The problem

FEW today question that the urgency of moral togetherness and possibility of interculturality poses one of the most difficult problems of our times. For all contemporary societies, dialogue with other cultures and religions is becoming an ever more important focus of research. In a world so profoundly divided by different forms of fanaticism, intolerance and violence, a world torn by seemingly irreconcilable divergences, a world where grand narratives to explain things are no longer available and all explanations appear seemingly valid, how can one not turn to dialogue among cultures as a task and not as a given.

Finding values that bind rather than divide is an art. Neither words, nor cultures that use them are innocent. They are as capable of starting wars as they are of making peace. However, nothing is more important in learning to live with others than our ability to listen to and talk. As such, elevating the quality of listening and learning in and among cultures is a key to solving humanity’s most pressing problems. It is an ideal, like so many others, that we seldom take seriously. Yet, even as dialogue among cultures has become one of the keywords in the global discourse on issues of cultural globalization and international conflict resolution, it has seldom been seriously investigated.

Interculturality like democracy is an ideal worth striving for. Like a torch in a relay marathon, the process of civilization has been passed on from hand to hand, from one culture to another. Though the vision of modernity might appear to many as the final triumph of civilization in the singular, understood as a global projection of western culture, it would nevertheless be philosophically more adequate and ontologically legitimate to highlight the need in human history for a genuine pluri-civilizational approach.

It goes without saying that the internal pluralistic dynamic of modernity suggests a self-problematizing, self-questioning and self-transformative cultural space opened up by democratic transformations. There is no denying that modern civilization has very often been rightly equated with the notions of progress, enlightenment and universalism. But this does not mean that modernity remains a monolithic and undisputed cultural terrain.

Though modernity may be seen as a distinct form of civilization and a new historical experience with a huge capacity for rational domination of nature and mastery of mankind alongside political expansion and violence, one needs simultaneously to focus on the modern vision of human autonomy which finds its expression in demands for the democratization of social and political relations. This double dynamic of modernity was translated on the one hand into new strategies of accumulation of wealth and expansion of power embodied in capitalist economy and gave birth on the other hand to a self-creative and self-transforming capacity within the modern West.

We can, therefore, consider modernity as an open-ended horizon which has engendered spaces to interpret modernity in multiple ways. As such the current state of the plurality and diversity of identities and practices in modern world can be emphasized as the consequence of the openness of modernity to different interpretations. Equally, it can be seen as an indication of the existence of multiple modernities. Thus, instead of speaking of ‘modernity’ in the singular, we should better speak of ‘modernity’ in plural.

If this perspective of diversity in unity of modernity is right, then we can see to what extent a Eurocentric model of modernity is condemned to fail in a multicultural world where a will to modernize is always accompanied by a call to difference. If plurality of modernity remains an incontestable fact, we need to think beyond the monistic conceptualization of modernity as a movement from plural cultures and traditions of mind to singular modernity. If this argument is correct, the notions of unilinear globalization and singular worldization too are unacceptable. A pluralistic conception of modernity implies a plural conception of globality based on difference of traditions and diversity of cultures. This means at the same time that the pluralistic idea of civilization tends to set the scene for a border crossing between multiple centres and the world-constitutive capacity of a global process gives way to a trans-civilizational dynamic and a growing awareness of the complex interrelationship between cultural and religious traditions of thought. This is an awareness of a diversified world and, above all, to a sort of faith in the capacity of dialogue to forge a plural world with plural voices.

We need to keep this last point in mind since it bears directly on questions concerning the idea of an ‘intercultural citizenship’, namely a sense of belonging to a global community and the duties and responsibilities that this entails. As such, intercultural citizenship is a different name for interchange of opinions among different cultural actors. It is this interchange that promotes plurality and human solidarity. This sense of global togetherness is confirmed by the idea of cross-cultural thinking and acting. Such a capacity for interaction and exchange can be perceived as a sense of the universality of humankind. As Seneca says, ‘The gods had distributed their goods unequally over the surface of the globe so as to drive men to communicate with one another.’ Consequently, we are capable of overcoming our cultural ‘egoism’ and of including the point of view of other cultures within our sense of belonging to the human race.

The intercultural approach to the ideas of civilization and citizenship is a pluralist attitude that refrains from monolithic moralizing and gestures instead towards a comfort with difference, alterity and otherness, enabling us to discuss the idea of equality of cultures without being accused of cultural relativism. Understanding that the world is composed of different and interrelated cultures is a way to achieve a cross-cultural plurality beyond the clash of intolerances. Understanding other cultures and learning from them is a crucial aid to understanding and evaluating one’s own. The capacity to engage constructively with conflicting values is an essential component of practical wisdom and empathetic pluralism in the process of intercultural dialogue. Empathy, contrary to sympathy or compassion, demands that an individual vicariously share in the thoughts and feelings of the other and temporarily become the other. Therefore, the first step to achieve an intercultural dialogue is to assume that not only are there differences between people, cultures, and political or social conditions, but also that people may have different value systems which need to be understood and approached critically.

Interestingly enough, that norms and rules of all peoples have hitherto in fact been a symbiosis of historical contingencies and cultural struggles attests to the notion that one can achieve global belonging – if not understand the many-faceted question of diversity – by exploring, cultivating, and articulating the conditions of intercultural mutuality and reciprocity. More clearly, intercultural solidarity is a dynamic political and ethical balance between the intercultural imperative and the principle of the recognition of difference. Simply put, cross-border support and tolerance suggests a level of ‘epistemic humility’ as the ground for political and ethical intercultural projects. Put differently, humility translates to dialogical interculturality as a global project, which cannot be thought of in terms of cultural relativism but as a new mode of projecting and imagining, ethically and politically, global togetherness.

Certainly, this is an argument in favour of a farsighted cross-cultural dialogue which seriously advocates solidarity beyond national selfishness and global exclusion. The basis for genuine interculturality, in which both cultural and individual identity is enhanced rather than threatened, is a recognition of the need and value of ‘living together’. The challenge facing our plural world, therefore, is not to oppose cultures and traditions, but to start from the principle that each culture contributes a part of the whole. We all live with the objective of being a part of humanity. We think that our destinies are all different, and yet they are the same.

RAMIN JAHANBEGLOO