William Sweet

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The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions a global
perspective

• William Sweet
• President, Canadian Philosophical Association
• Professor of Philosophy
• Director, Centre for Philosophy, Theology and
  Cultural Traditions
• St Francis Xavier University, Canada

2

• Lecture 1
• General Introduction and Methodology
• What does it mean to have a dialogue of cultural
  traditions?
• What is a global perspective?
• Definitions/descriptions of concepts

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Introduction and Methodology

• I. The theme/purpose of the course
• what are the prospects for encounter and dialogue
  on matters central to life together
• - i.e., on
• a) ways of living (ethics, values, and politics)
• b) ways of meaning (metaphysics, ideologies?,
  religion)
• c) ways of knowing (reasoning, experience,
  insight, intuition)

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Introduction and Methodology

• all are central aspects of culture
• practical issues they concern doing, acting,
  etc.
• also theoretical issues
• theories underlie, orient, and correct our
  practice
• these practices and theories have been challenged
  and criticized

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Introduction and Methodology

• more specific aim
• focus on ways of living
• some recent issues in ethics and political
  philosophy, in light of a number of recent
  criticisms
• discussion is difficult because of disagreement
• incapable of proof
• diversity of approaches
• diversity of cultural, religious, historical, and
  philosophical traditions

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Introduction and Methodology

• 3 questions
• what are some of the major positions on issues of
  ethics and political philosophy today?
• what are some of the challenges raised against
  these positions?
• is there any way of responding to these
  challenges?

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Introduction and Methodology

• there is an answer
• involves dialogue
• also involves understanding the nature, place,
  and function of culture and tradition
• ethics and political philosophy
• other areas as well, such as
• the nature of the person,
• also epistemology, etc.

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Introduction and Methodology

• therefore, my conclusion
• a dialogue about matters of ethics, values, and
  politics requires retaining a place for culture
  and traditions

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Introduction and Methodology

• Method
• - primarily this course is an attempt to answer
  some questions
• - combine analytical, phenomenological, and
  hermeneutical approaches
• - lecturing method open

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What does it mean to have a dialogue of cultural
traditions?

• T. S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of
  Culture, London Faber and Faber, 1948.
• Leslie Armour, Culture and Philosophy in
  Philosophy, Culture, and Pluralism, ed. William
  Sweet, Aylmer, QC Editions du scribe, 2002.
• Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy,
  http//www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/a
  rnoldm_ca/ca_all.html
• Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Blackwell,
  2000)

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What does it mean to have a dialogue of cultural
traditions?

• Culture and Pluralism in Philosophy, in
  Philosophy, Culture, and Pluralism, ed. William
  Sweet, Aylmer, QC Editions du scribe, 2002.
• Philosophy, Culture, and the Future of
  Tradition in Dialogue between Christian
  Philosophy and Chinese Culture, (ed. Paschal Ting
  and George F. McLean), Washington, DC Council
  for Research and Values in Philosophy, 2002
• "Globalization, Philosophy and the Model of
  Ecumenism," in Philosophical Challenges and
  Opportunities of Globalization, (ed. Oliva
  Blanchette, Tomonobu Imamichi, George F. McLean),
  Washington, DC Council for Research and Values
  in Philosophy, 2001.

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What does it mean to have a dialogue of cultural
traditions?

• not clear simply raise some questions (in no
  particular order)
• What are cultural traditions, culture, and
  traditions?
• What is such a dialogue?
• What assumptions / presuppositions are being
  made, about
• - the role and value of dialogue, culture, and
  tradition
• - why we talk about this theme at all

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What is a global perspective?

• Not a single perspective above all local
  perspectives
• Not (just) a summary of how dialogue occurs
  around the world, using different perspectives
• Not (just) an approach in the age of
  globalization
• Rather, how dialogue can be carried out at a
  global level

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Some definitions/ descriptionsWhat is culture?

• 1. Background conceptually
• what is the dialogue across cultures about, if it
  isnt culture?
• Is it just what is there?

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Some definitions/ descriptionsWhat is culture?

• 1. Background conceptually
• what is the dialogue across cultures about, if it
  isnt culture?
• Is it just what is there?
• No
• if it is,
• Why is this important?
• Why should anyone care?
• everything does not tell us much
• This does not mean high culture, but the high
  water mark of culture

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What is culture?

• Background the philosophical study of culture
• diversity and richness of world cultures are
  better known
• in the English-speaking world, few have written
  it
• compare with earlier centuries / other parts of
  the world
• Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), On the Aesthetic
  Education of Man in a series of letters
• Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), Reflections
  on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind
• Georg Simmel (1858-1918), Philosophische Kultur
  gesammelte Essais

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What is culture?

• Background the philosophical study of culture
• Since 1950 in sociology, history, and literary
  theory
• Ernest Gellner, Culture, Identity, and Politics
  (1987), Nations and Nationalism (1983)
• Fredric Jameson, The Cultural Turn selected
  writings on the postmodern (1998) Theory of
  Culture lectures at Rikkyo (1994)
• Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1994)
• Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
  selected essays (1973)
• Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (2000).

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What is culture?

• Background the philosophical study of culture
• some signs of change in contemporary
  Anglo-American philosophy
• particularly studies of pluralism and
  multiculturalism.
• Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Fathers House
  Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (1992)
• Morton White, A Philosophy of Culture the case
  for holistic pragmatism (2002).

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Definitions of culture

• some 164 different senses of the term
• Culture A Critical Review of Concepts and
  Definitions (1952), Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde
  Kluckhohn.
• Culture . . . is that complex whole which
  includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
  custom, and any other capabilities and habits
  acquired by man as a member of society.
• Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive culture
  researches into the development of mythology,
  philosophy, religion, art, and custom (1871).

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Definitions of culture

• Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
• Poet, educator, literary critic, government
  official
• Culture and Anarchy, 1869
• culture "contact with the best which has been
  thought and said in the world"
• Culture has its origin in the love of
  perfection it is a study of perfection Chapter
  1, 3

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Definitions of culture

• the notion of perfection as culture brings us to
  conceive it a harmonious perfection, a
  perfection in which the characters of beauty and
  intelligence are both present, which unites 'the
  two noblest of things,' which Arnold calls,
  following Jonathan Swift sweetness and light.
• Thus, culture has one great passion, the passion
  for sweetness and light (Ch. 1, 31)

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Definitions of culture

• T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of
  Culture (1948)
• culture is what the anthropologists mean the
  way of life of a particular people living
  together in one place,
• but culture cannot altogether be brought to
  consciousness and the culture of which we are
  wholly conscious is never the whole of culture
• Therefore, an elite is necessary to bring about
  a further development of the culture in organic
  complexity

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Definitions of culture

• Max Weber (1864-1920)
• the concept of culture is a value-concept.
  Empirical reality becomes "culture" to us because
  and insofar as we relate it to value ideas.
• Objectivity in Social Science and Social
  Policy. 1904 in The Methodology of the Social
  Sciences, 1949. Pp. 49-112
• example of money why do pieces of paper have
  value?

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Definitions of culture

• Alfred Schutz (1899-1959)
• culture is that which is "taken for granted by a
  given social group at a certain period of its
  historical existence"
• "TS Eliot's Theory of Culture"

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Definitions of culture

• Samuel P. Huntington (1927-)
• civilization and culture both refer to the
  overall way of life of a people, and a
  civilization is a culture writ large. They both
  involve the values, norms, institutions, and
  modes of thinking to which successive generations
  in a given society have attached primary
  importance.
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
  World Order (London Simon Schuster, 1996), p.
  41.

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Definitions of culture

• Gong Qun
• Culture is the living space and living field of
  human beings
• Contains objective (material) elements in it,
  such as churches, temples and so on.
• But also institutions, rules, moralities,
  conventions or customs.
• What is fundamental is value

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Definitions of culture

• Gong Qun (continued)
• In H. Rickerts eyes, value is the root of life
  without value, we are not alive. In other words,
  without value, we would no longer have desire and
  action because value gives us direction for our
  will and action.
• H. Rickert, System der Philosophie I (Tubingen,
  1921), p. 120.

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Definitions of culture

• Our definition
• culture - a collection of representations or
  ideas shared by and pervasive through a group of
  individuals
• - a set of dominant ideas.
• Bernard Bosanquet, The Reality of the General
  Will, International Journal of Ethics, IV
  (18931894), p. 311

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Presuppositions of culture

• 1. Is a culture something that we can isolate and
  observe at a precise point in time?
• Or is culture a dynamic notion, that is
  characterised by a telos or purpose?

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Some questions

• 2. Can we speak of cultures or traditions if
  everything is changing?
• 3. Can a culture have unity?
• 3a. What about multiculturalism, the plurality of
  cultures, sub-cultures?
• what is meant by truth and objectivity?
• John Searle on multiculturalism
• Richard Rorty

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Some questions

• 4. Is culture a dynamic notion, characterised
  by a telos?
• Jean Ladrière culture as a dynamic, processional
  unity a convergence of different perspectives
  towards an eschaton
• 5. Does it make sense to talk of culture in a
  more general way of culture as such in the
  contemporary world?
• Is there a grand narrative?
• Can there be any principles at all?
• is the alternative relativism?
• is there any possibility of cross-cultural norms?
  

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Some questions

• 6. Is culture just a social construction?
• 7. Is individual (personal) identity possible
  without culture?

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The place and value of culture

• What does culture provide?
• - culture gives us a language and values.
• i) a general conception of the good,
• ii) a notion of public reason (usually exhibited
  in liberal societies in the notion of the rule of
  law)
• iii) a context for political and ethical choice
• - culture influences the material environment in
  which such questions are raised
• economic production permits the creation of goods
  and the opportunities for leisure

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The place and value of culture

• culture gives us a notion of meaningful order.
• cultures give us a discourse set limits to what
  we can express, how we can express it, etc.
• cultural belonging is a basic value

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The place and value of culture

• Will Kymlicka and John Rawls cultures have value
  but not fundamentally morally valuable
• (cultures are of value simply as part of an
  individuals plan of life, and all are equally
  valuable) (the externalist view)
• others say
• a culture is a mode of mutual recognition and is
  a context in which individuals pursue their own
  long-term projects
• a culture can impose obligations on its members
• some cultures may be superior to others
• (e.g., based on the extent to which it allows
  individuals to be social agents, to show
  solidarity, to show loyalty towards the
  community, and so on)

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The place and value of culture

• Culture also provides for the possibility of
  philosophy
• provides or imposes a discourse
• culture sets up the problems that philosophers
  pursue.
• influences the material environment and the
  opportunities for leisure (in which philosophy is
  done)
• tells us what counts as philosophy (as distinct
  from history and religion)
• no reason to believe that the same culture will
  give birth to similar philosophies. (e.g.,
  Heideggerian phenomenology, the Christian
  existentialism of Karl Jaspers, and Moritz
  Schlicks logical empiricism)

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The place and value of culture

• influences in what language philosophical
  questions are expressed and answered
• Examples
• political philosophy in the United States
• cultures in another philosophical contexts (e.g.,
  western culture in relation to Indian philosophy,
  or in relation to African thought).
• cultures may lead philosophers to ignore other
  cultures.
• philosophy is not the prisoner of culture

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What are traditions?

• definition
• - ambiguous various kinds
• - political (e.g., liberal), ethical, religious

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What are traditions?

• Alasdair MacIntyre (1929- ), After Virtue (1981
  1984), ch 3
• A living tradition ... is an historically
  extended, socially embodied argument, and an
  argument precisely in part about the goods which
  constitute that tradition. Within a tradition the
  pursuit of goods extends through generations,
  sometimes through many generations.
• ... the history of a practice in our time is
  generally and characteristically embedded in and
  made intelligible in terms of the larger and
  longer history of the tradition through which the
  practice in its present form was conveyed to us
  the history of each of our own lives is generally
  and characteristically embedded in and made
  intelligible in terms of the larger and longer
  histories of a number of traditions (AV, 222).

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What are traditions?

• an inherited, established, or customary pattern
  of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious
  practice or a social custom) that has a
  continuity in social attitudes, customs, and
  institutions. I.e., practices (Merriam-Webster
  Online Dictionary)
• TRADITION is something present in, but also
  greater than, individuals that, arguably, both
  transcends and has a claim on them.
• tradition is normative.

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Role of tradition

• 1. tradition determines our moral practices
• at the root of our morals
• our morals and moral norms were originally
  determined by tradition (e.g., religious or
  cultural tradition).
• For example
• Christianity - Jesus of Nazareth / Matthew
  (517-18). Jesus says
• (17) Think not that I have come to abolish the
  law or the prophets I have come not to abolish
  them but to fulfil them. (18) For truly, I say to
  you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an
  iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all
  is accomplished.

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Role of tradition

• For example
• Karl Marx
• turned Hegel on his head
• taken Hegels dialectical idealism, and turned it
  into a dialectical materialism
• in place of the Hegelian notion of Mind or
  Spirit, Marx substituted the material
  world--specifically, the economic relations of
  human beings.

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Role of tradition

• 2. necessary for knowledge to be possible.
• to understand, we need to relate it with our past
  experience
• --vocabularies, stories, patterns of thought or
  ways of thinking, self-understanding,
  understanding of others
• legal, philosophical, and religious practices,
  are either traditions or are embedded in
  traditions.

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Role of tradition

• 3. Linguistic, cultural, religious, and other
  traditions, are valuable
• put the present in a context
• 4. gives the unity to (a) human life.
• an individual is not just a part of different
  narratives and engages in different practices,
  but is also a part of traditions.
• Provides a definition of the good life for man
• 5. tradition is inescapable.

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Tradition and other issues

• 6. Is tradition dynamic?
• 7. A clear relation of tradition to culture
• Cultures and communities--be they political,
  cultural, or religious--are defined by their
  normative character, that is, by their values

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Tradition and other issues

• Problems
• - the restriction of individuality and the
  exercise of autonomy or freedom.
• - traditional morals and morality are backward
  looking and conventional
• - tradition (e.g., religious or cultural
  tradition) is conservative, unimaginative,
  monolithic, inward looking, overly reluctant to
  and intolerant of change, ethnocentric or
  parochial, unworkable, and sometimes simply
  wrong.

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What is dialogue?

• Greek d?? (diá,through) ?????
  (logos,word,speech)
• A reciprocal exchange or conversation between 2
  or more persons

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What is dialogue?

• philosophy as dialogue
• - Plato Socratic dialectic
• - Rigveda dialogue hymns and the Indian epic
  Mahabharata,
• - Augustine and Boethius
• - middle ages and the practice of disputatio
• - Arabic philosophers
• - Malbranche
• - Berkeley
• - Hume
• - Buber
• - Mikhail Bakhtin

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What is dialogue?

• various models of dialogue
• there is communication
• 1. foundationalist/essentialist (Plato, Aquinas)
• 2. wide reflective equilibrium (Rawls, Daniels)
• 3. ecumenism interreligious dialogue
• 4. fusion of horizons (Gadamer, Habermas,
  Taylor)

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What is dialogue?

• presuppositions of dialogue
• interests, values, and ideas are shared
• mutual recognition
• dominant ideas (also make culture and tradition
  possible)

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What is dialogue?

• the aim, purpose, and value of dialogue
• Truth aysymptotic
• - expressing the infinite
• Action and cooperation with others
• Understanding oneself

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What is dialogue?

• the place and value of dialogue
• in general
• today