Beyond Ibn Khaldun's Asabiyya and Cusanus' Coincidentia

WIEL EGGEN BEYOND IBN KHALDUN’S ASABIYYA AND CUSANUS’ COINCIDENTIA On Bipolar Cooperativeness Clashing Endgames While Huntington’s theory of clashing civilisations is being tested worldwide from Nigeria through Iraq to Indonesia, the ever-hardening positions clearly call for a new scrutiny of the cultural conflict between Islamist movements and polit- icised Christianity, as security services push for extended mandates and bomb threats scare commuters and worshippers alike. What are the conceptual visions that incite both sides? While Christian neo-conservatives see Jesus’ return in judgment as the reason for seizing the reins globally, fundamentalist recruits for sui- cide bombings in the other camp look forward to Allah’s reward in paradise. The cynics, meanwhile, jeer at the sanguine bliss of those heavenly fields where rivals battle it out, blasting trumpets to the same God and waving banners for faiths that are similar in many ways. Yet, as we sound the depths and the emotional store- houses of either radicalism, we can perceive more than just the fanaticism of religious blockheads, who—like the proverbial rivalling brothers—fail to grasp their common cause. Some may idealistically invite both sides to consider their re- spective giants of the past, such as the medieval Aquinas and Ibn Rushd, so as to learn mutual respect. But the question arises as to whether the eschatological symbols used do not reflect an antithetic social ideal, a different telos, a disa- greement on social goals, which will continue to cause tensions as long as one ig- nores how both camps have radicalised and indeed deformed two opposing values which urgently need to be reintegrated.1 Rather than portraying two towering figures who could bridge the divide, I propose rather to study two men who epitomise the rival social ideals that are to be revisited if a truly bipolar social system is to re-emerge: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) and Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64). While the search for common values bridging 1 In a very critical study of political Islam the Syrian scholar Bassam Tibi (2002) un- derscores the disparity in social ideals between the two camps. Without assuming the rise of an Islamist moloch (see p.108), he stresses that both camps tend to see the historical struggle as ordained by the Lord of the Last Judgment. Because of a basic incompatibility, Tibi does not believe in islamising the social sciences. See Tibi 1995. 52 BEYOND IBN KHALDUN AND CUSANUS the religious divide rightly evokes a shared intellectual heritage—and stresses the West’s huge indebtedness to philosophical and scientific Muslim scholars, who tended the Greek treasures before passing them on to the battered “land of the Franks”—a wider task awaits us. A reminder of how Muslim scholars fertilised emerging Western centres of learning with marvels in metaphysics, mathematics and empirical disciplines such as astronomy and medicine is no doubt overdue. But, as this shared heritage has sadly failed to prevent the emotional standoff, notably since the Western hegemony made its inroads into the Orient, a more in- depth analysis in religious sociology is needed. Responding to a recent study on social evolution and some postmodern views, I propose to reconsider the work of two scholars whose dates interlock and straddle the power shift to the West and who have both been credited with launching empirical methods in the social sciences, even if they themselves remained steeped in their own religion. In examining human sociability as the central point of human science they both addressed, I propose to show how they unwittingly highlighted the aforementioned dilemma by hailing opposing social mechanisms and eschatological ideals. I shall close by briefly examining a way to overcome that polarity, as found in the basic social structure of Banda society (Central Africa), not so much as a model to be emu- lated but as a structural warning against harmful one-sidedness. Motivating Sociability The political historian Ibn Khaldun, who lived about a century after the era of the great caliphs (661-1258), may be credited with having caught the historical mo- ment by analysing what Mohamed Talbi (1986: 829) called an “aetiology of the political decline”—even though he never foresaw the imminent demise of Muslim power. Using an empirical approach that brought him much renown, he wrote a historiography that is often praised as a prophecy of the events to come. However, while he blamed the repeated failure to form a state on the decline of the all-im- portant asabiyya (provisionally translated as “corporate spirit”), our second au- thor, Nicholas of Cusa, hailed the individual’s search as the root of progress and social integration. Like Ibn Khaldun, he too was engaged in diplomacy, although he never applied his empirical methods to studying historical anthropology. From a different angle, however, he too favoured that research. The two allow us a rare perspective on the fundamental mechanisms in either system. Ibn Khaldun reads history in causal terms and describes the social forces that give birth to political units or undo them. Cusanus sees spiritual convergence as the fruit of an appealing teleological motive.2 While passing over, for now, the issue of how the 2 It is true that neither of these authors projected their social imagery into the afterlife as such. Ibn Khaldun’s view of the kingdom as the empirical telos of the asabiyya is not to be given theological wings and Aziz al-Azmeh (1982: X) warns against measuring his work by an occidental touchstone. Still, both authors seem so strongly embedded in their religious ideals that we can hardly avoid seeing their views of what has been divinely 53 STUDIES IN INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 15 (2005) 1 afterlife appears in filigree behind their obverse social constructs, I will concentrate on the starting points they chose during that historical power shift from the Crescent to the West which is now openly and spectacularly being chal- lenged. This is not to ignore the religious side to this standoff. For if both authors stress empirical aspects, they also insist that this approach stems from a religious conviction in terms of a sociological formula that relates to the ultimate reality. Cynics, labelling any call for dialogue merely utopian ritualism, tend to play up the incommensurability between the religions’ cultural foundations. But the often ignored Christian advocate of open dialogue, Cusanus, invites us to consider a particular approach to reconciling religious rivalry just after the fall of Byzantium into Muslim hands. That event in 1453 shocked him personally, as he had just re- turned from promising diplomatic talks there, attempting to bring about some re- conciliation between the Western and Eastern churches along lines he had earlier proposed in the case of the Hussites. Now he writes De Pace Fidei, proposing one faith in a multitude of rites to foster peace by accepting religious diversity. Even though his interest in the political clout of the papacy which he defended as a car- dinal makes his proposal of a theological debate sound hollow, his bid to square all religious views with his understanding of the Christian faith is less dogmatic than it seems and allows empirical studies of human behaviour in a way that re- calls Ibn Khaldun. This interests us precisely because his ingenious concept of the coincidentia oppositorum is rooted in a perspective which basically shows affinity and yet radical discord with Ibn Khaldun’s study of social unity as the basis of civilisation (umran). This should allow for a thorough comparison. So, when authors like Tibi take their lead from Ibn Khaldun and from his Western admirer Arnold Toynbee in seeking to remedy the present rift between the two blocks— which, in the eyes of Henri Pirenne, developed their identity by rubbing against each other—we may compare that to Cusanus’ argument.3 Both authors propose reading historical reality in an empirical way and agree on “tolerance for the facts,” even if they remained linked to ideological aims and differed as to the force on which any viable cooperation might be built. ordained as permeating their social ideas. 3 Tibi (2002, passim, and in several earlier publications), in his attack on what he calls the neo-jihad and usuliyya (fundamentalism) that stem from al-Afghani and Sayyid Qutb, not only chooses to return to the rationalism of al-Farabi but calls for the type of engagement Charlemagne practised by accepting opposing views within an ongoing dialogue. This would suit Cusanus, whose ideal of a dialogue comes so close to al-Farabi’s arguing for the pursuit of wisdom via different cultural roads. On Cusanus’ more empirical method and its link to the so-called Carolingian renaissance see Gierer 1999. 54 BEYOND IBN KHALDUN AND CUSANUS Ibn Khaldun feels that cooperation is to be based on the real force of solidarity in human societies, which is ultimately rooted in (patrilineal) kinship ties4. Although he is aware that his favourite term asabiyya is controversial—since a hadith of the Prophet is said to have ruled it out from playing a role in Islamic religion—he is adamant in turning it into a truly polysemic base for any political and religious harmony. By contrast, Cusanus views solidarity not so much as a given but as a beckoning goal behind life’s oppositions. Finding these two conflicting principles of social unity (the one rooted in biological relatedness and the other in a spiritual drive to overcome basic oppositions) we will ponder the root of their dissonance. We may link this to what appear to be remarkably different appreciations of kinship ties in Muslim and Western Christian communities in spite of their common monotheist faith.

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