An essential gesture

“The European identity and the challenges of intercultural dialogue” was the theme of the international colloquium held in Luxembourg in late September on the initiative of the Jacques Maritain International Institute, the Italian Institute of Culture in Luxembourg, the Pierre Werner Institute in Luxembourg, in partnership with the Cultural Centre of the Abbey of Neununster. (cf. SIR Europe 64-65/2007). One of the speakers, the Jesuit Paul Valadier – of the Centre de Sèvres in Paris – offered us this reflection on the theme of Europe and the acceptance of cultural differences and diversities.Recognizing the culture of others means admitting that it is not a by-product of our own, that it would be futile to seek to integrate it or assimilate it, and even more stupid to wish to transform it from the outside. It especially means admitting that we can draw close to others only with infinite respect, which does not exclude a capacity to judge and evaluate, but which does require we adopt a benevolent eye towards others, towards those who are different from us. Recognition presupposes the abandonment of our own self-sufficiency and hence the admission that humanity is greater and more complex than our own culture is able to see and thus represents various ways of being man and responding to the duty to “cultivate ourselves” with a view to the freedom. Recognition of others thus confirms to us our own culture, but it also liberates us from the temptation to attempt the total assimilation of the other person. It permits mutual enrichment, avoiding the two opposite temptations: despising the other person or aiming at a dangerous assimilation or unification. If we abide by the terms of intercultural dialogue – and this expression could be used in this sense – we would avoid the ambiguities, in other words the mistaken expectations that recognition gives rise to. Axel Honneth – philosopher and pupil of Habermas – rightly opposes “recognition” to “contempt”. Recognition does not imply the identification with the other, which presupposes an impossible and disrespectful fusion. It is attentive – says Honneth – to the “social pathologies” generated within relations by the past, by history, by inferiority or superiority complexes. Or it fails to see that the various exchanges, not always peaceful, that never cease to leave their mark on cultures have generated grave social pathologies, hence fuelled mistrust and hatred, in any case frustrations that any attempt at “dialogue” must strive to overcome. Without falling into an obsessive blame game, we can clearly intuit that Europe, to return to our case, must be particularly attentive to the pathologies that her age-old hegemony has succeeded in generating and attempt to rectify them, attentive also to a postulate that could be called “rationalist” and that tries to make people believe in a superiority, i.e. in an historic mission, of this culture. What is needed is an essential gesture that makes mutual recognition possible. Recognition depends on mutual esteem and the willingness to understand each other, even in our very differences, but that also inspires an attitude of self-correction, a willingness to recognize our own past guilt and so inaugurate new relations.