Elmar Holenstein (09.06.04)

Complex Cultural Traditions1)

AbstractCultural traditions are complex and heterogeneous phenomena. The values human beings adhere to are similarly complex and full of internal tensions. The line between “identical” and “different” does not continuously follow the conventional borderlines between different civilizations. It cuts through these complex constructs in confusing ways. Humans can speak the same language and adhere to opposite religions or to no religion at all. They can inhabit the same country and take very different moral, political or abstract philosophical views. Predators and prey thrive in the same climate, capitalists and socialists prosper in the same industrialized society. In a “Clash of – intrinsically complex – Civilizations”, alliances between people of different countries holding similar “world views” are to be expected. It is easy to find not only the same values, but also the same value conflicts in diverse cultural traditions. A classic example is the conflict between the duties towards one’s family and the loyalty to one’s country. Thanks to the complexity of cultural traditions it is possible to legitimize almost every idea imported from a foreign civilization “traditionalistically” – by presenting indigenous tendencies in one’s own cultural history. Long before they encountered the declarations of the American and French revolution, Chinese intellectuals advocated the equality of all human beings by quoting their own classics or Buddhaitic teachings. The unavoidable adaptation of cultural traditions to new circumstances makes it impossible to reduce such a tradition to its first heyday or classical period.

Introduction

Cultural traditions are not compact, discrete, homogeneous units, independent of

each other. As a rule, they are structures that continuously merge into and overlap

each other, and they are accordingly heterogeneous. The boundaries of continents

or even subcontinents, of climatic zones, of populations (alias “races” and ethnic

groups), of states, economic regions, languages, religions and other (ethical or

aesthetic) value communities are not congruent. There was no time at which the

conventional boundaries of Europe were at the same time climatic, ethnic, state,

economic, linguistic, religious or mentality boundaries. The same applies to South

Asia (“India”), which in geographical terms is more clearly delimited from the rest of

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Asia than Europe. This applies all the more to the “Midland” Zhongguo (“China”) with

its frequent changes in extension, its divisions, secessions and recurring subjection

to foreign hegemony, with voluntary or involuntary tributaries surrounding it, with

neighbouring countries that are more or less Sinified, by turns sinophile or

sinophobe.

Predators and prey among animals and bellicists and pacifists among human

beings thrive in one and the same climate. Speakers of the same language can

adhere to different religions. Adherents of the same religion can advocate different

philosophies, the one a rationalist philosophy, the others a mystical. In the same

industrialized state there are capitalists and socialists. “One country, two [or more]

systems” is not a novel Chinese invention.

Why are cultural traditions not as homogeneous as many philosophers have

dogmatically claimed for centuries and as political ideologies still proclaim? Why are

cultures, or, to use the word that in English is more current, why are civilizations so

complex and multi-faceted? The explanation is obvious. The various dimensions of

one culture will affect and influence each other. Their convergence, however, is

never long lasting. The causes of changes to them are too diverse. Different causes

are decisive for language change than for changes in religion, for migration and

shifts in population different causes than for shifts of state borders, for mental

changes different causes than for purely economic changes, and so forth. Thus, the

properties which in the past were brought to bear in attempts to define a culture

prove to be neither covariable nor, therefore, coextensive.

Today, social anthropologists use the complexity of a culture together with its

irregular change as one of the most important aspects to characterize a culture.

Instead of speaking of Hochkulturen (“high cultures”), which used to be current, they

prefer to speak of “complex societies”, or, though less commonly, of “complex

cultures” and “complex civilizations”. These new concepts are less evaluative. They

involve no temptation to assume that the emergence of urban cultures and of super-

regional states can be regarded as an advance in all respects. In particular, they

draw attention to the fact that there are striking differences not only between

cultures, but also within one and the same culture.

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Even archaic cultures, which used to be called “primitive cultures” as distinct

from “high cultures”, display considerable internal differences. In these cultures,

however, we find almost exclusively differences that are biologically determined,

differences depending on age, sex and kinship. The variations in people’s behaviour

towards each other in keeping with their degree of kinship can reach a degree of

complexity that “modern people” will hardly be able to grasp. The most important

factor of change in such societies seems to be ecological conditions, thus also

natural conditions. In English the term “culture” is not as regularly used in the plural

as in German; such a society is simply termed a cultural complex if it is studied over

an extended period.2)

Agriculture and the domestication of animals, and the subsequent

establishment of towns and of super-regional states bring new differences to bear,

differences that are no longer susceptible of biological explanation: differences

between various occupations (peasants, animal breeders, craftsmen and traders),

between property owners and those with no property, between educated and

uneducated, between governors and those governed, between military people and

civilians, between town and countryside, between centre and periphery. These are

all factors that have an influence on how people understand each other and what

they make of themselves, their nature and their traditional culture. Each of the

occupational groups and social strata mentioned develops a somewhat specific view

of the world and cultivates a different hierarchy of virtues. Thus, it is known to be

better for philosophers to abstain from high government office, and conversely for

political authorities not to consider themselves to be philosophical authorities. The

intelligence and the virtues befitting each of these occupations tend to conflict with

each other.

Although these new differences are not natural, biological factors like those that

play a role in the structuring of archaic societies (age, sex, kinship), but rather

historical, that is cultural factors, they do have something in common with them.

They are transcultural factors. They do not originate in specific cultures. They cannot

be attributed to people's ethnic origin, language or religion. No nation, no major

religion and no influential modern social ideology has been able to reverse any of

them. Every ideological movement has felt compelled up to now to make

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compromizes in this respect, even if these compromizes were quite contrary to their

original intentions, to their doctrines in the pure form. At best, they can be voided in

very small groups, which, however, almost inevitably have a sectarian character, and

do not only differentiate themselves from the major societies surrounding them, but

also artificially set themselves off from precisely those archaic societies that they

would like to restore.

Complex value systems

It is not only human cultures that are complex structures full of internal tensions.

Human value systems are also like this. The values that are dear to human beings

do not fit harmoniously into a conflict-free pyramid structure in which the various

values are simply of equal, superior or subordinate rank with regard to reach other.

The various values do not all admit of optimal implementation at one time. The

optimal implementation of one value does not at the same time promote the optimal

implementation of every other value. Optimal individual freedom is not compatible

with optimal social justice, radical self-fulfilment (“Selbstverwirklichung” in classical

German usage) or “self-cultivation” (xiushen in classical Chinese usage) of the

individual is not compatible with the strict equality of all people. “The greatest

happiness of the greatest number” cannot be achieved in a fundamentalist

communist society in which everybody, independently of capability and performance,

owns the same amount of property and receives the same income, but rather in a

moderately regulated capitalist society in which some are better off than the overall

population. However, there will never be a consensus as to how many should be

better off than the greater majority and to what extent so that everybody will be

better off. There are too many unstable factors that play a role. This is the reason

why in all liberal states there are political parties that promise the greatest happiness

and prosperity of the entire population on the basis of enhanced individual freedom,

and others that expect this from more equality. For such parties, at least, “an end of

history” is not to be expected.

Transcultural value systems and value conflicts

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It is not the case that specific and different fundamental values are to be found in

various cultures. The fundamental values that are found to be particularly

pronounced in a certain culture and which accordingly are regarded as “typical” of it

(for example, the “Five [neo-Confucian] Virtues”: humanity ren, rightness yi, decency

li, wisdom zhi and trustworthiness xin) can be found at least in rudimentary form in

every other culture of substantial extension in space and time. Just as the primary

emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise) are familiar to people

of all cultures, and cultures only differ from each other as regards the weighting, form

and cultivation of these emotions, so too is the full spectrum of fundamental values

to be found in all relatively complex human cultures, and so too are cultures only

distinguished from each other as regards weighting and cultivation of these

fundamental values.

The fact that not all fundamental values can be realized optimally in every

situation means that not only are the same values encountered in complex super-

regional cultures, but also all the same value conflicts. Indeed, depending on the

specific circumstances, line of thought and era, the same mutually contradictory

solutions for these value conflicts can be encountered in various cultures.

One classical example for a transcultural value dilemma are the philosophical

discussions about what is more important: the well-being of the family or the

common good. Discussions of this dilemma are encountered both in European and

in Chinese literature. In the Second World War, Sartre was asked by a student what

he should prefer: nursing his old, sick mother, or the struggle for liberty in the

Résistance. Sartre held the dilemma to be undecidable. However, his reflections give

rise to the suspicion that he himself would probably have decided to nurse his

mother. One and a half centuries earlier, the young Swiss educationalist Heinrich

Pestalozzi, an enthusiastic Enlightener, told his fiancée in no uncertain terms that in

case of a conflict between his duties towards his family and those towards his native

country, he would prefer his country. On the other side of the globe, in

Zhongguo/China, and more than two millennia earlier, Kong Zi/Confucius praised a

man who deserted three times in order to take care of his old father at home and

recommended him for a high government office due to his exemplary piety – with the

consequence, however, that his countrymen in Lu were thereupon prone to

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desertion. By contrary, in 479 BCE, in the year in which Kong Zi died, Zhuang

Zhishan in Chu, on being confronted with the same dilemma as Sartre in the 1940s

CE, told his mother that he could only support her with the salary that he receives

from his lord, and that he would therefore fulfil his duty as a soldier.3)

Social alliances crossing cultural boundaries

Complexity, non-homogeneity and disharmony are inherent to human cultures and

value systems. This phenomenological observation must be taken as the point of

departure in approaching the question of the relationship of cultures to each other, in

other words, the question posed at this conference about the identity and alterity of

cultural traditions. Its relevance will immediately become clear when, instead of

simply speaking of cultures or civilizations, we explicitly speak of complex cultures or

complex civilizations. Thus, Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations will become a

Clash of Complex Civilizations. Such a formulation brings the fact to awareness that

a clash between cultures will always be a clash between entities with a

heterogeneous internal structure. It is not be expected that when two complex

cultural traditions grapple with each other, the front will run along a uniform line. The

parties to the conflict will always find people on the opposing side who are at least to

a certain extent of the same mind or who sympathize with them; this often will be

along group lines and specific to social strata, motivated by similar interests and

values.

In a transcultural perspective, similar regional or economic circumstances of life

will lead to similar interests and similar values. A traveller in a strange land has no

difficulty telling urbane city-dwellers apart from people from the countryside. The

divergent behaviour and the specific preferences are as obvious as the difference

between courtly and rustic painting in a museum. In many respects, farmers in

Zhongguo and farmers in Europe have more interests and values in common than

they do with inhabitants of major cities in their own countries.

Farmers, who in fact, even if not in law, own their own land, unite to form

coalitions and solidarity groups.They have a tendency towards local and regional

self-government. Governors appointed by a faraway government are abhorrent to

them. Measures ordered by absentee authorities without knowledge of their

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circumstances provoke indignant rebellion from them. This analysis was not

propounded by a historian presenting the beginnings of the Swiss Confederation in

sociological order. It is found in the manifesto of a Chinese anarchist, Liu Shipei,

dating from the 19th century. He became aware of the occupation-specific mentality

of Chinese peasants on reading observations made in Russia by Lev Kropotkin, a

Russian aristocrat who had mutated to become an anarchist.4)

It is not only the “proletarians of all countries” who understand each other

across boundaries and display solidarity towards each other. To an even greater

extent this applies to the owners of transregional and intercontinental trading

companies who do business directly with each other. The rapid successes of

European colonizers in Asia as well as in Africa before the large-scale conquests

since the 19th century can be attributed to a considerable extent to the fact that

native and foreign business people had matching interests, and not only to the

superior weaponry of the Europeans. Analogous observations apply to the initial

successes of economic globalization in the past decades.5)

Since antiquity philosophers in Europe as in Zhongguo have discussed the

question as to what better promotes a decent society, strict laws or a good

education. In Europe as well as in Asia, in the Aristotelian literature and comparably

in Confucian and in Buddhaitic literature a third factor is encountered: secure living

conditions above the minimum subsistence level.6) This view might be discerned in

the background of the Chinese government's demand for a right to economic

development prior to other human rights. According to Aristotle, stable political

circumstances are most likely if a broad segment of the population enjoys a middle-

class standard of living. “Civil virtues” (or to put it in less positive terms: “bourgeois

morals”), the rule of law and a liberal constitution are among the specific interests of

such a population. They are a guarantee for their vested interests. Given a certain

degree of prosperity, a decent life is possible. And it contributes to self-respect and

the feeling that one is living in a manner befitting human beings if one can attribute

both factors, prosperity and decency, in large measure to oneself.

In Kerala in South India, teaching women to read and write proved to be a more

humane and no less effective way of limiting the number of children than the

draconian measures taken in Zhongguo. Thanks to the enhanced social status and

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the improved economic circumstances that a school education involves, women feel

enabled to decide for themselves what is best for them and their environment, and to

implement their decision. How quickly culturally sanctioned family stereotypes and

family values can change as a result of prosperity and improved school education

can be studied just as strikingly in traditional Catholic regions of western Europe,

from Bavaria in Germany to Ireland and Portugal.

The dire consequences of the assumption of homogeneity

Let us now take a look at the history of cultures. The dogmatic assumption that

cultures are homogeneous entities leads to contradictory, diametrically opposing

characterizations of individual traditions according to the era, the region or the

intellectual school on which the cultural theorist is oriented. Thus, for Nietzsche

Christianity is life denying, whereas Hinduism is life affirming. For Albert Schweitzer,

by contrary, Christianity affirms life, whereas Hinduism denies life. For Max Weber

and Jürgen Habermas, both are world denying in contrast to Confucianism and to

Greek metaphysics, which seem to them to be affirmative of the world.7) Nietzsche

judged Christianity on the basis of his childhood experiences in a Pietist manse and

is impressed by the clear worldly orientation of the ancient Veda. Schweitzer grew up

in a different Christian milieu than did Nietzsche, in a more liberal one. What

impressed him in South Asia was the asceticism and the philosophical teachings that

our sense experiences are illusory. Weber und Habermas use “the occupational

ethics of ascetic Protestantism” to explain modern capitalism in Europe, and on this

basis then try to explain four paradigmatic cultures using a simple pattern of two

pairs of diametrically opposed properties. As far as structure is concerned, their

simple typology of cultures is no different from the Aristotelian proto-scientific

description of the four elements. Aristotle uses the various combinations of two

bipolar properties to specify earth, water, air and fire (earth as dry and cold, water as

moist and cold, fire as dry and hot, and air as moist and hot). Weber and Habermas

are no less structuralistic in their procedure. With respect to the attitude towards the

world, they describe Christianity as active and world denying, Hinduism as passive

and world denying, Confucianism as active and world affirming and finally Hellenic

metaphysics as passive and world affirming.8) Such a typology of cultures obscures

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the internal diversity of cultural traditions in favour of a boldly exaggerated contrast of

the specific differences of the various traditions. It overlooks the fact that the same

oppositions that Weber and Habermas systematically assign to different cultures

(active vs. passive, life-affirming vs. life-denying) are also encountered within these

individual cultures and make an essential contribution to their dynamism and

creativity.

Another dire consequence of the homogeneity assumption is the fact that

different trends and variations within one culture are placed in a unilinear order with

no independent life of their own. Karl Jaspers9) proclaims and idealizes “Buddhism”

as the “fulfilment of the Indian form of life” and as the “conclusion of Indian

philosophy”. Hindu scholars, by contrary, regard “Buddhism” as a heterodox

philosophy and the Vedânta as the “fulfilment of [Indian] knowledge”, the Veda. It

must, however, be admitted that the further development of Vedânta philosophy in

the past one-and-a-half millennia would be inexplicable without the encounter with

Buddhaitic philosophy. A philosophical encounter with another school of thought

almost inevitably leads to the reception of opposing manners and contents of

thought. This also applies to the only two Brahmanic-Hindu philosophical traditions

that have remained active in South Asia up to the present day, the Vedânta and the

“new logic” Navya-Nyâya. Identity and alterity are not only a pair of concepts that

can be used to distinguish different cultural traditions from each other. Rather, in the

course of an encounter they become integral aspects of one and the same tradition.

“Integralist” adherents of a tradition regard the result of grappling with another

tradition not as a shaping and substantive influence on the part of this other tradition,

but rather at most as an external and superfluous stimulation to develop styles and

contents of thought which are already contained in an incipient form in their own

tradition. As shall be shown shortly, due to the complexity of every tradition that

extends over a substantial time and space, this view can only be more or less

qualified and can rarely be completely refuted.

The belief in the homogeneity of cultures only admits of differences in the

degree of development. Accordingly, classical typologies of culture frequently speak

of the stages of cultures: birth, heyday, prime and degeneration, or simply

stagnation. Ultimately, there are only adequate and inferior variations, but no

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transformations of a culture that are on a par with each other. Thus, Max Weber was

only able to see in the Korean social order “a pale image of the Chinese” order. For

him it did not contain anything independent. Instead of a pale image, he does not

speak of a coloured one (in the blue-green colour of the East: qing/ch’ong) or, like

the Chinese, metaphorically of a “small flower” (Xiao Hua/So Hwa) as distinct from

the “large flower” with which the Chinese identified their own country. In

Han’guk/Korea, Weber does not see a creative adaptation of the traditions (in the

plural) adopted from the large neighbouring country by a country of a different order

of magnitude, with a different history and a different environment, a country that is

capable of excellent achievements not only in the field of aesthetics, but also the

field of social politics, for example in the creation of a structurally unique alphabetical

writing system in order to improve the general education level. In the case of

Switzerland, which was closer to him, Weber was able to see more clearly. In Swiss

politics and cultural achievements, he recognized a “Germanness” of a special,

unique form, a form that is only possible in a small country and under special

geographic conditions, but not in a country of Germany's order of magnitude. A large

country such as the German Reich cannot avoid political action as a “power” – with

all the consequences this involves for its internal constitution.10)

Homogeneity – no cultural ideal

Not only are homogeneous cultures not an anthropological reality. They are also not

ideal. It is not the case that, although they do not exist, it would be better if they did.

They are not something that we should strive for, not violently with “ethnic cleansing”

of course, but with peaceful means. There is a romantic view that cultural entities

(“nations”) are realized in the best possible way when they are self-sufficient, that is,

both independent and self-reliant. One of the points this involves is that they do not

adopt anything alien in their national character. But optimal self-fulfilment, isolation

and self-sufficiency are in conflict with each other. Optimal self-fulfilment is only

possible by temporarily and in some respects by permanently abdicating complete

independence. The example of language is instructive in this point. The expressive

potential of every conceivable individual language falls short of the expressive

potential that people have by nature. This is not an accidental condition, but rather a

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structural condition. The meaning of linguistic utterances depends on their context.

They are also dependent on the language system to which they belong. The

linguistic connotations and associations are different when I say the same thing in

German or in English, in Chinese or in Japanese. I can allude to different things in

Japanese than I can in German, in Chinese to different things than in English. Such

associative allusions pave the way when we gradually get our thoughts together

when we are speaking.

Every human being is by nature capable of learning and speaking more than

one language. The potential for self-fulfilment that every human being has due to his

mental structures is more comprehensive and more varied than the potential for self-

fulfilment that a single language provides. An analogous observation applies to

cultures. The potential for self-fulfilment that every human being has due to his

mental structures is more comprehensive and more varied than the potential for self-

fulfilment that a single culture provides. The various natural dispositions with which a

human being is born are not all optimally realized in a single homogeneous cultural

tradition.

Philosophers of science know that this also applies to individual scientific

traditions. It may ultimately be undecidable whether Platonic realism or constructivist

nominalism provides the adequate theory for the ontological status of mathematical

entities and laws. According to Platonism – as well as to common sense – the

numbers together with the applicable laws exist independently of whether a human

being conceives them and calculates with them. Constructivists, by contrary, claim

that mathematical laws are based on conventional decisions made by human beings.

In the course of time mathematicians have found that it is good to regard these two

scientific traditions as complementary and to cultivate both eclectically. The research

potential of the two approaches is different.

Contradictions within complex traditions

It is not only the cultures of today that are complex. The traditions from which they

are derived are just as manifold, rich in variation and fraught with contradiction. In

discussions of universal human rights it has become customary in Europe to quote

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only those passages from the Bible, Hellenic (in particular Stoic) philosophy and

Roman law which go to found these human rights so that they can be presented as

the heritage of European history. The fact is all too readily tacitly ignored that appeal

can be made to the two most prominent authorities of Hellenic philosophy, Plato and

Aristotle, as well as the most philosophical thinker in the Bible, the Apostle Paul, to

deny universal human rights – especially for women, the poor, slaves and

(“barbaric”) foreigners; and that they were indeed appealed to for centuries.

Thus, the Christian theologian Jürgen Moltmann from Tübingen writes11) about

the current controversy over the Muslim scarf in France and Germany as follows:

“we do not owe freedom of religion and the respect for women's human dignity to the

Islamistic scarf.” Certainly not! But we also do not owe it to Paul’s commandment to

wear a scarf, nor to the Apostle’s prescription that the woman should obey the man

and that she should remain silent in the congregation.12) These famous Bible

passages also helped to “restrict women to a certain social role and establish a male

society”. In a globalized world, moreover, it is better to keep in mind that there are

still many people all over the world who do not only remember the Muslim scarf, but

also Christian clerical robes and the cross as symbols of suppression – in the

submissive service of imperial countries.

Moltmann further claims that nothing comparable to the modern secular state

can be found either in Arabic or in Asian cultures. But for the Enlighteners of the

18th century, for example for Christian Wolff in Halle13), was Zhongguo not a model

for the separation of morals and theology, and thus at least indirectly also for the

constitutional separation of state and religion? Can European philosophers and

theologians ever forget what role Muslim philosophers, most lastingly Ibn

Rushd/Averroës in Qurtuba/Córdoba, played in arguing for the separation of

philosophy and theology?

It is unfair and also unscientific to pick only those points in one’s own

Christian and European tradition that are compatible with current convictions, and in

the traditions of another religion or continent only the incompatible points. The

cultural heritage of Europe is not only the fruit of Hellenic-Roman antiquity and

Christianity. Judaism and Islam – and in a peripheral way even Zhongguo, at least in

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the form idealized by the European Enlightenment – have also each made their own

special contribution to it.

The non-European sources of “European culture”

The simplest by and large accurate definition of what can be called the European

cultural heritage has it that it is a synthesis of Hellenic and Biblical (that is, “oriental”,

South-West Asian and North-East African) ideas of the world and of values. It must

be immediately added that the Hellenic part of this synthesis itself cannot be

explained without the prior impulses received from the “orient” in the so-called

“Orientalizing Period” of Hellenic culture14) right at the beginning of the Axial Age

(750-650 BCE). If it is also asked by whom and where this synthesis was made, the

answer is: the first ancient stage by Jewish and early Christian theologians in South-

West Asia and North Africa (Philo, Origen, Augustine). For their part, they could

draw on the Alexandrian and neo-Platonic forms of pre-Christian syncretic Hellenism

(Plotinus was of Egyptian origin, Porphyry of Phoenician-Palestinian origin, and

Iamblichos of Syrian origin). The second, medieval stage of the union of Biblical and

Hellenic thought was more strongly oriented on Aristotelian philosophy; in addition to

Jewish scholars (Moshe Ben Maimon/Moses Maimonides), Muslim philosophers

now did pioneering work (al-Farabi/Alpharabius, Ibn Sina/Avicenna,

al-Ghazali/Algazel, Ibn Rushd/Averroës).

For all the differences in their traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have

quite a number of intellectual problems in common: the conflict between revelation

and reason in natural philosophy and moral philosophy, the contradiction between

the Bible and Hellenic philosophy in the question of the finiteness or infinity of the

world, the relationship between God’s omniscience and omnipotence and human

freedom in the explanation of evil in the world, the possible ways of understanding

the scriptures, the epistemological value of subjective religious experiences. The

answers that non-Christian scholars reached were exemplary for Christian

philosophers and theologians; indeed, they matched their own convictions to such

an extent that in the case of one frequently quoted text dating from the 11th century

which had been translated from Arabic into Latin, Fons vitae or “The Source of Life”,

scholars in medieval Paris were uncertain as to whether the author, who was only

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known by his Latinized name Avicebron, was a Muslim or indeed a Christian. In

1859, a text-critical historian, Salomon Munk, discovered that this author was

identical with the poet Ibn Gabirol from Saraqusta/Zaragoza and thus a Jew.

The universal potential for development and justification in complex traditions

In addition to the possibility of legitimating contradictory modern and anti-modern

ideas in traditionalist terms by reference to one's own history, the complexity of

cultural traditions has a second remarkable consequence:

It is always possible to play down the impulses provided by foreign examples to

make radical social reforms, and use the givens of the own tradition to motivate

reforms or at least to legitimate them after the fact. One remarkable example is the

“five maxims” or Pancasila which Sukarno placed at the beginning of the Indonesian

constitution in 1945-49 as its preamble. After the profession of adherence to

monotheism come four “modern Western” social and political principles: respect for

all people and races, the idea of a unified state based on consensus, representative

democracy and social solidarity. To found them, Sukarno adduces native Indonesian

traditions: religious tolerance (as manifested in the tendency towards syncretic

religion), the co-operative organization of land cultivation, the popular election of the

headman of the village and the mutual help of neighbours in projects that cannot be

implemented within the framework of one family alone.15)

In Zhongguo, numerous similar references to the own tradition can be

encountered in the various modernization movements that took place in the course

of the modern era; they are by no means restricted to those that took place the 19th

and 20th centuries at European instigation. For the idea of equal rights for all, Kong

Zi’s commandment that there should be no class differences in education and the

maxim of his legist opponents (as reported by the classical historians Sima Tan and

Qian) that all men are equal before the law could be quoted; for the idea of individual

freedom and self-responsibility the traditional Confucian requirement of self-

cultivation, xiushen; for the idea of global solidarity Mo Zi/Mocius’s anti-Confucian

admonition to “universal love”, jian ai, or also the (Buddhaitically inspired) neo-

Confucian credo of Zhang Zai, one of the initiators of neo-Confucian philosophy, that

all human beings belong to one family as brothers and sisters;17) for social justice,

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Meng Zi/Mencius’s proposals for land reform; for the duty (above all, the intellectuals’

duty) and thus implicitly also for the right (avant la lettre) of remonstrance against

bad states of affairs in government, Meng Zi’s political discussions; for the idea of

local autonomy and the formation of a “civil society” based on discussion and

consensus the instructions of Zhu Xi, the most prominent of all neo-Confucian

philosophers, on the organization of village co-operatives.

Against the Hegelian idea that in Zhongguo history has been stagnant for

thousands of years and that the social structure has remained stable through time,

Chinese advocates of fundamental reform of the state never tire to point out that in

ancient Zhongguo a revolutionary change of the structure of the state already took

place in accordance with changed living conditions. The feudal system that had been

introduced by the legendary wise rulers and cultural heroes of the three early

dynasties and accordingly seemed to be sacrosanct, was replaced in the Qin era

and the following Han era by a meritocratic system. From then on, it was no longer

aristocratic birth, but rather a state examination system that – at least in principle –

was decisive for the allocation of state offices. “To go against the times is fatal,”

claimed Wang Chuanshan from Hengyang in Hunan in the 17th century. The idea of

historical progress towards more humanity is also no foreign body in the cultural

tradition of Zhongguo. In the early 19th century, the philosopher, geographer and

historian Wei Yuan from Shaoyang, also in Hunan in southern Zhongguo, pointed

out that in the second pre-Christian century in Chang’an/Xi’an the Han emperor

Wendi abolished the punishments involving mutilation of the body which had been

practised in the three ancient dynasties. The insight that local and regional

differences are natural and a matter of course is even more pronounced as a

traditional Chinese conviction than the inevitability of historical change.

Vote-counting at elections and meetings as well as direct democracy (in

general a problematical form of democracy) are, at least according to the current

state of research, Hellenic achievements; the fundamental political equality of all

human beings, including the poor and women, is European-American. If, however,

“democracy” is understood in a comprehensive and fundamental sense of the word

as the possibility to discuss public affairs publicly, the right to criticize government

measures and officials and to propose new ideas, in short, as what is called Public

16

Reason, moreover as the respect for each individual human being and the

recognition of certain fundamental rights for all, then roots, exemplary developments

and innovative ventures in this direction can be found in many cultures all around the

earth.18)

The non-reducibility of cultural traditions to their first heyday

Against the insight generally accepted today that cultural change is a universal

phenomenon encountered in all traditions, there are still many circles with a

tendency to look for what is “typical” of a foreign culture exclusively in the early

stages of history, those stages regarded as classical and uniquely fundamental. It is

thought that the specific character of the cultural tradition is seen in its early history

in its pure form, unadulterated by later degeneration and foreign influences. It is

dogmatically assumed that foreign influences remain superficial, and that they are

only able to obscure and to hide the core of a culture, but not to transform it

fundamentally. Even today, philosophical anthologies are published in which the

selection of non-European thinkers in South and East Asia is restricted to

philosophers of the pre-Christian Axial Age, and in Islam to those of the heyday of

the Moslem Falsafa from the 9th to the 12th century. They disregard the fact that

Buddha's teaching, the Buddhadharma, transformed philosophy in East Asia just as

fundamentally as Christianity changed Hellenic philosophy in the western part of the

“Old World”. The other way round, Buddhadharma (“Buddhism”) was Sinified in

Zhongguo in a manner that is comparable to the Hellenization of Christianity in the

West. Moreover, since the 7th century the centre of Buddhaitic religion shifted from

South Asia to Zhongguo, that is, at nearly the same time as the intellectual centre of

Christianity definitively shifted from South-West Asia and North Africa to Europe. The

fact is overlooked that contemporary non-European thinkers, like European thinkers,

appeal to their predecessors in the immediately preceding centuries, and certainly

not only to the classical thinkers of the first heyday of their culture.

In the frequently discussed question as to whether universal human rights are

compatible without conflict with the Chinese tradition, it is inadmissible to restrict the

discussion to relevant passages from the Axial Age. The role they played then and

for many centuries thereafter was just as subordinate as the equally non-central

17

passages to be found in the writings of the classical Hellenic philosophers which for

centuries also remained almost without consequence. Moreover, the earliest

declarations of the equality of all human beings and of a universal ethics can be

found in South Asia, in Jainaitic and Buddhaitic teachings.19) From there they spread

to Zhongguo long before the same ideas were encountered in the modern legal form

that they were given in the American and the French revolution. They were also

propagated on a much broader basis with popular Buddhaitic religion. One

prominent example has already been mentioned, the credo of the early neo-

Confucian Zhang Zai: “All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my

companions.” This sentence is part of the inscription that Zhang Zai had placed on

the western wall of his study. It subsequently became known in the literary history of

Zhongguo as the “Western Inscription” Xi-ming, and was frequently quoted as a kind

of canonical text.20)

It may well be remarkable, but with a knowledge of history it is no surprise that

when a physician by the name of Xu Yanzuo took a stand in Guangzhou in 1896 for

the equal treatment of all sick people, poor and rich alike, he did not appeal to the

European or American declaration of universal human rights, but to Buddhaitic

classics.21)

No more does the Chinese philosophical tradition consist merely in a series of

footnotes to Confucius than can the European philosophical tradition be degraded,

following A. N. Whitehead, to “a series of footnotes to Plato”. This can also be said in

other words, slightly modifying Wang Chuanshan’s sentence quoted above: It is fatal

to reduce a cultural tradition to its first heyday.

Notes

1) Paper presented (as keynote speech) at the First PEACE (Phenomenology for East-Asian

CirclE) Conference (on “Identity and Alterity: Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions”), The

Chinese University of Hong Kong, 24–29 May 2004. – Some of the following reflections are

treated in my previous book, some in more detail, some in less: Kulturphilosophische

18

Perspektiven: Schulbeispiel Schweiz - Europäische Identität – Globale

Verständigungsmöglichkeiten, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998. This collection of

papers is a sort of prolegomena to my atlas of philosophy (Philosophie-Atlas, Zürich:

Ammann, 2004). Translation by Donald Goodwin.2) One frequently quoted definition of culture reads as follows: “Culture, or civilization ... is

that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and habits

acquired by man as member of society” (Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, London, 1871).3) Jean-Paul Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme (1946), Paris: Nagel, 1970; Heiner

Roetz, Die chinesische Ethik der Achsenzeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992. 4) Sources of Chinese Tradition, Second Edition, Volume II, ed. by Wm. Theodore de Bary

et al., New York: Columbia UP, 2000: 400 ff. 5) One well documented example dating from the 18th century is the major South Indian

merchant A. R. Pillai (see: Sources of Indian Tradition, Second Edition, Volume II, ed. by

Stephen Hay, New York: Columbia, 1988: 4 ff.). Pillai was on the best of terms with the

French governor of Pondichéry/Puduchcheri. The fact that the government was in European

hands did not bother him at all as long as it safeguarded his business. Apparently,

transcultural trading companies and their agents tend to have little interest in political

nationalism, at any rate less than in the emotional bond to the specific features of their own

cultural, religious and moral tradition and their modes of expression. Far from their home

country, they like to cultivate contact with organizations (churches, clubs and societies)

representing their inherited tradition, and expect tolerance and respect from their host

country for these.6) Aristotle, Politikê 4.11; Kong Zi, Lunyu, 13.9; Sources of Chinese Tradition, Second

Edition, Volume I, ed. by Wm. Theodore de Bary et al., New York: Columbia, 1999: 57, 283

f., 655f.; Volker Zotz, Buddha, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1991: 95 ff. According to

Aristotle, a person of moderate prosperity is most likely to conform to reason. The behaviour

of such people is more readily predictable. Excessively wealthy people may become self-

important, frustrated poor people will tend to deceitful behaviour. 7) Holenstein, Kulturphilosophische Perspektiven (see above, note 1): 306 f. (including

bibliographical information). 8) Cf. plate A 7 in: Holenstein, Philosophie-Atlas (see above, note 1). 9) Die grossen Philosophen (1957), München: Piper 1988: 143 f. 10) Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie II (1921). Tübingen: Mohr,

19

1988: 294; Gesammelte Politische Schriften (1921), Tübingen: Mohr, 1988: 142 ff.;

Holenstein, Kulturphilosophiche Perspektiven (see above, note 1): 37 f. und 308. 11) “Die Würde der Differenz”, in: Die Zeit, 26 Feb. 2004, no. 10. 12) First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapters 13 and 14.13) Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica – Rede über die praktische Philosophie der

Chinesen (1721/26), Hamburg: Meiner, 1985: 154 ff., note 55. 14) Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in

the Early Archaic Age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992.15) Cf. Elmar Holenstein, Menschliches Selbstverständnis, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,

1985: 135. – The classical example for a cultural philosopher from Switzerland is the

introduction of the modern liberal and democratic constitution of Switzerland in 1848. The

language was carefully chosen to be reminiscent of Switzerland's own (idealized, or, as

some historians would say today, “invented”) tradition, avoiding, to the extent possible,

every reminder of the ideas and institutions of the First French Republic – which in fact was

what of fathers of the Swiss constitution were oriented on. Cf. Alfred Kölz, Neuere

schweizerische Verfassungsgeschichte, Bern: Stämpfli, 1992: I 620 ff.

Another classical example is the Sikh reform movement in South Asia, an example of

greater world historical import and of pertinence in the Asian context. Here, too, there is

discussion as to whether the “modern” contents of this movement (imageless monotheism,

rejection of traditional, popular religious ceremonial, of food taboos, of the Brahmanic

priestly class and of the caste system in general) admit of endogenous explanation (internal

to India) or exogenous (as a result of contact with South-West Asian Islam). According to

the traditional view of Islamic and European Indologists, it is a synthesis of trends within

Islam (Sufi mysticism) and Hinduism (Bhaki religiosity). According to a view that today is

apparently advocated by Indian and European researchers, an explanation internal to India

is sufficient (cf. Sources of Indian Tradition, Second Edition, Volume I, ed. by Ainslie T.

Embree, New York: Columbia UP, 1988: 494 f.). Instead of a synthesis, convergence due to

similar living circumstances is assumed. At best a secondary influence, if not a completely

redundant status as stimulus is granted to the undeniable knowledge of comparable

teachings in Islam. In view of the omnipresence and the political dominance of Islam in

North India in the initial stage of the Sikh movement, this is an astounding revision of

history. However, it will have to be kept in mind for the coming self-assessments of

contemporary social and political transformations all over Asia.

20

In South Asia, Islam was not able to transform traditional Hindu culture in its totality in

the same way as Christianity transformed the Hellenic-Roman tradition in Europe or the

Buddhadharma the Daoitic and Confucian tradition in Zhongguo. Independently of the

discussion of the role of Islam in the emergence of the Sikh movement, however, Islam

must be given credit for the fact that in South Asia it acted as a sort of preparatory school

and preliminary stage for the “modernist” reform movements that developed since the 19th

century on European examples. In his youth, Rammohun Roy, the founder of the Hindu

reform movement “Society of God” Brahmo Samâj in Calcutta in 1828, became acquainted

with Euclidean geometry and Aristotelian philosophy at a Muslim school in Patna in Bihar. It

was first in Islam and only later in Christianity that he found important religious and social

reform impulses (for his commitment to monotheism and against superstitious idolatry and

rites that were understood in magical terms, for the expansion of school education and of

access to holy scriptures to include all strata of the population, for the improvement of the

situation of women, against infanticide of girls and against suttee). It is also remarkable that

in his search for native sources for his reform projects, he went to Sikkim or Tibet for a

period to study Buddha's teachings.

In the 20th century, the reformer Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the chief author of the

constitution of the Republic of India, appealed solely to the endogenous Buddhadharma in

his struggle for universal human rights and against the caste system. In 1956, he

demonstratively converted to Buddhism in Nagpur together with 200,000 “Untouchables”.

Other “Untouchables” earlier converted to Islam or to Christianity. Ambedkar is a particularly

impressive example for the fact that in the struggle for equal rights for all human beings in

South Asia one need not look to the West, whether it be to Islam or to Christianity, but

rather can draw on one's own complex tradition, albeit not on an orthodox movement, but

rather on a heterodox one. Buddhadharma is a movement that almost completely

disappeared from India for centuries, but which had previously played an influential and in

many respects laudable role and is inextricably linked to the history of the sub-continent.

For Europeans who tend to explain their cultural history exclusively with reference to

the creativity of their own ancestors and the potential for development of their own

traditions, the same haughty tendency in South Asia is certainly instructive. The European

pioneers of historical research in South Asia assumed almost as matter of course that

important development movements were to be attributed to influences from the West, from

Mesopotamia, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire and finally Islam: such developments

as the emergence of agriculture and urban cultures in the Indus Valley long before the

21

arrival of the Aryans, the development of Brahmi writing, the mother of all writing systems in

South Asia, the transition of Buddhaitic art from its original restriction to symbols to

figurative representations of Buddha, up to the example of the Sikh movement mentioned

above, the last successful religious and social reform movement immediately before

European colonization. Now it is not only South Asian researchers, but also European-

American researchers with a sceptical attitude towards theories of diffusion in the history of

culture who attempt to demonstrate that these developments can be explained by reference

to endogenous roots and tendencies, if not completely, then at least to a great and perhaps

decisive extent.

There are also plainly untenable claims that cultural achievements which were

acquired in contact with a foreign culture are of endogenous origin. The classical example

for this is the claim made by Jewish and Christian scholars in late antiquity that Hellenic

philosophy can be traced to plagiary of Biblical-Hebrew wisdom (cf. Eusebios, Euangeligikê

proparaskeuê (“Preparation for the Gospel”), Book X, written in the early 4 th century in

Kaisareia/Caesarea, Filastin/Palestine). If these claims are understood in literal terms, they

can well be forgotten. But they can also be interpreted as a symptom of unease about the

fact that Hellenic thinkers did not adequately research and reflect on the Syrian-Phoenician-

Palestinian and Egyptian prehistory of their cultural achievements.

A more recent example of a vastly exaggerated “native” explanation of a great cultural

achievement is the claim made by the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop (adopted and

propagated by Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization,

London: Free Association Books, 1987) that Egyptian culture (and thus also Hellenic-

European culture) is of “Black-African” origin. This claim is ethnically motivated as a reaction

to exaggerated claims to originality made by European scholars; it at least has the merit that

it provided additional impulses for the furtherance of the archaeological and linguistic

research of the African context of Egyptian culture that had already started. Today it is an

accepted fact that the role played by the African context in the early stages of the culture of

the Nile Valley is more important than was recognized in the past.16) Volume II of the Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Through the Twentieth

Century (see above, note 4) is full of “traditionalistic” justification of “modernistic” reforms. 17) See below, note 20.18) Cf. Allan Bullock, “Democracy”, in: The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, ed.

by Allan Bullock et al., London: Harper & Collins, 1999: 209, quoted and expanded in:

Amartya Sen, “Democracy and Social Justice: The Reach of Public Reason”, Paper

22

presented at the International Symposium on “Publicness Towards the 21st Century”,

Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, 2 June 2003.19) They are also more radical and more comprehensive than the Hellenic-Roman or

Christian declarations. The obligation of non-violent treatment extends to all living beings. 20) Sources of Chinese Tradition II (see above, note 4): 683 f. The proposition must not,

however, be over-interpreted. In the traditional Chinese family, brothers and sisters, or elder

and younger brothers – as in most traditional families – are not completely equal.21) Paul. U. Unschuld, Huichun: Chinesische Heilkunde in historischen Objekten und Bildern,

München: Prestel, 1995: 70 f.: “In the Buddhist classics we read: ‘The whole world is equal.’

Physicians should conform to this view.”

To be published in:Title (tentative): Identity and Alterity: Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions. Proceedings of the 1st PEACE (Phenomenology for East-Asian CirclE) Conference held May 2004 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, editors: LAU, Kwok-ying and CHEUNG, Chan-fai,to be published in the series "Orbis Phaenomenologicus", edited byKah Kyung Cho, Yoshihiro Nitta and Hans Rainer Sepp.