1. The statement that Europe has had the most "developed" set of values
regarding intercivilisation relations since the Enlightenment seems
plausible, but I am not quite sure what it really says. Whichever
civilisation has the most contact with others would only be expected to
think most about the implications of that contact. Had Song China carried
on a flourishing trade with the peoples of the Andean highlands and the
Congo basin, perhaps its notions of how to relate to the world would have
been correspondingly complex--and yet qualitatively different. In any
case, I am not sure tolerance of the European liberal sort is a
self-evident virtue. I strongly suspect few people anywhere six hundred
years ago would have thought it anything other than an escape from hard
debates, even though if pressed the "silent majority" would have had
second thoughts about "slaughtering infidels."
2. Tolerance is very different from abdicating judgement and a
synthesising project altogether. We have to draw a distinction between an
open-minded attitude to intellectual contributions from multiple sources
(good), and a failure to seek anything beyond relativistic coexistence
(bad). I suppose there is an existential question here about whether the
diversity of human social formations has merely aesthetic appeal per se,
or whether the primary long-term aim is to offer insights for building a
higher civilisation blending the best of all worlds. As all will realise,
I take the latter position myself.
3. I have doubts about the Huntington-like argument regarding the enduring
differences among civilisations, for it ignores two considerations. First,
what about conflicts among different intellectual currents within
civilisations, which might be translatable across cultures (eg. the ideals
expressed in millennial peasant uprisings, or conflicts over the nature of
elite social obligation, etc.)? Different languages do not necessarily
mean different sets of issues; if we map the issue clusters across
cultures, the multiple debates usually coalesce into universal clashes.
Second, we are arriving tragically quickly at the point of global
homogeneity, whether we like it or not. We are going to end up with a
single world civilisation all too soon if we persist in a
relativism-induced abdication of moral judgement, a world civilisation
that takes what always have been considered the worst parts of human
nature and holds them up for worship. Lack of judgement equates to
accepting the current trend rather than redefining it.
4. There is a very solid case to be made for maximum local (probably
closer to municipal than national) autonomy under the future scenario
of global sovereignty. Under conditions of interdependence--which will
hold under all likely regimes--I nevertheless fail to see how such space
even can be provided without a larger systemic transformation, both
structurally and ideologically (eg. a moral underpinning for that autonomy
more solid than slogans of freedom, such as provision of experimental
space that in the long run benefits the global civilisation-building
project).
5. Lastly, a comment on mere coexistence. I fully appreciate the
legitimate fears underpinning the hope that no one will try to convert
others to one's own dogma. Yet this mentality implies two possibilities.
Either the individual does not believe sufficiently in his or her own
realised "good" to think it worth bringing to the community as a whole, or
that personal "good" is considered too precious to share. Both scenarios
strike me as a little unsuited to a true "world city." We must examine
suitably critically the public-private boundaries that emerged from
mercantile relationships and plague us still. Do individuals exist
primarily as autonomous units or as intersections of public engagements?
Public engagement requires believing something sufficiently strongly to
take it beyond oneself.
Regards,
--AKW
===============================================================================
Adam K. Webb
Department of Politics
Princeton University
Princeton NJ 08544 USA
609-258-9028
http://www.princeton.edu/~akwebb