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Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy Volume 12: Intercultural Philosophy Introduction Stephen Dawson and Tomoko Iwasawa One truly significant development in scholarship in recent decades has been the maturing of intercultural studies. Intercultural studies in philosophy have their origins in the comparative study of religions that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pioneering practitioners include Max Müller, E. B. Tylor, and James Frazer among others. By the second half of the twentieth century, these traditions were further refined and extended by such notable figures as Gerardus van der Leeuw and Mircea Eliade. However, acceptance of what is now called "intercultural philosophy" was not immediately forthcoming. In 1962, Edward Conze observed that the "rapid growth of communications has brought Eastern and Western cultures face to face. So far European, and particularly British, philosophers have reacted by becoming more provincial than ever before." Although Conze believed philosophers could not remain provincial forever, he allowed that in his day the omens were "most unpropitious." His point was not that Western philosophy should simply include non-Western philosophers in the conversion (i.e., by merely determining where non-Western philosophers fit on the Western philosophical grid) but, rather, that non-Western philosophies, beyond their own intrinsic worth, would provide a valuable service to Western philosophy by exposing its "latent presuppositions" to sustained examination and questioning. Put differently, if the activity of philosophy is understood as public discourse in a community of inquiry, then the philosophical conversation of mankind could only be enriched by inclusion of other voices. The Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy (Boston, 1998) presented a far more propitious occasion for over 3,500 philosophers from nearly one hundred different countries to meet in Boston and to engage constructively in dialogue with one another. In the "Series Introduction" to the Congress Proceedings, the organizers of the Twentieth World Congress observe that a threshold was crossed in Boston: No longer would it be possible for philosophers from one part of the world to claim that their tradition represents philosophy, while the work done by others is dismissed as some other kind of activity. One would be amiss, however, to attribute the increasing amount of attention paid to non-Western philosophies solely to the good will of kind-hearted Western philosophers. Rather, the forces of globalization (which Conze in his day heard noisily assembling outside the gates) have now breached the citadel of Western philosophy. Globalization is a notoriously elusive term that resists easy definition. For the purposes of this Introduction, "globalization" (a process which Anthony Giddens argues is inherent to modernity) denotes the growing interconnectedness of states and societies that issue forth as multiple and rapid networks, interaction, and coordination. Examples of globalization include the global economic system, global networks of communication and transgovernmental interaction, and forms of multilateral diplomacy and regulation that restrict the policies available to governments and citizens. Globalization presents a Janus-faced challenge to global order insofar as the process of globalizing presents new opportunities as well as unparalleled risks: the prospects for a new, cosmopolitan global order move in the same currents that threaten to subsume existing political regimes (e.g., democracies). On the basis of the essays collected in the present volume, we can discern two broad consequences of globalization for philosophy. The first is that intercultural philosophy (as opposed to, say, "analytic" philosophy or "Asian" philosophy) is uniquely positioned to shed new light on perennial philosophical problems for the reason already mentioned above: the pursuit of philosophical truth can be advanced, not hindered, by the expansion of the philosophical community of inquiry. Second, globalization itself presents new problems for philosophy to address, especially in the areas of social and political philosophy. The philosophers in this volume, though differing with respect to analysis and prescription, agree generally that philosophy has an important public role in contemporary discussions regarding globalization and its effects. As has already been noted, the origins of intercultural philosophy are found in the comparative study of religions. In 1961, Mircea Eliade, a significant contributor to the development of the comparative study of religions, maintained in his essay, "History of Religions and a New Humanism," that scholars who study religions comparatively must understand the inner meaning of religion; that is, they must not only reconstruct the history of a religious form or bring out its sociological, economic, or political contexts, but, rather, they must "identify and elucidate the situations and positions that have induced or made possible its appearance or its triumph at a particular historical moment." Influenced by this hermeneutic insight, the comparative study of religions during the past few decades has emphasized "thick descriptions" (Clifford Geertz's phrase) of various religious and philosophical traditions so that such "descriptions" can elucidate the inner structures that define each tradition at a deeper level of consciousness. One may view the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy as the deepening of "thick descriptions" in the realm of intercultural studies. The scope of analysis has been extended from the historical, sociological, and political contexts to the more basic strata such as language and logical structures that seem to determine uniquely the ways of thinking of people who belong to different religious and philosophical traditions. For instance, it has been argued that the problems of Western philosophy dealing with universals and particulars, essences or mental objects, are foreign to Eastern philosophy, and that this difference between East and West may be ascribed to their different developmental stages of consciousness. Now a new theory proposes that the philosophical issues peculiar to Western philosophy can be considered the result of their language structures. Stated more generally, people's ways of thinking, i.e., their logical patterns, are inescapably related to their linguistic structures. If this theory is correct, then we may have to admit that even the concept of reality, i.e., the concept of how to relate oneself to an external world, varies depending on each linguistic tradition. The discovery of language and logical structures as a determining factor of different styles of philosophizing does not necessarily result in emphasizing the incommensurable differences between various philosophical traditions and, by extension, succumbing to relativism. Rather, it provides a key to understand other traditions better as well as an opportunity to re-examine one's own tradition from a new perspective, for, as Hegel put it, what is truly universal consists in "coming to oneself in one's other." In "Philosophy Educating Humanity: From Western to Asian Environmental Ethics," Carl Becker emphasizes the necessity to create "new common values" that could be maintained after recognizing the differences between Eastern and Western world-views. According to Becker, when encountering other cultures and life-styles that challenge traditionally-held values, "[s]ome people respond with a blind fundamentalism, but the broader Western tendency has been to a relativistic humanism," which suggests that "no values are ultimate and perhaps all are ultimately groundless." Ironically, this relativistic humanism "occasioned a moral vacuum in education, an inability to educate morality because of an inability to exalt one value system over any other." Becker pursues a solution to overcome this moral relativism, and concludes that the establishment of "new common values" is required, not by clinging to one's own religious standpoint, but by acknowledging more basic "conditions which face humanity and the future of the earth": the conditions in which "the survival of the planet" becomes the first priority. In reaching this conclusion, Becker critically contrasts the modern Western world-view and the world-view characteristic of Asian philosophies, and thus completely relativizes the Western perspective. This, however, is not an endorsement of outright relativism, but a necessary step toward eliminating one's vested interests and creating "new common values," which should be "based on a consciousness of our organic interlinking with each other." Becker's proposal to establish "new common values" for the survival of the human species is shared by Chung-ying Cheng. In "Classical Chinese Philosophy in a Global Context," Cheng argues that "the present global economy calls for a global ethics that protects against total economicalization and related politicalization." Seeking to create a global ethics, Cheng analyzes several schools of classical Chinese philosophy. Among them, emphasis is placed on the teachings of the dao, which variously inform classical Chinese philosophy. Cheng maintains that each human being "is born from the heaven and earth and inseparable from the dao," and thus must be "treated as a holistic entity with its source rooted in the whole universe and its future open to the whole world." The dao teaches us that the universe consists of a never-ceasing, dynamic dialectic between one and many, universality and particularity; it does not allow absolutization of a certain perspective, but induces us to perform constant interpretations of the world and ourselves. Based on this "ontocosmology" which espouses the ever-changing creativity of the organic universe of which humans are the parts, Chinese ethics centers on the nurturing of "virtues": the perfection of humanity through perpetual self-cultivation. Chad Hansen develops an insightful hermeneutics of the meaning of dao by exploring the inner structure of the Chinese language. Through his analysis, Hansen clarifies that only by understanding the meaning of dao can we come to know what "ethics" means for Chinese. As developed in his important book, Language and Logic in Ancient China, Hansen's premise is here again that the analysis of a civilization's language structure is a key to unveil a culture's way of thinking and philosophizing. Hansen develops his analysis of the Chinese conception of dao by relating it to "the current 'pragmatic' view that 'meaning' is irreducibly normative." According to Hansen, to assert that the meaning of dao is irreducibly normative is not to say that dao is regarded as a static norm by which people's conduct is regulated; rather, it is to say that dao functions as an impetus to induce performative interpretations on the side of an interpreter. Dao, he points out, is a "wholesale guiding structure" that includes within it "ways of describing and categorizing things for the purpose of action." The rules of dao, therefore, "are mostly implicit and any attempt to formulate them generates a regress." This interpretation by Hansen of dao leads to further inquiry into the Chinese word for "ethics," which consists of two concepts: "dao (guide)" and "de (virtuosity)." Ultimately, together with Chang's essay, Hansen's thesis presents a provocative counter-argument to the Western deontological approach to ethics. Hansen tries to show how language and logical structures determine the ways of thinking of those who belong to different religious and philosophical traditions. Two papers that follow Hansen's essay provide us with other examples that explore this question from Indian and Buddhist perspectives, respectively. Arindam Chakrabarti, in "Truth, Recognition of Truth, and Thoughtless Realism," raises the question of how different logical structures can bring about different perspectives and judgments about reality. Chakrabarti examines this problem from the standpoint of realism developed by the Nyaya School of logic. Chakrabarti begins his inquiry by analyzing "Frege's famous regress argument against the very possibility of defining truth." In this argument, Frege concludes that a general definition of truth is impossible since one cannot ultimately prove if the subjective apprehension of an external world truly corresponds to the objective reality of that same world. Chakrabarti observes that what is represented in Frege's argument is the separation of subjectivity and objectivity, which is characteristic of modern Western consciousness. He argues that the problem of modern consciousness consists in this subject-object separation: "it is the implicit assumption of this reflexive self-certification doctrine that has made Western theories of predicative perception so muddled, 'thought'-loaded and always at risk to lose touch with the causally operative external world of sensible things." Nyaya realism, he points out, deflates such pretensions of the subjective intellect that would cut human beings off from their membership in a larger world of nature. What Nyaya pursues as the basis for judging truth is a "thought-eschewing direct sensory account of concept-enriched perception," in which the separation of the human subject and the external world has not yet been experienced. Through his analysis of the principles of Nyaya realism, Chakrabarti tries to free modern subjectivity from its "thought-loadedness" and to reunite it with the external world of sensible things. He calls this approach to reality "thoughtless realism," and argues that by practicing "thoughtless realism," one can become a 'realist' without falling into Fregean fetters. Guy Newland introduces the worldview of a radical nominalism developed by the Madhyamika school of Buddhism. Here again, the unity of an estranged subjectivity and the external world becomes the point at issue. By maintaining a strong distrust in the intellect's linguistic activity, Madhyamika philosophy denies the existence of "essences," and further, of the concept of the "self" or "I," asserting that they are mere abstractions or mental fictions constructed by the intellect's linguistic activity. Newland examines how the Madhyamika theory of "emptiness" is compatible with the Buddhist principle of moral action; i.e., how such an empty person can make value judgments. Newland answers this question by showing that Madhyamika philosophy fundamentally derives its standard of judgment from "ordinary conventional consciousness," which "provides accurate information about practical distinctions" and "establishes the standard of conventional validity." When viewed from this consciousness, such ideas as "essences" and the "self" appear mere illusions, although the "existence" of these illusions is not negated. In other words, what Newland calls "ordinary conventional consciousness" may be understood as an apperception of "that it is," but not of "what it is." Newland emphasizes a tenet of Madhyamika philosophy that consists of a balance between this "conventional perspective," which sees things as they are, and "the perspective of a mind pursuing ultimate analysis," which advocates the primordial emptiness of what exists. Insofar as an "ordinary conventional perspective" is posited as a substratum that defines all consciousness, Newland argues that the Madhyamika theory of an "empty person" does not contradict one's ability to judge "conventional validity." Barry Smith and Natalia Avtonomova examine the relationship between language and thought from another perspective. In "On Forms of Communication in Philosophy," Smith proposes a theory that "the growth of a commentary literature around a given text is an indicator of the untranslatability of that text, of its departure from standard linguistic norms." Taking this as a premise, he focuses on the "prevalence of commentaries on prime German philosophical texts," such as Kant's Critique, Hegel's Logic, and Heidegger's Being and Time, and asks why these German texts necessitated so many commentaries. In exploring this problem, Smith examines the cultural, economic, political, and religious context in which these German texts were born, and concludes that the unique "untranslatability" of German philosophical language is characterized by its complex historical setting. Thus he tries to explicate how inescapably the forms of communication in philosophy are connected with the historical formation process of their language. This theme of "the cultural-boundness of language as well as of philosophizing" is also discussed in Avtonomova's essay, "On the (Re)creation of Russian Philosophical Language." Based on her own experience of translating several Western philosophical texts into Russian, Avtonomova expresses the role of translation as a study of "comparative epistemology" between two paradigms of consciousness. According to Avtonomova, some Western philosophical concepts do not allow easy translations into the Russian context, for "we always translate not only from language to language but also from culture to culture and so we can never translate absolutely everything." Especially, she refers to the untranslatability of "poetical language" which is strongly embedded in its cultural context. Thus, the activity of translation represents, not simply the encounter of two different languages but, more essentially, the confrontation of two different types of epistemology that have uniquely developed in each historical, cultural, social, and religious context. Here, it can be said that Avtonomova's reflection on the meaning of "translation" further points to the relationship between "globalization and localization" in the contemporary context: a question of what can, and cannot, be translated from one culture to another in today's globalization process. However, there is a provocative aspect to Avtonomova's thesis as well. She argues that the Russian language itself hinders the creation of new linguistic and conceptual paradigms. Avtonomova contends that, while the present openness to the West is both unprecedented and welcome, it has inhibited the development of Russian philosophical paradigms. In the past, Russian culture coped with conceptual difficulties slowly but steadily; this approach is now impossible, owing to the flood of material coming from the West. This brings to the fore the importance of translation and reliable secondary materials. Unfortunately, the present situation is one where "a reader, lost and embarrassed, picks up a word or term here and there and is forced to employ them without any real knowledge" of the intellectual context in which these terms find meaning. Avtonomova argues that Russian philosophy can rise to meet the challenges of the day only by the joint participation of philosophy and philology. Philosophy is embedded within language, so the work of restoring Russian philosophy must begin with the restoration of the Russian philosophical language. However, she does not ignore certain sociological realities that presently restrict Russian philosophy. Russian philosophers, for example, no longer enjoy the level of institution support they had grown accustomed to during the Soviet years. Further, she remarks that non-philosophers condemn philosophers "for not having met the challenge at hand in the medium of philosophical thought." In other words, philosophy is widely viewed as being irrelevant to the vast social and political changes currently at play in Russia and the former Soviet states. Evert van der Zweerde makes a similar point. He argues that "philosophical culture" is the "place where philosophy exists and develops according to its own nature, is normal to the extent to which the essential features of philosophy can realize themselves within it." Put differently, Zweerde argues that philosophy as a social activity requires grounding in the social order. There must be a place in society for philosophy where philosophers do not need to justify their vocation in terms of "usefulness" or "relevance." Philosophy for Zweerde is not a free-floating activity that takes place in a vacuum, apart from society. Zweerde argues that history of philosophy is an important part of philosophical culture insofar as it is an important factor in shaping new generations of philosophers. He argues that history of philosophy is "normal" insofar as it meets the following requirements:
He thus argues that a "normalization of Russian philosophical culture would then have to consist in a process in which philosophical culture gets more into accordance with these criteria than it was during its preceding, Soviet stage." He proceeds in his analysis by distinguishing four periods of Russian philosophy and focusing in particular on the work of Vladimir Solov'ëv. He argues that philosophy in the Soviet period was pathological to the degree that it was ideologized; during perestroika "the specific Soviet representation of past philosophy disappeared, without being replaced." If philosophy in the Soviet period can be characterized fundamentally as ideology, then philosophy in the perestroika era can be characterized by widespread anomie insofar as the old was destroyed but the new had not yet emerged. However, Zweerde points to the restoration of Solov'ëv as testimony "to the normalization of Russian philosophical culture as a whole, despite the many practical difficulties it currently encounters." Zweerde, alone of the contributors to this volume writing on Russian philosophy, regards the restoration of philosophy in Russian culture and intellectual life with optimism. Edward Swiderski, for one, dissents from Zweerde's optimistic conclusions. He argues that citizens living in Russia and East-Central Europe require epistemological and moral certainty in light of the sweeping changes occurring in the wake of the Communist collapse. Philosophers in Russia and East-Central Europe labor to meet these demands. However, Swiderski doubts that they are able to do so, since they lack the socio-cultural and moral prerequisites necessary for the practice of philosophy. In other words, he argues with great pessimism that present-day Russia and the countries of the former Soviet bloc are unable to support the activity of philosophy. He constructs his argument around three theses:
The problem is actually two fused together as one: continuity and relevance. First, there is no continuity between Soviet and Russian philosophy, both in terms of institutional support and ideas and content. Second, Russian philosophy is widely viewed as irrelevant to the demands of present-day Russian society. Many new philosophies argue that present-day conditions demand some kind of cultural or social legitimation. In certain respects, this is not far removed from the Marxist-Leninist ideal. But now legitimation focuses on what is sometimes called the Russian Idea. James Scanlon generally agrees with Swiderski's argument. Scanlon notes that the quest for the "Russian Idea" is a main trend emerging out of the demise of Soviet philosophy. The Russian Idea originates in the writings of Dostoevsky. It denotes a philosophical outlook uniquely appropriate to Russian culture. Dostoevsky describes the Russian Idea as a "a saving message that Russians as a people were destined to bring out to the rest of the world." In present-day discussions, the Russian Idea denotes the "supposed need for conformity between a Russian philosophy for the present day and the demands of the culture form which it arises." The desire for the Russian Idea is rooted in the "belief that for every national culture there is an integral set of philosophical principles that uniquely captures the culture's essence and nurtures it." Scanlan observes that the principal candidate to fill this role is a religious philosophy grounded in Russian Orthodoxy. However, in agreement with Swiderski, he warns that there is "surprisingly little in the way of critical recognition and reflection on the dubious assumptions made by those who seek the 'Russian idea'." Mikhail Epstein argues that "metaphysical radicalism" is one of the most overwhelming tendencies in contemporary Russian thought. He argues that philosophy in what he terms the "Third Philosophical Awakening" (1970s and 80s) represented a liberating idea or activity. He outlines eight principal trends that generally correspond to the new philosophies that began to arise as Soviet philosophy entered its final stages. All eight trends he identifies originated as "forms of intellectual self-liberation." However, Epstein argues that the general tendency of these recent developments is the "radicalization of . . . metaphysical ambitions." He asks rhetorically, "Is it a coincidence that this proliferation of new, radical metaphysical discourse has arisen with the degradation and collapse of the ideocratic system of Soviet power?" Epstein then answers his own question, noting that "the Soviet system . . . was founded on a metaphysical, even eschatological vision . . . stemming . . . from the prophetic philosophizing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries." The collapse of the Soviet regime thus left a "metaphysical vacuum, eager to be filled." The collapse of the Soviet ideocracy led various intellectual groups to attempt to build a new ideology on nationalistic, technological, and/or religious grounds. This overall tendency Epstein calls "metaphysical radicalism" or "metaphysics in the imperative mood." Metaphysical radicalism is a "specific type of philosophical discourse that ignores the Kantian critique of metaphysics and claims to 'transcend' the epistemological limits imposed on human cognitive capacities." This mode of philosophical discourse aspires not to "adequate knowledge but to the practical transformation of the world, not to truth but to power." The guiding principle of metaphysical radicalism would be, of course, Marx's eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Epstein argues that "the ideological incompatibility among Marxist, nationalist, and religious discourses, which sharply divided them in the late Soviet period, now becomes more and more irrelevant as these positions merge in the overarching type of radical discourse." He singles out "metaphysical radicalism as one of the most powerful tendencies in contemporary Russian thought, as a kind of metadiscursive strategy transcending the ideological differences among previously oppositional movements." Put somewhat differently, the situation in Russian is characterized less by the restoration of philosophy than by the rise of ideologies in philosophical clothing. The clash of religious, technological, and nationalistic ideologies is transcended, as it were, by a radical metaphysics. One can say that the problem for philosophy in the Soviet era was its subordination to political exigencies. One effect of this problem is the inability of Russian philosophy to generate new intellectual and conceptual paradigms (as Avtonomova argued). However, the problem of Russian philosophy, according to Epstein, is the search for political solutions (e.g., the metaphysical radicalism of the Russian Idea) to philosophical problems concerning questions of identity and ultimate meaning. The problems inherent in the Russian Idea and in metaphysical radicalism can be described generally as the problem of secular salvation or transcendence, which in turn brings to mind Max Weber's warning that "he who seeks the salvation of the soul . . . should not seek it along the avenue of politics." Hamlet Gevorkian focuses on the problem of cultural wholeness and unity with respect to the encounter of different cultures. He argues that although the "encounter" of cultures has a number of particular aspects, the general aspect or idea behind the phenomena of culture (what can be called "cultural consciousness") can be grasped by means of the philosophy of history. There are two closely related problems with which he is concerned. One is philosophical: "the possibility of objective knowledge of other cultures and a past culture, as well as the adequacy of their reconstruction." The second is practical: How is it possible for cultures to encounter one another without conflict? Gevorkian's line of thought here echoes Samuel Huntington's influential "clash of civilizations" thesis. Gevorkian argues that the development of a particular culture must be measured in terms of its differentiation. By this he means the expansion of culture into a "number of distinguished and separate, independent and various, forms in the 'cultural space'." Cultural consciousness is more widely diffused throughout the cultural space. Gevorkian distinguishes "advanced" and "primitive" culture. Advanced cultures are those cultures that are open, i.e., are able "to construct the phenomena of another culture by its own inner means." Open cultures are productive cultures insofar as they develop by producing culture. Primitive cultures, on the other hand, are unable to reconstruct or adopt the phenomena of another culture; they are thus "closed." Closed cultures are reproductive cultures because they can only reproduce themselves; their capacity for change is extremely limited. For this reason, Gevorkian argues that open cultures are living cultures, while closed cultures are dead. Gevorkian argues that only in the higher forms of culture (the forms of open culture) can one find the embodiment of a unique cultural ideal; the spurious ideals found in folk culture or in closed cultures leads only to narrowness and parochialism. Here, cultures can only clash with one another; there is little opportunity for genuine engagement. Gevorkian argues that in a global age, when cultures routinely encounter one another, the viability of a given culture increasingly depends upon the factors characteristic of open or advanced cultures. In "Buddhism and Democracy," Jay Garfield contrasts two worldviews-one political, the other religious-that are often considered mutually exclusive. Garfield observes that Buddhist social thought focuses on the good. The good of any social order, according to Buddhism, is "the maximization of happiness, the minimization of suffering, the provision for the least advantaged, and the cultivation of traits of character such as compassion, patience, generosity, and wisdom." Liberal democracy (by which Garfield denotes the democratic theory of the social contract tradition), in contrast, is "relatively silent about the good, but quite articulate and specific about social institutions and procedures." Put differently, liberal democracy is "self-consciously minimalist" with respect to conceptions of the good.1 Garfield argues that the genius of liberal democracy is the insight that "procedures themselves can be legitimated independently of many non-procedural values and that legitimate procedures can legitimate both institutions and conceptions of the good." Legitimation, in fact, provides a point of contrast between Buddhism and democracy. Liberal democratic theory, as has been noted, "legitimates its goods on procedural grounds; Buddhism legitimates any procedures on the grounds that they produce appropriate goods." Put differently, procedures of various kinds are constitutive of liberal democracy; in contrast, "commitments to particular social goods are constitutive of Buddhist societies." Hence, Garfield allows that Buddhism and liberal democracy are opposed on the issue of legitimation: Buddhism favors a conception of the good, while democracy favors procedure. Garfield then asks, why not bring together the Buddhist conception of the good with the liberal democratic emphasis on rights and procedures? Garfield argues that the two can be brought together fruitfully by means of the Buddhist idea of upaya or "skillful means." From a Buddhist perspective, it is important to cultivate skill because enlightenment is difficult to achieve and to facilitate. Buddhism, he notes, "requires not simply intention but success." The injunction for virtue in Buddhism amounts to an imperative "to cultivate the upaya necessary for its realization." Upaya, put differently, can be viewed as moral skills. These skills are not valued for their own sake, but rather as "means to goods that are antecedently regarded as valuable." Garfield argues that "this category of instrumental good . . . opens the door to a distinctively Buddhist justification and interpretation of democracy." If liberal democracy were the best means for realizing the collective social goods of Buddhism, then it would follow that according to Buddhist principles (especially that of upaya), liberal democracy would be the preferred Buddhist social framework. However, this way of putting things brings to the fore a key question: "Is liberal democracy plausibly construed as the best means for realizing the social goods Buddhism seeks?" To address this question, Garfield begins by asking, does "respect for the fundamental set of human rights and the correlative political institutions recognized in the liberal tradition provide greater promise as a vehicle for the development of a society conforming to Buddhist ideals?" He notes that, in classical liberal theory, rights denote "protective barriers against the intrusion by other individuals and the State into our private lives." These rights create a social space (the private sphere) where an individual or group can pursue and cultivate the good as they envision it. Without this protected space, no one is free to pursue his particular vision of the good. Garfield allows that this argument amounts to little more than saying that "the individual rights enshrined by liberal democracy provide protection for any set of values an individual might wish to pursue." These values can be those of Buddhism or those antithetical to Buddhist principles. Nevertheless, Garfield argues that "one important core value in Buddhist social morality is the minimization of the suffering of the disadvantaged." Garfield notes that one way to accomplish this is "to enshrine as a fundamental civil right a minimal standard of living and minimal access to such basic goods as medical care." And, if one is to speak seriously of rights, then one denotes by extension the context of a liberal political order in which rights become meaningful. Hence, in order to guarantee these specific rights, one must embed them in a liberal political order. Garfield allows that counter-examples can be advanced against every point he has raised in favor of liberal democracy. However, he notes that it is only necessary "to show that overall, the social structures advanced by liberal democracy represent the best means to achieve the ends recommended by Buddhism." Put differently, liberal democracy offers to Buddhism a political and social theory that allows for the social framework where Buddhist principles and ideals can be practiced. Garfield is relatively optimistic that two seemingly dissimilar worldviews such as Buddhism and democracy can be constructively brought together in a way advantageous for both. Other contributors are less optimistic, arguing that Western worldviews such as democracy are meaningful only insofar as they are embedded in a liberal (or Western) political order. That is, non-Western societies cannot institute democratic institutions and procedures with the same alacrity one would use in pulling on a coat or a pair of shoes. The problem is one already noted by Garfield: democracy is constituted by a dialectic relationship between its constitutive ideas (what is sometimes called the "soul" of democracy) and the social and political order wherein such a conception of the political finds meaning. Justice, for example, is often conceived of as being based on ideas regarding individual autonomy and freedom. Such a principle of justice finds meaning by being embedded in a political order marked by individual rights. Kwang-Sae Lee, for one, contrasts the Western understanding of justice (epitomized by Lockean liberalism, which he describes as the opposition of the "ego-centered" self to society at large, or the self-assertion of rights conceived as the practice of freedom, a freedom "licensed," as it were, by the "myth of individual natural rights") with the Confucian understanding of justice, arguing that pragmatic or Deweyan liberalism can mediate usefully between the two. Lee argues that the Rawlsian phrase "justice as fairness" is close in many respects to that held by East Asians. Lee observes that, for East Asians, justice is widely considered a harmonious mutuality between the individual and community. He argues that, in contrast with the West, Confucians believe that there is no transcendental order to which man must conform his actions. Rather, tao, or the Way, is not an antecedently given absolute reality; tao is a manmade construction, "the way in which civilized humans learn creatively how to get along with one another harmoniously." What is righteous or just is "what is situationally fitting rather than what is hooked up with the transcendental pretense of Truth or Justice." Lee notes that there are strong affinities between the Confucian and contemporary anti-representationalist pragmatists on this issue. He observes that Dewey tried "to dissociate liberal democracy from the foundationalism of the Enlightenment project and the doctrine of natural rights." He points out that from the Confucian as well as from the Deweyan, pragmatic perspective, "it is fallacious to suppose, as the rugged individualist does, that individuality is a fixed entity prior to social contextualization." For both Dewey and the Confucianists, an individual is by definition social; that is to say, society precedes the individual, who is a derived from society. An individual apart from society would, in Confucian terms, lack harmony; in Western terms, he would be considered an example of what Emile Durkheim called "anomic individualism." The resulting anti-essentialism and social practice interpretation of liberalism is something, Lee argues, highly compatible with "contemporary cosmopolitan" Confucianism. He notes that a Confucian or East Asian understanding of human rights, which would derive rights out of social practice, would be guided more by love and righteous rather than by penal law. Justice would thus be understood as rights embedded in a social order characterized by love and righteousness; justice would oversee the extension of the mutually beneficial cooperative scheme deriving from the combination of family cooperativeness and inventive, self-interested reason. Chung-ying Cheng in his "Philosophy of Violence From an Eastern Perspective" makes similar use of Confucianism. Cheng begins by defining violence as "the use of brutal force for achieving a goal . . . a brutality exercised on a person against his own will." After distinguishing four Asian perspectives on the problem of violence, Cheng focuses on Confucianism. He argues that his emphasis is not accidental, for Confucianism represents a position of means and centrality. The Confucian doctrine of centrality "recognizes that man has a unique and central place in the universe: he is born of the harmony of heaven and earth and he preserves that ability to bring harmony to all things via his actions and in this sense he can be the epitome of goodness and has a nature which is good as it is rooted in heaven." Put in different terms, man is the agent of harmony par excellence. Thus, the central problem of violence from a Confucian perspective is this: "How can a person ever commit an act of violence which betrays his nature and brings disharmony to the world?" How does one avoid the path of wrongdoing, the way of war, violence, and disharmony? Echoing the theme of the Twentieth World Congress (Paideia: Philosophy Educating Humanity), Cheng argues that moral education is necessary for men to live together in society. In order to benefit rather than harm one's fellows, man must undergo the discipline of self-cultivation that transforms "the deep structure of the human person's motives and goals." Critics of both Lee and Cheng might point out that both presume a strong and vigorous Confucian society that is able to encounter Western political ideas such as democracy and justice as well as address the problem of violence (perhaps the key question for justice). Many philosophers and other scholars from East Asia have argued that the looming problem for modern Confucian societies (e.g., Korea) is the eventual erosion of the traditional mores that presently order these societies. The next two contributors argue that the reception of Western political ideas in African societies have led to much different-and deleterious-results. Emmanuel Eze, for one, argues that the proper starting point for any discussions regarding democracy in present-day Africa must begin by considering the meaning of freedom when colonial liberation has been achieved. From this perspective, it is doubtful that democracy could be the foundation of freedom in contemporary Africa. Democracy can be for Africa a "formal political framework designed to unleash, 'manage', and nurture aspirations for, and actual expressions of, freedom." Eze criticizes Kwasi Wiredu's argument for consensual democracy (defined as an indigenous, Akan form of democracy that is characterized by consensus rather than a two party, winner take all system characteristic of the British or American system). He questions how easily consensual democracy can be implemented in present-day Africa (itself marked by the mixing of modern and traditional ways of ordering society) and how successfully consensual democracy could both live up to its past accomplishments as well as ameliorate present-day problems and concerns. Upon reflection, Eze dismisses consensual democracy as "a romantic and impractical way of thinking about political reality." Eze argues that practical, working democracy requires social grounding. The principles of democracy must be embedded in the political order. Individual freedom, for example, is predicated upon a system of laws that necessarily depends on customs, religion, and social mores. Such social grounding is completely lacking in today's Africa. (Eze provides a poignant example by describing the numerous obstacles posed by the relatively simple task of renting a car and driving from one town to another.) Eze argues that in present-day Africa, there is no sense of individual rights-a sense that informs the "soul" of democracy and stands at the core of democratic law. The proceduralism that is characteristic of liberal democracies simply provides an opportunity for graft and corruption in the African context. Hence, Eze is extremely pessimistic regarding the prospects for democracy in present-day Africa. Safro Kwame shares Eze's pessimism. In "Philosophy and Social Justice in the World Today: An African Perspective," he asserts that, from the African point of view, there is no social justice in the world today. He provocatively declares that, by the egalitarian standard of distribution of social goods established by Rawls in A Theory of Justice, apartheid is "descriptive of current world conditions and global economy," pointing to contemporary health and social indicators as indicators of "such a distribution of benefits and burdens." Kwame holds that current social arrangements are unjust from the utilitarian point of view (for the reason that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is not produced) as well as from the Akan or African point of view, which holds that injustice/apartheid results from the "propensity and ability of such societies to make fools or idiots out of persons." Such societies are in violation of what Kwame calls an "Akan or pre-Kantian version of the categorical imperative not to treat humans like animals." He asserts that although his view that there is no social justice in the world is grounded in an African perspective, this view is demonstrable or defensible in other cultures as well. Both Eze and Kwame argue that the forces of modernization are corrosive of traditional cultures and communities. Both the East Asian as well as the African perspective argue that community is the locus of human social and political life-community for one is founded on Confucian mores, for the other, those of traditional Africa. Community, in fact, provides the perspective from where many Western political philosophers have critiqued modern democratic liberalism in recent years. Two contributors to this volume have examined communitarianism from non-Western perspectives. D. A. Masolo, in "Communitarianism: An African Perspective," argues that the values of individual worth and freedom are compatible with communitarianism. He asserts that communities are "natural orders into which individuals are born"; nevertheless, he denies any kind of ontological determinism that would restrict these orders in terms of ethnicity and/or race. Rather, he argues, communities are best understood as "products of deliberate human organization and choice." One premise for this version of communitarianism is an understanding of the self as a collection of social beliefs and practices that cannot be understood apart from social context. Here, "individuals are molded into people who embody specific values and ideas of society which they are in turn expected to pass on as new agents of society's self regeneration." Masolo notes that "moral and customary teachings at initiation put great emphasis on the collective consequences of everyone's actions." Moral knowledge (what Durkheim would call the collective consciousness) is closely monitored and "applied to the everyday management of social order and human welfare." Another premise is his view that "the attainment of human needs and interests is best served in union with others." He points to "the idea of interdependence as a characteristically human mode of life; it is part of human nature." Communitarianism subscribes to the moral "principle of practical altruism as an important social virtue. It recognizes and encourages sharing with others as an important characteristic of human life." Masolo argues that "at the base of communitarianism lies the transformation of the structures which relate the individual to the community to which he belongs into a moral resource." That is, communitarianism is "transforming"; what is transforms are the structures of social solidarity, which Masolo holds to be moral. He argues that the basis of the moral outlook of communitarianism is a "sense of belonging." However, belonging is intersubjective: individuals to not simply belong to the group; rather, individuals belong to one another, and it is by this mutual belonging that there exists a group in the first place. In this way, Masolo distinguishes the community from the mass or from an aggregate of individuals. The community is not a collectivity. Masolo argues that community is constructed through deeds. In this way, community is not ontological insofar as one is privileged membership in the community on account of race or ethnicity or nationality. As a product of "deliberate human organization and choice," communitarianism is an excellent stepping-stone to cosmopolitanism. D. P. Chattophadyaya, like Masolo, holds that communitarianism provides a welcome corrective to both nationalism and liberalism. He argues that communitarianism or regional fraternity is "curative of the ills of national chauvinism and a step forward to true internationalism." He argues that the basis for communitarianism is "ethnic intermixture, linguistic affinity, and common historical experience," later adding "economic interests, security perception and, above all, yearning for durable peace" as criteria for community. Chattophadyaya equates communitarianism with social aggregates that often transcends the political bonds of the state. He identifies "empire" as the paradigm of large-scale human aggregates. He argues that empires often have religious sources and are ruled by a central religious authority. Empires develop out of the expansion of small aggregates marked by a high degree of social solidarity. As Chattopadhyaya puts it, "when the sense of solidarity of a religious community deepens, it develops a tendency within it to expand. . . . When a small social aggregate becomes strong in its internal strength, it tends to expand." However, over time the locus of authority shifts from the religious sphere to the political. Chattophadyaya observes that "when religious communitarianism loses its intimate spiritual orientation, it becomes primarily political and power-based." Here his analysis is reminiscent of what Weber called "disenchantment." Chattophadyaya argues that his analysis of the causes of the formation of small and large human aggregates renders the utopian ideal of the "world state" very much in doubt. Empire is not conducive for human self-expression. The key to the survival of political aggregates, rather, "lies in the free social space for individuals." Hence, Chattophadyaya argues that "we would be well advised to draw a very important line of distinction between union and uniformity. While uniformity suppresses individuality, both of individual human beings and their political aggregates, union allows psychological space for criticism and creativity." Uniformity, Chattophadyaya argues, is the defining characteristic of regional communitarianism, which itself is a "very welcome step" toward the "just world order or (what may be called) globalization." Globalization is addressed as well by Andrzej Kaniowski. He argues that that globalization (which he understands as a process of global differentiation) can issue forth in one of two ways: First, heightened social inequality which in turn threatens the foundations of democracy by fostering nationalistic (or otherwise) exclusivity; or, second, a cosmopolitanism marked by an inclusive, non-xenophobic worldview that does not divide social reality into a strict dichotomy of good and evil. Kaniowski observes that democracy, globalization, and Christianity are all products of Western civilization. All three cultural achievements are fundamentally characterized by "an orientation towards inclusiveness," which he takes to mean universalism. However, as Kaniowski notes, inclusiveness is often accompanied with exclusiveness. There are certain persons in a democracy, for example, who are considered non-citizens and thus deprived of basic rights (e.g., a convicted criminal who is stripped of his right to vote). Economic factors or lack of education often hinder political participation, rendering participation formal at best. Kaniowski argues that the "most important problem to be solved by each of these three achievements of civilization is a balance between an orientation towards including and towards excluding." Put in somewhat different terms, Kaniowski here argues for equilibrium between the sacred and the profane. He argues that a "dangerous mode of thinking," especially with respect to politics, is "Manicheism." Manichean political thinking not only draws an extreme dichotomy between good and evil, but also uses this dichotomy to legitimate the forceful exclusion of entire groups of people. The history of the twentieth century is unfortunately rife with examples of Manichean rationality: National Socialism, Communism, Stalinism, Maoism, and so forth. Manichean rationality is distinguished by an abstract, metaphysical understanding of evil that is embodied in certain social groups (e.g., the Jews for National Socialism, the bourgeoisie for Communism). Here, Kaniowski's depiction of Manichean rationality resonates strongly with the descriptions of "metaphysical radicalism" coalescing around the "Russian Idea" advanced by some earlier contributors. Kaniowski argues that "democratic thinking," in contrast, rejects Manichean rationality and "makes room for a non-substantializing [or moderate-eds.] way of thinking about both good and evil." Democratic thinking tacitly acknowledges that, in the realm of politics, at any rate, no one individual or group has privileged access to truth. This is the principle underlying the peaceful transfer of governing power in a democracy. Kaniowski observes that the "severest critics of globalization are, at the same time, the most vehement opponents of the liberal democratic order." He notes that critics of globalization are drawn from both the left and the right. He argues that this alignment is not merely accidental: the substantial conflict regarding globalization "is between proponents of a secular, liberal-democratic state and those opposing it," and that the difference is ultimately between those "groups and political forces oriented toward inclusiveness and those oriented towards exclusiveness who want to curtail interrelations with others whom they conceive of as morally dangerous and less valuable." Kaniowski thus concludes that globalization arising out of democratic thinking (globalization with a democratic soul, we might say) is "non-xenophobic and which refuses to see moral thinking in the strict dichotomy of good and evil" will hold many benefits. George Teschner provides a somewhat different perspective on the debates regarding globalization. In opposition to philosophers such as Marx, Marcuse, Heidegger, and Lyotard, Teschner argues that contemporary communications technology-far from being dehumanizing-is eminently compatible with the goals and values of the humanities. Interactive communicative technology is an ideal medium for the humanities because it is a hermeneutical medium that promotes a plurality of interpretations and meanings. We end the collection with a contribution by Robert Neville, who provides an intercultural inquiry into the meaning of paideia. He begins by focusing on the notion of "engagement" which has been developed as a main concept in American pragmatism, and asserts that "the heart of Pierce's lessons about engagement is that our signs, encoded in their semiotic systems, are themselves the media that connect us experientially with the world." Put differently, what Pierce's semiotics focuses on as an object of inquiry is not the signs themselves that are just regarded as the means of connecting us with the world, but rather, the interpreter, who engages in this connecting/interpreting activity between the signifiers and the signifieds and thus learns through the experience of having one's interpretations of reality perpetually checked and corrected. Neville develops this concept of "interpreter" into a key existential problem for paideia. Paideia begins with engaging in the performance of an "interpreter"; it is a perpetual cultivation of interpreting activities that could be developed to acquire "various levels of orientations" to the relations between humans and nature, which are disoriented. As an example of this cultivation, Neville introduces the significant role of "rituals" that have been practiced by, for instance, the Confucians. Rituals, Neville emphasizes, are signs whose interpretations are not a description but, rather, a performance that allows humans to exercise harmonious connections between themselves and the cosmos. Ultimately, what Neville finds in the Confucian rituals is the realization of paideia, as well as the crystallization of the concept of engagement of American pragmatism. We can think of no better point on which to end this volume.
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