Democratic Universalism and Cultural Particularities

Ramin Jahanbegloo

More than a half – century after the universal declaration of Human Rights laid the foundation for the human rights movement, diverse peoples have embraced those ideas across the earth. That fact is undeniable. But it is only part of the story. Those same people who have embraced that corpus also seek to contribute to it, at times by radically reformulating it, at others by tinkering at the margins. For many in non-Western countries, the human rights corpus as a philosophy that seeks the diffusion of democracy and its primary around the globe, can ironically be seen as favorable to political and cultural homogenization and hostile to difference and diversity, the two variables that are at the heart of the dynamism of the world today. For many the paradox of the human rights corpus is that it seeks to foster diversity and difference, but does so only under the rubric of Western democracy. In other words, it says that diversity is good so long as it is exercized within the Western paradigm of liberalism. This inelasticity of the human rights corpus needs an urgent philosophical debate on the ideals of difference and diversity. In other words, the old debate between universalists and relativists continues into the 21st century. Many scholars and intellectuals acknowledge that universalism is the product of European history. As a result, the center of the debate turns around the argument over whether or not Western democracy should be considered as a universal principle. Western democracy has always been challenged on the ground that it represents a form of political imperialism or hegemony. Having such origins, it denies cultural values, especially the so-called non-Western societies. In response, universalists often accuse relativists of providing excuses for legitimizing violent traditions and political suppression. The problem with this kind of exchange is that both sides tend to arbitrate the correct form of human existence. Unfortunately, the uncomprising stance of both parties only shifts the argument away from the fundamental issue which is to know whether the forms of human existence and their meanings could be chosen democratically.

The lesson that we can take from Wilson’s experience is not that Wilson is wrong about the importance of democracy, but that democracy as a universal principle is sometimes a bridge too far. Yet, even if democracy is not as easily spread or as deeply rooted as Wilson had assumed, there is no shadow of doubt that each democratic process is a potential ally in the struggle against the challenges of one time-containing ethnic and religious conflicts, combating terrorism and overcoming environmental degradation.

Despite the strong religious and even fundamentalist trends in the Islamic world today, democratic universalism is evident in the writings of Muslim authors. Naturally this could not have been the case had there been no earlier writings propagating democracy among the Muslims. These writings began to appear in the mid 19th century once the Arabs, the Turks and the Iranians had come into contact with and were influenced by the secular modern thought. Rationalism was not foreign to Iranian and Arab philosophers, even as far back as the Middle Ages. But this rationalism was not identical to secularism and to democratic universalism. It did not and it could not consider politics, society, law and ethics completely independent of religion. As a result the belief in the epistemological independence of human reason as well as in man’s responsibility for his actions could not be established as a philosophical foundation for democratic thought in the Middle East. The Islamic world exemplifies today a political and social order, which seems to lack much capacity to provide a strong secular democracy. Yet, Muslim intellectuals, work across their different cultural boundaries for the denial of absolutism, the strengthening of civil society and a cognitive growth toward a democratic universalism.

Muslim philosophers have never been able to construct democracies, but some of them have been able to teach men to think in terms of democracy. Democracy is a notion which serves a double function: it helps us understand how a given society actually works and how it differs from alternative forms of social organization. So, all in all, democracy is justified at least in part by the fact that it seems linked to our historical destiny. Perhaps the collapse of Marxist ideology demonstrates that modern man is not slave even to the most persistent and monopolistic indoctrination, and does not necessarily like that which pervades his world even though for a time it seems to have no alternative.

As for philosophy, what we learn from the history of philosophy is that humans are culture – creating creatures. Philosophy and democracy are both the results of the process of culture creation. Hegel understood that well enough in his phenomenological approach, but it is only in our global time that the urgent need for a systematic comprehension of cultural differences based on the principle of conscientious recognition of the other has become apparent. If as Michael Walzer holds “a community’s culture is the story its members tell us to make sense of all the different pieces of their social life” then surely from a democratic perspective every one must take part in telling the story, and not just one dominant section of the society. This approach could lead to difficulties in our contemporary world, of finding ways of giving voice to and respecting the values of the excluded. The problem of who is to be included and who excluded is, of course, a problem for those who wish to give the ideas of universality, democracy and community prominent roles. Therefore the whole problem brought up by philosophers is to discuss the validity or non-validity of universalist principles which construct the view of a shared value of life and a common citizenship while respecting individual cultural communities. If we agree on the fact that aims and values of communities are not only chosen by them, but are also constitutive of them, then we can hold that there are a number of shared human creations which are fundamental to understanding human life and human society. There is, therefore, a common understanding within different human communities about the worth and value of shared incomings or ways of human life. People on this account, don’t just inhabit their particular cultural worlds respecting their particular creations and giving particular meanings to these creations that vary from culture to culture, but also share and believe in a minimal universal which holds across cultures and communities. This “soft universality” would provide a theoretical framework for various possible versions of moral life without being founded in a fixed idea of the self. The universalizable principles by which we structure our lives, policies and institutions are relatively indeterminate. Committing ourselves not to make violence or coercion fundamental to our lives demands a great deal, including the construction of appropriate political institutions. But these commitments leave the doors open for further discussion and deliberation. There is no reason whatsoever to think that our fundamental principals can be expressed only in a single uniform pattern of action or by a single uniform set of institutions. For example, two persons might reject the non-univeralizable maxim of exploiting others, yet act in very different ways. Perhaps one lives in a traditional society in which clan or family structures are strong and protection from exploitation can largely be treated as the responsibility of families, while the other lives in a modern welfare state where protection from exploitation is a social responsibility. So, the more general philosophical point is just that universality is not the same as uniformity and “soft universality” unlike “hard universality” is not in search of uniformization and homogenization, because it does not prescribe cultural uniformity. Soft universality remains an exciting possibility today for democratic thinking because it underpins ethical criticism and provides arguments for an account of justice and yet allows that a large measure of cultural diversity may be acceptable.

Contemporary Aristotelians, Wittgensteinians as well as communitarians, often criticize universal ethics of principles, yet in fact focus on socially and culturally specific principles under some other title such as “norms” or “commitments”. If one takes a Kantian position one can say that the task of soft democratic universalism is to provide a universalistic criterion by which to scrutinize the principles of action that we might seek basic to our lives, activities and institutions. Soft universalism does not force others to choose, but offers them reasons and argumentations for adapting principles which they would adapt. In other words, soft universalism applies the universal right to reciprocity in a world of relative values in order to allow people with different values to accept one another. Without this universal reciprocity relativism would not hold. This universalism is a universalism beyond Western values, it is universalism within global democratic values.

Soft universalism in opposition to hard universalism is the only hope for promoting democracy in non-democratic cultures. This relies on conscious cross-cultural learning and understanding. In other words, when cross-cultural learning can enable one to internalize democratic values, the possibility by any one to move in and out of any value system is preserved. In this situation, individual responsibility replaces particular values to become the focus of concern. This means that individuals gain a sense of responsibility when learning from different cultures, which provide them to move out of a relativistic system. The action of moving out is  conscious and choice – enacted, unlike the initial cultural position that one grows into as a child,  and which does not involve a choice. Once one takes such a position of responsibility, relativism becomes superficial.

Philosophical learning as a historical learning that puts one into a position of choice not only accompanies one’s decision to stay within the initial culture (keeping one’s identity) but also legitimizes one’s decision to move into democratic universal values. Therefore, an action of moving out of a creation value system is a confirmation of the responsibility of those who stay with it because they are not denied the possibility of moving out. Democratic universalism as an alternative culture of politics has to emerge from encounters and dialogues. If we agree that people today are more open to ideas and are less fearful of openly expressing their choices, we can say that they are more capable of evolving a consensus on what they do not want than on what they want. They are more divided on the question of an ideal society and much less divided on the society they don’t want. This keeps democratic universalistic options open for the future generations too.

In short, soft democratic universality makes us not to think alike but to be responsible towards each other and towards our common problems, helping us to move in an out of our relative value systems. This is the best way to accept the values of rootedness and the sense of belonging without embracing the idea of complete political and moral relativism. In this way, the values of both community and autonomy, of both individual liberty and human citizenship are recognized in the framework of democratic accountability and constitutionality. If there is a future for the Middle East, it is not in the framework of relativism or hard universalism, but in relation with the principles of a soft universalism which takes into consideration the global urgencies of our world and the cultural particularities of the Islamic world.