Defense of ‘Soft’ Universalism or ‘Clash of Civilizations’

Abstract

Even the politically more tolerant parts of the world are in no way immune to cultural and national delimitation. The world seems to identify with Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. International organizations like the United Nations try to push back. One attempt is the UNESCO program ‘Philosophy, a School of Freedom’, the declared aim of which is to provide a prophylaxis against radicalization and dogmatism. This article points out three specific accomplishments of philosophical education and their significance for the impending ‘clash of civilizations’: (i) philosophical education as differentiation and critique; (ii) philosophical education as a defense for universalism; and (iii) philosophical education as transcendental tolerance education. The Struggle of Cultures and the role played by philosophical education Both the awareness and the configuration of the political international situation have undergone a dramatic paradigm shift. As to how greatly the asserted or actual ‘struggle of the cultures’ dominates minds in general and politics in particular can be shown by citing an optimistic ‘spirit of the times’ of a previous era. 26 years ago, Fukuyama’s assertion of the ‘End of History’ elicited enthusiastic acknowledgement from broad circles of people: scientists, the public at large and politicians (Fukuyama 1992). There were, after all, sufficient grounds for optimism: the ‘bloodless’ revolution of 1989 led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and put an end to the division of the European continent. The so-called ‘Cold War’ was at an end and the successor nation states of the U.S.S.R. were aspiring to democracy. Parliamentarianism in the countries of the newly founded Commonwealth of Independent States proved to be sufficiently resistant. Long despaired-of disarmament agreements were ratified. The Republic of South Africa overcame ‘Apartheid’ and the world celebrated presidents such as Nelson Mandela or Vaclav Havel. The conflict in Northern Ireland was pacified and Israelis and Palestinians extended each other the hand. Markus Tiedemann, Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) OpenAccess. © 2018 Markus Tiedemann, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492415-007 However, this stage was concluded by September 11 2001, at the latest. This was the greatest symbolic scenario of an open attack on Western life and culture, and demanded new explanation and categorization. A suitable exponent was already available: Huntington’s lecture, article, paper and book, all linked by titles containing Clash of Civilizations. A paradigm shift was again introduced. The ‘Struggle of the Cultures’ became the predominant interpretative sample for national and international conflicts. Dramatic, politically adverse decisions and wars against international law became an expression of as well as a catalyst for such developments. The United Nations, which has become an organization of coagulated ideas of global international understanding, has very little to offer as counteraction to such disturbing developments. One initiative is the UNESCO program ‘Philosophy, a School of Freedom’. Philosophical education, the declared aim of the global project, is to act as a prophylaxis against any form of radicalization and dogmatism. The idea is to promote a ‘world citizen’ of majority age, who does not perceive plurality as a threat, but proceeds to participate in collective opinion-forming by means of critical judgment. Federico Mayor Zaragoza couched this idea in the following terms: Philosophy and Democracy urge each of us to exercise our capacity for judgement, to choose for ourselves the best form of political and social organisation, to find our own values, in short, to become fully what each of us is, a free being. Among so many dangers, we have no other hope. (Mayor 1995, p. 12) But what can philosophical education achieve amidst the increasing ‘clash of civilizations’? I will highlight in this article three specific accomplishments of philosophical education and their significance for the impending ‘clash of civilizations’: (i) philosophical education as differentiation and critique; (ii) philosophical education as a defense for universalism; and (iii) philosophical education as transcendental tolerance education. A differentiated image of the ‘clash of civilizations’ When Samuel P. Huntington published his article “The Clash of Civilizations?” in 1993 in the journal Foreign Affairs, the publishers claimed that he triggered more debates in the first three years thereafter than any other contribution published since the 1940s (cf. Huntington 1996, p. 11). Huntington’s principal claim maintains that coherence, disintegration and conflict in a world after the end of the 80 Markus Tiedemann