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PARTISAN REVIEW
we are different. I must respect you . I must respect your differ–
ence. That's very important, when discussing sex and love and
cultures.
MCP:
I think so . And I think that one of the most terrible problems
one sees on every level of society is the built-in need for what I
would characterize as a slave-master relationship.
It
seems that
the world cannot get itself out of this pattern .
OP:
Yes , but Western civilization did not create this slave-tyrant
bond. The West invented anthropology. The Greeks, the Romans,
the Chinese were scornful of other civilizations . But Westerners
have preferred to try to find great qualities in other cultures . You
know we shouldn't be so ashamed of Western civilization. Don't
you think? I have been trying to defend it.
MCP:
There has been a rather strong fascination with the Far East
and with India recently in the West, and a turning from our own
culture.
OP:
Well , the West is hesitant , because we have done terrible things
in the last hundred years.
MCP:
But America escaped this sense of being responsible for the
horrors of the two wars .
OP:
The Americans have a beautiful sense, a great anthropological
sense . But Americans have the problem of the barbarians , of be–
coming civilized. To be civilized is to be old . To have a land
which is identified with the past . And they are newcomers to a
new land. When the Germans arrived in America after the Sec–
ond World War, they brought their history, but when the Puri–
tans arrived in America, they were escaping history and arrived to
no history, to before history , to a country without history. They
were escaping European history and arrived in a country without
history . The people who were there before them were nomadic
people, the Indian tribes. And this has been the great problem of
the United States, this wish to escape history. That's why I am
truly fascinated with the United States .
It
is a society founded
(and it still is) against history, outside history. The Puritans founded
the United States in a religious way. Then the founding fathers
tried to build a moral society which would escape the destiny of
Western society, the monarchy, intolerance. They wanted to live
outside history. But you cannot live outside history. That's why
they have this ingenuity, this kind of great generosity - and at the
same time a sort of incomprehension . I admire the Americans for
having been able to solve, more or less, their domestic problems. I
