Overlapping Territories : Asian Voices on Culture and Civilization [1 ed.] 9781443831093, 9781443829991

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Overlapping Territories

Overlapping Territories: Asian Voices on Culture and Civilization

Edited by

Bambang Sugiharto and Roy Voragen

Overlapping Territories: Asian Voices on Culture and Civilization, Edited by Bambang Sugiharto and Roy Voragen This book first published 2011 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2011 by Bambang Sugiharto and Roy Voragen and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-2999-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-2999-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... vii Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Roy Voragen Of Borders, Death and Footprints.............................................................. 19 Goenawan Mohamad Cosmopolitanism, between Cosmopolis and Chaosmopolis ..................... 39 Bambang Sugiharto The Claim of Truth and the Claim of Freedom in Religion....................... 51 Tran Van Doan A Case for Pluralism in a Relativistic Environment .................................. 67 Andrea Bonazzi History as the Burden of Inheritance and an Opportunity for Justice........ 81 Preciosa de Joya The Beautiful Difference ........................................................................... 89 Eunjoong Kim Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Dialogue ............................................... 105 Jove Jim S. Aguas Tracing a Cultural Fold in an Asian Context ........................................... 119 Cristal Huang Exposing the Hidden Dimension of Gender in Discourses on Civilization and Culture .............................................................................................. 123 Natividad Dominique G. Manauat

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Table of Contents

Garuda Indonesia – Registered Trademark ® ......................................... 131 John T. Giordano Javanese-Islam Value Consensus, Remarks on Value Pluralism ............ 143 Donny Gahral Adian Civil Society and Democracy in Post-Soeharto Indonesia ...................... 155 Roy Voragen Bibliography ............................................................................................ 167 Contributors............................................................................................. 179



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is a result of the international conference on ‘Civilization and Culture: Culture as Burden and Opportunity’, organized by the Department of Philosophy, Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung, Indonesia, 18-20 July 2006. We thank all contributors to this book for participating in this conference. A selection of articles were already published: Donny Gahral Adian, “Javanese-Islam Value Consensus, A Remark on Value Pluralism,” Melintas 22, no.3 (December 2007): 771-83; Jove Jim S. Aguas, “Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Dialogue,” Melintas 23, no.3 (December 2008): 369-83; Andrea Bonazzi, “De Symphonica Veritate, The Case for Pluralism in a Relativistic Environment,” Melintas 24, no.1 (April 2008): 11-27; Tran van Doan, “The Claim of Truth and Freedom in Religion,” Melintas 23, no.2 (August 2007): 153-69; Preciosa de Joya, “The Task of Remembrance, History as the Burden of Inheritance and an Opportunity for Justice,” Melintas 22, no.2 (April 2006): 591-600; Natividad D. G. Manauat, “Uncloacking the Universal Civilized/Cultured Man, Exposing the Hidden Dimension of Gender in Philosophy and Contemporary Discourses on Civilization and Culture,” Melintas 24, no.1 (April 2008): 1-10; Goenawan Mohamad, “Of Borders, Death and Footprints,” Melintas 23, no.3 (December 2008): 347-67; Bambang Sugiharto, “Cosmopolitanism, Between Cosmopolis and Chaosmopolis,” Acta Institutionis Philosophiae et Aestheticae 23 (2005): 95-103; Roy Voragen, “Civil Society and Democracy in Post-Soeharto Indonesia,” Melintas 22, no.3 (December 2007): 741-54 (a shorter version was published as: “How free are Indonesians today?,” The Jakarta Post, 5 June 2006, 6). An earlier version of the introduction was presented as “Orientalism, Occidentalism and Relativism, Proximity of Strangers in the Era of Globalization” by Roy Voragen as a guest lecture at University of Indonesia’s Department of Arabic Language and Culture, Depok, November 5, 2005; Voragen thanks all participants for helpful comments. A subsequent version of the introduction was published “Overlapping Territories, The Proximity of Strangers,” Melintas 25, no.1 (April 2009): 31-44. (Melintas is a philosophy journal run by Parahyangan Catholic University.)

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Sybrand Zijlstra for proofreading the manuscript and offering us insightful comments. We also thank Meiwiyanti Suling for making an excellent cover design.



PREFACE BAMBANG SUGIHARTO

The post-Cold War situation has given way to a new and unprecedented constellation of global interrelations. The power constellation today is not only multi-polar, but rather, ‘chaotic’: its configuration keeps shifting and it is determined not simply by new emerging super powers (such as China, India or Brazil), but also by any seemingly small events (such as Wikileaks or the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers) in non-linear modes of interaction. The interdependency between communities through networks of communication somehow makes significant changes more and more unpredictable. Such interdependent, yet chaotic, world order, in turn, raises new philosophical questions. Identity, culture and civilization cannot be understood anymore simply in terms of traditional categories. Indeed, these categories are called into question through mutual interrogation and mutual enlargement of horizons among different communities in the world. And this inevitably entails hybridization and pluralization, even within every traditional system, be it a cultural, social, philosophical or religious system. The Asian voices included in this book speak of recognition of and respect for the ‘otherness’, the other outside as well as inside of traditions. The writers mostly see globalization as well as their own cultural positions through dialogical imagination in which a Western philosophical framework is deployed to find out their Asian positions, and the reverse, the Asian reality is used to problematize the Western framework. Thereby this book attempts to shed light on the question of how we are to understand anew culture and civilization in today’s cosmopolitan world.

INTRODUCTION ROY VORAGEN

Cultures and civilizations are as old as human history, however, in the last two decades or so culture and civilization as concepts have been extensively discussed and questioned in all corners of the (academic) world. Politicians, journalists, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, philosophers and laypeople have crowded this Babylon with virulent energy. The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 aroused enormous euphoria and not only in that particular part of Europe. In this post-Cold War excitement some thought that the West provides the only model for modernization. Other parts of the world should follow the social, political and economic models that have brought prosperity to the West. And these models focus on free market capitalism; science, technology and innovation; meritocracy through the market based on equal opportunities and access to education; pragmatism in politics; democracy and peaceful negotiations; and the rule of law. Pragmatism in politics supposedly leads to an absence of ideological conflict and Francis Fukuyama concluded that history came to an end (history is then defined as ideological conflict in a Hegelian fashion).1 This overlooks the diversity all around our world and it is clear by now that not all countries are ‘progressing’ towards Western liberal democracy nor are they willing to do so in the future. (The term ‘progress’ implies that people should only be satisfied if they live in a country like Western countries). The end of the Cold War, however, posed many new questions. A bipolar world was rather easy to understand after more than forty years of phony war between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Samuel Huntington designed a concept for the multi-polar world order: the

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Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992). This could be regarded as a form of politicide, an extreme form of depoliticization as a crisis of and not in democracy when governance is only seen in terms of policy-making.

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Introduction

clash of civilizations. “People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity.”2 And international politics, according to Huntington, is characterized by identity politics in the era after the Cold War. To define the West as Christian, though, overlooks the fact that the United States is very different from the European Union countries (almost five hundred million citizens) due to the secularization in many European countries. Moreover, it overlooks the fact that while many Asian countries are predominantly Buddhist, Hindu, Confucian or Islamic, there are also many Christians living in these countries. (It also remains a question, for example, how significant an impact Confucianism has on communist China or whether only lip service is paid to its tenets). The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001 ended the joyous nineties. Some saw a new bi-polar world emerging: Islam versus the rest, particularly the West. To cope with the anxiety induced by terror, non-Muslims started to read the Quran. However, civilizations cannot clash, people can, and a person is never only a Muslim, nor is one Muslim a representation of Islam as such. By seeing an individual person merely through the perspective of community, culture, religion or civilization, is to reduce that person to a single dimension. Well before civilizations can clash, we have already limited the scope to a single perspective. Then we fall into the trap of stereotypes – sometimes with good intention. That all Muslims are (potential) terrorists is as much nonsense as claiming that all Muslims are by definition peace lovers. Amartya Sen says that we have “to distinguish between (1) the various affiliations and loyalties a person who happens to be a Muslim has, and (2) his or her Islamic identity in particular.”3 We will miss the whole picture if we only focus on the second. To read war through the prism of religion is to overlook other reasons and causes. For example, the Middle East cannot be understood if we only look at Islam and Judaism; the conflict also concerns access to land and drinkable water as after all, most of this area is desert. The cheerful nineties became even farther away when the bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt on September 15, 2008 and this bankruptcy

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Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon&Schuster, 1996), 21. Also Samuel P. Huntington, Who are We? America’s Great Debate (London: Free Press, 2004). In this book Huntington claims that Americans should refocus on the WASP culture, tradition, religion, language and values again as a response to mass immigration from Latinos. 3 Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence, The Illusion of Destiny (Princeton: W.W. Norton, 2007), 61.

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ignited a global financial crisis. This financial crisis is also a political crisis, because global market capitalism could only be established through political decisions. Now questions are raised whether the United States can still remain the sole super power in the world of emerging powers. This has less to do with the power of the United States declining and more to do with other powers emerging, for example: China (a country that lent huge amounts to the United States, partly to pay for the war-on-terror), India and Brazil have to be reckoned with today and in the future.4 These historical changes in (global) society, politics and the economy raise many new philosophical questions. How to understand identity, culture and civilization in our globalized world (especially from an Asian perspective)?

Overlapping territories in a globalized world Globalization is not something abstract, it is concrete and its consequences are real. Globalization is not out there, it is here and now. Globalization is not metaphysical; it is political (because its multiple causes and consequences are real and public). While the consequences of globalization are obviously uneven, that, on the other hand, does not mean that people have merely to accept these consequences passively without any ability to alter, appropriate and acculturate. Fatalism, after all, is the end of the power to change. There is nothing teleological about globalization. History has no purpose and the future is not inevitable. We are not progressing toward a situation where we will all be members of a single civilization, where all peoples of the world will embrace liberal-secular democracy and free market capitalism as the end of ideological conflict. Not only is globalization not a given, its consequences are unequal and not benign (and can be bellicose). Modernity in the era of globalization is not linear and not singular. The Enlightenment hope for progress and historical inevitability is utopian. Moreover, the Enlightenment dream of a universal civilization is Eurocentric.5 A growing interconnectedness and interdependence does not necessarily lead to peaceful cooperation; globalization does not mean an end to all international political conflicts, interstate war remains an



4 Fareed Zakaria, The Post American World (Princeton: W. W. Norton, 2008); and Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere, The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: Public Affairs, 2008). 5 John Gray, False Dawn, The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London: Granta, 2002), 170.

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Introduction

imminent possibility. While nation-states might seem to have lost steam, it does not mean an end to state sovereignty. Globalization has impacts on everyone, but not equally. Globalization, writes Ulrich Beck, are “the processes through which sovereign national states are crisscrossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientation, identities and networks.”6 Globalization, Anthony Giddens writes, is a “[g]rowing interdependence between different peoples, regions and countries in the world as social and economic relationships come to stretch worldwide.”7 Giddens sees modernity spreading across the globe as globalization progresses.8 Modernization in the era of globalization is not the same as Westernization or homogenization (hybridization, though, is the keyword). Modernization, on the other hand, becomes pluralized;9 globalization thus means a move away from universalism.10 Space and time are being compressed; we can go across space within no time. Activities – from war to entertainment – can occur or be experienced simultaneously around the globe. This does not mean that space is no longer of significance, how could we be and act without it? Space is the precondition to all existence, action and interaction. We, to state the obvious, live spatially. Territory is still important and we can see a dialectic between the local and the global, i.e. glocalization. Globalization is thus still spatially constituted, however, the meaning of distance and proximity changes in a world where people, values, goods and money are mobile. I can be socially near to someone, but that person can be spatially distant (or the other way around).

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Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 11. Anthony Giddens, Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 690. 8 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 63, 177. Giddens defines modernity as “to refer to institutions and modes of behavior established first of all in post-feudal Europe, but which in the twentieth century increasingly have become world-historical in impact. ‘Modernity’ can be understood as roughly equivalent to ‘the industrialized world’, so long as it be recognized that industrialism is not its only institutional dimension. […] A second dimension is capitalism […]. Each of these can be distinguished analytically from the institutions of surveillance […]. This dimension can in turn be separated from control of the means of violence in the context of the ‘industrialization of war’.” Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 14-5. 9 Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 3. 10 Göran Therborn, “At the birth of second century sociology: times of reflexivity, spaces of identity, and nodes of knowledge,” British Journal of Sociology 51, no.1 (January/March 2000), 14, 19. 7

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Globalization is not a one-way process people have to undergo passively, but, of course, not everyone has the same power to alter, appropriate and acculturate these changes. We are connected in many ways, and economics is only one way. Globalization should not be seen as something ‘out there’, it is also an ‘in here’ matter. Globalization “affects, or rather is dialectically related to, even the most intimate aspects of our lives.”11 Globalization restructures space, what Giddens calls ‘action at distance’ is the possibility to act without being present. ‘Action at distance’ is a two-way process, globalization is without ‘direction’ and we can no longer speak of globalization as Westernization. No one is outside, and while for a long time, the ‘conversation’ went only from the West to the ‘other’ now “mutual interrogation is possible.”12 With ‘mutual interrogation’ (for example the ongoing debate on post-colonialism and neo-imperialism) not only comes all sorts of forms of (violent) resistance, but also possibilities for all sides to change. One such interrogation to resist is the three-decade-old book Orientalism by the Palestinian-American Edward Said. The illegitimate invasion of Iraq by the United States – by ignoring the United Nations and the territorial integrity of the people of Iraq (as a consequence the United States has lost standing in the international community and therefore the (soft) power to get things done) – proves that this book has not lost any of its persuasive power. What Said calls Orientalism is an Orient based on the experiences of Westerners. Orientalism is a discourse to make a dividing line between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between those who are included in the making of history and civilization and those who are not. For this Said borrows from Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci. From Foucault he borrows the term discourse and from Gramsci the term hegemony. Orientalism is an academic, intellectual and cultural discourse that helps to sustain the economic, political and military hegemony of among others the United States. According to Said, borrowing from Giovanni Battista Vico, “the Orient is not an inert fact of nature. It is not merely there, just as the Occident itself is not just there either. […M]en make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both

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Anthony Giddens, “Living in a Post-Traditional Society,” in Reflexive Modernization, Politics, Tradition, and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order, Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 95. Also Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy, Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002). 12 Giddens, “Living in a Post-Traditional Society,” 96-7.

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Introduction

geographical and cultural entities – to say nothing of historical entities [such as nation-states] – such locales, regions, geographical sectors as ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are man-made.”13 However, Said continues, these ideas on space have real consequences for power relations in our global society. Through Orientalism the Orient becomes ‘Orientalized’, so that the Occident can dominate the Orient. Orientalism is not merely a set of myths that can be removed by revealing the truth. Orientalism is a hegemonic discourse about the Orient to hold power over the Orient. “Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand.”14 Said is not saying that only women can write about women (men can be feminists, John Stuart Mill and Amartya Sen are examples), or only homosexuals about homosexuals, blacks about blacks, Asians about Asians, Muslims about Islam. Said writes that “there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes [Said calls this form of knowledge humanism], and on the other hand knowledge – if that is what it is – that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency, and out-right war. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of coexistence and humanistic enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and external domination.”15 Said’s book Orientalism is about how Westerners perceive the Orient and how this body of knowledge is used in power structures. His book is not about the Orient in general or about the Arab and Islamic world in particular. This book is also not an anti-Western book. In the Islamic world, so says Said, this book is read as such. Said calls this ‘Occidentosis’, which means that Muslims claim that “all the evils in the world come from the west.”16 The Dutch-British Ian Buruma and the Israeli Avishai Margalit wrote a book about ‘Occidentosis’. They write in the conclusion of Occidentalism,

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Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 4-5. Said, 7. 15 Said, xix; Said calls Bernard Lewis a modern-day Orientalist. 16 Edward W. Said, “Orientalism and After,” in Power, Politics and Culture, Interviews with Edward W. Said, ed. Gauri Viswanathan (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 221. 14

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The West in the Eyes of its Enemies: “The story we have told in this book is not a Manichaeistic one of a civilization at war with another. On the contrary, it is a tale of cross-contamination, the spread of bad ideas. This could happen to us now, if we fall for the temptation to fight fire with fire, Islamism with our own forms of intolerance. […] We cannot afford to close our societies as a defense against those who have closed theirs. For then we would all become Occidentalists, and there would be nothing left to defend.”17 Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush inaugurated the war-on-terror by saying that who is not with him is against him. Bush as the commander-in-chief of this war only created more enemies. (Friedrich Nietzsche could have warned him).18 Orientalism by Edward Said and Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit’s Occidentalism, are about those people who divide the world into an ‘us’ and a ‘them’, who see the other as different, unlike ‘us’, less than human, i.e. these are dehumanizing ideologies, which reduce human individuals to sub-human classes, which, in turn, can lead to the destruction of human lives. The Orientalist sees the other as the ‘lazy native’, as the ‘exotic savant’ (often pictured in erotic and feminized terms). The native is backward because of his irrationality, and this justifies colonialism and imperialism. Colonialism and imperialism are justified as civilizing forces, so the argument goes. Orientalism is as one-dimensional as Occidentalism, but now it dehumanizes not the peoples of the Orient but the peoples of the Occident. Both ideologies have real and violent consequences. Buruma and Margalit’s book is an attempt to understand those who hijacked airplanes that destroyed the WTC in New York on an early September morning that reset the mood for this new millennium. It is the spiritual and profound East versus the coldly mechanical, shallow, rootless, destructive, sex-obsessed, and materialistic West. Today, Occidentalists often focus on the United States, however, “antiAmericanism is sometimes the result of specific American policies […]. But whatever the U.S. government does or does not do is often beside the point. [… Occidentalism refers] not to American policies, but to the idea

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Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism, The West in the Eyes of its Enemies (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 149. 18 Friedrich Nietzsche, “The wanderer and its shadow,” in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), section 208. Also Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23.

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Introduction

of America itself, as a rootless, cosmopolitan, superficial, trivial, materialistic, racially-mixed, fashion-addicted civilization.”19 How to deal with contingency, disagreement, indeterminacy, inconsistency, incoherence, incongruity, ambivalence, heterogeneity, opacity, paradox, risk and uncertainty in our globalized era? Friedrich Nietzsche is the philosopher that warned us that ontological uncertainty causes anxiety, and possibly violence against the ‘stranger’, against what is ‘alien’.20 According to Zygmunt Bauman the task of philosophy today is to teach us how to deal with uncertainty and contingency. No matter how much we need common ground, the search for absolute and universal values, though, is the existential need for security.21 In a traditional society the stranger would live on the other side of a mountain or sea (the Greeks called those strangers barbarians), today we no longer have that luxury. Some long to return to a traditional society, for it gives ontological security a society in present-day modernity cannot provide, with all the consequent anxiety. In a pre-modern society the question of what a society is remains unasked. Within a tradition, a person lives in a pre-established order. In present-day modernity the individual has to ask the questions how (global) society should be ordered. We can no longer rely on preestablished answers for these questions. Modernity held the promise that we can find security in rationality. However, modernity is now primarily characterized by insecurity and instability. Radical doubt is turned against itself: how can radical doubt lead to certain and stable knowledge with which we can colonize the future? What we do not know – or: cannot know – is probably as large as what we do know now. Many dangers we face in this world are manufactured by ourselves (for example: global warming or the economic crises of 1997 and 2008). Many factors cannot be given, which makes calculating the probable consequences of risks impossible. We can know how to act if we are able to understand a situation. Indeterminacy makes global society a risk-prone environment. The more complex society is – i.e. the complexity of the network of interactions – the more insecure and instable. A high-risk environment can lead to anxiety and alienation. We live in an ambivalent territory, as Bauman writes: “life is carried on by strangers among strangers.”22 How to decide

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Buruma and Margalit, Occidentalism, 8. Tony Davies, Humanism (New York: Routledge, 1997), 32-3. 21 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 81-2. 22 Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments, Essays in Postmodern Morality (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 125. 20

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how to act if the actions of others are unpredictable (because who the other is, is unknown)? This can make life fragmentary. Bauman states that there is a gap between what we need to know to know how to act and what we can know about how to act among people we perceive as ‘strange’. Civilization and the freedom to sustain and create cultural values are no longer feasible when fear takes over (see for example the European Union captured in the image of a fortress). The individual has to negotiate the proximity of differences. The stranger is near but socially distant. The high mobility in present-day modernity makes this situation even more complex. The danger is a renewed longing for community-hood – a community of thick relations of care – to exclude the stranger. That brings us to the moral problem of cultural relativism. There is an old saying: “In Rome do as the Romans do.” Does that mean there is no room for universal values that cross the boundaries of space and time? One such universal value could be the respect for human life. However, the debates concerning abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty seem to show that we do not have a consensus on the question of what constitutes man. What is then the normative source of morality if our moral values and norms merely reflect the cultural conventions of a particular space and time? The anthropologist Clifford Geertz defines culture as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.”23 Geertz is thus a relativist. And indeed, different cultures do have different values and norms. What can be considered as right in one culture can be perceived as wrong in another, and it is then naïve to assume that our norms have universal validity. Cultural relativists assume that there are no universal truths in ethics, i.e. that every normative standard is only valid within a culture. Cultural relativists conclude from the fact that there are cultural differences that we cannot find any agreement on morality. Rachels calls this the ‘cultural difference argument’. “The premise concerns what people believe […]. The conclusion, however, concerns what really is the case.”24 This argument is therefore logically fallacious. As if the simple point that we disagree means that no true position can be found (for example, for a long

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Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89. 24 James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), 19.

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Introduction

time most were convinced that the earth was flat and the center of the universe). Cultural relativism overestimates our differences. But what if we would take cultural relativism seriously? What are the consequences if we do not have a normative point of view from outside a certain culture? The first consequence is that we can no longer perceive cultural practices as morally inferior to our own practices, i.e. we no longer have a tool for moral criticism (in the debates on human rights and Asian values this position is often taken, criticism is then not seen as enlightened but as a new tool of imperialism). Second, we can only judge our society by the standards of our own society. So, even when we know that our society is not perfect, we have no tools to morally improve it. And third, moral relativism not only makes criticism impossible, it also makes moral progress infeasible. Relativism does not give us a standard to judge something as being better or improved, which makes social reform impossible. Many of our values are indeed products of our cultural conventions and it is mere arrogance to assume that our moral values are based on an absolute rational standard and therefore ultimately better than other moral systems. We should be wary of prejudices. Cultural relativism criticizes the dogmatism of universalism. However, cultural relativists go a step further, a step that leads back to universal morality. Anti-dogmatism, so claim relativists, could lead to the virtues of tolerance and respectfulness; these are, though, moral values, which according to relativism cannot be independent from culture. Multiculturalism, the theory that is often connected to cultural relativism, has two major flaws (beside the ones discussed above). First, just as the world cannot be divided into homogenous civilizations, so a society cannot be divided into homogenous blocks of separate cultures. Global society is one of overlapping territories and interdependent histories, according to Said. And second, multiculturalism locks individuals up in separate cultures by reducing their identity to a singular identity. Amartya Sen wants to make clear in his book Identity and Violence that nations are not diverse because they are federations of peoples, each nation, on the other hand, is a collection of individual citizens and each individual inhabits a wide range of identities. It depends on the context, according to Sen, which part of our identity gets focus. No matter how constrained we are by circumstances, we still have to choose and for making choices we need to reason, i.e. to give arguments and justifications. Identity is a complicated matter. And identity matters. Identity matters for the way we are, think and act. “When we shift our attention from the

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notion of being identical to oneself to that of sharing an identity with others of a particular group […], the complexity increases further.”25 Huntington is right to claim that there are differences between the East and the West, but he makes those differences too pronounced, there exists considerable overlap. “Civilizational or religious partitioning of the world population yields a ‘solitarist’ approach to human identity.”26 We all have plural identities according to Sen and he claims that it depends on a particular context which part gets importance. “When the prospects of good relations among different human beings are seen […] primarily in terms of ‘amity among civilizations’, or ‘dialogue between religious groups’, or ‘friendly relations between different communities’ […], a serious miniaturization of human beings precedes the devised programs of peace.”27 Society is a ‘collection’ of strangers; acknowledging this fact is an important step to the cosmopolitanization of society. Cosmopolitanization entails pluralization and hybridization instead of homogenization. The wider world becomes a part of society. Resisting ambiguity can lead to violence: “someone who affirms and elevates ‘his own’ will almost inevitably rejects and despises the foreign.”28 Prejudices are reflections of fear.

Asian voices on culture and civilization The Asian voices included in this book speak of recognition and respect for the otherness of the particular other. This recognition and respect is a universalism without uniformity. These writers claim that we have to recognize differences without falling back on sameness and a single value order. The writers, therefore, call for a questioning of power. The voice of the stranger should no longer be silenced. Global power needs to be scrutinized so that our societies can become more just and democratic, and can develop values, cultures and civilizations, and can peacefully coexist in our globalized era. For this to work, we have to realize that the identity of the self, a culture or civilization can never be fixed; we have to live with the uncertainty that comes with this dynamism and we have to keep the cosmopolitan dialogues open.

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Sen, Identity and Violence, xii. Sen. 27 Sen, xiii. 28 Ulrich Beck, “The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies,” Theory, Culture and Society 19, no.1-2 (2002), 38. 26

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Introduction

In the opening chapter “Of Borders, Death and Footprints,” the poet and journalist Goenawan Mohamad claims that unidentifiable identities are transformed into foreigners by rejecting the strangeness of strangers. Through metaphoric space, borders function to exclude the alien. These borders change time into space. Identity should be readable and is therefore shaped by fixed demarcations. However, boundaries do in fact shift. From time to time, different interpretations are ossified by the logic of difference, i.e. borders are volatile. This volatility signifies contingency with a never fulfilled desire: a desire for clarity without surprises. Borders signify a philosophy of difference as a movement from the same to the other. And ‘we’ represent ourselves in public, but this representation is a misrepresentation, because we have to use a symbolic order embodied in language, law, community and/or the state. We portray ourselves by preexisting significations that reduce our identities into fixed abstractions. The ‘we’ is defined by a ‘them’ – the gaze of the Other. This gaze can be experienced as a violation, because it signifies power and not choice. However, identity is a never-ending search, an on-going formation, and always tentative. A frontier can therefore also be seen as an invitation to other, unknown places. In the next chapter, “Cosmopolitanism, Between Cosmopolis and Chaosmopolis,” the philosopher and art critic Bambang Sugiharto rethinks cosmopolitanism in the era of globalization from a historical perspective to reconsider its ethical principles. He claims that it has always been a part of the Western utopian imagination, however, it was also a part of colonializational forces. Modernity is then also a ‘civilizational’ force: to emancipate and liberate through the use of reason. And this ‘civilizational’ force became centered in the nation-state. This cosmopolitan utopia is Eurocentric in that Europe sees itself as the home of civilization and as a consequence it sees itself as having the duty (or burden) to ‘civilize’, if necessary by force. The nation-state, though, has been contested in the post-colonial period. Questions emerge whether the nation-state remains the adequate entity to respond to the new conditions. Globalization is becoming part of our everyday life: cosmopolis. Cosmopolis takes shape in a ‘dialogical’ and not in the previous Eurocentric ‘monological’ imagination. The dialogical imagination searches for alternatives and recognizes the otherness of the other. The cosmopolitanism of the era of globalization comes with a consciousness of a shared future but without the institutionalized answers to respond to the new questions. A new infrastructure needs to be created, but not one with one panoramic perspective from a central point. There are as many points of view as there are cosmopolites, this is characterized by mobile ‘centres’ to (re-)invent

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the world. This reinvention has yet to take shape and could take a dystopian turn: the disembedding and dissolving of localities, an increase in global inequalities. Cosmopolis could thus very well turn into chaosmopolis. This calls for a rethinking of the meanings of hospitality, responsibility and reflexivity, which have to be sensitive to pluralism and pluralization, contradictions, risk, uncertainty and instability. However, openness to the world as cosmopolitan virtues require is far from easy. Cosmopolitan virtues can only work realistically if we can imagine the emergence of a global polity. Tran Van Doan claims in “The Claim of Truth and the Claim of Freedom in Religion” that standards of ‘truth’ and ‘justice’ are set by the powers-that-be. Knowledge and power are two sides of the same currency owned by the rulers and truth is then only a tool to remain in power, which contradicts the spirit of the Enlightenment, because this use of knowledge/power is not for the benefit of humanity at large. Morality is now used to consolidate the power of the rulers. True intellectuals voice their criticism against this abuse of power, knowledge and morality. Therefore, we should be critical of colonialism and neo-imperialism disguised as benevolence. Absolute truth is then having absolute power, and vice versa, to change the world by force and this is called unconditional freedom to force one’s truth on the unbelievers, which results in human rights violations and oppression. Freedom is then also unfreedom and truth is then also anti-truth. We should therefore re-examine the meaning of truth in connection to freedom. The problem lies with a lust for power expressed in truth-claims and claims for freedom to express and enforce truths. Through this lust for power, truth in life is twisted to truth as life. Freedom should be properly understood from within our life, with its finitude and dependency; therefore truth should be understood as truth in life. Then the question should not be what constitutes truth, but what constitutes life and how to be faithful to life should be the objective of philosophers. Truthfulness means a loyalty to life and to be faithful. Freedom means then liberation with a recognition of dependency. In “A Case for Pluralism in a Relativistic Environment” Andrea Bonazzi states that pluralism can be a bad thing, it can take the form of conflicts. Therefore there is a need for a reconciled pluralism: a symphony instead of cacophony presupposes a unitary principle that is commensurable through the appeal to experience. If one claims that there are no criteria to decide what is good then one is a relativist. Pluralism is a fact of life, however, pluralism does not necessarily imply relativism. Rules that guide our co-existence are needed, i.e. a need for a form of universalism which faith can provide. If this universalism is not feasible, i.e. incommensurability

14

Introduction

governs our social world, then we fall into solipsism, because we have nothing in common, which could result in conflicts. Solipsism means that we are stuck in our own private universe, because it assumes that we are absolutely different and thus isolated from each other, and mutual understanding, let alone the creation of cultures and civilizations, becomes impossible. The plea of relativists for absolute tolerance is a contradiction, for it means that we ought to tolerate the intolerant and their cruelty. Dialogue is only possible if and only if we accept a common ground with certain universal truths. This common ground is extra-subjective and the universal truths are accessible to all parties, because they transcend them, so truths need to be mutually respected and affirmed for them not to be partial. In turn, the truth makes us truly free and democratic in a civilized way to set common goals. For this to work, intellectuals should speak freely and openly. Preciosa de Joya sees history in “History as the Burden of Inheritance and Opportunity for Justice” as crucial to civilization. The memory of our history shapes the identity of nations as well as individuals. Memory can also prevent future cruelty occurring again, but remembering is mostly a selective process, therefore history can always be under suspicion. The unity of historical narratives goes with ‘silencing’ and thus exclusion. So we need a representation of the past within the present to link the present to past injustices so we can avoid those in the future and so that history is not merely the victors’ perspective. The past is never finished and will remain relevant to us today and in the future. Without such understanding of the past we remain ignorant of its implications, even if we claim the truth of our historical narrative, such forms of history only teach us to forget instead of truly remembering. The failure of remembrance makes it impossible to rectify past injustices and acts of barbarity will continue. We have a moral duty to avert forgetfulness. The past has to be experienced politically based on respect and retroactive justice. We owe this debt to our past. “The Beautiful Difference” by Eunjoong Kim criticizes Western prejudices against Asia. Cultures can be full of meaning without us being able to tell what culture is more significant. However, Westerners believe that their cultures are superior to Asian cultures without providing any reasonable grounds. This sense of superiority can also be seen within Asia. Feeling superior denies valuable differences and can lead to violence (and the justification of violence). The otherness of the other is denied when it is considered different from or inferior to logos. Logos does not allow for differences and logos is a central part of modernity, therefore it leads to exclusion, suppression or conquest. However, difference is the nature of

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our existence and not hidden under sameness. This pluralization of the living world is not a form of nihilism, but a starting point of civilized coexistence in which a creative cultural convergence is possible with an open attitude to heterogeneity. Freedom is then openness to the otherness of the other and self, the other exists in the self. A philosophy of difference should be developed so we can co-exist freely in a multi-dimensional world. Jove Jim S. Aguas defines civilization in “Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Dialogue” as a distinctive, complex and advanced society. Cultures are different in the ways they define human perfection and cultures evolve through human interaction on an individual and collective scale. Therefore, cultures are dynamic. It is culture that makes us human and we express ourselves to the world through culture. Identity and difference are connected, because we define ourselves through contrasts. These intercultural interactions are not necessarily characterized by equality. There is then an inherent danger to define culture and civilization from the perspective of those who have power – Westerners – who define what is and what is not cultured and civilized. To become cultured or civilized is then to follow the ways of the West. So instead of diversity, the dichotomies of cultured/uncultured and civilized/uncivilized remain, imposing a single order. No matter what, pluralism prevails and to make co-existence peaceful, recognition of this empirical fact is mandatory. Cultures are not parts of one single, universal culture we can access through the use of reason and rationality. A dialogue can work if the different parties bring in their particularities. A respect for the other as a unique, individual other with a genuine concern for differences can open dialogues. We should not objectify the other to a mere abstract being, but respect the other as the bearer of values and dignity. Through intercultural dialogues we can mutually change if these dialogues are conducted in a just manner. No one has a monopoly over values, however, universalism should not lead to uniformity. Christal Huang in “Tracing a Cultural Fold in an Asian Context” reinterprets Asia. To interpret Asia in a new way can lead to a situation in which Asians can make better use of their multiple differences as a powerful identity. This requires a cultural fusion of horizons, and this requires ‘tracing’ the ‘folds’ of Asia to create a new Asia for a new era. This new fold Asia becomes then the new totality, the new wholeness within which we can reinterpret differences and recreate collaborations between different but interlinked cultures. Collaborations within the Asian fold can lead to mutual change. The togetherness of the Asian fold might even lead to a decrease of intercultural conflicts. That means that the sign

16

Introduction

‘Asia’ has to become newly signified and through the newly signified sign ‘Asian’ links can be created between folds within the fold Asia. In “Exposing the Hidden Dimension of Gender in Discourses on Civilization and Culture” Natividad Dominique G. Manauat links culture and civilization to privilege and exclusion, especially if these concepts are overly moralized. Competing claims institutionalize values in different ways. The danger is that a ‘choice’ for one claim leads to exclusion (and an enlargement of the West). However, exclusion explained by geography, class or race is gender insensitive. Justice, freedom and autonomy are forms of false universalism when not extended to women, as can also be said of anti-colonial writings. The universal should also reflect the particular of subjectivities, particularly of women in Third World countries. The links between space, race, class and gender are further complicated if sexual orientation is added, because the norm is heterosexuality. Nonheterosexual subjectivities are considered deviant and immoral, in some countries these are even criminalized. To fight these forms of marginalization, the private has to be brought into the public without commodification, however, in a conservative setting a backlash is possible and public recognition is therefore necessary. John T. Giordano writes in “Garuda Indonesia – A registered trademark” that in our globalized era we undertake projects that are eclectic and not unified. These projects are characterized by universal tensions, struggles and uncertainty. The dynamic of cultural transmission is therefore different from the law, e.g. intellectual property rights. Culture is a public good, whereas intellectual property rights are connected to private interests. However, global impacts are absorbed and syncretized into localities, and these impacts are never fixed, always fluid, because they are always fragile. If power becomes destructive by being one-sided, then philosophers have a role to mediate and to address imbalances of power and conflicts. In “Javanese-Islam Value Consensus, Remarks on Value Pluralism” Donny Gahral Adian states that political liberalism recognizes value pluralism through the use of the concept of an overlapping consensus, i.e. everyone must agree with this consensus to develop one’s thick conception of the good life. Donny Gahral Adian, however, claims that most societies are monopolized by a single comprehensive ethical system. Religion can be regarded as such a comprehensive doctrine, which can be regarded as ethical monism. An overlapping consensus then becomes difficult to attain, yet it is needed to make democracy and civil society function peacefully. However, Donny Gahral Adian asks whether this view of religion is fair. He claims that this view is not correct in regard to Islam on

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Java. Islam and Javanese mysticism have been able to create an overlapping consensus and live peacefully side-by-side. The political scientist and philosopher Roy Voragen claims in the concluding chapter “Civil Society and Democracy in Post-Soeharto Indonesia” that diversity, as a fact of life, and religion, particularly Islam, do not necessarily endanger the prospects of democratization. For democracy to function properly the state should not be in opposition to society. What is needed is mutual reinforcement between a liberal democratic state and civilized civil society. After all, democracy does not just mean to vote once in a while, but also to demonstrate respect and tolerance towards one’s fellow citizens. Obviously, the Asian voices presented in this book do not write – and should not be read – as one voice. 

OF BORDERS, DEATH AND FOOTPRINTS GOENAWAN MOHAMAD

In the streets of the world, there is always a stranger. She is the one whom we meet, who walks with us and probably lives among us, or even lives within us, since, as the Book of Leviticus says, we were once strangers. A stranger is by definition an unidentifiable entity. At a crucial moment, however, a stranger is transformed into something else; she becomes a foreigner. It is the moment of inclusion and exclusion; it is the moment when the border is pronounced. Border is a concept, or a metaphor, generated by a paradigm of space. In practice, borders are made as markers. As markers are signs, geography becomes sites or/and communities where space is intertwined with time, practices, and power. After all, “places are marked, noted, named,” as Lefebvre puts it in his magisterial work The Production of Space.1

Border as a narrative of ossification and death In the beginning was the body. Space, as Lefebvre points out, may then be marked physically. Animals use smells the way human groups use visual or auditory indicators to rediscover a place. In the very earliest stage of organized society, people marked particular locations and indicated routes by means of fires. Ultimately, space may be marked with abstraction, ‘by means of discourse, by means of signs’. One of modernity’s achievements is the birth of intelligible social zones. The drive for intelligibility, or better, readability, has its own history. In Lefebvre’s thesis,2 it is “the intense onslaught of visualization” in the production of social space that impels it. This takes place when a space is produced in which ‘the eye of God’, or the ‘Father’, or ‘the Leader’ lays

 1

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1977), 118. 2 Lefebvre, 261.

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Of Borders, Death and Footprints

hold of whatever serves its purpose, bringing about “a space of force, of violence, of power restrained by nothing but the limitations of its means.”3 Parallel to it, the pronouncement of borders, like other main thrusts of modernity, entails the conversion of time into space. It stabilizes and regulates difference on, as it were, a flat surface. It makes difference no longer something radically exterior to any representation, no longer a quality that is always yet to come and whose absence conditions the possibility of meaning. Border thus assumes a certain degree of constancy, abolishes the dynamics of difference, and rejects the strangeness of the stranger, by making her a ‘foreigner’ – as well as fortifying one’s identity. As such, it embodies a peculiar role. It is analogous to the ‘mirror stage’ in Lacan’s thesis on the birth of the subject: as a child, one (mis)recognizes in his/her mirror image a stable, coherent, whole self. It is ‘this Gestalt’, as Lacan puts it, that “symbolizes the mental permanence of the I.”4 The production of ‘the mental permanence of the I’ is comparable to the act of naming. It is interesting that the Bible describes naming as a decisive moment of creation. God sets man free through language and gives man the power to name the animals. Adam assumes a creative role, just as God did, through words. But naming turns out to be an ambivalent undertaking. On the one hand, it attempts to grasp the enigma of the singular. It tries to prevent things from being transposed into mere concepts or numbers or items of classification. On the other hand, to name is to inaugurate an identity; it ossifies things out of difference, which is essentially a movement of, in Adorno’s word, ‘non-identity’. In entering the symbolic order, naming betrays our desire for presence or any kind of finality. This is because a name, like my name when I was a child, is always given under a set of certain linguistic and cultural systems. This is the core of Lacan’s argument: an identity, so conferred, is formed by others. One may believe him/herself to be a sovereign individual, but an individual is determined by a symbolic order structured around le nom du père (the name of the father) – words indistinguishable from le non du père (the father’s no).

 3

Lefebvre, 262. Jacques Lacan, Écrits, A selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Routledge, 1977), 2.

4



Goenawan Mohamad

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The story of borders is therefore a narrative of naming and ossification, and perhaps also of death. To illustrate the point, let me discuss a couple of novels written in two different eras and about two different places.

Stories of border The first begins in the city of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, in a classroom at the Imperial Russian Humanistic High School, at the turn of the twentieth century. One hot afternoon, this is what a geography teacher – a Russian professor – has to say to his students: “Some scholars look on the area south of the Caucasian mountains as belonging to Asia, while others […] believe that this country should be considered part of Europe. It can therefore be said, my children, that it is partly your responsibility as to whether our town should belong to progressive Europe or to reactionary Asia.” It is a mixed lot, this classroom: among them thirty Muslims, four Armenians, two Poles and one Russian. Then, one student, Ali Khan Shirvanshir, raises his hand: “Sir, I […] would rather stay in Asia.” Thus begins Ali and Nino, a novel by Kurban Said.5 That this is a pseudonym is well known. But when the work was first published in Germany in 1937, the very strangeness of that name prompted one critic to suggest that the author was a Tartar who died in Italy.6 The novel recounts the adventures of a young Muslim aristocrat, Ali Khan Shirvanshir, who falls in love with an Armenian Christian princess, Nino Kipiani, at school in the oil rich city of Baku. The tension begins as the youngsters mould themselves into becoming staunch supporters of their respective communities. Many critics have pronounced the novel a gem, hailing it, predictably, as the twentieth century Romeo and Juliet, even if towards the end Ali does end up marrying Nino. One of the blurbs quotes The New York Times Review of Books describing it “like an epic poem.” A reviewer for the Cairo-based newspaper Al-Ahram called it “a masterpiece of Orientalist

 5

The Ali and Nino version I am using was published by Anchor Books in October 2000. The novel was rediscovered for the first time in a second-hand bookstore in the ruins of post-war Berlin, forgotten during the turmoil of the Second World War. Jenia Gramman, who found it, translated it into English, and had it published in 1970. Paul Theroux wrote a review about it, ‘enthusiastically’. He also wrote an afterword for the 2000 edition. 6 Paul Theroux, afterword to the Anchor edition of Ali and Nino by Kurban Said, trans. Jenia Graman (Anchor, 2000), 277.



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Of Borders, Death and Footprints

literature.”7 When republished in 2000, the novel became a ‘national novel’, a kind of unofficial national saga of Azerbaijan.8 The novel’s strengths do shine through: a refined prose, a clear structure, beautifully ornate like a piece of art nouveau – all of which are not inconsiderable underpinnings. But, to me, Ali and Nino is still a hugely flawed work. It is flawed both at the basics and by a basic predictability. That which is normally present in a moving love story – an interior – is missing. For the story is, at its heart, not about love between persons, but about readable identity, shaped by a demarcation. Everything is fixed between two geographic entities and two personal histories. Starting with a lecture on the geography of Baku, it ends with the death of the hero in a battle to defend the city from a Russian invasion. The characters are constructed merely as a replay of a narrative strategy of narcissism at the border of self and non-self, of ‘us’ and ‘them’. That border – the overriding border of pretty much everything else in the twentieth century – is between ‘Asia’ and ‘Europe’. It is anything but an objective geographical line. It entails an emotional investment. As Lefebvre describes it, it hints at “an affective charge,”9 such as fear, disdain, attraction or nostalgia. Time and again, it is a site of anxieties and strain. It has also survived Ali and Nino. More than fifty years later, Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, restates the anguish. It is significant that Pamuk presents it with difference – like a necessary cliché that is both sad and funny, as when he tells us of an unnamed teenager reading a curious poem to a gathering of Turks: “Europe, O Europe Let’s stop and take a look When we’re together in our dreams Let’s not let the devil have his way.”

But what is ‘Asia’, and what is ‘Europe’? When we check the Encyclopædia Britannica’s entry on ‘Asia’; it is, as it were, a spark of différance: “The name Asia is ancient, and its origin has been variously explained. The Greeks used it to designate the lands situated to the east of their homeland. It is believed that the name may be derived from the Assyrian word asu, meaning ‘east’. Another possible explanation is that it was originally a local name given to the plains of Ephesus, which ancient

 7

Al Ahram, 16-22 June 2005. Denver Post, 26 May 2005. 9 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 141. 8



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Greeks and Romans extended to refer first to Anatolia (contemporary Asia Minor, which is the western extreme of mainland Asia), and then to the known world east of the Mediterranean. When Western explorers reached South and East Asia in early modern times, they extended this label […].” Put differently, the space named ‘Asia’ denotes something different (from the point of view of the Greeks, the Romans and ‘Western explorers’) from time to time; what it actually is seems always suspended. The name and its varied meanings are determined by different people in different times living not in the identified space – and the markers or boundaries are continually shifting. One may find its beginnings in Aeschylus’ play The Persians. The historical tragedy, about the defeat of King Xerxes from Persia in the hands of the Athenians in the Battle of Salamís, was staged for the first time in 472 B.C. In the play, the word ‘Asia’ is equal to a land ruled by ‘Persian laws’, where people ‘carry their tribute’ determined by ‘a master’s necessity’. Asia is a land where the subjects ‘prostrate themselves to the ground and adore’. Needless to say, this is not a purely descriptive narrative. Neither it is, however, the case in which “Europe […] articulates the Orient,” projecting ‘Asia’ as “defeated and distant,” as Edward Said suggests.10 Obviously, Said reads the play as a part of the Orientalist discourse promulgated in eighteenth century Europe, when ‘Europe’ was a conglomeration of powers dictating an ‘imaginative geography’ to the world. As I see it, the play, written by a pre-modern Athenian citizen proud of the democratic tradition of his Greek polis,11 depicts ‘Asia’ simply as a contrast to the Athenian sense of liberty. Early in the play, Atossa, Xerxes’ mother, asks the chorus of Persian elders about their Athenian adversaries, “Who is set as shepherd or as lord to oversee the host?” The chorus-leader replies: “Slaves of no man are they called, nor in subjection to any man.” It is quite clear here that Aeschylus’ ‘Asia’ is more a device of self-salutation than a space imagined and produced by a triumphant ‘Europe’. Said’s misreading of The Persians, however, illuminates a larger issue: his censure of the general Orientalist representation of the ‘Orient’. The view is largely legitimate: the projected image – ‘Asia’ not as a different realm, but a permutable negation – is pervasive, something you can find

 10

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 57. For a discussion from this angle, see Anthony J. Podlecki, “Polis and Monarch in Early Attic Tragedy”, in Greek Tragedy and Political Theory, ed. J. Peter Euben (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1986), 78, 81.

11



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Of Borders, Death and Footprints

from Marx’s theory on the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ to the blond Flash Gordon, the comic book hero, who perpetually sets himself against the Chinese-looking villain, Emperor Ming, an ‘Oriental despot’ living somewhere up there in outer space.12 In all this, ‘Asia’ suggests a lack, or worse, a negative Other. Not unlike the geography teacher’s proselytizing talk in the first chapter of Ali and Nino, this pointed use of adjective can be brutal: Asia is ‘reactionary’ as it is a contrast to ‘progressive Europe’. In fact, the taxonomic thrust is the undercurrent that carries the novel. When Ali recounts to Nino and her girlfriends the discussion that took place in class and how he had heatedly argued for Baku to remain Asian, he only encounters Nino’s rebuke. “Ali Khan, you are stupid,” she tells him. “Thank God we are in Europe. If we were in Asia they would have made me wear the veil ages ago and you could not see me.” The border is clear-cut, as is the dichotomy. In one of the novel’s most telling scenes Ali pays a visit to Georgia, where Nino’s family lives. The host, a ‘European’, invites him to camp in the forest. Ali accepts, but he says nonetheless, “The world of trees perplexes me, Your Highness […]. No, I do not love trees.” The shadow of the woods oppresses him. “I love simple things: wind, sand and stones,” he says. “The desert is simple like the thrust of a sword. The wood is complicated like the Gordian knot. I lose my way in the woods, Your Highness.” The host understands. This is probably the difference between East and West, he says. In the West, man finds the woods “full of questions;” in the East, “the desert man has but one face, and knows but one truth, and that truth fulfils him.” From the desert comes the fanatic. From the woods, the creator. It is interesting that Ali does not show even the slightest objection to such a bloated conceit, expressed barefacedly at his expense. In fact, the novel makes him celebrate his ‘Asianness’ almost every day of his life. When he kills Nacharayan, an Armenian friend, by biting his neck, he

 12

In a commentary on Flash Gordon, a comic book created by Alex Raymond in 1934, Edouard François writes in an essay on Planet Mongo: “[…C]e n’est sûrement pas pour rien qu’Alex Raymond a nommé la planète Mongo, son maitre suprême Ming, et qu’il a doté ses habitants d’une peau jaune et d’un faciès asiatique.” To François, Ming’s rule in this imaginary planet is a ‘tyrannie orientale’, noticeable for its ‘cruel, pitiless, cunning, crafty, and showy’ quality. See Edouard François, “La Planete Mongo, Peuplement, société, évolution’, in Flash Gordon, Le Tyran de Mongo, Alex Raymond (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Dargaud Ɯditeur, 1980), 44-46.



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does not forget to drive his identity home: “Yes, Nacharayan, that’s how we fight in Asia […] with the grip of the grey wolf.” There is no record that states killing a man by biting his neck is an ‘Asian habit’, but as far as Kurban Said is concerned, it scarcely matters. Ali is dead even before the story begins. He is ossified by the logic of pure difference. Yes, he is the novel’s narrator, the ‘I’ in the story. Yet he exists like a beautiful figurine displayed in an antique shop, among carpets, under the shades of the old city or the Tehran harem, surrounded by traditional songs and the Shiite rituals in the month of Muharram. Ali’s self-consciously ‘Asian’ persona is akin to an empty Russian doll to be filled with a replication of faces created by a narcissistic demand to establish an ‘ego ideal’ – something shaped by language. Essentially, it is the commanding language of ‘the woodman’ that determines the ‘creator’ as one who ‘comes from the woods’. What prevails is the ‘European’ symbolic point, with which an individual assumes a set of perspectives from which he or she wants to be viewed.

The volatility of identity The ‘European’ symbolic point makes the place putatively named ‘Europe’ loom high in the mind of ‘Asians’, people like Ali, who, even in his choice to put Baku in ‘Asia’, admits the inevitability of ‘Europe’ in the place to which he belongs. Granted, he refuses to be posted in Paris as a Persian diplomat. But he has his own reasons, which he explains to Nino: “Let’s stay in Baku, where Asia and Europe meet.” To be sure, Ali’s city is an imagined meeting space. But once the divide between ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ is made into a symbol, the space is structured to inhibit the capacity of persons to break through the form that announces their identities. It has all the elements of segregation akin to a racist scheme. It is not pure coincidence that Ali and Nino made fascinating reading in Austria and Germany in the 1930s, when the Nazis, obsessed with the idea of putting the ‘Aryan’ race in a special compartment, were finding a fertile ground for their doctrine. Interestingly, the author, using the pseudonym of ‘Kurban Said’, had nothing ‘Aryan’ about him. He had a very colorful biography – one that came to light with the publication of The Orientalist, Tom Reiss’



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Of Borders, Death and Footprints

investigation of the life of the true author of Ali and Nino, almost seventy years after the novel was first published.13 Lev Nussimbaum was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, to a Jewish family of nouveau riche oil industrialists in 1905. When he was thirteen, world history knocked at the city gates in a violent way. The Bolsheviks, fresh from their victorious revolution in St. Petersburg, came to take over Baku. After Lev’s mother committed suicide, his father fled as the Bolsheviks and the forces of the Czar fought over their city. He and Lev were part of a caravan of refugees that travelled through Turkestan, Persia and the Caucasus where they encountered diverse cultures and religions. In 1921 father and son arrived in the cultural melting-pot of Constantinople along with thousands of Russian refugees. Later, the Nussimbaums relocated to Paris and then to Germany, where Lev enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University under the name of ‘Essad Bey Nousimbaoum’ as his name on the application. ‘Nousimbaoum’ converted to Islam in August of 1922. No one knows for sure what prompted him to become a Muslim. Reiss suggests that the flights with his father through the Caucasus to escape the spreading horrors of the Russian Revolution nurtured Lev's view of Islam as “a bastion of heroic resistance in a world of brute force and injustice.” According to Reiss, Lev, who identified with Islam and the East when not yet ten, would come to see the Muslim and the Jew united “in their struggle against the West and its mass violence.” Reading Ali and Nino, remarkable as it presents ‘the Asian’ or ‘Muslim’ behavior with a noticeable trace of disdain or mockery, it is difficult to say that there is a consistency in this view. Now and then, the novel inserts Muslim misogynic homilies, like when Ali’s father gives his son advice on the absurdity of loving a woman. “One loves one’s homeland, or war,” the old prince says. “Some men love beautiful carpets, or rare weapons. But – it does not happen, that a man loves a woman.” On another occasion, Kurban Said tells us a derogatory anecdote about the improbable stupidity of Ali’s aristocratic uncle who believed, with a sense of satisfaction, that the immolation scene he saw in the opera L’Africaine was not a mere stage act but a real punishment inflicted on the leading soprano, “a very fat woman who sang dreadfully.” In short, Said’s Muslims are often a ludicrous lot. One can hardly discern the author’s genuine sympathy towards them. Perhaps, his

 13

Tim Reiss, The Orientalist: Solving the mystery of a strange and dangerous life (New York: Random House, 2005). All other quotations attributed to Reiss are from this book.



Goenawan Mohamad

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preference for Islam was dictated more by nostalgia than anything else. It began when, as a child, he would wander along the ramparts of the Khan's palace in Baku where he would imagine himself a prince. Baku, or the city of his imagination, allowed him to see himself in a position beyond the constraints of two different worlds, someone versed in European civilization and yet, like the Azeri Jews he admired, ‘always armed’ and in oriental dress. After all, Nussimbaum was not the only Jew in Germany who dressed up like an Arab or espoused a universal interpretation of Islam. A staunch Zionist, Wolfgang von Weisl, was with him writing Allah is Great, The Decline and Rise of the Islamic World. Another explanation for this position is the need for a protective mask. “The Orient, or an idea of the Orient, offered a refuge to a man like Nussimbaum, who could not feel safe anywhere in the Western world,” so writes Ian Buruma in his review of The Orientalist.14 “It was an identity that lent him pride, a certain grandeur.” At any rate, since his Berlin stay, he began to tell people that he was related to the Emir of Bukhara. He introduced himself as the son of a Muslim patrician father who owned oil wells. He avoided mentioning either his mother or his Jewish background. His friends and acquaintances went along with the charade. After all, he was not without success. Nussimbaum's travels were formative and enchanting experiences for him. Around 1926, he was known as a writer for the journal Die Literarische Welt and gained a reputation as an ‘expert on the East’. By the early 1930s he had become a bestselling author in Western Europe writing mainly about contemporary historical and political issues as well as biographies of, among others, Muhammad, Czar Nicholas II and Stalin. He began a romantic relationship with the Austrian baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels, who did not know his true name and origins. Later he married an American woman, the daughter of a shoe magnate. The marriage failed. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Nussimbaum moved briefly to New York City, but returned to Europe two years later. In 1938, his identity as a Jew was revealed and he fled Nazi-controlled Vienna for Italy. He had not much left. He offered himself to write Mussolini's biography, but was rebuffed. The most he received was some money to

 14

Ian Buruma, “Between Two Worlds,” The New York Review of Books 52, no.10 (June 9, 2005).



28

Of Borders, Death and Footprints

record fascist propaganda in Persian for the Fascist Colonial Service. He was intermittently starving. Starting 1939, he was aided by a Mussolini-era salon hostess who recommended to him Ali and Nino, not knowing he was the author. The man who wrote Ali and Nino died in 1942 from the Raynaud's syndrome that had gradually killed him. Reiss quotes a sentence from Nussimbaum's last manuscript, later crossed out: “The author of this book is dead. He was the victim of an airplane crash that occurred when he wanted to cross the short stretch that separates southern Europe from Asia.” Nussimbaum seemed to embody the desire to cross that ‘short stretch’ – and the volatility of identity. As Reiss describes him, he was simultaneously a Jew, an Oriental and a German, without inhabiting any one of these identities to the exclusion of the others. He had an evershifting series of self-portraits. In many publications during his lifetime, he appeared in different photographs and in different garbs, often donning a fez or a white turban. These personas might serve as a resistance. As Reiss suggests, by moving from one identity to another, Nussimbaum refused to be branded or categorized from ‘the outside’. The way he presented himself, as seen from the photographs, acted like a border: something visibly designed to mark difference. It is an identification in the imaginary – identification being the transformation that takes place when he, as a subject, assumes an image. Here, the role of the gaze is crucial. Despite its immediacy, this gaze, even in a self-portrait, is not without the language of ‘the outside’. In other words, the imaginary is latently determined by the symbolic.15 This identification with the Other implies a recognition of a master, in the form of language, law, community, and/or the state. As I see it, Nussimbaum’s mark of difference, identifiable as ‘Oriental’, is tailored to structure an agreement with the words of ‘the master’. In the case of Austria and Germany in the 1930s, the words, or the discourse, insisted on regulating difference; hence the labeling of Jews, ‘Orientals’ and other ‘non-Aryan’ people. It was a time ripe with nationalistic fervor, stressing the bond between one’s racial label with one’s land of origin, as words like Blut (blood), Boden (soil) and Heimat (home or homeland) suggested. This may explain the force of the ethnic taxonomy in Ali and Nino that portrays the life of the leading character as someone faithful to his bloodline and profoundly attached to his country of birth and Heimat. This may also shed light on Nussimbaum’s political stance. In 1931, he joined

 15



Lacan, Écrits, 308: “the symbolic dominates the imaginary.”

Goenawan Mohamad

29

the German-Russian League Against Bolshevism, the majority of its members were known as Nazis or would-be Nazis. The Nazi propaganda ministry included his works on their list of ‘excellent books for German minds’. Nussimbaum was an early admirer of Mussolini and a defender of the Nazi regime. The “National Socialist revolution,” he said, “has saved Europe from a catastrophe.” According to him, the Nazis were the one thing that firmly upheld “traditional European culture” in confronting “Bolshevik barbarism.”16 In the novel, Ali dies a patriot defending Baku from the Bolsheviks. One can also see him as a defender of ‘European culture’ in a different way – by representing an ‘Asiatic’ creature, something savage yet attractive, frightening yet amusing, and therefore a necessary sample of ‘them’, a negative ‘them’, in the border between a space named ‘Europe’ and another named ‘Asia’. It is precisely such a border that is the site of anxiety – hence Kurban Said’s changing personas and Nussimbaum’s shifting self-portrait, imaginary or otherwise. The anxiety is inevitable. All identity is differential and therefore contingent. In the words of Laclau, “Each identity is what it is only through its difference from all the others,” i.e. each identity is both affirmed and negated by that which lies outside it and beyond its control. Thus every identity is “penetrated by a basic instability and precariousness;” it always contains elements escaping its articulation of itself. Any identity (and a social totality) cannot possibly be fully achieved.17 Thus identity becomes a desire; it is something perpetually unfulfilled.

Border as a site of unfulfillment This reminds me of Groucho Marx. In one of his memorable quips, the comedian Marx speaks of different emblems of identity: “I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks.” The witticism prompted me to adopt the dichotomy as a pair of metaphors. One is photograph. The other is footprints. I see photograph as an allegory of portrayal. The word ‘allegory’ comes from Greek allegorein, literally ‘to say otherwise’. Along these

 16

As quoted in Buruma, “Between Two Worlds.” Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996), 52. Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990), 109. 17



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Of Borders, Death and Footprints

lines, Groucho Marx’s notion of photograph suggests a device to represent him for public viewing. But it is basically a misrepresentation. Photography implies the function of light and the demand for visualization – two crucial components of our predominantly oculocentric culture, of which the earliest expression was articulated by Plato in the cave scene in the Republic. In this dialogue, Plato promotes the visual to the level of the cognitive.18 The oculocentric leitmotif has brought a wealth of artistic and technological inventions into our lives. Even so, one cannot undermine its imbrications with a long history of power relations, where ‘the eye of God’ governs. A photograph, therefore, as a metaphor of identity, is something ratified by the symbolic order embodied in language, law, community, and/or the state. In other words, it is something fixed by a framing device guarded by the ‘Big Other’. Thus Groucho Marx’s jest is a form of resistance: instead of adopting the common use of photographs, he bestows prominence on his hardly visible footprints (‘they are upstairs in my socks’) – which are transient traces of mobility. He rejects the ‘onslaught of visualization’ and the imperative of framing. He pokes at the logic of light. The logic of light, equivalent to the logic of sight, puts everything under the Other’s gaze, brings it into the scope of clarity and knowledge. Knowledge is an attempt to get rid of surprises. It aims for familiarity by letting things emerge in a form in which I can recognize them. “Light is that through which something is other than myself,” says Emannuel Levinas, “but already as if it came from me.”19 Thus this ‘something’ that signaled difference is no longer truly different. For that reason, an identity framed as an illuminated ‘object’ will be captured by a pre-existing set of significations. There is an episode in Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, when he poignantly describes his experience in being recognized by a white child in the streets of Paris: “Look, a Negro.” At that moment, he encountered a meaning that he did not make for himself. The meaning was always ‘already there, preexisting, waiting’ for him, inscribed in the color of his skin; in short, his



18 Victor I. Stoichita, A Short History of Shadow (London: Redaktion Books, 1997), 22. According to Stoichita, by describing the shadow thrown by fire on the wall of the cave as a stage furthest away from the truth, Plato projected it as “a fundamental negativity that, in the history of Western representation, was never to be abandoned altogether (25).” 19 Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), 64.



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31

appearance sapped, invalidated all his actions. He was, as it were, reduced to a complete object, without the ‘ontological resistance’ to the colonizing gaze. He had no access to his own common humanity; he was fixed or identified by that gaze.20 But there was one thing Fanon forgot: his own feet. Actually he was able to walk out of the scene. His footprints would leave a sign of his revolt against exemplification. But portrayed, imprisoned, and paralyzed by the language of the white child, he, like a photograph, was put for a public viewing, by the way of misrepresentation. The critical point would be if he took it as his self-portrait – and thus put himself in the pursuit of an illusion. To follow Lacan, yet again, the image of a stable, coherent, whole self the child sees in the mirror does not correspond to the real child – and is, therefore, impossible to realize. The image is an ‘Ideal-I’, a fantasy that the child sets up in order to compensate for its sense of lack or loss. The result is a split: the mirrored ego is simultaneously itself and someone else. Thus, ‘the mental permanence of the I’ is its own alienating destination’.21 For this reason, a border is necessarily a site of unfulfillment.

Identity as an endless hegemonic struggle Kurban Said’s kind of border continues its complicated and traumatic presence in Orhan Pamuk’s novel Snow, published originally in Turkish.22 The novel’s main character is Ka, a tall, shy, forty-two year-old Turk, a bachelor and a poet of some repute. His real name is Kerim AlakuúoƧlu, but ever since his school days he has always wanted to be addressed as ‘Ka’. One day, after spending twelve years in Germany, he returns to Istanbul when his mother dies. Once in Istanbul, he decides to go to Kars. It is not exactly clear, even to him, what makes him head for this poor inland city near the Armenian border in the northeast. Raised in Istanbul in a well-to-do family, perhaps he wishes “to venture at long last into the other world beyond.” Or perhaps there are other reasons, stronger yet no less obscure: the trip is really to find a pretty student friend from his

 20

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto Press, 1986). One can discern the logic of sight in Fanon’s words, suggesting he had no access to his own common humanity, since he was fixed by “the movements, the attitudes, the glances of the other,” just as a “chemical solution is fixed by a dye (109-10, 132, 134, 214).” 21 Lacan, Écrits, 2. 22 The version I use is an English translation by Maureen Freely (London: Faber and Faber, 2004).



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Of Borders, Death and Footprints

university days, who has since returned home, married and divorced. He also gives others yet another explanation: he has arrived there as someone working for a newspaper to write about a series of suicides committed by young women in this depressing town. The novel begins with Ka taking the bus one white afternoon. Snow falls unceasingly, ultimately closing all the roads in Kars. In this town of 80,000 people, Ka meets people, asks questions and gives answers, and is filled with hopes and fears. For the first time after so many years a series of poems ‘comes’ to him. Kars is a lever between Ka’s old and new self. His new self has, however, a short life. Before the end of the story, the readers are told that he has died in Frankfurt – murdered, but without explanation. The author, ‘Orhan’, steps in; he wants to write about his deceased poet friend. Meanwhile life goes on in Kars, dotted by snippets of memories of those snowy days. In the end, what we remember most vividly is not the life of the main character, but of Kars, or the story of a Turkey at the border – a border between countries and between history and grand ideals. It is about Turkey in the early 1990s. “In Kars,” Orhan Pamuk said in an interview, “you can quite literally feel the sadness that comes from being a part of Europe, and at the same time the sparse, hard-fought very un-European life.”23 In the cracks between and beneath this sad contradiction, anomaly becomes commonplace and the extraordinary appears ordinary; Orhan Pamuk tells it all with no attempt to be lyrically captivating. His prose betrays a dry, dark humor, describing in an understated way, for instance, a local newspaper that published stories of events even before they happened, including the dramatic murder on stage of the leading actor. From such a narrative we also learn of a report that a group of young women wearing Muslim headscarves suddenly committed suicide, one after another, even if there were different versions as to why they did so. We also read that the murdered director of a ‘secular’ educational institution who forbade his students to wear headscarves apparently recorded his last conversation with the killer, an ‘Islamist’, who was still at large. Other unusual things take place: a military coup d’état and massacre that goes on as though part of a performance of the play Fatherland of My Headscarf, while Blue, a young, supposedly dangerous fugitive (whom one police officer calls “an Islamist terrorist with blood on his hands”) ends a secret meeting with Ka not by announcing a threat nor proposing a conspiracy, but with a naïve story about a warrior called Rüstem.

 23



In an interview with Jörg Lau, Die Zeit, 14 April, 2005.

Goenawan Mohamad

33

In Kars, between fact and fiction, between reality and imagination, life covers up the city’s wounds. Violence and death occur as though history was dictated from above and destinies are akin to floating snowflakes. Ultimately snow can serve as a parable for the life of this poor city, a city strung by high hopes and despairs over Ataturk’s ‘secularism’ and the new ‘Islamism’ that attack each other and accuse each other of betrayal. Snow is the color white that promises no defilement, and yet it is unable to stay clean; it even freezes itself solid and makes the roads impassable. There is neither hero nor anti-hero in Snow; the novel’s major and minor characters evolve through self-preoccupation, hatred, anger, simplemindedness, or confused sense of pride. Yet each has moments of magnanimity, presented by the narrator with a touch of sympathy. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that Pamuk is a Turkish writer growing up in Istanbul, living the ordeal in which all his characters find themselves in. I sense his less sanguine view of ‘Europe’, his cagey look at ‘Islamism’ and his apprehension about the brutal outburst of secular nationalism. With a post-modern sensibility, the narrative opens itself up to irony, inconsistency, unfinished parts, multiple voices, and surprises. It ends with a rather uncertain, melancholic closure: “As I watched the last snow-covered rooftops and the thin, quivering ribbons of smoke rising from the broken chimneys, I began to cry.” It is as if in Kars, in the border of ‘Asia’ and ‘Europe’, the roads were impassable even as the snow melted away. The lingering melancholy notwithstanding, the anxiety at the border can be intolerably intense. All of Pamuk’s characters: the young religious students, Kadife, Ipek’s courageous sister, and even Blue, perpetually find themselves, as Blue puts it, living under the shadow of ‘Europe’ out of which they want to step. One particular scene that captures this is when different people opposing the local military take-over – ‘Islamist youth, Kurdish activists, old and young leftists, and other revolutionaries’ – meet secretly at a hotel called ‘Asia’. They all gather to draft a statement initially titled ‘An Announcement to the People of Europe about Events in Kars’. Let me quote some remarks made during the meeting: 1. “[…I]n Germany, they can spot people from Turkey just by the way they look. There’s no avoiding humiliation except by proving at the first opportunity that you think exactly as they do.” 2. “When a Westerner meets someone from a poor country, the first thing he feels is deep contempt […]. And the next thing this Westerner thinks is that the poor man’s head must be full of all the nonsense that plunged his country into poverty and despair.”



34

Of Borders, Death and Footprints 3. “But we all know what Europe has come to mean […]. Europe is our future, and the future of our humanity.” 4. “I have come to this meeting because I wish to prove to the Europeans that in Turkey, too, we have people who believe in common sense and democracy.” 5. “We can never be Europeans!” 6. “Here is what I’d like you to write: I’m proud of the part of me that isn’t European. I’m proud of the things in me that the Europeans find childish, cruel and primitive.” 7. “We’re not speaking to Europe […]. We’re speaking to all humanity […]. The people in Europe are not our friends but our enemies. And it’s not because we are their enemies – it’s because they instinctively despise us.”

There is so much of a sense of ‘we’ in the meeting, yet there is no sure answer when someone asks, “Who do you mean, my son, when you say ‘we’?” One thing is obvious: what constitutes ‘we’ is the self-perception of being under the gaze of something called ‘Europe’. This is the famous Sartrean gaze, something that Fanon’s episode quoted earlier movingly describes. From this perspective, the Turks gathering unhappily in Hotel ‘Asia’ do depend on the recognition of ‘Europe’ to achieve selfconsciousness, yet being the object of the Europe’s look is experienced as a profound violation. Thus the knowing look of recognition ascertains, as well as governs and limits, their position. It freezes their possibilities. Needless to say, such knowledge is implicated in relations of power. The issue is not merely of a theoretical nature. ‘Europe’ has a history that doubles as a chronicle of property and power. “The space that emerged in Western Europe in the twelfth century,” as Lefebvre puts it, “was the space of accumulation – its birthplace and cradle.”24 And yet, precisely because of such an accumulation, ‘Europe’ internalizes a perpetual ‘ought’. Since the time of its imperial exploits, there has always been a fissure between what it is and what it thinks it ought to be. From the ambitions of the Third Reich to the Treaty of Rome of 1957 to the united Europe encompassing twenty-seven states, it has been driven by a desire to become a new, and yet an identifiable, entity. The preamble to the EU Constitution proclaims that, “While remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their former divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny.”

 24



Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 263.

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Thus, since its transformation into a ‘secularized space’ in which laws are established, customs and customary exactions replaced by contractual relationships, and the seal of the state sanctified, “the outcome of the revival of the Logos and the Cosmos,” as Lefebvre describes it,25 is the narrative of the political. This reminds me of a bit of myth. In Phoenicia, on a beach in Sidon, so the story goes, there once lived a princess. Her eyes were large and bright (europos, from eurys and ops, is sometimes supposed to mean either ‘large-eyed’ or ‘broad-faced’). Enchanted by this creature, Zeus, the king of gods, changed himself into a bull, whereupon the god Eros put her on his back and the beast dived into the sea, carrying her off to Crete. Roberto Calasso describes the incident in his strange and powerful novel The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony: “Europa, meantime, could see no end to this crazy sea crossing. But she guessed what would happen to her when they hit the land again. And she shouted to wind and water: ‘Tell my father Europe has been carried off by a bull – my kidnapper, my sailor, my future bedmate, I imagine….’.”26 Meanwhile, on the other side of the island, the five brothers of the princess went in pursuit of their lost sister. At every corner of the earth they asked: “Where is Europa?” No one knew, notwithstanding Europa had had a strange dream shortly before dawn. She was caught between two women who were fighting violently over her; one was Asia, the other was the land facing her, and she had no name. Calasso tells us: “And in the end it was the stranger whose powerful hands dragged her off.”27 Later, one of her five brothers arrived in Delphi. He inquired as to Europa’s whereabouts to the oracle who in return told him: “You will never find her. But follow a cow, push it unceasingly. Where it stops, you must found a city.” From this story, it seems that ‘Europe’ is a never-ending search, an unfinished discursive formation. It is the story not of a photograph, but of footprints, to use Groucho Marx’s dichotomy. The founding of the city, which is an outcome of the imposed Logos and Cosmos, is always tentative. The dispute whether Turkey can be part of ‘Europe’ is indicative of the political nature of the on-going formation. Despite the workings of shared myths, rituals, iconography and narratives, no ‘imagined community’

 25

Lefebvre, 263. Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, trans. Tim Parks (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 3. 27 Calasso, 5. 26



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Of Borders, Death and Footprints

is universally imagined. Ultimately, it is the outcome of an endless hegemonic struggle. Hence, the pain and frustration of the people gathering in the old Hotel ‘Asia’. Torn between a desire for recognition and a sense of rejection by ‘Europe’, they have a woefully limited access to the site that determines what ‘Europe’ is. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that Pamuk chooses to call the hotel ‘Asia’, perhaps to suggest a site of differently motivated sojourns, a provisional assembly and always somebody else’s conveniently available space. It has an ‘outside’ which is ‘constitutive’ – an outside that supports as well as alters it – even though this outside needs its own definition, and one that will never be completely successful.

One’s history as footprints What makes Snow a moving account of ‘Asia’ is the way the narrative, in its pursuit of coherence, always breaks into small, unfinished, stories. In contrast, Ali and Nino betrays the solidity of an indisputable statement. Ali’s notion of ‘Asia’ suggests a history defined by a will, or perhaps a desire. It is a geography of choice. “Sir, I […] would rather stay in Asia,” he says. Both the decision and the choice are by no means a leap into the unknown. For Ali and for the rest of us, circumscribed by the language of national or ethnic particularism, ethnic or national identity is not a matter of individual construction. It is neither attainable (hence the word ‘identification’),28 nor is it entirely an autobiographical theme inventing, instead of representing, the ‘self’. Often it is like an impulse that may emerge from somewhere deep in the political unconscious. Thus my own rootedness is not altogether transparent to me. I am attached to it as something I cannot break away from, but it is also something that cannot completely define me. Only gradually I reinforce it. After all, borders and places named are precarious socio-symbolic closures struggling to overcome their own impossibility. But precisely because of that, there is a sense of unsettledness in my act of self-inscription. The problem with Kurban Said’s characters is that they seem to be free from it. They are made so committed to an idea of ‘difference,’ but so enthralled by their respective rootedness, that their attitude towards the other is marked almost by total indifference. The swift killing of the Armenian friend, despite his good service to Ali (the Armenian was the



28 Ernesto Laclau, ed., The Making of Political Identities (London, New York: Verso, 1994), 3.



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37

one who made Ali acceptable to Nino’s family), comes off naturally as a violent expression of such indifference. While Orhan Pamuk’s Ka is a tragic character split between having too many and too few roots at the same time, Ali resembles something of a deeply planted tree. But we are not trees, as Levinas says. The worship of Blut und Boden (‘Blood and Soil’) at the core of German nationalism, as well as “the Heideggerian world and the superstitions surrounding the Place,” have probably prompted Levinas to warn us of the danger of “one’s implementation in a landscape, one’s attachment to Place, without which the universe would become insignificant and would scarcely exist.” Because, as he sees it, it will inevitably lead to the “splitting of humanity into natives and strangers.”29 Hence his veneration of “the human face” that shines “in all its nudity.”30 To be sure, such a position may be problematic; it is almost the equivalent of putting people like you and me on a pedestal of abstraction. But it is a legitimate response to a world navigating its way between the myths of globalization and various forms of sectarian bigotry. It is a way to reappraise the border as a limiting sign and yet simultaneously a frontier. A frontier is an invitation; it opens the possibility of a journey to the unknown, to ‘heterotopical’ places, ‘places of sorcery and madness’, ‘places which were fascinating but tabooed’,31 places where the ‘onslaught of visualization’ and its collusion with ‘abstraction, geometry and logic’, and also with ‘authority’,32 do not always prevail. In other words, it is the beginning of one’s history as footprints.

 29

Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom, Essays on Judaism, trans. Seán Hand (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 232-233. 30 Levinas. See also Emmanuel Levinas, Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. Adriaan T. Peperzak et al (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 54. 31 Levinas, Difficult Freedom, 263. 32 Levinas, 261.



COSMOPOLITANISM, BETWEEN COSMOPOLIS AND CHAOSMOPOLIS BAMBANG SUGIHARTO

In the current phase of globalization, acceleration in travel and quasi simultaneity in transmission of information have brought to the fore and intensified again notions of a cosmopolitan world. The word cosmopolitanism is becoming ubiquitous and calls for a rethinking of its further consequences today. This chapter is an attempt to rethink the concept of cosmopolitanism in terms of its historical perspective, its basic character and problems, as well as its possible ethical principles.

The Eurocentric basis of cosmopolitanism The idea of a cosmopolitan community is not new; it can be traced back in the utopian imaginary of the Western tradition. It was implicit in Augustine’s idea of the City of God, within which the legacy of Roman global society would be perfected. But above all, it has always been a part of the ambitions and expectations formulated in the period of the Enlightenment, which mostly grew under the auspices of European colonialism. Today’s cosmopolitanism is the logical outcome as well as unintended consequence of the Enlightenment’s discourse of modernity. The discourse of modernity makes the promise of an emancipation and a liberation which Kant described in terms of a freedom from immaturity and tutelage, a freedom achieved through the efforts of human beings themselves, relying on nothing more than the proper, free and courageous exercise of reason.1 With the discourse of modernity, then, the ‘eternal’ temporality of religious life and the determining unilateral agency of the unknowable God are replaced by a linear, progressive temporality of modernity and the agency of the modern, rational, unitary, self-present

 1

Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question ‘What is Enlightenment?’” in Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Patricia Waugh (London and New York: Edward Arnold, 1992).

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Cosmopolitanism, between Cosmopolis and Chaosmopolis

subject, the logocentric subject. The displacement in the foundation of the subject-agent proceeds from a transcendent God to other transcendentals, namely History, Reason and Science. In this way, modernity became a world-transforming project in which colonialism provided the opportunity and conditions for realizing it.2 Colonialism made available to the new sciences of the seventeenth century the vast store of knowledge about cultures, beliefs, languages, new geographical environments, and species of plants and animals. The new knowledge was systematically gathered and reported through expeditions sponsored by the colonizing states and trading interests. Parallel to this, a notion of the nation-state emerged as the central organizing principle for constructing the new progressive community. This view was explicitly elaborated by Kant and Hegel, bringing to its most systematic enunciation a theme advanced by the Enlightenment. The nation-state is the artifice which frames the institution of the community as the rational and morally ordered form of a good society. From this point develops a new form of governance, which combines the notion of a care for the well-being of the citizen with the business of regulation and discipline. The intrinsic purpose of power is, then, not the promotion of the interests of the sovereign but primarily the realization of the moral and material good of the community as a whole. The modern project thus became a moral duty, and power became ‘pastoral’ in the Foucaultian sense of the term. In the wider context of inter-state relationships the idea of the progress of humanity as a whole and the idea that Europe represented the highest point of development of humanity led to the view that it was the moral duty (or ‘burden’) of the West to take responsibility for civilizing all ‘primitive’ cultures. Such idealism can also be found in Goethe’s cosmopolitan idea of a world society that would transcend the narrow limitations of emerging German militarism. And despite his criticisms of bourgeois citizenship, it was also part of Karl Marx’s dream of socialism in the Communist Manifesto to create an international society in which workers would unite to overcome capitalism and to establish a world community.3 In short, it is this Eurocentric Enlightenment project which partly has paved the way toward the cosmopolitanism we are experiencing today.

 2

Couze Venn, Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity (London: Sage, 2000). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in The Revolutions of 1848, Karl Marx (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 62-98. 3

Bambang Sugiharto

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Cosmopolitanism today In the postcolonial and postmodern contexts, however, various developments have complicated the picture of cosmopolitanism. The phase of late or post modernity is characterized by disjunctures appearing between, on the one hand, the institutions and the social scientific knowledge established in the previous period, and, on the other hand, tendencies that are beginning to settle into the reality of contemporary times. The world is now characterized by flows – of people, money, images, ideologies and information – into new imagined spaces or scapes – ethnoscape, finanscape, ideoscape, mediascape, technoscape – producing heterogeneous, contingent, complex, fractal networks. These mechanisms are no longer amenable to the kind of regulations nation-states had put into place. Analyses of contemporary times have pointed to signs of fracture in the modern sociality and public space: for instance, disorganization (Lash), deregulation, risk and reflexivity (Beck), temporal and spatial compression (Harvey), de-traditionalization and de-differentiation (Lash).4 The spatial and temporal edifice of the modern state is no longer adequate to the new conditions. Major corporations today no longer respect national boundaries and cannot be constrained within state-bound regulations and law. A number of global NGO’s like the World Bank, IMF, the United Nations and its bodies, WTO, etc. in fact transgress national boundaries and their imaginary spaces, and affect local and global relationships of power. If in Kant cosmopolites are mainly people of culture and philosophers who strive toward an ordered and harmonious universe, today cosmopolis is composed of refugees, post-colonial subjects, migrants or workers, and those who are compelled to think of their existence and identities beyond the boundaries of narrowly defined nation-states and nationalisms. If in the past cosmopolitanism is a large, rich and controversial set of philosophical ideas and ideologies, today cosmopolitanism is a concrete frame of reference in the making, various processes of ‘globalization from within’ or a process of ‘cosmopolitanization’ as Ulrich Beck has put it. This is a process which transforms everyday consciousness and identities significantly, a banal cosmopolitanism, a process in which issues of global concern are becoming part of our everyday local experiences and moral

 4

Scott Lash et al., The End of Organized Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 1987); Ulrich Beck, Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992); David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989); Scott Lash, Sociology of Postmodernism (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).

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Cosmopolitanism, between Cosmopolis and Chaosmopolis

life-worlds.5 In this sense, cosmopolitanism is an ontological change whose defining characteristic is the ‘dialogic imagination’, contrary to the previous ‘monologic imagination’ of the national perspective. The dialogic imagination corresponds to the coexistence of rival ways of life in individual experiences, which makes it a matter of fate to compare, reflect, criticize, understand or combine contradictory certainties. This is the imagination of alternative ways of life and rationalities, which includes the otherness of the other and puts the negotiation of contradictory cultural experiences into the centre of activities: in the political, the economic, the scientific and the social. While monologic imagination of the national perspective excludes the otherness of the other.6 This experience of the cosmopolitan change, in turn, implies a shift not only in the spatial dimension, but also in the dimension of time and collective memory. Especially in facing global risks, people are now reflecting on a shared collective future which contradicts a nation-based memory of the past. The collective future consciousness takes over the position of tradition. The tradition of cosmopolitan societies is the tradition of a future, a fragile future. On the other side, however, there are still very few transnational forms of action designed for a shared collective future, hence the dilemma of cosmopolitanism: a critical contradiction between, on the one hand, a consciousness of a globally shared future without adequate forms of institutionalized action and, on the other hand, a past-based national memory with its shared hostility and without a globally shared collective future. Cosmopolitanism also implies a mutual transformation. Arriving humans have to be given rights, but they also bear the responsibility of acceding to the status of cosmopolites in turn. The hosts offer hospitality, thus receiving the other without hostility in their midst. In turn they expect others to insert themselves respectfully in the city that welcomes them and transforms them at the same time that it too is being transformed. The guests have to change some of their customs and abide by the laws of the

 5

Take the supermarket around the corner, today one finds on the shelves every possible kind of food coming from all over the world. Watch TV program, go to bookstores, one finds programs and books produced by other countries or continents. World society in fact has taken possession of our kitchens, studies and living rooms, and has shaped also our thinking, feeling and ways of expressing ourselves. This is banal cosmopolitanism. 6 Ulrich Beck, “The cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies,” Theory, Culture and Society 19, no.1-2 (February-April 2002).

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hosts, laws that, in turn, have to be modified to accommodate the new arrivals.7 The infrastructure of cosmopolitanism is cosmopolis. Cosmopolis can be thought of as a net or, as Deleuze and Guattari speculated, a rhizome.8 Cosmopolis exists through the interaction of its citizens who connect and communicate to form temporary assemblages in real or electronic space. The significance and the consequences of this communication network are different, depending on one’s position on the globe. Cosmopolis cannot be imagined as one world culture. Today, the central or controlling point of view that identified the modern city has been replaced by many partial points of view and the ‘panorama’ by ‘dioramas’, as Bruno Latour would have it. There is no one panoramic view of the city from a central tower.9 There are only partial points of view. The lessons of structuralism and post-structuralism prevail: humans are continually constructing and reconstructing the world in which they live; all terms are caught in everchanging force fields. From multiple (computer) windows, each cosmopolite has his or her view of the world as a city or the city as a world. And if there is no single controlling point of view, the position from which one connects toward the outside, toward others, continues to influence human’s perception in their organization of cosmopolis. Moreover, configurations are changing rapidly. The cosmos, once thought to be stable, well ordered and harmonious, has become what Guattari calls, a chaosmos whose citizens as chaosmopolites make connections to-from always temporary, partial assemblages.10 This chaosmopolis is characterized by its mobile ‘centres’.11 Cosmopolis will appear quite different if it is



7 This is the subject matter that Derrida and Kristeva also reflect upon. Derrida links hospitality with political refugees and asylum seekers. Writing along lines between hospitality and hostility, through the readings of Kant and Hannah Arendt, he suggests to rethink citizenship in terms of cosmopolite responsibility. Kristeva, thinking from the point of view of the host, appeals to culture to produce citizens of tolerance who are open to the other and dare to recognize the other in themselves. Both Derrida and Kristeva emphasize cultural and legal aspects. See Jacques Derrida, Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! (Paris: Galilée, 1997) and Julia Kristeva, Nations without Nationalism, trans. Léon Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). 8 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1983). 9 Bruno Latour, Paris, Ville Invisible (Paris: La Découverte, 1999). 10 Felix Guattari, Les Trois ƞcologies (Paris: Galilée, 1989). 11 If we identify chaosmopolis with the term globalization, the description from Zygmunt Bauman about globalization is also relevant here: “The deepest meaning conveyed by the idea of globalisation is that of the indeterminate, unruly and self-

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seen from China or Indonesia than from the United States or countries in Europe. Cosmopolis enables citizens from all over the world to connect in order to invent and reinvent the world. Yet how it is elaborated will continue to differ in relation to specificity of place, culture, history and context. Cosmopolitan interactions necessitate ongoing negotiations.

Utopian and dystopian visions The motor of cosmopolitan interactions is computer-mediated technology, particularly the Net and the World Wide Web, which is now considered as causally determining the conditions of human existence. From the utopian technophilic perspective new digital technologies, particularly computer-based networking is the single most important technical fix for the limitations and failings of Western democracies. Where the older analogue communication networks of the nation-state system were few-to-many, space-bound, essentially hierarchical and unidirectional, the digital systems made possible by the Net promise many-to-many, de-territorial, horizontal and interactional patterns of information flow and communication. A corresponding transformation of the public sphere is thought to follow from this technical revolution. Citizenship – hitherto confined to well-bounded geographical sites such as city-states, communes or nation-states – will irresistibly expand to embrace communities and societies hitherto ‘undemocratic’. The new technoscape makes the speculative idea of an all-encompassing unitary cosmopolitanism a realizable goal.12 While the traditional state dominated its satellite regions through centralized taxation and fiscal controls, controlling peripheries through bureaucratic policing, the new democratic state will be networked and transactional in form. The future is one of an oecumene of expanding virtual communities increasingly reshaping actual communities to create a cyber-republic of voluntary associations, lobbies and interests groups. Contrary to the utopian cosmopolitanism, the dystopian narrative brings forth the darker side of the technoscape. Many see digital communications as one of the main causes of disembedding and dissolving

 propelled character of world affairs; the absence of a center, of a controlling desk, of a board of directors, of a managerial office.” Zygmunt Bauman, Globalisation: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 59. 12 This is the vision of Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World (London: HarperCollins, 1994). See also the world order as the planetary triumph of the liberal West in Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992).

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local autonomies, disenfranchising and atomizing those excluded from the life zones of postmodern technoscience.13 Behind the utopian promises of the World Wide Web lie the old structural inequalities and social divisions, with the Net as a new instrument of global capitalism. Modern communications technologies simply enhance the power and control of ruling elites and dominant classes. The Web is no more than a new culture industry elevated by corporate market powers into a position of global hegemony. The information age turns out to be an era of cyberimperialism dominated by a cluster of powerful transnational corporations. Instead of promoting a wider scale of democratization, the Net will disempower its users, encouraging ‘private’ solutions to public problems, hence ‘the end of the social’, thereby the ‘end of politics’, as Jean Baudrillard would put it.14 To disclose these facts, the critical questions are: Who controls the global media infrastructures of the information age? Who decides the form and content of the new media industries? Who, in short, will benefit in material terms from the information revolution? Both the utopian and dystopian visions, however, fail to address complex issues surrounding the new technologies. From the perspective of the cyber-activist, for instance, Internet is not a fixed and finished artifact, but a frontier of constructive paths and possibilities. Internet is an anarchical habitus embodying ‘free-flowing’ information which escapes state control and monolithic corporate governance.15 In the new electronic polity, “the Net will foster activity instead of passivity.”16 In its historical context the Net resembles a non-synchronic configuration of contingent processes rather than a linear development.17 It is a complex picture of the interaction between ‘subjects’ (society) and ‘objects’ (technology), and is basically relational in character. ‘Online’ subjectivity, thought to be constitutive of contemporary technological citizenship, emerges through an open constellation of human agency, keyboard, monitor, fiber optics,



13 For instance Gene I. Rochlin, Trapped in the Net (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). 14 The phenomenon of privatization has always been considered one of the most important characteristics of global consumer capitalism as a ‘risk society’, see Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999). 15 Esther Dyson, Release 2.1: A design for Living in the Digital Age (London: Penguin, 1998); also Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community (London: Minerva, 1994). 16 Dyson, 49. 17 Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999). Also John Naughton, A Brief History of the Future (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1999).

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microprocessor, electronic text, etc. The emergent ‘identity’, however, is not reducible to any singular context. There are always various and different contexts, each of them is dependent upon contingent constellations of further contexts, which eventually blur the demarcation between the social and the technical. In other words, the emergence of digital information culture has systematically deconstructed the traditional dualisms of epistemology, a deconstruction that requires us to radically rethink the dialectic of the technical and the non-technical. The Net is in fact a complex web of socially shaped artifacts, multi-layered and decenterd. As such, it escapes the metaphors of linear causal determinism and suggests new ways of thinking that avoid essentialism. This may require a perspective of technopoiesis, as Barry Sandywell has it.18 This is a discourse on individual and collective world-making by way of technology that renders both humans and technology mutually malleable. The technical is contextual and cultural in that it is the material embodiments of cultural poiesis located within operative social practices, and it is the contingent articulations of non-synchronic elements that make possible distinctive operations (actions, meanings, metaphors), which extend the cultural praxis. In this perspective, instead of thinking of ‘culture’ as a fixed code, system of meaning or received tradition, it would be better to look at social life as a heterogeneous field of world-making practices creating diverse realms of the ‘social imaginary’.19

The ethical basis When we talk about the cosmopolitan phenomenon, however, what is significant is not so much its utopian or dystopian visions as the need for a fundamental rethinking of the ethical basis for new forms of sociality. Some important elements to be considered in the rethinking are: hospitality, responsibility and reflexivity. Hospitality here is not simply a right, but a sensibility that would encourage the formation of a critical consciousness in social relationships and interactions, as well as in institutional practices. This is similar to Conolly’s ‘critical responsiveness’: an ethos of critical responsiveness that endorses boundary crossings and which is critical to the maintenance of



18 Barry Sandywell, Reflexivity and the Crisis of Western Reason: Logological Investigations, Vol. I (London: Routledge, 1996). 19 Michail M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other late Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986); also Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).

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the constitutive tension between pluralism and pluralization. Hospitality is full of contradictions, as Derrida puts it: it requires borders as a condition for the possibility of a concept and experience aimed at crossing borders, ‘being possible only on the condition of its impossibility’.20 For Conolly, the critical responsiveness arises in settings where the end is often not yet clearly in view, either to the initiators or to the respondents.21 Hospitality, as Derrida also suggests, always implies a ‘not yet’, a ‘being on the threshold’. It is never completed: in the place of encounter and in terms of mutual engagement, the guest is as hospitable as the host; both are on the threshold, stepping towards alterity, never settled. Hospitality produces autodeconstruction.22 There is a constant process of shifting roles as hosts and guests, as two sovereign powers. Hospitality implies a questioning of the powers or authorities, of the ways the authorities are constructed as well as of their limits. In this sense hospitality is a refusal to conceive the host and the guest as pre-constituted identities. Hospitality is, therefore, not about the rules of being conditioned by a duality of host and guest with asymmetrical or unequal power relations leading to domination. It is, instead, about the recognition that they are mutually constitutive of each other, and thus, relational and shifting, as all identities are. In terms of responsibility, the Levinasian perspective is of central importance: the ethos of non-reciprocal and unconditional responsibility for the other. It is argued that this kind of responsibility arises as a response to fragility and suffering, intimated in face-to-face relations, in the silent commandment addressed to me by the other, convoking/invoking me to justice and love. While people from different cultures may continue to disagree about what is good, there is in fact a consensus against tolerance of suffering, that is to say, that suffering is somehow intolerable. While there is a diversity of happiness, there is a unity of human misery. Thus a general opposition to human suffering constitutes a standpoint that both transcends and unites different cultures and historical epochs. If human rights exist to protect us from suffering, it would be quite reasonable to think of universal human obligations, human responsibility to oppose misery, to oppose governments that fail in protecting human rights. In Levinasian terms, the responsibility is

 20

By this Derrida means: to receive a guest whom I am incapable of welcoming, to become capable of that which I am incapable of. See Jacques Derrida, “Hospitality,” in Acts of Religion, Jacques Derrida (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 364. 21 See William E. Conolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 183-4. 22 Derrida, “Hospitality,” 360-2.

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grounded in the experience of loss and lack, as well as in the recognition of the inaccessibility and irreducibility of the other, the absolute alterity of the other. The ethical response triggered by this ontological condition is solicitude and care, tied to the assumption of a responsibility for the other that even precedes one’s own rights and freedom. This implies giving as a modality of the relation to the other. Such giving, in turn, entails the questioning of oneself in the act of giving, as Derrida would have it.23 Or from a Ricoeurian perspective, the questioning of one’s self through the other will lead to the ex-centerdness of the self. So that the relation of the ‘I’ and the other can be imagined as one of compossibility. In the domain of intersubjectivity the ‘I’ is plural.24 Cosmopolitanism does not mean that one does not have a country or a homeland, but one has to have a certain reflexive distance from that homeland. The cosmopolitan virtue requires Socratic irony, by which one can achieve some distance from the polity. The principal component of cosmopolitan virtue is irony, because the understanding of other cultures is assisted by an intellectual distance from one’s own national or local culture. Understanding other cultures presupposes that we could treat our own culture disinterestedly as an object of inquiry. As such, cosmopolitan virtue also requires self-reflexivity with respect to both our own cultural context and other cultural values. As a result, cosmopolitan irony is a tolerance of others that starts from a position of some uncertainty as to the ultimate authority of one’s own culture, as suggested also by the pragmatism of Dewey and Rorty.25 Due to this ironic self-reflexivity, cosmopolitanism assumes that there is doubt about the validity of any ‘final vocabulary’.26 The prospects for cosmopolitanism depend upon the maintenance of a certain degree of world-openness, a capacity to embrace the other’s culture unconditionally. The fact, however, is that hospitality, responsibility and reflexivity – as the embodiments of openness – are becoming more difficult today in the face of current global terrorism. The emergent reaction toward terrorism, especially after 11 September 2001, is a reassertion

 23

Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault et al (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). 24 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. B. Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 25 Richard Rorty, The Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). 26 The concept of ‘ironic self-reflexivity’ is elaborated in depth by Bryan S. Turner in his article “Cosmopolitan Virtue, Globalization and Patriotism,” Theory, Culture & Society 19, no.1-2 (February-April 2002).

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of the global hegemonic agenda of the most powerful states; with their attempt to endorse a permanent state of emergency, hence a new form of military globalization. This will surely reinforce the sense of borders, cultural identity and greater regulation of global flows. With this, ‘cosmopolis’ is on the verge of turning into ‘chaosmopolis’ in the worst sense of the term. In such a situation, the above mentioned virtues will only be realistic and effective if they are elaborated at the level of global governance.

THE CLAIM OF TRUTH AND THE CLAIM OF FREEDOM IN RELIGION TRAN VAN DOAN

The Third World and socialist countries have more than often been accused by the West of being the abusers of human rights. One of their ‘crimes’ is, perhaps, the most controversial: offense against religious freedom.1 As expected, such condemnation is completely rejected by them, and even by a great many Western thinkers themselves. However, such a complaint falls on deaf ears. What is worse, it is ignored, paradoxically, by the accuser as well as by the accused. In fact, there is almost no difference among the powerful rulers, be they in the First or the Third World. They are the ones who set the standards for ‘truth’ and ‘justice’, and who claim rights for themselves, at least in their own countries. To the ruling class, freedom serves rather as a pretext, but not as their true concern. The former president of China, Jiang Dze-ming, made a remark which is echoed by rulers of many countries, that China has a different conception of human rights and that freedom is fully respected in China. Actually this remark follows the same logic of power (the reverse side of Bacon’s logic of knowledge): who has power, has the right to decide. The ruled have no other choice but to dutifully obey the ruler’s criteria of human rights imposed on them against their will, simply because power is not in their hands. The rulers know so well that knowledge and power are twin brothers, and that justice and human rights are at their whim. Sadly enough, truth and rights do not stand on the side of the weak. Justice for the poor and oppressed is only a beautiful slogan (or the opium in Marx’s remark on religion) to console them. Blaise Pascal’s sarcastic remark that ‘justice is for everyone, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’ may sound too pessimistic, but true to some extent. This ‘naked truth’ about power is equally applied to all men, regardless of race and geographical origin. So,



1 In the case of socialist countries, Western human rights watchers have cited the lack of a certain freedom of religion as the main offense of human rights.

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The Claim of Truth and the Claim of Freedom in Religion

the answer is quite simple: if power determines truth, then the business of acquiring power is more essential. Truth serves as a means rather than as an end. Bacon’s attempt to elevate knowledge (truth) to the same rank as power has been distorted. The disgracing of knowledge is taken, not as a noble ideal, but as a tool against humanity. Similarly, the Enlightenment’s spirit has been deformed: neither the force of judgment (Kant) nor the idea of freedom, but power (the power of the people in the case of the French Revolution) makes history. This means that the rulers have successfully transformed ‘the force of knowledge’ into the most effective weapon to dismiss the rights of the ruled, to suppress freedom of other people and to impose the Western criteria of truth and moral standards on the latter. Gun-boat policy, artillery power and a modern equipped army (results of the knowledge-as-power belief) as well as (Western) truth and morals are now taken to consolidate and expand the power of the ruling class. Rousseau, surely, was neither the first nor the last thinker unmasking the hypocrisy of the rulers. Socrates may have the right to claim to be the thinker per excellence with his critique of the Sophists and his total devotion to truth. One might say with some confidence that both Socrates and Rousseau (and not Galileo or Descartes) have set a good example for intellectuals with their relentless critique and non-compromising attitudes. As we see, true philosophers, social activists, and, foremost, theologians have often raised their critical voices against the rampant abuse of human rights by rulers.2 They mistrust the truth proclaimed by rulers. They challenge knowledge (ideology) that claims to be final. In their view, those who pretend to possess the absolute truth (total knowledge) are the worst offenders of human rights and freedom. Racism, imperialism, capitalism and colonialism, to name just the most recent ideologies and practices, are solidified by the belief in a certain truth: truth about the superiority of a certain race (the Aryan race in the case of Nazism and the Han race in the case of feudal China), of a certain nation (the British empire and the France of Napoleon) or of a certain class (aristocracy in the past and the upper class today). So, in the eyes of Western intellectuals, the claimed truth is nothing but a fabricated idea, used as a justification for the atrocities rulers commit.

 2

Note that the most ardent criticasters of Western culture (and religion) are theologians. Among the pupils of Friedrich W. Schelling’s class on religion, one finds the names of Bakunin, Kierkegaard and Engels. Marx adhered himself to the Doktorklub, the majority of which are theologians (Bauer, Stirner, Feuerbach and others). Today, the so-called theologians of liberation still stay at the front battling against imperialist suppression and capitalist exploitation.

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In this connection, the West’s condemnation of the Third World and the angry objection of the latter display rather a bitter fight for power, and not for truth, justice and freedom. This is not like the battle between Cain and Abel, and much less between the bad and the good. This is a war of those fueled by an uncontrolled lust for power. So, the accusers look as embarrassed as the accused. The self-pretending prosecutors turn out to be the most outrageous violators. Are they blatant liars? Or are they of good will and sincerity? No doubt, they belong to the same class with the same insatiable ambition. And they both claim truth for themselves. From such a perspective, one can understand similar controversies in our present world. The burning and dreadful conflict in the Middle East, just as the tension between the North and the South, cannot be understood without a thorough investigation of the relation between power and truth. Truth is claimed not because of truth per se, but because of a conviction about the role of truth in acquiring, consolidating and preserving power. Absolute truth warrants a lasting power. From such dogma, we are sticking to our belief, regarding it as a ‘sacred mission’ to defend our religion or ideology. Freedom is therefore understood as the rights to believe in our own truth and to liberate us from ‘un-truth’. Freedom even means the ‘duty’ to freely convince others of our truth (e.g. missionary work). In a loose description, freedom is an expression of our ‘free’ will to take whatever measure to achieve our goal, including violence and dictatorship. In this context, we can understand the reason why in the name of freedom ‘the fighters for freedom’ have resorted to the means of anti-freedom and anti-human rights. The acts of suppressing, murdering, terrorizing, enslaving, intimidating, chiding, etc., are ‘justified’ by ‘belief’ and ‘truth’. Freedom, therefore, means emancipation from the yoke of others, but not from our own yoke. We understand now the paradox of freedom and truth: freedom contains within it the element of un-freedom and ‘our’ truth contains within it the anti-truth element.3 This paradox can be seen vividly in human acts. On the pretext of defending freedom (of expression), a great deal of Western media have severely wounded religious feeling and belief (not only of the Islamic world, but all religious worlds).4 In the name of truth, rulers forcefully

 3

Such paradox has been brilliantly analyzed by Horkheimer and Adorno. See Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972). 4 The most recent outrage against a Danish cartoonist is a case in point. No doubt, both Islamic believers and the cartoonist were certain of their own truth and both call up to human rights (freedom) to justify their violent acts and their abused

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The Claim of Truth and the Claim of Freedom in Religion

condemn intellectuals into silence. They deny and even testify against truth. So, it is not the question of whether the kind of freedom of expression (a human right) is compatible (or incompatible) to religious life (also a human right), but the question of claims of truth and freedom, which must be carefully dealt with. I am trying to approach the problem from an indirect (or oblique) perspective. I will not follow the traditional approach by beginning with a definition of truth or freedom but with a critique of the human illusion of being the inheritor of God’s truth and God’s nature (freedom). I will argue that it is neither our yearning for freedom nor our belief in God, but rather our illusion of truth-possession and our arbitrary identification of truth with freedom as well as our artificial separation of truth and freedom from life that is the cause of conflicts. That means truth and freedom per se are not the cause of conflicts. Conflicts are rooted in our lust for power, and expressed in our claim of truth-inheritor and freedom-possession. To prove the tenability of this view, I will examine the process of twisting truth in life to truth as life. Such a radical twist has been made possible thanks to philosophers like Plato and the Neo-Platonians. They conceived freedom in terms of truth. As free men, they were firmly convinced of their ‘own’ truth. The claim of truth-possession is, thus, identified with the freedom-claim. Similarly, my investigation of the concept of freedom in religion yields the same result. The original understanding of freedom as part of human nature that makes man as man has been distorted into a pure theory of freedom (in philosophy) as an unconditioned free state. That means freedom cannot be understood albeit from life. So when the Jews understood freedom as emancipation from the state of slavery, they regarded the true man as a free man. A slave is not a man and slavery means un-freedom. Such a concept of freedom does not contain, intrinsically, the concepts of finitude and dependency. Man is limited by death and by his dependency on others. Nonetheless he feels free, because he is a true human being, and a true human being is always aware of his finitude and his dependency. Therefore the idea of God’s providence does not include the feeling of un-freedom. The believer in God never feels nor regards himself as a slaver but rather as God’s son. He enjoys freedom even while knowing his limits. From this point of view, I conclude with a reflection on ‘the clash of civilizations’ (Samuel Huntington’s phrase). In my own view, the clash among different peoples is not rooted in the differences of cultures

 languages defending their truths. It is the question of whether one can abuse the freedom of expression to distort religious truth.

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(civilizations), but rather in a belief in the superiority of a certain culture, i.e. in a strong belief in a certain system of values as the truest and highest one, and especially in our illusion of being the sole possessor of such truth and such freedom. So any solution to such conflicts can only be possible if human beings are willing to free themselves from the utopia of being the sole possessor of the ‘kingdom of truth’ (Kant’s phrase).

The twist from Truth in Life to Truth as Life The main reason for conflicts among religious worlds, and even among scientific communities, is most probably rooted in our illusion of being the sole possessor of truth. That happened to the Medieval Christian Church, the Enlightenment protagonists and the religious fundamentalists of today. Conflicts become deadly when our desire transcends our own finitude, when we entertain the illusion of being our own creator. The ‘philosopherking’ of Plato, the ‘philosopher’ of Hegel, the ‘superhuman’ of Nietzsche and the ‘proletariat’ of Marx stirred up more trouble than solutions simply because of their claim of being the possessor of the ‘final truth’. To be sure, such an illusion is constructed on and cemented by the formal logic of truth with its corollaries: the principle of identity and the principle of non-contradiction: the true must be the same, and consequently, truth is universal and necessary. The mathematical formula of truth ‘1=1’ has been taken as the most obvious and irrefutable form to pass judgment on all sciences, including the human sciences. Descartes and the German rationalists have expanded and applied this mathematical formula to the whole of the human sciences (ethics, in the case of Kant). It goes more radically with a bizarre principle of either-or (that Sören Kierkegaard has attacked in his Either-Or) and its logical law of ‘the excluded third’ (excluded middle). So, the conclusion of one true God is drawn from the premise of one truth. If our God is true, then other gods must be false; if our ideology is true, then all other ideologies must be false. It is not a mistake to take truth as the objective of sciences, but it would be questionable to believe it as the alpha and the omega, i.e. the total sum of human life. Let us begin first with the claim of truth as the unique objective of life, and the sole means to determine our thinking and actions. To many of us, the idea of a philosophy was palpable in the Homeric tradition: a tradition centered on life. The twist begins with Thales, who in his search for the origin of life identified the characteristic of life with life itself: the most original life must be the truest (i.e. the most universal and necessary) one. Truth and life seem to be the same. Other Greek philosophers followed suit and went on much more radically. The

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Pythagorians abstracted human life and identified numbers as the origin of the universe. They may be quite correctly regarded as the predecessors of Galileo. The latter described the universe in terms of a mathematical structure. In a word, one may say, Pre-Socratic philosophy is, in a certain sense, a constant search for truth, by means of arguments based on truth itself. Truth and not life is now the objective of our quest. It was Socrates who gave a final and decisive stamp on truth as the unique objective of philosophy. By insisting on truth implicit in life, Socrates embraced the view that truth is the most valuable treasure. Indeed, true to his view, he sacrificed his own life for truth. Truth is also the objective of scientific research. It is the essence of science indeed. And it is the securest means to safeguard truth and life. However, what is truth? This question, the most important one, has not been satisfactorily answered so far.5 When Socrates chided the Sophists for mistaking truth with opinion, and especially for having claimed truth for themselves, he clearly opted for the view that truth can be acquired only by means of a constant search and critique (in the form of a dialogue). Now the problem is, if truth can be acquired by a permanent investigation, then the acquired truth is rather temporal. The newly acquired truth would replace the one once believed. According to Hegel, temporal truth appears real, but it is the reality of a certain people in a certain age, i.e. an incomplete, partial truth. However, Hegel still believed in an eternal truth which he identified with reason. In his view, the true kernel determining the Zeitsgeist and the Volksgeist must be the rational.6 But the kernel (the rational) is either unknowable (as a noumenon in Kant) or incompletely known because the rational emerges in a constant and infinite process (Hegel). So, truth known by us cannot be grasped in toto. We know only a part of it. Karl Popper developed this view radically to the edge of rationalism and to the brink of a possible collapse of Platonian truth: no truth is final. Any claim of having a final truth contradicts the essence of truth. In this Socratic way of philosophizing, what we may grasp is not truth but reality, i.e. a temporal and spatial aspect of truth. We know for sure a certain facie of truth but not truth in its totality.7 The question of ‘What is truth?’ is still unanswered. It is left open by Socrates and his followers. His closest disciple, the ambitious Plato,

 5

Martin Heidegger, Sein unz Zeit, 44; Especially in Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit and Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. 6 Hegel, Vorlesungen ueber Rechtsphilosophie, Einleitung. “What is rational is real and what is real is rational.” 7 Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 150-1.

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attempted to fulfill the mission of his master by claiming to produce a final, irrefutable answer. He proved that truth is the most universal and necessary. It is the substance of all substances. In a word, it is divine and contemplative. Despite the warm reception of the Neo-Platonians (like Plotinus, Filone and Clemente) who found in God the absolute Truth, such an answer, regrettably, leaves behind more irresolvable puzzles. Nietzsche is neither the first nor the last one to rebel against such a view with his satirical declaration of the death of God. The non-existence of God is interpreted as the non-existence of truth, just as His death means the end of Plato’s truth. Without an absolute truth, Nietzsche plunged into a certain form of negative nihilism: the bottomless abyss. He was fully aware of the negativity of such thinking. Nihilism does not shed any new light on truth. In contrast, truth appears now as non-truth. The question of ‘What is truth?’ has not been answered. It is simply dismissed as non-sense, so Nietzsche’s madman in the Gay Science says: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”8 The twist from truth in life to truth as life has been unmasked by Heidegger. He is, surely, not the first but the most eloquent opponent of Plato’s truth and of Nietzsche’s negative nihilism.9 Traditional truth in terms of representation, or of correspondence (adaequatio intellectus et rei as Thomas Aquinas puts it), or of agreement, or of identification (positivism), or of coherence and pragmatism could not reveal the true essence of truth, because it is detached from the Ursprung of truth, i.e. life.10 Traditional criteria of truth have been based on facts, or phenomena, or similarity, but not on their source and their dynamic force. So, if truth is not life but only an essential aspect (authenticity), then it is not the question ‘What is truth?’, but the question ‘What is life?’ that must be the objective of philosophy. In Heidegger’s harsh critique, philosophers from Plato to Nietzsche have scratched where it does not itch. Ontology must be anthropology,11 and therefore, truth cannot be separated from human life. The investigation of life, and its basic characteristics, yields a new light on human beings in terms of freedom and on truth itself. Kant insists on autonomy as the essence of morals indirectly, i.e. that freedom does not contradict his faith in truth as the foundation of morality. It is only in the context of life that truth can be grasped in freedom, and

 8

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), section 125. 9 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Guenther Neske, 1961), Vol. 2, 31ff. 10 Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 44a. 11 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Einleitung; Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, (1929); and Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Vol. 2.

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freedom can manifest itself in truth. In Heidegger’s interpretation of truth as alηθeia, truth no longer plays the role of God or the a-temporal and non-spatial mathematical formula, but reveals itself freely in the world. Erschlossenheit, Entdeckheit, Unverborgenheit, etc. (uncovering, selfrevelation) are the essential characteristics marking the nature of truth.12 In this sense, he regards the essence of truth as freedom.13 Heidegger’s radical interpretation of truth in the sense of selfrevelation is, of course, not new. However, it is interesting to note that even if Heidegger has tried very hard to dismiss the role of God as custodis, providentia or the philosopher (Hegel) in favor of God as artis ingenius (like Nietzsche), he still follows the same logic of religion: only the God-like being can reveal itself. And the like-God being possesses the power of self-existence and the power of self-determination, i.e. the power of a creator. It is in this sense that Heidegger regards freedom as the essence of truth. Like the Epiphany that expresses the self-revelation of God’s true nature, freedom displays the essence (i.e. the condition and nature) of human existence. If Epiphany is a process of God in the World then, analogically, Being is in a constant process of self-emergence.14 So, Being’s epiphany expresses not only its autonomy but, much more, its freedom: to be the self and at the same the other (the different). It is in this sense that Heidegger may have the right to claim that the essence of truth is freedom; and also in this sense that the postmodernists have understood science in particular and human beings in general.15

Freedom and truth in religion Only in this context I argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of truth does not stem directly from Nietzsche’s ideas (as some postmodernists may insist), but is rooted in religious sources.16 Earlier religious thinkers, actually, never separated truth and freedom from life. Truth in religion is not a formula, or a criterion, or a means, but the most authentic aspect of life, just as freedom is not what is given to us but an essential part of human life which makes humans God-like. There is no formula of truth in religion. There is no unique way leading to God. And, of course, there is

 12

Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 44b. In Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, Heidegger clearly wrote: “Das Wesen der Wahrheit ist die Freiheit.” 14 Karl Rahner, Geist in Welt (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1939). 15 Jacques Derrida, Acts of religion (New York: Routledge, 2002). 16 A similar interpretation can be found in the works of Heidegger’s pupils. See Karl Rahner, Geist in Welt. 13

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no image that can depict precisely and truthfully the Godhead. Here is the reason why God forbids idolatry. In this sense, Heidegger’s interpretation of Being’s authenticity does not follow the pattern of traditional criteria of ‘certainty’ and ‘clarity’ (Descartes). Authenticity, actually, refers to what essentially constitutes life. As such, it gives light to what Christ means by truth. Truth cannot be separated from the Way and from our Life: Christus via, veritas et vita est (John 14:6).

Truth and life One clearly finds here the closest, almost inseparable, relationship between truth and life, truth and the way to live. And this idea has been the most important concept in almost all religions, not only in Christianity. It determines the behaviors, thoughts and even aspirations of believers. There is no internal contradiction here between freedom and truth, truth and life. In this perspective, Alfred North Whitehead rightly wrote: “A religion, on its doctrinal side, can thus be defined as a system of general truths which have the effect of transforming the character when they are sincerely held and vividly apprehended.”17 Of course, the ‘system of general truths’ here means not the system of truth built on a purely mathematical form. Truth can be known only through its effects on life. That means truth is considered as truth only if it is sincerely held and vividly apprehended. Needless to say, this kind of understanding of truth originates in many religious traditions, the Eastern as well as the Western. Let us take a look at the history of Christianity to see how such a truth is conceived. According to the study of Waldemar Molinski,18 truth originally (in the Hebrew emeth) means in the first place “to be firm, reliable, faithful or fidelity (2 Sam 7:28; Ps. 119:160),” “sincerity and constancy (Ps 132:11),” “loyalty of the people to God (Jos 24: 14; 1 Kg 20:3; Is 38:3; Ps 26:3; 86:11).” The meaning of truth as the correspondence between assertion and reality (3 Kg 10:6; 22:16) or the identification of “law as truth (Job 4:6; 13:6; Ecclus 27:9)” comes only second. Similarly, truth in the New Testament means firstly “fidelity and reliability of God (Rom 3:1-7),” “human sincerity (2 Cor 7:14; Phil 1: 18; 3:8; 4:4; 1 Tim 2:7; 2 John 1),” or “the quality of the genuine and obligatory which attached to the gospel

 17

Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1960), 15. 18 Waldemar Molinski, “Truth,” in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner (New York: Herder, 1970), Vol. 6, 308-18.

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(Eph 4: 21; Gal 2:5, 14; Rom 2:8; 2 Cor 4:2; Gal 5:7).” Truth is taken to be “the word of God (2 Cor 4;2; Gal 5:7),” and “authoritative doctrines (1 Tim 6:5; 2 Tim 18; 3:18; 4:4)” come second. The interpretation of truth as “to fulfill the laws of God (2 John 4; 3 John 3f)” follows the interpretation of the divine law as love. So, in John’s Gospel, truth is understood as the most necessary act of love, “the reality of salvation which sets man free (John 8:32).” Such an understanding of truth has been the basic teaching of early Christianity,19 until St. Augustine who, under the heavy shadow of NeoPlatonism, explained truth in terms of reality. He combines the Johannine Logos with the Plotinian Nous.20 In other words he linked truth as life to the divine (contemplative) truth. In De Trinitate,21 he stated that the (God) Son is the truth since He is the Word who reveals the (God) Father. As such, Augustine understood truth as eternal reality. In De Libero Arbitrio, he clearly conceived of truth as absolute, eternal and changeless.22 Drawn from this premise, he argued that truth is not created but discovered by us only.23 Truth is the ultimate objective of our life, and our search for truth determines the movement of thought.24 From St. Augustine on, Christian philosophers (Boethius, St. Anselm Canterbury,25 and especially St. Thomas) have interpreted truth as the ‘primordial opening out of being’ (ens et verum convertuntur), and at the same time as the function of judgment (adequatio intellectus et rei).26 St. Thomas identified God as the first Truth and the foundation of all truth,27 while Duns Scotus, by distinguishing the ontological from the logical

 19

Clement of Alexandria, for example, taught that God is the norm for the truth of beings (Protrepticus, VI, PG VIII, col. 173). 20 St. Augustine, Confessions, VII, 9. 21 Augustine, Confessions, VII, 3. 22 Augustine, Confessions, II, 15, 39. 23 Augustine, De Vera Religione, 39, 72. 24 Molinski, “Truth,” 308. 25 According to Molinski, 309, “Boethius refers to truth as judgment, while St. Anselm of Canterbury analyzes the relation of logical truth to ontological truth. Logical truth is an effect of the summa veritas, mediated by created things (De Veritate, chap. 19). This means that the ontological connection is under the rule of truth as the rectitutido sola mente perceptibilis (chap. 11).” 26 Cf. Contra Gentiles, I, 59; De Veritate I, 2. 27 Molinski, “Truth,” 310: “God is the Transcendental Truth means that being as an intrinsic relation to spirit and hence to the spirit-soul, and also that spirit is ordained to being (De Veritate I, 1). St. Thomas combines the Aristotelian notion that the soul is ‘all things in a certain fashion’ with the notion of the truth of things (Aristotle, The Soul, 431: Metaphysics, 993 b).”

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truth, gave to God the source of ontological truth. To prove God’s existence, however, one has to rely on logical truth. Now, we discover a slow change from the concept of truth as life (ontological truth) to that of the source of life (God), and finally to that of the so-called logical truth. Modern philosophers, like Descartes, went farther than most his predecessors. Descartes conceived God as the warrant for logical truth.28 He argued that man cannot be the origin of his infinite ideas,29 i.e. truth. So, it is God who is the source and the warrant of truth. However, he insisted on the clara et distincta idea as the essential characteristic of truth which exists only in pure thinking.30 Such a truth loses its traces in life and evaporates in ‘the world of purely thinking’. Descartes’ radical interpretation of truth in terms of logical truth gives way to a modern way of understanding truth as purely logical, and, consequently, truth is detached from life.

Freedom and life A similar twist is found in a human understanding of freedom. The original meaning of freedom in religious tradition as the true image of God (imago Dei) has often been interpreted as a restricted freedom: the freedom of the created. Such interpretation inclines to the view that only the total, unrestricted freedom of the Creator can be called true freedom. Freedom is here understood as the free act towards any possible purpose. But, this kind of understanding of freedom, actually, has surpassed the original meaning of freedom: freedom towards a fixed purpose (imago Dei), i.e. to the truest human. Now the question is, if human freedom cannot overstep the limit (human nature) and surpass its own purpose (to become perfect like God), then the so-called positive freedom (freedom to) and the negative freedom (freedom from) must be understood in the context of human nature and human activities, which means in the context of human life. That means, freedom expresses human attempts to overcome the conditions that restrain, diminish or dismiss the fulfillment of human life, and, at the same time, freedom displays a human force in fulfilling life. So the question here must be two-fold: Which conditions do we need to overcome? And: What kind of life can fulfill human nature? The answers to these questions are essential to our understanding of freedom.

 28

Descartes, Meditationes, III. Discours de la methode, 2, 14. 30 Meditationes, III, 4. Molinski, “Truth,” 311. 29

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Different answers to the question of which conditions do we have to overcome constitute the notion of negative freedom. Answers given by different religions, philosophers and politicians display the different approaches to the problem. To Christianity, it is sin that limits the human capacity of self-fulfillment. To Buddhism, sin is the main cause (craving for wealth, pleasure, power, continued existence) of unhappiness. To the Marxists, it is the unjust social structure. It is clear that a kind of freedom in terms of emancipation, or liberation, is implicit in these answers: liberation from slavery, escape from the yoke of samsara, and emancipation from class society. That is what we often identify as the negative freedom, the libertas ac coactione.31 Such freedom does not, however, solve the inner contradiction of freedom: freedom can be known and gained at the cost of others’ unfreedom. There is hardly a demarcation between individual freedom and individual interest. If freedom means to freely pursue one’s own interests, then conflict is a logical result of freedom. And to solve conflicts requires the restriction of other’s freedom. The others here are the powerless people. So, the belief that freedom is the most desired or ultimate objective of human beings would not make sense, or little sense, to the majority of people. The belief in freedom as ‘free from’ would turn out to be an illusion as long as power is still in the hands of a few rulers. Aware of this sad fact, John Stuart Mill proposed an understanding of freedom from its positive aspects. He writes: “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”32 He concedes the fact that such freedom is possible only if we can become our own master. To be our own master means self-realization. But, Mill does not discuss the question of how to be aware of being master and how to become master, i.e. how to realize oneself. Kant and the German ideologists refer to the idea of autonomy and the consciousness of the self, while Marx to the force (labor) as the conditio sine qua non that makes man autonomous. In other words, to be the master demands, first, a selfconsciousness and, secondly, the force of self-subsisting and selfdeveloping. That is impossible due to human relations and reliance on others and nature. Self-consciousness cannot be found in the ego alone. So the insistence on the equality of liberty for all human beings seems to be rather a wish, or a pure idea in the minds of (German) ideologists. Aristotle was not completely wrong when he discovered the existence of

 31

Max Mueller, “Freedom,” in Sacrmentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner (New York: Herder, 1970), Vol. 1, 352-361; also Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 122ff. 32 John Stuart Mill, Essay on Liberty. Quoted by Berlin, 127.

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the ruling class thanks to slavery. He was wrong because he did not foresee human evolution thanks to human labor. The master knows how to use his own force effectively and the labor of his slave to realize his good life, while the slave only works for his master and not for himself. Despite his unwillingness to treat the problem from the point of view of the German philosophers, Mill still regards positive freedom in terms of human self-realization.33 For my purpose, I will not delve into Mill’s controversy but start with his insight on freedom as a means for and expression of self-realization. So, the center of our discussion would be whether self-realization could fulfill the human quest for ultimate happiness, i.e. whether positive freedom could be humans’ most desired end, and whether such an objective is also that of religion. The fact that freedom can be understood and appreciated in a certain life, and that human life can be fulfilled thanks to other elements (and factors) relating to life, points to the fact that it is life and not freedom or truth that is the final end of human beings. So, one may argue that freedom makes sense only if it fulfills life, makes it perfect. If so, then the final question for us should be which kind of life can be appreciated as the perfect life. Negative freedom expresses the human aspiration for not being restrained by conditions which may jeopardize, limit and destroy life. Positive freedom points to the human desire to achieve what we consider as fulfillment, the perfection of life. In religion, the freedom to fulfill and to perfect life can be termed as transcendental freedom (libertas transcendentalis). The desire of transcending the status quo and ascending towards the highest stage, i.e. “being over and beyond”34 present life is, without doubt, the kernel of any serious religion. It is the religious spirit that motivates human beings to seek the perfect life. Such transcendental freedom is seen in human active participation (or engagement) in the absolute world of God. Thomas Aquinas describes such an act of transcendence as participatio quaedam infiniti. Only with this kind of transcendental freedom can we understand negative freedom and positive freedom.35

 33

Actually, the idea of positive freedom has been a mark of Greek culture. The Greeks refer to the idea of self-possession, being completely present to oneself, total self-sufficiency as autarky, while the Romans understand liberty as dominium in actu suos, dominium super se ipsum. Max Mueller, “Freedom,” 353. 34 Mueller, 354. 35 Mueller, 353.

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Concluding remarks My objection to the claim of freedom-possession is based on my rejection of the claim of truth-possession. Against such claims, I took Heidegger’s insight of truth as a self-revelation, i.e. a free state of selfpresentation to show that the human pretense of being able to grasp truth in its totality is the product of pure imagination. The uncontrolled lust for power, advocated by Nietzsche, seductively pulls humans into the hallucination of being God or semi-God. So, truth-possession and freedompossession, the property of the Creator, have been falsely claimed by these ‘supermen’. This absurdity has been the hallmark of many imperialist ideologies and cultures. I think, the source of the ‘clash of civilizations’ is not differences of race and culture, but our actual claim of truth and freedom for ourselves alone. To reflect on truth and freedom must, therefore, begin with a deeper reflection on life. Descartes’ mathematical truth would not have contradicted the logic of life if he had not separated life from truth. Kant’s plea for a freedom in the sense of autonomy would not have contradicted human transcendent nature if he had conducted more investigations into the limits of reason. However, there is still a difference between Descartes and Kant. If Descartes remained content with his discovered truth, which he did not bother to expand to life in toto, then for Kant, it is the question of “Was ist der Mensch?” that is the center of his investigation.36 Man cannot be understood in a single, static aspect. He can be apprehended only in a dynamic and infinite process of self-realization. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Whitehead’s insight on the correlation between mathematical truth and religious truth is striking. One can be a good mathematician and a religious man,37 because there exists no internal contradiction between truth and life, similarly the relation between truth and freedom. Both are rooted in life. Wittgenstein’s pondering about the origin of mathematics, just as Heidegger’s relentless quest for truth and freedom lead them to a similar conclusive view: mathematics is inseparable from life, just as truth and freedom are only the most expressive forms of authentic life. Edmund Husserl’s strong objection to the so-called ‘mathematization of the world’ has forced the

 36

Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 804f; B 832f; Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, 187. 37 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 14. “But as between religion and arithmetic, other things are not equal. You use arithmetic, but you are religious. Arithmetic of course enters into your nature, so far as that nature involves a multiplicity of things. But it is there as a necessary condition, and not as a transforming agency.”

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rationalists to rethink the legitimacy of ‘mighty reason’. Actually, in Husserl’s view, truth would lose its sense if it is separated from life. Truth would reduce the meaning of our flourishing lives if it is determined by rational criteria which are fully neutral towards life. So, it is time to rethink truth and freedom in terms of life, and not the reverse. To be truthful means also to be loyal to life; and to be loyal means to be faithful (as seen in religious belief). Our faith cannot be demonstrated by a set of criteria built on formal truth, but by our ‘truest’ feelings, by our deepest sense to life. Similarly, to be free does not mean to be completely detached from others, but to strive forward to fulfill true human nature without restriction or coercion by ‘untrue’ forces. Here, freedom does not mean a completely free state, but free only from the untrue forces which deform or destroy life. In this sense, Marx’s concept of liberty in the sense of liberation from the (social, economic, political) conditions making humans alienated (or reified) does not, actually, play against religious understanding of freedom: freedom means a liberation from the state of slavery, and a condition to restore humanity as well as to fulfill it. It is in religion that one finds freedom in its fullest sense: liberation from the negative forces that restrict or hinder human transcendence, and a positive engagement striving forwards to our ultimate purposes.



A CASE FOR PLURALISM IN A RELATIVISTIC ENVIRONMENT ANDREA BONAZZI

Catholic philosophers are currently going through an identity crisis, because they work under no overarching consensus about the first principles of philosophical enquiry. I take it for granted that pluralism can be a bad thing. Conflicts (ideological or otherwise) are also a kind of pluralism. What we definitely need is a reconciled pluralism. This is not to deny, of course, that truth is ‘symphonic’, as Balthasar puts it in the title of one of his books.1 Nevertheless, the ‘sym’ of the ‘sym-phony’ presupposes a unitary principle. Otherwise, legitimate theological plurality would not be a symphony, but cacophony. Such cacophony is an expression of what might be called ‘emotivism’. As Alasdair MacIntyre explains in After Virtue, “[e]motivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.”2 Similarly, some philosophers nurture the conviction, expressed or unexpressed, that philosophical judgments are essentially expressions of incommensurable, pre-rational commitments that, as such, cannot be impartially evaluated according to universally recognized standards, viz., in the light of a single, overarching principle of understanding. Emotivism thus obscures the reasonableness of the Catholic tradition and thereby it hinders the traditional contribution of philosophy to fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding).

 1

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic, Aspects of Christian Pluralism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987). 2 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 12 (emphasis in the original).

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Of course, sheer pluralism is actually impossible,3 and the pluralism of contemporary Catholic theology is in reality not quite as diverse as it first appears on the surface. For example, the ever so numerous ‘contextual theologies’ that dominate the Catholic landscape today: feminist theology, black theology, gay theology, liberation theology, ecological theology and so on, actually do share a single, unifying principle: the appeal to so called ‘experience’.4 In one sense, this reliance on experience is nothing new. The great Catholic tradition has always known this principle, take St. Augustine, to name but one. The modern appeal to experience, though, in fact continues the Enlightenment project of confining religion within the limits of reason alone. The only difference is that they have replaced Kant’s objectivist ‘reason alone’ with a subjectivist ‘experience alone’.5

The position of moral relativism6 Pluralism, of ethical concepts, philosophical visions of the world, and religious faiths, is a fact. In the face of this reality, there are those who maintain that any ethical system is as good as any other, that all ethical systems are the same, that no value is truly universally valid. The fundamental point of pluralism is that these concepts and ethical outlooks are not all the same; rather they are all different. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is something quite different from the imperative ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. Do we have available to us a rational criterion, one that is valid for all, according to which we can decide which ethics is best? If your answer is no, then you are a relativist (as opposed to a ‘pluralist’).

 3

“[N]ulla enim multitudo est quae non participet uno, quia omnia multa sunt unum secundum aliquid” (There’s no multiplicity that does not participate in unity, because all manifolds are one according to something). Thomas Aquinas, De divinis nominibus, chapter 13.2. 4 Compare the Heideggerian concept of ‘Erfahrung’. 5 According to Adrian J. Walker, “[c]ontextual theologies are merely the latest offspring of Liberal Protestantism, distinguished from their stodgy ancestor only by the attitudes of 1968. Like much of multiculturalism, current American Catholic theological pluralism turns out to be merely the same old liberal monism decked out in colorful funky costumes.” Adrian J. Walker, “Love Alone, Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal,” Communio 32 (Fall 2005): 519. 6 Dari Antiseri, Relativismo, nichilismo, individualismo, Fisiologia o patologia dell’Europa? (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2005); also “Melisso,” (4 March 2009).

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Moral relativism follows Hume’s Law,7 which states that prescriptions cannot be logically derived from descriptions. All that enters into human consciousness originates in the senses,8 but the senses afford us only descriptions. Hence, no ethical value originates in the action or in the thing evaluated in itself, but must be projected over it from the subject that perceives and evaluates them. Ethical judgments are thus purely subjective creations. The choice of supreme values – those values that inform the whole life of individuals and communities – finds its basis, not in science (that ultimately depends on sense perception), but in the conscience of every man and every woman. It now follows as a matter of course that there can be no absolute moral value, and he who professes such is ‘intolerant’. Life in the open society is ordered by ‘rules for common existence’, which are ‘the first and fundamental common good’. The open society is made up precisely of those rules that permit the coexistence of the greatest possible number of ideas and ideals, perhaps even contrasting ones; and it is closed only to the intolerant. And the intolerant person is the one who presumes to know in what the true good consists, to be in possession of that absolute good and he feels it legitimate to impose it upon his peers, perhaps even with the shedding of tears and blood. Moral relativism and its accompanying ‘absolute tolerance’ appear as necessary conditions for the open society. In a tone of friendly and gentle reproach, Antiseri invites the faithful Catholic to reconsider whether he can be so certain about his absolute values, even suggesting that he might have fallen for the ancient serpent’s temptation of possessing godlike knowledge, of knowing good and evil (cf. Genesis 3). Does the faithful Catholic’s moral conviction derive from a religious message or from some philosophical argument, from the gospel or from human reason? Presumably, if his conviction comes from the gospel, then it is fine insofar as it binds his conscience alone. If it comes from philosophical argument, then it is, as we saw before, at most a relative value, and he may not impose it on others. For the Catholic, only God is absolute. Therefore, if he preaches anything that is only human (and therefore only relative) as if it were absolute, then he sets it at the same level as God, who alone is absolute, and commits the sin of idolatry. According to relativists, moral judgments are not really in the world or in things, but are projected (some say ‘constructed’) by the individual human person, and therefore are subjective, relative and never absolute,

 7

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III. Also St. Thomas Aquinas would agree thus far, but his conclusions are completely different. 8

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and may never be imposed on another person. In sum, in this conception the world is comparable to a formless clay-like mass. And the human person has a mind abstracted from its material and corporal conditions, that with its ‘constructions’ thrusts values, and ethical codes, and in a word, civilization, into the amorphous and moldable world. The world appears as a demigod’s playground,9 and the demigod (the human person) is at once absolute and relative: absolute insofar as separated from the world and passing constructive judgments on it; relative insofar as these constructive judgments are of limited scope/extension and can never be universal. The cosmology of an amorphous but moldable world and the anthropology of an abstracted, relative-absolute mind are two foundational tenets of the ideology called relativism. Relativism tears down preexisting axiological structures, and becomes a source of tolerance and also opens space for the sacred. It empowers the person-demigod to construct his own values and meanings in his ‘playground’ that is the world, and requires him to leave room in the playground for the constructions of other demigods. The demigod is even permitted to construct a temple to the Eternal Creator God, so long as he does not claim that his God is the creator of universal and absolute values. This would be a sin against tolerance; and tolerance does appear to be, inexplicably, the one universal and absolute value. Antiseri writes: “Nihilism is a source of tolerance, above all, because so many presumptions of absolute truth have given rise to intolerance and untold tragedy, piling up millions and millions of dead. Lurking behind every form of totalitarianism is always the fatal presumption of ultimate, definitive truths and exclusive values.”10 Antiseri furnishes no examples illustrating how genocides follow from the intolerant impositions of universal truths (as opposed to falsehoods), but he does manage to blame metaphysics for them. Man may not be able to construct his own God or his own eternal paradise, but he can construct his hunger and desire for them, or at least he can construct a rational curiosity about them. Let he who can, take comfort in this. Science restricts its assertions to descriptions about the world. ‘Philosophies’, on the other hand transgress, asserting prescriptions with the absoluteness permitted only to descriptions, and dare to extend them to

 9

Cf. the Demiurgos of late antiquity. The Demiurgos was a Being dwelling in spheres of lofty spirituality, in a world devoid of every element of material existence with which in the Bible story the humanity created by God is naturally associated. 10 Dario Antiseri, “Una spia a servizio dell’Altissimo,” (19 December 2008).

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universal scope. Antiseri marches before us the pageant of the principal ideologies (he writes ‘philosophies’) of the twentieth century, and according to him, these attack God, not because they are false, but because they are universal and prescriptive. The real enemy of religion is human reason.

Confutation of moral relativism There is a natural ordering in things of universal scope that the human mind can know and should respect. The ordering is really in the thing: the human mind does not construct and project value into anything, but only recognizes it already present. In Catholic philosophical tradition, the human knowledge of this ordering is called natural law. Our knowledge of its reality does not depend on Catholic religious authority, though this confirms it. Therefore, it evokes the respect of everyone: Jews, Buddhists, atheists, terrorists and (Catholic) moral relativists.

A. The real epistemological power of the human intellect We consider the human person ‘the subject’ who perceives through his senses a thing (the object of perception). What can legitimately be concluded from the fact that the subject (S) can and does perceive an object (O)? Hume can see no more than O’s description internally represented, even as Descartes can infer from the internal representation no more than his own existence (cogito ergo sum). Hume and Descartes represent in the history of philosophy a concatenation of epistemological reductions. What is really there? In the first place, we know that S is not O and O is not S. The subject is not reducible to the object, for if he were, he would be an elephant when he thinks an elephant and would annihilate himself when he conceived the notion of nothingness. Furthermore, O is not reducible to S. Even if the object is something entirely fantastic, as when the subject imagines a unicorn, the unicorn is not the chimera, it is not nothingness. It has an ephemeral consistency that is not absolutely nothing. Should there be any doubt about this, tell the empiricist that he is wrong and he will no doubt reject this, proving that the notion ‘empiricism is false’ is not the same as the contradicting notion that ‘empiricism is true’ and therefore that the objects of thought are not reducible to nothingness. Therefore, the object is being, that is, ‘effective presence’, however tenuous. Now if the object is absolutely identical to the subject (O = S), the subject would destroy himself upon contemplating things that

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are not himself. Thus far, we can infer from the act of perception or cognition that (1) S and O are different; and that thinking would be impossible if S and O are not different; in other words, (2) the difference between S and O is a necessary condition for thinking.

Are S and O absolutely different? Is S so different from O that it has absolutely no point of commonality with it, and vice versa? We give the term ‘absolute’ all its value. If there existed some third reality M that had a relation with S and another relation with O, then S and O would not be absolutely different because they would have M in common. Therefore, S and O could be absolutely different only if each were sealed within its own universe, having nothing in common with the other. This is absurd, S and O are not absolutely different, and they have something in common. This discussion treats S and O in the context of the cognitive relation, but this result is more general. No two realities can be absolutely different: if they were, each would be in solipsism, in its own private universe having nothing to do with the other. If realities in this universe were so isolated from one another, the universe itself would be annihilated. We can add two more conclusions to our considerations on the cognitive scope of perception. (3) It is metaphysically impossible for S and O to be absolutely different. By ‘a thing is metaphysically impossible’ we mean that were such a thing to be given in reality, universal annihilation would ensue. From (3) it follows that (4) S and O are the same or identical (which does not mean ‘absolutely the same’, as in A = A). (5) The sameness of S and O is a necessary condition (5a) for existence and (5b) for thinking. For existence because absolute difference would split the universe into absolutely disjoint pieces; for thinking because absolute difference in the cognitive relation would likewise destroy it.

Putting (1) [S and O are different] and (4) [S and O are the same] together, we say that S and O are in metaphysical opposition. Now we must make the pertinent metaphysical induction. We do this by asking what gives origin to the sameness between S and O? Suppose the sameness derives entirely from S: then even O’s difference from S would derive from S, and the difference between S and O would vanish, contradicting the fact that O is necessarily different from S (1). Hence it is impossible that the sameness between S and O derive entirely from S. And

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by similar reasoning, it is impossible that it derives entirely from O. Yet it must exist by (3). Perforce, we must conclude that (6) the sameness between S and O does not derive entirely either from S or from O. Hence, (7) the sameness between S and O is independent of (‘transcends’) both S and O. This last conclusion is the metaphysical induction: the affirmation of a preexisting reality that is the necessary condition for the metaphysical opposition between S and O, and therefore, the necessary condition for the cognitive act and the reality of the difference between S and O.

The attentive reader perhaps has observed that this conclusion puts into crisis the notion that man is a mind abstracted from its material and corporeal conditions that absolutely judges the world, ‘constructing’ the values it wants. Why? Because the thought of the subject is not absolute but conditioned by this sameness between S and O, which derives from neither and therefore is independent of both. Therefore, an absolute mind cannot possibly exist. If an absolute thought were to exist, it would have to absorb this independent sameness into the subject (to eliminate its dependence on this sameness), and this would destroy the difference between subject and object, and by (2), would imply the destruction of thought itself. We return to our consideration of what certain knowledge is derivable from the act of human cognition. Conclusion (7) is argued in the context of the cognitive relation between S and O, but there is nothing in it to restrict its validity to realities in such relations. In brief, if X and Y represent any two finite realities, then they cannot be absolutely different (entailing universal annihilation in a manner analogous to (3) so they must be the same; and this sameness cannot derive from X alone or Y alone (which would eliminate their difference), so it must be independent of both for these to coexist in metaphysical opposition. Hence, we can strengthen (7) to conclude that (8) the preexistence of a common sameness between any two finite realities is an absolutely necessary condition for their metaphysical opposition.

Our actual universe is filled with many finite realities and many metaphysical oppositions between them. Let X again represent a finite reality. X thus enters into myriad metaphysical oppositions in which it is different from all the other finite realities, but not absolutely different; it is the same as each of the others too, so there must preexist a common sameness between X and each finite reality. Since X is common to all the metaphysical oppositions, all these oppositions cannot be absolutely

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different among themselves but must also enjoy some sameness (otherwise the finite unity of X would contradictorily be disintegrated in absolutely different pieces). We conclude that (9) there preexists a universal commonness that is a necessary condition for each and all the metaphysical oppositions among finite things. Since it is a necessary condition for the ‘totality’ of our universe of finite realities, we call it the Totality. If there were two Totalities, then by (8), there would have to preexist a ‘higher’ common sameness by which the two could be in opposition. This higher commonness would then be the Totality, and we would still have only one Totality. We conclude that (10) the Totality is unique and that we are justified in speaking of ‘the Totality’. We also affirm that (11) the Totality is extrinsically infinite: if the Totality were limited by another extrinsic reality, it would imply the preexistence of a higher common sameness that would be the true Totality, contradicting the Totality’s uniqueness. We could also argue that the Totality is intensive, penetrating into all finite realities, so that none of these can delimit it, but this anticipates the introduction of the notion of dynamism, to be developed in another context. Finally, we affirm that (12) the Totality is intrinsically finite: the finite realities dependent on it for their existence articulate it from within. This intrinsic articulation is an internal limitation which we denote as ‘intrinsic finitude’. In sum, the Totality is intrinsically finite and extrinsically infinite.

Based on (9), the fact that the Totality is the preexistent universal commonness necessary for the metaphysical opposition between finite things, and as such is irreducible to any one of them, it follows that the Totality is in metaphysical opposition with each and every finite reality: it is the same as and different from them. This calls for an ulterior metaphysical induction to resolve the opposition. By a reasoning similar to that justifying conclusions (6) and (7), the sameness between the Totality and a finite reality is not reducible either to the Totality or to any one of the finite things, so that this sameness must be independent of both the Totality and each finite thing. Thus, we metaphysically induce the necessary preexistence of an ulterior reality. This ulterior reality is extrinsically infinite: were it extrinsically finite, it would be finite and incapable of resolving the opposition between itself and the Totality, and certainly incapable of resolving the opposition between any other finite thing and the Totality. This ulterior reality is also intrinsically infinite: were it intrinsically finite, it would repeat the structure of the Totality contradicting its uniqueness (10). We call this ulterior reality ’o (AlphaOmega) and conclude that

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(13) ’o is intrinsically and extrinsically infinite, or more simply, ‘absolutely infinite’. Since it is absolutely infinite, (14) ’o is unique, for the existence of a repetition would limit it, contradicting its infinitude. Furthermore, its intrinsic infinitude (absolute simplicity) implies that it does not parcel out its existence to the realities that participate in it (as the Totality does): (15) ’o coincides with all existence and (16) the existence of finite realities including the Totality are entirely within ’o. This coincidence of ’o with existence (15) (to be understood in the strong sense that ’o = existence) is eternity: we say that (17) ’o is eternal, which can also be designated as the impossibility of ’o not existing. From (16), that ’o is the existence of each and every other existent we have, that ’o is not different (in existence) from any other reality. Hence, it is not in metaphysical opposition with any other reality, and there are no further metaphysical inductions to be made: (18) ’o is the ultimate reality. ’o is God.11

The whole point of this exercise is not to develop a new metaphysics. This metaphysics has in fact been developed over hundreds of years, and some of its elements are laid out here compactly and oversimplified with a view to make the skeptical empiricist doubt his certitude regarding his constitutive ignorance. The point is that a sound philosophical foundation for a non-relativistic pluralism entails no less than such metaphysical footwork. In other words, Catholic philosophy must be of a ‘truly metaphysical range’,12 if it is to escape the Babylonian captivity of modern skepticism. This is also the position of biblical revelation. St. Paul writes: “For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them since God himself has made it plain to them. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and divinity – however invisible – have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made. That is why such people are without excuse: they knew God and yet they refused to honor him as God or to thank him; instead, they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened. The more they called themselves philosophers, the more stupid they grew [emoranthesan], until they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a worthless imitation, for the image of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and reptiles (Romans 1:19 - 23).” Then St. Paul proceeds to connect this failure to recognize God with immoral actions, confirming our position overturning moral relativism, but from a religious perspective.

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I have borrowed and adapted this part from “Melisso” (with all probability a modern avatar of Melissus of Samos). 12 John Paul II, Fides et ratio, 83.

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B. Moral relativism destroys democratic society: the recovery of the good and truth It is absurd to consider tolerance an absolute value; it would be the end of free society. One wonders if it is necessary to tolerate the intolerant. Is it legitimate to defend oneself from the intolerance of the criminal intent on robbing one’s livelihood, on killing one’s family, even at the cost of being intolerant of the criminal’s intent? By what right can a court of law impose the punishment of imprisonment on intolerant criminals when clearly such an act would be intolerant of their criminality and of their contempt for the law of a nation? How can the relativist impose tolerance on all the rest of us without violating his own principle of absolute tolerance?13 To solve this riddle one must recover the notion of the ‘good’ and the notion of ‘absolute truth’. It is emphatically false that ‘metaphysics’ causes genocides and wars. A metaphysics that discovers and affirms the existence of a universal good rather encourages men to seek it and to harmonize their common pursuit of it. To the contrary, it is rather the denial of the infinite and of the absolute good that leads to genocides and wars. It is relativism, and any ideology that denies the necessary preexistence of the infinite, that leads to precisely such horrors. The notion of the good is in continuity with philosophical tradition: God and the Totality, as good, thrust good things into existence (realizing the sense of ‘good’ as effusivum sui, as in Plato) and draw them toward themselves (realizing the sense of ‘good’ as final cause, as in Aristotle). The notion of truth is also transformed with the affirmation of the infinite. Without the infinite, there can be no more than ‘your truth’ or ‘my truth’. Since, in the absence of the infinite, reality is conceived as the sum of finite things, so that what is inside one thing or person (for example, my way of thinking) does not necessarily have anything to do with what is in another (your way of thinking). But dialogue is based on a common truth which referees those who dialogue. “Did you pay the bill?” “Yes, check the receipt.” If the bill for your coffee was amount X, there is no way you can get around the fact that only amount X can satisfy the conditions for truthfulness of a statement like

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“Consistent with respect for human rights, the practice of tolerance does not mean toleration of social injustice or the abandonment or weakening of one's convictions. It means that one is free to adhere to one's own convictions and accepts that others adhere to theirs.” Declaration of Principles on Tolerance, section 1.4. Proclaimed and signed by the Member States of UNESCO on 16 November 1995.

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“bill paid”. If the question is “How much was your bill?” the only true answer must be “Amount X” (nothing less, nothing more). This is true under all suns and at all times. It is a universal truth. The receipt is an extra-subjective registration of a financial transaction; it is not merely ‘objective’, for as purely objective, it would be trapped inside a third reality and be inaccessible to the two persons. Dialogue and truth requires an infinite and common third that transcends the two persons in dialogue and which therefore can force each person to respect it (as the necessary condition for their relating; of course, this third is the Totality and God). But relativists generally deny the infinite, and circumscribe truth within the finite realities of the subjects and object, rendering truth necessarily contingent, finite and therefore partial. However, with the affirmation of the infinite, truth need no longer be partial, it can expand and take root in the infinite, and itself can become ‘infinite’, that is, universal and absolute. Far from enslaving the person, absolute truth is a window that opens onto the infinite good, and furnishes the person’s intellect wings to fly beyond his own narrow subjectivity. Only Truth makes us free and democratic. Many are the promoters of ‘tolerance’ as a virtue both civic and Christian, but if it is taken as an absolute it can become an excuse for not authentically loving the good, for not promoting it, for not being generous, for not demanding goodness, generosity and honesty in ourselves and in others. Thus, even indifference has been dressed up as ‘tolerance’ and even as Christian charity. But true Christianity means first doing good and shunning evil, authentic tolerance follows. Christian charity cannot be diluted to the mere tolerance of others; and an authentically open society is composed of people in common pursuit of a mission: the ardent, enthusiastic, alacritous pursuit of the good. Mere tolerance is too weak to unite a society of vibrant, healthy, free human wills energized with hope.

The Gospel as public truth How can we present the truth about Jesus to a world that rejects all truth claims as arbitrary? Can we find ways to engage in meaningful conversations without appearing arrogant or manipulative? Can we bear witness to the Gospel without simply enlisting in the ongoing ‘culture wars’? These are the questions we are facing in this so-called postmodern epoch. To answer them we need to step back and think deeply. “The designation of Christ as Logos in John points to the fact that the Evangelist thinks of him as occupying the place of the (Greek-Philonic)

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A Case for Pluralism in a Relativistic Environment world-reason through which all things become intelligible. The sequel of the Gospel shows, however, that he does not aim to demonstrate this by projecting the life of Jesus onto the plane of Greek wisdom (or vice versa), but through the self-interpretation of the very Logos who has appeared in the flesh. This happens insofar as the Logos makes himself known as ‘gracious love’ (charis), and therein as ‘glory’ (the ‘beauty proper to God’, doxa) – and precisely thus as ‘truth’ [aletheia] (Jn 1:14). In this way, a kind of intelligibility becomes possible whose light raises the pure facticity of the historical to the level of necessity.”14

This passage from Love Alone is Credible claims that divine Logos is more than just a principle for interpreting the Christian creed, more than just the in-house ‘jargon’ we in the Christian community use when we speak entre nous. It claims, over and above this, that divine Logos occupies the ‘place of (Greek-Philonic) world-reason’ itself. Balthasar can advance this claim because he knows that the Jesus story has been made the Reality that holds sway throughout all the realms of being – and so has become the principle that keeps the world together as a meaningful whole and guarantees that it can be interpreted meaningfully in the first place (see Col 1:17: “all things hold together [synesteken] in him”). By the same token, the Christian experience concerns the whole of being, and so forces, by its very nature, fresh thinking about everything: motion, reason, personal agency, causality, technology, war and peace – all in the light of the new logos of being: “Only a philosophy of free love can justify our existence, but it cannot do so unless at the same time it exegetes the essence of finite being in terms of love. In terms of love and not, in the end, of consciousness, or spirit, or knowledge, or power, or pleasure, or utility, but of all these things only insofar as they are modes of, or first steps towards, the one act that really fulfills them, the act which shines forth superabundantly in the sign of God. And beyond existence as such and the constitution of essence as such the constitution of being as such comes to light, in the sense that it ‘is’ in no way other than by ‘not clinging to itself’, in expropriating itself of itself, into finite concretion. At the same time, finite essences can in turn receive and grasp being as it is in itself only if they do not try to protect themselves, but are trained by being in the love that gives away: consciousness, and the possession of oneself and of being, grow only and precisely in the measure that one increasingly breaks out of one’s being by and for oneself into communication, exchange, sympathy with humanity and with the cosmos.”15

 14 15

Balthasar, Love alone is Credible, 39-40. Balthasar, 144.

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Note the connection Balthasar makes in this passage between the structure of the Thomistic real distinction between esse and essence, on the one hand, and christological love, on the other hand. In order to understand this connection, we can recall a key text in which Thomas Aquinas, speaking of esse, says that it is “something complete and simple, but not subsistent.”16 These lengthy quotations are meant to show, through Balthasar, a way to correspond with the Catholic tradition about the challenges Christians face in the postmodern epoch. Like us, Augustine and Aquinas faced questions such as what to proclaim to a fragmenting world, and what to say when truths previously held to be universal are under assault from a disorienting religious pluralism. We need not look upon the postmodern challenge as completely unprecedented. Rather, we must continually renew our relationship with our intellectual ancestors.17 Like Balthasar we should strive to combine 1) the greatest fidelity to tradition bringing out treasures new and old from the heritage handed down to us (the expressions of the tradition are not just monumental fossils, but living vehicles through which the core of the message flows authoritatively here and now); 2) with the greatest freedom: the interpreter not only sees the core of the tradition through its concrete expressions, but, so to speak, with them, in the same direction, in the same spirit in which they took shape, and so is free to draw creatively (creative fidelity) from them avoiding any fundamentalistic slavery to the letter. Of course, in emphasizing the Christian gospel as the truth that calls for radical conversion, we would run against the prevailing subjectivism and skepticism in our societies regarding the possibility of knowing ultimate truth. Asian societies that have undergone ‘modernization’, just like in the West, tend to regard the world’s religions as agencies for the cultivation of privately held religious opinions – agencies that can be studied with the tools of sociology, psychology and other secular disciplines. But the Catholic Church is not simply an agency that stands for good personal values. The Church has the mission of ‘speaking the Truth to Caesar’. The Gospel is a statement of extra-subjective, historical truth, and

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Adrian J. Walker, “Love Alone.” Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei, I, 1, ad 1. See (1)~(18) above. 17 Curtis Chang, Engaging Unbelief, A Captivating Strategy from Augustine & Aquinas (Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2000).

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all other modes of thought are to be evaluated in the light of the Gospel truth.18 It is probably almost inevitable that Christians, who do not live in a separate enclave but are part of society, should come to see the Church no longer as the bearer of the truth by which all human beings must live, but a voluntary association in which individual believers might freely join themselves to develop and express their faith. There are, of course, certain advantages in this situation as compared with the situation of the Church in Christendom, when the power of the state could, and often did, condition the Church into submission to worldly interests. Yet the proper stance of the Church is inseparable from its obligation to declare the sovereignty of Christ over every sphere of human life without exception. Take, for example, the contemporary ideology of the free market. Here we have, as so many times in history, an example of something good being corrupted. It has become clear that free markets are the most efficient way of continuously balancing supply and demand. But it is also clear that when the free market is made into an absolute, outside of rational control in the light of ethical principles, it becomes a power that enslaves people. The free market is a good servant but a bad master. Now it is not the business of the Church to make political programs or engage in political alliances, but it is clear that she must affirm the truth of the Gospel, the fact of the sovereignty of Christ as sole Lord and Savior, and must do so in season and out of season, whether it is followed or refused. For this to be effective it is absolutely vital that Christian intellectuals have the courage to speak out, with no inferiority complex, in the public arena. In order to do so, though, with a fair amount of self-confidence they would need to learn a new type of ‘natural (philosophical) theology’, one that in the contemporary world could probably be more aptly called ‘public theology’.



18 Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell, The Gospel as Public Truth (Geneva: Eerdmans/WCC Publications, 1991). Newbigin is of the opinion that the proof of public truth “is in my willingness to publish it and to test it in all relevant situations.” Moreover, “[w]e do not validate this claim by calling to our aid some philosophical system based on other grounds. There are no more reliable grounds than what are given to us in God’s revelation. The proper answer to the charge of subjectivity is world mission, but it is world mission not as proselytism but as exegesis (33).” Personally I tend to think that, in a Catholic perspective, it is possible and necessary to develop a proper philosophy, as has been shown in the medieval Renaissance.

HISTORY AS THE BURDEN OF INHERITANCE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR JUSTICE PRECIOSA DE JOYA

History is undeniably crucial to human civilization. We see the important role of memory in the construct of a nation and in the shaping of the identity of a people. We are who we are in the present because of the values and mores we choose to commemorate. But more importantly, we are a people, intimately bound by the memory of collective suffering. We are connected not only in the sense that we empathize and feel the imperative to never forget certain events, but also that together, we hope, that memory will serve as a constant reminder why it is we must never tolerate the same atrocities to happen again. In the development of our historical consciousness, we realize that remembering is always a selective process. What we choose to remember, we deem more important than what we banish to forget. It is precisely because of this principle that any ‘official history’, though it intends to effectively bind a people, will always be subject to suspicion; for like any narrative, its existence will depend on the weeding out of elements that do not contribute to its logic. And although it tries to establish a form of unity, it is also a ‘process of silencing’1 that results ironically in collective exclusion. To address this problem of silencing in history, significant developments have been made in the realm of historiography. Over the past decades, we have seen renewed interest in the methods of the Annales school, particularly in the compilation of life stories and testimonies of ‘common people’, all of which fall under the category of what we call ‘oral history’. The aim of this technique is certainly “to elaborate counter-history from



1 Shoshana Felman, “Benjamin's Silence,” Critical Inquiry 25, no.2 (Winter, 1999), 213.

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the ‘bottom up’, and to reconstruct the version of the ‘conquered’.”2 But more importantly, this effort to encourage the proliferation of collective memories reveals a certain maturity in our understanding of the nature of remembering: that remembrance is no longer perceived as the accurate depiction of a distant past but rather a representation that makes the past a part of present life.3 What follows is an attempt to further our understanding regarding the task of remembering, and how it can make a significant impact on our present life. In reflecting on the ideas of the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, I argue how remembering, in its essence, can never lead to silencing or exclusion. Rather, it is always an establishment of a relation that constantly seeks to rectify past injustices.

History as enshrined heritage In an essay titled “Theses on Philosophy of History,” Walter Benjamin addresses the problem of historical silencing. Official history, which is always based on the perspective of the victor, is here metaphorically described as a ‘triumphal procession’, where those who have conquered in the past are defeated. According to Benjamin, it is traditional practice, in a procession such as this, for the victors to parade, or what constitutes the loudness of authority that ‘deafens’ us to the truth of their real origin. Benjamin claims that they dazzle and invoke in us a sense of pride, we easily forget that these spoils do not merely exist because of the work of great men but are also produced by the ‘anonymous toil’ and suffering of nameless people. It is upon reflecting on this image one begins to understand why Benjamin insists that “there is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”4 The barbarity of official history, however, lies not only in discrediting other narratives, but also in making us deaf and therefore completely oblivious to the injustice that quietly banishes the memories of past suffering to forgetfulness. And what further makes this form of barbarity profoundly damaging, is that its existence has effectively established a legacy, transmitting itself from one generation to



2 Nathan Wachtel, introduction to Between Memory and History, eds. MarieNoelle Bourguet, Lucette Valensi and Nathan Wachtel (Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publisher, 1990), 2. 3 Wachtel, 4-5. 4 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Iluminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Shocken Book, 1969), 256 (thesis VII). Hereafter, this work is referred to as TPH.

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the next, so that all present rulers inevitably become “the heirs of those who conquered before them.”5 In the “Theses,” Benjamin argues that what perpetuates this legacy of barbarism is a distorted view of history which he attributes to the adherents of historicism. In this view, the historian insists on seeing “purely into the past,”6 and depicts events the way they happened. For Benjamin, this establishes a form of continuity,7 which reveals an “empathy with the victor.”8 The continuity obviously refers to the chronological sequence of events that show the “causal connection between various moments.”9 But perhaps what may not be so apparent, and thus what needs further explanation, is how this method of presentation favors the oppressors of history. In what way does continuity, intrinsic to the structure of the narrative, become problematic? In his collection of notes and fragments, Benjamin argues that the view of history that shows things ‘as they were’ was “the strongest narcotic of the century.”10 He believes that underlying this view is the delusion that the past is a ‘timeless truth’ that not only promises to remain the same for all eternity but also appears as what ‘will not escape us’. But in the historicist’s attempt to capture and present an “eternal image of the past,”11 he reifies the past into a commodity,12 a piece of knowledge that Benjamin describes as what can easily be possessed by the mind.13 The problem with this is that, as knowledge, the past is seen merely as an event of the past, as something that is “over and done with.”14 It is ‘finished’ in the sense that its signification is completely and absolutely determined at the time of

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Benjamin, 256 (thesis VII). Walter Benjamin, “On The Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress,” in Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tidemann, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1999), 470 [N7, 5]. Hereafter, this work is referred to as AP. 7 Benjamin, 474 [N9a, 5]. 8 Benjamin, TPH, 256 (thesis VII). 9 Benjamin, 263 (thesis X). 10 Benjamin, AP, 463 [N3, 4]. 11 Benjamin, TPH, 262 (thesis XVI). 12 Walter Benjamin, “Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian,” in One-Way Street and Other Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London: Verso 2000), 360. Hereafter, this work is referred to as EF. 13 Benjamin, 357. Also Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1985), 29. Here, Benjamin makes an important distinction between knowledge and truth. While the former is something that can be possessed by consciousness, truth is what is never wholly present. 14 Benjamin, EF, 360. 6

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its occurrence. In a chronological sequence, an event is regarded solely as the effect of a previous incident. As such, the past can no longer be relevant to the concerns of the present, except perhaps as information for the curious mind. An event that is ‘finished’ would be, as Jean-Luc Nancy argues, “unable to open itself to any future […] and unable to determine any historical present.”15 It is clear at this point that the real problem for Benjamin is not so much that official history silences the voices of the oppressed, or that it levels off the ‘peaks and crags’ of history by bringing the past to forgetfulness or scorn. Rather, Benjamin sees more danger in how the past, as the collection of cultural treasures, is disseminated as ‘enshrined heritage’.16 For Giorgio Agamben, this would mean that the past, congealed into knowledge, is “caught in a determinate mode of its existence.”17 But how then does this lead to complicity with the victor? I believe the key is to understand further the problematic nature of the writing of knowledge, in which I find the ideas of Plato most insightful. In the Phaedrus, Plato warns us about the suspicious character of writing in general. Although it may appear as “potion for memory and for wisdom,” “it, in fact, introduces forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it.” Furthermore, those who use it will come to imagine that “they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing.”18 Although it is unlikely that Benjamin completely agreed with Plato on this, he certainly grasped quite adequately the problematic nature of writing. In this way, he is closer to the position of Blanchot, who identifies the decadence of writing in relation to knowledge. In the Writing of the Disaster, Blanchot, quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, speaks of the “suffering that we bear for ‘knowledge sake’.”19 Here, knowledge is the disaster that “ruins books and wrecks language.”20 “It is what exemplifies and carries out the betrayal of language in its failure to reveal the truth; for instead of



15 Jean-Luc Nancy, “Finite History,” in Birth to Presence, trans. B. Holmes (California: Stanford University Press, 1993), 146. 16 Benjamin, AP, 473 [N9, 4]. 17 Giorgio Agamben, “Language and History, Linguistic and Historical Categories in Benjamin's Thought,” in Potentialities, Collected Essays in Philosophy, ed. and trans. with an introduction by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999), 60. 18 Plato, “Phaedrus,” in: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1997), 275a-b. 19 Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of The Disaster, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 3. 20 Blanchot, ix.

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making us remember, knowledge carries us of […], deports us […] straight to ignorance and puts us face with ignorance of the unknown so that we forget, endlessly.”21 In filling our heads with a mass of data, knowledge makes us imagine that we know, when in truth we know nothing. And perhaps what is most frightening is that disaster conceals itself by exiling us to ignorance, making us ignorant of the disaster itself and allowing it to persist unnoticed. But what of this truth that knowledge fails to reveal? What do we forget in this writing of the disaster? Here, we return to Benjamin who complains that historicism has made history “nothing but the residue of memorable things and events that never broke the surface of human consciousness because they were never, truly, that is politically, experienced.”22 Consequently, its study of the past, which is essentially a collection of facts, succeeds only in creating what Benjamin calls a “false aliveness of the past-made-present.”23 For Benjamin, this indicates that history has not only degenerated into the “heaping up of information,”24 but has also lost every trace of its “original role as remembrance.”25 Instead of helping us to remember, history has ironically taught us to forget: for in filling our heads with facts, we fail to remember the image of our ‘enslaved ancestor’, how they suffered and how the echoes of their lamentation continue to reverberate in the present. And because we fail to see this truth, we become blind to the demands made upon us in the present, and that is to acknowledge and rectify past injustices. Consequently, in our failure to remember, we allow our time to be a mere continuity of the barbarity of the past.

The task of remembering as the burden of our inheritance To redeem history from its complicity with the oppressors, we must restore the capacity for remembering. And here, the task is first and foremost to avert forgetfulness by constantly bringing to thought what we

 21

Blanchot, 3. Benjamin, EF, 360. 23 Walter Benjamin, “Parilipomena on the Concept of History,” in Selected Writing,1938-1940, vol.4, eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott et al (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2003), 401. Hereafter, this work is referred to as POCH. 24 Walter Benjamin, “The Life of Studies,” in Selected Writing, 1913-1926, vol. 1, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1996), 43. 25 Benjamin, POCH, 401. 22

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continually deny recognition: that, in Benjamin’s words, the “state of emergency is not the exception but the rule.”26 A threat is always in our midst, and it is not so much that the past is in danger of being forgotten or scorned but that it is constantly consigned to a ‘determinate mode of transmission’. The task of the historian is therefore to wrest tradition from the ‘enshrined heritage’ it constantly threatens to become. To do so, the historian must divorce her- or himself from any attachment to this ‘document for barbarism’. She or he must constantly brush history against the grain, not only by critically examining established historical facts but more radically, by rejecting evolutionary presentation. In the attempt to redeem the past from its determinate mode of existence, the historian must accomplish a disruptive blasting of historical continuity. In this destructive process, events are sprung loose from the temporal succession to which they have been consigned. Detached from their context, events are no longer perceived as interconnected moments in a narrative but are grasped as images.27 As image, events become openended, and never absolutely ‘present’. Their unfinished character is due to the fact that their significance can never be fully determined or exhausted at the time of occurrence. Their meaning can only be unraveled processually, in time, as they establish, what Benjamin calls, correspondence to events in the present. Here, events are no longer regarded in ‘terms of stasis’ or what is ‘fixed and permanent’.28 Instead, they are perceived as a ‘becoming of force’, a form of ‘presenting’ that step into our lives like specters that constantly haunt the present.29 To experience events as such is to experience them beyond mere facts. Through correspondence, events become truly historical, which for Benjamin only happens ‘posthumously’, or when an event can be related to other events “that may be separated from it by thousands of years.”30

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Benjamin, TPH, 257 (thesis VIII). “History decays into images, not stories.” See Benjamin, AP, 476 [NI, 4]. 28 Andrew Benjamin, Present Hope, Philosophy, Architecture, Judaism (New York: Routledge, 1997), 8. 29 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (London: Routledge, 1994), 100. The idea of the specter is crucial to our present discussion as it perfectly represents the past. Like the ‘deferred spirit’, the past is what anticipates the promise of expiation (see 136). 30 Benjamin, TPH, 263 (thesis XVIIIa). 27

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According to Benjamin, these correspondences are what constitute the “data of remembrance.”31 Such claim is important, as it reveals to us what it truly means to remember the past: that it is not to recollect an ‘eternal image’ of what has happened; rather, it is, as correspondences show, to recognize ‘what-has-been’ in the now. What becomes essential to the task of remembering is therefore not the acquisition of knowledge about what has happened, but the establishment of a relation between the past and the particular making, while the former misinterprets remembering as a way of control that not only possesses the event in the mind but makes memories appear whenever one wills it, the latter is more faithful to the real nature of remembrance. First of all, in recognizing the inextricable link between ‘what-hasbeen’ and the now, we acknowledge that memory is not so much what is voluntary, or what Benjamin describes as the “permanent recording of any event at any time in place.”32 Rather, memory is often involuntary, what we cannot force and thus what can only be triggered accidentally by a sensation in the present. Here, we realize that the act of remembering is, in fact, a presence of mind that captures the brief instance when the truth of a correspondence appears. Indeed, this only proves, contrary to what historicists claim, that truth is not what will not escape us, but is, in fact, very fleeting. And thus, one of the real threats to which the past is subjected is that we fail to recognize its correspondence to the present. To fail to see the correspondence is to fail to experience the past politically – the past can, in fact, be a source of truth that reveals to us that things are never quite finished, and that our ancestors continue to lament as the injustices reestablish themselves in the present. Secondly, to understand remembering as the establishment of a relation rather than as an acquisition of facts would be to acknowledge that an historical event has a determining force that simply cannot be exhausted or measured. This is why Blanchot asserts that remembering is that which “seeks to know in order to resist forgetting, but at the same time knows that it can never know.”33 And here, we see that remembering, as the establishment of a relation, is founded on respect. In acknowledging the event as what can never be truly grasped or objectified, the past is experienced as truth, which Benjamin characterizes as immeasurable, or



31 Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1994), 177. 32 Benjamin, 186. 33 Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster, 89.

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what will never be completely ‘present’ to consciousness. As such, the past is always experienced as what will never be completely finished. But what of the past will never be fully comprehended? I believe the answer to this lies in understanding that remembering, as the establishment of a relation, does not only pertain to the correspondence between the dead and the living. Using metaphorical language, Benjamin explains how the living are “obliged to prepare a banquet for the past.” And how the historian assumes the role of “the herald who invites the dead to the table.”34 It is an obligation that we feel heavily upon us, because as Benjamin further explains, we alone have been endowed with a “weak, Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim.”35 Obviously, this Messianic power alludes to the task of every present generation to ensure retroactive justice that will rectify the past that constitutes our heritage. Often, we erroneously think that heritage is the collection of ‘cultural treasures’, with which we fill our heads and surround ourselves. However, as Jacques Derrida insightfully argues: “That we are heirs does not mean that we have or that we receive this or that, some inheritance that enriches us one day with this or that, but that the being of what we are is first of all inheritance, whether we like or know it or not.”36 Indeed, our current existence is made possible because of the lives that have been spent for our sake. And here lies a paradox: that although our heritage is freely given as a gift, we feel ourselves in debt. Because they have suffered, the dead is the Other who constantly puts my existence to question. And so we realize that “inheritance is never a given, it is always a task,”37 a task inspired by a responsibility to the dead. History, or the act of remembering, is precisely what constitutes this task. Mindful of heritage, the living is the collective ‘I’ that is constantly in mourning. For in remembering, we realize not only that we will never fully comprehend the suffering of our ‘enslaved ancestors’, but also that we will never fully exhaust the depth of our debt.

 34

Benjamin, AP, 481[NI5,2]. Benjamin, TPH, 254 (thesis II). 36 Derrida, Specters of Marx, 54. 37 Derrida. 35

THE BEAUTIFUL DIFFERENCE EUNJOONG KIM

This story comes from a cemetery in the United States. A Chinese gentleman was preparing the table for a ritual ceremony when a Westerner who was putting a bundle of flowers in front of his ancestor’s grave glanced at him and asked in a cynical tone, “Does your ancestor really eat that?” The Asian calmly answered, “While your ancestor smells the flowers, my ancestor eats this food.” This episode demonstrates well Westerners’ deep distorted prejudice against Asia. No forefather can actually eat the food prepared by descendants. No ancestor can really smell the flowers either. Westerners may say that putting flowers in front of the tomb is what they should do to show their respect for their ancestors. Likewise, preparing the table in front of the grave is what Asians do for their ancestors. Therefore, the contentions such as smelling flowers or eating the food are not important. We cannot say which culture is more significant or dominant than the other. Both are meaningful and correct. Not all Westerners think like this, however, in general, most of them believe that their culture is superior to Asian cultures and lifestyles without reasonable grounds. Then, this kind of ungrounded idea is directly spread to the citizens. Koreans, for example, have accepted and learned Western culture and philosophy for the past decades. They have unwittingly taken on these prejudices. Therefore, most Koreans now feel superior to poor, underdeveloped countries in terms of culture and civilization. According to the analysis of this kind of perceptive structure, three principles of formal logic (contradiction, excluded middle, and identity) are found. The reason why Westerners fail to understand Asian culture is because they are controlled by these three principles before they start to disrespect the Oriental culture.

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Law of Identity and Law of Non-contradiction In ancient Greek philosophy common propensity not collective disposition was regarded as the basis for thinking. When Greek philosophers made a decision on a certain case as ‘true’ or ‘false’, they tried to suggest a common ground, which is a procedure for justification. Greek philosophers used a dispute by proof when the justification, which appeals to common proposition, was processed. This method was later called ‘dialectic’. Under this method, when there is a dispute, a person who suggests a common ground wins the controversy. This method was later formalized and the Western quest for tradition was formed. It was Heraclitus who started the search for knowledge. He even mentioned that a “dispute is fruitful.”1 Here, we should focus on his logos not on the dispute itself. This Greek philosopher suggested logos as an index of accord of dispute and conflict. His logos is the barometer of a definition that penetrates the phenomenal world. Therefore, he insists, “it is wise to agree that all matters are a single unit by paying attention to logos.”2 Logos provides a harmony which all materials should pursue with regard to conflicts, disputes and discords. Logos has three characteristics. First, logos is conformity of judgment and punishment, and decision and criterion on the materials in conflict within the universe. Second, logos is a law which harmonizes the conflict and dispute and unites them into one. And third, logos is a path which makes a decision on conflict and dispute in the process. Therefore, logos provides an index to define and judge actions which penetrate the world’s rational system. Then, logos is transformed into a law of necessity. A law of necessity is further specified by Parmenides. He mentions dike,3 which is judgment on those who struggle for life and death. Dike unites everything into one. Nothing in this world can ever avoid dike. Parmenides uses an inevitable dike concept, which is physically and logically enforceable against all materials in the world. “Dike does not

 1

Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, “Herakleitos,” in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Zurich: Weidmann Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1974), 80. 2 Diels and Kranz, 50. 3 Dike is a custom and practice, which is even mentioned in old stories. However, practice and custom became rules and restrictions. Then, the justification of the rules and restrictions, metaphysical justifications were demanded by philosophers. The emergence of the logical-metaphysical (dike) was at the core of the revolution of Greek philosophers.

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allow for chains to be loosened and disappear. Therefore, it grabs them firmly.”4 Dike is a judgment on those who struggle for life and death. Dike unites the world into one. Therefore, everything in this world ends up in dike. Dike confines the materials in a shackle of limitation and destiny. Dike’s judgment comes to everyone randomly just like natural disasters or an unavoidable principle. Laws emerged by dike are laws of existence. Within the boundary of existence, the materials are “all the same and within the same distance.”5 The former (‘all the same’) is an order of dike, which does not even allow a conflict in logical tension. Confined in all existence, ‘all the same’ is an unavoidable destiny which comes logically. As a solution to the dispute, Parmenides suggests a barometer which is a law of identity and non-contradiction making a critical contribution to the logic of the world, which is further developed by succeeding Greek philosophers. A law of identity demands to maintain the relation of existence on the identity itself as well as others. A law of non-contradiction does not allow any difference, which fits for justice review criteria. It was isonomia which led to the return to one existence. It can be said that the logic of identity and non-contradiction is used as a barometer to review disputes between Parmenides’ universe and the city and its justice. Therefore, identity and non-contradiction are justifiable to them. Parmenides insists that existence (Being) and non-existence (NonBeing) can be accepted at the same time. He believes that existence is the only object of thought and perception. Therefore, he insists that thinking and existence (perception and existence) are the same. In other words, he pursues the unity of thinking and existence. This kind of contention was settled as a pursuit of identity or a law of identity. Due to the influence of Parmenides’ tradition, Western metaphysics excludes the identity and the phenomenal differences as secondary cause and secures them by applying them retroactively. Western metaphysics has tried to exceed the difference between thinking and existence and accept them as the same material. Therefore, Western metaphysics can be considered as a ‘metaphysics of identity’. Western metaphysics, which have given privilege to identity, has excluded difference and justified violence. In existence, there is ‘the unthought that remains’. However, Western metaphysics unified thinking

 4

Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, “Parmenides,” in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Zurich: Weidmann Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1974), 13-5. 5 Diels and Kranz, 22, 49.

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and existence into one by excluding the difference between thinking and existence, and plugging the existence to the thinking.

The myth of centrism Western metaphysics endows priority to locating logos at the center in the binary opposition relation between logos and the other. The other should be identical with logos. Western metaphysics excludes otherness in the belief that the other should be denied because it is inferior to logos. From Plato to Ricoeur, via Descartes, Kant, Hegel and Marx, Western philosophy repeated metaphysical circulations starting from and returning to self-identity and self-presentness. This kind of metaphysical circulation was possible due to ‘a desire to return to the center’ which was ‘the returning to the idea’ claimed by Plato’s philosophy. Due to this kind of desire, Western philosophers returned all beings to a center. Philosophers with this kind of belief have no doubt whether it is real and the criteria for the truth. Dialectics serves logos-centered Western metaphysics. A typical example is found in Socrates’ dialectics. “Socrates’ dialectic is capable of absorbing the opponents.”6 In his dialectic, a fundamental difference of opinions is not allowed. There was no one who disputed successfully against Socrates, because participating in a dispute itself meant to agree with Socrates’ logic, which was characterized by logos. This form of logic is still applied today. If an argument is developed by confirming logos suggested from deductive logic, each individual particularity is unwittingly absorbed into logos. Therefore, the theory settles down as a firm deductive logic and pursues only the perception of identity, ignoring the otherness.7 Modernity is also identified with the logic above. The characteristics of modernity are (1) separation of the ego and the other; (2) reason (logos) as reality; and (3) logos-centrism. More specifically, they are monolithic in design, uniform, universal and closed. Hegel believes that reality can be understood with logos through a teleological development and a realization process. Therefore, absolute knowledge and reality are taken as the same. Insisting that the process in



6 David Roochnik, The Tragedy of Reason, Toward a Platonic Conception of Logos (London: Routledge, 1990), 195. 7 Logos gives a lot of help to humans in terms of clearness, logicality and economical efficiency. At the same time, it cannot explain the otherness due to theological imperfection and logos-centrism.

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which the possibility of the ‘possible world’ is excluded and that the whole reality can be understood through the use of logos, subjectivity is substituted for substance. Therefore, it can be said that Hegel succeeded Spinoza’s perfect rationalism except for the addition of the concepts of time and history. Universality and an onto-theological ideology, which have been the prides of Western culture, are just utopian myths and symbols for selfsuperiority: logos-centered myths. Within this centrism, a unity of narcissism is always found. It is a unity of God and the ego, of the consciousness and the subject, of the self and the self, and of the human and the human. This admiration of unity eventually becomes the inner voice which hears from an ego. Therefore, contradiction, disaccord and differences are regarded as curses. When social members cannot be assimilated with a unity-oriented social value, they are left as alienated others. In order not to be isolated, an individual must adapt to a social value. In a modern, functionalist society, however, it is hard to achieve a religious, racial or national integration with a certain common value. The more we try to achieve this, the less likely we can achieve unity, because identity is obtained at the sacrifice of non-conformity, identity always comes with conquest. Such a perfectly identical society is where everything is under complete control. Postmodernism has characteristics of plurality, multiplicity and particularity. While systematic rationality is emphasized in modernity, postmodernism focuses on aesthetic creativity. If the paradigm of modernity is based on mathematical science, postmodernism is based on architecturebased art. If there is Being, there is also Non-Being. If there is Existence, there is also Non-Existence. In his expression ‘Wozu Dichter?’, Heidegger mentions both the bright and dark side of the moon. “The bright side is Existence (because we can see it) and the dark side is Non-existence (because we cannot see it). However, the bright side and the dark side are not in an opposing relationship, but in a complementary relationship, because the former cannot be a perfect sphere without the latter.” He adds: “The side which is always ignored from us is not the opposite of the bright side. It is the whole of perfection, richness, and truth, and the completion of the Sein’s sphere.”8 Heidegger talks about life and death like this: “Death is what we avoid, but the realm of death and the dead belong to the whole entia and it is the



8 Martin Heidegger, Holzwege (Frankfurt am Mein: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003), paragraph 278.

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aspect of the other.” Here, Heidegger characterizes this whole as being open. For Orientals, existence and non-existence form a complementary relationship. According to Heidegger, if existence can be completed without non-existence, it will cause forgetfulness of existence, which is the starting point of metaphysics. .

Being as difference Today is the period of reason and rationalism, which are social and mental principles composing modern times. Rationalism says that reason is the power to make men free from control and suppression, and obtain freedom and equality, which has been accepted as an indemonstrable principle that no one can doubt. However, poststructuralism criticizes reason and rationalism as the principles of suppression and exclusion. Reason in itself has mechanisms of excluding, suppressing and ruling the other out of reason, and through these suppressive mechanisms of reason, civilized savagery, control, and violence are exposed in modern Western society. Accordingly, now, reason and rationalism are overturned by poststructuralism, which calls the whole of Western rationalism and metaphysics into question. Confrontation and contradiction are not the nature of things, but derivation. The nature of things is difference and confrontation is appearance derived from the difference. The reason why things look like confrontation is that the realistic factor of difference has been wiped out. In the abstract relationship, which is isolated from reality, the images of things are overturned to be reflected upon. Consequently, it should be said that there were differences, not existence, in the beginning of the world. Existence is difference. Confrontation and contradiction are derived from difference. To assume confrontation is not difference, but to assume difference is confrontation. Confrontation cannot solve difference. Confrontation cannot lead difference to the stronghold, but it distorts and changes the difference in quality.9 Therefore, it is required to reject confrontation and contradiction; difference is the nature of things. Deleuze criticizes Hegel’s dialectic of confrontation. He insists that confrontation and contradiction in the abstract are isolated from reality, so it is impossible to analyze reality correctly through them. The insistence that society is regulated by contradictions is wrong. Accordingly, Deleuze



9 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Kim Sang-Hwan (Seoul: Mineumsa, 2004), 134.

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emphasizes the necessity for changing the methodological code from confrontation to difference. That is, reality should be analyzed through codes. Deleuze compares the philosophy of difference to Copernicus’ revolution, because sameness turns around difference.10 Western metaphysics has put its focus on attainment of sameness only, treating difference as simulation hidden under the bright sun of sameness. Derrida discloses that the philosophy of Western rationalism adheres to the prejudice of privileging the particular. In other words, he says that Western philosophy gives a privilege to the presence against non-existence and to the subject as consciousness. In addition, Derrida understands the voice as fundamental while seeing letters as representations derived from voice. Derrida thinks that this privilege is a foundation for Western metaphysics. This privilege is the ether of metaphysics and it is the key of our speculation which is seized by the language of metaphysics.11 The structure of Western philosophy is binomial confrontation, such as reason vs. non-reason, nature vs. phenomenon, presence vs. absence, subject vs. object, truth vs. falsehood, sameness vs. difference, nature vs. culture, etc. In such a binomial confrontational structure, Western metaphysics gives a privilege to reason, nature, presence and sameness, while the confronting items are disregarded as secondary, so claims Derrida. According to him, to give ontological superiority to one aspect means to justify its privilege of controlling the other against the primary nature to which priority is given. Western traditional philosophy handles forced hierarchical orders and not peaceful co-existence with the opposite. In addition, one of the two items governs the other or has priority over it in terms of the theory of value and of logic.12 Therefore, Western metaphysics adopts the forced hierarchical orders of the ruling and the ruled class as its internal mechanism. The relationship between sameness and difference implies the forced hierarchical orders of the ruling over the ruled. Ethics and values that can support the globalized life of the twenty-first century are the principles of catholicity including non-sameness. The logic of difference is exposed from the feature that a thing makes a relationship with others, whether it is between individuals or between nations. The general form of this relationship can be formalized through Leibniz’ concept of the monad with an open window in which monadology is applied together. We can now propose four relationships that each monad can make: mow1 and mow 2 are different from each other (the relationship

 10

Deleuze, 112. Jacques Derrida, “Difference,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1982), 16. 12 Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Bass (London: Routledge, 1981), 41. 11

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of differentiation); both are mutually reliant (the relationship of mutual coexistence); both work contradictorily (the relationship of conflict); and both are complementary (the complementary relationship).13 These four relationships mean that existence of others is acknowledged, but making relationships among them is not excluded and it is to adhere to difference, not to make sameness, but it does not always need to be exclusive. Relationship making is not the principle of hierarchical organization, but the principle of heteroarchic organization, and it is not the logic of sameness, but the logic of difference. However, it is very difficult to break the fetters of the principle of sameness that has accompanied and supported most of human history, because the logic of thought works prior to reflection if a condition is given, even though it is recognized under the status of the reflecting mind. Modernity, which started with the change in the paradigm of understanding nature, left the logic of thought in human history. The meaning of the gap in the logic of thought is not correctly understood despite of endless efforts of Enlightenment thinkers. It might be a proof of the rapid development of modernity. From a traditional viewpoint, giving up the principle of sameness is regarded as nihilism. However, informationalization, the main axis of globalization, seems to cause a new type of nihilism. Nietzsche perceived the West after modern times as nihilistic; the West was oriented in a collapse of belief in absolute existence as the foundation for existence and the world, which was regarded as the origin of all present things. Pluralism in the living world, which is already being progressed regardless of what we want, is disclosed with several phenomena that do not correspond with social integration based on the traditional logic of sameness. These phenomena are experiences of loss if they are seen from the viewpoint of the traditional sameness logic. However, from the conversing viewpoint, segmentation of the living world is interpreted as diversification and the multi-dimensions of the living world. In addition, it does not grieve only the loss of hometown, but also actively reviews and uses various alternative values. In a globalizing world, the same value-based social integration is substituted by the function-based social integration. Functionally the segmented society is where the organizational principle of heteroarchy plays a leading role. Heteroarchy produces a highly complicated network. In a functionally segmented society, no infrastructure can insist upon its



13 Myung-Hyun Lee, An Introduction for a New Grammar (in Korean) (Seoul: Philosophy and Reality, 1997), 45.

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superiority over others. Social integration of this modern society becomes impossible through the traditional way that is oriented on hierarchical orders. The relationship with others is no longer the subject-object relationship that includes objects through the logic of subjects. It is communication; communication is not made among the same things in which difference is disregarded. Among the same things, communication is not necessary. The relationship of communication can be described as a relationship of acknowledging differences and not giving up one’s sameness by or for higher-level sameness. The distance and the difference among those who are involved in communication are premises of communication and intrinsic opportunities. If it is allowed to find out certain normative factors from communication, the clue to this can be found from the situation that it is condensed into the concept of harmony, and then expressed. The status of harmony is not to merge the other as the philosophical imperialism of the sameness theory, but it is made when the other is allowed to get near, but stays far and different. This status is characterized by peace. In this status, each separated thing is not involved in each other and is not ruled or does not rule any others.14

Cultural convergence Developments of transportation, Internet and globalization make exchange of people and cultures much easier. Therefore, the words of transculturation and hybridity are becoming the keywords of the most important cultural theories in our societies. Movements among cultures go beyond the border of a single culture, and hybridity appears to be the strong power of exchange and communication. The age when a culture belongs to only a particular nation comes to an end. Transculturation and hybridity have risen to the surface as problematic concepts, which are oriented from the understanding that the change in the dynamic relationship of transculturation, especially, the peripheral culture, can provide a new cultural possibility against the central culture that is the existing hegemony. Transculturation and hybridity produce cultural convergence.

 14

The principle of democracy, which was established as the operating principle of the political system after the modern times (even though it has a lot of problems, there is no better model known to us), should be understood from this viewpoint. Democracy exists for difference, not despite of difference.

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Cultural convergence is shown through the dynamic process of fusion or assimilation that happens in the system of different religions and cultures, and in the realm of the factors composing the system. It comes from tensions between difference and sameness. Tensions between extremes become the starting point of understanding cultural convergence positively or negatively. Tensions between difference and sameness that naturally occur in the meeting among different cultures cause exclusive, adaptive or creative confrontations. Cultural convergence is creative confrontation between cultures. The viewpoint – only the exclusion that is expressed by conquer and control, or adaptation resulting in loss of identity appears through the whole process of mixture – is the logic of the hegemonic power order and can result in illiberality and distortion in seeing reality. Therefore, cultural convergence is enjoyment of substances that are living in the flow of natural and smooth tensions between sameness and difference that happen in the meeting of cultures. The cultural convergence that is understood as enjoyment of life, takes an open attitude toward heterogenic factors. At this time, sameness and difference compose the self and the other. It is understood as sameness and difference. Morbid tenacity to sameness can be seen as ego-centrism, while freedom can be seen as openness to the other. Cultural convergence is divided into healthy convergence and pathological convergence. Healthy cultural convergence is the process of accepting and integrating each different factor, such as traditions, proposals, symbols, etiquettes and values, and then, becoming more affluent. In healthy cultural convergence, two cultures make each other richer and grow up to become a concentrated living community. Difference that I am faced with enlightens the question of truth hidden in my own sameness, and it requests that I accept existence of the other in myself, so that true subjectivity of making ethical relations with the other can be built up. It is a new type of sameness. The question of myself through the other makes me join with others irreversibly and in my own ways.15 This is the true birth of responsible existence for the other. However, destruction of difference and self-isolating deviation are changed into violence, so it becomes pathological cultural convergence that forces the other to die. Healthy cultural convergence and pathological cultural convergence can be explained through four concepts: conversion, up-version, perversion



15 Emmanuel Levinas, Die Spur des Anderen Untersuchungen zur Phanomenologie und Soziophilosophie (Freiburg: Alber Studienausgabe, 1987), 224.

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and diversion. Conversion is transition from the self to the other. Perversion makes the other into means for one’s goals. Conversion and perversion are confronting concepts. Up-version is transition from a low value to a high value, from an original non-value to an original value. Diversion is transition from a high value to a low value, from an original value to an original non-value. Up-version and diversion are also confronting concepts. Healthy cultural convergence indicates convergence and up-version. Through a healthy harmony and balance between sameness and difference, creative mixture can occur in the reality of life. On the other hand, pathological cultural convergence indicates perversion and diversion. It indicates a morbid tenacity to distort sameness and a closed attitude toward the other. Each version not only means an individual value system, but it can be applied to cultures and civilizations. In the healthy cultural convergence, two cultures make each other richer. Conversion can be substituted with convergence from the cultural viewpoint. Cultural convergence has three features. First, cultural convergence is the activity of recognizing the multiplicity and complicatedness of the reality of affluent life through differences, not an activity of finding out multiplicity in the expression of life through meetings with other cultures, and also finding difference among traditions, and then, falling into isolated closure that maintains and strengthens the egocentric system. It is to go beyond the egocentric viewpoint that is tied with cultural traditions, and then, to obtain the viewpoint of cultural criticism and cultural reflection that sees the self from the other’s viewpoint beyond the egocentric viewpoint that is tied with cultural traditions. Secondly, cultural convergence is dialogic and dialectic in the relationship with other cultures. Changes that are being made in the process of learning other cultures do not mean sacrifice of self-sameness, because convergence can make a mosaic of a more affluent life while recognizing not only sameness, but also difference. Therefore, sameness does not get lost in the conversion that is a value version of the healthy cultural convergence, but it keeps finding new sameness in the process of living together with the other. The process of finding new sameness, which occurs under participation and engagement in the symbiotic life, is cultural convergence. Thirdly, cultural convergence recognizes the reality of various life relationships not from other cultures or religions, but from the relations within nature. Through this ecological understanding of reality, conversion

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and up-version from people-oriented to life-oriented (eco-value) gets ignited. Therefore, cultural convergence, that expresses the features in the value area of healthy cultural convergence, makes each culture richer through experiencing diversity and unity of life through enjoyment of meetings. Cultural convergence not only recognizes both difference and sameness, but also understands and includes the values of sameness and difference through symbiotic life. And furthermore, beyond the human society, it means conversion of the values that reach the area of mysteries hidden in the world of creation, and it means a religious congeniality of space.

Difference as the enlargement of worldview This century will put globalism and humanism of globalized mankind on the testing board. However, it is not a beautiful or optimistic new world. Globalization needs several prepositions. Globalization does not mean to be Americanized or Westernized. This globalization is like an earthquake spread to remote regions from the seismic center. It falls into the trap of the center-induced system, logos-centralism and the principle of identity. On the other hand, globalization expands our horizons. It should not pursue nor induce sameness or standardization. It should preserve or encourage multiplicity based on the logic of difference. Globalization should be a multidimensional world where multidirectional and multidimensional communications are possible, not one-directional movement, i.e. sameness caused by exposure from one direction. Unless a multidimensional society is constructed, globalization is very dangerous, because as far as the world becomes one united community, contradictions and pathologies in this world cannot be expelled out nor transferred to other systems outside the system. They should be digested within the system itself. While the postmodern discussions are overflowing, the system of forcing uniform viewpoints, moral self-righteousness and arrogance, emotional illiberality of seeing one’s tastes as natural and forcing the other to share them, sweep over us. It is the power to refuse difference, to get rid of difference and to merge the other. And those who execute this power are regarded as strong, but this ruling power is the expression of one’s weakness. The reason why one controls and excludes the other is that one is weak. Therefore, a position insisting on absolute justice, absolute truth, absolute goodness and absolute beauty cannot be accepted any longer.

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An indicating language game, a regulating language game, an aesthetic language game and a political language game are impossible to promise each other so that the logic of a particular language game can judge the other language games. There is no meta-discussion that includes all these heterogenic language games. And further, there is no meta-rule that can be commonly applied to all language games. If a particular language game with its constituting and regulating rules are preferred and they are used as standards for judging all the games, it is a form of totalitarianism. There is no vantage point from which to judge all cultures because it is impossible for cultures to converge. There is no meta-discussion that includes all the heterogenic cultures. And furthermore, there is no metarule that is commonly applied to all cultures. The rules of a particular culture cannot be preferred to be used as standards for judging all the cultures. Two characteristics of Western speculation are: indemonstrable and inevitable categories are unconsciously presumed through the use of a language; and the concept of existence is decisively important in the philosophical and religious speculation of the West. In fact, the West continuously pursues an existence beyond the immediate phenomena in its whole history. The philosophical traditions of the West, which are closely related with the meanings proposed by certain grammatical functions, are founded on universal categories. The philosophical works of the West (intrinsically isolated from frequently changing phenomena) progressed through abstraction and fixed concepts. However, the necessary thing in modern society is not to logically classify concepts and analyze them, but to make them closely approach each other and combine them.

Exclusion of identity and acceptance of contradiction Modern society is composed of several infrastructures that are functionally segmented. The living world as the general horizon of life seems to be downgraded into an infrastructure of such other systems. It weakens efficiency and possibility of the traditional social integration that the living world as the resource of same meanings and interpretation is reduced. Under this circumstance, to pursue and wish social integration under the same norms, which worked efficiently before modern times, is just nostalgia for the past. Jean-Pierre Vernant says: “Contrary to the world of Chinese or Indian philosophers, the world of the Greek philosophers is presumed on dichotomy of existence and creation, and of rational understanding and

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emotional feeling. They just suggest only the series of confronting relationships that exist in anti-propositional predicates. These confronting concepts, which clearly contrast with each other, are classified into one of a pair so they make a complete system of antinomy and show two aspects of mutually exclusive substances: One is the realm of existence, one, unchangeability, limitedness and accurately fixed recognition; and the other is the realm of creation, a large number, instability, infinity, and inaccurate and floating thinking.”16 The Greeks imagined that there was the world of the pure and permanent (high and perfect) and that the human world was very humble and distorted. This imagination deepened confronting speculation, passing through several centuries. This imagination poses two problems. First, the Western idea of existence or substance confronting with creation or emotional existence cannot be universal at all. If we transfer ourselves from one civilization to another, the self-evidence of these concepts disappears. In a non-Western civilization, a concept is not immobile abstraction, but can be a continuously changing rhythmical concept. These rhythmical ideas are differently regulated through complementary confrontation and mutual reactions. Secondly, in the Western way of thinking, the principle of identity is made between me as an object and universality as a foundation for myself. Therefore, the belief that my idea is the realization of truths is continued to the judgment that others are different from myself is not true, but this is a fiction. However, the other is the other only from my reasonable viewpoint, but from the other’s viewpoint, it is the other’s peculiarity. However, while the rule of sameness preservation does not recognize it, the dialectic of confrontation, in connection with reality, sets social relations as the relation of confrontation and fighting between the ruling class and the ruled class in terms of politics and economy. Under these circumstances, social relationships become determined by the relationship between the majority and the minority that is differentiated from the majority, and as the relationship of genesis and species. The planning of postmodernism, in order to realize the ideology of the Enlightenment of advance and liberation, brings particular, concrete, multiple, and relative over it, evaluates, and justifies, centering around universality and absoluteness, sameness and wholeness. However, the strategy of bringing the relative over is presumed on a return to centralism. Acceptance of discordance and difference among particulars is necessary



16 Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Les Ruses de l'intelligence, la métis des Grecs (Paris: Flammarion, 1974), 11.

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to realize cultural convergence. Therefore, in order to speculate peaceful co-existence with others, the metaphysics of sameness should be disorganized, and a philosophy of difference should be developed. Western speculations have insisted that preservation of sameness should be beautiful, but now we should exclaim that difference itself is beautiful.

CULTURAL PLURALISM AND CULTURAL DIALOGUE JOVE JIM S. AGUAS

The term ‘culture’, in its social, intellectual and artistic senses, is a metaphorical term derived from the Latin word cultura, for cultivating or tilling the soil. Some Latin authors applied it to the cultivation of the mind, because the cultivation of the mind can be compared to the cultivation of the soil.1 Later on, this metaphorical sense of culture was applied to certain men who have cultivated their minds. The modern development of the concept of culture happened during the late eighteenth and late nineteenth century. This modern concept developed in four ways. First, culture meant a general state or habit of the mind, which is closely connected to the idea of human perfection. Second, it meant a general state of intellectual and moral development in a society as a whole. Third, it meant the general body of the arts and intellectual work. And fourth, it meant the whole way of life, material, intellectual and spiritual ways of life of a given society.2 In English and German social thought the modern usage became more common. The basic idea of culture is that the human spirit or the human mind will not attain its proper objective if it is not cultivated. Culture is the proper cultivation or formation of all dimensions of human life. George McLean writes: “The focus is on the creative capacity of the human spirit; its ability to work as an artist, not only in the restricted sense of producing purely aesthetic objects, but in the more involved sense of shaping all dimensions of life, material, spiritual, economic and political. The result is

 1

Raymond Williams, “Culture and Civilization,” vol. 2 of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 273. 2 Williams.

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a whole person characterized by unity and truth, goodness and beauty, and encouraged to share fully in the meaning and value of life.”3 The word ‘civilization’ comes from the Latin word for townsman or citizen, civis, and its adjectival form, civilis. It was derived from an actual social condition that of the citizen, in the case of the Romans, the citizens of Rome, in contrast to the social condition of a foreign group of people, the barbarians, hence the opposing concept of barbarism.4 In the narrow sense, a civilization is a complex advanced society with its specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of arts, architecture and literature, an organized religion and complex customs. In its broad sense it refers to any distinct human society or the entire human society. Anthropologists distinguish a civilization in which many of the people live in cities and get their food from agriculture, from a tribal society in which people live in small settlements, or nomadic groups who support themselves by foraging, hunting or working in small horticultural gardens.

Culture in anthropology and sociology The understanding of culture as an ideal of human perfection and embodiment of universal and absolute values has evolved into social, anthropological, artistic and intellectual concepts. As a social and anthropological concept, the stress is on the differences in the ways men find meaning and value in their lives as they live in a particular society, and as an artistic and intellectual concept it covers the body of artistic, intellectual and technical works. In anthropology, culture is identified with civilization. The English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor provides in his Primitive Culture (1871) a classic definition of culture, according to which culture is the complex whole which includes all capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of a society.5 Culture is regarded as the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief and behavior. It consists of language, ideas,



3 George F. McLean, “Meeting of Cultures, Meeting of People,” in Relations Between Cultures, ed. George F. McLean and John Kromkowski (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1991), 24. 4 Williams, “Culture and Civilization,” 273. 5 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Vol. 3, 784, Vol. 16, 874. Culture may also be viewed in terms of components patterns, like cultural traits, and in terms of institutional structures and functions, like social organizations, economic systems, education, religion and belief, customs and laws. The study of culture may be subdivided into the study of non-urban culture as compared to modern urban culture and the study of tribal societies as compared to modern industrial society.

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beliefs, customs, taboos, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of arts, rituals, ceremonies and other related components.6 All cultures form parts of the common heritage of mankind. The cultural heritage of a people includes the works of its artists, architects, musicians, writers and scientists, which express the people’s spirituality and the body of values which give meaning to life.7 It includes both tangible and intangible works through which the creativity of that people finds expression in languages, rites, beliefs, historic places and monuments, literature, works of art, etc. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) provided a more extensive definition: “In its widest sense, culture may now be said to be the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs.”8 Culture is a living and open totality that evolves through the constant integration of individual and collective choices that are taken in interaction with other similar wholes. It expresses itself in diverse concrete ways like the arts, literatures or religious practices, without being reducible to mere ‘works’. There is no such thing as a closed and finished culture. A culture is dynamic; it develops and grows out of a systematically encouraged reverence for selected customs and habits. The development of a culture depends upon human’s capacity to learn and to adopt new habits and practices and transmit these to succeeding generations. Cultures grow and change through constantly changing interactions, either with nature or with other cultures. Changes within and among cultures may take place not only by means of ecological and environmental changes, but by diffusion of certain advantageous cultural traits among societies at approximately equivalent stages of their cultural development, by acculturation or the acquisition of a foreign culture by a relatively subject people, or by the evolution of cultural elements over a period of time. It is culture that makes us specifically human, our attitudes, values, ideals and beliefs are influenced by our culture; at the same time it is through culture that we express ourselves. UNESCO declared: “It is culture that gives man the ability to reflect upon himself. It is culture that

 6

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 3, 784. UNESCO Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies, World Conference on Cultural Policies Mexico City, 26 July - 6 August 1982. 8 UNESCO Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies. 7

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makes us specifically human, rational beings, endowed with a critical judgment and a sense of moral commitment. It is through culture that we discern values and make choices. It is through culture that man expresses himself, becomes aware of himself, recognizes his incompleteness, questions his own achievements, seeks untiringly for new meanings and creates works through which he transcends his limitations.”9

Cultural identity and cultural diversity Each culture represents a unique and irreplaceable body of values, since each people’s traditions and forms of expression are the most effective means of demonstrating its presence in the world.10 UNESCO declared: “Cultural identity is a treasure that vitalizes mankind’s possibilities of self-fulfillment by moving every people and every group to seek nurture in its past, to welcome contributions from outside that are compatible with its own characteristics, and so to continue the process of its own creation.”11 Within a culture or cultural practice, there is an awareness of a common identity based on common practices, values and ideals. This implies that within such culture, there is a striving toward preservation of this identity and toward self-preservation of the culture. In this regard, every human society has its own particular culture or socio-cultural system which overlaps with other systems. This is certainly true among cultures and this is attributable not only to physical habitats and resources, but more importantly, to the range of possibilities inherent in various areas of activities, such as language, rituals and customs and the manufacture and use of tools; and to the degree of social development.12 The shared cultural identity is essentially determined by difference. A group feels it belongs to a group, which defines itself as a group, by noticing and highlighting differences with other groups and cultures. Any culture defines itself in relation to and in contradistinction from other cultures. So, while human beings share the same nature and reason, the expressions of this human nature into the different modes of life and different human activities are diverse, hence the diversity of human cultures. The diversity of human cultures are “various expressions of one

 9

UNESCO Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies. UNESCO Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies. 11 UNESCO Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies. 12 Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 3, 784. 10

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nature – the human nature.” This diversity is an “indication of the creativity and resourcefulness of the human nature.”13 They show how humanity can express itself under different geographical, religious, technological, educational and historical circumstances.14 The dynamics of cultural self-definition imply a continuous contact and interaction between and among cultures. But these are not always relations of equality, since they never exist in an isolated form. The complex web of relationships created by the superposition of political, economic, scientific and cultural relations may turn any relation between two cultures into an unequal one.

From culture to ‘cultured’ The modern and contemporary interpretations of culture have equated it with social cultivation. A cultured person, is one who has cultivated his inherent talents as a human individual, a cultured person is a civilized person. Civilization is oriented towards the enhancement of the quality of life; it is the result of the refinement of the skills, practices and knowledge which are inherent in a particular society. Culture and civilization, in this sense, are then interpreted as the cultivation of inherent talents, skills and knowledge, habits and practices; the continuous refinement of human behavior. Culture and civilization, in this context, represent the result of the best that has been thought and said in the world from a Western perspective. Theorists, like Matthew Arnold, regard culture as simply the product of the best in the world. Arnold, a preeminent poet and literary critic of the Victorian era, a lifelong educator, a pioneer in the field of literary criticism, describes culture as “contact with the best which has been thought and said in the world.”15 Culture is described as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection.16 Arnold writes: “There is a view in which all the love of our neighbor, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminishing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it – motives

 13

Michael Mitias and Abdullah Al-Jasmi, “Intercultural Dialogue,” Dialogue and Universalism No.3-4 (2004). 14 Mitias and Al-Jasmi. 15 Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, 1873, (23 December 2008). 16 Arnold.

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eminently such as are called social – come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part.”17 For Arnold, culture is the moral and social passion for doing good; it is a harmonious expansion of all the powers, which make human nature beautiful and worthy. Arnold writes: “culture is a study of perfection, and of harmonious perfection, general perfection, and perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.”18 It “ought to be, the study and pursuit of perfection; and that of perfection as pursued by culture, beauty and intelligence, or, in other words, sweetness and light, are the main characters.”19 But this perfection is not only for the perfection of the individual, it must also lead to the perfection of society. “But culture, which is the study of perfection, leads us, to conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious perfection, developing all sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection, developing all parts of our society. For if one member suffers, the other members must suffer with it; and the fewer there are that follow the true way of salvation, the harder that way is to find.”20

The West as cultured and civilized The modern notion of culture and civilization, as I have mentioned, developed in Europe during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This resulted in the description of Europe, or the West in general, as cultured and civilized, while the colonies were uncultured and uncivilized. And for these colonies to be cultured and civilized, they had to adopt the practices, the customs and ways of the Western societies. While this interpretation of culture followed from the idealist interpretation of culture as the embodiment of human perfection, it has also created a gap between cultures in the West and that of the former colonies. By branding the colonies as uncultured and uncivilized, the West has imposed its own culture, its own values, ideals and way of life on these colonies. This idea of culture and civilization reflects not only the diversities but also the inequalities among societies with diverse cultures. Some societies are labeled as ‘cultured’ and ‘civilized’ while others are ‘uncultured’ or

 17

Arnold. Arnold. 19 Arnold. 20 Arnold. 18

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‘uncivilized’. The identification between culture and civilization has overshadowed the differences and diversities of cultures. Societies are not culturally different and diverse, they are either cultured or uncultured. This interpretation or sense of culture excludes the understanding of culture in the social and anthropological context, wherein culture is interpreted in the plural sense as ‘cultures’. This interpretation does not recognize that distinct and diverse cultures exist, each with their own internal logic, values and modes of life. It promotes a single standard of refinement, against which one can measure all societies or groups. Thus, people with different customs are differentiated from those who regard themselves as cultured, worse they are not just labeled as having a different culture but are labeled as ‘uncultured’. Such can be considered as an imperialist attitude and absolutist stance toward other cultures. The idea of a universal culture and civilization characterized by the claim of the irreducibility of one’s own cultural identity and the universality of its values may be interpreted as a modern ‘grand narrative’ intended to make the rationality of the West the dominant discourse.

Cultural pluralism The prevailing reality today is pluralism. Given the diversity of cultures and traditions in the world, it is important that each culture is recognized and respected in order to attain harmony and peace in a world perceived to be violent and intolerable. Cultural pluralism is a principle that gives expression to the reality of cultural diversity. Cultural pluralism as an attitude of tolerance and respect for cultural and ethnic diversity is a necessary condition for a peaceful and democratic society to flourish. In cultural pluralism all groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities; unique groups not only coexist side by side, but also consider qualities of other groups as traits worth having. Cultural pluralism is an “attitude toward specific difference.” It accepts the fact that “humans have organized themselves in radically different ways and that no one way recommends itself as the only adequate human way or even the best possible way.”21 As men recognize the right of each people and cultural community to affirm and preserve its cultural identity and have it respected by others, they must also recognize the equality and dignity of all cultures. No

 21

Kenneth L. Smith, “The Unity of Human Nature and Diversity of Cultures,” in Relations Between Cultures, ed. George F. McLean and John Kromkowski (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1991), 307.

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culture should dominate and dictate others, and no culture should regard others as inferior to other cultures. No culture can claim that it is the universal culture and therefore must be followed by others. Cultural pluralism is the recognition and respect for the different cultures of the world. Pluralism is not reducible to unity or simply the co-existence of different cultures, it does not advance the idea that there is a universal culture common to all or that there should be one standard for all cultures. “Pluralism is a realistic attitude which having realized the irreducibility of the many to unity, tries to embrace the whole without reducing it to the quantifiable sum total of its parts or to a formal unity of whatever type.”22 Pluralism is not relativism; all it avoids is the absolutist stand, which is tantamount to exclusivity. Pluralism recognizes the mutually incompatible lifestyles and ways of different people. It recognizes the conviction of everyone of the goodness of one’s lifestyle and the worth of the values of others. It grows out of our experiences of the other, the distinct convictions, values, practices and ways.

Dialogue: a human encounter Given the phenomenon of cultural diversity and the grand narrative of universal culture, the better approach is not a rational discourse but human dialogue. While a rational discourse may bring about consensus, it may not bring harmony among various rationalities. Human dialogue is the best option at hand. A dialogue is possible only between or among human persons. It is a human encounter between individual persons seeking mutual understanding of an idea, an appreciation of a value or a common solution to a problem or question. The objective of a dialogue is always the promotion of harmony among persons. A genuine dialogue is an open exchange of ideas and beliefs with the hope that such exchange will bring about mutual understanding and harmony.23 For a dialogue to be a genuine human encounter and be able to achieve harmony, it must be based on certain attitudes: respect for a person, understanding, sensitivity and genuine concern. Every human person enjoys the same dignity and equal



22 Arvind Sharma and Kathleen Dugan, eds., A Dome of Many Colors, Studies in Religious Pluralism, Identity and Unity (Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1999), 31-32. 23 Jove Jim S. Aguas, “Promoting Human Dignity in a Culture of Violence,” Philosophy, Culture and Traditions 3 (2005), 69.

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rights that need to be respected. Respect for persons transcends boundaries and differences, and what is important is the commonality shared by people. We belong to different cultures and races, therefore, what is needed is the proper understanding of the differences among cultures and peoples – an understanding that should bring about sensitivity to these differences.24 We know that each group of people has its own religious, cultural practices and doctrines; we need to be understanding and be sensitive to these practices and beliefs. This does not mean acceptance of their beliefs, but respect for other people’s individuality and uniqueness. For this to be possible, participants in a dialogue must recognize that each one is a unique human person. The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber says: “each should regard his partner as the very one he is. I become aware of him, aware that he is different from myself, in the definite, unique way which is peculiar to him, and I accept whom I thus see, so that in full earnestness, I can direct what I say to him as the person he is.”25 To be aware of a man or woman in the strict sense is to experience him or her as a whole person gifted by spirit, to perceive him or her as a dynamic center and unique person. To limit a dialogue would be to limit one’s awareness, that is, when one objectifies the other and imposes himor herself on the other, his or her own thoughts and wishes, his or her own values and ways. This implies the acceptance of the person as the bearer of his or her personal beliefs, ideas and convictions. One may disagree with the other’s beliefs or convictions, but there must be a respect for the person as the bearer of values and dignity. Buber writes: “I must at certain points offer opposition to his beliefs and personal conviction, but what is essential is that I accept this person with whom I struggle; I struggle with him as his partners; I oppose his conviction but I affirm him as a person. This is the true meaning of confirmation, that I confirm my partner as this existing unique being even while I oppose him and his conviction.”26 However, this awareness and recognition of the other as a person will never prosper into a genuine dialogue if the other remains as the object of one’s contemplation and observation. It is impossible unless one enters into a personal relation with the other, unless the other becomes ‘personally present’. Making the other present means ‘imagining the real’, to imagine quite concretely what the other person is wishing, feeling,

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Aguas. Martin Buber, The Knowledge of Man, A Philosophy of the Interhuman, ed. Maurice Friedman, trans. Maurice Friedman and Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 79. 26 Buber. 25

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thinking and perceiving.27 This entails a sympathetic attitude towards the other. This means that one should never impose his or her own convictions, ideals and ways on the other, but rather one ought to respect the convictions, beliefs and values of the other.

Cultural dialogue A cultural dialogue may take different forms. First, it might be an intellectual exchange in which learned people expose their cultural beliefs, values, practices and ideals and hold a debate with their interlocutors. However, this form of encounter is not really a dialogue per se, but a discourse and it may not be beneficial, especially if those involved are not prepared enough and have not reached a certain level of mutual trust. The second form is a dialogue at the level of everyday life, where people of different cultures interact in the family, at the workplace or in recreational areas and in society in general, drawing from ideals and values and their cultures without discussing specific cultural issues. Third, it might be a dialogue of cultural works and arts, whereby people from different cultures join hands to promote the different aspects of their cultures. The last two forms are definitely viable forms of dialogue. Whatever forms a cultural dialogue might take, it is always a human dialogue, and it is an encounter complete with all the requirements of a human encounter. A cultural dialogue, strictly speaking, does not happen at the level of societies or communities; a dialogue happens between persons with their own unique cultural identities and personalities. The participants in a cultural dialogue are not abstract beings; they are particular concrete individuals, human persons with their respective thoughts, motives and intentions. Each person represents his or her own culture, his or her own world of thoughts, feelings, values and actions. Each person has a definite cultural identity, so the questions and issues that a person raises in the course of a dialogue, the line of reasoning he or she pursues, the values he or she emphasizes, even his or her psychological and intellectual temperament, reflect not only the kind of person that he or she is but also his or her own culture.28 The aim of such interpersonal dialogue is not just intellectual convergence, like what happens in a gathering of scholars. It is an encounter not only of the mind but also of the whole personality of each

 27 28

Buber, 81. Mitias and Al-Jasmi, “Intercultural Dialogue.”

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participant, and so what is achieved is a mutual understanding, a kind of a ‘sympathetic understanding’, that hopefully will lead to peaceful coexistence. The understanding attained in this encounter is not just a mental event or an intellectual consensus, its essential element is affective, which leads to actions. Hence, a genuine cultural dialogue should lead to a change in attitude towards persons of different cultures.29 The real aim of a cultural dialogue is the creation of social attitudes among people conducive to the understanding, appreciation and respect of persons of other cultures.30 However, if a cultural dialogue is to be a mechanism for world harmony and peace, it has to take place within a larger perspective. Although human encounters at the personal and individual level happen on a daily basis, it must have an effect on the macro and social level, in the community or the larger society. Unfortunately, this is where the critical problems and issues arise. There are the issues of inequality, domination and exploitation. For this cultural encounter or cultural exchange between or among societies to be successful and meaningful, it should be based on a balanced cultural dialogue, wherein each culture is respected and treated as equal. The principle of cultural pluralism, as I mentioned above, involves defending “the basic conditions for dialogue among cultures that accept each other as equal in dignity and are able to question themselves about their values, practices and adaptation to contemporary global conditions.”31 A balanced cultural dialogue denounces domination, control and manipulation of other cultures; it rather promotes respect and understanding among cultures. In a balanced cultural dialogue, every participant is heard and respected; it allows persons of different cultures to question each other. A larger perspective should therefore be considered: the progress of human civilization and not just the civilization of one society. Lasting peace and harmony, and consequently lasting economic development, is possible only when the states of the world conduct their internal and external affairs under the conditions of justice, freedom and respect for the human person.32

 29

Mitias and Al-Jasmi. Mitias and Al-Jasmi. 31 Mitias and Al-Jasmi. 32 Mitias and Al-Jasmi. 30

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Conclusion: culture and civilization – burden or opportunity? Though cultures are embodied in particular identities, this should not hinder the quest for common values. Values are not the monopoly of one society; there are common values that are inherent in each culture, values that might be considered as universal. Universality however, is not synonymous with uniformity. Each culture is an effort to reach the universal, but no culture can claim a monopoly. To some extent, each culture is represented in others. The defining objective of the preservation of cultural identities and cultural pluralism is “the defense of individual and collective freedom to choose while respecting universal values, affirming rights to difference.”33 But no cultural dialogue or interconnection can succeed when inequalities are too great or when dialogue is controlled by the most powerful. While globalization has facilitated intercultural exchanges, it has also created deeply unequal conditions for such exchanges. In the processes of globalization the more dominant and powerful societies have the tendency and the opportunity to impose themselves upon the less dominant societies, including the rationalization of the distinction between cultured or civilized societies and uncultured or uncivilized societies. The concept of ‘civilization’ has become the justification for colonialism, imperialism and coercive acculturation. Western civilizations have shown an inclination towards conquest and expansion. When civilizations were formed, more food was produced and the society’s material possessions increased, but wealth and opportunities also became concentrated in the hands of the powerful. There is a need to counter and respond to these notions of culture and civilization. Although cultures undergo changes and transformation, we cannot impose a single standard for enhancement or refinement of cultures. Civilization as the refinement of the inherent ways, practices and skills is not a monopoly of Western societies. The notion of a civilized world cannot be applied only on Western societies. There is a need to go back to the real meaning of culture and to recognize the plurality and diversity of cultures.

 33

Jean Tardif, “Intercultural Dialogues and Cultural Security,” Planet Agora, September 2002 (24 December 2008).

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However, we cannot just stop with recognizing the diversity and plurality of cultures. Although cultures are diverse, no culture has ever been isolated and none will ever be so. The cultural identity of a people is renewed and enriched through contact with the traditions and values of others. Culture is dialogue; it entails the exchange of ideas and experiences and the appreciation of other values and traditions If civilization will not be determined according to one standard of refinement proposed or claimed by a dominant rationality then it will not be looked upon with suspicion and if culture will be understood in terms of different expressions of one and the same human nature, then it will not be a burden but an opportunity.

TRACING A CULTURAL FOLD IN AN ASIAN CONTEXT CRISTAL HUANG

We all know, I believe, what ‘Asia’ means as a term. In the twentyfirst century, in order to maintain a stronger power for good existential conditions for all Asians, it is time for all of us Asians to try to use our multiple cultural differences to create a powerful identity as Asians by using ‘Asian’ as a signifying sign. Because only by doing so, can we maintain a concrete and good environment to develop a better existential cultural fusion of horizons for our next generations. I suggest philosophers try to use theories to re-think what the Asian context can mean in our present time. If one area has long histories and multiple cultural differences in social environments, we might accept one reality that only when we deal with cultural identities within differences, then we may obtain a good totality in respecting all the differences. And at the same time, this totality could improve the living conditions for all peoples in Asia. A good environment for being Asian means to me to apply all our cultural differences as power for existential dimensions, by learning from each other, by understanding and interpreting each other from concrete methods of living. I would like to propose French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s idea of ‘tracing’ and another French thinker’s, Gilles Deleuze, idea of the ‘fold’.1 Derrida suggests people erase a sign with a mark ‘X’ on the understanding.2 The erasure means that we go beyond the affirmative and move toward the one possibility after a negative gesture of the mark. To use Derrida’s idea on establishing an Asian context means then that the Asian context is the wholeness and the totality. Inside this context, there are texts. Cultural texts in Asia consist of diversity. If we re-think from the outside of these multiple realities of Asian cultures, we may get a new view on the whole

 1

Gilles Deleuze, The Fold, Leibniz and Baroque (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 3. 2 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 18.

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journey about the Asian context – it is an existential reality of living for all kinds of peoples, it is the connection of different texts. When different cultural areas try to interpret our differences from the idea of having one context together, the Asian context may then help Asian people to establish good collaborations between different cultures.

Erasing cultural differences and tracing the renewal in Asia When we erase some sign with an ‘X’, then in the subject’s heart, she or he may find another way of accomplishing the sign. I suggest to combine both Derrida’s and Deleuze’s suggestions. From outside the total context, we create a new philosophy about Asia. By erasing, we truly signify the sign ‘Asian’. Every individual belongs to Asia, it is one ‘Asia’ folder, and within the whole folder, we exist as independent and complete unities, but we are all linked to others. When people open it from the outside, she or he may contact from any one fold, and each fold’s text can be brought to the main discourse about the culture, but can also move the subject toward another cultural fold. We may change and move the order by many kinds of needs. If Asians might discuss and create a good cultural link between differences, then the philosophy of erasing and of signifying will no longer be French theories, but theories that help us to get different perspectives. In another way, we Asians create the sign ‘Asian’ by folding each other within us. And it is also a way of sharing a philosophical practice in contemporary times.

To contextualize the Asian context from discourse and writing Another French thinker, Paul Ricoeur, says that a text is a writing that is fixed by writing.3 If we use his idea to think on the question of having an Asian context, we may try it this way. In order to analyze how to establish a good Asian context in contemporary Asian societies, we suggest that postmodern ways of thinking from outside the system and the wholeness may help to re-establish one temporary but renewed totality within Asian cultural differences. To people who have different cultural systems in Asia, we may use Derrida’s way of tracing back to each other’s differences as the first step. Only when we want to trace to others, then



3 Paul Ricoeur, From text to action (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 105.

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may we get a perspective from the other’s point of view about Asia. Here we may also consider what other European philosophers think about the concept of discourse. The discourse is relevant to logos, if we apply German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s idea about the concept of logos. We should do it by letting-it-be. To Heidegger, the ideas of discourse and logos are relevant, and by indicating the discourse inside writing, we may combine our understanding on Ricoeur and Heidegger.4 Another term Heidegger uses is Befindlichkeit.5 When Asian cultural differences are considered with the togetherness within cultural contexts, we may perhaps obtain an Asian context with which we will create benefits instead of conflicts. If we contextualize a text by finding the discourse and then by erasing with new possibilities in the signifier of this discourse, we will get the sign newly signified. Doing philosophy within the Asian context means that we can use relevant theories of semiology, hermeneutics and ontology. The sign ‘Asian’ can be marked by a question mark first, and then an erasure. This erasure does not mean a general negation. It means that we are waiting for a tracing back from the signifier, to get the sign ‘Asian’ newly signified. And for the Asian context, I suggest using Ricoeur’s ideas about writing and discourse, combined with thought on letting Asian texts be first. I replace a new discourse of the term ‘Asian’ by folding differences in one whole fold ‘Asia’. The Asian context means that we link and make bridges between different cultural folds within Asia. The Asian context identifies our new identity as being in Asia with a view of folding each other with togetherness. To me, this is why we need to study Western philosophers, we learn from their theories, but we interpret these theories for our worlds to create a better environment for all human beings.

Conclusion: Folding Asian texts as the Asian context To Deleuze, the way of thinking in philosophizing means to create concepts.6 It may work from the outside of the wholeness, not from within the system. In order to get one new Asian context, we must open a new fold inside the original Asian differences. There are differences in Asia, but if we re-interpret the idea of being Asian, each individual may re-think

 4

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (San Francisco: Harper, 1962), 55. Heidegger, 172. 6 Gilles Deleuze, What is philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 15-34. 5

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this by using Deleuze’s suggestion: to establish the openness of the fold in Asian differences from the outside. Thinking from the outside on being Asian can start from being human in our contemporary life-world. The ways to interpret from the outside opens the fold inside Asian differences. When Asian peoples locate this fold, we identify ourselves as Asian, but when we locate cultural differences, we think that we are from different countries with different histories. So by tracing the Asian differences to establish new signs about Asia, we locate our existences to be Asian from outside the multiple cultural differences. And from this outside thinking, we open the fold of being Asian by thinking this problem outside general and traditional cultural theories. By tracing the being Asian, we establish the possibility of the fold. Within this fold of being Asian, we go beyond Asian differences, and we face a whole new existence of ‘Asia’ with multiple folds on Asian societies. If one folder relates different texts to one context, the new discourse about being Asian will always be with good and new dimensions if we conduct our journey within Asia. We identify the sign ‘Asian’ as newly signified,7 it indicates the cultural folder with many different folds. All folds are Asian, all folds are together. The philosophy of folding from Deleuze is no longer a philosophical text, but a good perspective for us to indicate the Being of Asia. Only when we re-open the Being of Asia from many different beings in the Asian world, may we obtain our contemporary understanding and applications from Western philosophers toward our own worlds. Within the togetherness, we differentiate Asian cultures, but we do not separate them as individuals. Heidegger’s ontology helps me to interpret the disclosure of Asia, Derrida’s concept of trace helps me to focus on listening to the invisible differences in between, but also waiting to get the newest signified at any moment. And Deleuze’s philosophizing about doing philosophy helps me to understand that the Asian context is a continuous folder. Inside the folder, there are as many cultural folds as possible, coming from different religions and different ideas of governing societies. However, by opening up a new Asian context, we shall try to let Asians be Asians, and the disclosure of the logos of Asia will be open to reading different discourses. We shall have different writings about the Asian context when we get new discourses. Asia will have a philosophical context when new discourses are established within these writings. I am looking forward to contextual cultural folds for our Asian context.

 7

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1986), 75.

EXPOSING THE HIDDEN DIMENSION OF GENDER IN DISCOURSES ON CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE NATIVIDAD DOMINIQUE G. MANAUAT

‘Culture’ and ‘civilization’ are loaded terms that reek of privilege. It is important to reflect upon how our respective societies are impacted by the use of these concepts, as well as to find relevance in the way that these are articulated in the global scene. More importantly, it is vital that we make connections between such articulations and the contexts of individuals, and how personal and social transformations could effectively take place. As Robert W. Cox explains: “Civilizations represent continuities in human thought and practices through which different human groups attempt to grapple with their consciousness of present problems.”1 Then it becomes increasingly important that we look into these thoughts and practices, as well as the configuration of such groups – as to who is included and who is not. This has always had a direct bearing on what may be considered as ‘problems’ that are deemed worthy of ‘solving’. The philosopher Albert Schweitzer makes a pronouncement that the essential nature of civilization is that it is “ultimately ethical” for “if the ethical foundation is lacking, then civilization collapses.”2 Artistic and intellectual forces notwithstanding, Schweitzer is convinced that superficial concepts of civilization must give way to what he calls “the reverence for life.”3 However, when one speaks about civilization in moral terms, it becomes inevitable to be even more speculative and critical about what values we ought to uphold. What is troubling about claiming an absolute foundation in a set of principles (as in religion, Christianity or Islam, for example), or in a process (Immanuel Kant’s categorical



1 Robert W. Cox, “Civilizations and the twenty-first century,” in Globalization and civilizations, ed. Mehdi Mozaffari (London: Routledge, 2004), 1. 2 Albert Schweitzer, The philosophy of civilization (New York: Prometheus Books, 1987), xi, xii. 3 Schweitzer, 330.

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imperative), or even in theories about human nature, the human condition, and civil liberties (social contract theory, existentialism, human rights discourse) is the recognition that there are competing claims. Once a particular foundation is adopted, it has the ability to affect a great influence in the way institutions are regulated and the individual’s life can be lived. With globalization comes greater economic and cultural exchange, as is evident by commonplace examples such as the flurry of electronic mail correspondences. So too would be the quantity and quality of short message service (SMS) and instant messages (IM) exchanged via the ubiquitous cellular phones. The same can also be said about the human traffic as the global citizen engages herself in various excursions (temporary or otherwise) for various reasons (pleasure, labor or resettling). Mass immigration and diasporas have modified the way people make adjustments as they depart from their old lives and settle into the new. Multicultural nations preach tolerance of such diversity. However, in the global arena, the ethico-moral foundationalist is like the hydra that rears many heads. There is a cacophony of competing claims as each voice insists on their version of absolutes. Zygmunt Bauman notes that what is referred to as the ‘postmodern times’ challenges us to rethink and reformulate old problems, and that the ‘moral agenda’ of our times consists of those which were not given much attention in the past. This includes “the manifold moral issues arising from the present plight of pair relationships, sexuality and family companionships.”4 This suggests that Schweitzer’s concern for the ‘ultimately ethical’ could be expanded to issues that go beyond what may be narrowly understood as ‘the reverence for life’.5 And although postmodern ethics is wary of moral absolutes, it does recognize the relevance of ethical concerns and the shifts in the way that we (re)map such ethical dilemmas, i.e. where the rights of categories are similarly acknowledged. This now includes even those that have been previously glossed over or marginalized, viz., “ethnic, territorial, religious, gender, and even sexual- policy based.”6

 4

Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern ethics (Oxford: BIackwell Publishing, 2004), 1. Especially since this phrase is generally taken to refer to human life only, specifically as the human species is regarded by Aristotle as the most highly ranked among all living creatures. Peter Singer insists on ‘speciesism’ and the expansion of the rights-based ethics approach in valuing lives to include nonhuman animals. Peter Singer, In defense of animals, The second wave (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). 6 Bauman, Postmodern ethics, 45. 5

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The focus on civilization in terms of ethnic and territorial disputes among colonized subjects was thoroughly discussed by Edward Said. The field of post-colonial studies is attributed to the wide influence of his pathbreaking book titled Orientalism. This term “described a structured set of concepts, assumptions, and discursive practices that were used to produce, interpret, and evaluate knowledge about non-European peoples.”7 In this book Said applies Foucauldian techniques of discourse analysis. The dichotomy between the European and non-European is articulated in other ways, the most common of which is by splitting the hemispheres into the West and non-West dichotomy, where traditionally the West has been “the model and the measure for social progress for the world as a whole.”8 Furthermore, as it is asserted that the division is more than just a geographical category, “the West is now everywhere,”9 this had been supplemented by the economic divisions of the First World/Third World,10 developed/developing economies and the more recent North/South distinction.11 However, feminist critics are quick to assert that perspectives of race and class are inadequate without the component of gender and that if there are any transformative interpretations to be gleaned from historical inquiry, gender is a perspective that is too important to miss. Lewis asserts that “gender could produce positions from which to enunciate alternative representatives of racial difference,”12 as she also accuses Said of falling into the trap of Orientalism when he refuses to recognize the glaring absence of women in colonial discourse, therefore excluding women by omission.13 Although he does not commit the same sin of omission, a similar criticism can be leveled against the Filipino philosopher, anti-colonial, and

 7

Margaret Kohn, “Colonialism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (24 December 2008). 8 David Slater, Geopolitics and the post-colonial, Rethinking North-South relations (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 9. 9 Slater, quoting Nandy. 10 As Heyes remarked, the usage of ‘Third World’ is problematic and it has been suggested that the term ‘Fourth World’ may be used instead to describe the very poor living in highly developed and wealthy countries. See Cressida Heyes, “Identity Politics,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (24 December 2008). 11 Slater, Geopolitics and the post-colonial, 10. 12 Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism, Race, femininity and representation (London: Routledge, 1996), 15. 13 Lewis, 18.

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national hero Jose Rizal when one does a careful reading of his advice to Filipino women. Rizal’s understanding of justice, freedom and autonomy that supposedly extends to all Filipino people is gendered in such a way that it is favorable only to Filipino men, but is narrowly defined when it is applied to Filipino women. The kind of gender exclusion that is prevalent in these instances smacks of false universals that philosophers who are privileged to write about issues of ethnicity and colonial matters fail to understand. Their experience of subjugation under colonial rule does not integrate the vital aspect of gendered subjectivity. Such subjectivities highlight the aspect of the gendered self. Identity politics, as a catch-all phrase, has been an important means for members of certain marginalized groups in actively working towards social justice. It has been described as that which “has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups […] assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination.”14 In the Philippines, the history of the feminist movement is somewhat similar to the ‘waves’ in the United States, where the first wave consists of the early suffragettes who used Enlightenment ideals in order to secure the right to vote in 1937. The second wave happened around the time when student activism emerged during the Marcos’ dictatorship. Anti-imperialist sentiments also ran high due to the obvious ties that Marcos had with the administration of the United States, despite the many years of political repression through martial law. With the clamor for social change and in protest against political tyranny and imperialism, Filipino feminists were then able to trace the link between the seemingly different but overlapping types of oppression. Hence, the kind of feminism that is dominant in the Philippines is rooted in the nationalist discourse due to its concerns with economic as well as socio-political issues. And while not all feminists rally around the banner of identity politics,15 there are those who find it useful as a strategy. Rights-based activism for example, does depend on identity politics in order to influence stakeholders in policy-making. In the Philippines, feminist groups (who identify themselves as ‘women’) are largely credited for their lobbying efforts in influencing the legislative agenda.16 It is also the concern of

 14

Heyes, “Identity Politics.” Heyes, citing Brown. 16 I am specifically referring to efforts of feminist groups and the passage of the Anti-Rape Bill (where the influential study revealed that 90% of women raped come from the poor sector) was cited in 1997, the Anti-Abuse of Women in 15

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Third World feminists to reflect on and assess the serious impacts globalization brings to migrant women (and the families that they leave behind), as there are millions of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW),17 many of whom are nannies, nurses, maids, caregivers, mail-order brides and sex workers who are exported to more affluent nations.18 The service of care tied closely to women’s identities and capabilities, although compensated contributes to what is regarded as the feminization of labor. This resulted in shifts in the distribution of paid and unpaid work between men and women. With globalization and the international demand for caregivers and nurturers, more women have the opportunity to receive compensation, though not always, and the work is not always humane. It is also important to note that this exportation of the caring service creates a vacuum in the families that women leave behind. Financial gain brought about by this type of service must be weighed along with losses that are not so easy to quantify. However, for impoverished countries, it seems difficult to transcend identity politics as the concerns of feminists still revolve around economic concerns as one of the most basic. Hence, gender, race, arid class issues are inexorably linked as feminists and activists face the opportunities and perils of globalization. To rephrase this discourse in the Schweitzerian imperative, it suggests that the ‘ethical’ ought to be reconfigured in what is good not only for the ‘universal man’ but also should recognize specific subjectivities and particulars. And while the typical OFW has to deal with vulnerability aliens face everywhere they go, the specific experiences of diaspora that women OFWs-as-caregivers and nurturers, exposes not only economic and racial inequalities, but rather it also perpetuates gender inequalities.19 Thus, the ‘uncloaking’ of the person’s gender is truly vital in any discourse involving culture and civilization. It exposes who is within the bounds of what is ‘cultural’ and those that are without, and how to address challenges that are framed in that map. Seeing that this framing is anomalous, we are then in a better position to reframe the discourse and seek more inclusion in determining what could possibly be ‘ultimately ethical’.

 Intimate Relations (AWIR) in 2003, and the ongoing efforts to push for the bill on Reproductive Health. 17 Almost 9% of 82.8 million Filipinos are living and working overseas, according to a 2003 study released by the Economic Resource Center For Overseas Filipinos. No data is available regarding the breakdown of genders 18 Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, eds., Global woman, Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy (New York: Henry Holt, 2003). 19 Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 13.

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For Ehrenreich and Hochschild, bringing these invisible women to light is a first step in their de-marginalization. “Before we can hope to find activist solutions, we need to see these women as full human beings. They are strivers as well as victims, wives and mothers as well as workers – sisters, in other words, with whom we in the First World may someday define a common agenda.”20 Defining a common agenda among one’s own gender surely sounds lovely. But as someone who more than dabbles in activism, my personal experiences have taught me otherwise. Even in the local feminist scene where I have worked with individuals and groups, there are still a plethora of competing claims. Feminists who believe that identity politics is useful also find themselves battling over what it truly means to be ‘woman’ and ‘feminist’. Couple those terms with ‘Filipino’ and ‘middle class’ or ‘urban poor’ and more so with identities like ‘straight’, ‘lesbian’ or ‘gay’ and the overlaps in categories is further complicated. With current debates surrounding the Department of Education’s curriculum on sex education, the Catholic Church and the state are seeking absolutes, as both sides are making the pitch for morality on the one hand, and responsible citizenship on the other hand. Discussions about who, when, how, why and exactly what young individuals ought to know about sexual matters is framed in what could be interpreted as heteronormative paradigms. If gender as a perspective is sometimes brushed aside as unimportant, sexuality is just as ignored and deliberately avoided as it is deemed as falling under the ‘private’ realm. At worst non-heterosexual subjectivities (when their existence is acknowledged) are stigmatized as deviants, immoral, even criminal in some cultures. And while the nature and scope of discourses on culture, civilization and globalization are challenged by feminists through the inclusion of gender, the same is also necessary from the perspective of sexuality. While one’s erotic desires might seem less important compared with the triumvirate of race, class and gender, persons who strongly identify as ‘othered’ in this manner will disagree. Unlike persisting inequalities in those categories, it is easy for the privileged to gloss over such inequalities that non-heterosexuals are subjected to. It has been remarked that ‘queerness is now global’,21 as the homosexual taboo has to a large extent given way to what is spectacular, hip or even cool. Manila has its share of gay bars, and a gay lifestyle is

 20

Ehrenreich and Hochschild. Arnaldo Cruz-Malave and Martin F. Manalansan, Queer globalizations, Citizenship and the afterlife of colonialism (New York: New York University Press, 2002).

21

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evident by the nightlife in Malate and the annual LGBT Pride Marches.22 In the Philippine scene, there has been a number of locally produced hit mainstream movies (not just indie flicks), as well as TV shows that regularly feature LGBT personalities, the most popular being the weekly drag performance of the ‘Balakubak Gang’. A case of coming-out of the closet that led to hogging the spotlight. Hence, what used to be considered as ‘private’ has become an object of spectacle, and more importantly, an object of consumption, as ‘queerness’ is commodified and marketed, where, “nonqueers invest their passions and purchasing power […] and through which queers constitute their identities in contemporary consumer-oriented globalized world.”23 Therefore the universal queer is hyped as the hip and fashionable upwardly mobile gay (man). In this sense, it is even more important for feminists who identify as lesbians to remain vigilant about such erasures and ensure visibility. Just as the (straight) woman is invisible in other discourses, so too are (non-straight) women, even in queer sub-culture. Although relatively young, the LGBT movement in the Philippines has become more visible by bringing the ‘private’ into the ‘public’. These groups have adopted the rights-discourse in battling homophobia, lobbying for the passage of the Anti-Discrimination bill, taking active part in policy discussions on AIDS, and most recently forming an LGBT party list. But apart from these special interests, LGBT groups have also formed alliances with non-homosexuals. Lesbian and gay activists have found that identity politics is promising as they work together in advancing their human rights, but so too as they forge alliances with other groups and NGOs, such as those who seek the elimination of Third-World debt, care for the environment, religious and spiritual groups. Filipino LGBTs are also networking with their international allies and it is one opportunity that local queers enjoy. However, although there are so-called models of gay culture, such as those in more inclusive and ‘progressive’ countries, the category of sexuality remains marginal in the local discourse on civilization. Such ‘exposure’ also puts LGBTs in a precarious position, and a backlash is almost always inevitable. The Pope’s repeated stance against gays and a rigid concept of human unions and kinship is a moral absolute decreed by the highest authority of the Catholic Church and as such, the Philippine faithful, approximately eighty percent of the nation’s population, are expected to toe the line.

 22

LGBT is the acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered. Although the origin is American, Filipino activists have appropriated the acronym in addition to identities that are decidedly local such as bakla (and its many stripes) and tibo. 23 Cruz-Malave and Manalansan, Queer globalizations, 13.

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And yet, for some Catholic gays and lesbians in the Philippines, this stance is interpreted as a failure to understand and appreciate the subjectivity of the queer other. Identity politics then becomes a strategy for various LGBT groups to strengthen their ties with one another while they remain open to having a dialogue with church officials, “despite the intimidating hateful language.”24 In our quest to find meaning in culture, civilization and globalization, Schweitzer’s focus is still relevant. What is ‘ultimately ethical’ could be framed in a way that recognizes various identities (including gender and sexual identities) while also valuing contexts that are specific to geography and time periods. The answer to what is ‘ultimately ethical’ is a journey in itself. As a student and teacher of philosophy, an activist and a Filipino queer woman, I have yet to reach the end of that journey. The struggle for personal recognition is inherently tied to political recognition, and this is why I view identity politics as a useful strategy. It aids in uncloaking universal presuppositions as it tries to make room for more specific and underarticulated perspectives. However, I am also aware of its pitfalls. Exposure is a risk that renders one vulnerable. Just like the proverbial revolving door, queers coming out sometimes find themselves going back inside the closet. But the discourse on culture and civilization is an arena that had long been inhabited by them, only that category was previously hidden.

 24

See APP with Manny B. Marinay, “RP gays fear ‘repression’ under Pope Benedict XVI,” ABS-CBN News Interactive Website (2005).

GARUDA INDONESIA – REGISTERED TRADEMARK ® JOHN T. GIORDANO

I have been called to Indonesia, through electronic mail, through electronic cables, their metallic life encased by rubberized skin, snaking their way towards portals, computer screens, optic nerves blossoming into mechanical eyes, with organic eyes steadily staring in response. I have come from the sky, like Vishnu, riding the wings of Garuda Indonesia, a registered trademark. Riding in the cabin of the plane, encased in layers of aluminum, plastic and fabric covered seats, filled with the noise of compressed air and the mechanical whine of the engines. While far below, lies the Gulf of Thailand, the hazy land faintly visible through the clouds. I am always astonished, how such distance can be covered in such a short time, how something so weighty like the earth, can appear so distant and ephemeral, the density of the land lost in the milky haze. And yet, the plane lands and here it is, again, solid land, the falling of rain, the flowing of water, the kinetic chaos of the landscape. Let me point out that this is also a dichotomy I struggle with in my personal life: the life of a scholar and its expectations. A dichotomy between my detached thoughts and the environment through which I move, between moments of perspective, moments of haze, and the more mundane preoccupations with the flows of the environment. And the ideas and images which cross my own mind swim within the same pool as those which move through the cityscapes. Some are ancient and sacred, and some are new, and copyrighted, registered and regulated by international law. What are the restrictions connected to ideas, names and images? What are the difference between traditional images and their transmission and contemporary images? And how does one think these ideas and images, speak about them – as a philosopher? And this subject is haunted by time. It involves a reckless and accelerating push into a future and a reaching back into the past. The

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philosopher often feels she or he has succeeded in something when pointing at a problem, a balance, a moderation, a resistance, and yet, these sandcastles are swiftly washed away again by the momentum of contemporary global culture. If I am divided and at odds with myself, it makes sense that such a project will be eclectic in nature. What is to be understood is not something unified like an idea or a conclusion, but a series of struggles and tensions which constantly undermine a certain sense but create certain relations which hold together into a theme. I will use the title – “Garuda Indonesia – Registered Trademark ®” – to organize my reflections. Not according to the sense of the words, but the spaces between them. So allow me again to take a flight. Garuda Chinese: jinchi niao; Hindi: garud; Japanese: karunra; Javanese: garudha; Khmer: khrut; Lao: kut, khut; Myanmar: galon; Thai: krut; Tibetan: gNam-mKha’-lDing.1

Garuda is the divine bird-man who is the vehicle of Vishnu. The story goes that there were two sisters. Kadru desired many offspring and so laid a thousand eggs, which quickly hatched into Nagas or snake deities. Her sister Vinata desired only a few offspring and so laid only two eggs. The eggs took so long to hatch that Vinata became impatient and opened one egg in curiosity. The boy in the egg was only half-developed. He had an upper body but as yet no lower body. He became the sun-god Anruna, who put a curse upon his mother for her impatience. For five hundred years, she would be the slave of her sister Kadru whereupon her son would free her. And so, Vinata waited another five hundred years before the second egg hatched and this one became Garuda. Garuda now desires to buy his mother’s freedom. To accomplish this, he must enter a whirling wheel of blades, defeat the gods – including the great warrior god Indra – guarding the amrita or soma (the liquor of immortality), and carry it back to his Naga cousins. Roberto Calasso has



1 Garrett Kam, G., Ramayana in the Arts of Asia (Singapore: Select Books, 2000), 14.

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an elegant way of telling the end of the story: “The Snakes had arranged themselves in a circle to await Garuda’s return. They saw him coming like a black star, a point expanding on the horizon, until his beak laid down a delicate plant, damp with sap, upon the darbha grass. ‘This is the soma, Snakes. This is my mother’s ransom. I deliver it to you. But before you drink of this celestial liquid, I would advise a purificatory bath.’ In disciplined devotion, the Snakes slithered off toward the river. For a moment, the only moment of tranquility the earth would ever know, the soma was left, alone, on the grass. A second later Indra’s rapacious hand had swooped from the heavens, and already it was done. Gleaming with water, aware of the gravity of the moment, the Snakes could be seen returning through the tall grass. They found nothing but a place where the grass had been bent slightly. Hurriedly they licked at the darbha grass where Baruda had laid the soma. From that moment on the Snakes have had forked tongues.”2 The struggle between the forces represented by the sun and the moon, the bird and the snake, are almost universal. Garuda is then connected to the sun, with cosmic order and justice. The more numerous Nagas represent less differentiated and fluid forces of nature, with the moon and with the feminine. In one story, Garuda demonstrates his role in killing a giant tortoise and an elephant who are fighting, while simultaneously rescuing twelve Brahman sages who are clutching onto the branch of a tree. In some stories, he is praised with the devotional hymn to the sun itself. In Calasso’s account, Brhaspati, chief priest to the Gods, says to Indra: “Garuda is not made of feathers but of meters. You cannot hurt a meter. Garuda is gayatri and tristubh and jagati. Garuda is the hymn. The hymn that cannot be scratched.”3 Finally, because of his strength and loyalty, Garuda is asked by the great god Vishnu to be his vehicle. Garuda becomes the servant of supreme power and sovereignty. As this story passes throughout Southeast Asia – from the Mahabharata, the Vishnu-Purana, the Ramayana and the Jataka stories – it adapts to local situations. For instance, in Java, the Garuda follows the religion of Vaishnavism and becomes the servant of the Javanese Kings. He becomes the symbol of royal sovereignty. “But Wisnuite [Vaishavite] elements, never exclusive, came up still stronger in the East-Javanese period, after the tenth century. Mighty kings were all presented as incarnations of Wisnu [Vishnu]. In the poem Arjuna Wiwaha, Erlangga

 2 3

Roberto Calasso, Ka (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 16. Calasso, 14.

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(1019-1042),the first great king of East Java, was connected to Arjuna, a Wisnu incarnate. There is a statue showing him with the attributes of Wisnu. More significant to our purpose, a sculpture of Wisnu mounting Garuda was found in his sanctuary, the Candi Belahan. Now exhibited in the museum of Mojokorto, it shows a ferocious Garuda, trampling the snakes and ready to fight. Another famous king of East Java, the king Jayabaya, the ruler of Kediri, was said to be Wisnuatmaka, or Wisnu incarnate. But the most famous king associated with Wisnu was Ken Arok, the adventurer made king who founded the kingdom of Singasari (12221292), from which originated the empire of Majapahit (thirteenth-fifteenth Century). In the Pararaton chronicle, Wisnu said to one of the characters: ‘Stop worshipping the statue, I am not there anymore. I have incarnated in Java under the name of Ken Arok.’ Ken Arok was eventually killed by his son-in-law, Anusapati (1227-1248), but the Wisnuite tradition was carried on. The reliefs on the walls of his sanctuary, Candi Kidal, tell the episodes of the Garuda story. On the western side, Garuda is shown visiting his mother while on the eastern relief he runs away with the vessel of water of immortality. The tradition associating the king and Wisnu persisted during later reigns.”4 As Islam became the religion of Java, the Garuda now began to serve the Sultan. “The Javanese rulers became Sultans, indeed, heirs to the prophet and commanders of the faith. Thus they appropriated the symbols of Islam for political benefit as they had earlier appropriated the symbols of Hinduism, notably Garuda. But they did not renounce the old stories nor the old symbols. They enrobed Islam in a Hindu garb. Resilient Wisnuite influences are numerous. The biggest ceremony of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta involves a Gunungan (mountain) of rice, the Gunungan is the cosmic mountain and the goddess of rice is Wisnu’s wife. Symbols directly related to Garuda are also involved. The Sultan of Yogyakarta, implicitly a Wisnu incarnate, still rides in parades in a Garuda-winged vehicle, the Garuda Kencono. The Sultan is also protected by Garuda, as shown in the Garuda banners used in his paraphernalia. The signs of Garuda’s presence in Java are too numerous for all of them to be included here.”5

 4

Jean Couteau, J., Archipelago, Vol.1, no.1, (20 December 2008). 5 Couteau.

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Today in Indonesia, Garuda is a symbol of the power of the state. Garuda Indonesia Airlines is a state company, and so the name Garuda is still connected to the symbolism of power. Today in Thailand, the Garuda is the royal symbol. Its use is highly restricted. It can only be used by businesses and banks which have demonstrated long service to Thailand. In fact the image is considered to have so much power that businesses across the street from a Garuda-adorned business will often mount a mirror to deflect the powerful gaze of the Garuda. Recently in Thailand there was an intense controversy over the selling by the former prime minister of a satellite to a business in Singapore. One important reason, and a very symbolic one, is that the satellite has imprinted upon it an image of a Garuda, the Thai royal symbol. Here Garuda looks down from outer space – representing the king from high above the earth – only to have his loyalties threatened by private interests. (We might find similar restrictions in Indonesia. Garuda Indonesia is a state company. What would be the consequences of selling it, along with the Garuda symbolism to private interests?) Here this brings us to the shore of a vast problem, the problem of intellectual property and the manner in which its dynamic differs from traditional cultural transmission. But so far we have found a path to lead us through this problem – the idea of ‘sovereignty’.

Trade-marks The title mentions registered trademarks, and this opens us to the problems concerning intellectual property. Peter Drahos in his work A Philosophy of Intellectual Property attempts to characterize the phenomena of intellectual property in various ways. One is through the idea of ‘abstract objects’. This stresses the incorporeality of intellectual property and how it moves from being considered a thing to an abstract expression of relationships between people. Another is through the distinction between ‘negative’ and ‘positive communities’ as Grotius and Pufendorf have developed it. In relation to the control of the commons, laws concerning intellectual property were shaped based upon the idea of a negative rather than a positive community. That is, a situation where everyone competes for rights over the commons, rather than a situation which stresses joint ownership. And finally, another way is through the idea of ‘sovereignty’. Drahos summarizes the argument of Morris Cohen that private property is a kind of sovereignty over others: “The argument has a disruptive quality because sovereignty is a public law concept which property usually features as part

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of private law. Cohen’s analytical argument rests on the now accepted view that property consists of a relation between persons in respect of an object rather than a relation between a person and an object. The link between dominium and imperium is accomplished by arguing, quite plausibly, that the dominant feature of property is the right to exclude others. The capacity to exclude others from things where those things are important or necessities gives the property owner considerable or even great power over others. Hence Cohen’s conclusion is that ‘dominium over things is also imperium over our fellow human beings’.”6 Drahos points out that this seems to be in conflict with Foucault’s very significant rethinking of the mechanisms of power. While he tries to retain Foucault’s understanding of the flow of power within a network, he also wants to retain the above idea of sovereignty. “Thus we should not follow Foucault when he suggests that we should ‘eschew the model of Leviathan in the study of power’. Instead we need to recognize that, through mechanisms of power, Leviathan changes its shape and produces progeny, which ultimately comes to threaten its supremacy.”7 And this is important. The sovereignty of intellectual property is a mechanism where private ‘factions’ (a word Drahos borrows from the American statesman James Madison) come to replace the power of the state. Abstract objects are then mechanisms to concentrate power and sovereignty into private hands. “We have opted for the view that abstract objects are fictional entities, albeit highly useful ones. Our question is, what role do these entities play in the concentration of power? Our answer will be that within law they form the basis of identity judgments, judgments that ultimately determine who has access to vital capital resources. The fact that these judgments are made using fictional entities suggests that the judgments are themselves pragmatic and based on conventions.”8 This should also remind us of Guy Debord’s definitions of the Spectacle: “The Spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.”9 We begin to see a distinction between Western law concerning intellectual property and the traditional Eastern transmission of images and ideas between cultures. Marshall Sahlins in his essay “Cosmologies of Capitalism” discusses the development of the unique connection of consumption and freedom in the West: “So by the time of Adam Smith,



6 Peter Drahos, A Philosophy of Intellectual Property (Singapore: Darthmouth, 1996), 147. 7 Drahos, 150. 8 Drahos, 153. 9 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books, 1995), 24.

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every person’s permanent misery – that is, scarcity and need – had become the premise of economic wisdom and the source of national welfare. The social and moral sublimation of temporal desires had indeed been dissolved by an oncoming capitalism. What for Augustine was slavery, the human bondage to bodily desires, was in the bourgeois view the essential human freedom […]. The new rationality was based on an exquisite sensitivity to pleasure and pain […]. But, then, the capitalist economy had made a supreme fetish of human needs in the sense that needs, which are always social and objective in character, had to be assumed as subjective experiences of bodily affliction.”10 Perhaps Sahlins overstates the sensual aspects of Western capitalism, yet I think the observation concerning the subjectification of experience and its connection with freedom and desire is significant. This capitalist cosmology is indeed a form of spirituality at the deepest level. It is here that Western culture still finds itself in tension with even highly developed Asian cultures. It is not so much a matter of asking the question of how these tensions can be resolved. This is a problem which would have to be addressed by the debate over the injustices of the TRIPS (Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights)11 agreements and that would be a political issue. But the question I would like to address here is: how are these tensions resolving themselves? Kenelm Burridge discusses in New Heaven, New Earth, A Study of Millenarian Activities the growth of millenarian or messianic movements in indigenous cultures faced with Western influences. He gives special emphasis to the introduction of money. “If money is to circulate significantly, if an indigenous community is to have a satisfactory access to money, then the community must so adapt and alter its prestige system that money becomes a basic measure of worth. Unless and until money begins accurately to assess those qualities which a people or community finds meaningful, so long will they not be able to use money as it was meant to be used, so long will they not have a satisfactory access. Belonging to, and connoting, the complex social order of those who have minted it, use it, and bring it to foreign shores, money […] demands acceptance of the dint of social ordering adopted by those who make it.”12 The dilemma is how to balance the traditional measure of man with the foreign monetary measure. Significant imbalances, according to Burridge,



10 Marshall Sahlins, “Cosmologies of Capitalism,” in Culture in Practice: Selected Essays (New York: Zone Books, 2000), 455. 11 See . 12 Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth, A Study of Millenarian Activities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 45.

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lead to millenarian cults, or cargo cults, which have become ritualized methods of addressing these imbalances. Burridge is speaking here of traditional Melanesian, Polynesian and Australian cultures. However, we can witness this same drama in the highly developed urban landscapes of Southeast Asian cities. If we take a step into an urban landscape like that of Bangkok, we find on the streets various syncretic mechanisms which attempt to preserve the flow of cultural values within the circulations of value in late capitalism, namely, in the commodification and circulation of sacred images in amulets. Stanley Tambiah has done very careful studies on the lives of the forest monks (arahants) and what he calls the ‘cult of amulets’ connected to their powers. At the end of his work he attempts to understand this within a sociological framework. “The possession and circulation of amulets in Thailand represents still another semiotic code. The ascetic saint of the forest distributes his charisma as a donation inspired by compassion and loving-kindness (metta). He himself does not expect a return from his gift to the worldlings at large. The amulet is indexically or metonymically related to the ascetic monk and represent a materialization of his virtue, achieved by means of a rite of transfer. Amulets are made in plenty and distributed to many, for the saint’s metta is inexhaustible and does not diminish by sharing, provided he continues to cleave to his ascetic and meditative life and to experience the bliss of tranquil joy and detachment. But, of course, we know that, in the Thai instance, amulets are comparable on the basis of the differential charisma of the saints and ascetics; though donated to the public at large, they in practice become scarce and assume a commercial value. They become, at a second less obvious round of social relations, private and hidden possessions of laymen who expect to use the amulets’ potency to manipulate, overpower, seduce and control their fellow men and women in an ongoing drama of social transactions. There is a two-level discourse – the charisma of the saint, who in transcending the world is able to shower upon it his virtue, and the gratification of desires on the part of the laymen, for whom prosperity and fortune approach the logic of a zero-sum game.”13 According to Tambiah, the circulation of amulets becomes a mark of status among the ruling elite. It also represents a kind of spiritual decay of the original function of the sacred image through capitalist exchange and commodity fetishism. I believe, however, that this is a limited reading of



13 Stanley J. Tambiah, Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 342.

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this phenomenon. We need not consider the commodification of amulets only as form of decay; we can also see it as a kind of resistance to the leveling of value within the capitalist exchange itself. Western capitalism is based upon an idea of individual consumption and fulfillment. But when the Western consumer-culture is imported into a foreign culture where individual fulfillment and transformation is less important, then subtle modifications are made to the exchange principle. We seem to see here a resistance to appropriation into full abstraction by mixing of traditional mythical symbols with capitalist exchange. Not a mere commodification, but a resistance to commodification by the alteration of the spiritual aspects of exchange. The exchange of money and goods are anchored to spiritual realities connected to religion, royalty and the state. Notice that this would show the weakness of Critical Theory, which condemns ‘commodity fetishism’ in a crudely over-generalized manner. It is not a matter of overcoming fetishism, but the manner in which the fixation on objects is ultimately connected to the more stable elements of culture and community. This is the lesson of amulets. Likewise, foreign goods cannot function in the abstract (pseudospiritualized) sense in which they wish. So they collapse again into mere corporeality – mere discs to be cheaply traded, mere labels which are sewn onto clothes and handbags.

Violations Along the streets of Bangkok and at the smaller shopping malls, pirated DVDs, VCDs and computer software are offered for sale. All the DVDs are lined on the counters of small stalls – the glossy reproductions of movie posters with famous actors and actresses – the simple reproductions of the film encoded and burned into the cheap discs. Then the police suddenly appear and behind them cameramen from a TV station. The merchants from one shop are lined up behind the counter with their illegal ware, the police lined up standing behind. A show is put on for the cameras. Then the merchants are led out, the DVD covers packed in boxes. The cameramen pack up and leave. And business resumes as usual at the other shops. The merchants spend a couple of nights in prison and return to work. The violation of abstract property is addressed in an abstract way – a show, a drama, like a Hollywood movie. This media drama is supposed to create an idea of corporate sovereignty and authority. But this use of illusion and force to achieve justice is unconvincing because the authority

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is unconvincing. As Drahos points out: “One of the distinguishing features of [abstract objects] is that they are fuzzy, indeterminate objects. Their boundaries depend on the identity judgments of a legal elite. These judgments are judgments of fragile convention that may easily break down or be influenced by specific interest groups, with the consequence that they cease to serve the broader, more diffuse societal interests to which they are meant to be directed.”14 But just as the fuzziness and fragility of abstract objects leads to their accumulation and abuse, outside of the Western perspective, this fragility also leads to the forces that undermine the fixing of intellectual property. The dark waters of piracy continue to flow even under the electronic gaze of corporate authority. Microsoft does not ride on the wings of the Garuda. It is merely a corporation, a faction, and an abstract body dealing with abstract objects. The gods of Gucci, and 20th Century Fox can never be adequately absorbed into a culture because they are frozen into a mere identity or brand. Corporate authority can never be convincing in the manner of state authority because it has no responsibility to the community, and so it is, as Drahos points out, a ‘fragile convention’. The sovereignty of corporations and factions cannot be complete because of their fragility, because they are too one-sided. Corporate mythology is not held in a holistic syncretic relationship with older traditional and state mythologies. In traditional Indian mythology we always see a balance re-established between contending opposites. Although Garuda demonstrates his power over the battling forces of nature represented by the tortoise and the elephant, and his preservation of the wisdom of the Brahman sages clutching the branch, the power of the Garuda, that is, the power of order, itself must remain in a kind of balance with the forces of nature represented by his cousins the Naga. Not only does Vishnu recline upon the great cosmic serpent Ananta, but reconciles directly with the forces of nature in the form of Krishna. Krishna, as an avatar of Vishnu, defeats Kaliya, the great Naga king. He is addressing an imbalance where the forces of nature undermine the establishment of ordered culture. Yet Kaliya is himself divine and merely acting according to his own nature. “I have only acted according to my nature. As you created me with strength and endowed me with my poison, so have I behaved. Had I comported myself otherwise, I should have

 14

Drahos, A Philosophy of Intellectual Property, 158.

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violated the laws laid down by you for every creature according to its kind.”15 Vishnu (in the form of Krishna) spares Kaliya and sends him back to his proper realm. “You shall not henceforth reside in the waters of the Yamuna, but in the vastness of the ocean. Depart! Moreover, I declare to you that Garuda, the sun-bird of gold, arch enemy of all serpents and my vehicle through the reaches of space, forever shall spare you, whom I have touched.”16 Heinrich Zimmer points out that Krishna plays the role of the ‘moderator’ rather than the ‘annihilator’. This is a theme seen in the syncretism of Southeast Asia. Buddhism and Islam appropriate these older images and set them in peace with one another. There are instances in Khmer statuary of Garudas intertwined peacefully with Nagas. So the lesson here, if I am reading these tensions correctly, is that when power becomes too one-sided it becomes destructive. It also becomes fragile and deep counter-currents begin to undermine it until it collapses and a new balance re-emerges. And what is the place of my own reflection and writing? As a scholar I attempt to navigate a tradition of texts and names from the past of which I have the responsibility to cite formally and accurately. And I apply these ideas and languages of the past to contemporary situations, images from the media, and corporate and economic phenomena. So far scholarship is relatively free with respect to intellectual property and corporate control. One still has relatively free access to information and the use of images, although this may perhaps begin to change. If it does, we will find ourselves in the same position as the pirates selling intellectual property on the streets – black market philosophy. However, scholarship and art are pursuits which still have a relative freedom, and can place themselves in the role of mediators. And in this role, they have the power and the responsibility to address the imbalances of power and conflicts in the contemporary world, to pass through the walls of legal restrictions, and find connections to something much more timeless.

 15

Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (Princeton: Bollingen, 1946), 85. 16 Zimmer, 86.

JAVANESE-ISLAM VALUE CONSENSUS, REMARKS ON VALUE PLURALISM DONNY GAHRAL ADIAN

Some proponents of liberal political philosophy have developed with the idea of value pluralism, a principle that underlines the diversity of values held by human beings as moral subjects. This has resulted in a new agenda proposed by Rawlsian liberal philosophy called an ‘overlapping consensus’. Overlapping consensus is a consensus of what kind of sociopolitical values everyone must share for actualizing one’s own ethical conception. This consensus is a delicate matter since society often builds upon a major ethical conception gained by marginalizing or discriminating other conceptions. Most ethical conceptions take the form of a comprehensive doctrine and tend to be a single ruler of society as a whole. That happens when it turns out to be not just one among many conceptions but a single-ruling doctrine. It is a comprehensive doctrine, according to Rawls, when it deals with all parts of human affairs, from personal to political affairs. This renders the comprehensive doctrine to deal with other doctrines confrontationally. The main agenda is always proposing its ethical conception as a comprehensive doctrine to be held by the whole society by taking over or influencing the state apparatus. According to liberal political philosophy, religion might be regarded as a form of ethical monism, which has three major weaknesses. First, it is the seed of totalitarianism due to its commitment to the highest good (summum bonum). Second, it cannot reach consensus upon which the democratic culture can be built. Its agenda is always one of ethical homogenization by integrating individuals into society. Third, it blurs the private/public distinction by privatizing public sphere, which is supposed to be pluralized by varieties of interests, values, ideologies and perspectives. These are strong criticisms toward religious ethical conceptions. The question, then, is whether these criticisms are theoretically and historically justifiable. Is it true that religious and liberal ways of life will always be in enormous tension toward each other? I show how those criticisms can be

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proven incorrect. My argument is based upon the historical Islamicization on Java, which resulted in a harmonious consensual relationship between Islamic and Javanese ethical conceptions. The consensus leads to my hypotheses that religion (Islam, in this context), despite its comprehensiveness, is prepared to make an overlapping value consensus with another belief system. This chapter consists of three main parts. First, religion and value pluralism. Second, Islamicization on Java: tension and integration. Third, Javanese Islam: overlapping value consensus.

Religion and value pluralism Value pluralism is a concept that many liberal philosophers hold as a basic principle. It is what they think distinguishes liberal philosophy from communitarian, conservative or socialist philosophies. Isaiah Berlin is the one who came up with the concept. He differentiates between value pluralism and value monism.1 The first is the doctrine that there are many values or good things in life and, consequently, there is no rational basis for concluding which one is the best. Value monism, on the other hand, insists that there is, in principle, a rationally best way for all of us to live. Berlin says that the world we encounter in ordinary experiences is one in which we are faced with choices between ends equally ultimate, and claims equally absolute. The commitment to value pluralism in such a world is then inevitable. The value pluralism principle is based on the idea of the community. A community nonetheless is a fictitious body, composed only of individual persons who are considered as constituting it as if they were its members. Community is simply a name we use to describe the actions, traits and interactions of individuals, who are real. Every social explanation must take account of individuals as a starting point. The pluralists, like Rawls, take this idea of community and hold a principle that each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of the whole society cannot override. Meanwhile, the social philosophy developed during the nineteenth century brings about strong resistance to such social ontology. Society is not simply an aggregation of individuals: it has a culture and customs that shape the individuals born into it. The life of individuals only expresses the common will of society, and in extreme cases may have to be sacrificed for the good of society.



1 Gerald F. Gaus, Political Concepts and Political Theories (Colorado: Westview Press, 2000), 58-59.

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The concept sounds ideal enough, but the reality shows that many moral doctrines regard themselves as a general and comprehensive doctrine.2 A doctrine is general when it applies to a wide range of subjects and limits all subjects universally. It is comprehensive when it includes conceptions of what is valued in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct in society. Rawls shows how a political conception needs to free itself from any comprehensive moral doctrine. When it fails to do that, political affairs will be ruled by a single doctrine and this will result in marginalizing other doctrines. The political must be founded on liberal tolerance and value neutrality. However, value pluralism-based principles are for most of the Third World countries, like Indonesia, which uphold moral homogeneity, remote and alien. But before I get into that issue, let me take a look at the theoretical dispute concerning the two principles. Liberal tolerance is a principle insisting that it is wrong for a government to use its coercive power to enforce ethical homogeneity on the community as a shared ethical code.3 Many arguments have been proposed to challenge this principle. First, the argument from democratic theory associating community with a majority, which claims that the community has the right to use the law to support its vision of ethical decency. In other words, it has a right to impose its views about ethics just because it is the majority. Second, the argument of paternalism, which holds that in a genuine political community each citizen has a responsibility for the well being of other members and therefore political power should be used to reform those whose defective practices will have negative impacts. Third, the argument of self-interest, which denies atomism and emphasizes that people need a community for material, intellectual and ethical reasons. Fourth, the argument of integration, which argues that the value of goodness of any individual citizen’s life is only a reflection and function of the value of the life of the community in which she or he lives. It means that in order to make their lives valuable, citizens must vote and work to make sure that their fellow citizens lead decent lives. All of the above arguments rest on the priority of the community over individuals; this social ontology strongly opposes the liberal commitment to value neutrality, i.e. neutrality concerning what it means to live well. The liberal value neutrality faces three strong challenges. First, the

 2

John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 13. 3 Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 211.

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challenge from romantics, who accuse liberals of being insensitive to the importance of individuals breaking free of petty morality. Second, the challenge from Marxists, who are strongly against the alienated and impoverished character of life in liberal capitalist democracy; according to Marxists value neutrality is a mask for its support of bourgeois morality. Third, the challenge from conservatives, who claim that liberals fail to understand that life can be satisfying only when it is rooted in a community, which defines norms and traditions. These three challenges share the same belief that political community must be governed by one single ethical conception, i.e. value pluralism is unthinkable. Religion as a comprehensive ethical doctrine is usually associated with the idea of ethical homogenization. It is based on the idea that the religious conception of the good is the highest good (summum bonum), so all other goods must be subdued and converted into one, i.e. it denies value pluralism. This attitude leads to the need for a political hand to bring about a homogenizing agenda: a political hand that converts dissidents by punishment-reward mechanisms. The freedom to choose her or his own ethical conception is limited. An individual must integrate her- or himself fully to the community’s moral doctrine. Recently there is a strong resistance to the monolithic tradition of religious moral doctrine. Brian Hebblethwaite says in his essay “The Varieties of Goodness” that the idea of summum bonum is by implication totalitarian.4 It puts aside the recognition and positive affirmation of the varieties of human goodness. From the perspective of Christian theological ethics, Hebblethwaite underwrites the necessity of welcoming other forms of religiously motivated goodness. Christians have no monopoly on God’s ways with humankind, since there may well be forms of religious life that encapsulate and manifest values understated in the Christian tradition. The same resistance emerges from the Islamic intellectual world. Dale F. Eickelman strongly states that it would be incorrect to say that there is a single, dominant view among Muslims concerning religious and value pluralism. Khalid Masud says that there have always been several moral traditions in Islam, some of which – as in other religious traditions – are more tolerant and open to alternative ethical positions. The Quran offers a distinctly modern perspective on the role of Islam as a force for tolerance and mutual recognition in a multiethnic, multicommunity world. There are several Quranic verses endorsing this view: “To each among you, We have

 4

Brian Hebblethwaite, “The Varieties of Goodness,” in Ethics, Religion, and the Good Society, New Directions in a Pluralistic World, ed. Joseph Runzo (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1992), 3.

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ordained a law and assigned a path. Had God pleased, He could have made you one nation, but His will is to test you by what He has given you; so compete in goodness (5:48).” “O mankind! We created you from a male and female and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another (49:13).” Historically, Islam has been remarkably open to the outside world. Fazlur Rahman, a prominent Moslem scholar, argues that the prophet Muhammad recognizes without a moment of hesitation that Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other Old and New Testament religious personalities are God’s messengers like himself.5 Their different messages, which are contextually bounded, are truly universal and identical. Muhammad even says in the Quran that “I believe in whatever book God may have revealed (42:15).” It shows that the idea of the ‘book’ (kitab) is a generic term in the Quran denoting the totality of divine revelations. Historically, the Islamic tradition has been in intense interaction with other beliefs. We can witness how Islam has incorporated many preexisting and coexisting cultural elements. It encompasses a variety of civilizational and cultural forms of life. By the tenth and eleventh century, for instance, the Islamic world showed a remarkable variety of institutional forms ranging from North Africa to South Asia. In terms of moral tradition, Islam has incorporated many pre-Islamic tribal values. There is something in the Islamic moral doctrine called literary moral tradition (adab), which derives its ethical values from multiple sources, both Muslim and non-Muslim. However, we also witness a rupture in the history of the Islamic attitude toward value pluralism. A nadir of intolerance within the Muslim community was the inquisition (mihna) of 833-848 AC. Within the period of fifteen years, the four successive caliphs implemented an authoritarian imposition of a single doctrine through the state apparatus. It soon met strong resistance and was abandoned after 848 AC. Robert Bellah, a sociologist, argues that the authoritarian version of Islam’s moral teaching is due to what he called ‘stagnant localisms’ of the tribe and kinship.6 ‘Stagnant localisms’ strongly resist the pluralist version of community found in seventh-century Islamic society. A society built upon the very principle of egalitarianism. The above arguments lead to the thesis that Islamic aversion to value pluralism is not based upon the holy guidance itself but upon the infiltration of cultural chauvinism. Islam as a moral tradition favors pluralism on two grounds. First, its appeal to human reason; Islam’s moral

 5

Sohail H. Hashmi, ed., Islamic Political Ethics, Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002), 118. 6 Hashmi, 117.

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tradition highly values individual rational choice and responsibility. Verses such as, “There is no coercion in religion. The truth stands out clear from error (2:256);” “By the soul, and the order given it, He has inspired it to its wrong and to its good (91:7-8);” and “To each is a goal to which He turns it. Then, strive for what is good (2:178)” emphasize that ethical values are reasonable and understandable by all humans. The different levels of understanding from one person or one community to the other are inevitable. Second, social acceptance of Islamic values; Islamic values are understood in different ways by different persons and communities that result in different regulations of permissible dissent. It is the social dialectics that determine and enforce the acceptable definition of ethical values.

Islamicization in Java Historically, Islamicization on Java did not start from a cultural vacuum. Java already had a great civilization based on a Hindu-Buddhist metaphysical and value system. Some call it a Javanese belief system (kejawen). So, according to Clifford Geertz, a well-known American anthropologist, Islamicization on Java did not construct a civilization, it appropriated one.7 The appropriation itself, however, did not make a very good start. Islam did not win the hearts of many of the Javanese aristocracy, which strongly upheld the Javanese belief system (kejawen) as their ultimate spiritual and practical guidance. In Babad Tanah Jawa, a story about the history of Java, it is said how the king of Majapahit (a powerful kingdom in Java) refused to take Islam as a new belief system. This refusal represents the aversion of Javanese aristocrats toward Islam. It is based on the idea of superiority of the Javanese belief system compared to others. Due to this refusal many Islamic missionaries went to the villages, especially the coastal area, to spread Islamic teachings. Those missionaries were quite welcome there and built many Islamic schools (pesantren), which became a counterculture to the dominant Javanese culture. After the fall of the Majapahit, Islamicization started to get a grip on the Javanese society belief system. By the end of the eighteenth century almost the whole of Java had been Islamicisized. At the beginning, the central development of Islamic culture was founded in the cities at the north coast of Java. From there, it moved deeper into the central area of

 7

Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed, Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 11.

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Java. But the tension was still fiery between the two worldviews. Even though many palaces on Java had officially accepted Islam, the way of life of most aristocrats was still based on the Javanese worldview. Many were still conducting Javanese spiritual rites like wayang performances, dances and other spiritual ceremonies. More frequent contact between Islamic movements on Java and those in the Middle East brought the tension to another level. The demarcation was becoming more vivid as the Middle Eastern movement’s orientation of purifying Islam infiltrated into the culture of the pesantren. It strongly opposed Javanese mysticism, which they regarded as a non-Islamic belief system. The pesantren society’s main agenda then was to implement the purest character of Islamic teaching as it was comprehended in Egypt through the influence of Muhammad Abduh. The emphasis was on the rigid implementation of Islamic law (Shariah).8 This purification resulted in the rising consciousness of many followers of kejawen. They started to realize their uniqueness compared to Islam and they tried hard to preserve their ancestors’ worldview. The schism between pesantren and nonpesantren culture began to take form. This schism echoes to the modern period. Clifford Geertz’ anthropological research in Mojokuto, a small village in East Java, shows a tension between the so-called santri and abangan.9 Santri is a category for those emphasizing the ritual aspects of Islam. A true Muslim is according to them the one who performs all those rituals as God’s absolute imperatives. Abangan, on the other hand, lead a mystical way of life that emphasizes the spiritual aspects of religion. They do not emphasize the ritual aspects of spiritualism. For them, the most important thing is controlling inner drives and doing good deeds. That schism was emphasized in the anti-colonial movement, which was very political in nature. In 1913 a political organization called Sarikat Islam (Islamic Union) was established. During the first ten years there was an internal conflict between the puritan group and the socialist-based group. Since then the development of Indonesian politics is based upon that polarization. After the declaration of independence, the polarization became stronger and stronger and led to many crises. There were certain Islamic groups who strongly opposed the newborn nation. A nation which

 8

Islamic law constitutes a divinely ordained path of conduct that guides the Muslim toward practical expressions of her or his religious convictions in this world and the goal of divine favor in the world to come. 9 Clifford Geertz, Abangan, Santri, Priyayi dalam Masyarakat Jawa (Pustaka Jaya: Jakarta, 1970), 165.

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according to them was a non-Islamic (kafir) nation. Many revolts conducted by Islamic puritan groups happened during the nineteen fifties. The conflict between Javanese mysticism and Islam is only one side of the story. There has also been integration between Islam and the Javanese belief system on the esoteric level; an integration which can be seen in many literary works. In terms of literature, many Javanese writers absorb the wisdom of Islamic mysticism to Islamicize the ancient literature from the period of Hinduism. They wrote many beautiful literary works about mystical teachings; among others: Wedhatama, Wulangreh, Serat Centini, Wirid Hidayat Jati and Paramayoga. Serat Centini, for instance, is a work written by Ronggowarsito, a prominent Javanese writer, about the journey to reach the highest knowledge and become one with the ultimate reality. Many writers thought that Islamic mysticism could enrich and perfect the ancient culture. What is so extraordinary about these writers is their openness, adaptability and flexibility toward other cultural elements, something that cannot be found in the pesantren. What we find there is the strict orthodoxy of pesantren culture based on Imam Al-Gazali’s religious teachings; the teachings held by pesantren as guidance to purify Islam from the infiltration of the Javanese belief system. The cultural gap will never narrow if the rival believers will not relinquish their orthodoxy. The openness of the Javanese writers has made integration possible. They have opened the bridge between those two belief systems within the context of esoteric teachings.

Integration or value consensus? Some scholars think there was integration between the Javanese and Islamic belief systems, metaphysically and practically; in short, a newborn religion of Java. However, I have for two reasons some reservations concerning this thesis. First, the Javanese and Islamic worldviews are quite distinct. The Javanese believe in a cosmic order into which man must fit himself; the Javanese idea about God is not a transcendent deity, but a mysterious one who can only be found in personal experiences. God is not the God of knowledge but of feeling. Whenever we can discard our selfinterest and integrate harmoniously with the cosmic order, we will feel God’s presence in our day-to-day conduct. The Islamic worldview, of course, is a monotheistic worldview. This is a worldview that posits God as a transcendent being who is the centre of the universe, and the course of history is His volition; man is a mere creature who should live attuned and subjected to the will of God. In other words, a transcendent God is the measure of all things, and man a mere servant who derives satisfaction and

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legitimation from following the rules and religious obligations set by God. Second, the religion of Java is not identical with religion on Java. Followers of the Javanese belief system vividly demarcate themselves from the followers of Islam. The so-called integration is just a political construct for the sake of social stability; it was deliberately constructed by the kingdom of Mataram to neutralize revolts from pesantren communities. The integration, thus, is not a natural integration but a forced one. What happened was that each belief system respects each other’s integrity to develop some kind of value consensus for social and political affairs. The question is then: how can Islam and the Javanese belief system develop such a consensus if both of them claim to be comprehensive? My thought regarding this is that both belief systems, no matter how comprehensive they are, remain at peace with each other. Politicization stimulates tensions. By politicization, each wants to authorize their ethical conception as the ruling conception of society. Meanwhile, what happens in grass-root society is quite different. There is a value consensus between Islam and Javanese mystical teachings in regulating public affairs. The question is then: can there be such an overlapping value consensus between two ethical conceptions claiming to be the highest good? That is, a claim which is shared by both the Javanese and Islamic belief systems, since both proposed some ultimate ethical code of conduct regulating everything from personal to social affairs derived from each metaphysical doctrine. History has taught us about the difficulty of such a consensus between two comprehensive ethical conceptions. Rawls thinks that such an ethical consensus between two comprehensive doctrines is possible. The consensus about values held in social-political affairs need not be indifferent, say, to truth in comprehensive doctrines. It must be true or reasonable from the standpoint of each comprehensive doctrine.10 The value of toleration, for instance, must be backed up by the truth in each belief system. To conclude, the overlapping value consensus gate is also open to the Javanese and Islamic ethical conceptions as comprehensive doctrines. So, first of all, we must explore each ethical conception to find their overlapping value consensus. The Javanese ethical conception is based upon an idea about the sacred order of the cosmos where man must find ways to fit in. In order to do so, she or he must repress her or his self-interest orientation and become one with the macrocosm. Based on the unity of cosmos, there are three elements in the Javanese ethical conception. First, sepi ing pamrih, which means that we as human beings must cleverly control our self-interests and

 10

Rawls, Political Liberalism, 150.

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impulses for the sake of harmony. Self-interest is what hinders us from developing compassion for other beings. The basic idea of the sepi ing pamrih principle is solidarity and harmony as a result of self-interest management. Second, rame ing gawe, this can be translated as actively doing good deeds for the welfare of humanity. As Javanese, we are not only asked to manage our impulses, but also actively do good deeds for one another. When people from another belief system want to hold a ceremony, for instance, a Javanese obliges her- or himself to offer help. It is an ethical obligation to help one another sincerely, and it can only be done when one has managed one’s self-interest. Third, mamayu hayuning bawono, this is an ethical imperative for the Javanese to beautify the world. Beautifying the world can only be reached by continuously checking our self-interest and doing good deeds for one another. In other words, it presupposes an ethic of solidarity, and not just solidarity among human beings but with the entire cosmos. The Islamic ethical conception is based on the notion of the oneness of God (tawhid). It means that for a Muslim, no other thing besides God deserves her or his worship including her or his self-interest. One must remember that everyone or everything is her or his equal as a fellow creation of one and the same God. When one worships her or his selfinterest, she or he finds her- or himself distant from her or his fellow creations and discards God from her or his life. The remembrance of the oneness of God must illuminate the whole life of a Muslim which makes life full of meaning: the meaning derives from the trial of doing good. The remembrance of one true God endorses man to live in harmony while encompassing all the elements of her or his humanity: living in harmony means to be linked with the values of goodness, justice and solidarity,11 values which transcend reductionist individualism and commodity fetishism. Prophet Mohammed himself told Muslims to speak in the best manner and not to forget to treat one another with generosity, goodness and kindness; something that can be fulfilled only by continuous remembrance of God, self-restraint and linking oneself with an ethic of solidarity. Both Islam and Javanese ethical conceptions, as we see, uphold the value of solidarity over individualism, remembrance (eling in the Javanese belief system) over forgetfulness, being over having, finality over means and quality over quantity. Consensus upon these principles is what I believe, to be the social integrator of the post-Majapahit Javanese society.

 11

Tariq Ramadan, Islam, The West and the Challenges of Modernity (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 2001), 234.

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Conflicts only arise when orthodox Muslims from the pesantren community blindly follow Shariah and forget the universal ethical message behind the Quranic revelations. They forget that Shariah is supposed to be a legal conversion of ethical principles found in the Quran. What they struggle for is only the legalizing of Shariah through positive law, which means proposing Islamic ethical conceptions as an official conception. This agenda discards any effort of an overlapping consensus, which, I believe, can happen only when social engineering processes are absent. Without the ‘political make over’, Islam and the Javanese ethical conception, despite their differences in metaphysical worldviews, and far from being totally exclusive from one another, manage to have a consensus upon values such as solidarity, justice, self-restraint and generosity.

Conclusion Overlapping consensus is the most advanced agenda proposed by liberal political philosophy to back up theoretically the very concept of democratic society: society built upon the principle of equal concern and respect. What can endanger this consensus is politicization of some belief system. Politicization can trigger conflicts, also provoked by the strong orthodoxy held dear by fanatics, orthodoxy that so easily writes demarcation lines between puritans and heretics. The combination between politicization and orthodoxy leads to ethical homogenization, which, from the perspective of liberal political philosophy, blurs the distinction between an association and democratic society, between a society that is single-handedly run by a comprehensive doctrine and that which treats the whole society with equal concern and respect. In other words, ethical homogenization stands diametrically opposed to the liberal commitment to value pluralism. Historically, religion as summum bonum finds it difficult to develop an overlapping value consensus with other belief systems. However, value consensus between the Islamic and Javanese belief systems proved to be otherwise. What happened between them was not integration. It was an overlapping consensus as a social mechanism to maintain peace and stability. Consensus upon values such as solidarity, justice and selfrestraint shows how far Islam can walk hand-in-hand with the principle of value pluralism in a liberal society. The contemporary echo of this historical message is the need of orthodox Muslims to give up their ethical homogenization agenda and to focus instead on finding an overlapping value consensus with other belief systems within the framework of a democratic society.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND DEMOCRACY IN POST-SOEHARTO INDONESIA ROY VORAGEN

Pluralism and rational disagreement about the truth are common features in today’s societies. And Indonesia is no different from that perspective. Robert Hefner writes: “The question of how to achieve civility and inclusive citizenship in deeply plural societies is today a nearuniversal one.”1 In this chapter I explore the relationship between society and the state in post-Soeharto Indonesia. This should be a relationship of mutual reinforcement: for a society to be civilized it needs a strong liberal democratic state and for a state to be democratic it needs a civilized civil society. The intuition many hold is that pluralism in society is a destabilizing factor for democracy. The Freedom House president Karatnycky writes that “democracy has been significantly more successful in monoethnic societies than in ethnically divided and multiethnic societies.”2 Many political scientists and journalists alike agree that consensus and compromise are difficult to attain when a society is highly divided. Many Indonesians fear that the plurality of cleavages – ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious, political, ideological, economical – could cause disintegration or even a ‘Balkanization’.3 Fish and Brooks wrote an article titled “Does Diversity Hurt Democracy?” to test this intuition. Their conclusion is that “ethnic homogeneity is not associated with more open political regimes [… and]

 1

Robert W. Hefner, ed., The Politics of Multiculturalism, Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia (Honolulu: University Of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 4. 2 Adrian Karatnycky, “The 2001 Freedom House Survey, Muslim Countries and the Democracy Gap,” Journal of Democracy 13, no.1 (January 2002), 107; on 108 Indonesia is rated as partly free considering political rights and civil liberties. 3 See, for example, the interview with the head of the largest Muslim organization Nahdatul Ulama Hasyim Muzadi, “The country could disintegrate…,” Tempo, 14 August 2006, 20-3.

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the degree of diversity is not shown to influence democracy’s prospects.”4 Crawford Young concurs with this conclusion in a review on African identity politics. Young writes that “cultural pluralism alone is not the prime determinant [of conflict]; countries that have escaped disorder are no less diverse than those in which armed conflict has erupted.”5 While scholars might be honest in their intentions, it is the idea that diverse countries are unfit for democracy which is misused by autocratic rulers all over the world. Soeharto claimed that the ‘little people’ (wong cilik, rakyat or massa) are not capable of making prudent decisions. During Soeharto’s authoritarian New Order (Orde Baru) regime the ‘little people’ were the so-called ‘floating mass’ and this mass should stay as much as possible outside the political realm. This mass was – or is – seen as an irrational mass of people who cannot be trusted and who do not realize what is really in their interest. We should not be too fast in concluding that pluralism has a negative correlation with the prospects of democracy, but what about the relationship between Islam and democracy? The prospects of democracy, Samuel Huntington says, are bleak in countries with Muslim majorities,6 and he states culture as the reason for these bleak prospects.7 There are theological and sociological reasons to shed doubt on Huntington’s statement. The late scholar and rector of Paramadina University Nurcholish Madjid has tirelessly shown his fellow Indonesian Muslims that Islamic values are not static; for Madjid the door to ijtihâd or renewal needs to and can remain open.8 And for Madjid there are no theological reasons why Islam should be in contradiction with human rights, democracy, rule of law, civil society and tolerance. He writes that individual freedom and individuals with unalienable rights play an important role in Islam, and individual citizens can only live in freedom if and only if rulers and ruled

 4

M. Steven Fish and Robin S. Brooks, “Does Diversity Hurt Democracy?” Journal of Democracy 15, no.1 (January 2004), 160. 5 Crawford Young, “Deciphering Disorder in Africa: Is Identity the Key?” World Politics 54 (July 2002), 540. 6 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon Schuster, 1996), 193. 7 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave, Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 315. 8 Nurcholish Madjid, “The Necessity of Renewing Islamic Thought and the Problem of the Integration of the Ummah,” in The True Face of Islam, Essays on Islam and Modernity in Indonesia, eds. Rudy Harisyah Alam and Ihsan Ali-Fauzi (Jakarta: Voice Center Indonesia, 2003).

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are obliged by the same law, i.e. the rule of law. And Madjid writes that civil society, according to Islam, is a community where people obey the law and respect contracts made in mutual agreement.9 Another example is former president of the Indonesian Republic and former head of the largest Muslim organization Nahdatul Ulama (NU) K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid (better known as Gus Dur), who holds a similar intellectual position as Madjid (even though their socio-cultural backgrounds are very different). Gus Dur has shown over and over again that Islam is not monolithic and should not be hijacked by its most conservative elements. A third example is the Liberal Islam Network (‘Jaringan Islam Liberal – JIL’).10 It remains a question, though, how much influence these views have in Indonesia. Madjid has often been criticized by fellow Indonesian Muslims as a Zionist agent who wants to ruin Islam from within. Paramadina University used to conduct mixed marriages (in Indonesia couples should have the same religion), but under pressure this has been stopped. And not only was Gus Dur president for just a short period (1999-2001), but he lost influence within NU and its political vehicle PKB (‘Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa – National Awakening Party’) during the last few years of his life.11 Some of the neighbors of JIL are trying to get JIL evicted from their Utan Kayu base in East Jakarta, because JIL is supposedly untrue to Islam. In this perspective we can see the 2005 fatwa (religious decree) by the Indonesian Muslim Scholars Council (‘Majelis Ulama Indonesia – MUI’)12 declaring pluralism, liberalism and secularism haram (unlawful). K.H. Ma’ruf Amin is the chairman of the MUI fatwa committee and he is also a senior NU ulama (scholar). While MUI acknowledges that a plurality of religions is a fact of life in Indonesia, pluralism is unlawful, because pluralism denies religious truth by seeing religions on an equal



9 Nurcholish Madjid, “The Potential Islamic Doctrinal Resources for the Establishment and Appreciation of the Modern Concept of Civil Society,” in The True Face of Islam, Essays on Islam and Modernity in Indonesia, eds. Rudy Harisyah Alam and Ihsan Ali-Fauzi (Jakarta: Voice Center Indonesia, 2003), 299301. 10 See for numerous articles in English and Indonesian. 11 The top of NU at least seems to be more conservative now, but NU is no monolithic organization, see Suratno, “Structural and cultural conflict within NU,” The Jakarta Post, 24 May 2007, 7. 12 MUI is founded in 1975 by Soeharto, but it is not clear what the legal status is of the organization or its decrees, as Bowen asks: “Does an MUI decree have the force of law […], or is it only advisory to the government, and to Muslim citizens […]?” John R. Bowen, Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia, An Anthropology of Public Reasoning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 235.

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footing, hence relativism. Liberalism is declared unlawful because religion is not only based on freedom of thinking, but also on revelation. And third, secularism is declared unlawful because secularism cuts the world away from religion by limiting religion to the relationship between an individual and god.13 The liberal democratic state, though, does not promote secularization,14 or push religions into the private sphere, but gives room to all conceptions of the good life in general and all religions in particular (as long as the liberal democratic state is recognized as legitimate). The secular state is not allowed to force a conception of the good on society, nor is it allowed to force its citizens to believe in a certain way. A secular state should leave religion to society, and not necessarily seclude it to the private sphere. Beside religious reasons there are also historical reasons which can contradict the claim that Islam and democracy is not necessarily a good match in Indonesia. Just as Islam is not monolithic and just as the history of Muslims is not monolithic; the ways Muslims have organized their public life have always been pluralistic, in different ages and different areas different forms of organization have been implemented and Islamic statism/statehood/the Islamic state has been a rare exception. Just as the West, the Muslim world is very rich in its roots. Islam spread through the Indonesian archipelago not by force but “through commerce, urban growth, and a new cosmopolitan culture.”15 Commercial growth was a reason for traders to struggle to limit royal authority, but even during precolonial times legal codes were drawn on varied sources.16 The pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), as civil society organizations, can be found across the country and are a good example of a religious and educational network independent of the state. Almost a decade ago Soeharto stepped down. On May 21, 1998 presidential power was transferred to then vice-president B.J. Habibie, who called for new elections and a referendum in East Timor (now Timor Leste) to appease the pro-democracy demonstrators. Indonesia started on a



13 Pancasila, the Indonesian state ideology, states that Indonesia is neither a secular state nor a religious state. 14 Secularization is the process that less and less people intend to view themselves as part of a religion. And that they do not view themselves as part of a religion does not necessarily mean they are atheists. We can define religion as an institutionalized belief system. Madjid defines secularization as the desacralization of domains wrongly perceived as sacred. 15 Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam, Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 28. 16 Hefner, 29.

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long road of democratization, rule of law formation and decentralization; a road which slowly meanders to a yet unknown future. Since 1998 many changes have occurred in Indonesia. In this era – known as reformasi – Indonesians can elect not only their neighborhood chief but also their president (for the first time in 2004; in the second round Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won over Megawati Soekarnoputri, who had been the president since July 23, 2001 when Gus Dur was ousted from power). Indeed it is impressive to see how, for example, the 1945 constitution has been amended; it now includes almost the complete Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Australian Indonesianist Tim Lindsey concludes that Indonesia now embraces liberal democratic principles. He writes: “Yet within five years of the signing of the Bangkok Declaration [in 1993] Soeharto’s Asian values discourse was gone from Indonesian public life, as suddenly as the ‘old man’ himself. And within nine years, Indonesia had reconstructed its Rechtsstaat on liberal democratic principles.”17 Lindsey makes a point on the institutionalization of norms. But legal norms can be paper tigers; a law against discrimination, for example, is one thing but it is another thing for it to become part of the culture of the public sphere. The codification of liberal norms in positive laws does not necessarily cause more freedom or equality for all citizens in the polity. These norms should be embedded in civil society and enforced by a liberal-democratic state; and state and society should mutually reinforce one another. However, civil society is not per se civilized, “the mere facts of structural ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-organization’ that theorists and activists celebrate as the essence of civil society do not in any sense guarantee that the attitudes or actions of civil society groupings will be inclusive or democratic.”18 The political scientist Daniel Lev continues that “most professionals, NGO activists, and interested students presuppose that politics is fundamentally dangerous, amoral, corrupting, and well worth avoiding.” Lev claims that this is the reason that “there is no bridge between political power and reform activism.”19 Freedom does not mean that the state should be absent in society. The state has to guarantee every one’s freedom. The state should guarantee everybody’s equal right to

 17

Tim Lindsey, “Indonesia, Devaluing Asian Values, Rewriting Rule of Law,” in Asian Discourses on Rule of Law, Theories and Implementation of Rule of Law in twelve Asian Countries, France, and the U.S., ed. Randall Peerenboom (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 286-7. 18 Hefner, The Politics of Multiculturalism, 9-10; also 47. 19 Daniel S. Lev, “Law and State in Indonesia,” Jentera Jurnal Hukum 8, no.3 (March 2005), 88.

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freedom by restraining its own actions, but, sometimes, also by limiting the actions of some citizens against other citizens; thus when some members of society refuse to be civilized by threatening the freedom of others, the state has the duty to protect and prosecute. When something unlawful occurs it should be the state’s monopoly to act upon it and guarantee a fair trial, i.e. no one is allowed to take the law into his or her own hands. Democracy does not only mean elections, but also that citizens behave civilly and tolerate differences, so all citizens are able to enjoy their equal right to freedom.20 Democracy does not only mean that citizens are a floating mass of spectators and only have to get out of their comfortable sofa once in a while to vote for a neighborhood chief or presidential candidate. Democracy also means that citizens have to act in a democratic spirit; democracy cannot survive without people behaving civilly. Citizens should tolerate differences and thus pluralism – pluralism is an empirical given citizens have to cope with. Pluralism and rational disagreement about the truth are common features in today’s societies,21 and from this follows the need for the virtue of civil tolerance (i.e. there is no need for tolerance if there are no differences). To define civil society in opposition to the state fits two trends. First, in post-authoritarian states, like the post-communist states in Eastern Europe, there is a widespread distrust of the state, its institutions and its representatives. And this fits with a second, global trend: general confidence in governments seems to be declining. Citizens tend to become cynical about politics when they believe that politicians promise more than they can deliver, that politicians are in politics to serve their own interests, and that politicians only can get involved in politics if they are part of an old-boys network and not because they possess the required talents to serve the public. Where the state and its government are widely regarded as illegitimate, it is unlikely that democracy will grow strong roots in the society of a post-authoritarian state.22 When public means are often used for private instead of common ends, for personal gain instead of, for example, relieving poverty, politicians will be seen as a self-serving and

 20

Herbert L.A. Hart, “Are there any Natural Rights?” The Philosophical Review 65, no.2 (April 1955), 175-6. 21 Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 50-1. 22 Larry Diamond, “What Civil Society can do to Reform, Deepen, and Improve Democracy,” paper presented to the workshop on Civil Society, Social Capital, and Civic Engagement in Japan and the United States, Tokyo, 12-13 June 2001, (24 December 2008).

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unresponsive class instead of representing the citizenry. The illegitimacy that comes with corruption, collusion and nepotism (in Indonesia known as KKN) can be overcome in a long established democracy with a strong and independent judiciary (France is an example), but that could be entirely different in a young democracy. The legal ontology that the ‘ought’ of liberal legal institutions is connected to the ‘is’ of the empirical reality is at the least naïve. An antidiscrimination law, for example, can be a good start to eradicate discrimination in society to set out a norm and a penalty when this norm is trespassed, but society and culture cannot be engineered just by means of legal norms and an enforcement apparatus. Institutions are not enough. What is seemingly done with liberal intentions can have illiberal consequences, which should not come as a surprise when we realize that in Indonesia no major political party is based on a liberal ideology with an agenda promoting rule of law formation.23 While decentralization is often coupled with democratization, it is not always the case that decentralization leads to more democracy.24 Decentralization can also be undertaken for the reason of holding on to a network one has (this could have been the reason behind the decision of Habibie to push for decentralization legislation), and decentralization can therefore lead to the strengthening of anti-democratic power holders at the local level.25 In the ‘third wave’ literature it seems as if transition is an irreversible process from A to B.26 Hadiz and Robinson claim, though, that Indonesia is no longer in transition, they write: “The pervasiveness of money politics – and political violence – in post-New Order politics should not be understood as the

 23

Vedi R. Hadiz, “Reconsidering the Idea of ‘Democratic Transition’ in Indonesia,” in Indonesia’s Post Soeharto Democracy Movement, eds. Stanley A. Prasetyo, A.E. Priyono and Olle Törnquist (Jakarta: Demos, 2003), 113; and Vedi R. Hadiz, “Power and Politics in North Sumatra, The Uncompleted Reformasi,” in Local Power and Politics in Indonesia, Decentralisation and Democratisation, eds. Edward Aspinall and Greg Fealy (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003), 121. One exception is the United Democratic Nationhood Party (‘Partai Persatuan Demokrasi Kebangsaan – PPDK’) founded by Ryaas Rasyid en Andi Alfian Mallarangeng, the latter quit the party when it decided to support Gen. (ret.) Wiranto’s bid to become president for Golkar (‘Partai Golongan Karya’, formerly Soeharto’s party). 24 Henk Schulte Nordholt, “Renegotiating boundaries, Access, agency and identity in post-Suharto Indonesia,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 159 (2003), 551. 25 Hadiz, “Reconsidering the Idea of ‘Democratic Transition’ in Indonesia,” 113; and Hadiz, “Power and Politics in North Sumatra,” 130. 26 Schulte Nordholt, “Renegotiating boundaries,” 551.

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mere growing pains of a slowly maturing liberal democracy. Instead, they are more fundamentally inherent to the logic of power relations that define an illiberal form of democracy already consolidated and entrenched.”27 But perhaps it is still too early to draw this conclusion.28 Below in more detail are three examples of how Indonesian society is at times uncivil. The Front for the Defense of Islam (‘Front Pembela Islam – FPI’) is a good example of an uncivilized civil society organization. FPI was established on August 17, 1998, the first Independence Day in the postSoeharto era, by Al-Habib Rizieq Shihab. The FPI fights, so goes the claim, vice and sin by cracking down on cafés, nightclubs and discos in the Ramadan period. FPI has also blocked several Christian houses of worship; FPI justifies this by claiming that these buildings are used as churches while lacking the proper permits (houses of worship should be built with the explicit consent of local administration heads and residents of the surrounding area). FPI and others see a conspiracy of Kristenisasi by the spread of Christian institutions.29 Islam specialist Martin van Bruinessen claims that FPI is “more like a mob for hire than a genuine Islamic movement.”30 State representatives justify their inaction by claiming that no violence is used. But obstructing other people from acting is illegitimate. Azyumardi Azra, former rector of Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in Jakarta, said that this is encouraged by the “almost complete absence of law enforcement and, worse still, impunity.” And “the law enforcement vacuum has been an important raison d’être for certain radical groups to take the law into their own hands through unlawful activities.”31 Azra’s conclusion: Indonesia is turning into a

 27

Vedi R. Hadiz and Richard Robison, “Neo-Liberal Reforms and Illiberal Consolidations, The Indonesian Paradox,” The Journal of Development Studies 41, no.2 (February 2005), 231. 28 Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13, no.1 (January 2002), 14. 29 Martin van Bruinessen, “Post-Soeharto Muslim Engagements with Civil Society and Democratization,” in Indonesia in Transition, Rethinking Civil Society, Region, and Crisis, eds. Hanneman Samuel and Henk Schulte Nordholt (Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2004), 39. 30 Martin van Bruinessen, “Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism in post-Suharto Indonesia,” South East Asia Research 10, no.2 (2002), 148. An interesting question then would be to find out who is ordering and paying for their services, if we can answer this question we can get a clearer picture of a power network in current Indonesia. 31 Azyumardi Azra, “Islamic radical movements in Indonesia,” The Jakarta Post, 30 December 2005, 15.

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‘mobocracy’.32 And worse yet: the ones who are attacked are blamed for inciting social disorder. Decentralization does not necessarily lead toward more democracy, let alone liberal democracy, and Hadiz claims that decentralization has been captured by predatory interests of “individuals and groups who had earlier functioned as the local operators and apparatchik of the previous New Order.”33 Decentralization gives these individuals and groups the institutional context to work at a local level, but these individuals and groups are willing to mobilize their power base or hire support when favored outcomes cannot be reached through institutionalized means. Hadiz speaks therefore of the militarization of society.34 Ryter describes how this works in Medan, the capital of North Sumatra, where, according to him, a ‘bad boy democracy’ flourishes.35 In Medan preman (literally a free man but with the connotation of an outlaw) and groups such as Pemuda Pancasila (officially a youth organization, but generally seen as a government backed group of thugs or paramilitary organization) run gambling, drugs trafficking and prostitution, but are also for hire for extralegal political handiwork. In the post-Soeharto era youth organizations adapted to the new multi-party system by supporting different parties (but sometimes (members of) youth organizations switch sides when the opportunity calls for it) to intimidate by number.36 Another example is how the free press is treated in the democratization and civil society literature. The press is seen as a necessary component of democracy. While ideally speaking this holds true, the reality is often all too different. In what legal-political context does the press operate? And are the media civil? According to Reporters Without Borders the press in Indonesia is “one of the freest in South-East Asia.”37 But Binsar Gultom, a judge at the Ad-Hoc Human Rights Court in Jakarta, speaks of the criminalization of the press when instead of the Press Law the Criminal Code is used, which has as its consequence that journalists can be jailed

 32

T. Sima Gunawan., “Law enforcement vital to ending moral mobocracy,” The Jakarta Post, 26 April 2006, 2. 33 Vedi R. Hadiz, “Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia, A Critique of Neo-Institutionalist Perspectives,” Development and Change 35, no.4 (2004), 711. 34 Hadiz, “Power and Politics in North Sumatra,” 129 35 Loren Ryter, “A Tale of Two Cities,” Inside Indonesia 63 (2000). 36 Loren Ryter, “Reformasi Gangsters, Preman have had to change to stay in business,” Inside Indonesia 82 (2005). 37 Reporters Without Borders, “Indonesia, annual report 2007,”