اهمیت گفت‌وگوهای فرهنگی در روزگار ما از منظر فلسفه

فلسفه به‌عنوان یک شیوه تفکر ماحصل تمدن یونان است

Hans Christian Günther

The philosophical significance of the dialogue of cultures today

1. The present situation of the world

Today's world is very different from how it was for the largest part of human history. Even the word ,world‘ has a quite different significance today from what it meant in other epochs in human history. What we conceive as the world today was once divided into several worlds with no or slight interaction between them. For people 2000 years ago the world was a realm with their culture or the culture of a dominating power as the centre and adjacent cultures at the outskirts. Interaction with cultures further away was scarce, knowledge of the attitudes, the way of live, the way of thinking of such cultures was extremely scarce.
The world as a whole was only opened up when Europe acquired more and more the technical means to first explore and later dominate literally the whole world. With European domination even the oldest and for a long time most powerful cultural centre China was reduced to scrap.
Thus with European colonialism the whole world was opened up, so to speak, physically. But this physically open world was practically dominated by one part of it, by one culture. Despite the fact that the European powers had to deal until WWI with one strong non European empire, the Turkish one, it was European culture that was imposed on the world, other cultures were, if not completely destroyed, sidelined. Europe really became what china once claimed for itself, it became the centre of the world. However, in order to understand today's world we should remember there were two cultures, not only one in human history that developed a centrist world view: China and Europe. Eurocentrism dominated the world until most recently, however Sinocentrism begins to take centre stage in the world right now.
I said Eurocentrism dominated the world until today, however, after WWII with the gradual decline of colonialism Eurocentrism became more and more a European presumption and has today become a European illusion. After the fall of the last colonial empire, the SU, the world was rapidly absorbing a change that had been prepared already before: the third world asserted and asserts itself ever more. First of all it acquired more and more economic and political power. Third world countries acquired nuclear weapons, the economy of several countries expanded ever more. Not only did China develop into the world's second superpower; India became one of the worlds largest economic powers, Indonesia and south east Asia developed into an ever greater economic powerhouse, and so did Brazil. The economic balance ever more shifts away from Europe; projections foresee that in 2050 only two western powers will remain in the group of the 10 largest economic powers, the US and Germany. The latter will just occupy place 10.
This shift of power inevitably forces Europe to confront itself with the various non-European cultures of the world. Despite all efforts to still impose on the world in various ways European culture as the supposedly most advanced culture it becomes more and more obvious that this is a futile exercise. Everyone who has a brain must see that in today's world a eurocentred worldview is simply not doing justice to the new reality of a not only physically but culturally open world. And this insight is crucial for the survival of mankind because Eurocentrism is misused by political power interests of the old establishment of world politics. If we do not oppose without compromise eurocentred thinking we fall not only into an intellectual trap we fall into the trap of people who inundate the world with violence and war of never seen dimensions. Since the invention of nuclear weapons violence threatens the existence of mankind as a whole, and the new generation of high tech weapons has opened up a new chapter in warfare once again. Nuclear balance at least reduced violent conflict drastically by the balance of lethal power. High tech weapons made war again possible to a much higher degree than before and with hitherto unknown destructive power. The violence thus unleashed upon the world implies the danger of an explosion of violence which could destroy the world more than ever before. In order to cope with this situation a new way of approaching cultural differences, a new way of thought that does justice to the actual state of the world is more than only an intellectual necessity.
2. Philosophy as a way of thought shaped by Ancient Greek civilization and its earlier ramifications
Philosophy is a Greek word. Thus it denoted originally the way of thinking of ancient Greek civilization. European thought - despite various important influences, more or less easily compatible with the Greek way of thought - descends from Ancient Greek philosophy and has not shed until now the basic assumptions of Greek thought.
With the domination of European civilization over the world, European thought began to dominate the world too. In fact, it dominated it so much that philosophy is used to denote also the thinking of other cultures. The representatives of other cultures as a rule do not object to western people using this word for their thought, thus it seems to me they do not realize that using this word western people impose upon other ways of thinking European concepts; and even more than that: even members of other cultures take over European models of describing the texts of their tradition of thought by European concepts.
Ancient Greek thought has its roots in the thought of non European middle eastern cultures. We don't know so much about the thought of these cultures as we know about Greek thought, but whatever this influences may have brought to Greek thought, the Greeks developed a way of thought which they called philosophy that shows a very specific way of reasoning and is based on very specific basic assumptions that we tend to take as a matter of course but which are far from being so.
Greek thought interacted in the course of time with that of other cultures, namely Judaism, it was transformed by Roman culture, but the major challenge came with the integration of Christianity, as many key elements of Christianity were incompatible with the Greek world view. In fact the problems posed by the Hellenization of Christianity remained a challenge and key element in European philosophy until the present day. Modern European philosophy is indelibly marked by the inner tension opening up in late antiquity and dominating medieval philosophy between Christianity and Greek thought.
However, we should not forget that Greek philosophy was absorbed too by the Muslim world. There it was reshaped in order to fit the tenets of Muslim religion similarly to what the fathers of the Christian church did in late antiquity. Only in its Islamic transformation did Greek philosophy originally begin to exercise a genuine influence on medieval European thought. In any case, Greek thought interacted in parallel ways with the three great abrahamitic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It shaped the thought of the cultures created by these religions and played an important role in the dialogue between these religions. This dialogue defined the concepts of these religions in their similarities and differences.
Thus it can be said that European and Jewish culture shaped themselves in a productive interaction with Islam. European culture was created long before it began to dominate the whole world as a mixture of Greek philosophy with the abrahamitic religions and thus with cultures originating from the periphery of the realm of Europe.
After the violent removal of Islamic domination of a part of European lands by the Arabs in Spain the close interaction between European culture and Islam was interrupted and Islam drew away from its Hellenization in its high medieval philosophical thought, shaped by Greek metaphysics. It rather developed into a return to theology, i.e. Interpretation of its religious tradition, mainly the Quran and the tradition about the life of the prophet. This interpretation was different from Christian theology in method as Islamic theology was dominated more by concentrating on creating a legal system of precepts for the life of the believer, from the divine law, sharia, not so much on developing a system of metaphysical description of the divine in its relation to the world. Beside developing a system of divine and human law there was however in Iran always a great tradition of mystical, even metaphysical thought. But thus an ever bigger cultural divide opened up between the Christian occident and the Muslim world, both now mainly closed in themselves. Still Islam and Christian Europe share common roots and were indelibly marked by a common denominator. Only that Europe developed this once common denominator further, Islam rather moved away from it.
3. Some remarks on the history of post medieval European interaction with non European cultures
As I have said above the intense dialugue of Christianity with Islam and Judaism ended more or less with the Middle Ages. Saying this I want however point out that Islam contributed much more to European culture than Judaism. To speak of common Christian - Jewish values is - in view of Europe's treatment of the Jews - cynical nonsense. People of Jewish descent contributed and contribute until the present a lot to European culture, but Judaism as a religion, based on the Talmud, fairly little.
With the European exploration and later colonization Europe came already in the early modern age in contact with far away cultures which was not only a negative one. Already the missionary efforts of the Jesuits in east Asia contributed much to Europeans being exposed to the great cultural traditions of east Asia. Even though the Jesuit missionaries under Franz Xavier started out with the idea to convert primitive foreign tribes Xavier in Japan and Jesuit missionaries in china immediately realized, when confronted with Japanese and Chinese culture that these cultures were far from primitive, their efforts to blend Christianity with Chinese and Japanese traditions were not only intellectually remarkable, they were highly successful too. Moreover Jesuits did a lot to research Chinese history and culture, their scholarly efforts are important and not fully exploited even in modern research; Jesuits and their institutions are until the present day important in researching Japanese religiosity.
Influenced from his knowledge of Chinese culture and thought via the Jesuits Leibnitz went as far as to claim Chinese superiority in ethics whereas European thought was superior for him in analytical thinking.
The Jesuit endeavor had and has a lasting influence on European appreciation of foreign cultures, even though there was a backlash first when the Jesuits' concept of mission was disapproved by the church, the greatest obstacle to approach foreign cultures with understanding and respect was Europe's glorious enlightenment. The enlightenment's recurse to reason as opposed to traditional religion is the unreflected recurse to what European philosophy in the Greek tradition called reason. This purely European concept of thought was without any further reflection taken as universally valid. When the enlightenment was confronted with other cultures it did not take the trouble to investigate these cultures but made their concepts of reason the yardstick of a judgement and judged other cultures as inferior. In combination with the rise of empirical science thus the enlightenment was the father of racism stricto sensu.
And it is precisely this attitude of the enlightenment that dominates European thought up to the present day: Europe still has not realized that it simply universalizes one concept of thought that is based on certain arbitrary assumptions. Thus Europe not only is in for a clash with other cultures Europe deprives itself of a chance to advance its culture and thought by opening up the merits of other approaches to the world.
In fact this is a constantly overlooked reason for Europe's decline in the world of today. Other cultures have long begun to adapt the merits of the specifically European approach to the world. Europe's great achievement is modern science and technology. This achievement bestowed on Europe its leading role in the world. In the meantime Europe is rivaled in technical progress and invention by Asian countries. Moreover, no country in the world would deny that it wants and must try to adopt the advantages of European science and technology. Science and technology are in the limits of their scope universally true. However this truth is a very specific truth, I would call it factual truth. More precisely a factual truth achieved by a technical view of the world, i.e. a view whose ultimate scope and yardstick is to observe how the world functions and to make it function according to these observations.
This technical world view is based on a fundamental approach of Ancient Greek thought tot he world.
However, as a truth of empirical science this truth is purely factual, it tells us only how things are, and what factual possibilities we have to handle them, it tells us nothing about how we should or how we want to handle these facts and our lives.
If we realize that the lasting achievement of philosophy in the Greek - European sense is modern science and technology we must realize the following facts too: European thought must change if it wants to address and thus be relevant to our lives and its questions today. It can only change if it realizes its limitations; its limitations it realizes if it goes back to its roots, its beginning, to the inexplicit assumptions on which it is based. Assumptions never fully reflected in their arbitrary nature because precisely these arbitrary basic assumptions lead to the limitations of the result of western thought. This way back to the beginning, the arché of western philosophy has been demanded by Martin Heidegger. If we thus fully realize the limitations of our approach to the world we become open to appreciate other ways of thought, as Heidegger put it: our beginning opens itself to the other great beginnings. Reserving the Greek word philosophy for the Greek - western way of thought he called his thinking not any longer philosophy but thought, as he acknowledged the otherness of the way of thinking of other cultures by not calling it philosophy as we still do today but calling it thought.
4. What are the requirements of a genuine dialogue of cultures
As I have briefly sketched above Europe was confronted first with the thought of cultures at its outskirts, namely from the Semitic area, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Europe and these cultures cross fertilized each other, thus both the modern way of European thought is shaped by this encounter as vice verse Judaism and Islam are influenced by European patterns of thought. However, modern Islam and modern Judaism in this exchange strongly shaped themselves in contrast to Europe. A confrontation of modern Europe with Judaism and Islam - if it should be fruitful - should confront Judaism and Islam precisely in their otherness, because only in its otherness we can profit from them. But although such a dialogue with Judaism and Islam would be easier than with cultures further away from Europe because of many commonly developed elements this dialogue does not take place: Europe refuses to take Islam in its otherness seriously, Europe either rejects Islam outright or it tries to assimilate it or find the common elements in order to make it acceptable.
Europe cynically stresses today Judeo-Christian values, in order to wipe out its antisemitic past, however genuine Judaism never finds any attention. The ignorance is so great that this very fact is not even in the conscience of Europe. Saecular Zionism has succeeded to such a degree to push genuine Jewish religiosity to the fringes and now even create a pervert travesty of Jewish religiosity that the genuine followers of the orthodox Jewish religion are branded as ultra - orthodox and pushed in a corner. Despite the efforts of a great 20th Century philosopher like Martin Buber nobody today even knows that Jewish Haredi and Hasidic thought after centuries of neglect is still all to be discovered. If Europe had learned from its horrible antisemitic past we should - in Germany in particular - revive Yiddish studies and do research on the great mystical tradition of medieval Judaism and of Hasidic Judaism in Central Europe, rather than show our adulation to the Zionist perversion of Judaism.
Such a dialogue with Judaism and Islam could equip us better to appreciate other, more distant cultures of the world in their otherness.
It's the fatal heritage of enlightenment that Europe still - even people sincerely willing to engage in dialogue with other cultures - unconsciously misunderstand other cultures by applying to them the yardstick of European thought.
In the past this lead to describing non European traditions of thought as deficient if they did not conform to European thought; thus Indian thought was not philosophy but wisdom in the sense of an exotic and such interesting kind of religious and mystical thinking which however lacked reason and thus could of course not seriously be as important as European philosophy. Chinese or Japanese culture could be appreciated as possessing a valuable set of role models for moral behavior or a fascinatingly different art. Today the danger is rather more that people genuinely interested in a dialogue with these cultures still look above all for the similarities with our way of thought. We try to rationalize other ways of thought according to our limited concept of reason. We do this because we still think what it not rational is irrational, whereas our reason is simple one concept of thinking, other ways of thinking are neither reasonable nor unreasonable, they are simply different. And it's precisely that what we need: we need that what is different.
Thus what we need for a genuine dialogue is: to appreciate the other in its otherness. Both sides in such a dialogue should try to enter the way of thinking of the other and not impose on it their own way of reasoning. Such a dialogue can only happen if it's a dialogue eye to eye, not one in which one side - or indeed both partners - treat the other from above. In such a dialogue there is no place for such notions as modern, outdated, primitive, medieval, enlightened, fundamentalist etc. Cultural chauvinism, religious prejudice have no place here. Other cultures have all their particular prejudices to overcome, Europeans simply have to realize that of course being able to build planes and space shuttles is a great achievement but it's not all that counts in human life: the culture or Australian indigenous people surely cannot pride itself of these obviously impressive achievements, however it's more than likely that this culture knows of other ways of living in harmony with nature, we have forgotten or never knew, ways of living in harmony with nature that should be of interest to us today where our lost balance with nature begins to show its disastrous consequences. Lifelong study of the Quran or the Talmud at the expense of all other activities will not result in new technology for building smarter robots or more comfortable forms of transport, but could it not fill the acutely felt lack of sense and direction in our lives, that manifests itself in western society by its being prone to falling for new dubious religions and fake pseudo spirituality? Asking these questions shows: the dialogue of culture leads us right in the middle of the burning problems of our times. Genuine intercultural dialogue and only such a dialogue will restore our thinking - or if you want to use this word - philosophy to what Greek philosophy once was: a guide to the good way of life.