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Abstract
Recent sociological research has shown that the ideology of multiculturalism, after having been adopted as official policy in many countries, has generated more negative than positive effects (fragmentation of society, separation of minorities, cultural relativism). This article discusses the possible alternatives to multiculturalism, asking whether the path of interculturality can be a solution or not. The idea of interculturality has the advantage of stressing the inter, namely what lies in between different cultures. But it does not yet possess a conceptual and effective means to understand and handle the problems of the public sphere. To go over the failures of multiculturalism and the fragilities of interculturality, a lay approach to the coexistence of cultures is required, which is able to give strength back to Reason, through a new semantics of inter-human diversity. The author suggests the development of ‘relational reason’, beyond the forms of rationality already known. To make human reason relational might be the best way to imagine a social order which is able to humanize the globalizing processes and the increasing migrations.
Notes
1. For instance, the idea of a patriotic and civic constitutionalism (or ‘constitutional patriotism’ as elucidated by J. Habermas) now debated in countries such as Germany, France and Italy.
2. It is not possible, here, for reasons of space, to stop to analyse all these versions.
3. About the distinction between ideology and collective imaginary, see Charles Taylor (2005, p. 174).
4. One of the deepest criticisms of multiculturalism has been expressed by the Ayn Rand Institute, according to which multiculturalism is a growing force in America's universities and public life. In brief, multiculturalism is defined as the view that all cultures, from that of a spirits-worshipping tribe to that of an advanced industrial civilization, are equal in value. Since cultures are obviously not equal in value – not if man's life is your standard of value – this egalitarian doctrine can have only one purpose: to raze the mountaintops. Multiculturalism seeks to obliterate the value of a free, industrialized civilization (which today exists in the West and elsewhere), by declaring that such a civilization is no better than primitive tribalism. More deeply, it seeks to incapacitate a mind's ability to distinguish good from evil, to distinguish that which is life-promoting from that which is life-negating: ‘We are opposed to this destructive doctrine. We hold that moral judgment is essential to life. The ideas and values that animate a particular culture can and should be judged objectively. A culture that values freedom, progress, reason and science, for instance, is good; one that values oppression, stagnation, mysticism, and ignorance is not’.
5. In confirmation, there are several societies that are virtually multicultural (such as Brazil, for instance, but generally various countries of South America, Africa and Asia), even if the imaginary and ideology of multiculturalism are totally absent.
6. According to Gunther Teubner (Citation2006): ‘Since violations of fundamental rights stem from the totalising tendencies of partial rationalities, there is no longer any point in seeing the horizontal effect as if rights of private actors have to be weighed up against each other. On one side of the human rights relation is no longer a private actor as the fundamental-rights violator, but the anonymous matrix of an autonomised communicative medium. On the other side, the fundamental rights are divided into three dimensions: first, institutional rights protecting the autonomy of social discourses – art, science, religion – against their subjugation by the totalising tendencies of the communicative matrix; secondly, personal rights protecting the autonomy of communication, attributed not to institutions, but to the social artefacts called “persons”; and thirdly, human rights as negative bounds on societal communication, where the integrity of individuals' body and mind is endangered’.
7. See the juridical debate on the introduction of the ‘cultural defence’ ‘to mitigate punishment, create exemptions from policies, and increase the size of damage awards’ (Dundes Rentein Citation2005). The evidence sought to be adduced is ‘cultural’ as opposed to classically scientific (Currie Citation2005).
8. We refer to the theories of E. Durkheim and F. Tönnies.
9. Namely, it considers values and lifestyles not only as opposite realities (as like the physical and the spiritual, which may coexist), but also as excluding one another (as like considering the embryo as a human being or just a clot of cells).
10. I am conscious, here, of disagreeing with both Charles Taylor (Citation2004) and Jurgen Habermas (Habermas and Taylor Citation1998). They try to save liberalism by reformulating it, the first in the key of recognition and contribution of rights to minorities, the second in the key of civic or patriotic constitutionalism.
11. If liberal tolerance may have been an element of civil progress at the beginning of the modern times, afterwards – with the loss of its traditional (Christian) values – it has become the reason for the decay of Western society (Seligman Citation1992).
12. Culture may rise only by relation, i.e. it is a relational product: written and oral communication, that is sound and symbol, are not such by emission, but by reception, not owing to their ‘make sense’, but through their ‘con-sense’. And this latter depends on recognition and sharing (that are relational acts). That is why sociology is empirically relational.
13. In my opinion, instead, it is suitable to underline that multiculturalism is inscribed within a definite framework, where philosophical–cultural relativism and multicultural citizenship become synergistic and give a peculiar answer to the crisis of the lib-lab outline of society, which supported the Western countries from the Peace of Westphalia onwards. The lib-lab outline, having its far ancestor in Thomas Hobbes, is based on two complementary pillars: on the one side, proprietary individualism (and the related market liberties) (lib side) and, on the other side, a political power that exercises the monopoly of strength, and that rules society in such a way that no one can violate another's liberty, and all individuals have equal opportunities to compete in the market (lab side). It is well known that the lib-lab outline has been in crisis for a long time, finding no alternatives yet (Donati Citation2006).
14. Under that light, it may be useful to understand reflectivity, both in M. S. Archer's (2003) and in B. Sandywell's (1996) meanings.
15. ‘No matter who you are – so everyone could say – if you have human features, you too are a member (Mitglied) of such a great community; … no one exists in vain for me, as long as it shows the mark of reason on its face, even if it is a coarse and crude expression’ … ‘in any case it is sure … my heart will be united to yours by the most beautiful of the ties, the one of free and mutual share of good’ (Fichte Citation2003, p. 90).
16. Rightly A. Sen (Citation2006) has called attention to the difference between a public sphere based on freedom and consensus and one based on cultural communities of ascriptive character (the ones transmitting a cultural tradition from one generation to the other, based on the fact that an individual is born in that particular culture). But Sen does not clarify how the liberties enjoyed by equal individuals can build up a common public sphere. He criticizes multiculturalism in the name of an open society (according to the lib-lab model of institutionalized individualism), which seems to be as imaginary as the multicultural one.
17. Here, I refer to the well-known distinction between faith and religion proposed by Karl Barth, without accepting his theory of an intrinsic opposition between them. In the perspective of relational sociology, it does not mean to put them in opposition, but instead to see their inner and necessary relationality.
18. As for the various forms of reflectivity (communicative, independent, meta-reflexive, fractured or disabled): cf. Archer (Citation2003).
19. A dialectic concept is a concept in which boundaries are not strictly defined, because it lies partly with other concepts on their respective boundaries (in a sort of ‘twilight’). Thus, the concept of democracy may have several partly overlapping meanings. To them, the principle of not-contradiction of classical logic could not be applied (according to which B cannot be A and not-A at the same time; instead, if B is a dialectic concept, it can be part of A and not-A at the same time). An arithmomorphic concept, instead, is a discrete concept, therefore being strictly definable: for instance, numbers (1, 2, n), symbols (z, y, etc.), the concept of triangle or circle. Computers operate with the most arithmomorphic of the distinctions, that between zero and one. Their characteristic is to be clearly distinguishable one from the other, because they have no defined boundaries and they are not overlapping. According to the logic positivists, these are the only concepts qualified to operate in the world of science. So it is clear why positive (technical) reason is basically arithmomorphic.
20. The relational concepts, unlike the arithmomorphic ones (which are divided by a blank space: ‘the one or the other’), share with the dialectic ones the fact of having boundaries that overlap and cross with other, even opposite, concepts. But – unlike the dialectic concepts (in which boundary is a shady space) – they are characterized by the fact that the space dividing them is made of a relation, with personal and sui generis powers and properties, not modifiable at will or by dealing, because such a relation is a not-fungible qualification, with the characteristics of an emerging effect (generable only on certain conditions).
21. ‘Instrumental rationality’ is conceived as the one that, given certain aims, focuses on the means to realize them; the means are technical instruments to achieve ‘values’ which, by their nature, are indisputable and incommunicable (Max Weber's polytheism of values). The instrumental reason searches for convenience, utility, efficiency, while ‘substantial rationality’ is the one that focuses on values as ultimate concerns subjectively defined by the agent/actor.
22. The moral norm is what, at the same time, binds (connects) the other dimensions of the social relationship and distinguishes the relative autonomy of any social relation from other kinds of social relations (Donati Citation2006). For example, the relational rationality of the family as a social relation consists in connecting its human dignity with its situated goals and the instrumental means to achieve them; so that the autonomy of the relation-family is configured as distinct from other types of social relations which are not family, although they can have some dimensions in common with it.
23. Vittorio Mathieu (Citation2004) rightly suggests distinguishing between Wert (the value that has a price or monetary equivalent) and Würde (the value that has no price, i.e. anything that cannot be treated as a means and no money can buy). Anyway, he does not see the value of the inter-human relation, and therefore he fails in indicating the relational reason which links (mediates) the value in itself (axiological reason) and the other dimensions of rationality.
24. The value rationality (or axiological rationality) is inherent to the process of recognition properly understood in its three aspects: (1) as a cognitive identification of an object; (2) as a validation of the truth it bears with it; (3) as gratitude or thanks-giving.
25. Me as a social agent in primary relations, We as a corporate identity, and You as an individual actor in a social role (cf. Archer Citation2003).
26. In the Catholic doctrine, these are the so-called preambula fidei.