ahmad sadri, mahmoud sadri, intercultural understanding- max weber and leo strauss

Intercultural Understanding: Max Weber and Leo Strauss

Ahmad Sadri, Mahmoud Sadri

Introduction

For much of human history intercultural understanding has been precluded by fantastic folkloric and mythological conceptions about inhabitants of exotic lands. What the contemporary academic lexicon defines as xenophobia, ethnocentrism and prejudice have often been the very basis of judgments about the ways of life and belief in other societies. The western social sciences evolved in part by serving or rebelling against such judgments in the course of the last three centuries.1 They have sometimes fallen prey to pitfalls of both extremes. But vacillating between these extremes, we contend, has gradually enabled the social sciences to identify and articulate the central problems involved in acquiring valid knowledge of other societies. 2 Thus, to ignore all the social sciences' substantive, methodological and critical achievements 3 concerning the intricacies of intercultural understanding and research may represent an unglamorous naivete in which problems and solutions seem deceptively facile and final. Still, Leo Strauss' unhesitant denunciation of the social scientific approach toward intercultural understanding calls for a review of his intriguing invitation to an alternative method of understanding other cultures and societies. It also requires a reappraisal of the accomplishments of the social sciences in this respect. The focus of the present evaluation, therefore, is Strauss' criticism of social science in general and his critique of Max Weber's methodology and sociology in particular. An exegesis of the anthropological and sociological implications of a Weberian theory of intercultural understanding will conclude this essay.

1. Of Strauss

Leo Strauss considered modernity as narrowing, rather than as an "enlargement of the horizon" of classical thought, 4 and thus

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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 393

regarded "enlightenment" as "obfuscation. ''5 Still, some Strauss- eans have insisted that the study of the modern social sciences, an obvious progeny of the above currents, "constitutes an excellent example of the cast of his mind and the way in which he proceeded. ''6 They further assert that Strauss, despite his lack of interest in the new social sciences as an important intellectual movement, felt a "severe moral responsibility"* to study "almost all of the literature ''7 which they produced.

Judging from Strauss' works, however, one can not conclude that he studied such disciplines as anthropology and the philosophy of social science with any seriousness, or that he solved, transcended, or successfully sidestepped issues raised and discussed by the modern social sciences regarding intercultural understanding and evaluation. An understanding of Strauss' political philosophical orientation requires an appreciation of his early intellectual interests and gravitations.

Without disregarding the Straussean dictum that we must understand a writer "as he understood himself or desired to be understood," we can establish that Strauss' project was motivated by subtle paradoxical sensitivities sharpened by ethnic and historic frictions and taxed by the catastrophic emergence of Fascism which brought unprecedented enmity and violence to his refined native culture. The existing consensus about the effects of Strauss' background on his intellectual interests is authenticated by his own recollections of himself as "a young Jew born and raised in Germany who found himself in the grip of the theological-political predicament. ''1~ A sympathetic commentator underscores Strauss' own assessment: "He was born a Jew in a country where Jews cherished the greatest secular hopes and suffered the worst terrible persecutions. ''11 Similarly, a critic maintains that "as a Jewish thinker he experienced the conflict (between reason and religion) within himself. ''12 Far from relativising the content of Strauss'

* One should bear in mind, however, that the morally outraged Strauss was neither the first nor the only scholar to suspect the intent and the validity of social sciences or to warn against dangers of their practice, s However revolutionary Strauss' teachings might have sounded to his American students who admittedly had until then been exposed to nothing but liberal, modernist and abundantly tolerant academic environments, 9 his rhetoric strikes familiar chords for those who study defensive postures of the intellectual elite of civilizations in crisis. In one such instance with which the authors of this paper are intimately familiar (Iran of 1950's to 1970's), a rising generation of scholars criticized the demoralizing effects of skepticism, universalism, and the pure tolerance advocated by the western social science s . The rhetoric of these theologians, literary scholars and social philosophers against relativism and historicism, and their belief in the knowability of absolute truths, universal criteria of justice, and the validity of traditional and religious heritage closely parallel the Straussean arguments.

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ideas, these observations are meant to complement our compre- hension of Strauss' thought in relation to a specific intellectual and historical context. .13

Strauss' project of recovering the pristine principles of "reason and faith," or of Greek "right thinking" and "Jewish right acting" from dual fountainheads of intellect and morality located in Athens and Jerusalem, 14 represents an obviously simplified intellectual geography. *.1~ The hypothetical assumption that such a bi-focal tunnel vision may be the result of Strauss' belief in the existence of "separate and discrete cultures" with "no actual relations with one other," and that he, therefore, simply wished to "enter upon possession of his own inheritance by reenacting the genesis of his own civi l izat ion.. , as a western man. . , minding his own business ''16 is plausible only if we ignore Strauss' conviction that the Judeo-Greek heritage constitutes the sole repository of eternal and universal notions of truth and justice. Indeed, it was on this basis that he criticized the modern social sciences for their "recognition of all civilizations as equally respectable," and for their acceptance "as morality, religion, art, knowledge, state, etc., whatever claimed to be morality, religion, art, etc. ''17

Strauss' swift and sweeping judgments, which dismiss or doom to inferiority (and worse) all that does not belong to or vacillate between Athens and Jerusalem, must be understood as a contribution to the polemarchian and ultimately Xenophonean notion of justice: "justice does not consist in helping everyone. . , not even in . . . helping all good men" but only "in helping one's friends, i.e., one's fellow citizens, and in hating [which does not exclude "hurting"] one's enemies. ''is Strauss seems to have advanced this imperative beyond the sphere of international politics to the world of intercultural and intercivilizational understanding. "Transcending city," argued Strauss, "means transcending justice. ''19 It is strange that Strauss would advocate intercultural value judgments without recourse to a broader notion of justice and without detailed and close knowledge of non-western cultures. His understanding of the world outside the Occident

* The distinction between relationism and relativism first introduced by Mannheim--and inspired by Scheler--may inform a nonreductionist sociology of knowledge, Strauss himself engaged in this type of analysis when he described the socio-psychological background of Max Weber's thought.

** Even within the confines of such projects the Straussean dualism is not the only conceivable formula. Nikos Kazantzakis, the Bergsonian philosopher-poet, for example, has introduced a "Cretan glance" overlooking the fateful convergence of the Greek and the Indian worlds.


hardly exceeded Edmond Burke's pictograph of "the great map of mankind" or Gibbon's image of a "world of barbarism and savagery." In this respect Strauss was merely a consumer of what Edward Said calls the "orientalist vision: .... A vision by no means confined to the professional scholar, but rather the common possession of all who have thought about orient in the west. ''2~ It is not surprising, therefore, that Strauss' grasp of such contemporary issues as "underdevelopment" hardly exceeds that of a layman. 2~

As an alternative to the social scientific approach Strauss argued for the logical possibility and utility of the knowledge of ultimate truths concerning social and cultural phenomena. His noble propositions, however, usually remain hypothetical. For example Strauss bids at one point:

Let us assume that we had genuine knowledge of right and wrong, or of the Ought, or of the true value system. That knowledge, while not derived from empirical science, would legitimately direct all empirical social science; it would be the foundation of all empirical social science... If there were genuine knowledge of the ends, that knowledge would naturally guide all search for means. There would be no reasons to delegate knowledge of the ends to social philosophy and the search for the means to an independent social science. Based on genuine knowledge of the true ends, social science would search for the proper means to those ends; it would lead up to objective and specific value judgments regarding policies. Social science would be a truly policymaking, not to say architectonic, science rather than a mere supplier of data for the real policymakers. 22

While the knowledge of the "true value system" may not be logically impossible to acquire, nowhere does Strauss provide an explanation as to how it could actually be reached. The sequence of "would be's" and "ifs" in Strauss' Athenina project, may well deserve a Laconic retort: I~.* Strauss does not always stop at the consideration of a possibility. He would also argue for the undemonstrabil ity of an impossibility. Notice, for example, his objection to Max Weber, whom he had dubbed "the greatest social scientist of our century: ''2s "He never proved that unassisted human mind is incapable of arriving at objective norms or that the conflict

* The Laconians, also known as Spartans, had a flare for brevity of speech. The proverbial Laconism of Spartans is exemplified in their one word reply to their hostile neighbors. Locked in an inconclusive siege, the commander of the Athenian army wrote a wastefully long letter, elaborating on the horrors that awaited the Spartans if their city were captured. The Spartan response was truely laconic: "If."


between different this-worldly ethical doctrines is insoluble by human reason. ''24

Strauss attempts to refute an assortment of (conveniently summarized) "historicist" and "relativist" claims in a manner consistent with the above strategies. He maintains, for example, that the variety of notions of right does not prove the "nonexistence of natural right or the conventional character of all right. ''25 The history of ideas, he observes, simply demonstrates the succession of ideas. "It does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. ''26 Even Strauss' more substantive arguments on the possibility, utility, and indeed, necessity of arriving at universal and knowable criteria of truth, justice and cultural excellence are wanting in substance: "All human thought, and certainly all philosophic thought, is concerned with the same fundamental themes or the same fundamental problems, and therefore there exists an unchanging framework which persists in all changes of human knowledge of both facts and principles. ''27

Strauss' exegeses of political philosophy and modern social science hark back to the Socratic question of "how man ought to live," a question which in Strauss' view is "susceptible to a final solution. ''2s Hence his critique of modernism, enlightenment, the social sciences, conventionalism, relativism, historicism and positivism. Strauss apparently thought his project for recovering the absolute and unchangeable "principles of right of goodness" could be achieved without venturing beyond the pale of Occidental civilization. Yet he seemed to enjoy taking rhetorical shots at whatever lay beyond. Strauss' intercultural frameworks consist of such incriminating dichotomies as "superior and inferior," "genuine and spurious," "true and false," "just and unjust." Understandably he keeps his distance from details that would blur the starkness of his contrasts; nevertheless he makes his views sufficiently clear by deploring the very practice of comparing "our standards with theirs," and by conveniently identifying "ours" as "civilized" and "theirs" as "cannibal" societies. 2~ The closer Strauss comes to a concrete comparison of actually existing instances, the easier it becomes to assess the empirical worth of his arguments.

Despite his vituperatives against the social sciences' lax and lazy relativistic attitude in intercultural studies, Strauss' advocacy of the self-evidence of the superiority of western standards fails to provide a viable and vigorous alternative. For self-righteous claims to superiority of exponents of various cultures especially when they are made at the expense of intellectual fairness, or when they are informed by mere opinions and myths about other cultures,


constitute the very problem of intercultural understanding and not its solution. The appeal of Strauss' naive relegation of non- Occ identa l cultures and c iv i l izat ions: lies in its nosta lg ic ethnocentr ism which offers soothing comfort and self-confirmation to those who are weary of encountering the vortex of intercultural understanding. By rejecting the Kant ian separation of facts and values, of scientific investigation and judgmental evaluations Strauss collapses the Weberian distinction between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology, anthropology and history, and the dogmatic disciplines such as jurisprudence, ethics and aesthetics. 30

Thus, the attitude of Straussean anthropologist is that of a judge in a "Tr ibunal" - -an allegory of which Strauss is extremely fond. Possible uneasiness about this dubious promotion, however, is dissipated as the Straussean judge finds out that he will preside over imaginary cases which are already tr immed of all of their complexities and reduced to a series of dichotomous antinomies. Perfect mythological symmetries reduce the dimensions of the cultural world to a dualistic projection. Surely, "humani ty and barbar ism," "knowledge and notorious nonsense," "civil ization and cannibal ism" cannot be equated. .31 Given the nature of these cases, the task of the anthropologist/ judge could not be a difficult one, unless, of course, the judge happens to be a "generous liberal" who thinks good is equivalent to evil. For those who fail to see the differences in such black and white terms, Strauss points out where to look for the crucial differences:

The sociologist of religion cannot help noting the difference between those who try to gain the favor of their gods by flattering and bribing them and those who try to gain it by a change of heart. Can he see this difference without seeing at the same time the difference of rank which it implies, the difference between a mercenary and a nonmercenary attitude? Is he not forced to realize that to attempt to bribe the gods is tantamount to trying to be the lord or employer of the gods and that there is a fundamental incongruity between such attempts and what men divine when speaking of such gods? ''*.32

* The common mythologically imbued and ideologically charged lexicon of Western man is constitutive of Strauss' world view, with respect to the charge of Barbarism we shall not belabor the obvious. Cannibalism, as W. Arens has demonstrated in his ground-breaking work "The Man-Eating Myth," is a persistent and rarely challenged racial slur that is invented and used in the frontiers of many cultures and civilizations.

** The intrinsic religious value of a "devotional offering" unless it is unceremoniously characterized as "bribing the gods," cannot be judged to be inferior to a dispassionate Deist "religion of reason" which is espoused by Strauss' revered master Herman Cohen and his disciples.

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The Straussean judge thus reserves for himself the privilege of deciding in what respect the contending cultures must be compared.* Besides, by mislabelling devotional offerings as "bribing," Strauss denies the native the chance to be understood as he understands himself or wishes to be understoodY This, as we have seen, is a courtesy that Strauss readily extends to the sages of his own culture. To relate Xenephone's thought to its "historical situation," Strauss maintained, "is not the natural way of reading the work of a wise man." This use of a double standard in the service of ethnocentrism comes so naturally to Strauss that he assumes its self-evidence. 34 He thus explains the reluctance of the Occidental social sciences to declare the superiority of the West as a childish game in which the participants refrain from saying a certain word despite their inner certainty and urge to appro- priately do so. ~ This is the Straussean "spade." He assumes that everyone sees it as clearly as he does but only a few have the courage to jettison the conventional niceties of the liberal social sciences and call it by its proper name.

Yet, Strauss' rejection of the social sciences is not categorical. The historicizing, retativizing and reductionist effects of certain social scientific methods and theories seem to annoy Strauss only when they are applied to the Occidental intellectual legacy. When talking about Hinduism, for example, he apparently has no compunctions about espousing the most overt type of functionalist reductionism: "Why do Hindus believe in their karma doctrine if not because they know that otherwise their caste system would be indefensible? ''36

In this case, Strauss must not have cared, for he must have known that this sort of approach has been used by the vulgarizers of a school of thought that even in its original form aroused his indigent rejection, namely Marxism. The obvious implication of Strauss' interpretation of karma doctrine is that he understands the classical Indian thinkers better than they understood themselves. Had these classical thinkers been Greek, however, Strauss would emphatically dismiss such an interpretation. In fact he did explicitly reject the implication that we are better judges of the situation in which a given Greek classical thinker thought:

* In the contentious sphere of religious disagreements this is a tremendous advantage to grant oneself indeed, If one were to grant the same advantage to a Moslem scholar dedicated to the cause of absolute monotheism we would find both Judaism and Christianity (not to mention Hinduism) relegated to various levels of inferiority because of their common theological weakness: belief in anthropomorphic Gods.


We cannot be better judges of that situation if we do not have a clearer grasp than he had of the principles in whose light historical situations reveal their meaning. 37

Strauss disputes the validity of the historicists' claim to a better overview all the more decisively when such claims are based on perfunctory treatment of these classical texts.

And even if it were true that we could understand the classics better than they understood themselves, we could become certain of our superiority only after understanding them exactly as they understood themselves. Otherwise we might mistake our superiority to our notion of the classics for superiority to the classics. 3s

In the hasty judgment he passes against the karma doctrine, Strauss seems to have fallen victim to the naivete he so eloquently deplores here.*

That the karma doctrine preceded the caste system and is believed in by non-Hindus who disdain the caste system does not enter Strauss' exposition. He does not even entertain the possibility that karma doctrine was linked to an oppressive social order by a reinterpretation of its original meaning and that the two may be conceived of as separate entities, as ideas and ideologies.

Strauss refuses to treat the doctrines that occur within his range of thought, between Amos and Socrates, with the same unforgiving harshness. 39 In these cases he fails to warn against the possibility of individual or group self-deceptions. Rather, one must understand the masters as they understood themselves and practice exactly what Strauss berates the social science for: "bow without a murmur to their self interpretation. ''4~

At this point the picture of the presiding judge in the tribunal set up to examine the values and standards of other cultures fades into that of a cringing student seeking an audience with the masters. "Judging" is thus postponed indefinitely, because of the graveness of the task of understanding. Also, the social implications and unintended consequences of an idea are sharply separated from the idea itself. But Strauss' Xenophonean interpretation takes him further. The analytical separation of the ideas from their social functions, which he parsimoniously withheld from the aliens for

* Can we not dismiss this as an oversight of an accomplished classicist who was not after all known for his mastery of the Ind ian civil ization? No, because Strauss h imsel f makes swift intercultural judgments pivotal to his thought by criticizing the circumlocutions and noncommitta l language the social sciences use in intercultural studies.


fear of evincing excessive generosity is not even worthy of his friends. What was too good for the goose turns out to be not good enough for the gander. Let us illustrate by comparing the aforementioned treatment of the idea of karma to Strauss' critique of Weber's theory of Calvinism.

Strauss perceived an implied accusation (one which is not likely to have been intended) in Max Weber's linking of the Protestant ethic to the advent of capitalism. Of course, unlike Strauss, Weber did not ask the rhetorical question: "Why do Calvinists believe in 'predestination' if not because they know that otherwise their capitalist system would be indefensible?" Rather Weber maintained that it was a reinterpretation of Calvin's ideas which dovetailed with the development of capitalism. But even this leaves something to be desired from Strauss' point of view; Weber should have explicitly condemned Calvinism by calling it a corruption of Calvin's ideas. The Straussean observer ought to take sides. This means that on the one hand he is expected to announce, with what amounts to Feuerbachean determination, that the karma doctrine is nothing but an ideological facade for the caste system. On the other, he is expected not only to dissociate Calvin's ideas from later Calvinism but also to go the extra mile and condemn Calvinism as a regrettable degeneration of Calvin's intentions. 41

In the Straussean view social sciences that do not partake in this mode of partisan social philosophy stand accused of rudderless relativism if not treason.* Strauss attempts to buttress his position by attaching a hypothetical social scientific study of concentration camps from which all allusions to cruelty would be carefully deleted. 42 But, one may wonder, if it comes to pondering the worst scenarios, would the committed social philosophers fare any better than the non-committed social scientists? If social scientists are liable to stop at explaining and thereby to implicitly condone evil and its social organization, would it not be only appropriate that

* Strauss elaborated a quaint intellectual conspiracy theory according to which the Germans avenged their defeat by striking back in the academia of the United States: "It would not be the first time that a nation, defeated on the battle field and, as it were, annihilated as a political being, has deprived its conquerors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them a yoke of its own thought." American social science stands accused of being vulnerable in this sinister scheme.

Allen Blooms's best selling "The Closing of the American Mind" while echoing the master's view almost verbatim, assigns a more innocent role to the American intellectuals from Arendt to Riesman as the unwitting pawns of a "German Connection" singing "a song they do not understand translated from a German or ig ina l . . . " See, Leo Strauss, Natural Right History, op. cit., pp. 2, 4. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1987 p. 152).


the committed social thinkers, the engineers of the "natural order" and the advisers of the state, tremble at the possibility of creating or perpetuating the very evil that once organized would be dispassionately studied by the hypothetical social scientists?

2. Of Weber

Before examining Weber's theory of intercultural understanding it may be helpful to offer a brief, classificatory note on alternative theories or assumptions that have informed the Western philosophical and social scientific investigation of other cultures. At the risk of some simplifications and without claiming to either exhaust the varieties or delineate the fine details of the controversy, we deem the following dual taxonomy heuristically fit for the purposes at hand.

1. Essential ism: The fundamental presupposition of this category, which comprises empirical and rationalist genres is the belief that what is worth knowing about a given culture that is, the "truth" of that culture, exists independently of both the intentionality of the natives and the cognitive orientation and value relevant interests of the investigators. By sifting through the heap of false or trivial opinions or data, essentialists hope to discover the objective truth about a given cultural world. True science, they contend, must be free of the value relevant (ideal) interests of its practitioners as well as those of its subjects. Besides, they must account for those cognitive preferences that are somehow linked to the investigator's cultural world. The essentialists are wearily aware of the former but do not perceive the latter as such. If we define cognitive preferences as a set of guidelines which determine how to select, organize and disseminate the important data once the subject has been selected, the essentialists could not be said to possess cognitive orientations. They are rather possessed by them, for they conceive of themselves as selfless instruments of a science that goes on to accumulate information about, or to correct the image of the world according to its pristine principles. In this process neither the investigator nor his subjects need to intervene as the unimportant and the untrue are supposed to be automatically and systematically eliminated by the turning wheel of deductive reasonings or inductive generalizations. Whereas the empirical essentialists generally seek to justify their criteria of "objective truth" by emulating the generalizing ambitions of the natural


sciences, the rationalists usually presuppose the possibility of arriving at such criteria through the application of the methods of "right thinking." Nevertheless, as a rule, an overt explication of or justification for these objective criteria of truth remain implicit in both types of essentialism. Apparently the strength of such claims lies in not questioning their presumed self evidence.

It is ironic that before the rise of neo-rational essentialism represented by Strauss, a vague but nearly ubiquitous empirical essentialism had found expression in the social sciences, namely in the early anthropological theories of the savage mind and in the sociological theories of cultural evolution. Thus, the earlier social sciences led the quest of Occidental culture to organize cultural diversity into a universal hierarchical order or to transform geo-cultural differences into rungs of an imaginary chronological ladder of progress.

2. Relativism: We classify under this rubric all those theories that reject the possibility or usefulness of arriving at universal and objective criteria of truth, and supplant them instead with a variety of context-dependent and often ultimately incommensu- rable criteria of distinguishing the significant, the true and the just from the unimportant, the false and the unjust. Here the subjects of intercultural understanding become sovereigns in their respective domains. They undertake to introduce, if not to initiate, the empathizing investigator to the intricacies of their world by defining and defending their fundamental concepts and systems of thought and judgment. The duty of the investigator is to "understand," i.e., to capture the prevailing sense rather than to try to make sense out of the alien universe of discourse. By recognizing the authenticity of the self understanding of the natives, the relativists explode the unity of the essentialists' objective world; parallel cultural universes are discovered as the image of one real world confronting many delusional ones fades away. At the same time relativism implodes the essentialists' favorite universal duality of true and false; all shared beliefs, insofar as they are anchored in their respective contexts, are seen as equally rational. Rationality is redefined as "conforming to norms."43

Contemporary anthropology and certain segments of modern philosophy have recently reasserted relativism with new vigor, provoking vitriolic rebuttals from the essentialist school. 44 Without trying to belittle their decisive methodological differences, especially regarding the relevance of the "native's account" to a scientific understanding of his own culture, we merely wish to point

Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud $adri 403

out a common weakness in both of these camps, namely, their underestimation of the importance of the investigator's value relevant interests and, cognitive orientations. Essentialists elevate their cognitive orientations to the level of epistemological truths and, while marginal ly aware of the influence of value relevant interests in their scientific work, view the latter as a minor impediment to be overcome. The relativistic theories, however, are widely unref lexive and even ventr i loquis i te insofar as the invest igator 's ideal (value relevant) interests and cognitive preferences are concerned. They often seem to view themselves as the selfless curators of a cultural museum whose task is to record and meticulously preserve the varieties of cultural universes of discourse.

It is exactly this common blind spot in most of the essentialist and relativist theories which sets them apart from the Weberian project. Weber bridged this gap and laid the foundations of a unified approach for the study of "distant peoples," i.e., those who lived before or live apart from us. The potentialities of this approach, however, are not fully developed. With respect to the historical past Weber's solution finds expression today in Gadamerian hermeneutics, but a Weberian theory of intercultural understanding has not yet been exhaustively explored. It is symptomatic of this one-sided development of Weberian methodology that Alfred Schutz viewed only the study of the "world of predecessors" as problematic (because of the lack of "the common core of knowledge" available to the world of contemporaries). 45 He presupposed the understand- ability and thus the homogeneity of "contemporary civilization." It is of course by no means self-evident that the "common core of knowledge" belonging to the medieval European burger would be more accessible to the contemporary Occidental man than that of Indian yogis, Siberian shamans, Japanese Zen masters or Ghaderi sufis.

Instead of neglecting or attempting to eliminate or circumvent the historical and geo-cultural distances, Weber recognized them as instruments of, rather than as obstacles in the way of, understanding. Just as a hermeneutical consciousness of our rootedness in time renders destructive prejudice into constructive historical insight, an awareness of our defined presence in geo- cultural space can turn cultural distance into intellectual leverage for understanding. In studying distant peoples, therefore, the human interests of the investigator present a Janus face: their denial or their self-righteous assertion impedes understanding but an awareness of them turns this blind spot into a lens which allows the discriminating gaze of inquiry to focus on issues of importance.


Neither the embedded ethnocentrism of rational essentialism nor that of early anthropological and sociological studies affects Weber's theory of intercultural understanding. Weber's is a new "ethnocentrism," one which instead of echoing the self-righteous claims of a dominant culture, testifies to the conscious adaptation of the science of man to the spacio-temporal limits of human knowledge. Without the advantage of such an Archimedean point, i.e., a particular value-relevant and scientific interest, it becomes impossible for us to scientifically study the distant worlds of our predecessors or those of our "alien" contemporaries. Against the essentialist denial and the relativist neglect of the presuppositions of the social sciences Weber stated: "The question as to what should be the object of universal conceptualization cannot be decided 'presuppositionlessly.' -46 Even within contemporaries of a given dominant cultural world the development of new ideas depend on a certain cultural distance: the quasi-proletarian intellectuality and the intellectuality of the peripheral regions of greater cultural centers, Weber observed, are better poised to utilize this Archime- dean advantage and to revolutionize the dominant systems of thought. Freedom from certain binding social conventions seems to unleash the creative impulse that can overturn overarching cultural world views. 47 "The possibility of questioning the meaning of the world presupposes the capacity to be astonished about the course of events."48 In intercultural studies an even more radical "freedom" from the conventions and opinions is available to the investigator. The geo-cultural distance can be scientifically reduced to the differences in cognitive orientations and value-relevant interests.

Thus, a Weberian anthropologist would not set himself the goal of achieving an empathic appreciation of the culture as experienced by its natives. Indeed apart from his doubts about accessibility and verifiability of such a knowledge 49 Weber shared Strauss' concern over the individual or group self-deceptions of the subjects:

. . . the 'conscious motives' may well, even, to the actor himself, conceal the various 'motives' and 'repressions' which constitute the real driving force of his action. Thus in such cases even subjectively honest self-analysis has only a relative value. Then it is the task of the sociologist to be aware of this motivational situation and to describe and analyze it, even though it has not actually been concretely part of the conscious intention of the actor; possibly not at all, at least not fully. 5~

It is obvious that in his studies of alien civilizations Weber did not hesitate to use the famil iar categories of the Occidental civilization. He freely spoke of "confessional relationships" of


Hindus to their gurus 5t and of "knighthood" in medieval JapanY He elaborated on the "petit-bourgeois ''~3 strata in ancient China and on the "welfare state" and "democratic religions" in India. ~4 Weber observed cross-cultural parallels between the continental influences of France and Hellenic cultures in Europe and those of China and India in Asia. 5~ He underscored the similarities of Confucian and Greek philosophies, 56 liberally quoted the Communist Manifesto to describe the plight of Hindu lower castes ~7 and compared the Quaker silent meditations to the apathetic ecstasy of yogis. ~8.

It would appear from these considerations that Weber was more interested in asking his own questions about the particular developments of alien civilizations than in trying to attain an empathic understanding of them. This tendency characterizes Weber's agenda in contra-distinction to that of the relativist school.

Unlike some rational essentialists, like Strauss, Weber excludes normative evaluations from his social scientific investigations. Therefore, those who wish to substantiate the superiority of their own standards through the study of other cultures will find Weber's principle of "value neutrality" unconducive. Weber seems to have assumed that the inevitable distortions imposed on the alien culture due to the geo-cultural distance between the subject and object remain relatively benign as long as they are not compounded by evaluative judgments. It should of course be stressed that for Weber, opting to pursue "a science as a vocation" does not deprive the social scientist from his or her right to pass value judgments on moral and ideological issues as long as he refrains from tracing the genealogy of his moral judgments back to a dispassionate and scientific study of facts.

At any rate the predominance of the observer's cognitive orientation in the study of the alien culture remains problematic as it may perpetuate the unfair advantage of the observer over the observed. The problem of onesidedness of the intercultural studies has been the central theme of a prolonged debate between the relativist and the essentialist camps, with little gain on either side. Despite their attempts either to justify the Occidental scientific bent for logical discourse, or to discover parallel logical universes, they never transcend the direction of the inquiring gaze which

* Some of these cross cultural references are pedagogical; others bear a tinge of irony, and, of course, a small fraction are redolent with Weber's fascination with the developments of the modern Occidental sciences. Indeed, Weber was very nearly reductionist when he attempted to explain religious experiences with the help of the pathological lexicon of modern psychology 59 or when he hoped that one day the dissimilarities of Occidental and Oriental rationalism would be accounted for by the sciences of comparative neurology and physiology. 6~

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invariably originates in the West. As to the fairness of their respective arguments, one can hardly decide which of the two would be more offensive to the "natives:" the ostensibly more charitable exegeses which reduce natives' worlds to flat logically closed universes or insistent accusations that their universes of discourse are not logical enough.

The present reconstruction of Weber's anthropological methodology suggests that instead of trying to dissolve the qualitative differences between cultures into one universal ranking system, or to create a Gulliverian world of many cultural islands, the investigator must recognize not only his own right but also that of any culture to construct images of other cultures on the basis of its own cognitive approach and ideal interests. The result would be an irreducible variety of cultural images that reflect one another and know each other not despite but because of their differences. Only through this mutual recognition can they look at one another through the prisms of their cognitive orientations and value- relevant interests. These mutually reflective cultures, thus, would enter into a crescendo of ever-changing and ever-enhancing knowledge of each other.* Instead of denying to themselves the benefits of geo-cultural distance, the Occidental scientists must recognize it as such and reserve the right of the others to do unto their culture as they do unto others. This would make the process of intercultural understanding a reversible one. Once the current reification of cognitive orientations and ideal interests is dissolved, all would regain a right to their interests which at once distort and make accessible the "relevant" portions of the other culture.

This shows that the relativists' quest for the unification of subject and object, even if possible, would not be conducive to intercultural understanding, which occurs only when the investigator strikes a tenuous balance bestriding the intercultural seesaw. Those who assimilate an alien culture so well that they "go native" may only achieve intercultural intuition, not systematic intercultural knowledge. A native Bushman who studies Western medicine and a European who masters Acupuncture return to their respective native lands as practitioners of, and believers in, an exotic art of healing. Indeed, these cultural converts may at certain points ponder their internal conflict in terms of a quasi-essentialist partiality toward one culture or a stoic existence in the relativized

Professor Arthur Vidich, who has provided the authors with the benefit of his insights, has suggested a less optimistic trajectory than that envisioned by the authors: "the 'cressendo' is one possible outcome of the process of mutuat recognition you describe, but it strikes me as an optimistic outcome. Why is a cacophony not an equally possible outcome, at least for all but the 'scientists' and investigators."

Ahmad .Sadri and Mahmoud .Sadri 4-07

twilight between the two, but their solutions remain private and unsystematic.* The worlds of Occidental social science fiction (e.g., Carlos Casteneda's works) and literature (e.g., Conrad's Heart of Darkness) are replete with the theme of travelers or social scientists who indulged the temptation of "going native." The social scientists of the third world who have considered the matter from their side of the fence and with a more serious tone, have dubbed it "Occidentosis," "brain drain," etc. In either case cultural conversion of individuals contributes little to intercultural understanding, which is a matter of collective confrontation of different ideal interests and cognitive orientations.

Having briefly outlined the antfhropotogical aspects of intercultural understanding, let us turn to the sociological domain. Here the value-relevant interests of the investigator in conjunction with his cognitive predilections play a significant role in the selection of the subject matter and in the formation of appropriate ideal types. This is most apparent in social history and comparative sociology. The recognition of the investigator's ideal interests does not diminish science to the private tale of the individuals for these interests are themselves shaped by the socio-historical circumstan- ces. Neither does Weber's method of studying distant peoples turn the social sciences into a civilizationatly determined utilitarian enterprise. Weber had already attempted to correct a different version of this misunderstanding in his critique of Eduard Meyer's limited definition of historical interests. The latter restricted the scope of historically relevant facts to those elements that have been "causally effective" in bringing about the "Present." Weber responded to this by broadening the concept of ideal interests to encompass much more than what is deemed to be causally effective from a particular historical point of view. Even the study of alien and vanquished civilizations, such as those of Aztecs and Incas, can become the subject of our value relevant interests. Such a study can, to say the least, function as a heuristic device for the study of analogous cultural developments.

This knowledge may function positively to supply an illustration, individualized and specific, in the formation of the concept of feudalism or negatively, to delimit certain concepts with which we operate in the study of European cultural history from the quite

* Dilemmas of self-understanding as well as those concerning the social image of the cultural converts have been explored by Georg Simmel and Robert E. Park in their conceptualizations of "the stranger" and the "marginal man," and by Thorstein Veblen's discussion of "the intellectual preeminence of Jews in modern Europe."


different cultural traits of the Incas and Aztecs; this latter function enables us to make a clearer genetic comparison of the historical uniqueness of European cultural development, sl

The Weberian social scientist no longer needs to conceal or neglect the fact that he, like his subjects, is also a finite human being who is bound to his own historical and geo-cultural time and space. An examination of Weber's studies in the field of comparative sociology bears out the above conclusions. He viewed alien civilizations from an Occidental Archimedean point and organized his empirical data around the nuclei of his value relevant interests. Weber's most important value relevant interest concerned the reasons behind the nonemergence of modern capitalism in the Orient.

It is a well known fact that Weber's interest in the development of Occidental capitalism led him to perceive non-Western societies as a "set of gaps and absences ''62 which ranged from autocephal- eous cities, particular political, religious and legal structures, and voluntary associations, to such epiphenomena as gothic vaults, spatial perspective in painting and harmonic music. 88 What is less known is that Weber followed the same "Eurocentric" approach in his studies of American society, underscoring the lack of mass party system, strong church organizations, labor movements and other distinctly European institutions. Weber's solution seems to elude essentialism but it is equally averse to relativism. His approach is more comparable to a theory of social scientific relativity in the domain of intercultural studies.

Both Weber and Strauss inherited and--for different purposes-- utilized the "discursive currency" of the Western Orientalism. 64 The important difference, however, is that Weber acknowledged the existence of the dilemma, tried to assess and minimize its impact on intercultural research, and even devised a method to use the distorted loci of the anthropological hermeneutics to the advantage of a non "presuppositionless" social science. Leo Strauss, on the other hand, categorically rejected the Weberian--or any other social scientific--solution, reverted back to the apparent objectivity of an "orientalist vision," and tried to lend credence to what Levi Strauss has called "a primitive science of the concrete" and the patently discredited discourse it represents.

Reference Notes

1. An example of such contentions could be found in the early European debates concerning humanity and rationality of the American natives which emerged


in the wake of the Spanish conquests of the Americas. This presented the Occident, for the first time since Rome, with the moral and practical dilemma of justifying and perpetuating its domination over vanquished civilizations. A rediscovery, modification and implementation of Aristotle's doctrine of "natural slavery" epitomized the response of the era to this problem. The theory was deemed applicable to "people less capable of using their reason," hence the attribution of irrationality to the inhabitants of the newly invaded continent, The controversy over the rationality of native Americans is best illustrated in the debates between Jaun Gines Sepulveda, the Spanish Aristotlian who strongly supported the application of the doctrine of natural slavery to the "irrational '~ Indians on the one side and Done Bartolome De las Casas, the Spanish clergyman who tried to demonstrate that Indians were in fact "rational people" who fulfilled all of Aristotle's requisites of the rational good life on the other. See Mahmoud Sadri's Problem. Areas of Rationality, State, Culture and Society, (Fall 1985)), and M. T. Hodgen's Early Anthropology in the 16th and 17th Centuries, (Philadelphia, Princeton University Press, 1984).

2. Clifford Geertz has recently formulated this problem as the attempt "to understand how it is we understand understanding not our own." C. Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York, Basic Books, 1983), p. 5.

3. As regards the critical history of the social scientific discourse this essay acknowledges and presupposes the work of Foucautt and Edward Said. See: Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York, Pantheon books, 1970)~ Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Pantheon books, 1978).

4. Leo Sta-auss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, (Chicago: The University of Chicago P~ess, 1983), p. 228.

5. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, (Glenco: Free Press, 1958), p. 173, 6. Allan Bloom, "Leo Strauss," Political Theory, (Vol. 2, no. 4, 1974), p. 37. 7. Ibid., p. 375~ 8, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History~ (Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1953), pp, 1-8. 9. Dr. Werner J. Dannhauser describes himself before meeting Strauss as "a

relativist ill at ease in his relativism." See: W. Dannhauser, "Leo Strauss, Becoming Naive Again," American Scholar, (Vol. 44, Autumn 1975), p. 637; Also see: H. V, Jaffa's account of his pre-Straussian stage in New York Review of Books, (Oct. 10, 1985).

10. Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, (New York: Schocken, 1965), p. 1. 11. Allan Bloom, op. cir., p, 373. 12. M. F. Burnyeat, "Sphinx Without a Secret," New York: Review of Books, (May

30, 1985), p. 33. 13. Max Scheler, Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge, tr. M. S. Frings, ed. K,

W. Stikkers (London: Routtedge and Kegan Paul, 1980); Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, (London, K. Paul Trench & Co., 1936); Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History.

14. Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, pp. 147, 332. 15. Nikos Kazantzakis, Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, tr. k. Friar, (New York: Simon

& Schuster, 1958), p. xviii. 16. Leo Strauss, "On Coltingwood's Philosophy of History," Review of Metaphysics,

(Vot. v. no. 4, June 1952), p. 563. 17. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 5, 55. 18. Leo Strauss, City and Man, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp.

72-3; Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 150. We are indebted to Dr. Barnyeat for drawing our attention to these quotations in his N.R.B. article.

19. Leo Strauss, Xenephon's Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of Economics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, t970), p. 123.

20. P. J. Marshall and G. Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, (London: J. Mo Den and Sons, 1982), pp. 1, 3.

21. Strauss was apparently oblivious to the critical literature that exposed meaning, origins and the future of underdevelopment when he offered his conjecture about the meaning of the term: "The expression underdeveloped nations.. , implies


the resolve to develop them fully, i,e, to make them either Communist or Western." Sep: Leo Strauss, City and Man, p. 6. Such judgments may be consistent with the Xenophobian duty towards one's enemies only insofar as the following Arabic proverb holds: "people are the enemies of that which they do not understand," E. Said, Orientalism, op. cit. p. 69.

22, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 41. 23. Ibid., p. 36. 24. Ibid., p. 70. 25. Ibid., p. 10. 26. Ibid., p. 19. 27. Ibid., pp. 23-4. 28. Ibid., p. 36. 29. Ibid., p. 3. 30. Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vol. 1, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich. (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1978), p. 4. 31, W. Arens, The Man-Eating Myth, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 32. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 50-51. 33, Ibid., p. 57. 34, Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, (New York: Cornell University Press, 1968), p. 24. 35. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and IIistory, p. 52. 36. Ibid., p. 130. 37. Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, p. 195, 38. Idem. 39, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 42. 40. Ibid., p. 55. 41. Ibid., pp. 59-62. 42, Ibid., p, 52. 43. Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science, (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey:

Humanities Press, 1970). 44. See: Rationality, ed. Bryan R. Wilson (Oxford: Basil Balckwell, 1979). 45. Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh and

F. Lehnert. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1967), p. 120. 46. Max Weber, Methodology of the Social Sciences, ed. E. A. Shills and H. A.

Finch. (New York: Free Press, 1949), p. 48. 47. Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vo]. 1, p. 507. 48. Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, (New York: Free Press, 1952), p. 207. 49. Max Weber, Rosher and Knies, (New York: Free Press, 1975), pp. 179-80, 50. Max Weber, Economy and Soc&ty, Vol. 1, pp.. 9-10. 5I. Max Weber, Religion of India, eds. Hans H. Gerth and P. Martindale (New

York: Free Press, 1958), p. 327. 52. Ibid., p. 333. 53. Ibid., p. 12. 54. Ibid., p. 142, 240. 55. Ibid., p. 329. 56. Max Weber, Religion of China, eds.: H. Gerth and P. Martindale (New York:

Free Press, 1957), p. 175. 57~ Max Weber, Religion of India, eds, H. Gerth and P. Martindate (New York:

Free Press, 1957), p. 175. 58, Ibid., p. 163. 59. Ibid., p. 149, 303; Max Weber, "Social Psychology of World Religions," in From

Max Weber, eds. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 245-46.

60. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, t930), p. 31.

6]. Max Weber, Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. t56. 62. Bryan Turner, For Weber, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 276. 63~ See especially the author's introduction in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit

of Capitalism, pp. 13-31.

Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 4It

64. That Weber and Strauss subscribed to an orientalist vision of the non western world is substantiated in Weber's case, by Brian Turner and in Strauss' case in the first part of this essay. See: Edward Said, Orientalism, op. cit. p. 72; Claud Levi Strauss, The Savage Mind, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); B. Turner, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974); B. Turner, For Weber, Essays on the Sociology of Fate, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).

ahmad sadri, mahmoud sadri, intercultural understanding- max weber and leo strauss

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