Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I

Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series I. Culture and Values, Volume 46 General Editor: George F. McLean Cultural Clash and Religion Edited by William Sweet The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2015 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Box 261 Cardinal Station Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Cultural clash and religion / edited by William Sweet. -- first edition. pages cm. -- (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I, Culture and values ; Volume 46) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Religion and culture. I. Sweet, William, editor. BL65.C8C845 20152015014847 201'.7--dc23 CIP ISBN 978-1-56518-310-0 (pbk.) TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Cultural Clash and Religion: Some Philosophical Reflections 1 William Sweet Chapter I. Religion, Culture, and the Intellectuals 19 Richard Schaefer Chapter II. Thomas Aquinas on Communication between Christians and Jews: A Clash of Religious Cultures 39 Jennifer Hart Weed Chapter III. Dialogue and Clash: Gasparo Contarini and the Colloquy of Regensburg of 1541 49 David Bellusci, O.P. Chapter IV. Windigo Killings and the Clash of Cultures 63 Cecil Chabot Chapter V. The Clash of Cultures in Canada: Apocalyptic Fear and Christian/Muslim Relations 79 Martha F. Lee Chapter VI. Metaphysical Commitments: A Precondition of Cultural Clash in Education and Society 95 Thomas Philbeck Chapter VII. Liberalism, Communitarianism, and the Clash of Cultures 111 David Lea Chapter VIII. The Idea of Religion and the Clash of Cultures 135 Leslie Armour Chapter IX. Cultural Clash and the Moralist Quest 157 Sari Nusseibeh Chapter X. Authenticity and Community: An Inquiry Concerning the Future of Christianity 163 Walter J. Schultz Chapter XI. Being, Becoming, and the Philosophical Transformation of the Self 183 Mario D’Souza iv Table of Contents Chapter XII. Global Ethic as a Response to the Clash of Cultures 195 Uchenna Okeja Chapter XIII. Secularism According to Charles Taylor and Gérard Bouchard 203 Solange Lefebvre Chapter XIV. Integral Humanism or Exclusive Humanism? Reconsidering Maritain’s Political Philosophy 225 David Klassen Chapter XV. Establishing Relations through Truth and Love 241 Jean-Nil Chabot Contributors 251 Index 255 INTRODUCTION CULTURAL CLASH AND RELIGION: SOME PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS WILLIAM SWEET Samuel Huntington’s controversial 1993 essay, “The Clash of Civilizations?”1 – expanded in 1996, with the question mark removed, as The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order2 – advanced the view that, in the contemporary world, after the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War, the primary source of conflict will be people’s cultural, including their religious, identities, and not ideology or economics.3 Huntington’s analysis acquired a significant following after the events of “9/11” – the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City and on the Pentagon, on 11 September 2001 – and, even in the second decade after these events, it continues to influence how many interpret international political and social events. Huntington’s thesis of a clash of civilizations has been challenged by many,4 but it seems that one might still – and less grandiosely – claim that there are clashes of cultures, particularly where religion is involved. In works such as A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor, Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, by Hent de Vries, José Casanova’s Public Religions in the Modern World, and Jürgen Habermas’s “Religion in the Public Sphere,”5 much attention has been given to how religion – at least in the sense of ‘that which expresses one’s ultimate commitments’– is part of, or is drawn into debates about, putative clashes of culture. For example, in the United States, the phenomenon of ‘red’ states and ‘blue’ states – marking differences between the urban and rural, traditionalists and progressives, and internationalists and protectionists – not infrequently correlates with deep disagreement about the relation between religion and the secular, as well as about religion itself. This volume brings together philosophers, historians, sociologists, political scientists, theologians, and scholars of religion, to review and comment on some of the underlying issues involved in talking about ‘cultural clash,’ to show what responses have or could be given to apparent clashes of cultures, to consider the place of religion and philosophy in such putative clashes, but also to see what problems have arisen or may arise in attempting to address them. Together, these essays aim at identifying and clarifying some of the key issues involved in the discussion of the so-called ‘clash of cultures,’ especially where religion is present; reviewing the particular contributions of philosophy, theology, and religious studies, but also history, political science, and anthropology, to the discussion; and, 2 William Sweet finally, considering directions in which reflection, especially philosophical reflection, on this topic might be fruitfully pursued. DEFINING ‘CULTURE’ AND ‘CULTURAL CLASH’ Before presenting the specific topics raised in the essays that follow, however, it may be helpful to consider briefly what is meant by ‘culture.’6 Culture The word ‘culture’ is an ambiguous one; it is used in many senses, and there is substantial disagreement on what, exactly, the term means. The classic definition of ‘culture’ is generally held to be that provided by the anthropologist, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, at the beginning of his Primitive Culture (1871). Tylor writes: “Culture… is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” 7 The term ‘culture’ has, however, come to be understood in a variety of ways. Matthew Arnold (1822–88) used the word ‘culture’ to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of “the best that has been thought and said in the world.”8 Over a half century later, in his Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948),9 T.S. Eliot wrote that, while ‘culture’ is “first of all what the anthropologists mean: the way of life of a particular people living together in one place,”10 a culture “can never be wholly conscious – there is always more to it than we are conscious of”11 – and that an elite is necessary to “bring about a further development of the culture in organic complexity: culture at a more conscious level, but still the same culture.”12 Thus, culture is “the whole way of life of a people, from birth to the grave, from morning to night,”13 but it is adequately appreciated and developed only by a few. (‘Culture,’ here, is what sociologists have called ‘high culture,’ where the existence of cultural diversity is not considered to be of particular value.) In fact, in their Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (1952), Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn provide some 164 different senses of the term.14 Not surprisingly, then, ‘culture’ has been said to be: “a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action,”15 or “the product of learned behaviour,” or “ideas in the mind,” or “a system of ideas, signs, associations, and modes of behaviour and communication.”16 Today, people speak of a ‘culture of science’ or a ‘culture of health,’ which seems roughly equivalent to ‘ideology.’ (Though some, interestingly, reject the notion of culture altogether, alleging that it is “a logical construct” or “a statistical fiction.”) Nevertheless, and despite this debate, it seems fair to say that one can take the term ‘culture’ in a very broad sense as ‘a collection of representations or ideas shared by and pervasive through a group of individuals’ – as a set of what the idealist philosopher Bernard Bosanquet Cultural Clash and Religion: Philosophical Reflections 3 called “dominant ideas.”17 Such a description provides a heuristic norm or a regulative idea for a study of culture, without being a complete definition – or even claiming that ‘culture’ can be defined. One may well wonder, then, are religions cultures? This is a controversial question. Religion – in the etymological sense of religare, as that which ties, fastens, or binds people to one another – would seem to be, at least at first glance, part of culture, if not constituting a kind of culture itself. While this is an issue that is discussed at length later in this collection of essays, for the moment one can certainly say that there is, at the very least, a close relation between the two. Cultural Clash The notion of ‘clash’ usually indicates that there is not only a difference of opinion or opposition, but a confrontation and conflict, where emotions tend to run high. Clash, therefore, often involves violence. Moreover, pacē Huntington, ‘clash’ generally suggests an event of relatively short duration, as distinct from a struggle or a war. Of course, some clashes repeat, and so, overall, they may not be short term. Still, clashes are not as ‘comprehensive’ as many other forms of conflict. There are, clearly, different kinds of clash. People may clash when they misunderstand one another but, once the misunderstanding is cleared up, the clash disappears. Disagreements – particularly when they are about values, beliefs, and practices, and not just facts – can also be, or lead to, clashes. Some clashes occur when there is a deep lack of mutual understanding, and the confrontation immediate and direct, such as that between the wealthy and the dispossessed, the urban and the rural, and the young and the old. But some clashes may occur when the parties seem to understand one another all too well – when the disagreement is not just over one value or belief, but over sets of values and sets of beliefs, and the corresponding social, political, and economic structures that go with them, such as those who press the demands of the market versus those who emphasise non-economic values.

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