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Round Table: Dialogue among Civilizations United Nations, New York, 5 September 2000 Provisional verbatim transcription

Address by R.K. Ramazani (United States of America)

Mr. Ramazani: It could be. There is no question that we have a process of what in its own vocabulary the United Nations has called the rejuvenation of the world population and that we do have the process of rejuvenation all over the world and therefore I would subscribe to the notion that youth has a great role to play. I would add also that in addition to youth the whole process has to be extended to gender and the role of women in it as well as young men.

Although we might use the expression "unity in diversity", which could sound as though we have already achieved some kind of reconciliation, that might be misleading. We in essence are still dealing with a problem that has been with humanity over history for thousands of years, a problem that started in the East, the problem of dualism. Certainly the Greeks had it in terms of the juxtaposition of the archetypes of ideas versus reality, the shadow and reality. Subsequently in terms of Western culture, at least, there was the development of man versus nature. We are still entangled in this dichotomy, some kind of dualism, that will not be washed away by simply saying unity in diversity.

Having said that, and hopefully that statement is not a conclusion, it is an indication of my desire to explore the fact that we do indeed live with a world of reality which is that of diversity predominantly and very little of that which we call unity. Unity to me at least would appear to be more of an aspiration than something that we have at the moment. We must recall that even in the United Nations Charter we seem to have that dualism in terms of the sovereignty of nations and yet at the same time we talk about universality. One of the most intriguing aspects of this has been that indeed we have been at least nibbling in terms of universality, not in a theoretical sense so much as in practical terms, as we have come somehow to reconcile diversity, case by case. We have accepted the sovereignty of States yet when we come to humanitarian intervention we are talking about some other concept, that is the concept of universality. Perhaps the realm where this apparent dichotomy and dualism could be resolved is less at the level of theory and more in practical terms.

Let me for a moment turn to something that has been intriguing me for a long time. I was prompted to think about this by the very thesis of "The Clash of Civilizations". I made a criticism of it when it first appeared and was one of its early critics. Now we seem to be somehow encountering more than just the thesis of a clash of civilizations but a proposition of globalism or globalization. In trying to think about dialogue among civilizations we could perhaps think of approaching the problem either in terms of paradigms that have already been invoked and somehow one might then juxtapose dialogue among civilizations as a new one, as contrasted with, let us say, technologically driven globalism and the clash of civilizations. That juxtaposition comparatively would be extremely useful, if I may suggest, because unlike those two specially dominant theories, which both assume the existence already of an international system, an international system of clash and an international system technologically and scientifically dominated and somehow fuelling the [indecipherable] of the world economy.

If we contrast dialogue among civilization, we would perhaps be more searching and scholarly in our approach rather than having an outcome already to substitute for the cold war. The proposition here is what attracts me to [Homibarbe] who has a wonderful statement about the kind of condition of the world in which we find ourselves at the end of the twentieth century, the beginning of the twenty-first century and the millennium. I should like to quote that literary theorist here:

"At the end of the century, before we enter the twenty-first century we find ourselves in a moment of transience where space and time cross to produce complex figures, differences and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion, for there is a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction. Hence the paradigm of dialogue among civilizations would seem somehow to take that kind of ambiguity of our world at this juncture of history as a real question.

If we take that to be the case then dialogue among civilizations juxtaposes in either this context of the stage of history that we are in, or in the context of these paraded pieces of technical globalism or clash of civilizations. I find four propositions of how it could help our thinking about a dialogue of civilizations actually benefiting this whole notion of unity in diversity.

The first one has already been mentioned in the sense that a dialogue among civilizations does not pretend to have a model. It is in search of a paradigm. It is in that sense an excellent idea because it is exploratory rather than a preconception of a model. I could go into that but time will not allow.

The second feature of dialogue among civilizations in comparative terms X and I am not saying "comparative terms" only in terms of a clash of civilizations like globalization but in terms of humankind being not even in the post-modern period but the post-post-modern period X would be that relative to all others it has a normative dimension. It posits what is desirable in terms of aspiration of humanity. Ethics concerns this kind of concept of dialogue, the question of the decline of morality in terms of our time, having come together so much with modernity and post-modernity and partly also the adverse side effects of globalization.

Thirdly, relative to other paradigms, a dialogue among civilizations seems to me to be far more comprehensive. I would call it holistic in its approach. It is not reductionist as the clash of civilizations is. Even globalism is reductionist. One is reductionist in political terms and the other in economic terms. But dialogue among civilizations in essence says we need to look at all dimensions of humankind, not only political or economic but in terms of ethics, of religion, of lifestyles, beliefs and so on.

Finally, the fourth feature of the dialogue would seem to me to be indicative of a degree of concern with humanity or the oneness of mankind as an aspiration, which is indeed terribly difficult to find in either the thesis of the clash of civilizations or globalism as a thesis. In both those instances the underlying assumption, somewhat spoken and somewhat not, is that there is in the words of the proponent of a clash of civilizations X first it was America and now it is called Atlanticist X that somehow a combination a North America and Europe would produce some kind of a paradigm that could perhaps be imposed or should be imitated by the rest of the world. In terms of a dialogue among civilizations there is no such claim. The claim, if there is any, is one of unity, the unity of mankind as an aspiration. So in a sense we are in a waystation. We are searching. Searching for what? We are searching for shared values.

That reminds me of a wonderful saying from Santayana that I read long ago. It is in the most brief form but it strikes me as being so relevant to our discussion. Santayana profoundly called, in his words for, the harmony of the whole which does not destroy the vitality of the parts.

Mr. Picco: I wonder if on the same theme we could ask Professor Koh and Professor Aoyagi to comment a little more on the subject matter of a common denominator of values and individuality, identity, and disaster which are emerging here as the second part of our conversation. Perhaps both Professor Koh and Professor Aoyagi could comment on that.

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