Session 5(a): The Role and Place of Intercultural Philosophy and Religion

Session 5A: The Role and Place of Intercultural Philosophy & Religion
Chair: Nada Bucat

Philosophy’s Role in an Inter-Cultural Dialogue
Alfredo Culleton
UNISINOS, São Leopoldo, Brazil

In this text we expect to develop some cogitations on the challenge philosophy has in the building of an inter-cultural dialogue that seeks to couch rights that can claim for universality.
Before exposing our arguments we believe to be important to have a small clarification of the most fundamental concepts with which we´re going to deal with: When we say philosophy we do this thinking in that knowledge that since the greeks has two essential functions: at one hand, wording and throw light on concepts and, on the other, the intend of conceptually situate us within a given world of signification, and the building of significations in the sense of seeking for a wording of values that can claim for universality.
In this sense, in the whole history of philosophy it’s understood that the only way of signifying is within a given universe of signification, towards somebody else, and in dialogue with, other conceptual and value worlds, that are not it’s own, but that can be recognized as a signification horizon for the other.
When we say culture we do so, not in an abstract sense, reserved to the creation of spiritual values, but to the process by which such a human community organize themselves on the strength of ends and values that they aim to reach. Philosophy is able to evidence that those ends and values are only one among an infinity of possibilities and not the , in the sense os absolutes, and in this way hand the minimum of conditions for a dialogue.
The history of philosophy has, in the XIII century university, a unique experience of tolerance, dialogue and the wording of values among so different cultures, and in some cases understood as antagonist, as the Muslim, Jewish and christian traditions are, and that philosophy and the academic environment made possible preserving differences and proposing universals, like Maimonides, Aquinas and Averroes, and so many others, did. A critical reading of this experience is able to help us to find connections in the sense of favouriting the dialogue and the wording of real universal rights.

The Philosopher as Intercultural Mediator
Flavia Monceri
Dipartimento di Scienze della Politica, Università di Pisa, Italy

Intercultural encounters are gradually becoming an everyday experience for contemporary individuals who are assumed to live in an increasing ‘global’ society, so urging them to look for more and more suitable tools in order to efficiently communicate ‘across cultures’, i.e. when they face an interpersonal communication process with a partner they are not able to immediately identify as ‘one of us’. Both within and out of the academic community we try to elaborate communication strategies able to offer effective hints as to face up the concrete intercultural situations. So being things, we could expect for philosophy to be the first discipline to grasp the relevance of the issue of interculturalism for contemporary life. Philosophy is namely for the most part an exercise of elaborating the ‘concepts’ we use in everyday language, in such a way that they can be perceived as logically consistent with each other and ‘univocal’ as for their meaning. In this sense, the main task of philosophy is that of interpreting a complex reality by reducing it to a number of stable ‘mental entities’ fitting human mental structure.
However, in this paper I intend to show that philosophy – and by the name I intend Western mainstream philosophy – is not yet able to confront itself with interculturality because of its being still too much culturally conditioned. I will first concentrate on the notion of interculturalism as it should be conceived from a philosophical standpoint in order to allow philosophers to effectively act as intercultural mediators, particularly through giving up the traditional notion of ‘truth’ based upon a ‘binary logic’. Then, I will attempt to show how this task is only possible if philosophy reintegrates the notion of ‘individual experience’ as the foundation also of philosophical activity.

Moral Perfectionism as a challenge to Human Rights
Marjaana Kopperi
University of Helsinki, Finland

Reflections on the question of moral diversity and universal standards have given rise to several responses. Bhikhu Parekh argues that of these responses, relativism, monism and minimum universalism have been proved most influential. It is however amazing how little discussion there has been of these approaches on a kind of theoretical, structural, or meta-ethical level. As far as I know, very little has been done to clarify what really characterises those views as moral views. What is meant by morality itself? What is seen as the role and meaning of such a conception as morality in human life and society? How is the nature and purpose of morality understood?
In this paper, I shall consider these questions especially with regard to the issue of human rights. In this respect, monism and minimum universalism represent the most prominent approaches. The most important distinguishing feature between these two approaches, I think, is whether morality is seen as being based on a definite ideal of the highest good, a specific ideal of a truly human life, or whether it is seen as independent of such ideals. Monistic or perfectionist approaches represent the former view, minimum universalistic or non-perfectionist views the latter.
In the current discussion of human rights, minimum universalism is represented in the “traditional” view of human rights. According to this view, human rights are seen as providing the universal standard against which the norms and laws of a society are checked, but this standard is, however, limited: it does not provide human beings with a complete way of life. This minimum universalistic view is challenged by monistic or perfectionist views which claim that legal and political norms of a society must be based on a specific – often religiously or culturally justified – ideal of life. Hence, instead of modifying legal and political norms of a society on the basis of human rights, it is maintained that human rights must be seen within the limits of those ideals and even reshaped in accordance with them.
My claim is that many of the controversies in human rights discussion are due to different interpretations about the nature of morality and not, for instance, to the cultural or religious differences. Therefore, I think that it is of fundamental importance to take a closer look at these moral views as moral views. Without this kind of meta-ethical scrutiny it is difficult to deal with competing claims about human rights, not to speak of deciding between them.