New York: SUNY Press, 1996), pp. 276 and
281. Emphasis added.
36
Ken Wilber quoted in Joan Stambaugh, The Formless Self (New York:
SUNY 1999), p. 93.
37
Bin Kimura, Zwischen Mensch und Mensch: Strukturen japanischer
Subjektivitt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002).
38
Friedrich A. Hayek, Recht, Gesetzgebung und Freiheit: Regeln und
Ordnung (Mnchen: Verlag Moderne Industrie, 1980), pp. 35-36.
39
Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006).
40
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action. A Treatise on Economics (London:
Hodge, 1949), pp. 755-46.

41
Friedrich A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1980), p. 24.
42
Hall and Ames, Thinking from the Han, p. 25.
43
Nishida, Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness, p. 176.
44
45
REHABILITATING VALUE REHABILITATING VALUE REHABILITATING VALUE REHABILITATING VALUE: QUESTIONS OF MEANI : QUESTIONS OF MEANI : QUESTIONS OF MEANI : QUESTIONS OF MEANING AND NG AND NG AND NG AND
ADEQUACY ADEQUACY ADEQUACY ADEQUACY

Karim Crow

It is indispensable that man`s attention move Irom the
meaning (al-ma`na ) to the wording (al-laIz ) more than it
move Irom the term to the meaning, Ior in reality the
wording does not evince the meaning save by the
mediation oI the Iorm` oI that meaning in the heart` (illa
bi-wa sitati s u rati dha liIa l-ma`na Ii l-qalb); when the Iorm oI
the meaning is not ascertained in the heart, the meaning
can never be grasped through the wording

|al-Ra ghib al-IsIaha ni (11
th
cent.), al-Dhari ah, ed. Abu
Zayd al-Àjami , p. 124|

Spirit in the body is liIe Meaning in the word
al-ruh Ii l-jasad Ia-l-ma`na Ii l-laIz .
Ali (7
th
cent.)
|Sala h al-Di n al-S aIadi, Sharh La miyah al-Àjam
(Cairo: 1290 H) II p. 133|

INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION

How the language oI Scripture and Tradition embedded in revealed texts or
sacred writings, and in the Ioundational narratives supporting pre-modern
world-views, may be understood and applied today remains a major issue
Ior the world religions. Traditional articulations oI religious conceptions
and past modes oI discourse now appear inadequate Ior meeting sweeping
global challenges Iacing most human societies. Increasingly, thinIing
people oI Iaith seeI to re-awaIen and re-appropriate essential religious
teachings through creatively transIormative understandings yielding more
meaningIul ways oI addressing problems raised by our global reality in
relation to pervasive material and cultural conditions. The axis around
which these attempts revolve is twoIold: :: : First: recovering primary values
oI universal true validity, and recognizing which disciplines and individuals
really possess the authority to enunciate application oI such values in the
context oI speciIic conditions prevailing within our societies. Secondly:
recovering the deep essential intelligibility oI Knowledge and Virtue at the
heart oI the endeavour to more Iully realize our humanity. These two
eIIorts are intertwined and should not be pursued separately.
Such awaIened awareness involves a creative adjustment and
appreciation oI new modes and applications oI Inowledge in our age
without doing violence to the genuine modes oI Inowing and being that
provided strength and versatility in the past and which potentially oIIer
resources that may aid us now. This mode oI selI-awareness involves
training the imagination to live the creative process received Irom within
our own traditions oI learning, practice, and organization so as to see and
to grasp what is most adequate to our tasI, discriminating what remains
moist` and viable Irom what has dried out becoming brittle` and no
longer adequate or needing to be discarded or archived.
Approaches embedded in past models may be contrasted with those
arising Irom speciIic cultural and political realities oI our modern age an
era posing unprecedented changes signalling a rupture Irom the past. We
shall taIe as our model oI pre-modern (traditional) experience the Islamic
intellectual and spiritual teachingdiscipline,
1
and seeI to draw out its
relevance Ior peoples and cultures when searching Ior more adequate ways
oI invoIing religious teachings in response to contemporary needs. Ideally
we would pursue a double path by Iirst invoIing instructive models Irom
the past, and then demonstrating in what manner such previous eIIorts
achieved more adequate modes oI conceptualization and application during
their particular eras, thereby pointing to modes oI activity required Ior us
to accomplish a parallel tasI. An example oI such a model might be the
worI oI Abu H a mid al-Ghaza li (d. 1111 CE). Here we only have space to
brieIly suggest these tasIs, and our remarIs resemble more oI a partial
sIeleton than a Iull bodied entity.
The promise inherent in comprehending past modes oI
conceptualization and application may assist eIIorts by individuals and
leading circles Ior awaIening a Iuller adequacy oI traditional ideas and
values. Such awaIening has the potential to Iacilitate wise solutions to
personal, societal, regional and international problems, and to meet the
challenge oI inhabiting our individual and communal humanity more Iully.
However, this potential is conditioned by the manner with which
permanent values are grasped and brought to liIe within individuals and by
extension throughout their societies and polities.

VALUE VALUE VALUE VALUE

Values are essential Ior revitalizing the universal rather than the national
or particular (exclusivist) side oI religious identity. Values are critical Ior
nurturing a Iaith-commitment that aIIirms the unity and dignity oI the
Iullness oI human liIe. The primary values upheld, Ior example, by leading
Muslim exponents in their experiential teachings embrace: Oneness oI The
Real /tawhid; Security and Peace, Justice, Knowledge (with its hierarchy
oI Inowers and their authority), and Integrity and Purity oI Soul |virtue`|
through cultivating and practicing praiseworthy character traits with
Rehabilitating Value

109
these values embodied in the psychic and intellective substance oI
individuals |Soul|, radiating through their community and beyond into the
world.
By values` we mean those ethical attitudes and immaterial ideals
that sincere conviction implants into humans through their Iamily
upbringing, training, education, and liIe experiences attitudes and ideals
which may grow into interior motivating impulses expressed through
actions. Values possess a practical Iorce operating deep within the human
at the level oI conscience and will. Values operate Iirst and Ioremost by
the inner willing oI conscience, and are maniIested outwardly in
praiseworthy character traits and admirable models Ior behavior. This
practical dimension oI ethical endeavor and moralvolition is termed the
Iaculty oI conation (that is to say, volition and will-power). Ethics (in
Arabic: the AIhla q or Mah a sin /`virtuous character-traits`) is the domain oI
Practical Reason or prudential mind` (aql amali in Islamic terminology)
involving the Iaculty or power oI conation. Conative power denotes the
impulse or striving to change one`s behavior and act in accordance with
both the directives oI inner conscience arising Irom within the innate
constitution oI the created person, as well as oI outer guidance or revealed
imperatives received Irom without.
Furthermore, the human attitudes and ideals prompting actions, and
which are mediated by values, possess an intellectual or cognitive power
shaping the worldview and discourse oI humans collectively Iorming a
cultural community Iunctioning Ior a deIinite purpose within the created
order. For Islam, these two related aspects oI values are bound together
through Knowledge: the conative Iaith-induced dimension oI Inowledge
yielding conviction and moral-volition through the operation oI human
intelligence embedded in conscience, being intimately joined with the
cognitive or perceiving or Inowing dimension operated by our intelligence.
A closely related pair oI Islamic notions expressing these two dimensions
is the joining oI Righteous Action (al-àmal al-s a lih ) with BeneIicial
Knowledge (al-ìlm al-na Ii` ): :: : Inowledge and practice must go hand in
hand Ior values to become truly operative and eIIective in human
experience. Here is an example oI what we have just stated concerning the
conative and cognitive dimensions oI value. In an utterance by the Shiite
imam JaÌar al-S a diq (d. 765), the term understanding or cognition`
/ma`riIah is employed in conjunction with activity or practice` /àmal :

God accepts (a person`s) practice only (iI perIormed) with
cognizance`/illa bi-ma`riIat
in
, and (God accepts a person`s) cognition
only (iI accompanied) by practice. Whomever Inows/àraIa, the
cognition directs them to the practice; and whomever does not
practice, that person has no ma`riIah /cognition.
2

Islam teaches that the true origin oI universal human values mirrors
or reIlects the transcendent source oI all that is valuable`, that the
permanent enduring values saIeguarding our true humanity are sourced in
the divine. The highest human values possess true value only because they
spring Irom a transcendent source and help to draw us closer to the
ultimate source oI Being, Existence, and Value. A well-Inown tradition oI
the Prophet Muh ammad (S) counsels us to 'Adorn yourselI with the
virtuous character traits oI God /taIhalluq bi-aIhla qi lla hi as the chieI
path to authentic service and inner realization. This Iundamental insight
insists that the transcendent source oI values is the true reason why they
are deemed universal and permanent, and objectively to be sought and
practiced by all humans. Another way oI stating this is to aIIirm the
complementarity oI right thought and right activity, or intellectual
perIection and moral perIection, or awaIened intelligence and ethical
action. But here we simply say that cognition and conation are integral to
actualising the Iullness oI human nature, and that realization oI value
requires their conjoined Iunctioning.
The universal values upheld and taught should be clearly evident and
displayed in the lived practice oI their practitioners, their exemplars or
living examples. Otherwise, one is dealing with hypocrisy, with hollow
words lacIing any conative Iorce Iailing to touch and move us Irom within,
thereby Iailing to maniIest outwardly in any substantive change oI
behavior. Contemporary Scientism |physicalism| universalized by Euro-
American inspired modernity is deIicient in both the quantity and quality
oI the bond that arranges universal values into an authoritative hierarchy.

ANTHROPOCOSMIC ANTHROPOCOSMIC ANTHROPOCOSMIC ANTHROPOCOSMIC AND ANTHROPOSOPHIC AND ANTHROPOSOPHIC AND ANTHROPOSOPHIC AND ANTHROPOSOPHIC

In general, the traditional (pre-modern) worldviews embedded in religious
cultures with elaborated intellectual and spiritual disciplines were
concerned with realizing Inowledge in Iour domains: metaphysics or
apprehension oI The One Real |Being, First Principle, Absolute, God|;
cosmology; spiritual psychology; and ethics.
3
These are Iour
complementary domains: investigation oI the cosmos yields insight into
the interior world oI spiritual psychology, while apprehension oI
metaphysics and cosmology leads to grasping the true nature oI the human
soul`, and proper prehension oI soul science` returns the SelI to the
ground oI Being.
We may also invoIe the venerable conviction oI the uterine inter-
relatedness oI the celestial, cosmic, and human orders. And as most oI us
Inow, the modern heedlessness or ignorance over understanding the SelI as
a uniIied Iield` Ior energy-activity-awareness conjoining cosmos and soul
as both object and subject at once, has led humans to IalsiIy the relations
between selI, people, and nature.

111
In order to avoid the traps oI exclusivist parochial dogmatism and oI
the ideology
4
characteristic oI our modernities, we must each individually
recover Ior ourselves a proper understanding oI our own nature. William
ChitticI states:

.in order to Inow the proper way oI acting in the world and living
out our human embodiment, we must Inow what the world signiIies
to us. In order to Inow the signiIicance oI things, we must Inow our
own nature and our own proper destiny. In order to Inow our own
nature, we must Inow the selI that Inows.
5

What is Inowledge Ior? What is the proper role and qualitative
context oI human thought? There is a very real discrimination between
two Iundamental modes oI Inowing involving distinct Iaculties or
energies: :: :
First, we can speaI oI transmitted Inowledge employing
instrumental rationality |viz., the brain`|, viewing the world as a
collection oI objects, which understands Inowledge as the means to control
nature, society, and the body; thus, humans seeI control and power over
creation by means oI the technological application oI Inowledge and
exclusive reliance on instrumental reason.
Second, there is direct unmediated Inowledge which transpires by
awaIening and actualizing human innate intelligence |heart` and
spirit`. light: Arabic aql, qalb & ru h . nur| Iorming the peculiarly
special perceptiveunderstanding power oI our interior selI |soul or mind|.
Such prehension is termed realization` /tahqiq in Islamic teaching in
contrast to the imitative` mode oI transmitted Inowledge termed taqli d.
Philosophy with its metaphysic oI soul-science` was particularly
interested in ways oI activating the human potential Ior realized
intelligence or heart`; ontemporary Euro-American philosophy` does not
Inow oI, or admit, this reality anymore, but speaIs oI neurophysiological
cognition in terms oI measurable physical events. To say more about this
might mislead and conIuse meaning, so I let another speaI Ior me: 'Only
what is Inown in the depths oI the soul without intermediary is
intellectual in the proper sense oI the word . the only locus oI intellectual
Inowledge is the Inowing selI.
6
Nor should we Iorget that transmitted
Inowledge, since it exists embedded in a speciIic cultural matrix
conditioned by habits oI mind solidiIied within its own priesthoods`
molded by socio-political Iactors and selI-interested needs, Irequently
becomes a veil preventing attempts to actualize true realized intelligence.
A Iine example oI this is the description provided by the 11
th
century
authority al-Ghaza li (d. 1111), in his analysis oI the Iamous tradition that
seventy thousand veils oI light and darIness separate God Irom His
creatures.
7

Realized Intelligence` exploits both the critical powers oI reason and
employs the imagination through envisioning things` as signs and symbols
oI The One Real (seeing the Face oI God` everywhere and in everything, as
the Quràn states). Intelligence may be rationalist and symbolist together,
and it may resuscitate the mythic imagination by restoring the creative
power oI symbolic and mythic discourse which lies at the heart oI
traditional religious language (proIoundly imbued with anthropomorphic
imagery). This mode oI trans-rational apprehension vehiculed by the
human soul when actualized as realized intelligence` enables one to erase
the boundary between the literal and Iigurative meanings oI sacred texts,
and go beyond this by aIIirming a reality Ior the imaginal realm as an
intermediate domain partaIing oI the qualities oI the corporeal as well as
the purely immaterial. In Islamic experience, this aIIirmation oI an
imaginal reality has a long history until our own time, and is particularly
associated with the Andalusian saint buried in Damascus, the Greatest
ShayIh Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), whose understanding oI the World oI
Imagination` /Àlam al-Khayal combining qualities oI spirit and body was
so inIluential.
8
Ibn Arabi integrated the achievments oI the philosopher
Avicenna (d. 1037) as well as oI al-Ghaza li in his own grand synthesis; and
centuries later the Iranian sages including S adr al-Di n Shirazi (d. 1640)
elaborated upon this in a proIound manner which invites serious attention
today.
9

Do not misunderstand my meaning: there is no going bacI, no
return to the dogmatic literalism oI traditionalist anthropomorphism when
apprehending sacred texts. Yet there remains the possibility Ior us to
expand our horizons, to embrace the truths aIIirmed by intelligence
inIormed through Iaith-cognition and thereby to awaIen the dormant
potential oI our humanity. Teachings oI the order just mentioned oIIer us a
model oI a mode oI experience and activity to accomplish a parallel tasI
and thus rehabilitate a living intellectual tradition. But it will be ours,
not that oI the past. Furthermore, we must be especially wary oI ill-
conceived exploitations oI powerIul ideas that might yield great harm and
generate much Ialsehood. Is not the energy contained in the human
imaginal Iaculty increasingly being abused in our era by all manner oI
delectations and temptations Iacilitated by technological advances
(television, electronic media, computers)? Are we even aware oI its
possible deletrious eIIects? Here is an area oI psycho-somatic research that
will have to start Irom the data already amassed by advertising
organizations Ior decades in their dedicated eIIorts to persuade consumers
and amass wealth.
Every Inowledge maIes ethical demands upon the Inower. Realized
Intelligence becomes actualized within oneselI through a lengthy process
oI cognitive training and inner puriIication, oI disciplining the mind and
the soul. Achieving correct understanding oI the Absolute, cosmos, and
soul by grasping an authentic vision oI reality demands the actualization oI

113
the pristine human character and cultivation oI virtue the corresponding
activity oI selI-understanding and selI-realization in conIormity with such
direct Inowledge. The cognition calls out Ior its complementary conative
practice; Inowledge necessitates virtue. ChitticI observes: '.correct
activity ethical, moral, and virtuous action depends upon correct
Inowledge oI the world, and correct Inowledge oI the world depends upon
Inowing the contingent and convergent reality oI soul and cosmos.
10
This
entails healing the split between subject and object upon which the
prevailing modern scientiIic worldview is grounded.
There is another issue related to the illumination that awaIened
intelligence and direct experiencing may shed today on re-thinIing values
and virtues on the path to becoming more Iully human. This involves
language, with its organic aptitude Ior sharing and communicating
experiences and ideas within one linguistic Iamily. Language may also
bridge across diIIerent linguistic groups through Iostering unitive
disclosures oI meaning, allowing over-arching understanding oI more
universalizing values dressed in various conceptual and linguistic guises
speciIic to diIIerent cultural matrices. In conjunction with this, the barriers
between social groups and cultural blocIs Iostered by linguistic
diIIerentiation may under the right conditions operate as Iilters selectively
admitting congenial elements while blocIing others.
11
We may observe
this operating within the two most signiIicant translation movements in
human history: the 8
th
10
th
century movement oI Hellenic sciences and
philosophy Irom GreeI into Arabic, and the 12
th
14
th
century transposition
oI sciences, philosophy, and spirituality Irom Arabic into Hebrew and
Latin in Europe.
12

Perhaps the most instructive example oI the operation oI language as
a congruent unitary Iorce is the lingua Iranca` phenomenon whereby one
tongue serves as a vehicular language` Ior communication and exchange
between many other local vernaculars, reIlecting the military, mercantile or
cultural dominance oI the vehicular language group. Currently the
recognized dominance oI spoIen English with its Latin script |341 million|
is rivaled by written standard Chinese and standard spoIen Mandarin in
East Asia |ca. 1.2 billion persons|, spoIen Arabic vernaculars |ca. 422
million|, Hindi in S. Asia |366 million| and spoIen Spanish in the
Americas |322 million|.
13
Today Arabic vernaculars Iorm the second
largest spoIen language aIter standard Chinese, ,, , while the Arabic script
the language oI the Qurà n remains aIter Latin the second most widely
used alphabetic system in the world.
14

It is well Inown that Iew cultures placed more emphasis on their
language as a uniIying Iactor than have the Arabs; yet the unprecedented
diIIusion oI Arabic linguistic and conceptual presence Irom sub-Saharan
and East AIrica, the Iberian peninsula, through to Central and South Asia,
China and to South East Asia was due as much to religious and cultural
grounds than to commerce or polities. Within various Muslim cultural
regions historically, a number oI other languages adopting Arabic script
also served vehicular Iunctions such as Persian (lingua Iranca oI India,
beIore the British conquest), TurIish, Azeri, Urdu, Swahili, and Jawi
|Melayu|. This displays the integrating unitive eIIect oI Islam over Iar
Ilung territories, previously separated by geographical barriers and racial
cultural divides. Subjectivities tend to exclusion and conIlict, disclosure oI
meaning tends to inclusion and harmonious awareness.

LANGUAGE AND MEANING LANGUAGE AND MEANING LANGUAGE AND MEANING LANGUAGE AND MEANING

Language, comprising speech and narrative (e.g. text) and poetry, is rightly
taIen as a Iey index oI the human Iaculty Ior grasping and communicating
meaning, and is intimately involved in rationality and critical
apprehension. A signiIicant aspect oI speech and its accompanying seizure
oI meaning is the conjunction oI symbol and the reality it points to,
namely the meaning disclosed through its apprehension; or, to express this
relationship another way: the Word and the Meaning which it discloses.
Restoration oI the imaginal power oI symbolic and mythic discourse at the
basis oI religious language centers on apprehending the eIIicacy` oI Names
in their qualitative depth, not merely their quantitative Ilatness.
15

We can only reIer brieIly to one aspect oI the relation between word
and meaning. The word is a tangible sensory Iorm conveying meaning;
language points to meaning and discloses signiIicance thus, Arabic
calligraphy became Islam`s pre-eminent art Iorm and mode oI symbolic
representation. But such disclosure requires the minds and hearts oI
humans to be prepared and capable to conceive and grasp meaning, to heed
the indications or pointers words provide and thereby penetrate to their
intended signiIicances. The identity or non-identity oI name and thing-
named was intensively discussed among Muslim speculative theologians,
while the legalist-oriented traditionalists avoided the topic as a
reprehensible innovation. This issue was oIten cast in the polarity oI ism
and ma`na / name` and concept`, where proper comprehension elevates
the conceptmeaning` above its name`. The gist is captured in an
utterance by the reputable early thinIer JaÌar al-Sa diq (d. 765):

.the name is other than what-is-named, so whomever worships the
name disregarding the concept/ma`na commits unIaith (IuIr ) and he
worships nothing, and whomever worships the name and the concept
commits unIaith by worshipping Two, and whomever worships the
concept disregarding the name now that is true oneness`/tawhid.
16

Two things must be borne in mind: a) the same meaning may be pointed to
by more than one term or phrase within the same language, as well as by
several words across several languages; and b) without the meaning already
being present, or suIIiciently evoIed and indicated, within our

115
understanding intellective Iaculty, the proper apprehension oI the Word is
diIIicult or the Word itselI Iails to convey the intended Meaning and may
even be taIen in a wrong` meaning (e.g. conIining the term to merely one
restricted surIace sense while ignoring its deeper symbolic or mythic
signiIicance).
ConIirmation oI this would be our common experience oI Iirst having
apprehended the meaning oI a term in an ordinary` sense as a young
person, then later, with increased Inowledge and insight, achieving a
deeper more signiIicant sense. Furthermore, signiIicances may be Ilat`
(Iigurative or rhetorical), or may possess depth,` opening out onto a
hierarchy oI related meanings and apprehensions. Poetry, as well as
prophecy, Irequently operates in this latter mode oI symbolic signiIicance.
Incorporation oI Iresh meanings through borrowing or inIluence Irom
another language or culture represents a particular case oI expansion oI
meaning, and Irequently induces new values or new ways oI looIing within
the worldview oI the host culture. The phenomenon oI bilingualism
(whose many dimensions we leave untouched here
17
) underlines the
importance oI cross-cultural penetration, and demonstrates that successIul
bilingualism and becoming bi-cultural require intelligence as well as proper
attitudes toward the other group(s) and motivation. Similarly with
translation between languages, where the competence oI the translator in
rendering the meaning requires more than linguistic expertise, but also
conceptual and cognitive insight into other cultural patterns oI thought and
experience and the critical intelligence inIorming particular disciplines.
This reminds us oI: the complementary operation oI a barrier acting
simultaneously and selectively as a Iilter; as well as: the requirement that
meaning already be present in the mind or heart in order that Word may
Iunction as disclosing symbol. (The notion oI disclosure` is useIul here.)
Meaning the ability or Iacility to elicit or to evoIe over-arching
correspondences and conIluences, or contrasting points oI
complementarity, bridging separately expressed meaning |discourse,
imagery| embedded within distinct cultural matrices is capable oI
prompting a unitary sense oI value or signiIicance wherein each speciIic
culture with its unique manner oI discourse and symbol may come to be
seen in some degree as simultaneously both a light and a veil. This is not a
matter oI doctrines or oI dogma, Ior the Christian Trinity remains a
stumbling blocI Ior Muslims and Jews, while the personal Creator oI
prophetic monotheism may appear alien to the IneIIable Principle oI
Buddhism. And even within one religious culture there are varying
conceptions oI origination: thus Islamic thinIers spoIe variously oI
temporal creation /Ihalq & h udu th, or oI divine Iiat (creative imperative:
Ialimah & amr), or oI timeless existentiation /ibda , or the continual
emanation /Iayd oI the Peripatetics (all but the last oI these terms are
drawn Irom the Qurà n).
Rather, tapping the unitary sense is a matter oI essence and the
congruence Ilowing Irom it, grounded above all on the reality that the
human species is not only biologically but ontologically one and the same.
This reality Iacilitates the openness oI religious texts, imagery and symbols
to a hierarchy oI readings and seizures oI meaning in accordance with the
hierarchy oI Inowers who plumb their depths and hold them up as lenses
through which to apprehend metaphysics, the cosmos, and the horizons
within the human soul. Knowledge is hierarchical along with
gradations oI the Inowers who seize meanings.

FINAL REMARKS FINAL REMARKS FINAL REMARKS FINAL REMARKS

Restoration oI the imaginal noetic power oI symbolic and mythic
discourse at the ground oI religious language must be guided by the
recognition that the qualitative power oI words |Names| aIIords a more
real and eIIective mode oI insight and meaning Ior bridging across cultures.
What is truly being asIed oI us is to learn new languages oI the spirit
and heart, to experience Iresh thoughts and grasp the Inowledge joining
our inmost selI to the whole and the source. ThereIore, cultural multi-
lingualism should be one oI our means Ior soliciting the desired unitary
sense oI value. We all must worI as translators Irom the limiting cultural
constraints given us at birth, into the unutterable Iullness oI being which is
our veritable human birthright. This might be the best worI oI translation
to render the SelI bacI into its essential meaning. It is certainly a more
adequate response to the global conIlicts and cognitive chaos that threaten
conscious liIe on earth.
Name is a veil over Essence
Muh ammad al-NiIIari (10
th
cent.)

International Institute oI Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS),
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

NOTES NOTES NOTES NOTES

1
The purpose oI language is to convey meaning, so we shall use Arabic
Islamic terms sparingly in order to spare those unIamiliar with this
tradition Irom conIusion. Nevertheless, in terms oI transIorming inter-
cultural misunderstanding, there is a great beneIit to be derived Irom
clariIying the Iey terms and notions oI speciIic cultures, so as to Ioster
apprehending shared meanings. (See our remarIs on the utility oI cultural
bi-lingualism below.) However, this clariIication has to begin with an intra-
cultural eIIort, given that most moderns` are now estranged Irom the deep
roots oI their own particular intellectualcultural heritage. Actually, the
most pressing concern today may be the dialogue within one culture
between its traditional components and its own mode oI modernity this

117

is certainly true oI Islam. Remember: there is more than one way to be
modern.
2
al-Kulayni , Us u l al-Ka Ii , ed. al-GhaIIa ri (3
rd
ed., Tehran: 1388) I Iita b
Iadl al-ìlm, bab isti`mal al-ìlm p. 44 2.
3
Consult e.g., Seyyed Hossein Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic
Cosmological Doctrines (Boulder: Shambala, 1978).
4
We intend by ideology the secularist socio-political programs deemed
rational and scientiIic, including the varieties oI politicized religious-ethno
nationalism termed Iundamentalism`.
5
ChitticI, Science oI the Cosmos, Science oI the Soul: The Pertinence oI
Islamic Cosmology in the Modern World (OxIord: Oneworld, 2007) p. 73.
He also asserts: 'Cosmos and soul are not two separate realities, but two
sides oI the same coin. (p. 132).
6
ChitticI, Cosmos pp. 136, 138.
7
Abu Ha mid al-Ghaza li , The Niche oI Lights, tr. D. Buchman (Provo, UT:
1998); and see Hermann Landolt, 'Ghaza li and ReligionswissenschaIt`:
some notes on the MishIat al-Anwa r., Asiatische Studien 45 (1991).
8
See in particular: Ibn al-Àrabi , The Meccan Revelations vol. I, ed. M.
ChodIiewicz, trans. W. C. ChitticI & J. W. Morris (New YorI: Pir Press,
2002) index s.v. Ihaya l ; W. C. ChitticI, The SelI-Disclosure oI God:
Principles oI Ibn al-Àrabi s Cosmology (Albany: SUNY, 1998) The
Imaginal BarzaIh p. 331370; W. C. ChitticI, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-
Àrabi and the Problem oI Religious Diversity (Albany: SUNY, 1994) p.
67119; and Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Su Iism oI Ibn
Arabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).
9
See preceding note; and our contribution to the international syposiuim
Ibn Arabi and Modern Era (Istanbul & Damascus, May 2328, 2008), 'Ibn
Arabi and Imagination: The BacIground, Iorthcoming.
10
ChitticI, Cosmos, p. 136.
11
See especially Norman Daniel, The Cultural Barrier (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1975) Ior an extended meditation on obstacles
to Inowing other cultures by a long time observer oI Islam. I taIe this
notion oI Iilter` Irom Daniel.
12
Dimitri Gutas, GreeI Thought, Arabic Culture. The Graeco-Arabic
Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abba sid Society (2
nd
4
th
/8
th
10
th
centuries), (London & New YorI: Routledge, 1998). For a survey oI
the translations, scholars and institutions involved, see Gerhard Endress,
'Die wissenschaItliche Literatur |ScientiIic Literature`|, in Grundriss der

Arabischen Philologie, vol. II: LiteraturwissenschaIt, ed. H. Gtje
(Wiesbaden: 1987) 8.18.5, pp. 400506 (esp. pp. 41631), and
Supplementband (1992) pp. 3152; and the ongoing compilation edited by
G. Endress & D. Gutas, A GreeI and Arabic Lexicon: material Ior a
dictionary oI the mediaeval translations Irom GreeI into Arabic (Leiden:
Brill, 1992-).
13
'Languages SpoIen by More Than 10 Million People, MicrosoIt
Encarta 2008. Retrieved June 21, 2008.
14
Even aIter TurIish, Azeri, Swahili, Malay /Brunei /Indonesian, and Uyghur
switched to Latin script.
15
ChitticI, Cosmos, pp. 96101 Ior the notion oI qualitative eIIicacy oI
Names; also Paul-A. Hardy, 'Epistemology and Divine Discourse, in The
Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology, ed. Tim Winter
(Cambridge University Press, 2008) pp. 288307, treating al-Ghaza li `s
important contribution to this theme.
16
al-Kulayni , Us u l al-Ka Ii , I I. al-Tawhid, ba b al-ma`bu d p. 87 2. This
utterance is also assigned to Ali in other sources.
17
For an approach between psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, see W.
E. Lambert (in colloboration with Elizabeth Peal), 'The Relation oI
Bilingualism to Intelligence, in Language, Psychology and Culture.
Essays by Wallace E. Lambert (StanIord, CA: StanIord University Press,
1972) pp. 111159. Lambert`s worI shows 'that a person can comIortably
become bilingual and bi-cultural, that one`s attitudes toward the other
group whose language is being learnt play an important role in language
acquisition and that such attitudes both aIIect and are aIIected by one`s
motivation to learn the other language. . (p. xiii).
WHAT REMAINS OF MODERNITY?
PHILOSOPHY AND CULTURE IN THE TRANSITION TO A
GLOBAL ERA

William Sweet

INTRODUCTION

A view often attributed to many of the major thinkers of the modern period,
such as Descartes, Hobbes, and Kant, is that philosophy goes beyond
particular cultural or historical or contingent concerns that it seeks to
provide arguments that all rational beings, regardless of their culture or
tradition, can recognize as sound, and that it proposes to arrive at certain,
universal, timeless and absolute truths. On this modern view, then, while
philosophy may emerge from cultures, it seeks to leave cultural specificity
behind, and to abstract itself from the particularities of these cultures.
This view of philosophy has been challenged, especially since the
early nineteenth century and the development of hermeneutics and it has
come increasingly under fire during the late twentieth century, largely as a
result of an increasing global awareness and the recognition of the
diversities in ethical practice and in ways of knowing. How conclusive are
these challenges to modernity and to modern approaches to philosophy? Is
there anything characteristic of modernity that remains in philosophy after
the contemporary critique?
In this paper, I wish to focus principally on issues related to this
latter question, namely, What, if anything, remains of modernity in
philosophical thinking in the global era? To respond to this question, I begin
by explaining what it means to say that philosophy emerges from culture.
Next, I outline what is generally considered to be the contrary view one
that is allegedly characteristic of modernity and explain why
philosophys relation to culture has been described as merely incidental and
contingent, and as telling us nothing about the philosophical enterprise
itself; I give a brief illustration of this view drawn from ethical theory. I
then present a critique of this account and give a constructive alternative,
taken from the perspective of postmodern thought showing how one
might conclude that philosophy not only emerges from culture but can never
separate itself from it. Again, I illustrate this by an example from ethical
theory. Finally, I note some criticisms of this postmodern approach, and
offer another constructive alternative to both the modern and the
postmodern views which allows us to say that philosophy emerges from
culture and yet retains many of the characteristics of modern thought an
alternative which has an affinity with philosophical idealism.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR PHILOSOPHY TO EMERGE FROM
CULTURE?

One finds today a thesis that philosophy emerges from culture, and can
never free itself from it. This thesis is not universally accepted, but it is
nevertheless widely held.
But before one can assess this thesis as a whole, one needs to
consider the first part of it i.e., what it means to say that philosophy
emerges from culture and what evidence we have for thinking so.
I think that this can be understood in a number of ways.
1

At the most mundane level, one can say that philosophy emerges
from culture in the sense that culture is part of, or influences, the material
environment in which philosophical questions are raised; for example,
culture determines the opportunities for and character of leisure, and it is
generally only where people are freed from constant effort to obtain what
they need to live that they have leisure time in which philosophy can be
done.
One may go further and say that cultures set up the specific sorts of
problems and questions that philosophers pursue. For example, in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the West where we have an
increasing individualism, where science and technology made traditional
forms of labour obsolete, and where there was not simply a search for more
resources, but a search to expand markets we find philosophical enquiries
concerning human nature, the rights of the individual, political order, and
conceptions of the good.
Perhaps, more controversially, one may say that culture seems to
determine, as well, what counts as philosophy (as distinct from literature,
science, history, or religion), and how to distinguish philosophy from the
religious, scientific, axiological, and literary elements of ones culture. For a
number of years, in the West, the writings of figures such as Laozi,
Confucius, or Sankara, or the traditions of thought in Asia or Africa or of
American aboriginal tribes, were regarded by many as not being
philosophy, but matters of religion or social practice. Such an emphasis on
the influence of culture has affected how even some western authors are
regarded today. There is certainly debate whether Nietzsche or, in our day,
Judith Butler, is a philosopher, and opinions may shift over time; Paracelsus
(Phillip von Hohenheim; 1493-1541) was regarded as a philosopher in his
time, but today almost certainly would not be.
Further, and more concretely, some have argued that culture
influences in what language philosophical questions are expressed and
answered and what counts as a satisfactory answer.
2
For example, by
establishing norms of reason or emphasising values (such as the value of the
individual, the common good, and the good of communities such as the
nation, the church, humanity, and the biosphere), a culture provides a
language that puts limits on the kinds of philosophical questions that can
meaningfully be asked.

What Remains of Modernity? 121
And finally, more broadly, some may say further that philosophy
emerges from culture in the sense that culture provides or imposes the
conceptual framework in which philosophical enquiry takes place.
In short, to say that philosophy emerges from culture can mean
many different things and some would say that it means all of the above;
that culture determines the very possibility of philosophy.
3

ARGUMENTS FOR PHILOSOPHY EMERGING FROM CULTURE

What is the evidence for such a view i.e., that culture determines the very
possibility of philosophy? Interestingly, there are several arguments that
might lead us to this conclusion, but today the most influential of them
come from followers of postmodern hermeneutics. (It is also a claim of
philosophical idealism a point that I will return to, later.)
The argument here is primarily a negative one that the view of the
relation between philosophy and culture that is typical of modernity (though
also typical of much of Western philosophy from the time of Plato), and
which holds that philosophical work is independent of or transcends culture,
is defective. And so, the argument goes, the opposite position must be true
i.e., that philosophy not only emerges from, but can never free itself from,
culture.
To see how strong this argument is, a brief survey of the modern
view will be helpful.

The Modern View

How do critics of the modern view understand modernity?
Modernity has generally been described as reflecting a number of
basic principles.
4

1. It rejects tradition and custom as a priori authoritative;
everything must be subject to rational criticism.
2. It seeks objective truth and knowledge ideally, absolute, law-
like, ahistorical principles that can be known by reason, employing a
formal, rational method.
3. Modernity is, therefore, rationalist at least in a broad sense,
meaning that all reasonable beliefs and claims to knowledge must
have sufficient evidence for them. This evidence is, ideally,
provided using demonstrative deductive arguments that start from
self-evident or indubitable premises. In this sense, it is usually
foundationalist in its epistemology.
4. It acknowledges that the conditions of knowledge are, in some
way, determined by the capacities of the knowing subject; we have,
then, a turn to the subject, and epistemology has a priority over
metaphysics.
5. This priority of the subject is also reflected in an emphasis on the
value of the individual over that of the community.
6. According to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, modernity
sees reason as instrumental that is, as a tool to be used, not only to
understand, but to master or control, the world.
5

7. Modernity is, however, optimistic it suggests that knowledge
is progressive and emancipatory, and that the knowing subject is
(self) perfectible.

As a result, then, contingent matters of tradition or history or
culture are not of fundamental importance at least, not to philosophy.
Broadly construed, philosophical modernism is said to have
begun in the early seventeenth century (e.g., around the time of Descartes),
and to have had its most complete statement in the work of the eighteenth-
century enlightenment philosophers and, principally, Kant. These
philosophers rejected having culture or context or tradition play a
determining role in knowledge, seeking instead law-like, absolute,
foundationalist principles, and ahistorical, timeless, objective truths.
As an illustration here, consider the principle based
(deontological) ethics of Kant.
6
Kant, as we know, rejected any ethics based
on custom or tradition or past practice, or any external sanction. For there to
be a genuine moral philosophy, it must be law-like that is, it must be a
priori. Kants approach is not to look at culture or context or tradition
doing this would be sociology, not philosophy but to ask what a rational
being, reflecting on what one ought to do, would discover and assent to.
His answer, as we know, is Law something that can be
rationally grasped and recognised as true (and obligatory) by all rational
beings, not just human beings. Autonomy is simply assenting to or giving
this law to oneself.
The moral law which Kant seeks is, qua law, objective, universal
and absolute it is a priori and without exception. It is recognized and
enacted by reason alone specifically, the reason of each individual agent
hence, it is (though only in this sense) subjective. It does not matter if
people like it, agree to it, or not; it does not indeed, it cannot depend on
an external lawgiver. Neither does morality depend on consequences or
results; only on conformity to reason.
It is clear, then, that the moral law is what it is, independent of any
contingencies of culture, history, or tradition. Indeed, it is for this reason
that it applies to all rational beings qua rational beings, and not just to
human beings.
The very point of modernism, then is that one had to put all claims
of culture, custom and tradition under the light of reason and, if they are
found wanting, reject them. Thus, there was no significant relation between
philosophy and culture or, what relation there was, was purely incidental.

Criticism of the Modern View

Critics of the modern approach to philosophy and those employing a
hermeneutical method here have played a key role have argued that there
are several problems with this view:

1. To begin with, these critics challenge the view that there are any
absolute, universal, ahistorical, objective truths or principles or, at
the very least, they deny that we could ever know them.
2. There are no neutral, unprejudiced subjects who can make
objective judgements, independent of their interests. Indeed, there can
be no privileging of the human subject because, really, there are no
subjects and, in any event, there is no reason to prefer the human
subject over any other being. In fact, the modern privileging of the
subject (anthropocentrism) is itself the source of a wide range of
contemporary problems philosophical, political, social and
economic.
3. The modern ideal of rationality is problematic; there is no
neutral, formal method of arriving at objective truth. Reason or
rationalism is not independent of tradition and culture; it is just
another tradition. Empirical observation and history reveal that there
are many different models of rationality, each rooted in distinct
historical periods and each reflecting different social and cultural
conditions and there is no means of establishing any one as
ultimately preferable. In other words, there is no single model of
rationality in terms of which one could show that anything is true or
can be known. Reason is contextual. As Richard Rorty has argued,
there can be no grounding no foundation outside of a context
or (what Wittgenstein called) a form of life.
7

4. Epistemological foundationalism is, therefore, arbitrary. Indeed,
the principle of foundationalism is not only arbitrary but self-
defeating. It is arbitrary because there is no reason for believing that it
is true, and there are other, equally plausible models of knowledge
that are available. (In fact, few, if any, of our knowledge claims could
ever satisfy this standard.) It is self-refuting because it cannot
measure up to the standard that it sets i.e., it is neither derivable
from principles we know independently to be true, nor is it self-
evident. In short, there is (and there can be) no ground for our
common-sense beliefs or knowledge claims.
5. (Therefore) There is no objectivity; there simply are no impartial,
objective absolute truths or principles upon which all informed,
mature, intellectually competent individuals can or must agree.
6. We cannot know nature or reality as it is in itself; indeed, such
an ideal is illusory. Thus, truth cannot be the correspondence of
statements to the world (since, at the very least, we can never make
sense of such a correspondence). All that we can have are
interpretations of texts or (more broadly) interpretations of
experience.
7. There is, therefore, no essence or nature or natural law of
anything, including any human nature.

Thus, these critics claim, we need to reject the modern tradition
altogether or, at least, to recognise that modernity (and its accompanying
rationalism and dismissive attitude towards culture and tradition) are simply
part of another tradition. Philosophy can never be separated from tradition
and culture.
But if the modern approach fails, what is the alternative?

Postmodern Views

Some philosophers offer what we may call the postmodern response,
which draws extensively on the insights of the hermeneutical movement of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Postmodernism describes, and
even celebrates, the disintegration of the cultural, political, and
philosophical views typical of modernity. Philosophers as Friedrich
Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Hlne Cixous, Michel
Foucault, and Richard Rorty challenge the modern view that there is a
community of discourse or an epistemological model that allows for rational
and objective knowledge. In the words of another of its principal
representatives, Jean-Franois Lyotard, postmodernism is an incredulity
towards metanarratives
8
an incredulity towards the claim that there is or
can be one story into which all truth or knowledge can be placed. More
specifically, within Anglo-American and German philosophy,
postmodernism is considered to be anti-foundationalist, anti-realist, anti-
essentialist, highly pluralistic and pragmatist.
What does philosophy look like after modernity? What is its
relation to culture? One suggestion is provided by the late Richard Rorty,
who proposed a postmodern approach to (modern) philosophy.
In a recent tribute to Rorty by Raymond Geuss a tribute widely
circulated on the Internet
9
Geuss mentions a pet project of Rortys. Rorty
apparently was long interested in giving an undergraduate course that would
be called An Alternative History of Modern Philosophy, starting with the
end of the Middle Ages and proceeding up to the beginning of the twentieth
century. It would focus, not on the major canonical figures, but on some of
the lesser known though, from Rortys perspective, equally or more
philosophically powerful figures.
Rorty may have had a number of reasons for proposing such an
alternative approach. But Geuss conjectures that one in particular reflects
Rortys view of the activity of philosophy.
10
Geuss notes that Rorty held
that what some people called philosophy at certain times in history, was,
at other times, not regarded as philosophy at all. Geuss writes that,
according to Rorty:


There is no such thing as a universal set of philosophical questions or
issues; Paracelsus wasnt remotely interested in asking or answering
questions like those we find philosophical, still lots of people at the
time thought his work a paradigm of what a philosopher should be
doing. The assumption here would be that the longer and more deeply
one reflected on this fact, the more one would see that philosophy
at different times and places referred to different clusters of
intellectual activities, none of which formed a natural kind and none
of which had any inherent claim to a monopoly on the proper use
of the term philosophy. Doing a history in which Paracelsus figured
centrally but not Descartes, could be seen as a part of trying to give a
history, not so much of philosophy, as of historically differing
conceptions of what philosophy was.
11

For the postmodern philosopher like Rorty, then, philosophy is
clearly a product of culture, and what philosophy is, is also a matter of
culture. There is no one model or one approach into which all philosophical
knowledge can be placed or to which all philosophical knowledge aspires.
But the position of the postmodernist, such as Rorty, is not just that
there is no transhistorical or ahistorical conception of philosophy, or that
there are no essences or natures outside of cultures and contexts which
philosophy should seek. It is also the case that, if philosophy is contextually
determined, then what counts as reasonable, or reason, or a good
argument, is also contextually determined; there are no universal standards
of rationality. Terms like objectivity and true do not mean what the
moderns took them to mean. Objectivity does not mean corresponding to
what there is
12
, but a property of theories which, having been thoroughly
discussed, are chosen by a consensus of rational discussants.
13
Truth is
not a correspondence between a statement and reality, but is the product of
the widest consensus or agreement within our set of social practices. (Thus,
for Rorty, we cannot provide proofs, only explanations and narratives.)
According to Rorty, then, we are fools if we spend our time looking
for some neutral, universal conception of reason, or of truth, or of human
nature, or essences.
This critique seems to be particularly corrosive of ethical theory.
14

For example, Rorty finds the language of universal human rights at best
question begging, and at worst incapable of any clear justification; it is
simply an ideological approach that appeals to those, like him, who are
liberals living in the West. There is no external justification of rights or
argument or proof requiring the equal consideration of others. Instead,
Rorty says that we need sentimental education
15
an education of the
sentiments so that people come to see the world less in terms of us and
them or, at least, so that they are willing to enlarge the sphere of us, and
thus extend their moral communities. The aim of ethics is not to construct a
theory of the good or the right, but to promote solidarity. Instead of
seeking argument and proof in ethics, then, we should try to awaken or
educate the sentiments. To the extent that we do so, Rorty writes, there is
moral progress.
If the postmodern view is correct in its critique of modern
philosophy and in its recognition of the place of historicity, context, and
interpretation, then the modern claim that philosophy somehow transcends
its origins and is not essentially a product of the culture in which it arises,
simply fails. This, postmoderns would note, is simply to inject humility and
perspective into the juggernaut that the modern view has been. Philosophy
emerges from culture. We should henceforth focus on philosophies rather
than Philosophy, so that our philosophical investigations will be more
modest, but also more respectful, of other cultures and traditions outside our
own cultures of origin.

CRITICISMS OF POSTMODERN VIEWS

Is this generic postmodern view plausible? There is of course a great danger
in talking of the postmodern view, since the accounts that one finds in
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Cixous, Foucault, Rorty and others vary
widely indeed. Still, it is fair to say that there are two parts to this approach:
its critique of modernity, and its own positive view.
Clearly, postmodern views have their advantages. They draw our
attention to problems in modern thought, such as the emphasis on the
powers of human reason and the exclusion of any role for the sentiments in
knowledge. Moreover, by focusing on particulars rather than universal
principles, postmodernism reminds us that certain features of reality have
been long marginalized or overlooked (e.g., the experience of non-western
cultures, of women, and of propertyless classes). Postmodernists such as
Rorty are oriented towards practice and the practical. Moreover, because of
its attention to particulars, to difference, and to the marginalized,
postmodernism seeks to be open to diversity, whereas modern philosophies
which seem to focus on a totalizing or a reductionist approach
presumably were not.
But postmodernism has been severely and extensively criticized
itself. In general, its arguments against modernity have been challenged for
being inconclusive, inconsistent, or based on over-generalizations.
Thus when we look at Rortys views on ethics and human rights,
for example, we find that his own positive account seems to be at least as
problematic as the views he challenges.
For example, it is certainly true that philosophical demonstrations
are far from the most effective tools to address front line (ethical) conflict.
But this does not mean that they have no role. And while Rortys appeal to
sentimental education is not without its benefits, it is far from an adequate
alternative.
An ethical response cannot be just a feeling that what we are doing
is appropriate to the situation; we must believe that we must do something

in this situation and this requires justification, argument, and proof. By
itself, nothing follows from feeling; one might show compassion in a
particular case, but one might just as well (depending on ones sentiments)
show indifference. Besides, the feeling of compassion can be acted out in
different ways; some people focus on the immediate needs of the suffering
individual, others may try to address what caused the suffering, and so on.
And if what is central is ones own feeling or sentiment, then how can we
call on others to take an ethical position to be in solidarity? Such a
postmodern approach results in emotivism and in ethical confusion.
16

There also seems to be a deep-rooted inconsistency in Rortys
ethics. Presumably, the aim of sentimental education is to make us more
aware, not just differently aware. If Rortys sentimental education is
indeed an education, then there must better and worse ways of
understanding the world for which reasons need to be given. Rorty does not,
however, seem to recognize this. (And, as we will see below, there is no
inconsistency in promoting sentimental education and yet also insisting on
giving reasons and proof.)
Though Rorty rejects the charge, there do seem to be grounds for
saying that his position is relativistic and some would hold that
postmodernism as a whole is not only relativistic, but, as a result of this,
fundamentally conservative, because it can provide no clear argument to
challenge cultural norms or the status quo.
The preceding criticisms are, of course, at a very high level of
generality, and there have been responses to them. Nevertheless, at the very
least, it seems plausible to say that the postmodern approach is problematic.
Even if a postmodern philosopher can respond to these criticisms, one might
still argue that there are arguments for both modernism and postmodernism;
that there are reasons for and against the notion of philosophy as embedded
in, and emerging from, culture; and that modernism and postmodernism,
as philosophical approaches, are on a par.

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW: RECOVERING MODERNITY

Are we, then, at a stalemate?
I would argue that there is another critical approach to modernism
that avoids at least some of the challenges to postmodernism and yet retains
several of modernisms central principles. In this way, we can speak of
philosophy as emerging from culture and never being separate from it and,
at the same time, of modernism still having an important place and still
being able to make an important contribution in a world where we recognize
the pluralistic character of philosophy.

The Model of Critical History

At approximately the same time as hermeneutics was being developed by
thinkers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Alexander von
Humboldt (17691859), and Friedrich Ast (1778-1841), we find significant
critical reflection on history by British idealist philosophers. For example,
in his Presuppositions of Critical History (1874), F.H. Bradley (1846-1924)
raised a number of fundamental questions about history and the role of the
historian. No doubt influenced by German Biblical scholarship and criticism
(and perhaps, indirectly, by Biblical hermeneutics), Bradley argued that
(historical) texts do not stand on their own, but must be interpreted and
evaluated from the perspective of the historian. History, then, must be
critical it cannot pretend just to seek to provide a copy or mirror of
what happened in the past. The historian must select from the available data
and, in the process, must also be aware of the presuppositions of the
approach she or he brings to the selection process or historical enquiry.
Bradley argued that it is the historian and the historians judgement
that is the basis for history; The historian ... is the real criterion.
17
Bradley
does not deny that there are facts; he simply rejects the view that these facts
exist independently of the historian and are there for scholars just to
collect and repeat. While Bradleys position is not (narrowly) historicist, it
recognises the importance of understanding historical events within their
contexts, and that the historian is engaging in a normative, and not just a
descriptive, activity.
Bradleys contemporary, Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923) took an
even more cautious and sceptical view. When confronted with mechanistic
accounts of history or accounts that emphasized the fundamental role of
great individuals, Bosanquet was struck by their fragmentary and dead
quality. He was suspicious of any history qua narrative or qua chronicle of
the contingent events of the past, which proposed to give a total
explanation
18
and he was also suspicious of the view of the historian as
one who provides an explanation of the minds and natures of great men as
if he was Gods spy.
19

We see this critical approach to history in R.G. Collingwood
(18891943) as well. Influenced by Bradley
20
, Benedetto Croce
21
(though
he rejected many of Croces views
22
) and, later in life, by Wilhelm Dilthey,
Collingwood is best known for his The Idea of History (posthumously
published in 1946). Here, Collingwood develops some of the insights of the
idealist tradition by insisting that historians focus on thought that is, on
what was going through the minds of the historical actors at the time.
Collingwood argued that All history is the history of thought ... and
therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historians
own mind
23
; the scientific historian reenacts the evidence making the
thoughts of his subject [i.e., the historical actor] his own
24
and, thereby,
comes not merely to understand the reasons for, but knows, what happened.
Collingwood also argued for a closer relation between history and
philosophy than was generally held, and insisted that philosophy must
understand itself as a historical discipline. Philosophys task was to
articulate the absolute presuppositions characteristic of each age or way of

thinking, and the truth and falsity of philosophical claims can and must be
determined only be understanding them in their original context.
Collingwood provides another important methodological insight
claiming that philosophy rests on a logic of question and answer.
25
(It is
interesting that Hans-Georg Gadamer sees a link between Collingwoods
view and Gadamers own logic of question and answer, which he develops
in Wahrheit und Methode [Truth and Method].
26
) Thus, in order to
understand what exactly a philosopher said or meant, we need to see the
question that she or he sought to answer. Collingwood writes that Every
statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question
27
, and
that In order to find out [a philosophers] meaning you must also know
what the question was . . . to which the thing he [or she] has said or written
was meant as an answer.
28
(This also suggests that genuine disagreement
may be less common that we might think, for two propositions do not
contradict each other unless they are answers to the same question.
29
)
Collingwoods method is, in a sense, backward looking (and hence reflects
a kind of hermeneutics), but it is also forward looking, for it provides a way
of pursuing future enquiries on a topic. And this, together with the theory of
re-enactment, shows us the importance and the role of context and culture in
historical knowledge that is nevertheless consistent with a rejection of
relativism, subjectivism, and historicism.
30

I have outlined here what has been called critical history, but this
approach is not idiosyncratic or sui generis, and it is particularly congenial
with doing the history of philosophy. With elements of both empiricism and
rationalism, and of both objectivity and subjectivity, this critical view is
also quite modern. Yet it anticipates and addresses many of the criticisms
later raised by postmodernists against modernism.

Lessons from Critical History

How does the preceding model of critical history help to see the place of
modernity in contemporary philosophy?
In the first instance, this model recognises that certain elements of
modernism are problematic. It rejects attempts to understand history and,
in light of Collingwoods remarks on the relation of philosophy to history,
philosophy in abstraction from specific, concrete concerns; historical truth
is not out there in the world, waiting to be discovered by the scholar.
Critical history insists on knowing the particular situation and understanding
the underlying issues in order to make sense of historical and philosophical
claims. It is, like many postmodern views, an approach that is sensitive to
context taking account of the perspective of the person carrying out the
investigation, and the situation in which it is being carried out. The logic (or
dialectic) of question and answer is based upon just this insight.
But there is more to critical history than this. While it does not see
tradition and custom as providing a last word, critical history does hold
that they provide essential insights, and it sees them as containing truths that
need to be recognized in arriving at a more complete account of an event.
Critical history would certainly challenge the foundationalist
model of reason and argument that knowledge can be had only by starting
from self-evident or indubitable premises and using deductive modes of
argument. Hence, its employment of question and answer and re-
enactment. It also sees investigation and analysis as collective processes
as social practices. Thus, it would reject the view that, in our knowledge of
the world or of what is of value, the individual historian or his or her
subject is central. Proponents of critical history challenge modern
tendencies to individualism and atomism. In these ways, then, a critical
history and, by extension, a critical philosophy would call into question
some of the key assumptions of modernism.
Yet a theory of critical history satisfies many of the principles of
modernism.
Critical history holds that there is objective truth and knowledge
though it may be more of a challenge to arrive at them than many moderns
have assumed. It is through the model of re-enactment and the method of
question and answer that critical history enables one to reach truth.
Consequently, in critical history, the historian looks at the particulars and
attempts to rethink the thoughts of the historical actors and, by doing so,
achieves a (more comprehensive) view of reality.
Thus, while critical history is attentive to context and contingency,
and is aware of the role of the particular interests of the historian, it is not
obviously historicist (as postmodern views tend to be), for it does not reduce
truth claims to statements about what is true in a context. Indeed, while
there is no single method across the disciplines that can be used to arrive at
objective truth, critical history does hold that there are arguments whose
validity is not limited to the cultures, traditions and practices in which they
first arise. There can be absolute, universal truths but the critical historian
(and the critical philosopher) recognise that these are not easily reached and,
indeed, can only be reached once we have a comprehensive grasp of reality.
And, underlying its method, there is a commitment to reason, coherence,
evidence, and argument, and to the claim that there are truths that all should
see, even if some do not.
There is an important place for the subject in this view though,
again, it is reducible neither to the purely modern view nor to a postmodern
view. Instead, it is a view that sees individuals as ultimately intelligible only
when in relation to other individuals i.e., when seen as being what some
have called the concrete universal.
Finally, this view is broadly optimistic. Admittedly, it does not
claim that history is essentially and inevitably progressive from moment to
moment, and it rejects the view that individuals can be passive and
unengaged in the world, comfortable in the knowledge that all will
gradually, and inevitably, improve. Nevertheless, it does hold that, overall,
there is progress, and that the elimination of incompleteness or conflict in

ideas leads increasingly to a more rational conception and development
of the world.
The approach adopted by critical history one which we may
describe as a broadly idealist approach acknowledges that modernity fails
in certain respects. But idealism also affirms that these failures are just what
we should expect that coherence and consistency are goals to be achieved,
not simply features of the world as it is. The solution to this incoherence and
inconsistency, so to speak, is not to abandon the modern view, but to
recover it by addressing its tensions and contradictions, thereby arriving at a
more comprehensive and complete understanding of the world that reflects
unity amid diversity. For such a result to be attained, then, there needs to be
a recognition of diversity and cultures, and a recognition that philosophy
itself is a product of culture that can, in turn, inform and challenge culture.
What would this approach imply, for example, for ethics? How
could an ethics retain characteristics of modernism and yet also be seen as
emerging from, and being dependent on, culture?
Consider the view of the idealist, Bosanquet. Bosanquet like
many of the British idealists, though not all wrote little on ethical theory,
focusing more on questions of practical ethics and particularly on questions
of social and public policy and of education. Bosanquet held that what was
needed most in the contemporary world was concrete moral action i.e.,
practice and conduct that focussed on specific moral, social, cultural, and
political issues and the development of the moral character of the
individual moral agent. Thus, he emphasised moral training and education,
and he repeatedly wrote on and spoke of the importance of being adequate
to the situation.
31
He would have had little hesitation in endorsing a kind of
sentimental education, for feelings as well as reason are relevant to moral
action. As Bosanquets teacher Edward Caird wrote: if, in order that reason
may rule, all such impulses have to be driven out, reason will rule in an
empty house.
32

Yet Bosanquet did not reject moral theory he simply recognised
that its place was not to address concrete issues directly and immediately.
And while Bosanquet, in his applied philosophy, focussed on the specifics
of situations, he in no way rejected moral objectivism. Underlying his views
on moral education and moral action, Bosanquet held that there is a moral
theory which focuses on human flourishing, and which has both
deontological and teleological elements. It has, moreover, basic principles
concerning human nature, for culture and tradition, the value of the
individual and its ends, the existence of a common good, a recognition of
the role of reason, and criteria for moral progress. He acknowledged,
however, that our knowledge of such principles is, as it were, in progress.
These principles were manifest in traditions and culture and, hence, one
ought to be aware of them; indeed, Bosanquet insisted that tradition and
culture often serve as important indicators of these principles at the various
stages of moral development.
Like the modern philosophers, then, Bosanquet held that there were
moral principles and proof of them that moral action was rational action
and that what is right or good is something that all rational beings can come
to recognise. But Bosanquet would not claim that any particular articulation
of a (moral) law could be absolute and applied to all rational beings at all
times. Again, the value of the individual was not to be found in that being as
distinct and separate from others, but through though not necessarily in
ones relations to them.
Like postmodern philosophers, then, Bosanquet had an expansive
view concerning what is relevant to and appropriate in ethics, and he was
critical of abstract models of how people should act. Moreover, our
standards of rationality, argument, and proof clearly reflect our histories and
cultures; not surprisingly, then, he was also critical of a correspondence
theory of truth and of justification. We can also find in his work reasons for
why we should enlarge our moral communities and why we should
awaken and educate the sentiments.
Unlike the postmoderns, however, Bosanquet would insist on the
existence of standards of rationality and on a robust account of objectivity
and truth, and hold that there are proofs and principles in ethics and, of
course, in epistemology and metaphysics that are more than consensus. He
admits that, when it comes to ethics, proofs i.e., moral theory cannot
settle many concrete moral conflicts; one cannot stop evil just by arguing
against it. Nevertheless, if one is going to try to stop evil, one needs to know
what the nature and goal and purpose of morality is, and why it is
important.
33

Bosanquet held that one can, in short, adopt many of the principles
of modernism as goals to be achieved while, at the same time, recognise that
much needs to be done to realise them, and that, in the meantime, we can
rightly be satisfied with less.
The preceding model which I have called the model of critical
history has had its critics. Nevertheless, it acknowledges the challenges to
modernism especially the relation of philosophy to culture and tradition
while, at the same time, recognises the positive elements in it. It reminds us,
then, that modernism has features that are necessary for any view even the
postmodern view to be plausible, and it shows us how modernity has a
place as we negotiate the transition to a global era.

CONCLUSION

In a world in which there is an increasing global awareness, as well as a
growing recognition of different ways of knowing and ways of living, the
paradigmatic modern approaches to philosophy no longer seem
appropriate to the task. There is, moreover, good reason to believe that
philosophy emerges from culture that philosophys relation to culture is
not a merely incidental and contingent matter. The culture or tradition from
which we come tells us about both the meaning of the questions that we

raise and seek to answer, and the methods or ways in which we seek to
answer them.
Does anything, then, remain of modernity in the transition to a
global era? I have claimed that a critique of modernity does not entail the
validity of postmodern approaches for example, that while each
philosophy emerges from a particular culture, it can never separate itself
from it, and that there is no objectivity or truth. To show this, I have drawn
on some of the insights characteristic of critical history and, more broadly,
of late nineteenth century British idealism. Such a view challenges some of
the key theses of modernity while, at the same time, embraces others. Thus,
philosophy can be recognised as emerging from culture and yet, because of
the possibility of going beyond the particular and local, can seek to satisfy
some of the goals of modernity. In the current transition to a global era,
such a model of philosophy may well provide a way of allowing us to draw
on the resources provided by various cultures and traditions while, at the
same time, giving assurance that all cultures can and ought to form a
common cause. Only in so doing will humanity be adequately prepared to
address the many challenges arising in an increasingly pluralistic world.

St Francis Xavier University,
Antigonish, NS, Canada

NOTES

1
For more on this, see Culture and Pluralism in Philosophy, my
Introduction to Philosophy, Culture, and Pluralism (Aylmer, QC: Editions
du scribe, 2002), especially pp. x-xii.
2
Some would insist, for example, that political philosophy in the United
States frequently reflects assumptions and principles that are virtually
uniquely American.
3
Of course, such claims about how philosophy emerges from and is
affected by culture are quite consistent with claims about how philosophy
affects culture. For a discussion of this, see my Philosophy, Culture, and
Pluralism, pp. viii-ix.
4
What follows is a generic view of what modernity has been commonly
understood to involve. It does not claim that all modern philosophers or,
indeed, any held all of these principles, although the more of them one
adopts, the more plausibly one is what many call a modern.
5
See their Dialectic of the Enlightenment [1944], tr. John Cumming (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1972).
6
Another modern (enlightenment) theory which is alleged to be
paradigmatically rationalistic is the natural law theory of John Locke. Locke
writes: The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges

every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but
consult it Two Treatises of Government, Second Treatise, section 6.
7
See Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1979). See also Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigations, section 19: To imagine a language means to imagine a form
of life.
8
Jean-Franois Lyotard, La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir
(Paris: Minuit, 1979) [The Postmodern Condition, tr. Geoff Bennington and
Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. xxiv].
9
Raymond Geuss, Richard Rorty at Princeton: Personal Recollections,
Arion, 15 (2008); internet text at http://www.bu.edu/arion/Geuss.htm
10
For more on this point, Geuss refers us to Rortys 1984 paper, The
Historiography of Philosophy [in Philosophy in History: Essays in the
Historiography of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984)].
11
Geuss, Richard Rorty at Princeton: Personal Recollections.
12
Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 339.
13
Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 338.
14
In his 1981 After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press), Alasdair MacIntyre draws on some of this criticism: he writes that a
demand for proof in ethics is odd, if not impossible; that modern ethics
combines many cultural traditions and norms and leads to relativism or
emotivism or skepticism; and proposes that we should focus on moral
practices, the traditions in which they appear, and on people of practical
wisdom. (This is the basis for MacIntyres resurrection of Aristotelian
virtue ethics.)
15
Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality, in On Human
Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, ed. S. Shute and S. Hurley (New
York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 111-134. See also Rortys Solidarity or
Objectivity, in his Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 21-34.
16
For a development of this criticism, see my Solidarity and Human
Rights, in Philosophical Theory and the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights, ed. William Sweet (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,
2003), pp. 213-231.
17
F.H. Bradley, The Presuppositions of Critical History, ed. with
introduction and commentary by Lionel Rubinoff (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1968), p. 78.


18
See Bernard Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value
(London, Macmillan, 1912). While Bosanquet was somewhat skeptical of
the discipline of history that history was the doubtful story of successive
events [which] cannot amalgamate with the complete interpretation of social
mind, of art, or of religion (p. 79) his objection was not that history could
not be done. It was that histories when they are understood simply as a
series of contingent events in a narrative ignore the general; they are not a
concrete universal. And so Bosanquet proposes that, rather than concern
ourselves with histories that focus on listing events, we turn to art and
religion, which bring together the particular and the general. Thus, he could
write a history of aesthetic of the development of aesthetic consciousness
in and through particular works of art without being interested in a history
of art itself.
19
Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value, p. 79.
20
Bradleys view, R.G. Collingwood later wrote, was a Copernican
revolution in the theory of historical knowledge. See Collingwood, The
Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 240.
21
Croce, Teoria e stria della storiografia (Theory and History of
Historiography), tr. Douglas Ainslie (London: George G. Harrap & Co.,
1921).
22
See Croces Philosophy of History, Hibbert Journal, Vol. 19 (1921), pp.
263-278.
23
Collingwood, The Idea of History, p. 215.
24
David Boucher, The Significance of R. G. Collingwoods Principles of
History, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 58, No. 2 (1997), pp. 309-
330, at p. 326.
25
Collingwood, The New Leviathan or Man, Society, Civilization, and
Barbarism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1942), p. 74.
26
Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzuge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik
(Tubingen: JCB Mohr Verlag [Paul Siebeck], 1960); See the English
translation, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), p. 333.
27
Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940),
p. 23.
28
Collingwood, Autobiography, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), p. 31.
29
Collingwood, Autobiography, p. 33
30
For claims that Collingwood is adopting a form, of historicism, see Leo
Strauss, On Collingwoods Philosophy of History, Review of Metaphysics,
Vol. 5 (1952), pp. 559-586; Louis O. Mink, Collingwoods Historicism: A

Dialectic of Process, and Collingwoods Dialectic of History, in Louis O.
Mink, Historical Understanding, ed. Brian Fay, Eugene O. Golob, and
Richard T. Vann (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 223-45, 246-
85.
31
See Bernard Bosanquet, Some Suggestions in Ethics (London: Macmillan,
1918), p. 146.
32
See Edward Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers,
2 vols. (Glasgow: J. MacLehose, 1904), Vol. 2, p. 125. (Caird is here
discussing Stoicism, in comparison with Kantian ethics.)
33
For a more extensive discussion here, see my Social Policy and
Bosanquets Moral Philosophy, in Collingwood Studies, Vol. VI (1999),
pp. 127-146.
RETHINKING PHILOSOPHY IN AN ORIENTAL WAY

Gholamreza Aavani

The theme Rethinking Philosophy is of utmost importance, because it
concerns directly or indirectly the destiny of philosophy itself and
consequently the destiny of humankind, particularly at this present critical
juncture.
Rethinking is embedded and inherent in the very nature of
philosophy if it is not to turn into a fragile and stereotyped dogma. But the
way or the method of rethinking is particularly important. As a matter of
fact, it is all that matters. So the all important question is: How should we
rethink philosophy? My solution is that we can rethink philosophy in an
oriental way. In my view, this is the only way, or at least, the best way that
can save us from the blind alley that Western philosophy is confronted with
and which as philosophy the West has always ignored.
It is almost a platitude to say that philosophy is a Greek term
meaning the love of Sophia or Wisdom. But the etymological derivation of
this word has come to signify that philosophy is Greek, not only in
nomenclature, but also by birthright. This is what most books on the history
of western philosophy inculcate. The idea perhaps might be traced back to
Aristotle, who sought the origin of every philosophical issue in his Greek
predecessors, whom he considered as crude and presumptuous physilogoi
and estimated himself as the culmination of the philosophical enterprise in
his days. Non-Greeks or Berbers were moreover regarded as below the
dignity of being considered as philosophers. This has been more or less the
attitude of Westerners with regard to philosophy, at least in academic
philosophical circles. Hegel, the father of modem philosophical
historiography and the analogue of Aristotle in our age, could be quoted as
an example. Surveying the whole gamut and vista of philosophy over the
millennia in the eastern lands, whether China, India or Persia, he was not
able to spot a single philosopher, even of a diminutive stature.
The Islamic civilization was the intellectual heir of Greek culture
and civilization. In an unprecedented translation movement, nearly all the
great Greek philosophical and scientific works, together with all their major
commentaries, were translated into Arabic mainly in a famous institution
called Baytal Hikmah or the House of Wisdom. To give but one single
instance of the extent of this translation movement, suffice it here to
mention that all the works of Aristotle (with the possible exception of the
Politics) were translated into Arabic for the first time, and Muslims, in
possession of this vast intellectual treasury, together with the cultural and
intellectual bequest of other civilizations, started to rethink philosophy in a
fresh way. They did not take the philosophical presuppositions of Greek
philosophers for granted or as self-evident. Rethinking Greek philosophy
profoundly, they came out with new solutions to which we allude for
exemplification to certain instances.
Avicenna (980-1037 CE), one of the great Muslim sage-
philosophers unlike Averroes, known in the Latin West and also by Dante
in his Divine Comedy as the Commentator did not consider Aristotle as
the culmination and the last word in philosophy, although he paid deep
respect to him. He envisaged an alternative system of philosophy, one other
than the Aristotelian, while he was composing his magnum opus Kitab ash-
shifa (translated into Latin as Sufficientia) at the age of forty. In the
prologue of this book, Avicenna makes it clear that he has compiled this
work according to the principles laid down in Peripatetic philosophy. But at
the same time he mentions that he has expounded philosophy

in a manner more consonant with human nature and as dictated by my
express judgment, in which I have not taken into consideration the
views of my partners in this art (i.e., Peripatetic philosophers). Unlike
my other books, I have not been afraid to oppose them. I mean the
book I have written entitled the oriental philosophy. As to the
present book, it is more detailed and elaborate and I have tried to
corroborate the views of my partners in Peripatetic philosophy. But
he who desires to know the truth without any taint and blemish
should consult my other book.

From Avicennas statement, it is evident that he had already, in his maturity,
devised another framework for philosophy which he had designated as
Oriental Philosophy, and had complied a work under the said appellation.
The book is no longer extant but, fortunately, the first part of the book
(which comprises the introduction) has been recently recovered and
published. In the introduction, again Avicenna complains about the bigotry
of those who study philosophy with the eye of fanaticism, desire, habit, and
attachment. He has no hesitation to divulge his differences with the people
instructed in Greek books: We have no fear if we reveal to the
philosophers something other than what we have written for the common
people the common people who have been enamored of the Peripatetic
philosophy and who think that no one has enjoyed the Divine Mercy except
them.
Of course, Avicenna admits that Aristotle had discovered many
things that his teachers and predecessors did not know: he distinguished
between various sciences, he arranged sciences in a better manner than
before, he discovered the truth of many subjects he was superior to those
who came before him; but those who came after him should have brought to
order the confusion in his thought, and should have mended whatever
cracks they found in his structure. Those who came after him could not,
however, transcend what they had inherited from him. Bigotry over
whatever he had not found became a shield, so that they remained bound to

Rethinking Philosophy in an Oriental Way 139
the past and found no opportunity to make use of their intellects. Avicenna
again stresses the point that:

And often we gained knowledge from non-Greek sources. . .. Under
these conditions we longed to write a book containing the important
aspects of real knowledge. Only the person who has thought much,
has meditated deeply and is not devoid of the excellence of
intellectual intuition can make deductions from it. We have composed
this book for ourselves that is for those who are like ourselves. As for
the commoners who have to do with philosophy, we have provided in
the Kitab al-Shifa more than they need ... soon in the supplement we
shall present whatever is suitable for them beyond that which they
have seen up to this time. And in all conditions we seek the assistance
of the Unique God.

Fantastic guesswork has been done by good orientalists who were not as
good philosophers about identifying the nature and substance of Avicennas
Oriental Philosophy. L. Gauthier, identifies it with Tassawuf (Sufism)
which he calls la tendance mystique de lorient. A.M. Goichon identifies
it with the medical school of Gundishapur and its connection with
experimental tendencies. L. Gardet considers it a more Pythagorean
Platonic, Plotinian and less Aristotleian strand in Avicennas philosophy.
Pines, more justly pinpoints the arbitration of Avicenna between the oriental
and occidental philosophers in his non-extant work Kitab al-Insaf (The
Book of Equitable Arbitration), which was pillaged among other works of
Avicenna during the sack of Isfahan by the Ghaznavid emperor Mahmud,
and which concerned adjudication regarding thousands of philosophical
issues at odds between orientals and the occidentals.
Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, more aptly consider the
word Oriental to be a symbolic term signifying the realm of light rather
than just a geographical designation. The orient (Sharq) symbolically
alludes, and is etymologically related, to Ishraq (illumination) and hence
signifies the orient of light. It means a fleeing away from the prison of
sense and matter, of the journeying toward the realm of the spirit and the
Divine. A close study of the later works of Avicenna corroborates this view
and reveals that oriental philosophy is not a ratiocinative, abstract
thinking, but it is more bolstered by a sort of enlightenment, unveiling or
intellectual intuition, akin to what we find in Eastern traditions.
A more glorious instance is Suhrawardi (1153-1191 CE), the
founder of the famous school of Illumination (Hikmah al-Ishraq) which, as
we said, is symbolically connected with the east or the orient of light, just as
the West, where the sun sets, is symbol of spiritual darkness. Suhrawardi
has written many works and treatises in which he has expounded both the
essentials and the details of the oriental philosophy both in Arabic and in
Persian, his mother tongue. His most famous book in oriental philosophy is
The Philosophy of Illumination (Hikmah al-Ishraq), which can also be
rendered as The Philosophy of Orientals, which might be considered a
continuation and the culmination of Avicennas oriental philosophy. Here
we shall point out some of the most essential features of the illuminationist
school of Suhrawardi as laid down in his Hikmah al-Ishraq. The first point
to be mentioned with regard to Suhrewardis conception of Hikmah
(translated as philosophy, but also meaning sagacity and wisdom, and
equivalent of the Greek Sophia) is that it surpasses the bounds of apace
and time. As against the Aristotelian conception, it is neither Eastern nor
Western. Each seeker after truth has a share in the Divine light which is
Hikmah. Everyone who exerts himself to attain it, shall have a taste of it. It
is not the monopoly of a single race, nation or community, otherwise the
gate of the Divine Mercy would be closed. God, the bestower of knowledge
and wisdom is not so stingy as to deprive certain people of His eternal
bounty. The worst age is the one in which the itinerary of thoughts has
been cut off and the gate of revelations has been closed.
Suhrawardi again has a new theory with regard to the development
of the history of philosophy which itself reveals another aspect of his
Ishraqi (illuminationist) wisdom. Philosophy was revealed by God to
mankind through the prophet Hermes (identified with the prophet Enoch in
Judaism and Christianity and with the prophet Idris in Islam). This wisdom
was then divided into two branches: one going to Persia and the East and
the other was bequeathed to Egypt and thence to the Greece and the West.
These two sources that is the East and the West exemplified by Greece
and Persia finally merged together in the Islamic philosophy. Among the
Western sages he mentions Hermes, Agathedemon (Seth), Asclepius,
Pythagoras, some of the pre-Socratics, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle. Among the Eastern sages he names certain Persian priest-kings
such as Kayumarth, Furaydun, Kai Khusraw, and, strangely enough, the
Buddha. Among the Muslim sages he classifies the well-known
philosophers such as Farabi and Avicenna who occupy a secondary rank
compared to such great mystics as Bayazid Bastami, Hallaj, Junayd and
Abu Sahl Tustari.
A second feature of illuminationist philosophy is its emphasis on
symbolism. The truth cannot be conveyed except through signs and symbols
(ramz). Symbolism is the language of being itself. Ramz can also be
construed as an allusion. The procedure of the master of philosophy and
the Imam of wisdom, the Divine Plato, was the same and the sages who
preceded him like Hermes, the father of philosophy, followed the same
path. Since the sages of the past, because of the ignorance of the masses
expressed their sayings in secret symbols and the refutations made against
them have concerned the exterior of these sayings, not their real intentions.
Suhrawardi vehemently reprimands Aristotle for not
comprehending the real significance of these symbols and for having
reduced them to their literal and outward meaning.
A third feature of illuminationist philosophy is the construal of
being as light. According to Suhrawardi, all reality is nothing but light

Rethinking Philosophy in an Oriental Way 141
which possesses various degrees of intensity. It needs no definition, for to
define is to explicate the less evident by the more evident and nothing is
more evident than light. light is evident by itself and by manifesting makes
every thing evident. Needless to say the ontology of light is a true
phenomenology and evades such abstract concepts as the secondary
intelligibles. According to Suhrawardi, the phenomenology of light had
been at the core of the sacred doctrines of the ancient sages.
Another main feature of Suhrawardis oriental philosophy is that it
has vertical and longitudinal rather than horizontal and latitudinal
dimensions. In other words, it is hierarchical in the sense that some kinds of
philosophy are superior in worth and dignity than others. The best kind of
philosophy is the one based on direct intellectual intuition or sapiential
wisdom based on the formal training of the soul. It is founded on direct
intellectual vision, contemplation and spiritual illumination; hence it cannot
be destroyed by the doubts of skeptics.
Following Plato, he calls this sapiential wisdom theosis (Taalluh)
and the possessor of such wisdom a theosopher (Hakim mutalliha), He,
moreover, includes all the eastern sages and most of the Presocratics in this
category, but also the semimythical ancient Persian kings such as Jamasp,
Farshaushtar, Buzurgmehr and others. But strangely enough his list
comprises all the great sufi saints of Islam which means that for Suhrawardi
authentic Sufism, which is based on direct intellectual vision of reality and
on purification of the soul and ultimate illumination and union, is a pure
oriental metaphysics.
Next in the hierarchy of philosophers are the adherents of
Peripatetic philosophy. Peripateticism is a kind of discursive philosophy,
based on ratiocination and conceptual abstraction and on deductive
inference. It is not based on direct intellectual vision. The master of this
kind of discursive philosophy is Aristotle, and his followers in Islam Farabi
and Avicenna. Suhrawardi blames Aristotle for having reduced the
sapiential theosis of his master Plato to pure ratiocination and discursive
philosophy. For Suhrawardi, the philosopher par excellence is Plato who
has merged into a unique synthesis both the intuitive and the discursive
philosophy. He claims that he has done the same synthesis in Islamic
philosophy.
This latter distinction between the intuitive ( la Suhrawardi) and
the discursive is very significant for rethinking philosophy in an oriental
manner. The sapiential wisdom is not based on ratiocination and
conceptualization alone, but it is primarily based on spiritual realization,
direct inner intellectual disclosure. If philosophy is the search after truth, it
should ultimately end in the realization of the truth and that is what is
underlined in all traditional schools of oriental philosophy. But we should at
the same time bear in mind that, for Suhrawardi, this oriental philosophy
does not merely have geographical significance. We should not forget that
Plato for him was the master of oriental philosophy.
If Aristotle and Hegel deprived the non-Greeks and Easterners from
having tasted the flavor of philosophy, this would mean that they have had a
very narrow conception of philosophy and have reduced philosophy to its
discursive connotation. But if we take the sapiential philosophy based on
direct intellectual intuition and spiritual illumination and the science of
realization, then we can see all its luminaries in the East: in China, in India,
in Japan, in Korea, in Persia. But if we take philosophy in the pure
deductive, syllogistic, discursive and ratiocinative sense, then we could say
it started in Greece and continued in its cultural inheritor, that is Europe.
Discursive philosophy, if not bolstered by the sapiential wisdom, will end in
skepticism. Moreover knowledge of the deeper realities, such as knowledge
of the Self, of the ultimate reality, knowledge of the universal principles, of
the Absolute, of the Atma, is only possible through sapiential wisdom;
Discursive philosophy only roams far aroud them, but is never able to
attain.
Islamic philosophy continued the path delineated by Suhrawardi,
and its illustrious career could boast of such great sage philosophers as
Mulla Sadra, whose philosophical system called al-Hikmah-aIMuta aliyah
was the culmination of the unique synthesis between the ratiocinative and
sapiential philosophy.
The lesson which Suhrawardi has to teach us is a total revision in
our conception of philosophy. The history of philosophy in the West has
been a gradual distancing from the sapiential wisdom even in its Greek
phase. We see this decline even in one generation and its total denigration
by the Sophists. One might see certain glimpses of philosophy in the
medieval sages, but had Suhrawardi been alive to see the flourishing of
modem philosophy, he would have seen the correctness of his hypothesis
that philosophy not propped by sapiential wisdom would end in skepticism
and in nihilism. He would have seen most of the great achievements of
modem philosophy as trivial, not being based on the search and the
realization of the truth.
We saw Suhrawardi mentioning the Buddha among the great sages
of oriental wisdom. Had he lived longer he was martyred at the age of 37
to study the Indian and Chinese classics such as the Upanishads and the
Tao Te Ching, he would again have been much amazed at the depth,
plenitude and richness of their sapiential wisdom and he would be more
confirmed in his hypothesis that true sapiential wisdom has been and if
not harassed by the torrential skepticism of the West is still oriental.

Iranian Institute of Philosophy
Teheran

ORDINARY LANGUAGE ANALYSIS AND AFRICAN
PHILOSOPHY: SOME COMMENTS ON METHOD

Moses k

The systematic analysis of ordinary, everyday language use in culture can
significantly consolidate and enlarge philosophical traditions. This is
universalizable to all cultures of the world; it is not applicable to just non-
Western, particularly, African cultures.
1
Since language is acknowledged as a vehicle of culture, and
philosophy is definable as the systematic critique of cultures, the analysis of
language use in a culture will provide a philosophically valuable means of
examining the wisdom and life of the people in that culture. It will also
make it possible to describe a distinctive philosophical tradition for that
culture, especially where it is a traditional culture. This is moreso when it
is realized that a peoples languages, beliefs, practices and institutions are
invariably intertwined into what is known as their culture (that is, their
comprehensive design for living).
There is no doubt, therefore, that through a systematic analysis of a
peoples language, we may come to have a critical understanding of their
culture. However, there is a strong need to be cautious in using this method
as it could be inappropriately employed in specific contexts. The comments
in this paper are not on the method in itself, but on its operational prospects
and difficulties in particular cultures, using the Yorb culture as an
example. The main objective of this paper is to clear some of the obstacles
in the way of an optimally productive use of Barry Hallens proposed
linguistic approach, and indicate as he himself proposes a line of future
research.
2

In Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft and in The Good, The Bad,
and The Beautiful,
3
Barry Hallens consistent interest is in intercultural
studies, especially intercultural translation
4
. Hence, he makes a concerted
effort to find a pattern for making a distinction between m and gbgb
in Yorb language discourse along the lines of a distinction between
know and believe in English language discourse.
5
In this, and in many
other issues, the contributions of Hallen are immensely valuable. It is in
view of these contributions that Hallen, though an American citizen, is an
eminent African philosopher, in the strictest sense of that label.
6

Hallen has, also consistently, sought to use the phenomenological
approach in the philosophical study of the Yorb culture
7
. The ordinary
language method, which he has used in the two works cited above, is a
species of the phenomenological approach. It is important, however, to
recall that Anglophone ordinary language philosophers have always had

a
vast repertoire of centuries-old theories of professional academic (and
practical) philosophers as well as long traditions of commentaries on those
theories and philosophers against and within which they sought to practice
their kind of analysis. The problems and issues considered philosophically
significant in Anglophone cultures have been extensively mapped out and
discussed from various perspectives over several centuries. There was
therefore never a need for any of the analysts to go outside the universe of
academic philosophy for generating problems or distinctions to treat. Also,
the Anglophone ordinary language philosophers never needed to consult
an established translation manual (etm)
8
or some alleged sages
9
of the
cultures that they chose to analyse. Rather, they depended on their personal
mastery of the English language and individual analytical competence, such
as Austins elevated insights into the nature of certain forms of expression
in the English language.
10
This was not what Hallen did or could have done
with respect to the materials for analysis in the Yorb language culture.
Given the nascence of academic Yoruba philosophy, Hallen could
not have had the luxury of an armchair or on-campus conceptual analyst in
his application of the analytic method to Yorb concepts. Hence, he had to
go the extra phenomenological length to interrogate the culture in order to
discover some of what it contains. Hallen chose the onsgn as his point
of cultural interrogation on the concepts of knowledge and value in Yorb
culture. This choice constitutes a major part of the operational issues about
which to be cautious.
If Hallen were to undertake a similar study on the concepts of
knowledge and value in English language culture, he will certainly not
make the medical professionals (as he did with the onsgn Yorb
traditional healers, masters of medicine, herbalists, or (today) alternative
medical doctors
11
his target group or primary (nay, sole) source of
information about the ordinary uses of those concepts. It is also noteworthy
that Austin and other English ordinary language philosophers did not have
recourse to interpreters or translators in their analysis of philosophical
concepts in ordinary English usage. Similarly, they did not have to go to
some illiterate English-speaking villagers to learn how words were used, or
were to be used, in English. On the other hand, Ludwig Wittgenstein
although he lived virtually all his university life in Britain (as Hallen
almost did in Nigeria), and practiced conceptual analysis there did not
seek the services of English interpreters or sages to facilitate his work.
Rather, he worked with his native German language and culture, aided by
the competence that he had acquired in English language and culture. In that
way, he did not need an interpreter either, and he also did not require the
intervention of any group or groups of German, Austrian, or English, sages
to facilitate his work. The upshot of this is that the ideal use of the method
of ordinary language analysis requires that the analyst belong to the culture
and be a regular, conscious and competent primary user of the language
concerned, in the way that African professional philosophers use either
English or French language, and have become immersed in the
corresponding culture. Hallens use of the method of ordinary language
analysis in the works under reference cannot be said to have satisfied these
minimum requirements. The use of an interpreter reinforces the feeling that
Ordinary Language Analysis and African Philosophy 145
Sodipo, Hallens Yorb co-author of Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft,
either did not participate in the fieldwork
12
or did not wish to claim
sufficient competence in his own language as he claimed of English.
Otherwise, the research would have been less problematically conducted in
his dialect area of Yorb land, where the researchers would not have
needed an interpreter.
The use of an interpreter, rather than help, could only have
complicated matters for Hallen in his bid to get to the mind of his Yorb
discussants.
In ordinary Yorb language usage, the problematic
epistemological know-believe distinction probably does not exist as such.
In most cases, where gbgb or gbgb is correctly used, m or m
is either uncalled for as contrast, or will come to mean the same (and so be
superfluous), or will become extra-ordinary. This is why for a person
supremely fluent in the Yoruba language, Hallens questions to the
onsgn were not the sort of questions he could have asked and expected
to have been taken seriously
13
. His use of the method, as he had done, will
undoubtedly be appropriate and productive if we were concerned with
special (technical, extra-ordinary) usages of the language such as in
divination (If), folk science (gn), religious worship (sn) and ritual
(tt). In these cases, there are identifiable acknowledged specialists and
masters of the appropriate language use and practices who have to be
consulted for education and information in their respective fields. These are
babalwo (diviners/If priests), olgn (folk scientists, including herbalists
and native doctors (onsgn)), ols (deity devotees) and elgb (cultists),
respectively. Apart from their alleged professional knowledge in their fields,
the onsgn do not possess any special training, knowledge or wisdom as a
class to qualify them for the privileged role of philosophical discussants and
informants of the race on correct ordinary language usage such as Hallen
has given to them. Outside their occupational or professional settings, the
onsgn are not specialists in the Yoruba language relative to other Yoruba
persons or groups of them, such as to qualify them to be regarded as
colleagues, wise men, and satisfactory equivalents of the academic
philosopher.
14
The reason why the local people in Hallens area of
research
15
recommended the onsgn was precisely because they
mistakenly believed that Hallen was after the special knowledge of the
onsgn (to wit, gn).
16
Also, if ordinary language is ordinary language,
Hallen would certainly have done a more analytic experiment if he had
sought information about correct usage in everyday discourse from ordinary
folk in everyday contexts and walks of life. What he went to the village to
do could have been done more profitably and methodologically less
controversially if he had organized discussion meetings among various
Yorb people from diverse fields, areas and backgrounds. This would have
been a kind of focus-group discussion, akin to Austins weekly discussion
meetings in Oxford.
In Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, Hallens inquiries targeted
what the components or elements of knowledge (m) were thought to be by
the Yorb
17
(such as belief, truth, and justification, in English). In
doing this, Hallen must have believed that he was engaging in some sort of
philosophical dialogue
18
with Yorb culture. As it appears, he seems to
have structured the discussion with the onsgn in line with his supposition
that there might exist in Yorb language discourse a distinction between
m and gbgb similar to the distinction between knowledge and belief in
English.
19

The following question is important and worth asking. If the
onsgn made a mistake in their accounts or prescriptions of the correct use
of a term, how was the researcher to have known or to have pointed it out to
them? In the case of Austins weekly meetings, that was not likely to have
been a problem because the interrogators and the discussants were equally
masters of the language and did not restrict their enquiries to any one
professional or social group of English-speaking people gratuitously
regarded as experts or the wise ones in the language-culture. This problem
manifests at many points in Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, especially in
the several glaringly incorrect (not indeterminate) interpretations and
translations of the onsgns responses to Hallens questions. It is also
important to ask if the onsgn were always unanimous in their responses
to Hallens prompts, or whether they and Hallen ever disagreed on any
relevant issue in the course of their discussions.
Given the manner of his approach to the onsgn, they must have
been thoroughly and understandably flattered, and have wanted to impress
him (the white university professor of wisdom) by responding
appropriately to his prompts, even if they could not see either the point or
the wider links of the distinction he was trying to establish in ordinary
language Yorb discourse. The approach of the researcher to both the
local population and the onsgn must have been sufficiently ambiguous
and vague, or at least not really understood by the people, so as to have
misled them on the recommendations they made, especially when we
consider the generally very low level of Western education and familiarity
with academic discourse in a typical African village. If the researcher had
sought the opinion of the local people about those who understood, or
were deep in the language (wn t gbd, or wn t jinl nn
Yorb), or those who knew the wisdom of the Yorb (wn t m
gb Yorb), the most likely idea that will occur to the average Yorb
person is that some special persons with extra-ordinary powers and abilities,
rather than ordinary language competence, were intended. This is because
gbd, jinl, and mgb are not cognitively neutral expressions; they
elicit in the thought of the average Yorb something special, uncommon
and un-ordinary. It is not surprising, therefore, that the local people
recommended the onsgn, who they regarded as possessing some kind of
secret, esoteric or mysterious knowledge of nature. This however does not
make them, qua onsgn, masters of the Yorb language or culture. To
regard them, simpliciter, as masters of correct ordinary use of the language,
therefore, might be methodologically less than appropriate.
The extra effort which Hallen has had to make to try and justify his
research method
20
indicates his own dissatisfaction with, or reservations
about, the method or of the appropriateness of his use of it. However,
Hallen deserves credit for proposing the approach and for testing it in a
particular African culture. He deserves credit even more so when it is
realized that many Africans who are professional philosophers have not
done as much, if anything, for the development of African philosophy as he
has done.
21

A philosophers approach, such as Hallen proposes, to a traditional
culture requires, as a necessary condition, a firm grounding in the culture in
question. The essential aspects of this grounding are (i) a mastery of the
language of the culture in question, (ii) a full participatory immersion in the
culture, and (iii) a routine conscious working use of the language of the
culture. In this regard, Africans who are philosophers need not bemoan their
training and upbringing in European languages and cultures. All they need
do is to get back, or move forward, to being as competent in their native
languages as many of them are in those European languages, and as
knowledgeable and participatory in their own cultures as many of them are
in those European cultures. Then, they will be at a great cultural and
philosophical advantage over their European and American counterparts,
who are usually not well situated (even though many of them try very
conscientiously) to master African languages and be sufficiently
participatory in African cultures as many African intellectuals have had to
be in European languages and cultures.
Hallens analytical experiments in Yorb philosophy must be
seen, therefore, as a great challenge to African professional philosophers,
especially those of the Yorb language-culture. They can become analytic
philosophers of their own culture if they adopt the method of ordinary
language analysis, provided they are not either linguistically or culturally
deficient. It is possible that the outcome of the investigations of such
Yorb analytic philosophers will challenge part of Hallens findings, thus
engendering further critical interest in analytic Yorb philosophy. Hallen
himself expects this much when he says: these conclusions are
incomplete (not indeterminate). Many interesting comparisons between the
two systems remain to be made.
22
Hallen would then have succeeded
finally in providing a universally viable alternative method for doing
credible contemporary African philosophy.
Finally, it has to be remarked that, since the application of Austins
kind of elevated insights is required for the proper analysis of concepts in
any language, only those who have the requisite linguistic skill, cultural
immersion and philosophical competence can hope to do satisfactory
ordinary language analysis in any language or culture. The special (rare)
kind of insights required here cannot be imported through an interpreter
who himself/herself might lack it, as in the case of Hallens undergraduate
student-interpreter. Neither can the onsgn be necessarily credited with
such insights, or the activation of such insights in others, since knowing
medicine
23
does not entail expertise or privileged competence in the use or
analysis of ordinary language. Neither does knowledge of medicine place
any one in any culture at a level of understanding and analysis of life
and thought that is more critically sophisticated than that of the ordinary
person.
24
Philosophically, as far as anyone can reasonably expect, however,
Barry Hallen has done the best that an alien genuinely interested in an
African culture can do under the circumstances.
What remains to perfect Hallens procedure is the philosophers
personal sharpness of his eye and ear for very fine nuances
25
in Yorb,
or any other African language. For this reason, Africans in professional
philosophy, who are competent primary users of their respective languages
and are ideally intimate with their cultures, should take up the challenge and
the cue that Hallen has given to them. As they are the best suited to do it,
they should become committed to philosophical analyses of concepts in
their respective cultures and conceptual schemes, for both practical and
theoretical purposes.
26

What Hallen has initiated in the Yorb context is collaboration
between scholar and producer of culture.
27
Such an inquiry, which is a
prerequisite for critique,
28
will, however, be enhanced if it is undertaken as
multidisciplinary experiments involving linguistically and culturally well-
positioned philosophers, linguists, sociologists, artists and other relevantly
knowledgeable persons among who may be onsgn.

Obafemi Awolowo University,
Ile-Ife. Nigeria

NOTES

1
B. Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful: Discourse about Values
in Yoruba Culture (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
2000), p. 1.
2
B. Hallen and J. O. Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft: Analytic
Experiments in African Philosophy, (London: Ethnographica, 1987), p. 9.
3
Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, p. 1.
4
M. k, Modeling the Contemporary African Philosopher: Kwasi Wiredu
in Focus, in O. Oladipo (ed.) The Third Way in African Philosophy: Essays
in Honour of Kwasi Wiredu (Ibadan, Nigeria: Hope Publications, 2003), pp.
19 -35.
5
Hallen and Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, p. 8.
6
Hallen and Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, and Hallen, The
Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful.

7
8
9
10
11
12
Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, p. 7, where he says: Of
course, Femi was with me throughout all of this and p. 10, where he says;
in my discussions with the onsgn. For I was relying upon them to
explain to me (Emphases are mine). The use of the first person limiting
personal pronoun referring to Hallen as the sole researcher, with Femi, his
interpreter, is all over the texts. Moreover, Sodipo would not have referred
to his own native language Yoruba as an alien language, or speak of any
of its concepts as an alien theoretical term, etc. (p. 39).
13
14
Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, pp. 8, 11.
15
Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, pp. 5-6; Ijan Ekiti is a
small remote Yorb village inhabited mostly by illiterate old people with
little or no formal education or exposure to academic life.
16
Hallen and Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, p. 13; and Hallen,
The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, p. 7.
17
Hallen and Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, p. 39; and Hallen,
The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, p. 7.
18
19
Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, p. 7; and Hallen and
Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, p. 13.
20
Hallen and Sodipo, Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft, pp. 11-13; and
Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, pp. 10-11.
21
For references to some of his major publications in African Philosophy,
see M. k, Modeling the Contemporary African Philosopher, pp. 28-29.
22
23
24
25
G. J. Warnock, English Philosophy Since 1900 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1966), p. 97. Also, Anders Wedberg, A History of

Philosophy, Volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 315-316.
26
Hallen, The Good, The Bad, and The Beautiful, pp. 34 -35.
27
I. Karp & D. A. Masolo, (Ed.) African Philosophy As Cultural Inquiry
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, and Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press Ltd; 1994), p. 13.
28
Karp and Masolo, (Ed.) African Philosophy As Cultural Inquiry, p. 13.
A WAR ON DISTRUST:
REINVENTING THE MODE OF TOGETHERNESS IN AN AGE OF
CONFLICT

Donny Gahral Adian

After the 9/11 catastrophe, the moral face of the globe has changed.
Relationships among nations are increasingly colored by prejudices and
stereotypes in particular, prejudices and stereotypes obstructing
relationships between the West and those in Middle East and parts of Asia.
Those prejudices and stereotypes are being concretized in terms such as the
axis of evil, the war on terror, weapons of mass destruction, and so on.
These terms are being used by the West, especially the United States, to
generalize about some states in the Middle East, saying that they are
terrorist nests which pose an imminent threat to national and international
security. On the other hand, some Middle Eastern nations also show a deep
distrust of any kind of diplomacy proposed by the United Nations, including
its humanitarian-oriented diplomacy. They suspect that there is a hidden
agenda at the very root of that diplomacy. That hidden agenda is suspected
as promoting the interests mainly the economic and ideological interests
of the United States.
At this time, there seems to be little mutual trust or cooperation.
The climate of prejudice and stereotyping has blocked the very conditions
for symmetrical trust. The prejudices backed by eachs national interests
create a particular mode of togetherness called the us/them mode of
togetherness. This is a mode of togetherness which negates any possibility
of cooperation. In this paper, I will explore the root of this deep mutual
distrust among nations resulting in continuing conflict, both potential and
actual. First, I would like to explain the idea of precautionary principle in
international relations. Second, I would like to relate that idea to what I call
social trap, Finally, a new mode of togetherness has to be developed to
prevent that social trap. In this case, I introduce something called authentic
we-ness as a new mode of togetherness in international relations.

SUSTAINED DISTRUST

International relations can be divided into two major phenomena: harmony
and discord. It is harmony when a states policies automatically aid the
attainment of one anothers goals. It is harmony when bargaining is not
required since there are no conflicting interests. The relationship changes
into discord when a states policies hinder the attainment of another states
goals, and there is no incentive to change behavior.
There is third alternative called cooperation. In cooperation,
policies or actions of different states are brought into conformity through a
process of policy coordination. The possibility of cooperation requires that
each state will change its behavior toward the others. It is founded in the
strong belief that cooperation will maximize each others benefits. This,
however, is a difficult task to be accomplished in a world that has changed
radically since 9/11. States have made national security the top priority. It is
more advantageous to distrust others than not. Trusting others is a risky
foreign policy that might create another unprecedented catastrophe.
We have come into what I call a climate of distrust in the world.
An address by former President George W. Bush at the West Point military
academy gives us a lucid illustration. He said, if we wait for threats to fully
materialize, we will have waited too long. I believe it is essential that when
we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent.
1

In other words, Bush proposed a worst-case scenario foreign policy or, to
put it in simple words: Better safe than sorry.
This scenario rests upon a principle called the precautionary
principle. The precautionary principle takes many forms. Despite these
variants, the basic idea is that the regulator should take steps to protect
against potential harm, even if causal chains are unclear and even if the
chances of the materialization of harm are unknown. There are two basic
reasons why the precautionary principle is worthy of sustained attention.
First, it provides the foundation for intensely pragmatic debates about
danger, fear and security. Second, the precautionary principle raises a host
of theoretically fascinating questions about individual and social decision-
making under conditions of risk and uncertainty.
2

Based on the precautionary principle, the object of uncertainty must
be found. In this case, the United States simply could not search elsewhere
than in some nations in the Middle East which, it thought, most probably
posed terrorist threats to its national security. That probability was not the
result of scientific calculations, but certain historical stereotypes in the
minds of American policy makers. Those stereotypes were responsible for
blocking any information challenging the existence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.
What former President Bush said about the condition of uncertainty
was certainly a subjective possibility. It was advantageous to distrust Iraq
due to its recent history and, most of all, its being a Moslem country. The
United States, however, has its own history. Its double standard concerning
the conflict between Israel and Palestine has created suspicion among
Middle Eastern nations. That is allegedly why Iraq denied the UNs request
for inspections related to the existence of weapons of mass destruction. It
suspected a hidden agenda behind the UNs actions an agenda it thought
to be that of the United States.
Both sides were trapped in mutual distrust. For them, it was more
advantageous to distrust than to trust, considering eachs national interests.
However, was it truly advantageous to distrust one another and be in a
cautionary relationship at that time? The answer was that it was not. It has
ended up that the United States has lost thousands of soldiers and Iraq has
beem torn apart by civil war and insurgencies.
A War on Distrust 153
Following the violent conflict between the United States and Iraq,
the climate of distrust among global actors has increased. The climate of
distrust creates an institutionalized conflict among nations. Conflict is
institutionalized when distrust has become the ruling norm in international
relations. Conflict, not cooperation, becomes the pattern of behavior among
nations. Shadowed by the climate of distrust, this pattern of conflict will
continue. It will stay that way until each nation puts an end to their
sustainable distrust.
In this climate of distrust, nations are falling into a social trap.
Before we move on this important subject, it is necessary to clarify the
notion of social trap. The notion of social trap was invented by the
psychologist John Platt
3
. It is an umbrella term for a number of strategic
situations in which social actors find themselves. In this situation, their
behavior is determined by their assessment of the future actions of others.
The logic of the social trap can be described as follows:

1. Everyone wins if everyone chooses to cooperate
2. But if people cannot trust that almost everyone else will
cooperate, it is meaningless to choose to cooperate, because the end is
contingent on cooperation by almost everyone else.
3. Non-cooperation is rational when people do not trust that others
will also cooperate.
4. Conclusion: efficient cooperation for common purposes can come
about only if people trust that most other people will also choose to
cooperate.
5. Lacking that trust, the social trap will slam inexorably shut. That is,
we end up in a state of affairs that is worse for everyone, even though
everyone realizes that they would profit by choosing to cooperate.

In terms of cooperation, the social trap entails two important
problems. First, actors in a situation where there are options of
cooperation or non-cooperation may end up in a situation that is most
disadvantageous to them all. The parties involved might fall into certain
pathological situations without any of them having intended the result. This
happens simply by mistake when something that actually is an attempt to
cooperate is misunderstood by the counterpart perceiving the action as
deceitful or threatening, and the matter escalates into a social trap. Second,
the term trap in social trap refers to the fact that once a group, society
or organization has fallen into it, the escape route is difficult to find.
Escaping from a social trap requires people who have developed deep
mistrust over a long time to begin to trust each other and abandon memories
of past deceitful behavior of the other group.
It must be noted that the actors in a social trap situation are not
mathematically naive. They are not perfectly informed, strictly rational,
unbiased actors, but real political actors having incomplete information and
limited knowledge of their interlocutor. Nations reflect the behaviors of
political actors. If political actors are moved by their self-interest, nations
are moved by their national interest. Political actors are moved by self-
interest alone and use instrumental modes of rationality to further that
interest. Consideration of other values is neglected. What matters the most
is promoting ones self-interest effectively. The same logic works for
nations. What matters the most is a nations national interest and how to
promote it effectively. In this new climate of distrust, the incentive to
cooperate is low. As a result, most nations are falling into social traps.
The inability to trust one another is caused by how the image of the
other appears in the mind of the policy makers. The shaping of an image of
another is determined by variables, such as personal knowledge about the
individuals in question, and culturally or ideologically-determined
stereotypes or memories of how the actors have acted in similar situations in
the past
4
. In the mind of the western policy makers and political actors, the
image of Middle Eastern nations has been polluted by stereotypes such as
terrorist nest, home of fundamentalism, breeding ground of radicals,
and so on. These images have blocked the minds of policy makers from any
positive information about that region. Unfortunately, it is the acceptance of
positive information that might actually change the climate of distrust
among nations after the 9/11 catastrophe.
The inability to trust one another is also caused by domestic
political interests. What we understand as a social trap is very much related
to domestic politics. Domestic political entrepreneurs often build their
power by manipulating our knowledge or memories of the behavior of other
groups as having been treacherous. What they are doing is selling their
foreign policy grounded on manipulated memory. That kind of political
marketing is necessary to get votes. Domestic political actors also often
choose to concentrate on negative information about the other groups
intentions. This is frequently done to justify their foreign policy. This was
done by American policy makers in the lead up to the war in Iraq. By
manipulating evidence about Iraqs weapons programs, American policy
makers justified a pre-emptive strike.

THE U.S.-IRAQ (UNDER SADDAM) SOCIAL TRAP

IRAQ (under Saddam)

U.S.

Trust

Distrust

Trust

(x, y)

(x-3, y)

Distrust

(x, y-3)

(x-2, y-2)

According to the above matrix, the ideal solution for shared benefit is
trusting each other (x,y). However, due to the absence of trust, the parties
got themselves into a disadvantageous situation (x-2, y-2). This is said to be
the inevitable consequence of the rational behavior of political actors in a
social trap situation. It leads to the question whether global political actors
can ever escape from a social trap and engage in a mutually advantageous
relationship. The answer, I believe, lies in the mode of togetherness that
creates perpetual conflict among global political actors. In other words, we
need to think about a new mode of togetherness which is not mutually
exclusive and entraps actors in a situation of perpetual conflict.

TRANSLUCENCY AND THE NEW MODE OF TOGETHERNESS

As we can see, sustainable distrust produces a loss rather than a benefit. The
remaining question is how to end that sustainable distrust responsible for
social traps. How do we assure policy makers around the globe that
cooperation is far more beneficial than the opposite strategy. Without that,
the option not to cooperate will always look more reasonable.
Nations can be understood as agents motivated by self-interest.
David Gauthier, for example, differentiates between straightforward
maximizers and constrained maximizers.
5
Straightforward maximizers only
take into account the others strategies. To take into account the others
strategies is to act in accordance with the ways in which you expect the
other will act. Constrained maximizers, however, consider both the others
strategy and utility. To take account of the others utility is to consider how
she will fare as a result of your action, and allow that to affect how you act.
Consider recent American foreign policy. The United States acted
as a straightforward maximizer when it considered that the Iraqi strategy
would be to hide the truth about the location of any weapons of mass
destruction. The only option for the United States, then, was to launch a pre-
emptive strike to protect itself. The United States had neglected the benefit
of trusting Iraq and considering how a pre-emptive strike wiould create
disutility for Iraq. The United States could have prevented that from
happening by acting as a constrained maximizer. It could have considered
Iraqs utility and chosen to cooperate for a long-term benefit. In other
words, the United States could have constrained the maximization of its
own utility (national security) by adopting the principle of morality. The
principle of morality, in this case, is different from the principle of utility.
Whereas the principle of utility focuses on utility maximization or expected
utility maximization, the principle of morality focuses on rational judgment
of preference based on impartial and unbiased criteria
6
.
Nations should act cooperatively with each other. However, in a
social trap situation that is unlikely to happen. To cooperate, each nation
must believe that the others are disposed towards cooperation. Nations as
agents must be able to assure themselves of the intentions of others in order
to constrain their behavior. The United States, however, would not
cooperate until it was assured that Iraq would not lie concerning the
existence of its weapons. Iraq also would not cooperate until it was assured
that the UN observers would be neutral and independent of the U.S. agenda.
What is needed for cooperation is translucency.
7
Translucency is a
cognitive assumption that the others disposition, while not entirely
transparent, is also not entirely hidden. It is assumed that agents might be
able to discern the true disposition of the other. It is not a guaranteed
disclosure, but it is better than guesswork. Translucency is an assumption
that discriminates between the straightforward maximizer and the
constrained one. The straightforward maximizer focuses only on negative
information. The constrained maximizer, however, tries to determine the
true motives of the other by suspending all stereotyped judgments.
There are two important results of translucency. First, it gives us a
criterion by which we can decide whether to trust others, by allowing us to
judge whether they have disposed themselves to be cooperative. Second, it
gives us a reason to be trustworthy ourselves, for if others can see us well
enough to be able to ascertain whether we have disposed ourselves to
cooperativeness, then the benefits of cooperation will available to us only if
in fact we are to be constrained maximizers. There are two criteria of
trustworthiness entailed by translucency. The first is our willingness to
suspend our stereotyped judgments. Through this kind of willingness, others
will develop trust and be disposed to act so that they can be trusted. The
second is the others disposition to disclose herself in terms of her true
motives. This disposition allows the opposite party to accept new
information that leads to cooperation rather than conflict.
The phenomenon of the social trap placed the United States and
Iraq in a situation of conflict. The conflict was sustained by eachs
stereotypes about the other. The conflict had blinded both to the long term
benefits of a peaceful relationship. They would have avoided catastrophe if
they had adopted translucency in their policies. In fact, we would have had a
different story if they had disposed themselves to trust and be trusted. For,
in such a situation, both states would have tried very hard to determine the
true disposition of their counterpart, and so both would try to be trustworthy
in the eye of the other. The result is illustrated in the following matrix:

IRAQ (under Saddam)

U.S.

Trust (plus
translucency)

Distrust (minus
translucency)

Trust (plus translucency)

(x, y)

(x-3, y)

Distrust (minus
translucency)

(x, y-3)

(x-2, y-2)
What translucency means is that we not discount anothers
disposition in advance without further inquiry. Translucency implies a
willingness to trust and be trusted. This willingness, unfortunately, is
blocked by the particular mode of togetherness called the us/them mode of
togetherness. This mode of togetherness is a prejudiced one. The logic of
this mode of togetherness is the logic of exclusion. One grouping based on
common interest always excludes the other as having an opposed interest. It
is us against them or to put it in former President Bushs terms,
either you are with us or against us. Them is an absolute evil, and the
only policy available is total eradication. There is no possibility for trust.
The hidden assumption of the us/them mode of togetherness is as
follows. A group may consider itself consisting of self-sufficient entities,
each detached from the other. This, however, is inauthentic, since this
denies that there is any mutual and enriching relationship with one another
in the group. On the other hand, there is another mode of togetherness called
authentic we-ness.
8
In this mode of togetherness, being-together-with-
others is established in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding.
There is no objectification of the other. The other is not a mere atom or
signularity, but a being worthy of respect and care. Here, the patterns of
reciprocal objectification or manipulation within the group are absent. All
there is, is mutual respect and enrichment. Authentic we-ness as a basic
mode of togetherness is objective and supportive i.e., constituents tend to
lose their respective subjectivities and are incapable of actualization by
themselves alone since, as a we-ness, they experience themselves in
relation to others.
The coalition of the willing led by the United States is a vivid
example of the inauthentic we-ness mode of togetherness. It is build upon
the presumption of the existence of a third party, namely terrorist-harboring
nations. The coalition of the willing denied any possibility whatsoever that
its judgment might be misled by historical stereotypes. For them, Iraq (i.e.,
Saddam) was objectified as the threatening third party, for whom the only
response available was military action. There was no incentive for
cooperation or dialogue. Singularity or non-possibility meant there was no
willingness to trust. The coalition of the willing was actually a coalition of
the unwilling.
To escape the social trap, it is necessary to transform inauthentic
we-ness into an authentic we-ness mode of togetherness. It is important
to consider that the other is in the realm of relation and not singularity. This
other asks us to be in a translucent mode of relationship with it. In other
words, we must be willing to listen to others. The other is, ultimately, not a
stereotype or an object of enmity but a fellow subject colored by possibility.
This means that any presumption about the other must be suspended until
there is convincing evidence to the contrary. Taking precautions concerning
the other does not necessarily mean that our prior negative presumptions are
immune to correction.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

For the sake of perpetual peace, the war on terror must be replaced by a war
on distrust. The success of this war, however, requires us to rethink our
current mode of togetherness, i.e., us/them or inauthentic we-ness. This
current mode of togetherness, I believe, is responsible for blocking
trustworthiness among nations in the present era. However, it is only a
fragment of a larger story. Due to this current mode of togetherness, the
only pattern of global behavior seems to be one of conflict, not cooperation.
Nations are making coalitions to invade other states, based on unquestioned
assumptions. These assumptions, unfortunately, are left unchallenged.
Information itself might be manipulated to justify the reasons for war (jus
ad bellum). This, in fact, creates a social trap, resulting in collective
disadvantage. To escape the social trap, each nation must adopt a new mode
of togetherness based on translucency and mutual trust. This authentic we-
ness mode of togetherness will take the global community to a new era of
harmony where the possibilities of conflicts will be greatly reduced.

University of Indonesia
Jakarta

NOTES

1
See the complete text of former President Bushs West Point Address (June
3, 2002) at http://www.newsmax.com/ archives/ articles/ 2002/ 6 /2
/81354.shtml.
2
See Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 4.
3
See Bo Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 12.
4
See Rothstein, Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, p. 15.
5
See David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986), pp. 15-16, 166-170, 179-181.
6
See John Harsanyi, Advances in Understanding Rational Behavior in
Rationality in Action (New York: 1990), p. 278.
7
Celeste M Friend, Trust and the Presumption of Translucency in Social
Theory and Practice (January 2001), p.27.
8
For further elaboration on the difference between inauthentic and authentic
we-ness see Fuad Hassan, Kita and Kami: the Basic Mode ofTogetherness
(Jakarta: Winoka, 2005), p. 28.

HUMAN RIGHTS, PRACTICES, AND CODES OF ETHICS
1

David Lorenzo Izquierdo

INTRODUCTION

One of the most important issues in contemporary ethics (and also in
political theory) is the relation between first principles and the application
of those principles to specific fields of action, such as politics, economics,
law, medicine, and so on. We find a similar issue with human rights. One of
the most important challenges nowadays regarding human rights is how
they can be applied and protected in practice.
Human rights are principles which have been accepted by many
countries and institutions as, so to speak, first or common principles.
They are both ethical and political principles. But nowadays a new facet is
called for: they have to guide particular acts they have to be applied to
specific fields of action (through specific laws, regulations, codes, etc.). But
this is not an easy matter.
One of the areas where human rights have to be applied and
protected is in the field of professional endeavours or the workplace. In
recent years, codes of ethics have arisen as a possible means to foster and to
define ethical behaviour in the professions. Among the principles of a code,
human rights play the role of first principles as I shall explain below
2
.
Humnan rights tend to function in codes as the principles that inspire and
guide the rest of the moral rules. But how can codes of ethics make
individuals respect and foster ethical principles and human rights in the
professions? Can they guarantee a good ethical environment in the
workplace? This paper aims to answer those questions.

PRACTICES, GOODS AND MORAL RULES

The concept of practice is a central concept in contemporary sociology as
well as in moral and political philosophy. One author who has focused on
this concept is Alasdair MacIntyre. This concept is useful when thinking
about the role of codes of ethics in applying and protecting human rights
3
.
According to MacIntyre, practices are important because as we
read in his paper Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and
Goods
4
individual acts and the development of human beings take place
only in them. Social and individual lives are structured by practices, which
take place in particular institutions and in a particular history or tradition
so that every practice is part of a history and a tradition.
In his book After Virtue, MacIntyre defines practice as

any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative
human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity
are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of
excellence which are appropiate to, and partially definitive of, that
form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve
excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved,
are systematically extended.
5

Sciences, architecture, and farming are examples of practices.
6
Therefore, a
practice is an activity with internal goods and with internal standards of
excellence. The academic life of a university can be considered, for
instance, a practice; thus, this paper can be considered as a part of the
practice which is the academic life of a particular university.
There are three elements of a practice, according to MacIntyre:
goods, models of excellence (or authorities), and rules. Let us consider
briefly each one of these. Regarding goods, the author distinguishes two
kinds: external goods and internal goods. The internal ones are those goods
which refer to the proper excellence of a specific practice. The best building
and the best way to design it are internal goods to architecture. External
goods are those not related directly to the proper excellence of a practice.
These can be achieved through many kinds of practices and can be
independent of the achievement of the internal goods to a practice. Some
examples of external goods are money, power, and prestige. Therefore,
internal goods are the proper or essential telos of a practice.
7

Rules are necessary elements of a practice because they are the
guidelines or the norms to be followed by the individual who wishes to
achieve the internal goods of the practice.
8
Certain rules have to be
observed, because they are relkevant to an individual reaching excellence in
a practice. For instance, it is necessary for the members of a soccer team to
train weekly if one wishes to build a good soccer team.
The third element of practices are models or authorities. According
to MacIntyre, they are necessary because the individual needs to know the
rules and the goods of the practices, and he or she also has to learn how to
apply the rules and how to understand the internal goods. Models and
authorities are the means whereby individuals learn and practice these
elements.
9

Of course, in After Virtue, MacIntyre is cognizant that there are
practices which are evil in themselves: for instance, torture, sadomasochistic
sexuality, etc..
10
But, if all practices contain goods, how is it possible to
consider a practice evil or wrong in itself? The author answers that we need
a good external to the practices in order to judge the issue. This external
good is what MacIntyre, in his book Dependent Rational Animals, calls
flourishing. Flourishing is the development of the powers that a human
being possesses as a human being, or, in other words, how human beings
should live.
11

This is why MacIntyre says that an individual has to be able to
make two distinctions:
Human Rights, Practices, and Codes of Ethics 161
1) Regarding the good internal to the practice, he or she has to
distinguish between what seems good for him or her at this moment
and what is really good according to the practice.
2) Regarding flourishing, he or she has to distinguish what is good for
him or her here and now, and what is good in itself, for everybody
12
.

Therefore, the final good beyond the goods of the practices is
necessary to be able to judge the same practices. In addition, a final good
is necessary to explain human existence because there are many practices in
which an individual can be involved, but the individual him or herself is an
unity one and the same person in different practices. A final good which
relates to the individual as a whole, as a unity is necessary.
Because of this, MacIntyre distinguishes three meanings of the
concept of good:

1) Good as a means to another good, which is a good in itself.
2) Good according to a specific practice. In this sense, an individual
is good as a father, as a teacher and so on.
13

3) Good as a human being, as a member of the human species. In
this sense, an individual is good if he or she is flourishing as such.
14

In fact, this third sense of the concept is the main one for MacIntyre:
something is good for an individual if it contributes to his/her flourishing
15
.
Therefore, flourishing is the final good, the final telos of human life.
We have seen so far four important ideas: human acts take place in
practices; every practice has its own internal good; rules are necessary
elements to achieve the internal good to any practice; and those rules imply
both technical and moral aspects. Achieving the internal good to a practice
is not only a technical matter but also a moral matter, because it is related to
the individuals human qualities as a practicioner and also as a human
being.
In order to think about how codes of ethics can be a means to
protect human rights, we can take two important and useful concepts from
MacIntyres thought: flourishing and practice. According to MacIntyre,
beyond the goods of the practices, there must be a final good, which is
necessary to judge the same practices. Flourishing is this final good,
16
as
we have seen above. If flourishing is the development of the powers that a
human being possesses as a human being, it can be said that human rights
are a set of ethical and political principles whose aim is to protect some
basic goods which are necessary to make possible the individuals
development or the individuals flourishing. MacIntyre does not relate
human rights to the concept of flourishing, but we think that this relation
can be acknowledged
17
.
Regarding the MacIntyrean concept of practice, we can see that
every profession is a practice (although not every practice is a profession
strictly speaking
18
). It can be said that codes of ethics are sets of moral rules
whose aim is to guide human acts in the workplace from the moral point of
view. If a profession includes both technical and moral aspects, codes of
ethics can be narrowly related to practices. MacIntyre does not connect the
rules of practices to codes of ethics, but we think that this relation exists and
also that it is important to understand the role of codes of ethics in
protecting human rights.

HUMAN ACTION, CODES OF ETHICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

In our time, professional ethics has become more important and, as a result,
the number of existing codes of ethics has increased. This fact can be used
to point out many features of our society, but we wish to focus for the
moment on the resulting increased awareness of two important matters: the
difficulty of making decisions in certain particular circumstances
19
, and the
importantance of the social responsibility of individuals and their acts.
As we have seen by employing the MacIntyrean concept of
practice, human action is a complex fact. Perhaps one of the most
important and fruitful topics in ethics today has been the account of the
different elements from which human action can be explained, or, in other
words, how it is possible to explain human actions. It seems that it is a fact
that cannot be explained in a static or fixed way. This difficult point
comes partly from the fact, obvious but deep, that human action is twofold:
it has both an external and internal side (intentions, feelings, etc.). That is
why we can say that an action shows how an individual is. From this
twofold nature of action, we can surmise that every human action implies
three different kinds of relations: individual-end, individual-context and
individual-fact/action. That is to say that when an individual acts, he or she
carries out an action (a fact) within the frame of a particular context, and
this action comes from a personal intention (from a personal end, which is
related, of course, to that context). These relationships are so various and
changeable that sometimes individuals do not know how to act, how to
make a decision. Codes of ethics tend to guide the external side of human
actions (although they presuppose the internal side).
Codes of ethics include rules to guide an individuals actions in a
specific field of activities. Because of this, one feature of such codes is that
they contribute to the individuals training or formation: they make use of
the experience and history of this activity (i.e., of this practice) in order to
be able to teach the individual rules of acting correctly. Some of these rules
perhaps are not known by the individual; or, if he or she knew about them,
perhaps he or she didnt know their importance; one of the functions of
models of excellence or authorities is to help the individual with those
issues. This is possible only because codes of ethics make some rules
explicit, so that they more easily show individuals that they must respect
them. And, at the same time, this fact makes clearer and more obvious the
social responsibility of an individuals acts. Another important feature of
codes of ethics is that they are supported by a community (e.g., a
professional association, a company, etc.), which defines the codes content
and watches over the observance of its rules.
In order to explain these features, let us consider, for instance, the
Code of Ethics for Engineers of the National Society for Professional
Engineers (in the United States). This code says that, in order to show
objectivity and independence in their professional duties, Engineers shall
disclose all known or potential conflicts of interest that could influence or
appear to influence their judgment or the quality of their services (Part II,
art. 4.a). It also says: Engineers shall not accept compensation, financial or
otherwise, from more than one party for services on the same project, or for
services pertaining to the same project, unless the circumstances are fully
disclosed and agreed to by all interested parties (Part II, art 4.b). These
rules are determined by a professional association (the National Society for
Professional Engineers) in accord with the experience and history of a
profession (engineering, in this case). An engineer, as an engineer (and, to
some extent, as a person) has to know and to follow these rules in order to
carry out his or her profession. In this sense, we say that a code gives rules
to guide the individuals actions. Perhaps an engineer does not need a code
giving him or her those rules, because he or she can see or grasp those
rules on his or her own, by him or herself. These rules are, for some people,
evident. But we think that it is clear that, by stating these rules explicitly, a
code can help an individual to know and to follow them (in this case, in
order to keep his or her objectivity and impartiality).
Nevertheless, a codes rules do not always help the individual to
make decisions (and correct decisions) in a particular situation. This is due,
first of all, to the fact that codes cannot rule on or solve all the possible
situations that an individual may find in a practice. Codes of ethics include
rules concerning a practice, but this does not imply that they include all
the possible rules related to it. In fact, professional associations must
periodically change and update their codes according to circumstances. This
is one of their important functions. Moreover, we have to take into account
that sometimes, in particular situations, two or more rules of a code can
come into conflict with one another. For instance, the conflict between the
right to privacy and a common good can lead a physician, a lawyer, or a
psychologist to not keep a professional secret. (Here, individuals need a
model of excellence to solve such problems, that is to say, they need
someone who can help them to make good decisions.) But why does this
happen and what are its consequences? In order to answer these questions,
we have to focus on the nature of human acts.
Human acts may be judged to be correct, not only with regard to
some principle, rule or good, but also with regard to particular
circumstances. Given the importance of individual circumstances, be they
internal or external, contingency is the proper field of human acts. An act
that has to be done by me under some particular circumstances (here and
now) is not the same as an act that another person ought to do (under the
same, at least external, circumstances). In order to reach the internal good of
a practice, an individual has to act according to his or her personal
circumstances and qualities, which are different from another individuals
circumstances and qualities. People involved in a practice share the same
good internal to this practice, but every individual seeks to reach this good
according to his or her particular qualities. In this sense, they can share the
same rules, but the way of applying them though not the rule itself can
change depending on personal qualities and circumstances. That is why the
rules included in a code of ethics can only guide an individuals act, but
cannot define or determinate it totally. So human action is always a
creative fact.
20
It is a creative fact because the individual, in a particular
situation, has to discover which rules should be followed and, at the same
time, how he or she should apply them.
This creativity is based on the fact that a particular act in any
profession (and in any practice) is the result of three elements: (1) an
individual who mediates (2) some first principles, and (3) some
professional rules
21
. When individuals act in their professional fields, they
are applying not only the rules of their codes of ethics, but also some
primary or first moral principles (which are then first principles with
regard to this code). Take, for instance, a moral principle regarding truth.
There is a first moral principle according to which every human being has
the duty to say the truth; this would be a first principle. But different duties
or rules can be derived from this principle depending on different practices
(or professions). That is to say, different professional rules (the third
element we have mentioned) can be derived from the same first moral
principle.
For instance, both a marketer and an engineer, as human beings,
have the duty to say the truth, but, each has to follow different rules in order
to apply this principle (in their particular professions). The Code of Ethics
and Standards of Practice of the Canadian Marketing Association says that
Marketing communications must be clear and truthful. Marketers must not
knowingly make a representation to a consumer or business that is false or
misleading (Section H, art. I). The Code of Ethics for Engineers of the
National Society for Professional Engineers says that Engineers shall be
objective and truthful in professional reports, statements, or testimony. They
shall include all relevant and pertinent information in such reports,
statements, or testimony, which should bear the date indicating when it was
current (Section II, art. 3.a).
What is the relation between first moral principles and professional
rules? The first link between them is that the rules of a code of ethics base
their legitimacy founded on some principles prior to them. A proof of this is
the fact that the first articles of a code are usually dedicated to so called
general principles. Such principles express and refer to some human goods
and also to some general rules which are the frame of the profession (e.g.,
the Preamble and section I of the Code of Ethics for Engineers of the
National Society for Professional Engineers; articles 5-14 of the
Catalonias Psychologists Code of Ethics; articles 4-6 of the Spanish
Medical Code of Ethics). The Catalan Medical Associations Code of
Ethics devotes its first section to making such principles explicit. Article 1
defines the goal (end) of the medical profession: individual and social
health, while the subsequent articles define more general principles, such as
the respect for human rights and human dignity (article 5). The
Economists Code of Ethics of Spain devotes section I to defining the
basic principles of this profession: independence, integrity, loyalty, etc.
Nevertheless, first and basic ethical principles (and goods) do not
always appear in the same way. For instance, the Catalan Bar Code of
Ethics does not use words like human dignity or human rights in its first
articles. However it states, in article 4, the principles of freedom,
independence and competence as basic principles for lawyers.
Those facts show that there are some principles (related to some
goods) that, in an implicit or explicit way, form the basis of the rules of a
code of ethics. We can ask ourselves, of course, why such principles must
be those specific principles, or why those principles must be defined with
those particular words (and not with different words). But the most
important matter here is the fact that those principles express some goods
which work as a point of reference for a practice and for its rules. We have
to take into account that there is a narrow relation between rules and goods.
Both from the moral and legal point of view, goods are the sense of rules. A
rule does not make sense without a good. The aim of a rule is to protect a
good. We have talked above about the concept of truth. Truth is the good
protected by rules (e.g., such as we have mentioned above regarding
marketers and engineers). In fact, normally, individuals do not follow a rule
unless they know and understand the good that a rule tends to protect.
Using the MacIntyrean concepts explained above, we could say that
an individual can reach the internal goods of a practice only if he or she
follows or respect those principles (e.g., related to some specific goods)
22
.
Life, freedom, truth, justice, human dignity, integrity, amd so on, are those
goods on which the rules of a code of ethics are based. And those goods are
the goods that human rights try to protect, as we can see, for instance, in the
articles 1, 3, 4, and 18 to 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights:

Art. 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should
act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Art. 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the
person.
Art. 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the
slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Art. 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience
and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or
belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and
in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching,
practice, worship and observance.
Art. 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas
through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Art. 20. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly
and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an
association.

In the first part of this paper we claimed that human rights can be related to
the MacIntyrean concept of flourishing. We admitted that MacIntyre does
not state this relation as such, although he thinks that the rules of natural law
are the rules that an individual has to observe in order to achieve his or her
flourishing as a human being.
23
In order to relate human rights to human
flourishing, beyond the debate over natural law, we think that the most
important thing is the fact that there is a narrow relationship between human
development (human flourishing) and some basic goods (life, freedom,
etc.). Those basic goods (or some of them) are the goods protected by the
articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we have just
quoted. Given the relationship between rules and goods, we surmise that the
aim of the principles of this Declaration is to protect some basic goods
which are necessary to make possible the individuals development and
flourishing.
Moreover regarding codes of ethics, we can find a narrow
relationship between these six articles (or some of them) and, for instance,
the Code of Ethics for Engineers (of the National Society for Professional
Engineers), the Catalan Medical Associations Code of Ethics, or the
European Code of Police Ethics. The Code of Ethics for Engineers does
not include an explicit reference to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, but the first of its Fundamental Canons states: (Engineers shall)
Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public (Section I, art.
1). The Catalan Medical Associations Code of Ethics includes an explicit
reference to this Declaration by saying, in the fifth principle of its General
Principles, that a physician shall respect human rights in carrying out his or
her activities (Section I, General Principles, art. 5). The European Code
of Police Ethics, in its first section (Objetives of the Police), says that
one of the objectives of the Police is to protect and respect the individuals
fundamental rights and freedoms as enshrined, in particular, in the European
Convention on Human Rights (Section I, art. 1).
The second important link between first principles and professional
rules is that the goods protected by these principles are the point of
reference or the criteria for applying these professional rules. It could be
said that those goods are the spirit of the codes letter (that is to say, of
the codes rules). For this reason, when two or more rules of a code conflict
with one another in some particular circumstance, the individual takes this
spirit as a criterion (e.g., as a point of reference) to apply the rules of the
code correctly, that is to say, the individual thinks about the goods to be
protected. Thats why a physician (according to the Catalan Medical
Associations Code of Ethics, Article 32) or a lawyer (according to the
Catalan Bar Code of Ethics, Article 41) can break their professional
secrecy under certain special circumstances when another good (for
instance, social safety) has to be protected
24
.
Because of the relation between principles and basic goods
(regarding human flourishing) in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and also because of the relation between those goods and general
principles in codes of ethics, we believe that human rights can play the role
of first principles with regard to moral rules in codes of ethics. In this
sense, it can be said that some basic human goods can be protected at
different levels through different kinds of principles: first principles and
(also) professional rules (which would be secondary principles). And we
can say, therefore, that, in carrying out a practice and in seeking to reach the
internal good to a practice, an individual has the duty to respect some first
principles since he or she has the duty to protect some basic human goods.
So far we have seen two important links between ethical first
principles and the rules of codes of ethics. In dealing with the former, after
seeing that these rules are based on these principles, we asked ourselves
why those principles stated in a code explicitly must be specifically those
principles (and not others), and why those principles must be defined with
some words (and not with different words). In dealing with the latter, we
have said that the goods protected by these first principles are the point of
reference needed in order to apply the rules of a code to a particular
situation correctly.
Both issues can be stated and tackled from the point of view of the
main element of the human act, as we have mentioned above, namely, the
individual. We have also said that an individual acts by mediating first
principles and also the codes rules. It is the individual, through his or her
abilities, virtues, conscience, qualities, etc. who, together with others (a
professional association, for example), selects and states the suitable
principles to a code of ethics according to the social, technical and historical
circumstances related to the practice (which is ruled by this code). And it
is the individual who mediates the principles and the rules in order to
know how to apply them in the best way.
According to MacIntyre (and also to classical ethics), this relation
(individual and rules or principles) depends on the virtue of prudence or
phronesis. MacIntyre, following Aristotle and Aquinas, defines prudence as

the exercise of a capacity to apply truths about what it is good for
such and such a type of person or for persons as such to do generally
and in certain types of situation to oneself on particular occasions.
The phronimos is able to judge both which truths are relevant to
him in his particular situation and from that judgment and from his
perception of the relevant aspects of himself and his situation to act
rightly
25
.

and, MacIntyre adds, the virtue of being able in particular situations to
bring to bear the relevant universals and to act so that the universal is
embodied in the particular.
26

By combining these definitions with the concept of basic good
regarding first principles, we can say that the virtue of prudence is twofold.
It implies that there are some goods which are goods for every human
being. These are narrowly related to human flourishing and, therefore, there
are some principles that an individual has always to respect. On the other
hand, this virtue implies, at the same time, that an individual has to discover
how to protect these goods and how to respect these principles in his or her
particular situation or circumstances, because this is not an automatic
process. That is the core of this virtue. In this sense, and specifically in a
professional situation, codes of ethics help individuals discover these things.
The virtue of prudence shows us the creative nature of human acts and
ethics.

CONCLUSION

We can conclude by saying that codes of ethics are nowadays an important
means to protect human rights in a specific field of action, namely, the
workplace. We have seen that any profession, as a practice, implies both
technical and moral rules rules set explicitly in the code of ethics related
to it. At the same time, human rights play the role of first principles on
which rules of different codes are based. The goods protected by human
rights are the point of reference used to define or to state duties in every
practice through codes of ethics. In this sense, human rights are first
principles and codes of ethics are secondary principles.
Nevertheless, codes of ethics are not enough to protect or to apply
human rights in particular situations. We have seen that, because of the
nature of human actions and codes, individual moral qualities play an
important role in protecting human rights. Individual moral qualities are
very important, not only in defining the rules of the codes (in the social
context of the professional association), but also in applying them to
particular situations. Human actions are so complex that sometimes the
rules of a code cannot show the individual how to act or at least they
cannot define or determine it totally. Therefore, it is the individual, through
his or her conscience, virtues (especially the virtue of prudence), etc., and
by following the spirit of a code (the goods protected by it and by the
principles of human rights), who must grasp which is the best, and not
only the correct, action in his or her particular circumstances.

University of Puerto Rico at Mayagez
Puerto Rico, USA
REFERENCES:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

Codes of Ethics:

Code of Ethics for Engineers, National Society for Professional
Engineers, 2007.
Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice, Canadian Marketing
Association, 2007.
Code of Police Ethics, Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers,
Recommendation 2001/10, 2001.
Cdigo de Deontologa del Consejo de Colegios de Mdicos de Catalua
(Catalan Medical Association Code of Ethics), 2005.
Cdigo de tica y Deontologa Mdica Espaola (Spanish Medical
Code of Ethics), 1999.
Cdigo de la Abogaca Espaola (Spanish Bar Code of Ethics), 2002.
Cdigo Deontolgico de Economistas de Espaa (Economists Code of
Ethics of Spain), 1999.
Cdigo Deontolgico de la Abogaca Catalana (Catalan Bar Code of
Ethics), 2001.
Cdigo Deontolgico de los Abogados de la Unin Europea (European
Bar Code of Ethics), 1988.
Cdigo Deontolgico del Psiclogo de Catalua (Catalonia
Psychologists Code of Ethics), 1989.

NOTES

1
This paper is the initial result of a research project on the relations among
human rights, applied ethics, and codes of ethics. The author would like to
thank the referees for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve
its content. He also would like to thank Professor Halley Snchez for his
suggestions on some grammatical and stylistic issues.
2
According to the frame and the aim of this paper, by first principle we
mean a principle from which other principles can be derived, but also a
principle that inspires other principles.
3
MacIntyre, of course, criticizes human rights discourse for instance, in
his paper Are there any natural rights? [Charles F. Adams lecture,
delivered Feb. 28, 1983 in Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine], pp. 14-15,
and in other work. But we think that this need not prevent us from relating
the concept of human right to the (MacIntyrean) concept of practice (as
we shall see). See his After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 70ff.
4
MacIntyre, Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy: Rules, Virtues and

Goods, in The MacIntyre Reader, ed. K. Knight (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame, 1998), 13652 at p. 139.
5
MacIntyre, After Virtue, pp. 187-188.
6
After Virtue, pp. 187-188, 200-201.
7
After Virtue, pp. 188-194; MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral
Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (London: Duckworth,
1990), pp. 64-65.
8
After Virtue, pp. 194-195; MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 31-32.
9
After Virtue, pp. 194-195.
10
After Virtue, p. 200.
11
MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the
Virtues (London: Duckworth, 1999), pp. 63-65, 76-77.
12
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, pp. 126-127; MacIntyre, Plain
Persons and Moral Philosophy, p. 140.
13
Dependent Rational Animals, pp. 65-66.
14
Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy, p. 151; Dependent Rational
Animals, p. 66.
15
I would like to thank Prof. MacIntyre for personal conversation on this
issue (September 2004).
16
Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy, p. 151; Dependent Rational
Animals, p. 66.
17
In our opinion, although MacIntyre does not say this explicitly, this
relation can be stated because he agrees that there is a natural law (and
natural law can be related to human rights). Natural law is a topic which
MacIntyre has dealt with mainly through papers or articles (see, for
instance: How Can We Learn What Veritatis Splendor Has To Teach?,
The Thomist, Vol. 58 (1994), pp. 171-195; Natural Law As Subversive:
The Case of Aquinas, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Vol.
26, n. 1 (1996), pp. 61-83; Natural Law Reconsidered, International
Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 37 (1997), pp. 95-99; Theories of Natural
Law in the Culture of Advanced Modernity, in Common Truths: New
Perspectives on Natural Law, Edward B. McLean (ed.), (Wilmington,
Delaware: ISI Books, 2000), pp. 91-115. We have seen that practices can be
judged and understood based on flourishing. Just as there are rules for
practices, there are also rules for flourishing. These rules, according to
MacIntyre, are the rules of natural law. The individual has to observe them
in order to flourish as a human being. See MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions
of Moral Enquiry, p. 139; Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy, p. 143;
How Can We Learn What Veritatis Splendor Has To Teach?, The
Thomist, p. 173; Wahre Selbsterkenntnis durch Verstehen unserer selbst
aus der Perspektive anderer (interview with Dmitri Nikulin), Deutsche

Zeitschrift fr Philosophie, Vol. 44 (1996), pp. 671-683, at pp. 676-677;
The Privatization of Good. An Inaugural Lecture, The Review of Politics,
Vol. 52 (1990), pp. 344-361, at p. 344).
18
We mean a profession with a contract, a salary, etc.
19
For instance, an individual has to know how to apply rules in a particular
situation, or sometimes rules conflict with one another.
20
D. Innerarity, Libertad como passion (Pamplona: Eunsa, 1992), pp. 42-
43.
21
By saying that an individual mediates these elements, we mean that an
individual has to establish a dialogue with them in order to make the best
decision.
22
These principles are, as we can see, not only technical rules.
23
See, for example, MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry:
139; Plain Persons and Moral Philosophy, p. 143; How Can We Learn
What Veritatis Splendor Has To Teach?, p. 173; Wahre Selbsterkenntnis
durch Verstehen unserer selbst aus der Perspektive anderer, pp. 676-677;
The Privatization of Good. An Inaugural Lecture, p. 344
24
This is an example of how two different goods (privacy and, for instance,
social safety) can conflict with each other. Or, strictly speaking, they can
conflict with each other in some particular circumstances. Such goods do
not conflict with one other in themselves, but only in some particular
circumstances. In some cases, there are additional rules that can help an
individual to find out which good has to be protected in a particular
situation; in other cases, it depends on the virtue of prudence (phronesis).
This issue is an important issue for ethics (and also for professional ethics),
but we cannot deal with it in this paper (whose aim is related to other
issues), at least in a deep way.
25
MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, pp. 115-116.
26
MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 139.

THE ARGUMENTATIVE TRADITION IN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
1

Balaganapathi Devarakonda

A spirit of disintegration and disunity is conspicuous in the contemporary
social as well as philosophical scenes. There is a celebration of
fragmentations and differences. In such a scenario, no less than a person
than Amartya Sen rose to the occasion and traced out the roots and the
space of a democratic discourse that has been sustained in the Indian
philosophical tradition. It is laudable that he opened up a discussion that
will strengthen the democratic spirit which is missing in the present. This
paper examines the dialogic tradition projected by Sen in his The
Argumentative Indian (2005). Following a general exposition of the
significance of the dialogic tradition, a paradigm of argument is constructed
to explicate the dynamics of argumentation. Further, the place of
argumentation in the methodology of the Indian philosophical tradition as
projected by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya is also discussed. The limitations
of Sens exposition of the Indian argumentative tradition are explicated, first
by pointing out the problem of distinction between argument and dialogue
and lack of an explicitly stated extended definition of heterodoxy. Next, this
paper critically examines Sens four important claims which are put forth
as: 1. India has a strong argumentative tradition; 2. Participation in the
argumentative tradition is not limited to a few sections of the society; 3.
Heterodoxy contributed extensively to the argumentative tradition; and 4.
the argumentative tradition has created a public sphere.

SIGNIFICANCE OF DIALOGIC TRADITION

Amartya Sens The Argumentative Indian rightly emphasizes the
significance of the dialogic tradition in the formation of public reasoning
in which every one has a part, irrespective of gender and social
distinctions.
2
He opined that, if used with care and commitment, the
argumentative tradition can be extremely useful in resisting social inequality
and in alleviating poverty and deprivation. The work also informs us of the
role that heterodoxy plays in making the dialogic tradition lively and
forming public reasoning. Sen states that the tradition of public reasoning
is closely related to the roots of Democracy across the globe.
3
Public
reasoning, for him, includes the opportunity for citizens to participate in
political discussions and to influence public choice. He adds that open
discussions on important public issues can not only enhance society and our
respective priorities, but also provide the opportunity for revising the chosen
priorities in response to public discussion.
Sen, while applying dialogic tradition, heterodoxy, and public
reasoning to the Indian tradition and pointing out instances from the Epics
(such as Ramayana and Mahabharata), Upanishads, and medieval mystical
poets, argues that the richness of the tradition of argument has helped to
make Heterodoxy the natural state of affairs in India: persistent arguments
are an important part of our public life. Heterodoxy deeply influences
Indian politics, and is particularly relevant to the development of
Democracy in India and the emergence of its secular priorities.
4

PARADIGM OF ARGUMENT

The word argument is often used to mean a verbal dispute or
disagreement, which is different from the way it is used in philosophy.
When two people verbally disagree with each other, unless they merely
resort to name calling or threats, they typically present an argument for their
respective positions. An argument, here, is a connected series of statements
or propositions, some of which are intended to provide justification or
evidence for the truth of another statement or proposition. In philosophy,
then, arguments are those statements a person makes in an attempt to
convince someone of something, or present reasons for accepting a given
conclusion. Arguments must be separated from other uses of language, such
as conversation, explaining, giving an example or telling a story. In these
cases, one might find a connected series of statements, but the author or
speaker does not intend it to be the case that some of the statements provide
support or evidence in favour of one of the others. So they are not
arguments. Argument must also be distinguished from dialogue, which Sen
often uses as interchangeably with argumentation which will be discussed
a little later in this paper. Let us now examine the form of the argument, in
order to have a better understanding of the concept.

FORM OF AN ARGUMENT

Prerequisites of an Argument: --- Parties committed to their views
--- Equally shared platform with open
minds
--- Difference of opinion over an issue

Act of Argument : --- Methodical reasoning
--- Equal opportunity to contradict the
opponent and to advocate his view
--- Attempt to oppose or menace each
others views.

Outcome of the Argument: --- One wins the argument; making the
opponent realize the inadequacy of his
view; making the opponent accept that his
view is correct or valid.
--- End in disagreement
--- Compromise
The Argumentative Tradition in Indian Philosophy 175
From the above depiction, it is understood that argument begins with
difference and continues to strengthen or weaken the difference in its
course. But it may not necessarily result in dissolution of difference.
Differences may continue or may become still stronger in the course of
argumentation. Further, a defeated argument may refuse to go into oblivion;
A defeated argument that refuses to be obliterated can remain very alive.
5

The course of argument may strengthen both the parties or may weaken at
least one of them. The methodical reasoning employed by the parties is vital
to the whole course of argument. Sometimes the methodical reasoning may
be compelling in the sense that it is capable of convincing someone about
the truth of the conclusion. Such reasoning is mostly either inadequate or
misleading, since it depends more on the skill of the person in constructing
the argument to manipulate the person who is being convinced, and less on
the objective truth or undeniability of the argument itself. Hence, though
argumentation is a skill by itself, it should not be manipulative. If the
motive is strictly winning the argument, then the methodical reasoning
adopted may sometimes be compelling and manipulative. But if the
argument is initiated with an open mind, then it could result either in
winning or in disagreement, both of which can be of ideal value. Though the
parties involved start the argument with differences of opinion over an issue
and oppose each others views, it is possible that the argument may end in
either disagreement or compromise.
Arguments can be either static or interactive on the basis of the
involvement of the other. In a static argument, the other (purvapaksha)
that is being represented for rejection (khandana) is inactive. The other, in
this case, is presented to strengthen ones argument. In an interactive
argument, the other is an active participant. The position of the other always
shifts between the parties involved in the argument. The other is
purvapaksha for both. Both parties proposer and interlocutor
interchange their roles according to their position. The proposer and
interlocutor have a more symmetrical relationship. The premises as well as
the validity of the intermediate inferences would be discussed actively.
Unlike the static argument, the interactive argument is dynamic in practice.
The static argument is passive in the sense that it represents the argument
from only one point of view. However, a static argument has the potency of
generating a dynamic argument. For instance, a text which is passive in
representing its argument can generate a lively argument, by going beyond
its spacio-temporal limitations, as it increases the accessibility of the
argument. An interactive argument is dynamic in nature, as both the parties
put forth their arguments while criticising the other in an interactive mode.
As mentioned above, the change of roles as proposer and interlocutor makes
the argumentative process dynamic. In a dynamic mode of argumentation,
not only the roles, but also the rules and the reasoning may change
according to the need. A static argument, once laid down, is limited by itself
and leaves no scope for modification of the rules or the reasoning. But in an
interactive argument, the rules are always negotiable and reasoning can be
modified accordingly. Sometimes static arguments may also depict
interactive ones. But such depictions are limited by the intentions and
motivation of the presenter of the argument.
Often, it is observed that the hierarchical power structure of the
existent social set up not only determines the argumentation process, but
also defines the terms of discourse. Rarely do arguments, whether social,
intellectual or political, go outside the existent paradigm. However, the rules
of the argumentation, whether it is static or interactive, may sometimes be
negotiable by the parties, although in many cases the rules are already
determined by social mores. Sometimes argumentation is viewed more as a
process of discovery than as the justification of a conclusion. Ideally, the
goal of argumentation is for participants to arrive jointly at a conclusion,
whether it be unity or difference, by mutually accepted inferences.
Let us now proceed to explicate the argumentative methodology of
the Indian philosophical tradition, as projected by Debiprasad
Chattopadhyaya.

ARGUMENTATIVENESS OF THE INDIAN PHILOSOPHICAL
TRADITION

Sen affirms the existence of a great many discussions and compositions of
different kinds, conforming to the loquaciousness of the argumentative
tradition in Indian philosophical texts.
6
These texts, according to him,
include elaborate religious expositions and protracted defences, along with
controversies between defenders of religiosity on one side, and advocates of
general scepticism on the other. While stressing the existence of the
argumentative tradition, Sen states, in philosophical discourses throughout
Indian history, atheists and sceptics make frequent appearances and even
though, in many cases, their points of view are ultimately rejected, they do
get their say.
7
Before we examine the claims of Sen regarding the
Argumentative tradition of India, let us explicate the place of argumentation
in the Indian philosophical tradition.
Argumentativeness is considered to be the starting point of the
methodology of the Indian philosophical tradition. The source of this
methodology was traced by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya to the Upanishads.
The main point of the methodology, he maintains, consists in moving
towards a philosophical position through a clash of ideas or through
confrontation of a thesis with its anti-thesis in short, through arguments.
The Upanishadic word for this is Vakovakya,
8
which means the art of
argument through the medium of question and answer.
Argument has two forms: destructive and constructive. Unlike the
former, which leads us nowhere in the acquisition of knowledge, the latter
plays a significant role in the advancement of knowledge. It aids the zeal for
knowledge and its clarification improves the technique of communication
and strengthens conviction by way of removing doubt in the pre-existing
stock of knowledge.
9
The art of argumentation, taken seriously, raises
questions concerning evidence, reason and fallacious thinking. It is Gotama
and Vatsayana who first made a clear cut statement of philosophical
methodology as growing out of the technique of debate or argument or, to
be more specific, of the direct, frontal clash of ideas.
In Indian philosophical methodology, generally followed by most
of the systems of philosophy, the final ascertainment (nirnaya) of a
philosophical position is based on the critical examination (Pariksha).
There can be no final ascertainment or nirnaya without critical examination
or pariksha. Pariksha, in turn, is dependent on Doubt or Samsaya. Doubt
is the intellectual situation of being confronted by two philosophical
positions, opposing and menacing each other. It is the doubt resulting from
contradictory assertions about the same thing the argumentation between
the two each wanting to negate the other; this is the beginning of
philosophical activity in India. A questioning attitude is the starting point of
argumentation or the frontal clash of ideas.
Though questioning is a necessary aspect of the argumentative
process, one must note that, mere questioning cannot be taken to be an
argument. Questioning can be of at least three kinds; 1. questioning to know
or obtain knowledge, 2. questioning to bring out how far the other knows,
and 3. questioning to critically evaluate a view. In the first case, the
questioner is a seeker and the other is presupposed to be a knowledgeable
person. The second presupposes a doubt regarding the knowledge of the
other. Here the questioner is not as ignorant as the one in the first case. In
both these cases, though interaction and questioning are involved, they
cannot be regarded as arguments. Argumentation makes use of the third
kind of questioning coupled with methodological reasoning. Both the
parties involved would question the view of the other and critically evaluate
it. In this process, both try to substantiate their views by providing support
or evidence through logical reasoning. One can infer from this that only this
kind of questioning leads to argumentation.
As argumentation is the beginning of philosophical activity, it has
played a key role in strengthening the positions in the Indian philosophical
systems. This argumentativeness is presented by the philosophers of India
while putting forth their views in writing. They developed their views, first
by confronting it with its opposite i.e., the opponents view, called
purvapaksha. Only on the basis of a more or less elaborate negation of it,
they established their own thesis called siddhanta. There was a continuous
interchange of argument and counter argument between the participants,
resulting in a cumulative sophistication of the positions held in an
intellectual achievement of the highest order of which any culture might be
reasonably proud.
10
This is the general methodology which is argumentative
in nature that is adopted by most of the philosophers of India.
Stressing the importance of argumentation, Daya Krishna stated
that argumentation provides an interesting starting point for exploring those
possibilities of thought which have been so brusquely or casually rejected in
the text.
11
In a sense, the Indian philosophical texts provide a far greater
opportunity for such an exercise than most philosophical texts written in the
Western tradition as the Indian texts provide, in the very format of their
presentation, the possible argument or arguments against their position and
their reply to them. Daya Krishna highlighted the sophisticated
reformulations of the views following the process of argumentation which
avoid static repetitions on the part of the Indian thinkers, when he wrote:

the history of the debate on any philosophical issue documents,
thinker by thinker, the development of the argument and the flaws
pointed out by each in the position of the others. There was, however,
in this matter no static repetition of positions but a modification of
ones position in the light of opponents trenchant criticism or even a
more sophisticated reformulation of ones position in the light of
those criticisms.
12

While stating the purvapaksha, utmost care was taken by Indian thinkers to
avoid static repetitions. This care facilitated a more sophisticated
reformulation of ones position. Thus, undeniably, the argumentative nature
has made a significant contribution to Indian philosophical thought.
However, one must also note that there is always the socially constituted
and ideologically legitimised hierarchy that was ruling the argumentative
platform. The hierarchy could be of gender, or social, or of a socially
constructed spiritual nature. This ideologically legitimised hierarchy often
implicitly imposes its own constitutive prejudices and threats.
Let us now proceed to examine the limitations of Sens exposition
of the argumentative tradition of India, first by pointing out the problem of
distinction between argument and dialogue and the lack of an explicitly-
stated extended definition of heterodoxy, and then by critically examining
his four important claims.

PROBLEM OF DISTINCTION: ARGUMENT AND DIALOGUE

Sen used the phrases Argumentative tradition and Dialogic tradition
inter-changeably while referring to the Indian tradition. This inter-
changeable use ignores the essential distinction between the two. Though
both seem to be stressing the involvement of more than one person in the
discussion, they are distinct in their character. Dialogue is more of a
general talk or conversation or discussion between two groups. But an
argument is an exchange of views, especially of a contentious nature, with
the support of methodical reasoning by the parties or groups involved.
Unlike a dialogue, an argument involves a disagreement regarding an issue,
methodical reasoning by the parties involved, and the intention of each of
the parties involved to challenge and oppose the others views. Dialogue
need not involve opposing groups, but an argument invariably presupposes
opposing groups. All arguments, with some reservation, could be
considered as discussions, but not all discussions are arguments.

DEFINITION OF HETERODOXY

A significant issue given very little attention by Sen is the definition of the
term heterodoxy. Sen opined that heterodoxy has contributed enormously
to the argumentative tradition of India. He states

The particular point of the focus on heterodoxy and loquaciousness is
not so much to elevate the role of tradition in the development of
India, but to seek a fuller reading of Indian traditions, which have
interacted with other factors in the dynamism of Indian society and
culture.
13

Sen used the examples of heterodox philosophical traditions such as
Jainism, Buddhism and Carvaka. Sen also mentioned the voices of the
oppressed against the affluent as heterodoxy. The Indian philosophical
tradition in general categorizes those who do not accept the Vedic authority
as a part of the heterodox traditions. Sen seems to be going beyond this
traditionally accepted definition by including the voices of various
marginalized groups of the both ancient and modern times. Participation in
argumentation requires substantial logical skills besides participation in a
dialogue. Argumentation is a specialised skill and cannot be a general
opportunity as claimed by Sen.
14
Debate could serve as a better supplement
to dialogue than argument, if Sen is only looking for a synonym. The claim
for this extension or inclusiveness is in need of a clearly and explicitly
stated definition of heterodoxy something which has not been provided by
Sen.

CRITIQUE OF SENS CLAIMS

Taking the above exposition to be the background of Sens account of the
argumentative tradition in Indian philosophy, let us now proceed to
critically examine the four claims he makes.

1. India has a strong argumentative tradition
2. Participation in the argumentative tradition is not limited to a few
sections of the society.
3. Heterodoxy contributed extensively to the argumentative tradition.
4. The argumentative tradition created a public sphere.

Sen provided instances from the Geeta and the Upanishads in
support of his first claim. The discussion between Krishna and Arjuna is
stated as an example of the argumentative tradition. It presents, according to
Sen, a tussle between two contrary moral positions Krishnas emphasis
on doing ones duty, on one side, and Arjunas focus on avoiding bad
consequences (and generating good ones), on the other.
15
One can certainly
extract two different moral positions from the discussion between Krishna
and Arjuna, but whether doing ones duty and avoiding bad consequences
can be contrary to each other is a debatable issue. If we take the main focus
of the discussion to be doing ones duty and avoiding bad consequences and
generating good ones, as Sen himself stated, then the two parties are arguing
from two different standpoints, though both are talking about the same
action. One is talking about the duty of the individual and the other is
talking about the consequences of the action. Argument requires both the
parties to be either equal or standing on an equal platform without being
subjected to any threat. But unfortunately the parties involved in the
discussion in the Geeta are neither equals, nor standing on the equal
platform for discussion. Further, none of the characteristics that are
discussed above with regard to an argument can be applicable to the Geeta.
There is no disagreement regarding an issue. There is no methodical
reasoning provided by both the parties involved in support of their views
and to oppose or challenge the views of the other. The discussion between
Krishna and Arjuna implicitly presupposes a spiritual hierarchy; one is
enlightened and the other is a seeker. It is not methodical reasoning, but
emotional despair that prompts Arjuna to seek clarifications. Though there
is active participation by both the parties and there is a process of
questioning and answering involved, a mere conversation without
employing any methodological reasoning or critical attitude towards the
view of the other would fall short of qualifying as an argument. Further, the
actual argument of the Geeta was held at an imagined situation
constructed by a war for existence. The situation of existential challenge
cannot create any ideal space for symmetrical argument. Thus, the Geeta
cannot be regarded as an example of argument, neither static nor interactive,
as it is a conversation between Realised and the Seeker. A similar kind of
criticism applies even to the Upanishadic texts. Daya Krishna, while
referring to the dialogue contained in the Upanishads, noted that, they do
not even attempt to provide the atmosphere of a real dialogue, for it is a
dialogue between those who have known and realized the truth and others
who have not.
16
The implications of the discussion may be very relevant to
the present time, as Sen rightly points out, but that itself cannot prompt us to
judge anything about the strength of Indian argumentative tradition.
While stating that one cannot expect the argumentational
participation to be uniformly distributed over all segments of the population,
Sen argued that in India it is not confined only to the more affluent and male
literate. He pointed out the participation of women like Gargi and Maitreyi
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) and Draupadi (Mahabharata) in support of
his argument. But one has to accept that the number of women who were
shown to be participants in the argumentative tradition were incomparably
fewer and were only the participants in the dominant tradition. They neither
questioned nor argued against the affluent tradition. If one goes through the
discussions of Maitreyi and Gargi with that of Yajnavalkya, one would
come across the questions of seekers rather than questions loaded with
methodical reasoning. To recall the above discussion, questioning can be of
at least three kinds; questioning used to seek answers regarding unknown
issues, questioning the knowledge of the other, and questioning employed to
critically evaluate viewpoints. The discussions of Maitreyi and Gargi are of
either the first or the second kind. They attempt either to know what is not
known or to know whether the other knows anything. In the first case the
questioner is ignorant and in the second case the questioner attempts to
prove the ignorance of the other. In any case, if the questioning is pursued
beyond a point, there is always a threat to life.
17

While claiming that argumentative encounters have frequently
crossed the barriers of class and caste
18
, Sen points to religious movements
such as Jainism and Buddhism which have played quite a large role in the
rebellious religious movements against the superiority of the priestly caste.
According to Sen, they stood for human equality and protested and resisted
the system of social hierarchy. Though both religious movements stressed
the importance of equality, they themselves were caught up in the
complicated structure of hierarchy. Subsequent to their initial
19
propagation
of egalitarianism, they slowly succumbed to the hierarchical structure of the
Indian tradition.
Heterodoxy in India, Sen maintains, has contributed extensively to
the argumentative tradition, and underestimating this would give an
inadequate picture of Indian thought. While pointing out the selective
inattention paid to rationalist parts of this Indian heritage, Sen states that an
inadequately inclusive understanding of Indian heterodoxy is particularly
important for appreciating the reach and range of heterodoxy in the
countrys intellectual background and diverse history.
20
It is true that the
range of heterodoxy is underrepresented in contemporary accounts of the
Indian tradition. Sen points to the constant neglect of the frequent
appearance of atheists and sceptics in philosophical discourses throughout
Indian history. But one must note that even these frequent appearances may
be selective representations, presented on the basis of their possibility of
being rejected. That is why most of the interesting accounts of the
arguments involving members of disadvantaged groups tend to be biased.
Sen mentions Carvaka and Buddhism as the examples of the
extensive contribution of heterodoxy to the argumentative tradition. Before
we say anything about Carvaka, it must be noted that there are no original
accounts of their philosophy written by their own exponents. Whatever
material is available, is so through the selective representations of secondary
sources.
21
These secondary sources do not depict any form of
argumentation; rather they provide a pre-conceived representation of a
defeated point. Though Carvaka is represented selectively, if not honestly,
with the motive of defeating its tenets, one must be happy for at least an
acknowledgement of its existence. These selective representations are cases
of static argumentation, in which the other in this case Carvaka is
neither active nor interactive. They are representations constrained by the
intentions and the motives of the presenters. The ulterior motives of the
presenters may have thrown some or most of the dissenting voices, both
unconquerable and weak, into oblivion.
Buddhist councils were mentioned by Sen for their contribution to
the Indian argumentative tradition. Sen opines that these councils also
addressed the demands of social and civic duties, and furthermore helped in
a general way, to consolidate and promote the tradition of open discussion
on contentious issues.
22
But if one looks at the history of these councils
and the discussions that went on in the course of the meetings of the
councils, one may wonder, how far were they addressing the demands of
social and civic duties? It may be true that they promoted the tradition of
open discussion on contentious issues, but they were limited to issues of
religious practices. A cursory view of the origin of the councils would
reveal that they were invented by brilliant Buddhist monks in order to
resolve religious conflicts. Some of the topics include the authoritative
versions of the sacred texts, the Tripitakas, and the conduct and status of the
Arhat.
23
Interestingly, instead of resolving the conflicts as conceived by the
monks, the councils ended up in schism. Though the Buddhist councils can
be regarded as the earliest attempts of brilliant Buddhists to facilitate open
discussion, they were limited to religious practices of sangha.
Sen also claims that the argumentative tradition in India has created
a public sphere which has to be carefully scrutinised. In its ideal form, the
public sphere is made up of private individuals gathered together as a
public, and articulating the needs of society with the state. Through acts of
assembly and dialogue, the public sphere generates opinions and attitudes
which serve to affirm or challenge and, therefore, to guide the affairs of
state. In ideal terms, the public sphere is the source of public opinion needed
to legitimate authority in any functioning democracy.
24
Creation of a
public sphere through argumentation is desirable and democratic, but it is
only possible in an ideal situation. Even Jurgen Habermas, the most
influential contemporary proponent of public sphere, opined that the public
sphere is a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist
in any identifiable space.
25
For a society like that of India with manifold
cultures and religions possessing well-formulated ideologically imposed
hierarchical systems, it would be a difficult dream to realise. Sens claim, as
pointed above, has a number of limitations. If we take the strength of the
argumentative tradition to be the participation of people from all sections of
society, then his discussion on the extent and reach of the argumentative
tradition is not sufficient. We must note that the examples of less affluent
and privileged people, which Sen provided, are not a representative sample.
One should be careful in taking support of exceptions for forming
generalisations. Though the participation in the argumentative tradition is
not limited to a few privileged groups, the place and participation of the less
privileged is very marginal and negligible. Further, one must also note that,
as Sen himself pointed out, it is doubtful whether the sceptical arguments
put forth belonged to the people to whom they are attributed, as they are the
representations of a third person. One must see this to be a case of static
argument. These static arguments are mostly presented to defeat another or
to prove another inadequate. It would also be possible that some of the
authors had their vested interests and might have constructed the sceptical
arguments in order to highlight the point they want to make.
Finally, Sen takes a leap in his argument from the existence of
argumentative tradition to the resultant creation of a public sphere. The
meagre evidences available can only prove the existence of the
argumentative tradition, but they cannot conclusively establish the creation
of public sphere. One should note in this context that, even among these
meagre evidences, whenever there is an involvement of the less privileged
in a dialogue or discussion, there was a possible threat to the life of the less
privileged. Thus, the limitations and the threats of the argumentative
tradition have curtailed the creation of a public sphere in India.

CONCLUSION

The limitations of Sens account of an argumentative tradition of India, as
pointed out above, do not undermine the relevance of an argumentative
tradition in the formation of public reasoning which promotes democracy
and upholds public sphere. The distinction between dialogue and argument
is not maintained by Sen, which undermines the significance of argument.
Further, though he seems to be advocating the voice of the dissent as
heterodoxy, this is not explicitly stated as an extended definition, in contrast
to the traditionally accepted one. The projection of the discussion between
Arjuna and Krishna in the Geeta, as an instance of argumentation, can be
contested, as it belongs neither to Static nor to Interactive forms of
argument. Though it involves interaction and questioning, it does not carry
the weight of the argument since it lacks the commitment to a particular
standpoint and use of methodical reasoning in support of it. In contrast to
the claim of Sen, there is discrimination on the basis of gender, class and
caste in the Indian philosophic tradition. Whatever instances Sen provides in
support of his claim are only exceptions, and no generalisation can be drawn
on the basis of exceptions. An authors representation of an opponents
argument would always be limited by the possibility of refutation. Mostly
an opponents view (i.e., purvapaksha) is presented to suit the refutation.
This prompts us to wonder whether there is any honest representation of the
opponent at all.
Though Buddhist councils, for the first time in Indian history,
facilitated a space for open discussion, they were limited only to religious
issues and did not extend to other socially relevant matters. Since the Indian
argumentative tradition is restrictive in scope, it could not create a public
sphere. But this should not be surprising; there is no distinction between a
public and a private sphere in the Indian tradition.

Dravidian University,
Kuppam, India
NOTES

1
I have benefited from suggestions and comments made by Dr. Tirupathi
Rao, Dr. K.M. Anil, Mr. Srikumar, Ms. Anuradha and Ms. Sridevi in the
course of developing this paper. I record my gratitude to them.
2
Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian. Writings on Indian History,
Culture and Identity (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2005), pp. 3-33.
3
The Argumentative Indian, p. 12.
4
5
6
7
8
Chandogya Upanishad. VII. 1.1-4.
9
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, What is Living and What is Dead in Indian
Philosophy (Delhi: Peoples Publishing House, 1993), p. 5.
10
Daya Krishna, Comparative Philosophy: What It Is and What It Ought to
Be? in Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative
Philosophy, eds. Gerald James Larson & Eliot Deutsch (Delhi: Motilal
Banarasidas Publishers, 1989), p. 76.
11
Daya Krishna, Thinking vs Thought. Strategies for Conceptual
Creativity, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Vol. V,
No.2 (1988), pp. 45-57, at pp. 50-51.
12
Daya Krishna, Comparative Philosophy: What It Is and What It Ought to
Be?, p. 75.
13
14
The Argumentative Indian, p. xiii.
15
The Argumentative Indian, pp. 3-4.
16
Daya Krishna, Thinking vs Thought, p. 50.
17
The two questions referred to by Sen that are asked by Gargi, while
seemingly challenging Yajnavalkya, are one and the same. They represent
the thirst of a seeker to know the ultimate eternal reality which is above the
heavens, beneath the earth and between these two the heaven and the earth
and that which is said to exist in the past, the present and the future (See
D.S. Sarma, The Upanishads: An Anthology [Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1961], p 222). At yet another place in the same Upanishad, when
the discussion is probed further by Gargi, Yajnavalkya warns her by saying,

O Gargi! Do not ask too much, lest your head should fall off
(maatiiprakshiirmaa te muurdhaa vyapatpadanati! Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad, VII. Up. III.1, 4-9. 7. from D.S. Sharma, p. 216).
18
Sen, The Argumentative Indian, p. 10.
19
Only probable exception to such a religious movement is the Bhakti
movement.
20
21
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya has made a significant contribution to Indian
philosophical heritage by reconstructing the philosophical doctrines of
Carvaka.
22
23
Nalinaksha Dutt, Buddhist Sects in India (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.
1998), pp. 15-23.
24
Paul Rutherford, Endless Propaganda: The Advertising of Public Goods.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 18.
25
See, for example, Jrgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, tr. Thomas
Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), and
his Further Reflections on the Public Sphere, in Habermas and the Public
Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, tr. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1992) Though it is not intended to impose the Habermasian paradigm on
Sens view, one should be made aware of the significant discussion
regarding public sphere. The success of the public sphere, as it is pointed
out by Rutherford (Endless Propaganda, p. 18), depends upon; i. the extent
of access (as close to universal as possible), ii. the degree of autonomy
(citizens must be free of coercion), iii. the rejection of hierarchy (so that
each might participate on an equal footing), iv. the rule of law (particularly
the subordination of the state) and v. the quality of participation (the
common commitment to the ways of logic). One can observe problems in
applying all these aspects to the Indian Argumentative tradition and the
consequent creation of a public sphere.
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188 Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions

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postmodern migrants and homeless consumers. Most of us are
programmed to think of homelessness in terms of the vague, cold figures
who wait outside our subway stops in hope of a hand-out, but Bouma-
Prediger and Walsh widen that picture to include even the well-off business
man who spends his time on an airplane and the middle-class family
constantly seeking to sell-off and trade-up their homes. The authors
response is the imaginative construction of hope based on biblical faith,
which they call Redemptive Homecoming. It involves trusting God but
also taking the shackles off our imaginations; we are all homeless, but
there is a home in which our yearning hearts can and will find rest (p. 320).
Bouma-Prediger and Walsh have done us a great service by
emphasizing homelessness and displacement as much more than a real
estate or economic issue. The issue reveals a crisis of worldviews. But they
might have helped their argument with more discussion of the economics of
balance and growth, further exposition of the role of Christian social
thought, and the importance of faith-based organizing. They clearly present
the conflict, even demise, of grand narratives in this postmodern age, but
then proceed to the biblical narrative of redemptive homecoming. For me,
this makes sense but needs the intervening steps of arguing the validity of
Christian and Jewish social principles and showing them in practice. The
volume leads us to a fundamental option in contemporary theology: the
relation between the sacred and the secular. I would love to see this text
discussed and debated in dialogue with Charles Taylors A Secular Age.

Book Reviews 189
The book is an excellent resource for college courses, adult
education programs, and para-liturgies celebrating social justice and/or
environmental themes. However, covering so much ground, the argument
sometimes becomes hard to follow. Summaries and perhaps a few reflection
questions at the end of each chapter would help.

John P. Hogan
Council for Research in Values and Philosophy
Washington, DC

Karim Douglas Crow, ed., Islam, Cultural Transformation, and the Re-
Emergence of Falsafah: Studies Honoring Professor George Francis
McLean on his Eightieth Birthday (Tehran: Iranian Institute of Philosophy,
2008). xiii + 179 pp.

A festschrift in honour of George McLean, O.M.I., Professor Emeritus at
the Catholic University of America and Founder of the Council for
Research in Values and Philosophy, this volume offers ten essays each of
which deals with one or more of the titular themes. The authors were asked
to focus on specific contexts of Muslim cultures with an eye toward
cultural transformation, (p. viii) and further to inspire the contributors to
reflection, Fr. McLean himself provided the following statement:

Given the global social-political and economic transformations
underway, there is a need to shift into a period of social
reconstruction. Philosophy may now draw upon the cultural resources
of many world peoples and apply them in a creative retrieval of the
dignity of persons and societies. What is sought is a new integration
of humanity with nature, of persons with society, and of the secular
with the sacred. (p. viii)

The result is an eclectic volume of topics unified by their common
reflection on the questions how may philosophy emerge from culture? and
how may culture emerge from philosophy?
The first two essays are eminently scholarly in detail and
presentation. Fr. Joseph Kennys contribution, Ibn Sn and the Origin of
Human Life, is a presentation (in Arabic and English) of Book 8, Chapter
16 of Avicennas al-Shif (The Cure), with Fr. Kennys commentary. The
text is a section from Avicennas treatise on animals, in which he presents
his position on the genesis at conception of the sensitive and intellective
souls. Amid critical analysis, Kenny highlights the ways Avicennas
conclusions as a physician and natural philosopher depart from the received
(and Quranic) legal position (fiqh) that spirit is breathed into the flesh
many days after conception.

In the next essay, Is ens per se the Definition of Substance in
Avicenna? Gholamreza Aavani wishes to correct tienne Gilsons answer
to the title question, claiming that Gilson merged two questions into one
(p. 21), namely, the textual question of whether scholars can find the
relevant text in Avicenna and the philosophical question of the
substantiality of God. Aavani points out that Gilson focused only on chapter
4 of tract 8 of Avicennas Metaphysica, which is devoted to special rather
than general metaphysics, and Gilson consequently failed to find Avicenna
teaching that substance is ens per se (as St. Thomas cites, in De potentia
9.7). Aavani also provides an appendix with a translated passage from
Avicennas logical work Kitb al Burhn, in which Avicenna offers an
explicit teaching of the doctrine.
The next four essays offer prescriptions for merging Islamic
philosophy and contemporary secular culture. Karim Crow presents the
thesis that we ought to reconceptualize our understanding of intelligence
away from the predominant information-processing model and toward the
Islamic conception of aql. Aql is comprised of not only narrated reports
(i.e. reason-giving, serving as the basis for legal rulings), but also an
infused wisdom, a light in the heart, amounting to a kind of innate
intelligence in matters of faith. (p. 47) For Crow, reconceptualizing human
intelligence as aql would restore the notion of non-scientific modes of
knowing, thus giving faith a renewed appreciation as being not irrational but
a-rational. He also offers a curious thesis that a misreading al-Ghazls
critique of falsafah has been responsible for the current mistrust in Islamic
intellectual heritage.
Yasien Mohamed presents medieval ethicist Raghib Isfahns
integration of Aristotle within Isfahns own Islamic theory of justice.
Mohamed is writing against viewing the call for the Islamization of
knowledge as meaning that knowledge must be changed to become more
Islamic (whatever this may mean). Against this, Mohamed proposes that
instead we may transform the secular epistemic paradigm which informs
contemporary knowledge, (p. 59) in explanation of which he says that the
secular paradigm will be replaced by an Islamic paradigm elaborated from
our understanding of human nature and creation, and that secular concepts
and terms are replaced or expanded by faith-based conceptions and terms
mediating our own values & concerns. (p. 60) He offers as examples of
such transformations that human law might be expanded by divine intent,
gods may be replaced by One God, and worldly happiness could be
extended to otherworldly happiness. (p. 60) The first is what Isfahn does
with Aristotle, replacing Aristotles notion of human law with divinely
revealed law (Sharah), by regarding justice of the self as the basis for
justice towards others, and bringing in benevolence to temper justice. (p.
75) Mohamed is sympathetic to Islamization as a response to secular
modernity (p. 62) but his worry seems to be that it is not integrative of
other modes of knowledge in the (true philosophic) spirit of e.g., al-Kind,
al-Frb, Ibn Sn, who looked to Hellenic knowledge in conjunction with

Book Reviews 191
Islamic teaching, integrating them into an authentic Islamic worldview.
(p. 62) Mohamed says, Once foreign knowledge is integrated into an
Islamic context, it becomes naturalized and indigenous to Islam. (p. 62)
Isfahns treatment of Aristotle is presented as a model of how secular
knowledge is to be naturalized to Islam (perhaps not fully convincingly,
but that is an especially tall order).
Burhanettin Tatar addresses the severe tension or anxiety (p. 88)
Muslims experience when considering the Quran as achieving a complete
worldview and at the same time offering a re-interpretable living text
relevant to present-day concerns. Tatar identifies this tension between the
letter and the spirit as a split consciousness of many Muslims. He notes
that in the Golden Age of Islam roughly from the time of al-Kinds
school to the Mongol siege of Baghdad in 1258 Muslim jurists held that
the Quran maintains a universal relevance to every human historical and
immaterial condition thanks to the rationally attainable correspondence
between the inherent sapientially ordered nature of thinks and Divine
hukm (wise ordinance). (p. 82) Tatar proposes a Quranic hermeneutic,
influenced by his reading of Hans-Georg Gadamer, whereby the past reveals
itself within the continually unfolding present, which present includes art,
politics, commerce, religious knowledge and rituals, science, daily cultural
practices, customs, and even humor and tragedy; thus tradition becomes
not mere knowledge of the past, but rather the nexus of historical
continuities linking the past and the present. (p. 91) Tatar sees this vision
as consistent with McLeans hermeneutical project to replace culture clash
with complementarity.
Rahim Nohabar, in a substantial essay, presents the position of
Islamic Teaching on the question of a division between public and private
spheres. He distinguishes two issues: first, how Islam treats the public and
private as domains separate from the state, and second, how Islamic
Teachings differ on the public-private demarcation of classical or orthodox
Liberalism. Nohabar offers various examples from early and current Islamic
legal thinking to argue that Islam respects and values individual privacy. At
the same time, Islamic Teachings do not agree with the absolute distinction
between the public and the private sphere as it is recognized in classic
Liberalism. (p. 140) Nohabar notes that the Quran teaches that all aspects
of a Muslims life are under the dominion of a coherent spectrum of
values; the upshot is that Muslim peoples formulate their identity freely
through careful consideration of their Islamic tradition. (p. 131)
The final four essays are very much focused on presenting
McLeans philosophy and approach to culture complementarity. Md. Sirajul
Islams essay is a broad review of how Islam and Hinduism came together
to forge Indian culture. He praises and follows Fr. McLeans goal for a
common global pluralist culture, focusing on the experience of Indian
Muslims. The author ends on a programmatic note: In forging a global
pluralist culture we shall take care to guard their specific identity.

Preserving their unique identities yields a more inclusive cultural whole
sharing certain common characteristics. (p. 110)
Musa S. Dibadjs essay, McLean About Us, suggests that current
globalization cannot offer humans a new anthropology. Dibadj presents
McLean as aim[ing] at an integral reconstruction of the whole in which
another reality, society or culture occupies its place in the ultimate
completeness of the human being. This aspect of McLeans hermeneutics is
all the more remarkable in that no other hermeneutical vision rivals any
comparable theory of the reconstruction or re-creation of culture. (p. 141)
Thus McLeans stance is more promising than the present eighteenth-
century-rooted Enlightenment political philosophy of individualism and
subjectivism.
The final two offerings from Latif H.S. Kazmi and Asna Husin are
reflections on Fr. McLeans dedication and vision. Kazmi, tracking
McLeans accomplishments and emphasizing his scholarship on al-Ghazl,
also praises McLeans firm belief in God as that which oriented him to
serve people of all faiths, to communicate with them and to work out the
modalities for inter-faith, inter-cultural and inter-societal dialogues and for
extracting commonalities between religions, cultural groups and societies.
(p. 157) Husin, reflecting on McLeans remark: I hope Muslims never
become secularized, considers the relevance of McLeans ideology for
modern Indonesia, highlighting the core of Professor McLeans life
mission of forging global cooperation and interchange of philosophical
insights among faith communities and thinking believers to address the vital
concerns of the age for the sake of our common good. (p. 176)
The volume includes a brief and laudatory introductory summary of
Fr. McLeans accomplishments, as well as many statements of his mission,
one of which, from Kazmi, I include here as exemplary of the tone of
reverence taken by various contributors: It is McLeans firm faith,
devotion and commitment which enables him to work insistently in
cultivating the atmosphere of love, togetherness and faithful rational
communication for cross-cultural dialogue, freedom of thought and
expression, respect for human rights, inter-faith understanding, democratic
co-existence, value-based governance and sensible humane unity in
diversity. (p. 157) The essays succeed in addressing issues of importance,
and throughout the book, Father McLeans students, colleagues and
contemporaries very much present him as engaged as a sage seeking
wisdom.

Robbie Moser,
Canisius College,
Buffalo, New York

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Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions

Vol. 5 2008-2009 ISSN 1609-2392

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