Cosmopolitan Liberalism: Expanding the Boundaries of the Individual

COSMOPOLITAN LIBERALISM Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores Previous Publications Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores. 2005. Polit...

Author: Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

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COSMOPOLITAN LIBERALISM

Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

Previous Publications Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores. 2005. Political Philosophy for the Global Age. New York: Palgrave Macmillan


COSMOPOLITAN LIBERALISM EXPANDING THE BOUNDARIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL



COSMOPOLITAN LIBERALISM

Copyright © Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–61352–2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sánchez-Flores, Mónica Judith. Cosmopolitan liberalism : expanding the boundaries of the individual / Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–61352–2 (hardback) 1. Cosmopolitanism. 2. Liberalism. I. Title. JZ1308.S25 2010 306—dc22

2009048249

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: August 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.


Compassion is the finest weapon and the best defense. If you would establish harmony, Compassion must surround you like a fortress. —Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching


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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Contemporary Cosmopolitanism

1

1 2 3 4

Compassion and a Tale of Belonging for the Human Species

19

Trust in Strangers and the Critique of Abstract Liberalism

53

Beyond the Realm of Individuality: Nature and Children

83

Human Difference and the Multicultural Dilemma

127

5 Citizens of the World, Unite!

167

Notes

177

Bibliography

185

Index

195




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

am indebted to my colleagues in the History Division at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City; much of the work in this book was discussed in its internal seminar in the past three years. I would like to especially thank Clara García, Erika Pani, Luis Barrón, Rafael Rojas, Mike Sauter, and Jean Meyer for their support and useful comments to this project. Chapter two of this book was presented at the 2009 Annual General Meeting of the British Columbia Political Science Association (BCPSA) in Thompson Rivers University (TRU). I would like to thank Derek Cook for encouraging me to be discussant of a panel that included cutting-edge presentations that would eventually prove to be very useful for this project. A paper that became the biggest part of chapter three in this book was presented at one of The Species of Origin workshops at Glasgow University in December 2007. I would like to thank Emilios Christodoulidis for introducing me to such an exciting multidisciplinary effort that brought together intellectuals and artists to discuss fresh perspectives on Darwinism and evolution. An early version of chapter four in this book was presented at the Association for Political Theory Conference 2008; and Frank Lovett’s comments were very useful in rewriting it. Also, this chapter was completed with the support of the Faculty Research Program Grant 2006–2007 awarded by the Canadian Studies Program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the Embassy of Canada in Mexico. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the loving support of my husband, Stuart Douglass, who epitomizes the ideas expressed in this book and whose constancy in compassion is the backbone of the culture of peace that together we build for our children. Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores



INTRODUCTION

CONTEMPORARY COSMOPOLITANISM

T

he moral philosophy of contemporary cosmopolitanism—the basis on which cosmopolitanism is discussed today—is distinctly Western. What this means is that it is based philosophically, historically, and culturally in the Western tradition of liberal thought. Western liberalism, in spite of being posed and proposed in abstract and culture-neutral terms, emerged from JudeoChristian Europe and to this day is conditioned by these cultural roots, as well as tainted by the history of colonization and abasement of the constructed non-Western “other.” I am referring to liberalism here as “Western” because, in spite of it not being possible that there be any other type of liberalism in the world, I want to differentiate it from a type of liberalism that aspires to be purged from the conditionings of Western supremacist history and culture. My ambition in this book is to lay the grounds for the possibilities of what I call Cosmopolitan Liberalism, which will embrace the cultural achievements of Western liberalism but will leave behind its parochial limitations. Western liberalism, in trying to propose itself as abstract thought, refuses to see how its own structure is culturally shaped by the Judeo-Christian ethos and also how such structure depends on stories of supremacy that are mingled both with race and wealth as symbols of worth. According to the principles of reality that emerged in the Age of Reason, modernity defines itself in contrast and opposition to parochial and superstitious myths and this self-confidence is complemented with the


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C O S MO P O L I TA N L I B E R A L I S M

achievements of natural science and the morality of liberalism (with universal pretensions). However, if the communitarian critique to abstract liberalism has taught us anything at all,1 it is that liberalism—and by association, contemporary cosmopolitanism—is not without its own cultural roots. Western liberalism is based on the cultural achievements of modernity, which got its own selfawareness in Europe and North America during the long historical stretch that encompasses all the modern revolutions: scientific, industrial, and political. Because of this history, proud colonial powers in Europe considered themselves at the highest stage of human civilization with much terrain to be conquered still for the unstoppable march of modernity. These peoples and colonial powers, regarding themselves the authors of such social transformations, proceeded to compose stories of racial and continental supremacy with respect to the rest of the world. The term Western liberalism intends to stress the supremacist side of the tradition while at the same time acknowledging its cultural roots. As a cosmopolitan I believe it is important to bear in mind the cultural and historical sources of the liberal tradition of thought, as well as its structural prejudices, in order to aid its development toward fully serving the goal of justice for universal humanity. In the leading story of supremacy mentioned earlier, Greece is the “cradle of Western culture” that was rediscovered during the Renaissance by Europe; however, the culture that today we refer to as Western is also the product of a host of many other unacknowledged cultural sources. What we call Western culture comes from a diverse set of stories and histories woven together by philosophical efforts in search for the basis of universal reality.2 It is well known that Western culture could not have reached its current heights without Arabic, Chinese, Indian, and other inf luences and cultural transformations (see Sen 2006). Nevertheless, today the term Western is used in an equivalent manner to the term modern. In fact some commentators have referred to modernization as Westernization, as if the peoples who embrace the secular principles of modernity are in fact stealing these ideas from the Western colonial powers that are seen as having authorship over them. In spite of this, modern culture is shared across the globe today. My point is that modern culture should no longer be considered


C ON T E M P O R A RY C O S MO P O L I TA N I S M

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Western because it has become planetary. The cultural sources of modernity can indeed be traced beyond Europe and white folks, and modernity has expanded culturally all over the world. In so doing, modern culture has picked up many contributions to its sophistication from people in geographical spaces, cultures, and ethnicities well beyond the fuzzy geographical area that is referred to as the West. This makes modernity a global culture with various different manifestations throughout the world, especially in big urban centers. The reader will realize that throughout this book I avoid using the term Western to qualify modernity. My contention is that when people use it in this way, this geographical reference unwittingly creates a hierarchy that identifies who belongs to the club of the civilized—and supposedly because of this—rich peoples (according to the Western tale). In sociological terms then, “being Western” is a kind of identity and peoples of past colonial powers share this sense of belonging, especially if they perceive themselves as white in race. The racial element of this identity is constructed around an idea of whiteness that has been socially transformed throughout time to include a few more groups at an international level, but not many (the Jews, the Irish, the Southern European). This identity works in a similar way to what Rogers Smith (2003) calls “stories of peoplehood”; it empowers all the people who can consider themselves Western, but at the same time it excludes all the gendered and racialized people that this same story contemplates as other-than-Western. Cosmopolitan Liberalism seeks to clarify the cultural sources of Western liberalism’s most important philosophical principle: individuality and individual responsibility. What I want to achieve with seeing the West as an identity label and modernity as a planetary phenomenon is to show that the liberal tradition of thought can be purged from its patriarchal and racist structural aspects. In so doing, liberalism acquires a plasticity that will allow for our modern sense of individuality to be molded to accommodate ideals that the tradition contemplates as outside its realm of possibilities. I am referring to the ideal of universal love and the principle of compassion, which are generally regarded as religious concepts with no bearing in the contemporary era of what Jürgen Habermas (1995, 1998a,b) calls post-metaphysical thought. Nevertheless, my


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contention is that contemporary cosmopolitanism ought to embrace as many dimensions of human reality as it possibly can in order to overcome Western liberalism’s bad habit of looking down on human cultural achievements other than its own. Only thus will its aspirations to universal applicability be honored by peoples who do not belong to the club of the “highly civilized” and rich peoples. However, before going there, before persuading ourselves to embrace these two guides for moral action; it is important to explore the cultural sources of individuality. The origins of liberalism come from the invention and social construction of individuality that eventually acquired its modern philosophical possibilities. Nevertheless, while we ought to bear in mind Western liberalism’s origins and cultural roots in order to overcome its imposed particularities—especially when considering the universality of liberalism—we can also acknowledge that it has already spilled well beyond such origins to inhabit at the same time many dimensions of social reality considered as peripheral in the world order of power and wealth. Contemporary cosmopolitanism and the way in which it is debated today can be said to have three very important philosophical elements: the primacy of individuals, impartiality, and universality. First, individuals are the ultimate recipients of justice and rights; that is, the individual human being is the legitimate object of moral care and concern, the “ultimate unit of moral worth” (Tan 2002, 431), regardless of where she was born or her origins, without considering her membership in any specific society, her race or ethnicity, her allegiances, or any other particular aspect of her personhood. This element of cosmopolitanism has become its most important organizing principle for the allocation of universal rights. However, individuality can also be regarded as a cultural production of Judeo-Christian morality and the European tradition of liberal thought inherits from these traditions its sense of morality and human worth.3 As I will try to show in the second chapter of this book, following Paul Ricoeur’s Symbolism of Evil (1967a), the modern individual’s scrupulous and judgmental type of morality has very old roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition and is based on a conception and perception of time as history and a judgmental type of morality. Second, cosmopolitans argue that the



5

point of view of cosmopolitanism ought to include that of all of humanity and it refuses to espouse any one particular perspective: “If local viewpoints can be said to be partial, then a cosmopolitan viewpoint is impartial” (Beitz 1994, 124). This begs the question of how exactly this perspective can be genuinely constructed and remain neutral, considering the fact of a plurality of worldviews and the problem of cultural and historical location: If our social situation conditions our understanding of human consciousness and self, in what sense can liberal cosmopolitans—culturally situated in the Western tradition—claim to hold an impartial point of view? And is this perspective legitimately impartial? As cosmopolitanism refers to “everything there is” (123), this impartial viewpoint would correspond “with the cosmos, or, perhaps, one from which everything there is could be seen” (ibid.). However, this perspective is suspiciously close to that of God (i.e., an omnipotent, monotheistic, male, and Judeo-Christian God). I argue that neutrality ought to be more inclusive in the perspective it espouses and no point of view can beat the inclusiveness of an ideal of universal love. Third, cosmopolitanism ought to embrace principles that have universal applicability, principles that any rational human being would not hesitate to accept. Cosmopolitanism seeks to look after the human rights of all individuals in the world from the perspective of respect for the dignity, rationality, and agency of the human subject. As it will be clear throughout this book, I believe with all cosmopolitans that the universal applicability of principles as an ideal aspiration is essential to be able to achieve any degree of cosmopolitan justice. However, liberalism defines the human self in terms that are too constrained to pay homage to the aspiration of universality essential in cosmopolitanism. Liberal universality is displaced from considering aspects of humanity that ought to be taken into account when speaking about the human self.4 It highlights what the Western liberal tradition contemplates as the basis for human moral worth (agency, rationality) and only refers in passing to essential aspects of our shared humanity, which to this tradition are more problematic than essential. The latter include things such as being members of a species with animal-like needs (and part of a wider natural environment), who as infants are the most fragile species on earth, who because of this are needy and


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also moody, and who pervasively hold spiritual and metaphysical (religious) ambitions and beliefs—while at the same time aspiring to be rational in modernity. Having had a glance at the cultural roots of all three aspects of contemporary cosmopolitan philosophy, I believe it is important to stress that any proposed development or betterment of this story ought to be built upon them. What I suggest here is to focus on the one element that is culturally most strongly attached to liberalism—that of individuality—and consider where it comes from and whether it can be transformed and expanded in order to take into account the aspects of our humanity that the liberal tradition of thought sidelines. One important aspect of the way world justice is debated today is its tension with people’s local and national allegiances, bonds, and ethical responsibilities based on their identity. Nationalists tend to think that there is a cosmopolitan aspiration to make those particularistic sentiments secondary and a wider responsibility to all human beings primary. This tension, however, ought to be placed within a typology of cosmopolitanisms because this philosophical position is not necessarily opposed to the moral importance of holding national and local attachments, and in my own position, these particular bonds and stories are essential to the f lourishing of human life. Even though all types of cosmopolitanism hold that questions of justice ought to transcend socially created borders between human beings, we can say that in the contemporary debate there are two types of cosmopolitanism: institutional and moral. The former refers to how world institutions ought to be set up not only to further global justice, but also as a matter of governance due to the complexity of contemporary world interaction. Institutional cosmopolitans argue that such complexity has rendered the international institutions and normative basis of the states system quasi-obsolete. According to Held (2002), “[b]oundaries between states are of decreasing legal and moral significance. States are no longer regarded as discrete political worlds. International standards breach boundaries in numerous ways” (20). In institutional cosmopolitanism, the need for ref lection on how a worldlevel of legality and government ought to be set up is seen in how contemporary world interaction has transformed the state system and made it necessary for an international or global level of authority



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and/or enforceable legality to emerge. A measure of how world interaction has become more intensive and complex than ever before is the “extent, intensity, velocity and impact of human networks and relations in each of the core domains of social activity— economic, political, legal, communicative and environmental . . .” (Held 2003, 465–6; see also Held et al. 1999). Institutional cosmopolitanism does not necessarily propose a world state, but does call for more effective legal or democratic political levels of governance with authority over the states, which would necessarily deal with global justice—sometimes considering a world scheme of taxation for wealth redistribution, such as the Tobin Tax or Thomas Pogge’s Global Resource Tax (2008 chapter 8). This type of cosmopolitanism can be said to be in tension with nationalist allegiances because it takes away from the sovereignty of states or their self-determination, and tries to concentrate power in one form of supranational authority/legality or other. Many political theorists have criticized this position because they consider that liberal political philosophy ought to be framed within the clear confines of the nation-state and on the basis of a theory of nationalism (see Miller 1995; Rawls 1999; Walzer 1983). However, as Kok-Chor Tan (2002) has argued, “there is no inconsistency in endorsing both liberal nationalism and cosmopolitan justice” (433); and his position is not based on a simplistic distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. Tan reminds us that all political authorities engage in reinforcing emotionally charged cultural commonalities of their group. I have argued elsewhere that human beings need such stories to f lourish, be it in a political association or in any human endeavor (see Sánchez-Flores 2005). When it comes to building a sense of belonging, even liberal political authorities use shared symbols, myths, and memories to tap into the emotional life of the group that they lead through the creation of “stories of peoplehood” (Smith 2003). And so, what Tan argues is that liberalism is based on an ethics of belonging in an important way—on nationalism—but this does not mean that it is impossible then to embrace cosmopolitanism. Institutional cosmopolitanism then can be said to be in tension with national and local stories of belonging insofar as it takes away from states’ self-determination; but the other type of cosmopolitanism is not necessarily so, namely, moral cosmopolitanism.


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Moral cosmopolitanism concerns itself with world justice and how our regard for the welfare of other people must encompass the whole of the human species. So, while moral cosmopolitanism is needed in order to espouse the more systemically complex institutional cosmopolitanism, the opposite is not necessarily true: One can defend moral cosmopolitanism without needing to commit oneself to the institutional type. Moral cosmopolitanism is skeptical about the inherent importance of socially constructed boundaries of nation, ethnicity, race, religion, and so on; this is why it has also been called “skeptical humanism” (Beitz 1994, 125). However, this skepticism refers to the inherent validity of borders built by human groups; it amounts to a type of sociological imagination whereby we acknowledge the personal, emotional, and even moral importance of the various groups to which we may belong, but it is aware that such belonging is essentially diversified. The “either/or” way in which political theorists have debated about the primacy of the individual versus that of the group to which this person may belong has been found to be a reductionist approach to the human sense of identity. Sociologists and anthropologists know that human identity and sense of belonging are not necessarily definite and clear, but an ongoing process of negotiation and self-actualization that considers all the diversified human groups to which people may belong at any one time. Amartya Sen (2006) criticizes the “illusion of singularity” that many political philosophers assume about people’s identity; this illusion presumes that a person ought not to be seen as having a plurality of affiliations nor as belonging to many different groups, “but just as a member of one particular collectivity, which gives him or her a uniquely important identity” (45). The conceptual clarity that defines a tension between either belonging to a specific group (such as a religion, a community, or the nation) or seeing oneself as a member of the human species is not to be found in social complex reality. One can see oneself as part of both and indeed of a good number of other identities and allegiances. People identify with one sole group, Sen tells us, when loyalty has already been polarized and rigidified either by political leaders or even hate-mongers, who urge people to identify with one aspect of their identity and blow it out of proportions for various political reasons often leading to tragic consequences (see



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Sen 2006, chapter 9). Moral cosmopolitanism though, refers to how our moral concern about the well-being of other human beings should not be limited to any particular group with which we may identify ourselves. However, this does not mean that it is at odds with the importance of belonging to a specific moral community within which to realize our very particular conception of the good life, nor is it at odds with having allegiance toward a political community within which to realize the ideals of political participation and institution-building. “Recognizing the need to consider the claims of a global identity,” says Sen, “does not eliminate the possibility of paying much attention also to local and national problems” (182). Moral cosmopolitanism is preoccupied with world justice in terms of distribution of basic goods, wealth, and opportunities for all individuals and particular communities and associations may indeed be the locus and the source of such ethical considerations. This is why one can regard as reductionist the accusation that cosmopolitanism dilutes the real essence of human belonging into a mind-bogglingly huge group—the human species—outstretched and scattered all over the globe. Having said this, it is important to bear in mind that world interaction today has developed along new dimensions beyond the typical international relations perspective neatly supported by the states system and this makes it necessary to ref lect on how such dimensions may be considered and theorized in contemporary cosmopolitanism. Drawing from my work in Political Philosophy for the Global Age (2005), I engage with our modern conception of time in order to question its usefulness in such an endeavor. Globalization creates the need for a moral cosmopolitan outlook on the consequences of various and different worldviews coming in constant contact and awareness of each other in contemporary world interaction—and the dominant view of self and time is only one worldview among a few others in the world. In this view, we “move” in time; we live the embodied experience of time passing, of clocks “ticking,” and of us humans progressing through history in a straight-line direction constantly and indefinitely; recording historical events sequentially. Modern consciousness throughout the world pays homage to the dominant view of self and legitimates the reality of this sequential order of events as objective history.


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Historical time is perceived as objective and we consider it real. However, in order to engage with how the Western idea of individuality with very specific cultural roots can be made more inclusive, I engage in considering an alternative “order of events in time” by means of which individuality can be transformed. I am referring to the order of event in simultaneity as a perspective on time-phenomena that has acquired significance in modern life due to technological advances and constant cultural exchanges throughout the world. Due to a complex network of world communications, much of what happens in the world today may become relevant to us at the same time as our immediate experience, which is one of the signs of globalization. In contemporary interaction and awareness, global infrastructure has made it possible for us to consider relevant facts, political, economic, social, and even cultural concerns of faraway peoples almost at the time as they arise throughout our daily life as well as in our ethical and emotional reactions. An alternative perspective to time-as-history contemplates time-as-here-and-now—the constant present—which our modern historical minds do not necessarily conceive of as timelike. Simultaneity focuses on the f leeting present instant as the experiential basis to be able to disclose conceptually a realm of morality today more than ever needed in ref lection about global justice: The realm of universal love from which a hermeneutics of the heart can be realized through the principle of compassion. In this book, I argue that the modern mind does not have the conceptual tools to approach simultaneity; present time is seen as a static unimportant moment, not enough “time” to achieve anything, or an instant that unavoidably gives way to past and future: the march of history. In contrast to this, the idea of time as the constant present moment can encompass infinity, and is necessary to conceptualize universal compassion for moral ref lection under the contemporary conditions of globalization. This conceptual framework will allow me to criticize Western liberalism as is currently conceived and debated from the perspective of its own cosmological roots, which give the idea of individuality a very specific shape that emerged from Judeo-Christian morality. There is vast postcolonial/postmodern/feminist literature and research programs that condemn the effects of the imposition of an



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individualistic and narrow conception of self defined in abstractuniversal terms, which is seen as having clear colonial and patriarchal roots. This kind of critique has its own merits and achievements especially in considering the role of violence and the consequences of discrimination in imposing culturally rooted, so-called universal values at many group levels: domestic (as in household family politics), communal, local, national, global. However, my perspective in criticizing this typical universalistic liberal attitude is different, for while I do object theoretically to the imposition of Western individualism as a universal human trait, I also propose that political theory needs individualism as an ideal. Nevertheless, I believe that it is important to show the cultural sources of individuality and its sacred and ref lexive roots that lie in how the notion of fault brought about moral conscience in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This will help to temper the traditional validity of individualism’s universalistic pretensions and open up the possibility for liberal thought to go beyond the limitations of individual subjectivity toward an expanded self. A phenomenological methodology to think about the self is the basis to achieve this self-expansion and also the concept of simultaneous-synchronic time. Yet, as I have said before, the concept of individuality as an ideal universal principle cannot be disposed of; rather, it must be complemented. Individualistic and abstract liberalism that aspires to universality with its roots in modern Enlightenment is not sufficient any longer to deal with contemporary political world predicaments. My perspective and critique is based on the present realm of simultaneity that provides the individual self with expanded awareness about her moral life. From the perspective of simultaneity Cosmopolitan Liberalism has no underlying intentions of domination or cultural superiority; but it has nonetheless universalistic pretensions in embracing humanity—the whole of the human species—as a legitimate groupidentity that ought to compel our allegiance as moral entities. What I am trying to say is that humanity needs a cosmopolitan story of peoplehood, as I discuss in the first chapter of this book, a cosmology that in embracing humanity does not suffocate “others.” What I call Western liberalism amounts to a racial and patriarchal story that is not fully inclusive of all of humanity and is structurally


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compelled to a process of “othering.” Western liberalism is based on a tragic history of colonization, oppression, violence, and imposition associated to Western liberal nation-states whose peoples allowed their local stories of superiority to contaminate liberal universality with exclusion, marginalization, and discrimination of people perceived as other-than-us-civilized-white-folk. This is the reason why in this book I argue that if a universal world order of any kind (moral, symbolic, legal, institutional) is to be organized, it must include the ideal of universal love and a philosophical principle compassion for moral ref lection in order for this global order not to become suffocating to imagined others and even to nature. Nevertheless, one must never forget that any kind of universal principle for social and political organization ought to be seen with skepticism, for we must always see universals as mere orderproducing myths: Ideals that are sought for and realized only sporadically and even then, only partially. However, humanity needs a more inclusive tale of togetherness and one-in-anotherness than the one that Western liberalism has provided thus far and my main point in this book is to say that it cannot be achieved in abstract terms without the ideal of universal love and the principle of compassion. Only equipped with these philosophical elements can liberalism become truly cosmopolitan. In chapter one of this book entitled “Compassion as a Tale of Belonging for the Human Species” I argue that it is important to bear clearly in mind that the liberal tradition of thought has emerged from Europe, with a culturally situated way of defining individuality, agency, responsibility, and freedom. In liberal literature, there is also a history of defining who the individual self is with contrastive definitions of who this self is not (coming from colonial impositions with patriarchal and racialized baggage). In this chapter I try to show that the debate needs to expand its theoretical basis beyond traditional liberal universalism and the Judeo-Christian moral spectrum toward a type of morality that can embrace the principle of universal love. The root of this type of morality is mysticism and I explore the philosophical basis for the expansion of the individual self toward all there is, including nature. History is based on an idea of events in time that is related to the Judeo-Christian worldview and limits the reach of human morality. On the one hand, I argue



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that modern historical consciousness prevents us from considering the sociological importance of telling stories of the mythical type within the framework of cosmopolitanism. On the other, historical consciousness conditions us to disregard the importance of the present moment in mystic traditions; the moment that allows us to conceive of simultaneity, be aware of our compassion, and perceive our shared humanity with distant others—especially people who may be in conditions of poverty, oppression, and exploitation. In this chapter I explain why the moral justification of what we owe to distant others in the world lies at this nonhistorical present moment. I have defined the theoretical bases to speak about mythic and mystic sources of human moral life in my book Political Philosophy for the Global Age. Here, I use these sources as well as the universalism of individual rights in order to argue that political theory’s chore now is to imaginatively come up with a form of cosmopolitan liberalism that will include the ideal of universal love and the principle of compassion in order for it to be able to appeal to all conceptions of the good, all cultures and all religions around the world, such that it produces a tale of belonging for all people in their being members of the human species. Chapter two “Trust in Strangers and the Critique of Abstract Liberalism” engages with how abstract liberalism has been heavily criticized by communitarianism, how the debate on political liberalism in turn illustrates the need to go back to metaphysics to be able to define the philosophical sources of universal love and compassion, and how the latter may be seen to be linked with the ability to trust in strangers. When John Rawls published his book A Theory of Justice in 1971, the reaction to his theory produced an authentic revival of political theory in the wealth of publications in support and opposition to it. Rawls’s theory has been regarded as assuming that individuality—of a liberal type—is a quasi-naturalistic trait of human beings. Many communitarian critics, especially those of a sociological persuasion, find that Rawls’s theory considers individuality in terms that are too abstract to be useful. In doing so, he fails to recognize the cultural sources of individuality—an attitude that in turn fails to locate the source of civic virtue, the values of modern citizenship, and the encumbrances of the individual self in terms of political duty to others.


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To these objections, Rawls (1985) replied that his idea of “justice as fairness” meant to be “political, not metaphysical” and did not intend to define the individual essence of people. Later, his Political Liberalism (1993) postulated a “freestanding” position—independent from comprehensive conceptions of the good—as the basis of public justice amid diversity that can be interpreted as his response to the communitarian critique. Jürgen Habermas, an important sociologist and political philosopher, launched a criticism of Rawls’s political liberalism that eventually became a debate between the two philosophers. Habermas charged that Rawls, in avoiding metaphysics, could not avoid philosophical ref lection on truth and the moral sources of justice. To Habermas, this “method of avoidance” fails to clarify the “moral point of view” needed for universal applicability of justice. I will review the communitarian critique of Rawls’s abstract liberalism and also Habermas’s critique in order to pose the problem of universality in contemporary liberal political theory. I argue that liberalism should not avoid this problem as Rawls tried, and in fact should go back to metaphysics in order to find a synchronic moral point of convergence between comprehensive conceptions of the good. This move toward universality will allow for keeping firmly in mind its conventional evils, rooted in individualistic difference-blindness that has been used (especially by the powerful) to hide and overlook inequality. World diversity makes it ever more important to produce plausibly acceptable sources for universally applicable principles of justice. Liberal individualism is one such source, but I argue that it alone will not suffice. This means that liberalism must expand universal validity of principles beyond individuality in order to create the basis for a public morality that can be invoked in conditions of diversity and inequality. As I will explain in this chapter, trust in strangers has been found to be embodied in the enduring values and optimistic attitudes toward life in early childhood (Uslaner 2002). I argue that the basis for an expansion of the individual self unto others lies in creating social possibilities for enhancing our trust in strangers through the morality of universal compassion. I explain how the metaphysical sources of compassion can lead to trust in strangers and how this can amount to a moral choice for modern individuals.



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Chapter three titled “Beyond the Realm of Individuality: Nature and Children” explores the structural role of othering in what I call Western liberalism and how this is related to regarding nature or “natural time” as enfolding beyond history and this dimension of time as lying in a realm that is essentially other to human existence. This essential otherness also defines childhood as a stage in our life span that is displaced from our conception of freedom in individual adulthood—and thus from actual humanity. The problems of an alienation of nature and childhood from the human world of rational individuality are discussed in this chapter as well as how this essential otherness organizes the logic of colonialism and patriarchy. Human morality unfolds in the historical time of man (as opposed to the nonhistorical time of nature and evolution). This means that those regarded as abiding in a sense of self and morality that is closer to nature (women, children, and “barbarians”) are situated under the guardianship of the supposedly morally able entity (the Western individual, white and male). In this chapter I propose a phenomenological exercise that stresses the importance of synchronicity, an order of events in time identified with simultaneity as opposed to sequence (diachrony). Synchronicity makes human and animal time converge and discloses an alternative source of (compassionate) ethics to think about nature, children, and about one another. I will also use the concept of natural selection to illustrate that no form of knowledge can escape the myths of its own cultural tradition. In spite of Darwin’s celebrated nonteleological account of evolution, he portrays human beings as moral beings setting them aside from the rest of nature. The structure of this tale inherits the diachronic timeline of Judeo-Christian cosmology. I propose to consider an alternative position that recovers Darwin’s views on non-teleology and natural-animal time: Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s theory of “autopoiesis” that portrays all life as conscious, self-creating, and self-creative; and of evolution as “natural drift.” Their view on evolution allows for humanity to leave historical-human time and dwell in the same natural-animal time where all that is nonhuman also dwells and evolves—or just drifts. Chapter four “Human Difference and the Multicultural Dilemma” engages with the problems of race in the process of


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othering. Here, I discuss how it is that othering on the basis of race can perpetuate racism in spite of it today being used by public policy to accommodate and compensate the people for whom racism produced systemic inequality in the past. Constant population migration and global interaction pose one of the most important questions to contemporary political theory: How do we deal with the political problems and conf licts that arise from ethnic and cultural diversity in modern societies? This sociological reality is further complicated by how European colonialism and culture historically abased the colonized other that is embodied by the peoples with brown skin and/or slanted eyes. Western liberal theory offers a number of answers that are insufficient to deal with this predicament; and one of these theoretical answers is represented by a liberal type of multiculturalism espoused by Canadian political theorist Will Kymlicka and also by the Canadian multicultural public policy. Multiculturalism does not necessarily sit comfortably together with the liberal principles of neutrality: The tension between liberalism and multiculturalism is illustrated by modern cultural perception of otherness as a threat to liberal freedoms.5 In spite of this tension, current multiculturalism in Canada regards group rights to cultural differences as based on the liberal principles of tolerance and celebration of diversity. I argue that the specific ways in which this policy is implemented end up defining phenotypical characteristics to award privileges in the guise of equity rights that perpetuate, not alleviate, racism. Nevertheless, a color-blind approach in public policy does not address the racially related problems of equity that public policy ought to overcome in a creative manner. This is why multiculturalism in Canada, and also elsewhere in the world, has a dilemma to solve with respect to the problems of race and othering. Canada is a good example to examine when thinking about cosmopolitanism because its self-aware diversity represents a micro-cosmos of world diversity. However, cultural and ethnic diversity in Canada is lived within the consequences of early assimilationist policies that assumed European superiority, which devalued the self-perception of nonwhite Canadians. Canada has a policy of multiculturalism that is also a national symbol and ideal. From the 1970s, Canada built its national identity on the symbol of seeing itself as a “cultural mosaic” based on rights to diversity and



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reasonable accommodation, and today, immigration is its most important source of population growth, especially from nonwhite countries. In this situation, people forge their identity amid vivid awareness of ethnic and cultural differences. This is especially the case in Canadian children of ethnically mixed marriages, a small sample of which I interviewed in the province of British Columbia. This research shows that in order for people to overcome the problems of difference, it is important for them to realize that the idea of distinct human races is a socially constructed illusion. These ethnically diverse individuals displayed a strong sense of individuality that included compassion both as a principle for moral behavior and also as a powerful emotion that allowed them to create an identity of self that encompasses and embraces diversity. I argue that this attitude fosters a genuinely multicultural cosmopolitan vocation that could address the shortcomings of universalist approaches to equality—the soul of what I call Cosmopolitan Liberalism. The last chapter of the book is meant as a rallying cry for cosmopolitanism, “Citizens of the World, Unite!” seeks to appeal to every individual consciousness that is willing to expand itself unto others, nature, and all that there is. A true citizen of the world has the cognitive capacity to see all people as ends in themselves; but also the cognitive ability of aspiring to love oneself and others to the point of regarding them as part of oneself. Both cognitive abilities start at the individual level. Only people who have been brought up in a nurturing and loving manner, or who are willing through mindful practice to rid themselves from self-destructive tendencies, are able to apprehend the importance of others—even distant others—to their own realm of self. There is urgency in this cry; and it is related to the need to come to terms with our emotions and loving capabilities to save the human species from extinction—the planet from becoming too hot and us from becoming too violent. This would be possible not by merely being able to produce universalizable principles of moral action, but by feeling compelled to extend oneself to other people who are close to us, especially children, but also to strangers. However, this can only come from a liberal perspective that has it as a philosophical principle to thoroughly respect the freedom of each person in making


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her moral choices. This rallying cry is calling for a revolution of peace that will only take place at a grassroots level as multiple individual efforts to understand that all of us are members of the human species and as such we owe one another at least the attempt to reach out and see ourselves in each other—especially in others in the world who live in conditions of poverty, oppression, and exploitation.


CHAPTER 1

COMPASSION AND A TALE OF BELONGING FOR THE HUMAN SPECIES

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uman beings have a biological need as a species to tell tales—or produce cosmologies—in which to live. These “tales” refer to what Northrop Frye calls an “integument of culture,” a kind of protective substance that human beings “wear” in order to protect our embodiment. Culture is sustained in language and ongoing enactment of the relevant story or set of them in which we live and that gives us the ropes to constantly construct, actualize, and reify who we humans beings are. Our embodiment, our animal existence, makes us fragile and needy and this neediness shows in that our species’ survival depends biologically on the ability of cultures to keep human groups living together, sharing meaning, building social interaction. However, the Western liberal tradition of thought saw itself in the necessity of exiling awareness of human neediness in order to paint a picture of individual powerful agency and rationality that are supposed to make humans worthy of moral consideration. The range and depth of human tales are ruled by diversity amid individuals and human groups; these tales emerge from the numerous particularities that characterize human life and also from various levels of interaction and exchange; from family life to communal, tribal, local life, all the way to the national, international, and global levels. What the critical mind of modernity teaches us is that all cosmologies are products of human creativity and ingenuity,


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and this is the case also with big systems of thought such as religion, spiritual discipline, or philosophy, which include liberalism and cosmopolitanism. This means that human beings live in various tales of belonging at the same time and political theory ought to ref lect on how to come up with a cosmopolitan tale of belonging that can be embraced by everyone in the world on the basis of our shared humanity—liberal and nonliberal. In order to do this, the cultural roots of the liberal tradition of thought ought to be unraveled from the more abstract presentation of the cosmopolitan philosophical position. This gives liberalism a plasticity that will allow us to then creatively expand its horizons beyond Judeo-Christian cosmology and morality. My point is that the modern idea of individuality ought to reconsider its own philosophical structure in order to allow for more than agency and rationality as the basis of our moral worth. Our human fragility, our emotiveness, our need to belong ought to be central when ref lecting on human worth and dignity, as well as the constant reality of human suffering. Here, I propose a hermeneutics of the heart to consider these aspects of our shared humanity in a contemporary cosmopolitan defense of worldjustice. My proposal seeks to make the ideal of universal love and the principle of compassion essential in cosmopolitanism. This would bring the development of a cosmopolitan-liberal attitude toward understanding and embracing as much human experience as we can pose in abstract terms in a philosophically inclusive conception of self. It is liberal because, as the reader will find out, it is based on individuality; and it is cosmopolitan because it seeks world justice on the basis of liberalism, but also on those of compassion. I argue that such an exercise is essential to further ref lection on what it is that all human beings owe one another in spite of the many humanly created borders that set us apart. In this chapter, I will sketch my typology of views of reality (historical, mystic, primitive) in order to gain greater definition on the contrasting conceptions of time as simultaneity (synchrony) and as historical progress (diachrony)1; I will then explain how the individual self and thus liberalism are tied to the historical conception of reality. Framing modern individuality within its Judeo-Christian roots will allow me to engage in the phenomenological exercise of expanding this concept toward a more inclusive conception of self


C O M PA S S IO N A N D A TA L E O F B E L O N G I N G

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along the lines of my mystic ideal type of reality and the synchronic order of events in time. I also discuss how such expanded sense of self may be useful to accommodate our primary need for belonging and for identity building as a species that depends on the natural environment. I will follow Rogers Smith (2003) to show how this primary aspect of our shared humanity has philosophical cosmopolitan consequences. I hope that this exercise will clarify the need to go to philosophical sources beyond the secular history of Western thought with the help of the synchronic order of events in time and universal compassion. This will be the philosophical basis on which to transform modern individuals into selves empowered enough by compassion to be able to embrace cosmopolitanism wholeheartedly. The Order of Events in Time: Synchrony and Diachrony There is a popular myth that assumes that modernity erases the traditional order of things progressively, a premise that produces naive projections of a better future as well as terrifying visions of a totally administrated and rationalized world. This view of things also simplistically opposes the modern world against the traditional one in a dichotomy that today is the source of more myth and ideology than of actual experience. Although we freely and continuously speak of modern and premodern societies it is hard to unequivocally define who belongs to one or the other realms for this dichotomy is the product of specific and particular sets of peoples defining themselves in contrastive and absolute terms against an imagined “other” (nature is the ultimate other, as I will discuss in chapter three). In order to overcome such dichotomy we must also overcome the dialectical relationship in which the nonmodern is also seen as the other and where tradition is seen as something that precedes modernity in a sequential manner. In reality, and as Hans Gadamer (1989) has taught us, even modernity depends on its own traditions. One way of leaving this mythological dichotomy behind is to bring it to the contemporary world scenario and to contemplate it from the perspective of time as simultaneity. To say it differently: even though modernity as a concept and as a way of experiencing the world emanates from Europe (and can be said to


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come from a mixture of sources from all over the world) the supposedly premodern world is also already part of it through global interaction. Another approach to this mixture of sources and products is Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1993), which argues that the project of modernity is suspended as well as sustained by its own inner contradictions. So we face the paradox that nobody has ever been modern, and yet liberal modernity is already the ideal basis of global culture and interaction. However, in this interaction many diverse views of reality intersect and overlap, feed each other, deny each other, and even clash with one another. This is the reason why I have proposed to identify ideal types of views of reality according to the sociological method inherited from Max Weber. It is important to stress that my ideal types—following Weber’s teachings about them—are mere utopias or conceptual tools; they cannot be found in lived experience in their theoretical purity, but they can guide research and our ref lection about society (Weber 1949). These ideal types are all seen as possible human experience, relevant to the species without considering if they are preeminent in our own culture, tradition of knowledge, or conception of reality; and due to the principle of simultaneity, they all coexist in one person or culture at the same time—even within contradiction. And so, I propose a theoretical construction that conceives of three ideal types of reality and the structure of this ideal difference is theoretically organized around the dialogical relationship between “world” and “transcendence.”2 World refers to all the concrete aspects of our experience, our worldly reality. Transcendence refers to a superior type of reality above and beyond this world that people aspire to as a higher domain of reality. World is what our senses perceive and transcendence is only apprehended through our imagination and our emotions. This is an artificial conceptual difference for both are intricately entwined in a complex manner in any view of reality. Yet, I propose the two concepts in a dialogical relationship as the basis to create ideal types that will clarify notions of time at a theoretical level. In my typology, the structure of the relationship between world and transcendence defines notions of time and language that preeminently shape the principles of discipline that are practiced and observed in each culture and that perpetuate it.3 It



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is important to clarify yet again that although these views of reality may seem to lead to a classification of cultures, they stress empirically experienced aspects of human consciousness in all kinds of cultures all over the world. The three ideal types of reality that I propose may be regarded as three types of prevalent culture, but are not mutually exclusive; they are complementary in human experience: all cosmologies have recognizable organizational features of the three types. I have called the three ideal types of reality historical, mystic, and primitive (in a primary sense), respectively. Only the historical type of reality considers both world and transcendence as simultaneously real, which organizes a tension between them that is solved through an imagined progress of humanity through time in history—even when there may be pessimism about such ideal of progress. The mystic type regards the world as illusory in essence and only transcendence as real; this world of illusions—or maya—is supposed to keep humans confused about their transcendental origins and attached to the world. The primitive type regards reality as the world, and transcendence is not present as a concept; transcendence may be an intuition, represented in oniric spaces that are beyond the grasp of living entities, the world of the unborn or the dead, but they are worldly spaces of myth. Thus, while the historical type is based on the dialectical tension of an eternal division, the mystic and the primitive types conceive of reality as essentially whole and couched in either of the two poles whose tension the historical view inhabits. In historical modern time, reality is divided into an opposition—however ideal—between world and transcendence. The other two typically ideal conceptions of reality that I propose are holistic in that reality is fettered either wholly in world or wholly in transcendence, and the opposition between these two terms in these ideas of reality is either nonexistent and thus irrelevant in the primitive type, or an illusion in the mystic type. We are left with three typically ideal conceptions of reality whose empirical reference is linked with the prevailing spiritual practice in diverse cultural settings that, despite their diversity, can nonetheless be generally classified as primitive (reality as the world only), historical (reality as world and transcendence at the same time), and mystic (reality as transcendence only). The transcendentalist views


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(historical and mystic) legitimize the symmetrical opposite at the basis of their belief systems: in the historical type of reality the individual self has come to be regarded as a value in itself, while in mysticism, the collective mind is sacred and it is not anthropocentric. However, this clean symmetrical differentiation is mediated by the idea of transcendence, which is clearly articulated both in the historical as well as in the mystic views of reality, but not in the primitive one. In the latter, oneness with the cosmos is a living experience of either collective or individual ritual, a sense of awe and veneration for the experienced mysterious characteristics of embodiment and the world. In the primitive ideal type these characteristics are articulated in archaic symbols and myths and induced by their cyclical mimetic enactment that bring about experienced awareness and renewal of the symbols of spiritual-organic union of life and death. These stories are legitimized in metaphorical verbal structures.4 At the theoretical level, there is a conceptual tension, with further dichotomous consequences, between the two views of reality that contemplate transcendence as real: while the historical conception of reality produces the practice of what Weber referred to as “rational domination” of the world (or experience), the mystic conception produces the practice of what I call “intuitive submission” to experience. Rational domination creates material organization that is most successful in coordinating world interaction; intuitive submission produces peacefulness and clear mindedness as a substantive imperative and enabling awareness of mundane experience. This awareness, even as mysticism may consider worldly reality as illusory, is supposed to make the practitioner of any mystic discipline better able to deal with worldly experience, be supple, and allow tribulations become part of her strength. The holistic view of mystic reality is legitimized in the disciplined experience of the here and now, of the simultaneous union of all living consciousness (synchrony). In the historical view of reality the relevant experience of time that is legitimized is either the religious expectation of the end of times in Apocalypse, or the perpetual “not yet” of modernity.5 The historical type of time is sequential and lays emphasis in the concrete and inexorable passage of time, from past to future (diachrony). This way of looking at the world practices



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constant belief in the sequence of means and ends, in the coherence of rational disquisition, and also promotes awareness of objective history as a realm of reality that is relevant for humanity in a universal manner. Both types of transcendental practice with universal pretensions are aimed at colonizing the primary/primitive world of humanity, bringing it awareness of the transcendental and moral order beyond worldly reality. But the mystic ideal type of reality is legitimized in a synchronic conception of time (based in present awareness of simultaneity), while the historical type is legitimized in a diachronic notion of time (based on the experience of the constant passage of time, the sequential order of events). The theoretical distinction between synchrony and diachrony is based on the structuralist analysis of language: synchrony refers to its axis of simultaneities (the syntactic relation among meanings) and diachrony to its sequential axis (the story or tale that is told) (Merquior 1986; Wilden 1972). Synchrony and diachrony can be thought of as two aspects of the same phenomenon. For the sake of illustration with a visualizing aid, think of a couple ballroom dancing; their synchronic aspect is the coordination of their hands and feet and their diachronic aspect is their f low and movement across the dance f loor. However, rather than their movement being back and forth as in any regular dance f loor, in an analogy with universal history, their diachronic movement would be linear and indefinite. Here, I borrow linguistic theory in order to clarify the difference between synchrony and diachrony as analogous to the difference between the embodied awareness of simultaneity and the experience of sequential events. The synchronic order of events in time can be conceived as a continuum of simultaneity or coordination comparable to space (yet not identical to it)6 and that connects everything with everything else; but the order of events in time can also be experienced as diachrony or a movement that is manifested in the constant and restless change that surrounds us. In order to understand the structure of the relationship between both orders of events in time, it is useful to put them in relationship of directionality of one with respect to the other. Synchrony is centripetal (moving toward the center) and produces simultaneous awareness of relevant values, reasons, beliefs, affections, and/or emotions in human experience; diachrony is centrifugal (moving away from


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the center) and determines the relevant differences between all these elements in our awareness and allows us to analyze and evaluate them critically. The synchronic order of events in time contains the possibilities of establishing the links between what is related by that simultaneity, that convergence of factors. The diachronic order makes it possible for us to differentiate them and symbolize those differences. As the reader may have already realized, synchrony and diachrony cannot be understood in isolation from each other; there is a relationship between both principles of the order of events in time that may help to find points of convergence between the diverse views of reality. Going back to the typology outlined earlier, the holistic views of reality (primitive and mystic) place great importance in the experience and symbolization of the synchronic aspect of time: Primitive reality stresses the cosmic-ecological union of the heavens and the earth, of all that lives, of the human group to which one belongs and sustains us; mystic reality emphasizes the spiritual union of all there is. Historical reality finds legitimacy in the diachronic experience that the transcendental or moral principle unifies in the sense of universal history (for all peoples and all times). “This is the basis,” says Frye, “for the common place that Biblical religions have a distinctive sense of history” (1982, 83). This distinctive sense lies in the assumption of objectivity in historical happenings that is based on how such happenings can be said to be nonfiction and are expressed in descriptive verbal structures, not in compact archaic symbols. This historical view of what is the real order of events in time—the one that prevails in the world today—is based on a sequential representation of events (diachrony). This representation of events in objective history legitimizes the modern sense of ongoing time that moves forward and is not yet. Much faith is invested in the indefinite advance of science. Primitive and mystic realities are legitimized at the same time as they are experienced in synchrony: A primary experience of cosmos comes from mimetic enactment or any induced ecstatic awareness (by physical means, or by substances and plants) of the essential interconnection and entanglement of all life, human or otherwise; a mystic experience describes this togetherness in abstract terms



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belonging to the metaphysical realm. Both the primitive and mystic types of interconnection are needed in order to be able to put together a tale of togetherness and one-in-anotherness for the human species. This tale is essential in order to overcome humanly created borders between groups. Such borders are essential to provide us with a sense of identity; they allow us to look inside our human world and give our lives some sense. However, in this global age, we need a tale of shared humanity based on compassion that will overcome such borders when they become obstacles to peace. Judgmental Morality and the Responsible Agent Western liberalism is bound to the historical type of reality in my typology. In cosmopolitanism, this liberalism is conceived as the moral/political common basis on which the human species may converge universally. The critics of Western liberalism contend from a diversity of political positions (communitarianism, identity politics, postcolonialism, feminism, postmodernity) that this type of universality is a necessary imposition or an unrealizable ideal that is not even desirable for it denies and suppresses other important forms of ethical experience based on either culture, gender, social circumstance, or the relativity of the values therein. The problem with this type of criticism is that it stands on the pragmatic aspect of ethics and declares that there is no universal way of characterizing human interaction: There is a wide variety of documented human worldviews and to pretend that there is an actual universal measuring rod for morality is to go against such knowledge. This is a powerful argument because it is based on sociological facts and emphasizes the relativity of human beliefs, experience, and behavior. Nevertheless, a way of looking for common principles of interaction may be found if we consider that people’s ethical life is based on ideals and that the global reality of today’s complex world also requires such ideals to be able to sustain global justice. Liberal individualism is tied to the culture and history of Europe, and this is the reason why liberalism is often accused to espouse a sectarian type of universality. In spite of this, the strongest point for liberal individualism is its universality: it has become a lived modern experience around the world and cosmopolitanism needs it as a


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principle for the allocation of rights and care. Nevertheless, Western liberal universalism emerges from a view of reality that is based on universal history and the Judeo-Christian kind of morality. It is in the formation of this distinctive type of ethos that the notion of fault becomes a relevant object of analysis, because it eventually creates the responsible agent that embodies Western morality as well as modern individuality. In what follows, I will discuss how human individual consciousness is linked to the Judeo-Christian notion of fault and how liberalism and also contemporary cosmopolitanism is related to what I have defined as the historical type of reality and the order of events in time as sequence or diachrony. Following Paul Ricoeur’s Symbolism of Evil (1967a), a phenomenological study of the Judeo-Christian symbolism of evil, and Keiji Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness (1982)7 where he ref lects on the Zen Buddhist notion of fault; I refer to three types of fault preeminent in each of my three types of views of reality. Paul Ricoeur’s three stages of fault—defilement, sin, guilt—represent the symbolic evolution of the Judeo-Christian tradition toward deeper awareness about the responsible individual self in modernity. According to my typology, the primitive type of reality conceives of fault as defilement; the mystic type as “worldly suffering” or karma in Eastern disciplines, and the historical ideal type, as sin and guilt. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, worldly suffering is seen as a condition of sinful humanity. The notion of fault is constant in any cosmology and it clarifies how each view of reality tends either toward an ideal collective self, a self that learns to see itself in the whole, or an idealized individual self. Defilement highlights the importance of a collective self embodied in community from which one can be expelled. Worldly suffering or karma becomes a learning cosmic mechanism that highlights how everyone and everything is intimately entwined with one another in a kind of fate begotten by our actions. The historical notion of fault (especially in guilt) tends toward individuality as the locus of self conceived as the responsible agent either in the religious imputation of fault or in the secular one. The most archaic or primitive type of fault, that of defilement, is generally expressed in language of disease and pestilence in order to exclude the transgressor from the human group. Defilement is



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incurred when the boundaries of permissiveness are violated. Here the person in fault is seen as impure due to her objective violation of a prohibition and not at all because the violator is seen as a responsible agent. In the primitive type of reality the list of faults is thus vast while the intentions of the agent are not even considered. Evil and misfortune are still associated, defilement connects physical contingency with fault; “the ethical order of doing ill has not been distinguished from the cosmobiological order of faring ill” (Ricoeur 1967a, 27). Taboos define primitive boundaries of permissiveness; they are punishments emotionally anticipated in transgression of cosmological interdicts. Def ilement is typically symbolized as a form of impurity by contagion that infects from without, “but this infectious contact is experienced subjectively in a specific feeling which is of the order of Dread” (28). According to Ricoeur, vengeance is the oldest and most primitive form of representation of fault and there is an archaic relationship between vengeance and defilement. The first human modes of expression of order emerged from a primitive need for vengeance in the language of retribution. The notion of worldly suffering or karma in mystic Eastern disciplines, keeps the connection to the primitive language of vengeance and retribution, but transforms it into a cosmic burden of infinite embodied debt in the pain of attachment. This debt can only be paid through self lessness, unending acts of compassion, and spiritual practice that leads to spiritual Enlightenment. It keeps the archaic relationship between doing ill and faring ill, nevertheless in transcendental awareness this relationship acquires a moral arrangement that uses fate as a learning device: Fate arises as the product of our own actions. As Nishitani (1982) reminds us, “[karma] is a destiny that appears only in the shape of the acts we ourselves perform, only as one with our own actions” (104). This is why the realm of historicity that karma discloses is immediately related to factual awareness of the personal story, the lifetime—or biography—of the individual self (personally and ontogenetically). This awareness never reaches the realm of universal human history, it remains a subjective type of awareness. Mystic apprehension of the universal realm of being concentrates on the universe within [the “near side” in Nishitani’s (1982) terms; see later]. Every practitioner who strives


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for redemption from the sea of suffering does so not only for her own benefit (or individualistic self-interest), but primarily for every other sentient being, for the good of the cosmic whole. Ultimately though, she knows that every other sentient being is part of her own spiritual self—an enlarged sense of self that encompasses the universe. To seek redemption for one-private-self is regarded as a form of slavery to the illusory nature of embodiment in the world, when the universe within in identity with every conscious being has not yet been apprehended. In mystic reality, the symbol of karma is the representation of fault in worldly reality. Karma represents the transformation of the archaic relationship between doing ill and faring ill into trust in contingency as fate. This mystic trust in contingency as fate is displaced from the critical discipline of factual historical analysis; it defines an intuitive attitude of submission to experience and contemplation of the cosmobiological links between all things in the particularity of the present situation. The Judeo-Christian approach to fate may be said to lie in personal responsibility about acts (at times collective and individual) and the cosmological impossibility of the notion of “transmigration of souls” (reincarnation). In the religions of the book, an individual lifetime is unique and has one historical chance to earn or prove her own salvation. Modernity secularizes this as “once and for all” unique individual lives—the individuals that we all are. Based on Ricoueur’s phenomenological study, it can be argued that the most primitive roots of individualism are based in a personal relationship with the Hebrew monotheistic God that communicates to His chosen people through prophetic indignation; in whose spiritual tradition historical exegesis is seen as an expression of His Will. This is illustrated in the anthropological myth of the fall and the figure of the serpent, which is told as an event that took place “springing up from an unknown source, it furnishes anthropology with a key concept: The contingency of that radical evil which the penitent is always on the point of calling his evil nature. Thereby the myth proclaims the purely ‘historical’ character of that radical evil” (Ricoeur 1967a, 251; emphasis in the original). In the JudeoChristian tradition, radical evil is contingent in history, in the world, and even in the f lesh. Yet it is not the sole nature of human beings, and humanity’s only mission is to overcome evil through



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their transcendental identity as children of God. Under this circumstances of reality, it would be irrational to trust in fate as contingency for radical evil may at any time spring out of nowhere in the course of historical time. This defines an attitude that must be intentionally active, dominating evil, controlling circumstances, and finding proof of success in the world. The emergence of Yahweh as the only God of the universe with a chosen people was originally symbolized as a collective relationship with a local sacred entity who would lead them to historical success. “What there is in the first place,” says Ricoeur, “is not essence but presence; and the commandment is a modality of the presence, namely, the expression of a holy will. Thus sin is a religious dimension before being ethical; it is not the transgression of an abstract rule—of a value—but the violation of a personal bond” (53). Revelation transformed this local relationship into the figure of the Covenant, and gave it its transcendental possibilities. It is with respect to the Covenant that the notion of sin is defined: Sin is an unavoidable human characteristic according to the myth of the fall, the awareness of which unites the chosen people before God’s judgment. But this judgment is expressed as an infinite distance between God and human, between His transcendental power and the deeply rooted mundane evil. The law teaches people how they are already sinners and this accusation deepens the experience of being oneself, but alienated from oneself: “Sin, as alienation from oneself, is an experience even more astonishing, disconcerting, scandalous, perhaps, than the spectacle of nature, and for this reason it is the richest source of interrogative thought” (8). While alienation from oneself in defilement—the primary experience of the cosmos—is alienation from the community, in sin, this kind of alienation is related to exile from the transcendental realm symbolized in Paradise: It defines the worldly human condition that must struggle to defeat evil until the end of time. Sin is thus universalized as a condition that, as it were, unifies humankind and it is individual and communal at the same time. It is also entwined with the “Day of Yahweh,” the historical events, and their penal interpretation by the prophets. Prophecy joins the promise of salvation to the threat of calamity; there is a double imminence of catastrophe and deliverance. “This double oracle,” says Ricoeur, “keeps up


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the temporal tension characteristic of the Covenant” (68). The emergence of personal guilt occurs when sinful human being internalizes and personalizes the experience of fault, not only as responsibility in being the cause of a violation of interdiction, but now as being the author of ethically wrong deeds in the eyes of the divine gaze. “That is why,” Ricoeur tell us, “the consciousness of guilt constitutes a veritable revolution in the experience of evil: that which is primary is no longer the reality of defilement, the objective violation of the Interdict, or the Vengeance let loose by that violation, but the evil use of liberty, felt as an internal diminution of the value of the self ” (102). The formation of the individual judgmental conscience comes when interdiction stops being ritual and becomes ethical. In this move, human beings are radically called to a perfection that goes beyond their objective obligations; it becomes a subjective assumption of responsibility. It is in this internalization of fault and in this awareness of being seen by God that individuals face the alternative “God or Nothing” (103). When all possibilities are reduced to this simple alternative, human beings must look at themselves as the authors of their acts together with the motives of their acts. It is in the subjective emergence of the experience and symbolization of fault that the notion of conscience as individual and solitary conscience emerges. As a religious experience, and in an intimate relationship to sin, it is lived in the presence of God, who inhabits a higher spiritual order from which human beings are displaced and which observes them. In modernity, the individual self appropriates this transcendental identity in her assumption of agency and the freedom from being observed by God; but to make it hers, the self necessarily internalizes such gaze and takes its place. Individual conscience is born from this move, from this moral decision; and her own individual conscience comes from this transcendental perspective (the Kantian transcendental subject) that can now observe and train herself to become cognitively able to judge her own deeds. The experience of a complete cleavage between sin and guilt can then be formulated in the emergence of an individual conscience that judges the doings of the mundane self or person from a moral perspective, able to transcend particularities; that is, it is a universal self.



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This cognitive ability eventually allows for individuals to develop personal principles according to one’s own judgment and critical mind; which in secular reality may no longer be transcendental qua God, but is still transcendental qua part of the human identity. Ricoeur shows phenomenologically that the experience of evil is subjective, emotional, and that “conscience” is its measure: “It is not by accident that in many languages the same word designates moral consciousness (conscience morale), and psychological and ref lective consciousness; guilt expresses above all the promotion of ‘conscience’ as supreme” (104; emphasis in the original). In the historical type of reality, the basis for this conscience is individual due to the fragmentation of symbolism of the human self. Self is conceived as preeminently collective in primitive fault as defilement; in the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is alternatively collective and individual in consciousness of fault through original sin and the personal relationship with God; it ends up being constructed as preeminently individual in the hope for salvation and the reality of mundane evil as guilt. In secular modern reality and moral behavior it is conscience as guilt—either projected or assumed—that shapes morality, which becomes a supreme entity liable to be worshipped at the temple of personal individuality and the private realm. Individual conscience is an essential aspect for the construction of the moral self in modernity, and as Ricoeur has shown, a very particular type of judgmental conscience emerges from JudeoChristian sacred cosmology. This cultural achievement eventually made possible the responsible agent or rational individual of the Western liberal tradition of thought. But this achievement in the shape of institutions and organizations has already been exported all over the world and is lived together with a bunch of local and national stories wherever rational individuality manifests itself. Individuality is a socially constructed identity required to sustain modern organizations—however diverse ideas of individuality may be in the world. And so, ideal individuality comes from a JudeoChristian ethos; but there is no reason why in the age of globalization we should be satisfied only with this moral basis for cosmopolitan justice. Individual identity is the ideal basis for legitimating the primacy of individuality in liberalism as well as in contemporary cosmopolitanism.


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Compassionate Morality and the Extended Self While the liberal ideals of tolerance and mutual respect through rational conversation are essential principles for sharing our human differences in a meaningful way, I argue that the one ideal sentiment that may help us overcome such differences is universal love— the latter present in all religious belief systems of the world. The problem with love though is the question of who or what ought to be the object of our care and if it is a specific object, person, group, or idea, then it is regarded as a particularistic emotion that cannot be trusted as a basis for political decisions, the kind that affect the public at large. This has generally been the argument to discard love as a plausible basis for our moral life in political theory, in spite of its being praised in the tradition as a proper vehicle for benevolence. The ideal of universal love has generally belonged to the realm of religion, yet I believe that universal love and, more specifically, compassion can be conceived as the one moral principle that may unite creeds and ideologies throughout the world and open the door to rational conversation for mutual acceptance toward a common cosmopolitan goal of justice. However, this can be done in conceiving compassion as an ideal that can be apprehended by reconsidering and revising the individualistic source of our principled morality in the modern world. As I have mentioned before, this effort would not merely embrace compassion as the sole source for moral and political decisions: We ought to value the historical lessons taught by Western liberalism; but we also ought to learn from its limitations in order to expand its horizons toward what I call Cosmopolitan Liberalism, with compassion as its center and Kantian moral reason as its frame. A moral philosophy that considers itself liberal cosmopolitan ought to recognize its universalistic calling. The concept of compassion that I propose is directed toward wholeness; primary harmony in the primitive view of reality, or the union of universal consciousness at the moment of mystic Enlightenment. Mystic union conceives of itself as universal and aims at overcoming particularity. However, it is necessary to take this mystic principle as an ideal that can be aspired to, which also serves as a heuristic tool, and not as a concrete axis that may perfectly rule our functional



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and conscious experience. The concepts of love and compassion that I propose here are framed in a ref lexive exercise that allows us to converse philosophically with views of reality and ethics that are different from the judgmental liberal one and that may coexist with liberalism—even in the same person. A phenomenological exercise is necessary to examine the type of movements of consciousness that ought to occur in order to engage in such conversation. This exercise entails visualizing individual consciousness at the center of perception considering everything perceived as mere appearance— including one’s own individuality. This philosophical position is justified in the tolerant will that aspires to understand diverse views of reality.8 From this basis it will be possible to conceive of an awareness of self that “spills” beyond individuality, toward other conscious individuals and also to everything else that consciousness can perceive. At this point it will be useful to introduce the idea of an awareness of being in the present time, the constant “now” that emanates from the mystic type of reality based on the work of Keiji Nishitani. According to Nishitani, the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum—I know, therefore I exist—“expressed the mode of being of that ego as a self-centered assertion of its own realness” (1982, 11); it is an ego conceived as real and that ref lects itself on the other egos that it has to live with. This conception of the self—with respect to an individual ego—is not situated in a position where it can look beyond the fact that it considers its individuality as real. This has to do with the multiplicity of emotional interactions in which the self is involved qua individual ego. To Nishitani, it is essential to deepen awareness of an absence of ego, which allows individual awareness to contemplate its non-reality as impermanence and to experience nothingness—or nihility—as the actual basis of its existence: “Only when the self breaks through the field of consciousness, the field of beings, and stands on the ground of nihility is it able to achieve a subjectivity that can in no way be objectivized” (16). The grounds for the nothingness or “nihility” that Nishitani refers to converge with the moment of spiritual Enlightenment or awareness of one’s union with the whole of reality, which I propose here as a mere ideal and not as an objective state for the self to attain. These


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grounds refer to the absolute emptiness of self that allows for letting go of the particular ties and bonds of the individual human being, the most important of which are the emotional ties to the reality of one’s own self qua ego. The problem of excessively identifying our idealized individual self with the particular embodied person or ego that we are is precisely the predicament in which an individualist culture finds itself: “If we grant that Cartesian philosophy is the prime illustration of the mode of being of modern man, we may also say that it represents the fundamental problem lurking within that mode” (19). In Western individuality there is an unresolved tension between the transcendental identity of the self and the embodied individual personality to which that self is attached. The tension is never resolved because the individual transcendental identity is universal, infinite, and morally powerful; while the person that holds such an identity is fragile, needy, mortal, and finite. However, individual historical awareness needs the element of infinity attached to its own sense of self to be able to conceive and represent at all the new and the irreversible aspects of history. Nishitani calls this infinite aspect of the historical consciousness, necessary for history to be truly universal, “transhistorical perspective.” He argues that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the legitimate realm of transhistorical reality is positioned far away from ordinary consciousness “a personal God who is thought to reveal himself vertically from heaven down to earth, as commonly represented in Christianity, is considered to be seated beyond, on the far side” (104). The distance laid down between God and the transcendental identity of human beings is significantly represented in the passage of time as relevant to the moral point of view and is reified as dialectic thought and as sequential historical time that passes and moves in search of the not yet. This perspective on history is also present in the mystic view of reality, but Nishitani shows how in Eastern mystic philosophies the transhistorical is radicalized as the experience of an Absolute emptiness of self as the basis of reality, which makes the factual aspect of time as history be contemplated as a mere illusion of impermanence. This is the reason why Eastern philosophical traditions never developed a mature philosophy of history, the mystic perspective contemplates historical time as illusion. Here, Nishitani poses the “near side” of oriental mystic



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traditions—which can also be found in the mystic traditions of the religions of the book (see Underhill 1995)—to refer to the closeness that there can be between individual awareness and her apprehension of the universe, her seeing herself in the whole. The absolute near side of the mystic view of reality denotes an immanent kind of transcendence, which means that individual consciousness can merge with the universe—and ultimately sees the universe itself as the actual essence of self. It is at this present f leeting instant in time where I want to locate the ref lexive exercise mentioned earlier for individual consciousness to “spill” beyond its own individuality, in order to try to conceive—if not experientially but only ref lexively—its own universal identity in the present realm of time that discloses simultaneity, where compassion, love, and trust in strangers are situated. This is an absolute realm of identification of the self with the other in an impersonal manner, like the Buddhist creed in a “ ‘Great Compassionate Heart’ [maha-karuna], the essential equivalent of the biblical analogy that tells us there is no such thing as selfish or selective sunshine” (Nishitani 1982, 60). This is similar to Jesus’ exhortation to love enemies as much as friends and the Buddhist virtue of love that does not differentiate between enmity and friendship. This is the near and absolute transcendental realm that prevails in the mystic type of morality. Enlightened spiritual masters have taught about universal love, the kind that involves loving the other as one loves oneself. It goes beyond anthropocentrism by extending such love to all sentient beings and indeed the world and nature itself. Universal compassion is then an ideal that organizes an orientation to moral conduct that is lacking in the ideal of human individual autonomous will. It is important to stress that this source of compassionate morality with transcendentalist origin is different from the ethics of caring and responsibility that arose from the Kohlberg-Gilligan debate on the theory of moral development in psychology (Gilligan 1982, Gilligan, Ward and Taylor 1989; Kohlberg 1981). Kohlberg’s morality of justice fails to represent the female experience of ethics that Gilligan observed to ref lect on personal bonds and a reluctance to make others suffer. Kohlberg’s theoretical scheme represents this type of ethics as cognitively underdeveloped, following the Kantian


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metaphysics of self. From the perspective of the ethics of caring, the dominance of principles is oppressive to manifestations of ethics in personal relationships with people that can see the particularity of each situation and criticizes the unavoidable legalism of acting on universalizable moral principles (see Benhabib 1992). However, precisely because of its being based on particularity, it is impossible to award complete philosophical recognition to the ethics of caring and responsibility. In spite of the benefits that it may bring in particular circumstances, it does not provide us with a convincing and genuine moral point of view because it is essentially partial and may lead to noxious biases in moral decisions. In contrast to this, the type of morality that emanates from the near side of transhistorical time—universal love overcomes the particularistic problems of the ethics of caring; its source is metaphysical and universal and it could be used as a complement of the same stature to liberal universalisms. Nishitani’s near side of universal love overcomes the Western problem of objectivizing the non-civilized (or partially civilized) other in the postcolonial order of contemporary global politics—who is indeed a very elusive character, unless we identify her with a specific gender, skin color, geographical area, ethnicity, or religion. It is in this sense that Luce Irigaray considers that only under the gaze of the Buddha—in a relationship that nurtures the world and is not based in the self-interested individual entity—one can escape the typical dialectics of domination ( Jay 1993). The awareness of the constant present time of the here and now discloses the realm of universal love as an ideal that could be used to guide our moral decisions and thus effectively defines the moral principle of compassion. There is another way of conceiving of compassion that is also relevant and useful in this discussion. In her Upheavals of Thought (2001), Martha Nussbaum defines compassion as “a painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person’s undeserved misfortune” (301). She follows Aristotle to postulate three cognitive elements of compassion. First, the belief that the suffering one witnesses is serious rather than trivial; second, the belief that the sufferer does not deserve her plight; and the third is the “eudaimonistic judgment,” which comes in two steps. First, there is a belief that great undeserved suffering may happen to anyone, including



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me, which is the judgment of similar possibilities. This step is not yet compassion, but it is initially postulated as an epistemological principle that bridges the gap toward the second step where “others (even distant others) are important part of one’s own scheme of goals and projects, important as ends in their own right” (320). This is the eudaimonistic judgment, and is an essential cognitive element for the feeling of compassion. Based on this cognitive judgment in two steps, Nussbaum finds a relationship between its first step and the moral point of view that John Rawls models in the original position in A Theory of Justice (1971): To Nussbaum (2001), the original position is congenial with the judgment of similar possibilities, “Rawls himself invites the comparison, stating that he has attempted to model benevolence in an artificial way, by combining prudential rationality with constraints on information” (340). In other words, self-interest is the root source of compassionate eudaimonistic judgment, much in the same way as it is the basis to want a just society in Rawls’s terms. However, Nussbaum poses no hypothetical ref lective exercise, she considers self-interest as a developmental point of departure in the ethical life of a human being: Children will learn to be compassionate by recognizing that they have similar possibilities of suffering, identifying themselves with the sufferer, deploring the fact that anybody should suffer greatly and undeservedly, and thus elevating the other (even distant others) in their appreciation. Children learn to be compassionate by means of a qualitative jump from self-centered interests, to being able to imagine themselves in the situation of somebody else who suffers. This is the reason why education in arts and humanities— Nussbaum refers to the literary use of tragic predicaments—may help the imaginative efforts of education in this direction. This initial judgment is couched in self-interest and, according to Nussbaum, is not yet legitimate compassion. Yet, it allows for children’s imagination and compassionate emotional concern to be extended to become adults who genuinely regard the absence of suffering in other people’s lives (even distant others) as an important part of their own “scheme of goals and ends.” In order to make Nussbaum’s position closer to an ideal of universal love, I would add that our compassionate emotional concern with distant others ought not to be merely that they should not


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suffer, but that their lives be joyful, abundant, and that they acquire some experience of relationships based on loving care. The initial self-interest that children display as the basis for their moral decisions—as in Kohlberg’s pre-conventional stage of moral development (1981)—and the judgment of equal possibilities should help children visualize the well-being of distant others as important to them personally and can eventually lead people to expand their concern emotionally. So becoming morally able should not be considered as a mere cognitive ability to elicit universalizable principles and to realize that distant others are ends in themselves—as in Kohlberg’s Kantian post-conventional level of moral development, the highest possible (see Kohlberg 1981). Becoming morally able ought to include this as well as the emotional concern that the life of distant others, of strangers, be joyful and abundant. Compassion both in Gilligan’s as well as in Nussbaum’s terms is a type of love in which the self is seen as partly constituted of attachments to other things and persons. The idea of a wider self constituted by its attachments helps us conceive of the possibility to extend such self beyond individuality; “compassion pushes the boundaries of the self further outward than many types of love” (Nussbaum 2001, 300). The problem with an extension of self into her own constitutive attachments is that compassion remains a particularistic emotion, a category that only allows for the self to be extended up to a limited amount of relationships and objects of concern. In contrast to this, if compassion is conceived as emanating from the ideal of universal love in Nishitani’s terms, it becomes a guide for our moral decisions that goes beyond mere particularity. It makes us bearers of moral sentiments that deplore that any person or any sentient being should suffer and raises the value and the quality of the life of others (even distant others) and of life in general in our appreciation. This type of compassion can become essential grounds for moral support of cosmopolitanism, as well as provide intuitive basis for support of human rights, pacifism, positions against capital punishment, and even environmentalism and animal rights. A Tale of Belonging for the Human Species A compassionate sense of morality bears in mind the dignity of the human person, and is also keenly and vividly aware of our frailty, Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores


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of the constant possibility of human suffering. Our need for belonging to a group emerges from such frailty as embodied organisms ever since we are born; and the human infant is the best illustration of such neediness. Human beings need one another, we need to form groups to be able to survive as a species and this is a constant in the whole of recorded human history and prehistory. People need to form groups that will live together, work together, and get a sense of togetherness going and this fact is the raison d’être of sociology and anthropology; and the modern sense of self is no exception—even when the precondition of modern togetherness is the possibility of private life. There is a story of peoplehood that emerged with modernity in Europe, got mixed with supremacist local stories of race, and eventually became cosmopolitan but did not leave behind local prejudices. Modern imagination engaged in defining just how the modern man (explicitly male and preferably white) tried to define himself and this took Western philosophers, thinkers, and social scientists into weaving the tale of modern individuality. The figure of the powerful individual subject, rational, autonomous, and free in modernity, is a myth of protean proportions. This is a story with the power to move the whole world at the same time toward constant and ever expanding human global interaction thanks to technology. Durkheim saw the uniqueness of modernity in that it achieved an “organic” type of solidarity based on the specialization of work and urban private life. To Durkheim, pre-modernity had a mere primary and unref lective “mechanical” type of social solidarity based on sameness and kinship, unaware of individual autonomy and merit. This contrastive definition of modern lifestyle based on individuality mixed with particularistic stories of male and white supremacy produced the Western habit of looking down on what is premodern (including the ascribed nonhistorical realm of female domestic life). Myths with the power and stature of that of individuality, however, also contain the potential imagery and literary matter to inspire scary visions of sordid consequences. A cold future of human estrangement through autonomous individuality was painted by more than one theorist of modern individuality. Durkheim himself was haunted by anomie and Tönnies regretted the rise of the more modern Gesellschaft (association out of individual self-interest) type of human relationships (detached, cold, merely polite) and saw a loss in the diminished Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

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role of the Gemeinschaft (community) sense of premodern group (familiar, intimate, and warm). Max Weber shuddered at the power of such sense of individuality to fully disenchant the human soul and send us into a “dark polar night” of impersonal interaction. In spite of this, the modern story of individuality paints indeed a powerful picture of just who people are in modernity: Individuals, definitely free by virtue of having our own judgment and equal to one another in principle. This modern tale of individuality has universal aspirations however conditioned by its Judeo-Christian sources, local tales of white supremacy, and a gendered basis for power and freedom. In his Stories of Peoplehood (2003) Rogers M. Smith argues that there is much evidence that human beings will weave particularistic tales about their political communities that are entangled with the social, cultural, and intimate spaces that they inhabit, and this is a persistent and unavoidable social fact. He shows that all stories of peoplehood contain ingredients based on cultural and social myths, even the ones advanced by societies that see themselves as liberal and non-hierarchical. His theory is very useful to explain why the Western habit of defining its sense of self contrastively against a nonmodern and nonliberal other amounts to a particularistic story that ought to be left behind for a genuinely cosmopolitan attitude toward the human species. Smith takes a cosmopolitan and rationally enlightened stand in the type of solution that he comes up with to deal with the potential violence and hatred that such particularistic stories may produce. I do not follow him on his solution because it lacks a principle of human togetherness and one-inanotherness (such as compassion) when envisioning the future of humanity as a species on the planet. In the end, Smith goes back to freedom and rationality as the basis of a kind of competitive contest where particularistic group identities (that he suggests we can contemplate as something like political parties) keep each other in check in a kind of Rawlsian reasonableness that is complemented by a will to construct increasingly more universalistic and inclusive stories. Smith means his theory of people-building to be a ref lection on how the particular identities of peoples are constructed—a political community with common economic interests as well as a sense of



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shared identity or even destiny. He tells us that this ref lection is essential especially recently when much attention has been paid to “identity politics”: On the one hand, much academic effort has been spent in condemning the colonial and patriarchal practices that deny and silence the political expression of difference. On the other, many important thinkers insist that “an undue focus on ‘identity’ misses deeper, often economic causes of political actions. Many think also that this focus operates to def lect attention from material inequalities and to heighten divisive, essentialist understandings of political actors” (11). Although Smith refers to “peoples” as his basic unit of analysis, this concept can be very close to that of “nations,” even when he explains that peoples refers to a broader spectrum of social phenomena; his theory includes a spectrum of senses of political peoplehood that can vary from very weak to very strong and also from wide to narrow demands placed on members. Smith’s work fills the gap left by political scientists who until now have not sought a general theory of how peoples are built and he finds this surprising, given the “wide range of scholarship in many fields—on nationalism, on race and ethnicity, on gender, on identity politics, on coalition building, and related themes—that reveals much about the sorts of people-building accounts that can prevail and endure in our politically competitive, constantly community-constructing world” (57). Such accounts, according to Smith, manage to sustain ongoing political leadership, but are also subject to change and transformation. His stories of peoplehood are political stories that become part of the system of symbols with which human beings eventually define their lives and themselves. However, he wants to stress that political peoples are not ever natural or primordial; they are ongoing human creations, and come from long histories in which conf lict constantly figures. A hermeneutic approach to social reality will converge with Smith in his view that we live immersed in human stories. However, it is important to stress that the stories that he engages with in his theory are put together by leaders for political reasons using available cultural and symbolic materials. This story-telling must have an effect in the society to be organized politically; they must command what Smith calls “senses of trust” and “senses of worth”—“two


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linked but distinguishable conceptions of what successful peoplebuilders must achieve” (ibid.). Senses of trust in a political sense refers to whether people trust one another in any particular community as well as their leaders; and he defines trust as “simply the belief that they are likely to do the right things, from one’s own point of view” (59). Senses of worth, on the other hand, is defined as the “belief that a community’s leaders and members have the capacity to succeed in advancing some of one’s important values or interests, if they should try to do so” (ibid.; emphasis in original). After having examined many examples of stories of peoplehood, Smith proposes that there are three types of stories that command senses of trust and worth among members and between members and leaders; and he calls them stories of economic, political, and ethically constitutive worth. Economic stories are the most pragmatic ones in the sense that they promote trust by arguing that their way of doing things will eventually advance the economic well-being of the members of the community; the worth they offer comes hand in hand with increased wealth for all. Political stories refer to power and who and how it ought to be wielded, which generally promises to enhance the power of the members of a community. “Even monarchs and totalitarian dictators” says Smith, “have usually claimed to be the true representatives as well as the great champions of their people” (63). Power also has a pragmatic dimension in that people trust their leaders more if they themselves are empowered politically and not subject to exploitation and constant arbitrary impositions. Ethically constitutive stories, the third type of political stories that comprise Smith’s typology, are more problematic. They are the locus of the ethical significance of belonging to a people, a specific and particular political community. Some of these accounts may be universalistic and all inclusive, but many define themselves in contrastive terms to others that do not belong to “our group.” Also, ethical worth of a community defines itself in terms of something that is intrinsic to members and is very often based on an imposed ascribed status, on the basis of race, ethnicity, religious background, even gender (see also Ivekovic 1993, 2005). According to Smith “such stories proclaim that members’ culture, religion, language, race, ethnicity, ancestry, history,



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or other such factors are constitutive of their very identities as persons, in ways that both affirm their worth and delineate their obligations” (2003, 64–5); and yet not all such stories need be based on some pseudo-biological or intrinsic aspect, some are ethically constituted on the basis of sharing a common history. In any case, members of a political community are linked to one another through shared “constitutive traits” that their story of peoplehood presents to them as inherently valuable. These three types of stories contribute to commanding trust and building a sense of worth, but they all do it in different ways and, as Smith tells us, “perhaps as a result, actual narratives of peoplehood seem to always involve complex blends of all three” (59). Smith’s theory illustrates very clearly why dichotomous definitions of types of political communities—like the amply resorted to “civic” and “ethnic” types of nations—perpetuate stories of supremacy and go against showing that all peoples resort to commonly held particularistic symbols of shared identity. The original definition of civic and ethnic nations in 1944 by Hans Kohn’s classic The Idea of Nationalism has been found useful by twentieth-century academia on the topic, but it follows the pattern of modern judgmental self-definition in contrastive terms that represents the correct way to be a modern nation in the civic type and the improper, backward, and dangerous way to be a nation in the ethnic type. Smith’s typology shows that most political scientists who advocate this dichotomous typology represent liberal, republican, and democratic stories of peoplehood as if the terms that kept them together were based only on their economic and political arrangements. A description of these stories of civic nationhood is then set up in economic and political terms: The liberal doctrines of economic rights to own the fruits of one’s productive labors and to exchange them in fair markets are “economic stories” that promise to generate expanding wealth for all through mutually beneficial competitive efforts. Liberal guarantees of personal rights against violations of one’s life and liberty, by other individuals or by government agents, are “political power” stories that promise power in the form of personal security, the form most valued by most people. And insofar as liberal


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visions of peoplehood are also democratic they offer further valuable political powers: powers to keep rulers reigned in, and powers to share in the political authority of a sovereign people. (Smith 2003, 78)

However Smith illustrates with ample examples from supposedly civic nations how they also always resort to stories other than political or economic to keep their peoples in an ethical cohesion that is based on myths about the inherent worth of those considered members. He questions the idea that political life has become so much the arena of economic calculations and political rights that leaders can confidently leave behind the third type of stories that he refers to: People’s ethically constitutive stories of worth. Further, Smith tells us that even the economic and political stories of rights are based on some primordial myth of intrinsic worth: “John Locke argued that human rights stemmed from the fact that we are God’s property; Immanuel Kant, that liberal rights and republicanism f lowed from our characteristics as intrinsically rational creatures” (86). These stories are based on particular symbols and myths coming from particular traditions, yet liberalism, republicanism, and even socialism are universalistic in that they apply to all human beings, but then again so do Islam, Roman Catholicism, Taoism, Buddhism, and all other transcendentalist religions. Smith reminds us that all universalistic stories can be made to operate politically as partisan ones. He also stresses that the modern sense of belonging to a republic was heavily gendered before the twentieth-century with martial and virile civic virtues. Today, we disentangle such arguments from egalitarian republicanism, yet “in practice the maintenance of republican virtues has most often been tied to highly inegalitarian, patriarchal understandings of masculinity and femininity” (91). Therefore, no story of peoplehood is ever only based on political and economic stories, and this has become amply clear to scholars on this subject in recent times; so this illustrates the weakness of the civic/ethnic nation dichotomy. Yet, with the appropriate qualifications, the contrastive dichotomy civic/ethnic nation is still used today with its accompanying good/bad connotations. In Smith’s



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terms, the ethnic type of nation does not merely rely on ethically constitutive stories; it also resorts to political and economic stories. So ethnic as a term of description for very strong particularistic and chauvinistic nations or senses of peoplehood is confusing at best, because it obscures many of its elements. Also, the civic type of nation is portrayed as relying solely on economic and political stories of worth. Smith tells us that it is unrealistic to think that any people would be receptive only to those kinds of stories because any such community has experienced or may experience historical situations of economic downturn and reduced political power (for instance, during wars). So leaders cannot rely merely on economic and political stories, they also need ethically constitutive ones. The necessity for these stories means that virtually all current prescriptions for embracing concepts of a purely “civic nation,” a purely “constitutional patriotism,” some form of essentially “liberal” or “republican” or “liberal republican” or “neorepublican” or “strong democratic” or “social democratic” or “cosmopolitan citizenship” as conventionally defined, seem insufficient. (133)

Specifically, I argue that “cosmopolitan citizenship” requires an ethically constitutive story that includes universal love manifested in the moral principle of compassion. Smith’s typology portrays, I believe, a conceptually more useful characterization of how political communities build their senses of worth, but at the same time provides for the theoretical basis for imaginative construction of an ethically constitutive story that encompasses humanity. Also, Smith’s ethically constitutive type of stories comprises a wide array of ways of representing the intrinsic worth of members, and they need not be merely ethnic. They can be based on shared circumstances (such as history) and shared ethics. The ethically constitutive story of moral cosmopolitanism ought to be based on the very pragmatic circumstances of belonging to the human species and also the morality of compassion that all transcendentalist religions include. In order to construct an ethically constitutive story for moral cosmopolitanism, other aspects of such stories ought to be


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considered. Weak forms of political community may not provide enough support nor command sufficient allegiance to be able to fulfill the material and political needs of members, as well as the psychological aspect of belonging. Very strong forms are too chauvinistic and particularistic to become an appropriate basis for cosmopolitanism. So Smith proposes to concentrate on moderate senses of peoplehood, strong enough to command a sense of belonging, yet they allow for a multilayered acceptance of multiple membership: “Moderate” political peoples are communities that assert some significant claims on the loyalties of their constituents and some significant authority over various phases of their life, and they must be able to inspire corresponding degrees of allegiance. But they do not claim absolute sovereignty over all aspects of their members’ lives or primacy over all alternative communities to which their constituents may also belong. Since they do not, they are logically required to accept the legitimacy of multiple political memberships, multiple citizenships, so long as those alternative allegiances do not prevent them from governing in their areas of authority and accomplishing their distinctive purposes. (130)

Moderate political peoples are then a better way of referring to desirable political arrangements that do not entail an “us & them” differentiation on the basis of supremacist tales. A story of peoplehood from the perspective of moral cosmopolitanism, which takes the whole human species as its relevant political community, would necessarily be of this moderate type. A very important point on which I agree with Smith’s effort to come up with solutions to the contemporary problem of battling stories of peoplehood is to say that, as human beings cannot live without ethically constitutive stories of worth, we ought to promote building more inclusive and universalistic ones where people are empowered both economically and politically. Such stories may command allegiance and eventually dissolve the more particularistic and chauvinistic type of stories with violent and dangerous tendencies. According to Smith, the dangers of the latter type of stories include that members of their political communities



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give blind allegiance to the authorities of such sovereign peoples, that these authorities trample on the rights of nonmembers that live within the geographical territory of such communities, and a failure to identify with other human beings who may live outside those boundaries. The danger of violence from one group on another due to strong exclusionary ethical identities can only be averted with other such ethically constitutive story. Smith himself suspects this when he says that liberal authors such as Jürgen Habermas, whose Kantian republicanism used the power of the best argument as the basic cement of political communities, and John Rawls, whose theory intends to be post-metaphysical, are still lacking the symbolic raw materials of ethically constitutive stories. “[I]t remains likely that any effort to check the claims of particular constitutive narratives and memberships by appeal to a more universal story of human identity will need more of an ethically constitutive story than Habermas and other neo-Kantian writers have provided” (146). It is important then to review these contemporary liberal positions par excellence and why their abstract principles fail to substitute for the living cultural substances mingled in ethically constitutive stories. In doing so in the following chapters I intend to set the basis for the much needed tale of human belonging to the same species through compassion and universal love. I have referred earlier to how this must be accomplished in a vivid awareness of the constant possibility of human suffering both at the local and at global levels. Smith finds the basis for an expanded sense of belonging to the human species in our vulnerability due to a set of historically recent and humanly created challenges to the collective survival of the species: (1) weapons of mass destruction, (2) climate change and the spread of toxic waste, (3) the global interconnectedness of our economic and technological systems that also makes us all vulnerable to major setbacks (as the recent American/world recession well illustrates), (4) world demographic pressures, and (5) the ability of human beings to affect our genetic endowment, even possibly altering what we conceive of as the human species (166–7). According to Smith, these five challenges are making people the world over more aware that it is no longer


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safe to live their lives absorbed in their own particular self-interest or that of their traditional communities disregarding the well-being of outsiders and of the earth in general. These challenges are perfectly legitimate and face modern humanity with its own creations. However, there remain the constant human challenges that are born with us when we are born into this material world of suffering. Our acquiring our embodiment at birth opens up the possibility for pain and suffering; and this is an important realm to bear in mind for moral ref lection. My point in this chapter has been to argue that an ethically constitutive story for cosmopolitanism requires the element of universal love to be properly inclusive and universalistic, and also to remain properly moderate and accepting of human diversity. This is the case because, otherwise, what we are left with is a cosmopolitan tale based on Western individuality that remains sectarian and defined as desirable for morally able, rational, free, and powerful individuals (generally white, well-off, and male), charitably looking after oppressed and disenfranchised others. The particularistic elements of the tale of modern individuals make it necessary to review the ideal of individuality itself as the basis of cosmopolitanism. This is the reason why I propose to expand the borders of individuality on the basis of synchrony to be able to let go of its definition of self in contrastive terms with an imagined other. An expanded sense of individuality embraces its characteristic modern sense of freedom at the same time as it also embraces the ideal of a mystic absence of self that needs no contrastive definitions due to the ideal of universal love. The current global age in which we live and cosmopolitanism demand that we create a plausible story of peoplehood that will comprise the whole of the human species without contrastive definitions against imagined others and for this to even become a conceptual possibility, the ideal of universal love and the moral principle of compassion are needed. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that this kind of universal story will exist as the only relevant story of allegiance that people will come up with. Stories of peoplehood with their particularistic ethically constitutive elements will always remain with us. However, my point in this chapter is that cosmopolitanism today requires bringing



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back from metaphysics the ideal of universal love and secularizing it in the moral principle of compassion as a major axis for world interaction. In the following chapters I explore the structure of Western liberalism to explain why compassion and universal love are needed in an ethically constitutive story for the human species that is genuinely inclusive and thus cosmopolitan.




CHAPTER 2

TRUST IN STRANGERS AND THE CRITIQUE OF ABSTRACT LIBERALISM

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ndividualism can be regarded as many interrelated aspects at the same time: First, it is a way of life for people living in modern societies; second, a principle of order in liberal democracies, and also among other things, it is a learnt skill, a product of culture, of nurture, and not of nature. To scholars who were not born in the developed world and also to sociologists, the latter aspect of individualism is quite obvious. However, what I have called Western liberalism, which is also known as abstract liberalism, centers its attention mostly on the second aspect of individualism referred to earlier: individuality as a principle of political order. Western or abstract liberalism subscribes to considering individuality as a universal characteristic of humanity defined in terms of freedom and reason. In this spirit, a liberal society is an association of rational and free individuals, each working the best they can within fair rules to further their own interests. There has been much debate as to what exactly it is to be free, but in liberalism, this basically boils down to assuming that the individual has agency, autonomy, and reason, the latter being the source of her principled morality. However, these assumptions are laden with specific ideas of what it is to be human; assumptions that abstract liberals do not frame within time, space, culture, and society, and also make universalistic assumptions of how public order ought to be structured catering to the supposed


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needs of such individuals. Communitarianism, a term coined by Michael Sandel (1984), opposes this type of abstract individualism by highlighting the importance of social life and of growing up in a specific community to attain bonds, values (especially civic ones), responsibilities, and commitments. Communitarians reject liberal universalism as an empty attempt to impose abstract principles on a vibrant global tapestry of a human variety of cultures and ways of life and on the concrete and particular living ethics. The strongest point that abstract liberals make to contend against this position is that such particularity provides no universal or universalizable basis for philosophical ref lection on justice or on how to organize a just society. In the end, abstract liberals contend, the state can only be neutral by considering individuals as autonomous and rational entities, and this is the best universal basis for justice and freedom. I agree with the liberal position that contemplates such diversity as a private matter in modern societies, which is allowed to expand and f lourish by means of respect to ideal modern individuality (that ought to be seen as a learnt skill). The liberal idea of justice (the “right”) aims at protecting the individual person from what could be seen as oppressive practices of the group—in spite of the “good” that the group might find in such practices. Underlying the whole debate about freedom in liberalism and state neutrality or the right versus the good is one of how public authority ought not to impose any particular “conception of the good life” on individuals, which is basically a way of referring to religious and philosophical values. What we can call metaphysical or transcendent reality, sacred or beyond mundane existence, is a dimension of reality that we cannot touch or see unless we represent it in metaphor and metonymy, myth and tale. This type of otherworldly reality still dictates moral principles to people around the world depending on their beliefs and spiritual commitments. Metaphysics of the religious type is represented in particular tales and symbols that often clash with one another in their specific prescriptions of how a person should lead a good life (and the clash more often than not exists between religious and secular views of reality). In this vein, it is a victory of the modern world that religion should remain in the private realm of personal practice. Jürgen Habermas refers to the post-metaphysical thought era in which we


S T R A N G E R S A N D A B S T R AC T L I B E R A L I S M

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live as a consequence of the “fact of plurality.” Post-metaphysical thought has to do with how transcendent sources for what was considered the correct ways of life were historically left behind as a result of an embrace of tolerance in public life to overcome ongoing religious wars in Europe before the Age of Reason. In spite of this position, I believe and have argued before (see Sánchez-Flores 2005) that liberalism and historical reality are already built on the basis of too much Judeo-Christian metaphysics for liberalism to decide that this transcendent realm should be left behind. I propose instead to go back to metaphysics, to mystic sources of morality, not to seek advice from specific and particular symbols of the good life that religion may prescribe, but in order to rescue an abstract principle that lies within the ideal of universal love and also within every major spiritual discipline and religion in the world: Compassion. I have explained in the previous chapter how the universality of this principle may help us expand the idea of individuality and also that of self-interest. In this chapter I will suggest that trust in strangers bears interesting links to the principle of compassion, even in modern life. Trust in strangers refers to acting as if all of them were trustworthy even when there is no evidence that they may be. In current literature we can find a wide variety of definitions, especially for trust (see Hardin 2002, chapter 3) because it has been identified as a major ingredient in modern interaction. Such abundance of definitions has brought much confusion to the debate; but I propose that simply defining trust as trust in strangers will set it apart from other more strategic views on trust. This is because although such representations have their merit, it is important to emphasize that the more mysterious sources of trust abide in the moral choice to trust in strangers, which strategic trust portrayals are unable to grasp. Both compassion and trust are based on placing value on others—even distant and unknown others—and both are essential aspects of our moral life. Nevertheless, these two aspects of our morality have been systematically neglected by important works of contemporary political theory. In what follows I will explain what abstract liberalism refers to in the contemporary debate and the content of the communitarian criticism to this type of liberalism. When John Rawls published his


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book A Theory of Justice (1971) it became the choice target for this type of criticism due to its portrayal of abstract individuality. I will then show how in his Political Liberalism (1993), he addresses these critiques and also the problem of harmonizing diverse worldviews in liberal societies. He insists his position is political, not metaphysical, and wants to leave “philosophy as is,” not engage with ref lection of what the essence of being a person is. This insistence brought him the attention of one of the most respected and prolific figures in social and political thought: Jürgen Habermas. Both abstract liberal philosophers engaged in what Habermas describes as a “family dispute” because they agree on fundamental liberal principles: to both of them, as to the contractualist tradition of liberal political theory (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant), the principles that regulate public life can only be legitimately accepted when they can rationally convince all the citizens in a political association. On this, Habermas and Rawls agree, but not on what the foundations of such rationality are or on how one must think for the mechanics of such legitimation to work. In a nutshell, and using words that Habermas does not, I will explain on what bases he criticizes Rawls for abandoning Kantian moral philosophy (that he explicitly embraced in his A Theory of Justice) in order to appease the communitarian appraisal of particularistic world cosmologies, thus jeopardizing philosophical neutrality. This debate illustrates how metaphysics is an important source of modern political thought and cannot easily be left behind. Even though post-metaphysical thought prevents us from resorting to specific symbols and prescriptions of world cosmologies in order to make sense of our public moral life, I have shown in the previous chapter how metaphysics—or the evolution of the Judeo-Christian relationship with such transcendental perspective—still lurks in the background of individuality and thus in the liberal moral basis for public order and the construction of a just society. After considering how Rawls fails in exiling the metaphysical realm of moral thought following Habermas’s critique, I will explain how the metaphysical sources of compassion can lead to trust in strangers and why this is a moral choice that ought to be open for modern individuals. My theoretical position strives to integrate a specific type of trust and also compassion as essential pillars of morality while at the same time



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upholding the centrality of the liberal ideal of the individual self, the dignity of the individual person in the Kantian sense.1 I argue that the Kantian moral position—the value of the transcendental subject—needs to be complemented with an equally universalistic one of compassion in order to imagine an ethically constitutive story of belonging for the human species as a whole in a genuine cosmopolitan spirit. Communitarian Critique of John Rawls’s Abstract Liberalism When Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his Democracy in America in the nineteenth century, he ref lected about the future of liberal society where he saw the path of equality as unstoppable. He and other liberal thinkers (such as Edmund Burke and José Ortega y Gasset) considered the equalizing force of modernity as a danger to liberty due to its potential to engender stupid masses of people that would move like herds and could fall prey to authoritarianism. De Tocqueville warned us about the “tyranny of the majority” borne from equality in an age of individualism: When ancestral authorities (religion, morality) lose their value, public opinion becomes the sole authority and it imposes itself on everyone even more thoroughly than an arbitrary dictator. Also, he thought that the individualistic pursuit of self-interest destroys the moral fiber of mutual obligation and civic duty and degrades the human soul toward mere enjoyment of superficial pleasures. He observed in history how equality displayed an unstoppable advancement paired with individual freedom. However, all was not lost for he thought that he had found in America the way to overcome such bleak future for liberalism. In the mid-nineteenth century, he observed how in this young country people associated with one another in order to participate in their local communities for the good of all. This constituted the basis of federalism in local and provincial institutions, in community-based self-government, and came from their Puritan drive to help one another and their moral identifications with one another. This conservative strand of liberal thought considers individuals as people embedded in their particular cultural and historical communities; values community and its bonds, and regards


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them as the source of the political vitality of social interaction. In contemporary political theory, this line of thought is inherited by communitarianism, which can also be liberal, but objects to seeing people as individuals in abstract terms. Liberalism in general defines itself with respect to the value of the individual self, its preeminence, its inviolability. Individuality is a basic concept in liberal political theory and in modern culture because it is at the heart of the debate about the basis to organize a just public life under the conditions of contemporary modernity. In this context, the individual self is seen as having priority over the community that she belongs to in order to evade the imposition of arbitrariness from the group on the individual person. Communitarians criticize abstract liberal individualism by saying that human beings are individuals only because their community gives them the cognitive and cultural basis to be able at all to think of themselves as individuals. The communitarian critique of abstract liberalism rescues the good of individuality as a specific “comprehensive conception of the good life,” a cultural entity, a kind of discipline, a set of skills or “practices” in the language of Alisdair MacIntyre (1984) that is based in the civic tradition of political participation and the cultivation of a public sense of mutual responsibilities. When John Rawls published his A Theory of Justice, communitarianism objected to this theory on the basis that Rawls portrayed people as mere abstractions without any moral depth. In his theory, Rawls proposed a theoretical mind experiment to model how free and equal citizens would agree on principles for a just society out of self-interest. He placed them in what he called an “original position” where citizens come up with principles of justice for a society of free and equal individuals. In order for these citizens to actually be free and equal, this situation places them under a “veil of ignorance.” This means that in such conditions, people would not know who they are in most aspects of their social standing and private lives, effectively stopping them in this way from proposing and defending skewed principles for any particular social situation or position. Out of self-interest then, these citizens under the veil of ignorance would come up with principles that



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would ensure justice for all of those involved in this hypothetical situation. Communitarians believe, on the one hand, that the mere individualistic pursuit of self-interest is no basis on which to set the foundations of mutual obligation and civic duty, and on the other, that the only way to understand human beings is by framing them in their particular social, cultural, and historical situations, which create actual persons and not individualistic abstractions (Avineri and de-Shalit 1992). This defines the philosophical cum sociological objections to abstract individualism: Regarding people as selfserving individuals leads to consequences that are not morally satisfactory and also this idea of people is basically false, as we are all constituted as persons by our particular bonds and commitments (Kymlicka 2002). This type of political thought considers individuals as people embedded in their particular communities, values their bonds, and regards them as the source of the political vitality of modern social interaction. In contrast to this, an abstract type of liberalism believes that people can be seen as rational individuals, whose reason gives them access to a higher type of universal moral ref lection. This idea comes from Kantian metaphysics according to which the transcendental subject (and end in itself ) may overcome particularity through reason and produce universal principles for every moral decision. Having such independent abilities means that nobody, no authority, may impose on the individual person any idea of how to live her life; or what principles are the good ones to heed when it comes to making moral decisions. This rational competence for moral ref lection is a measure of the freedom of an individual person in the liberal doctrine (the mechanics of which will be the basis for the disagreement between Habermas and Rawls). The only limitation to individual freedom in a liberal polity, in principle, should be everybody else’s individual rights. Public order in liberalism is based on the primacy of the right over the good; that is, public authorities ought to defend individual rights and leave individuals alone to define the good of their lives according to the principles they themselves choose based on their own judgment. What this means is that when liberal authorities send somebody to jail, they do so because this somebody trampled on


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the rights of somebody else—not necessarily because she has done something wrong or bad in the eyes of public authority. This is an important subtlety to ponder; in theory, liberal governments are neutral and this means that they ought not to judge the goodness or badness of the deeds of individuals. If they did they would produce arbitrary principles as impositions on their lives. The good of an individual life is a private matter. It follows that liberal states ought not to espouse any comprehensive conceptions of the good—such as a religion or a spiritual philosophy. In liberalism, collective prerogatives ought never to come before individual ones. Nevertheless, as said before, it is an individual’s right to choose her own moral principles or those dictated by the community to which she belongs. Communitarians contend that abstract liberals hold the Hobbesian image of rational individuals “springing up like mushrooms” (Hobbes [1651] 1948) ready to use their judgment in order to choose their way of life and community without any inherited source, identity, or allegiances. Communitarians hold that the abstract differentiation between the right and the good in liberal theory is arbitrary and that the right that they speak about is a type of good—that of the modern culture of individuality and the public values of liberal democracies. The abstract individual self of liberal theory cannot be found anywhere in empirical social reality. No one can escape their historical context and personal situation, even one’s style of reasoning depends on it. According to this line of thinking we are all a product of our environment, our culture, we all have “constitutive attachments” (Sandel 1984) to other people and to ways of thinking that define who we are, what we stand for, and determine the depth of our moral fiber and political commitments. Some liberals consider this to be of the essence in liberal polities sustained by the civic impulse of people to associate with other citizens in collective action that will perpetuate liberal traditions. Abstract individualism, they contend, takes people out of their social and historical reality and refuses to acknowledge the importance of belonging. The vitality of liberal institutions itself depends on such attachments, on such shared meanings. To communitarians, the error of abstract liberalism is to think that individuals can situate themselves beyond



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and above the cultural meanings and attachments that produced them qua individuals; [O]ur sense of identity is inseparable from an awareness of ourselves as members of a particular family or class or community or people or nation, as bearers of a specific history, as citizens of a particular republic; and [. . .] we look to participation in the political realm as a way in which we can develop and refine our sense of ourselves by developing and refining forms of community with which we can be proud to identify. (Mulhall and Swift 1997, 67)

In his critique of abstract liberalism, Sandel regrets that when America was consolidated as one single nation, a philosophy of common purposes seemed to disappear and this gave way to the ascendance of universal rights. The bearers of such rights are what he calls “unencumbered selves,” atomized people without clarity of purpose, attachments, bonds, obligations borne from belonging. To him, defense of individual universal rights at a national level has taken power away from democratic institutions (such as local government, legislatures, and political parties) and given it to the courts and the bureaucracy. As Sandel (1984) puts it; In our public life, we are more entangled, but less attached, than ever before. It is as though the unencumbered self presupposed by the liberal ethic had begun to come true—less liberated than disempowered, entangled in a network of obligations and involvements unassociated with any act of will, and yet unmediated by those common identifications or expansive self-definitions that would make them tolerable. (28)

This unencumbered self is then detached from personal identifications and bonds that would make her political involvement meaningful. This produces what he calls a “procedural republic” where people are left with the apolitical resource of applying for bureaucratic support to further their interests and the courts to defend their own individual rights. Some other philosophers who identify with the communitarian line of thought have gone further and criticized modern contemporary life and its platitudes that distance people from the traditions


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of thought that could be the source of virtue and ethical ref lection. In his book After Virtue, first published in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre describes the origins, development, and decadence of the Western moral and political culture. He blames the current decadence on the emotivist school of political theory, according to which any moral preference is an expression of our own personal feelings and emotions. The problem with this is that it makes all moral discussion an instance of manipulative interpersonal interests. In MacIntyre’s sociology of modern life, he sees people treating other people as means to their own ends or to those of the marketplace, and they are regarded as something beyond systematic, rational, or objective evaluation. To MacIntyre, the problem with abstract liberalism is that if the capacity to be a moral entity lies only on individual judgment and not in the social roles that people adopt, then individuals lack the benefit of the history of their own life lessons. Thus moral preferences for the modern individual entity are purely willful and the transition from one to another is completely arbitrary. MacIntyre says that there was a time in Western culture when there was objectivity in moral judgments and that they were truly impersonal. The shift to this emotivist situation came during the European Enlightenment, when inherited values such as justice, keeping promises, or fulfilling one’s duty were seen as sustained in human nature, detached from time and history. Enlightened thinkers did not emphasize that those values are the product of a particular historical and cultural context. According to MacIntyre, they are part of a wider moral scheme that dominated the Middle Ages and whose origin was Aristotle. According to this classic philosopher, ethics is conceived as the science that leads human beings to the realization of their potential; they must be transformed through experience and practical reason and elevated to a higher state of being. MacIntyre says that it is necessary to reintroduce the Aristotelian concept of a telos to restore the sense of morality that leads to some kind of objective goal. This sense of morality is based on virtues that are learnt in our particular context. MacIntyre then poses three central social categories that could be the basis for the cultivation of virtue in contemporary modern societies; they are the “narrative unity of a human life” (individual), and also practices on the one hand and traditions on the other (both are social



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categories). In this scheme, we can see that even in his individual category there is a strong sense of the social: Human beings tell stories so that their reality makes sense to themselves and to everyone else; this signals that individuals are not sovereign authors of such narratives. Individuals live in social contexts—such as conversation—where intelligible action takes place. Only within this framework can they make rational decisions with respect to the demands that come from the diverse practices to which they may belong, aspire to excellence, gain virtue, define their identity, and fulfill their telos, their ends. MacIntyre’s theory places individuals in groups or communities (practices) with very clear and evolving principles of action that provide their decisions with objectivity and meaning. Another important liberal philosopher who reacted to characterizations of people as abstract individuals is Charles Taylor, who in his book Sources of the Self (1989), questions the erroneous ways in which liberal principles are defended. He believes with MacIntyre that human beings are animals that interpret themselves, creatures whose identity depends on their own orientation to the good. This implies that human beings need a conception of the good that they themselves derive from the linguistic matrix of the community to which they belong. Taylor criticizes the naturalist reduction that excludes referential frameworks and makes our moral intuitions into something universal, as if they emanated from some innate source of knowledge in us. Taylor says that it is within such referential frameworks that our ethical thought emanates; and it does so from three essential axes: our relationships with other human beings, our conceptions of how to lead a good life, and our sense of our own dignity and status. To him, abstract liberalism uses a type of atomist individuality that leads to what he calls moral subjectivism where moral judgments are arbitrary expressions of preference. The enlightened rational self is disillusioned and skeptical about traditional referential frameworks such as religion and old values, and so they are rejected and negated. Yet interpretation of the self holds a fundamental link with the relationship that the self poses with respect to values and other selves in her community. After learning this, of course, the self can innovate and question the values of the community, but such innovations can only make sense


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with respect or in contrast to the intuitions and conceptions of others. Taylor adds that we cannot make sense of human will without the qualitative distinctions that exist in our moral frameworks, that is, the referential frameworks that define our moral space. In such space, the self and the good are inextricably entwined, distinctions between them are qualitative, but self and good really constitute two perspectives on the same phenomenon. The metaphor of a physical space for our morality is interesting because it gives concreteness to something that is really quite abstract. And so, he uses this metaphor to speak about moral orientation according to the “map” that referential frameworks provide and says that it is impossible to solve all the issues of moral orientation simply in abstract universal terms. And so, when using a map, it is just as important to know where all the important places are as well as where one is with respect to those places. In our moral space, such important places constitute the good, or what is qualitatively better. An orientation to the good poses an aspiration of plenitude, a pattern of superior action with meaning or a link to superior reality. However, it would be a mistake to think that in our life we can arrive at such places in a once and for all manner. The metaphor stops working when this superior dimension comes in: An orientation to the good is about whether the good directs my life and not if I am situated in the good or not. A naturalist unattached being would ask whether she is in the good or not and this is the error of such absolute questions—we should approach this orientation as a life quest. Just like MacIntyre, Taylor reminds us that the narrative or story that we tell about our life gives coherence to what we have become and what we are becoming; we require such narrative to show us the purpose of our lives. But again, narratives, frameworks, and contexts refer to the social dimension that human selves inhabit and where identity and a sense of morality emanate from. This kind of communitarian sociologically based arguments produced in political theory a vivid awareness about the social reality where people abide: communities and historical contexts full of meaning as opposed to the social unreality and lack of depth of the unencumbered and unembedded abstract individual subject. Human reality was described as belonging to human communities



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and groups, from the family to the nation, and inheriting their values. The point of the importance of community and identity in the formation of persons was well taken: John Rawls’s theory became the center and target of communitarian criticism, which amounted to a dramatic reminder that “people are themselves their circumstances”—paraphrasing José Ortega y Gasset’s famous phrase. As I will explain later, Rawls replied by stating that his idea of justice as fairness was merely political, not metaphysical (1985 and 1993). Thus his views on the individual self are not absolute; they model rational individual behavior within certain constraints, acting solely in the public space. The debate is not solved because communitarians do not accept this convenient abstract partition of human spaces into private and public—sociologists especially are aware that these two spaces constantly overlap with one another. Other more radical critics contend that the model itself is a blueprint of Western culture, portrayed philosophically as universal and superior to anybody else’s culture and way of life. Rawls’s Political Liberalism as a Response to the Communitarian Critique Rawls believes in abstract individuality and the clear distinction between the right and the good for the basis of a neutral public authority in a constitutional democracy, but while he keeps Kantian metaphysics in his A Theory of Justice, he tries to leave them behind in his Political Liberalism. Michael Sandel (1984), one of the most ferocious communitarian critics of his 1971 book, considers that the role of Rawls’s original position is to preserve Kantian teachings on moral philosophy “by replacing Germanic obscurities with a domesticated metaphysics more congenial to the Anglo American temper” (18). But Rawls (1985) refuses to accept that his idea of justice as fairness is embedded in a comprehensive moral doctrine and his specific response to his communitarian critics is that his conception of justice wants to avoid “claims to universal truth, or claims about the essential nature and identity of persons” (186). He names this conception Political Liberalism, where he stresses that the basis for justice in modern societies ought to be merely political, limiting itself to public order and not philosophizing about


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what people are or who they ought to be; as said before, in liberalism such matters are private. Does this mean that the public and private realms never overlap or even clash? Ideally, they should not, yet in practice we know that there are no purely neutral states and that what we believe in our private lives is relevant to public interaction. So how does Rawls resolve this tension between the public and private realms? He defines his position as “freestanding”— independent from comprehensive conceptions of the good. He further insists that it only applies to the basic structure of society, and that it is a systematic articulation of intuitive ideas at the heart of liberal democracies shared by citizens living in such modern order (Rawls 1993 and see Mulhall and Swift 1997). Rawls’s original position represents the idea that society ought to be a just scheme of cooperation among citizens conceived as free and equal. Two elements are of the essence here: the idea of cooperation and that of his original position modeling the role of citizens. Cooperation is guided by recognized public rules and whoever cooperates accepts them; the terms of cooperation ought to be just, and each participant hopes to gain something rationally by engaging in such cooperation, that is, she is attending to her own selfinterest. This last element begs the question of whether Rawls sees rationality as mere self-interest; and the answer is that he does at that individual level, but at a social level, he adds the concept of reasonableness. In Rawls’s theory and original position, people are reasonable when they will propose principles and standards as fair terms of cooperation and also when they will follow them as long as everyone else will too. I will come back to this difference between rationality and reasonableness because it is essential in Habermas’s critique of Rawls. But the other element already mentioned remains to be dealt with: the person in the original position models the person in her role of citizen because, to Rawls, this is appropriate in political contexts where different people have a variety of comprehensive conceptions of the good. While in his A Theory of Justice Rawls was engaged with a liberal form of redistributive justice, in his Political Liberalism his focus changes to the problem of diversity in modern societies. When there is a diversity of human groups holding different and incompatible



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comprehensive conceptions of the good life (religions, moral, and spiritual doctrines) living together in the same society, no particular worldview can be imposed on them or this would be a form of tyranny. So, according to Rawls, the public order produced by the original position of free and equal citizens ought to produce principles of public order that should be stable in the right way; that is, not by imposition or due to a balance of powers, but because everyone in the association agrees with them. However, Rawls insists that the stability of justice as fairness must be achieved following two stages: First, that it be freestanding or not dependent on any comprehensive conception of the good life, and second, after ensuring that it is freestanding and everyone agrees, we then worry about it being sufficiently stable. These two stages ensure that the order achieved will not be a series of principles imposed on citizens. One could object that the stable agreement reached by Rawls’s two stages could then take the shape of a mere pragmatic modus vivendi or way of life, one that evades conf lict by embracing whatever creates consensus. To this possible objection Rawls advances that he is not proposing a convenient agreement, his is a moral conception— albeit not comprehensive, but political. How so? He says that reasonable people will want to realize the moral liberal ideal. Rawls proposes a kind of moral psychology: In private life, people may defend their own comprehensive principles, but in public life the liberal political values ought to prevail both for “reasonable people” and “comprehensive doctrines.” The justification for the stability of public order comes from three interrelated aspects in his theory: from his political constructivism, which Rawls insists is not Kantian in that it assumes nothing about the essence of people but only models them as citizens; from the liberal principle of legitimation of public authority, according to which political power (and violence) is justified when all citizens can support the idea of basic justice behind it under the light of public reason (and not on the basis of comprehensive principles); and third, from this very idea of public reason that is the vehicle through which citizens come to an agreement on a political conception that can be justifiable to all of them, even when they may hold incompatible comprehensive conceptions of the good privately. The trick to this harmonious conception of liberal and


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diverse political life lies in his concept of reasonableness. Reasonable persons and doctrines see that their specific and particular religious or otherwise philosophical comprehensive beliefs set limits on what can be reasonably justified to others, and so they endorse some form of liberty of conscience and freedom of thought. Reasonableness entails social cooperation based on the primary and rational selfinterest to exist as one of the many comprehensive doctrines in a diverse society. Rawls refers to comprehensive principles and beliefs as the “burdens of judgment” that our worldview prescribes for us; and precisely because we would not want anyone imposing theirs on us, we as reasonable people (willing to cooperate in a society of free and equal citizens) would not impose ours on any other individual. It is only within this kind of framework that peaceful interaction is possible when there exists and can emerge a plurality of incompatible and reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good. They are reasonable because they understand the value of freedom of creed and they can achieve what Rawls calls an “overlapping consensus” because all reasonable comprehensive doctrines will find in themselves, in their own specific values and principles, the moral sources to uphold the freestanding social order on which plurality depends. So Rawls’s justice as fairness is directed to the public reason of citizens who are reasonable (willing to cooperate) as well as rational (seeking their own self-interest), who see each other as free and equal, and who understand this and the need to sustain a neutral public order as a moral duty; but the overlapping consensus implies that they will do this on the basis of values from their own comprehensive doctrines. A “Family Dispute” between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls Jürgen Habermas reacted to the aforementioned representation of the moral foundations of liberalism with a number of objections. As I have mentioned before, he called this a family dispute because both of them agree on the importance of individuality as a principle of order in modern societies; so both of them are important abstract liberals. This dispute started off with the well-known 1995 exchange in The Journal of Philosophy, where Habermas published



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a critique of Rawls’s theory of political liberalism and Rawls his “Reply to Habermas” (1995). Here, it was clear that they did not agree on how to solve the natural tensions between the private and the public spheres of modernity. According to Fernando Vallespín (1998), to Habermas, the strict division between private and public spheres is ref lected in Rawls’s design of his original position and this gives priority to private autonomy over anything that public authority could do on behalf of the political association as a whole, which is already ref lected in the stated lexical priority of Rawls’s principles of justice in his first book. This has a double consequence: On the one hand it entails a type of philosophical paternalism, it would be the philosopher Rawls who would play the interaction game and would interpret and ultimately determine what the citizens ought to agree on as individuals when in the original position, and this goes against the democratic basis of such agreement. On the other hand, the theory ends up falling into the most conventional liberal logic; where rights are seen to exist essentially to protect individuals from potential impositions on individuality but are not seen as embodiments of deliberative past decisions of public autonomy. Vallespín (1998) reminds us that Habermas resorts to his idea that worldviews are sustained in the “life world”2 of actual social interaction and it is the vitality and freedom in this life world that liberalism ought to defend. Whatever citizens can do together by means of their public autonomy in deliberation emerges from this life world; but public autonomy eventually creates public institutions. People can use their own moral reason against impositions coming from authorities or from comprehensive doctrines and seek to expel them from the public sphere on those bases. The role of the philosopher is to clarify what Habermas calls the “moral point of view” for actual people to make their own political decisions; he bases this perspective on Kantian metaphysics and has no problem with its universalistic implications. Habermas published his political theory in a book called Between Facts and Norms (1998b) where he attempts a discursive reconstruction of the Kantian idea of the moral person that emphasizes the public dimension of autonomy in modern societies in what Habermas calls Kantian Republicanism.


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As I have said earlier, I want to concentrate on Habermas’s critique of Rawls in order to point to the difficulties involved in trying to get rid of metaphysics as Rawls intended, and also to the consequences of not getting rid of them, thus clarifying a universalistic moral point of view, as Habermas does. This critique is most clear in a third less well-known piece that is part of this dispute, published by Habermas in 1996 in a book in German that was translated into English in 1998 as The Inclusion of the Other, where he responds to Rawls’s reply (Habermas 1998a). In this essay Habermas makes it clear that Rawls tries to evade philosophical controversies by merely naming his theory political, not metaphysical, and engaging in a “strategy of evasion.” This strategy depends, according to Habermas, on just what it is that we understand by qualifying a theory as merely political. Rawls understands this term as different from metaphysical to characterize a liberalism that ought to be neutral when facing different world cosmologies, or comprehensive doctrines, and thus claims to be freestanding or independent from them. To this characterization, Habermas objects that Rawls cannot explain where his theory of justice comes from without having to take a philosophical stand, which may well not be metaphysical, but does have to deal with philosophical issues of reason and Truth. To Habermas, Rawls’s strategy of evasion—leaving philosophy as is, not making any assumptions about what a human person is—does not save him from addressing philosophical questions such as, what is reason? And what is valid and true? To Habermas, the philosophical stand that Rawls tries to evade is contained in his idea of reasonableness, which depends on the philosophical idea of truth. What this means is that the citizens in Rawls’s model cannot achieve any overlapping consensus until they have adopted a moral point of view that is independent from the comprehensive doctrines that they may espouse in their private lives. Rawls conf lates what is pragmatically reasonable with what is morally right and so hopes to escape metaphysics and philosophy altogether. However, he merely sweeps them, as it were, under the rug-concept of reasonableness, which to Habermas f lattens and distorts Kantian practical reason (including self-interest, ethical duty, and the moral perspective: universal and compelling).



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The first contractualist that reduced practical (moral) reason to self-interest was Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Habermas goes back to his philosophy in order to illustrate the dilemma of trying to conf late pragmatic cooperation (out of self-interest) with what is morally right. Habermas (1998a) reminds us that eventually it became clear in utilitarianism that mutual responsibility cannot be explained solely on the basis of instrumental rationality based on self-interest. So he resorts to the Kantian moral tradition that defines a perspective for an impartial judgment of norms and principles. In this tradition, one ought to consider three levels of interest in order to clarify how the moral perspective works: the first one is self-interest, which Rawls defines in his idea of (individual) rationality; the second is our duty to our group, our bonds, our personal commitments; the third is the universal level, our duty to humanity, and indeed, to the earth and beyond. This level depends on metaphysical truths that lie in a realm that, in order to differentiate it from worldly phenomena, Kant called noumena: God, immortality, and freedom. The liberal tradition rescues mostly the last one and makes it the essence of individuality as a principle of order in modern societies. As freedom is such a widespread value in liberal societies, it is easy to forget about its metaphysical sources that go way back before Kant (philosophical ref lection on the metaphysical sources of freedom can be traced all the way back to the scholastic idea of freewill and even further back to its classical sources). The rational and free individual person, who Kant conceptualizes as a transcendental subject, ought to make moral decisions on the basis of her moral rationality following the dictates of the “categorical imperative”; living her moral life on the basis of universalizable principles to which she herself can arrive freely. According to Habermas, Rawls collapses the level of duty or particularistic ethics unto the one of morality in his pragmatic concept of reasonableness. From this perspective and under the veil of ignorance, the principles of justice pass the test of neutrality that, once the veil is lifted, citizens will justify from within the metaphysical principles of their particular and reasonable comprehensive doctrines. However, Habermas (1998a) does not agree with Rawls’s idea that a public conception of justice must obtain its ultimate moral authority from within the metaphysical authority of non-public


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comprehensive doctrines. In his concept of an overlapping consensus Rawls forgets that individual autonomy is mediated by reason and competent understanding of publicly binding (universal) principles of justice. This, to Habermas, requires the moral point of view with universalistic consequences, which cannot leave philosophy behind. Nevertheless, Habermas clarifies that postmetaphysical thought in an era dominated by the “fact of plurality” demands that public morality not be based on the principles of any one comprehensive doctrine. The fact of plurality refers to contemporary awareness of the many plural worldviews or cosmologies that inform and may also determine people’s identity as well as allegiances to specific moral principles of action, which may include, sometimes all at the same time, ethnicity, race, religion, tribe, family circle, social class, social circle, occupational status, lifestyle, inclinations, personal philosophies, and any other cultural creation not mentioned in this list. At this point it is useful to invoke a critique of the principles of abstract liberalism that takes the shape of an overarching critique of modernity and that differs from communitarianism in its emphasis on how liberalism may become a form of oppressive ideology (in the Marxist sense) designed to produce and sustain inequality. At times, this approach seems to converge with the communitarian critique, quite surprisingly, because the former is radical while the latter tends to be conservative. What I call the “radical” type of critique of liberalism (or modernity) contemplates abstract individuality as an ethnocentric and patriarchal creation; contends that it is a good (in the sense of the term used in political theory—a comprehensive conception of the good life) that was created by European culture, shrouded in an abstract mantle of neutrality, and then imposed on every human group as if individuality were the essence of human freedom instead of a cultural creation. This type of criticism includes class analysis, postmodern thought, feminism, and postcolonialism and engages in an attempt at disclosing the perspective of the other of modernity. In modern cosmology or worldview, the exclusion of this other is essential for modernity’s self-definition; and this entity is typically poor, gendered, and/or visible due to her perceived difference on the basis of physical characteristics, which may be



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colored skin, slanted eyes, disability, or even deviant behavior, and such sources of human oppression can intersect, interlock, and add up. These positions show not only that social order is a series of enacted values and beliefs held dear by specific communities, but also how the universalities defined by specific communities, religious, spiritual, or otherwise, can be the moral basis of ongoing colonial campaigns in the world with civilizing missions.3 Social class, postcolonial, feminist, and even postmodern critiques against individualism can be seen as a reaction to the colonialism of abstract liberal thought whose violent imposition created inequality as an aspect of modern social reality at all levels: local and national as well as international. And so, these positions highlight the violent aspect of power, even of so-called neutral liberal public authority, which Max Weber made the central element of his definition of the state. This critique regards “abstract individuality” as male, rich, white, able-bodied, and modernity as breeding inequality and as a colonial imposition. The aforementioned radical critique of modernity illustrates with a mountain of argumentation and evidence that even public morality of the liberal “neutral” type is based on a particular and comprehensive doctrine and its development in European and/or what is generically called Western culture from the JudeoChristian tradition, into which classical Greece is embedded, through Protestant reformation, to modern individuality. The Kantian metaphysics of self is already firmly situated in this latter stage of evolution, but we can still see in it the secularized JudeoChristian sources in Kant’s noumena where God, immortality, and freedom abide. In them and also in the subsequent Hegelian critique, we can identify a philosophy of history, and the transhistorical moral point of view (transcendental in moral terms) that is often invoked in current political affairs as an absolute principle of judgment (“history will judge”). In contemplating the radical critique of modernity we can see that abstract individuality defined on the basis of Kantian metaphysics of self depends on the evolution of the Judeo-Christian tradition toward its secularization. I have also discussed this evolution in the previous chapter toward the notion of the modern responsible and moral agent. Rawls realized that abstract individuality could indeed be seen as a cultural


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imposition of colonial powers and this is the reason why he attempted—and failed—to evade metaphysics and philosophy altogether in his merely political type of liberalism. One can still regard his political liberalism as an attempt to impose individuality as supreme, but Rawls denies this because he says that all reasonable world cosmologies can interact and be part of a modern polity (see Rawls 1993).4 Habermas’s critique shows that Rawls fails in exiling metaphysics from political philosophy; however, the former is happy to abide in the neutrality of philosophy to clarify the moral point of view, at the cost of ignoring that his philosophical tradition gained the upper hand in the world by means of violent colonization. The solution to this dilemma, I want to propose, does not lie in evading metaphysics a la Rawls, or in ignoring the radical and very legitimate critique of modernity and insisting that it is a project still in need of completion a la Habermas. I argue that the solution lies in going back to metaphysical sources for the clarification of the universal moral point of view. Such sources ought to include the Kantian metaphysics of self that in a truly liberal position cannot be left behind, and also what I call mystic sources that the Western tradition abandoned during the Protestant Reformation to eventually become secularized in the cultural creation of modern individuality. The moral individual is a gem of the Judeo-Christian tradition that became secularized in its universalistic responsibility toward the rest of humanity, in its ideal clarity about intentionality, in its intellectual discipline, and in its formal organizational possibilities. While conceding that individuality has cultural and particular roots, liberal individualism can be contemplated as a major cultural achievement of humanity (Western or not) with vivid awareness of a shared ideal that places an almost sacred value on people as the basis of civilized interaction. This kind of refined interaction is produced by belief and practice of autonomous individuality as a universal ideal. However, as I have discussed earlier, this ideal is not without its limitations and it ought to be transformed to better serve the idea of justice in a globalized world. Going back to metaphysics, and specifically to mystic sources, opens up the possibility for a philosophical dialogue with other than Western traditions of the philosophy of self in the spirit of searching for a universal basis



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for the construction of a just public order on which all comprehensive doctrines can converge. I believe that this basis cannot dispose of individuality even when it has been seen as a cultural imposition by radical critics; they already oppose and condemn its consequences shrouded and sustained in the inviolability of their individual rights and the sharpness of their critical minds. The new disciplinary chore for the liberal tradition is to suspend judgment upon the abased other, which according to mystic metaphysics is a constant judgment upon oneself. If the I and the other are not embraced as one, the moral individual remains trapped within ontological individuality. Compassion and Trust in Strangers The philosophical exercise of extending individuality to apprehend the principle of universal compassion was done in the previous chapter with the aid of a secularized mystic philosophy. Once we accept the possibility of a compassionate expansion or extension of the individual self unto everything that exists, the more mundane but related concept of trust can be better understood and both of them can be seen as aspects of our lived morality qua individuals. Although compassion and trust are not linked to each other in the literature, I believe it necessary to focus on how they relate to one another to place them in their proper moral dimension. Compassion and trust constitute an emotional aspect of human morality and this is one of the reasons why they have been perceived as slippery and problematic. Social theories have limited themselves to outline the ample spectrum of benefits that compassion and trust provide to social interaction; yet they are not systematically defined or the definitions provided are so diverse that they confuse more often than clarify what is at stake. Compassion and trust have different qualities. The sentiment of compassion is one of the most intimate emotions that human beings can have for it is purely subjective, akin to spiritual Enlightenment. We can all imagine the ideal of universal love and can attest to its manifestation in compassionate behavior, but lived experience of this sentiment is rare although always inspiring. Every genuine feeling of compassion ought to be treasured and regarded as a small miracle when it effectively guides


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human action. Trust, on the other hand, defined as trust in strangers, is an essential element of contemporary social life—a necessary building block of modern social interaction. The concept of trust has many connotations, the oldest one referring to faith or confidence in a supernatural power that the human being feels dependent on (Misztal 1996). Whoever trusts takes a risk and acts, even under conditions of uncertainty and in spite of them. This is why trust has moral foundations in the way people consider and value other people. Mutual obligations are learnt and built while people behave in certain ways as they interact with other people in particular circumstances, as communitarians contend. Expectations in all kinds of social relations are the product of gradual learning that establishes shared references about the diverse types of mutual obligations, or of ethical principles in the community where we grow up. Nevertheless, it is not absolutely beyond human imagination to be able to grasp the importance of mutual obligations established in human groups other than one’s own—and those obligations often include the dead, the unborn, and the Almighty. This is where metaphysics or transcendence—an abstract concept of the beyond—may be helpful in establishing the bridges that will allow human groups to converge with each other. But metaphysics alone cannot do the job and has more often than not created obstacles for convergence in producing an array of merely abstract philosophical systems with universalizing pretensions that create supposedly superior forms of conceiving morality. When seen as moral sentiments, both compassion as universal love and trust in strangers are based in appreciating others—even others whom we may not know, will not meet, and could not possibly come across. Trust is a dense concept that has stimulated a wealth of definitions both in philosophy and in research in the social sciences; however, here I will concentrate on exploring a conception of trust that views it as a moral sentiment. This position contrasts with the rational choice one that sees trust as a phenomenon based on strategic, individualistic, and self-interested considerations. While the latter are important in trying to explain our economic behavior, I argue that trust in strangers has moral qualities that are analogous to compassion as universal love. This is related



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to concern with how individuals develop the emotional capability of caring for distant others while growing up (together with the cognitive capability of producing universalizable principles for moral behavior). Trust in strangers is necessary as a vehicle for mutual respect and conversation with people whom we do not know anything about; it evades domination because when one has the inclination to trust strangers one also has the inclination to appreciate them. In this conception of trust as a moral sentiment, the quality of life of others (even distant and different others) is regarded as being just as valuable as one’s own. In his The Moral Foundations of Trust (2002), Eric Uslaner unsuspectingly establishes a link between compassion and trust when he finds that people who tend to trust in strangers are also optimists and people willing to better their world. Uslaner analyzes a wide range of public opinion surveys in the United States and argues against the conventional wisdom that sustains that we establish trusting relationships only when we know a lot about the people with whom we establish them. Rather, he argues that people do trust strangers, place their faith in unknown others, and that this is a mechanism by which people interact with other people with whom they would not interact otherwise: “this is why [trust] helps us to solve larger problems, such as helping those who have less, both in the private and the public sphere, and in getting government to work better” (3). His position counters the classical economics or rational choice arguments about trust according to which people trust other people because they know them well and this trust can be easily broken when the relationship is betrayed. Uslaner challenges this by investigating the stability of trust as a value, because as such it ought to be stable over time. He finds that this attitude is not something that others earn from us; rather, it is something that we learn from our parents—just like we learn our values. Uslaner shows that “your trust depends upon how much your parents trusted others and, more generally, how nurturing your home environment was” (77). He does concede that faith in strangers also depends on experiences and ideas that people learn as adults, yet the most basic component to be able to trust strangers is based on values learned as children. This essentially means that our trusting capabilities are developed as we grow up. He finds


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impressive stability for most instances of trust, which “suggests that trust is an enduring value” (67). He thus challenges the rational choice definition of the concept of trust, which regards it as a mere strategy for social interaction based on self-interest. Rather, trust is one of the most complex and multilayered principles of social interaction. Russel Hardin (2002 and 2006) champions the rational choice position with his concept of trust as “encapsulated interest,” which, according to him, regulates interaction in modern society, made up of complex networks: Basically, we develop trust relations with those with whom we deal reciprocally. I do something for you because I trust you to reciprocate. And you do reciprocate—in large part because you want to maintain your relationship with me. Because you want to maintain that relationship, you have an interest in fulfilling my trust in you; you encapsulate my interest in your own. (Hardin 2006, 8; emphasis in the original)

Hardin also says that much discussion about trust is really dealing with perceived trustworthiness. While the latter perception is essential for modern social networks and interaction, as Hardin shows, this representation sidelines and ignores the more mysterious—and thus more interesting—aspects of trust when it is laid on perfect strangers. Uslaner tells us that there is a wide range of trusting behavior that simply does not fall under the rational choice type of definition. On the other hand, Hardin argues against the use of surveys to find out about trust because people don’t have a clear idea of what trust is and thus an answer to the question if “most people can be trusted” elicits answers that refer to different conceptions of what people imagine it is.5 However, this position basically means that if people cannot articulate a consistent definition for what they do (or represent their deed), they don’t really know what they’re doing. Trust is such a dense, complex concept that one would intuitionally concede that Hardin has a point, yet people may be unable to provide an accurate definition of trust (after all, the academic community has failed to do so thus far) but they know when they trust others or not. In other words, people do



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not need a definition of trust to know when they actually do it, when they place their faith in unknown others. In order to evade these definitional problems Uslaner speaks of two types of trust: Putting faith in strangers is moralistic trust. Having confidence in people you know is strategic trust. The latter depends on our experiences, the former does not. Trust in strangers is largely based upon an optimistic view of the world and a sense that we can make it better (Uslaner 2002, 4). Strategic trust leads to particularized trust, or trusting only those who one knows well and with whom one has established trusting reciprocal relationships. Moralistic trust leads to generalized trust, that is, to trusting people even when we have no sign or indication that they are trustworthy. This latter kind of trust signals more an attitude toward life, a worldview learnt from childhood than a strategy to deal with social (economic) interaction. As I have mentioned before, Uslaner (2002) found that the generalized trust attitude is stable over time, and also that it is based on an optimistic outlook on life. He describes optimism as consisting of four components: a sense of personal well-being, of a supportive community, the view that the future will be better than the past, and most importantly to our present discussion, the belief that we can act to make our environment better. People with an optimistic outlook on life are more likely to trust others as well as to participate in charitable activities that will result in making their environment better for themselves as well as for everyone else. These theoretical considerations about trust make it akin to compassion also as a value or moral sentiment. In order to trust in strangers one must have a well-developed appreciation of others (even distant others) and hold them as important in our own scheme of things. According to Martha Nussbaum (2001) egotistic self-interest is the first step toward the emotion of compassion: the judgment of equal possibilities in suffering for all—including me. If individualistic self-interest were the sole source for moral compassionate behavior—as in the Smithsonian dictum of capitalism—the benevolence thus modeled would be tarnished by a Mandevillian type of warning about the relationship between “private vices and public goods”: our charity as a measure of our vanity. In this sense, Rawls’s individual under the veil of ignorance in his original position is cognitively displaced from


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carrying out Nussbaum’s second step toward genuine compassion. The first step is that of self-interest and similar possibilities (anyone, including me, can suffer greatly and undeservedly). The second step is what Nussbaum calls the eudemonistic judgment, one in which (distant) others become genuinely important in our own scheme of things and goals; and I argue that this judgment is ruled by the ideal of universal love. This is analogous to an emotional self-interest, because if we assume that the principle of universal love rules, it is in our own emotional advantage that others should lead happy and fulfilling lives. Yet this advantage is marked by the mystic moral awareness of perfect love: The self and the other are one and the same entity and thus what is in the advantage of the other is also in the advantage of me. This is the basis for trust that is engaged in appreciating strangers. Additionally, this value of trusting strangers also trusts in contingency. In the compassionate type of morality, the loving appreciation of others is extended unto the cosmos; not only to other human beings but also to everything else that there is—other sentient beings and also the natural environment where human beings live. This kind of morality based on universal love is not anthropocentric. In Nishitani’s (1982) near side transcendental reality of the eternal present, the here and now, self and universe ideally fuse in spiritual Enlightenment. Therefore, this type of view of reality trusts in contingency as fate. There is an awareness about evildoing in the world but trust in contingency arises from emptiness of self—individual, frail, and needy personal self, that is—and an empowering identification of self with the universe. This type of empowerment is used and abused in popular-culture representations of modern individual consciousness that has readily discovered spiritual Enlightenment but that sidelines its associated self lessness.6 Self less trust in fate produces an empowerment that is not individually self-absorbed; it is morally engaged in the present moment, aspiring to get a glimpse of the togetherness and one in anotherness of universal love. To be sure, bad experiences arise from being cognitively able to trust others and they may betray such trust. But as Uslaner (2002) confirms in his analysis of data, people do not abandon their attitude of trusting behavior after a couple of bad experiences. Their optimistic outlook toward life



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involves the sense that one can makes one’s environment better with one’s actions and also with one’s thoughts and emotions (after all, they are the creative part of our subjective being). And so a moralistic trust in strangers is not a passive expectation of good things in naive, benighted anticipation. It is based in a disciplined and emotional involvement in cooperating with one’s actions in creating a personal and a world environment of peace and loving care. A compassionate type morality that leads to trust in fate involves three things: a commitment to peace, a commitment to raise compassionate adults by means of one’s own example, and cooperation to make one’s environment and social context better. These commitments and behaviors involve constant emotional and moral involvement of the self in making others—even distant others—important in our own scheme of goals and ends. However, this is not simply an abstract cognitive capability of seeing human need in faraway places; need is right in front of us at all times. A true cosmopolitan attitude is vividly aware of the constant possibility of suffering everywhere, but also right there in our own immediate sphere of existence. The commitments mentioned earlier can be seen as affecting only local reality, but now I turn to a critique of individuality as conceived by Western liberalism that will disclose why these commitments have cosmopolitan consequences with respect to the natural environment and children.




CHAPTER 3

BEYOND THE REALM OF INDIVIDUALITY: NATURE AND CHILDREN

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s we have seen, abstract or Western liberalism has been criticized due to the universal pretensions of its philosophical principles. Most critiques, including this one, have done so by showing the way in which the basic liberal premise of universal individuality is nonetheless culturally and historically situated. However, in spite of these critiques, individuality remains a very useful abstract principle for public order and for the allocation of rights and duties. When speaking about justice, the principle of freedom entails that authorities have no power to impose arbitrarily on individuals; and equality has brought about an important sociological trend in liberal polities toward decreasing discrimination of people on any basis. My contention is that these efforts toward social change will remain marginal unless liberalism embraces the moral principle of compassion. The Western tradition of liberal thought has had a structural need to define individuality with contrastive definitions that have been classist, racist, and patriarchal. In the twenty-first century though, many liberal polities have developed legal frameworks to include, accommodate, and even compensate people who could be discriminated—or have been discriminated against in the past—due to assumptions of inferiority. I will discuss the limitations of such legal frameworks in the next chapter,1 which I see as abiding in the very structure of what


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I call Western liberal thought and the structural need that individuality has for othering people. This is related to how Western liberalism is based solely on a judgmental type of morality. In contrast to this, compassionate morality is structurally displaced from othering; it is in fact the discipline of seeing others as important to our own scheme of ends and goals—of extending ourselves toward others. Liberalism needs to integrate compassion as a moral principle when considering questions of justice in our society and in the world, my argument is that only then will it become genuinely cosmopolitan. In order for liberalism to integrate compassion as a moral principle, it is important to explore the structural sources of othering in the Western tradition of thought, which arise from fundamental definitions of who can enjoy freedom and is thus considered legitimately human. A less obvious type of othering in the structure of the Western liberal view of reality is how individuality, in order to define its own realm of existence, has to alienate itself both from the (nonrational) world of children on the one hand, and from the natural environment on the other. It is evident from the effects of climate change that the human species may pay dearly for the alienation of the natural environment. James Lovelock, the author of the Gaia hypothesis—which is today the basis for most climate science—warns in his latest book The Revenge of Gaia (2006) that there is nothing that can be done to prevent ecological catastrophe: No carbon offsetting of any dimension, or ethical living of any proportion will prevent this. Lovelock tells us that human beings should concentrate now on how to survive the coming catastrophe as a species. Although this is an extreme position on the subject, it illustrates the kind of danger that alienating nature and disregarding the effects of modern industrialization can bring to the human species. On the other hand, the alienation of childhood organizes the logic of colonialism: Childhood as the nonrational state of those in need of guardians. Colonialism was traditionally justified as such guardianship for non-civilized peoples, which led to violence, oppression, and exploitation. In the case of children though, and within the logic of individuality, the reason for them to need guardians—generally their parents—is that they have not acquired judgment yet to behave as individuals. However, only toward the


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second half of the twentieth century has attention been directed to the consequences of systematic violence in the guise of discipline for children, which before was seen as either necessary in the public school system or as a private matter. Nature and childhood are essential others to Western individuality and it is urgent that we decipher where this othering comes from. I will try to show in this chapter that othering is a structural problem of the historical conception of time, sequential and diachronic, moving, being spent, already past, and pinned onto the constant unfolding of the future. The alternative order of events in time that I have proposed to transform Western liberalism into cosmopolitan liberalism is synchronic time, which conceptualizes simultaneity as the source of a kind of togetherness and one-inanotherness that can encompass nature as well as human childhood. In order to produce a tale of belonging for the human species as a whole that leaves othering behind, such tale must also convey that the survival of the human species depends on the survival of all other species and the integrity of nature as well as on the quality of the process of raising human offspring. The problems of human difference that abstract liberalism claims to solve with the principle of individuality emerge from drawing too clear a line between the human world and the world of nature. This essential difference organizes the structure of discrimination: the world of individuals lies on one pole and that of nature (or of those defined as close to nature) on the other. Women, children, and “barbarians” have been readily placed by the Western liberal tradition of thought in the proximity of nature, and thus have been seen as essentially underdeveloped, or worse, inferior. As I have mentioned before, due to the principle of individual equality, a negotiation has been set off to include women and racialized others into the world of humanity; but nature itself and also children remain problematic elements in this negotiation. The reason for this is that children can only be considered as potential individuals and nature is the essential realm of otherness or the point at which the human world stops—there is no historical time in nature. This is the reason why I propose a different time frame to try and transform what has been considered as primordial otherness into essential components of the human world. The only time frame that allows


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for this is synchronicity and not that of history. History is essentially anthropocentric and produces a type of morality that can only be apprehended by rational and judgmental individuals. A compassionate type of morality, as I have discussed earlier, emerges from the realm of synchrony, the constant present time, and it is non-anthropocentric. This type of morality provides, from the synchronic perspective on time, the theoretical possibility to extend ourselves to all there is—human and nonhuman. The transformation of liberal individuality that I propose for a truly cosmopolitan liberalism must take this into account in order to construct imaginatively a story of belonging for the human species that will not alienate nature and childhood. In order to illustrate how the Western individualist structure of thought alienates nature, I engage with Darwin’s theory of evolution and the symbological structure that holds it together; and I also propose to consider an alternative position on the same phenomenon developed by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. In chapter one of this book I discussed the differences between synchrony (simultaneity) and diachrony (sequence) and said that the latter gives shape to the historical modern conception of the order of events in time while synchrony abides in the present. Here, I use the difference between synchrony and diachrony to be analogous with the difference between awareness of simultaneity and the experience of sequence either in natural events or in social ones. Darwin’s theory relies on the diachronic aspect of time, while the alternative perspective that Maturana and Varela propose is based on simultaneity, or the conceptual need for synchronicity in apprehending ongoing autopoiesis, organisms creating and re-creating themselves, or the “throbbing of all life.” My approach in this exercise is phenomenological because it relies on consciousness as the center of analysis, perception, and experience; and also because certain aspects of accepted reality in mainstream modern culture are bracketed and questioned (such as the constant advancement of science and technology or any notion of progress, including the economic one). No form of knowledge can escape the myths of its own cultural tradition, even when those myths may be useful in a practical way to give structure to our thoughts. This is the case of the Darwinian account of evolution,



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and more precisely, of the adaptationist school of Darwinian biology. It is important to stress though that with this exercise I am not putting into doubt the factuality of evolution. Under the light of evidence and in our modern cultural setting, Darwinian evolution is the most reasonable and reliable cosmological belief to hold about how it is that life enfolds on this world. Yet, the cosmology brought forth by Darwin is not without its mythical elements. The alternative perspective that I propose is an interpretation of Maturana and Varela’s theory based on simultaneity. Simultaneity renders this alternative view of life non-anthropocentric: According to Maturana and Varela, “to live is to know” and this means that all living organisms in this world—animals, plants, human beings, and any other living entity—share the gift of consciousness. Individuality, according to abstract liberals, is a characteristic of human beings, of adult human beings. However, when considering children, the Western liberal tradition of thought is at a loss of concepts to be able to include them in the human world; they are potential individuals, but they cannot be the bearers of rights in the same way as adults, because they cannot yet be allocated adult responsibilities. This is an aspect of liberalism that cannot be left behind because children in all human societies have to be trained to internalize the social and cultural world in which they are born and so they need guardians, or as I will refer to them in this chapter, caretakers. However, the problem with the liberal worldview is that its essential stress on the primacy of maturity as a principle of individual worth has traditionally alienated children and privatized them under the guidance of the pater familias in a similar way that this was done to women. But children, to a more pressing degree, have been regarded by this tradition as developmentally displaced from sharing the type of awareness of rational individuals. However, the one aspect that we can be confident adults share with children is the world of emotions; yet the Western liberal tradition of thought is extremely suspect of them. And judging from what this tradition considers as distinctly human—our rationality—it should be. In her Upheavals of Thought (2001), Martha Nussbaum shows that emotions are not exclusively human, animals also display emotions and so we share this aspect of consciousness with them. According to Nussbaum, “emotions always involve thought of an object


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combined with thought of the object’s salience or importance; in that sense, they always involve appraisal or evaluation” (23). We can say that the evaluative aspect of emotions in animals as well as in very young and adult human beings has to do with how embodied entities relate to the physical world within which they find themselves. According to Nussbaum, by cognitive she does “not mean to imply the presence of elaborate calculation, of computation, or even of ref lexive self-awareness” (ibid.). In this sense, she stresses that the evaluative aspect of emotion is cognitive- evaluative, not merely motivational—as Jürgen Habermas (1990b) would have it (see also Benhabib 1992, 178–202)—and it helps living organisms figure out how to survive in their environment. Here, I want to highlight that this cognitive aspect of emotions is connected or bootstrapped to the biology of living organisms and the knowledge that it produces is the kind that animals (as well as humans) need to survive in the world: The need to sustain life and beware of death—which need not be articulated in symbols, yet is present in animal behavior. I will resort again to the theory of autopoiesis to explain how this is the case. Specifically in human beings because of our evolutionary specialization on a complex nervous system, the relationship between children and their caretakers is critical for the very formation of the children’s idea of the shape of the world and sense of self through emotional cognition. I resort to the work of Humberto Maturana and the child psychologist Gerda Verden-Zöler to explore the importance of the relationship between children and their caretakers; which shows how human beings are hard-wired for developing care and cooperation for the survival of the species. The culture of individual autonomy downplays the relevance of a culture of care in human societies. What I want to get to is that animals, children, and adult humans all display emotional cognition and this means to stress that human beings can be regarded as animals of a certain species with its particular biological characteristics. A specific human characteristic is that we constantly create and inhabit a meaningful cultural order that is sustained in language and emotional involvement. Children develop a sense of self as they grow up in an emotional and imaginative involvement with the people that take care of them and their culture—which they



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also relate to in an imaginative and emotional manner. And so, child development is intimately related to caretakers and the culture of domestic life. It has been found by a wealth of research that the ethics of parenting ought to be based on a culture of care and cultivation of compassion to in turn be able to raise caring and compassionate adults. In their classical study The Altruistic Personality (1988) Samuel and Pearl Oliner discovered that people who put their own life in danger in rescuing Jews from the Nazis during World War II also enjoyed a nurturing childhood, where the style of parenting stayed away from violence and abuse. According to the logic of the Nuremberg trials, all human beings should have behaved like rescuers of Jews; but the Oliners found that only those with the experience of a nonviolent childhood had the inner strength to display humane behavior in such extreme circumstances. A strong stress on developing cultures of care where human offspring can thrive is lacking in the liberal tradition of thought and it has been shown that they are essential in sustaining human life in this world. The universality of the moral principle of compassion can be the stepping stone on which liberalism can embrace childhood—not only our own but that of others—as an integral aspect of our sense of self, a precondition of individuality. Darwin’s Natural Selection Darwinian cosmology is non-teleological; however, its structure was conceived under the shadow of the sacred symbol of spiritual transfiguration from darkness into light and within a framework of diachronic time or the sequential order of events in time. In the Darwinian story of evolution, human consciousness must emerge from mere animal consciousness. During Darwin’s time this idea was revolutionary in itself, yet it implied a transfiguration from the darkness of animalism to the light of human awareness; where this awakening was a matter of secular transformation or evolution. And so, Darwinian cosmology holds beyond doubt that gradually throughout evolution our species woke up to human consciousness, making it essentially different from all other species of animals. But the essence of this different consciousness is not easily


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grasped. It has been generally posed as the human capacity for intellect, language, and for making tools—homo sapiens and homo faber. But, as Tim Ingold (1986, 303–32) argues, these criteria are problematic when it comes to define a clear difference between the nonhuman and human animal kinds of consciousness. Distinctively, human beings do represent reality in a discursive way, but before their own representations become intellectual and before their ideas of reality give them a sense of mastery over nature; human naked consciousness—like that of a newly born baby—needs to produce for itself a coherent view of such environment (social and natural) in which she finds herself. The difference between human and nonhuman consciousness is better posed in that humans develop a system of beliefs in order to engage in interaction, either social or with the environment (Frye 1982; Maturana 1990). This is a characteristic of the human species: the constant creation of a sense of self, individual, spiritual, or collective; and it is basic to sustain our human biology. Humberto Maturana has proposed that human belief systems have an organic function, they are like surrogate “wombs” that receive human babies, which are born as embryos—completely vulnerable—and remain as such for the first nine months of life (Gould 1977, 72)2 and are vulnerable for as long as childhood lasts. I use metonymic language when referring to belief system or worldview as a protective womb, “shell,” or “cultural integument” (Frye 1982) for human life, because it is qualitatively different from any material kind of nonhuman animal protection. Its plasticity is such that it may be expanded to include experiences and perceptions that produce concepts such as infinity or universe. In the emotional cognition of environment and in the continual construction of ideas of reality in which humans interact among themselves, meaning and legitimacy are linked to each other; and therefore, symbols and beliefs converge to represent the view of reality’s sacred or ethical realm as posing the relevant or legitimate dimensions that produce our reality (even in the scientific discipline). And so, the relevant tales that we tell about reality have the very important organic function of sustaining human life in every different tradition of knowledge.



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In our scientific tradition, the Darwinian theory of evolution is the legitimate tale that explains life as we know it today; but as I have said before, it is not without its mythical assumptions like any other kind of knowledge. One such assumption or modern belief is a universe integrated in such a way by its Creator that it displays universal laws. Nevertheless, “[i]f Darwin needed to invoke a Creator it was only (as for Newton and Hutton) to set the ball rolling, after which He could leave His Creation to look after itself ” (Ingold 1986, 132). Tim Ingold reminds us that in his Origin of Species (1859), Darwin decidedly rejected teleology in nature. However, it can be deduced from Ingold’s discussion that at the same time as Darwin rejected a telos in nature, he saw it in culture. In Darwin’s less celebrated and Eurocentric work The Descent of Man (1871), a moral telos was situated in human history in the faculties of intellect and culture and he “was convinced that their improvement could be judged on an absolute scale, that natural selection would inevitably generate progress along this scale, and that this underlies a universal movement of mankind from savagery to civilization” (Ingold 1986, 51). Even if the terms of this movement have greatly changed in academic circles, to this day, the best explanations about the difference between the human animal and the nonhuman animal remain linked to culture and the intergenerational transmission of culture—even if there is still no consensus about the mechanisms of transmission (Ingold 1986, 1989; Sober 1993; Varela et al. 1991). Darwin separated his biology from his socio-anthropology in two books (Origin of Species and The Descent of Man); while the latter failed in giving him a name in sociology and anthropology, his biology remains today a founding theory that dominates any serious scientific discussion about the origins of life on earth. It is useful at this stage to consider the basic postulates of Classical Darwinism: 1. Evolution occurs as a gradual modification of organisms by descent; that is, there is reproduction with heredity. 2. This hereditary material constantly undergoes diversification (mutation, recombination).


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3. There is a central mechanism to explain how these modifications occur: the mechanism of natural selection. This mechanism operates by picking the designs (phenotypes) that cope with the current environment most efficiently. (Varela et al. 1991, 185; my emphasis)

The scientific and measurable principle of natural selection substituted the archaic idea of a sacred cosmic telos of creation; yet even though the principle depends on diversification that feeds on variability and chance, its essence remains linked to the theistic idea of an “invisible hand” doing the selection. According to Hodgson (1993), the dominant political economy of Darwin’s time in general, and Adam Smith in particular, inf luenced him in the elaboration of a principle of order that emerged spontaneously from chance and diversity: “Essentially Smith and the Scottish School gave Darwin the idea of order and regularity being based on a chaotic multitude of individual units, and emerging without common intention or conscious design” (58). So this mechanism is not, in Darwinian terms, a divine involvement in the selection of fit organisms. Herbert Spencer was the one who came up with the slogan “survival of the fittest,” not Darwin (Waters 1986). After the first edition of the Origin of Species had been published in 1866 Darwin’s friend Alfred Russel Wallace persuaded him to use Spencer’s phrase in key parts of the work, rather than “natural selection.” “The word ‘selection,’ ” Wallace argued, “implied the existence of an agent doing the selecting, and some could take this agent to be God” (Hodgson 1993, 81–2). It was only through the replacement of this kind of involvement for a mechanical principle that the study of life could be withdrawn from the realm of Creation and be studied systematically by the scientific method. The term evolution was popularized by Herbert Spencer and not by Darwin. According to Ingold, in 1857, Herbert Spencer published an article entitled: “Progress: Its Law and Cause,” where progress is seen as an organic law that rules all nature: With one sweep of his cosmic pen, everything from the earth through all forms of life to man and human society was brought within the scope of a single principle of epigenetic development, as applicable in astronomy and geology as in biology, psychology and



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sociology. Shortly after the appearance of this article, Spencer decided to substitute “evolution” for “progress” on the grounds that the latter entailed too anthropocentric a vision. His celebrated definition of evolution, appearing in First Principles (1892), ran as follows: “Evolution is definable as a change from incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and dissipation of matter.” The grandeur of this conception captured the Victorian imagination. Before long, Spencer had a considerable following, and evolution had become a catchword. It still is, yet Spencer and his voluminous works are today all but forgotten. (Ingold 1986, 4)

His works on biology are forgotten mostly because his teleological theory of evolution lacks an adequate explanation of the evolutionary process and its transmission mechanisms, and is described as a matter of dogma (Hodgson 1993, 92). But it can also be argued, following Ingold, that Spencer’s view of the universe was too unified along a cosmic telos for science to embrace it legitimately. Spencer did not have the good sense to separate his biology from his social sciences as Darwin did. Nevertheless, he was giving expression to the belief of his times, and the kind of Victorian progressivism that he championed was also present in Darwin as a social scientist. It has been argued rather insistently that Darwin resisted the term evolution due to its teleological implications in nature. “Whatever the substance of these arguments,” says Hodgson (1993) after a brief consideration of their assumptions, “it is a fact that Darwin did not introduce the word until the sixth edition of the Origin of Species, and then only sparingly. Darwin preferred phrases like ‘descent with modification’ to ‘evolution’ ” (81). Besides the scientific need to displace the divine telos from nature, it can also be posed that Darwin’s resistance to the term evolution in Spencerian optimistic progressive tones might have been due both to the inf luence of Malthus’s Essay 3 and to his observation of conf lict and death as the source of indeterminate variability, which constitutes the basis for an infinite unfolding of life on earth with no limiting telos in nature. “Although the precise extent of Malthus’s inf luence is open to dispute,” says Hodgson (1993), “it is rash and relatively rare to ignore it entirely” (63).


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According to Hodgson, many of the interpreters of Darwin’s notebooks agree that Malthus provided him with a vivid picture of “crowding and struggle” as the motor of natural selection. Through this observable fact of nature, natural selection was not teleological; it was a principle of order that fed from chance. However it is important to consider what lay behind this mechanism because, as Hodgson puts it, there is much more to Malthus than a mere mechanism of the divergence between arithmetic and geometric series of reproduction of food and people; and the source of his sordid image of scarcity lies in his natural theology and his critique of the invisible hand ideas of equilibrium and harmony of the political economy of his day. According to Malthus’s natural theology, the loving and righteous God allowed the existence of suffering and constant struggle on earth in order for humanity to always strive for virtuosity: “the intended role of evil is to energize us for the struggle for good” (Hodgson 1993, 65). Without diversity and struggle there would be no force impelling God’s creation to constantly improve itself. Therefore, to Malthus, the idea of a progressive natural teleology was out of the question, and the laissez faire assumptions that the market forces should be left to themselves for an overall good was mere utopia: “for Malthus, neither self interest nor the invisible hand had unqualified virtue” (Hodgson 1993, 67). Death and suffering remained a natural feature of life; this natural evil that should be resisted was a divine test on Creation. Darwin’s cosmology takes into account both the contingent side of the transformation of life in struggle and death, and its ordered output in heredity, diversification, and natural selection. According to Hodgson (1993), Darwin’s scientific esteem reached a low ebb around 1900 mostly, it has been claimed, because a synthesis between the Mendelian mechanisms of genetic inheritance and Darwin’s theory was produced later in the 1930s (the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis) (281). It is relevant to consider once again that, at the beginning of the century, the popularity of Spencer’s progressivist alternative to Darwin’s unpopular view of life as struggle had been grounded on its agreement with the belief system of those times (which nevertheless today continues to be progressivist in many areas of social and political imagination; see Trigger 1998). But Spencer’s most enduring contributions to science



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in general and to social science in particular are his views on what may be identified with the modern idea of progress in society, which he called evolution. To Spencer, “evolution meant a tendency toward increasing specialization and differentiation, combined with sufficient functional integration to ensure the coherence of the system” (Hodgson 1993, 83). Spencer lost all repute as a biologist with the creation of the modern neo-Darwinian syntheses of evolutionary biology, even if he remained inf luential in the social sciences, as can be seen, for example, in the current use of the term “complexity” as applied to large modern organizations (see Czarniawska-Joerges 1992; Morgan 1986; Perrow 1979). From the perspective of legitimacy, however, the superiority of Darwin’s theory over that of Spencer about the evolution of life lies on their different cosmology. Darwin’s theory achieves a better separation of the scientific endeavor (legitimated by the scientific ethos) from the Christian view of reality. Spencer’s symbolism about nature remains too clearly linked to Christian symbolism, where a preplanned perfection of nature and society as the objective of progress is known by the Creator from the beginning of times. This, theoretically, leads progress to an eventual standstill; and while this has been admissible in theories of future political harmony in the social sciences,4 in nature, this kind of teleology is not sustained by empirical grounds. This difference can be seen as linked to the idea that, in modernity, humanity is considered as the producer of its own social order, while nature is characterized by the absence of history and moral values. History and moral values are human—or legitimate realms of social reality for modern culture—and take place only in diachronic human-historical time. This is the way in which Darwin separated his sociology from his biology: His cosmology subtracts nature from divine teleology by substituting telos in nature (knowledge of origin and destination) by a simultaneous awareness of, on the one hand mechanical principles of contingency (death, struggle, and variability) and on the other, principles of order (the survival of the fittest and natural selection). Maybe Darwin had a clearer scientific grasp of the need to separate the phenomenal domains of nature and society in order to pose a proper scientific natural non-teleological mechanism of transformation of life. But it is important to bear in mind that this


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division of phenomenal domains is based on a theoretical clear divide between humankind and the rest of nature. And even if it is clearly arbitrary to us to ascribe teleology to nature, the arbitrariness of separating humanity from nature is not always clearly seen in its full arbitrariness, mainly because it has been a legitimate separation in modern culture for a long time. From a synchronic perspective, Darwin’s view of time as a backdrop against which life enfolded (evolved) implied an explanation of how human beings emerged from animalism to civilized history. Civilized human beings are assumed to be conscious as an ontological principle for the scientific observer to exist. Many postcolonial critics have shown that in the writing of early modern history, a Judeo-Christian type of morality was used as a principle of differentiation from other human beings who were in the process of emerging from their primitive stage, which Europe regarded as its own past. Unfortunately, this principle of differentiation emerged at the same time as power relations in colonialism defined it. In Darwin’s nineteenth-century type of legitimate symbology, the changing social environment appeared to be naturally as it was observed (and therefore made) to be: It was only through the definition of the human other, the savage or the barbarian, that humanity could be reintegrated with nature, yet different from it in a hierarchical moral fashion. If we accept that in the twenty-first century the human underdeveloped other is no more a legitimate principle of differentiation, human consciousness reemerges as the most compelling of mysteries that we must explore in the synchronic present moment of experience. The present mystery of human consciousness can be placed in two distinctive dimensions of cosmology: It may be regarded as emerging in human species in the evolution of the world; but it can also be posed as a recurrent phenomenon in individual conscious lives of human beings, our birth, the development of the child into adulthood, and unavoidable death. Ontogeny is the development of a particular individual organism throughout its lifetime; and phylogeny is the ongoing evolutionary history of a population, which includes changes in its genetic pool (Hodgson 1993, 40). Phylogeny is also the descent from ancestry that takes life back to a common point of origin of all living organisms; any one species



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forms a branch in the lineage of the “tree of life” to which all living organisms belong. And so, the mystery of consciousness can be observed as emerging in human phylogenetic evolution (Darwinian cosmology), or as an ongoing phenomenon in present recurrent human ontogeny. Consciousness, then, involves the cosmological position of any human being with respect to the reality that she sees, or rather lives, and her social position in the community where she grows up: Her view of reality and her consciousness of self. In contrast to Darwin’s theory, Maturana and Varela’s theory of life (1997) and evolution opens up the possibility to consider humanness as a present embodied experience that we share with other members of the human species. And also, they pose this awareness of humanness while at the same time assuming that human beings share the gift of consciousness with other living organisms. This theoretical difference is based on the notions of time that are emphasized: Darwin’s theory is eminently diachronic while Maturana and Varela’s is couched in the synchronic temporal realm of what they call autopoiesis. The latter means that living organisms are engaged in a practically conscious production of themselves. They propose the term autopoiesis to name the mechanism through which living beings create themselves as systems autonomous from their environment: “The most striking feature of an autopoietic system is that it pulls itself up by its own bootstraps and becomes distinct from its environment through its own dynamics, in such a way that both things are inseparable” (46–7). This mechanism refers to a different perspective on the phenomenon of life, which involves consciousness of the autopoietic (or living) system in the business of self-creating. The mechanism involves an organizational closure of an organism with respect to its environment while it simultaneously keeps a structural coupling with it. Through this synchronic perspective, the notions of evolution or history—or of any other kind of human cosmological tale—are regarded as mere manifestations of the biological need of our species to live in myth or explanation. From this perspective, the difference between the human world and the nonhuman one (or the rest of the living beings on earth) is that the human species develops a belief system and relates to it, and to fellow human beings, through imaginative and emotional personal relationships. That is, human beings


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develop a belief system, as a “shelter” or “integument” of vast plasticity, within which to live as a species. As mentioned earlier, modern culture has crystallized the reality of this shelter to the extent to which it has become alienated from nature, and it holds an ontological divide between the human world and nature (the modern city is its most dramatic experience). This human need for stories, tales, or myths is the way our species lives in the world, how we draw a protective divide between us and nature, the integument of culture. It could be said that Darwin conceived his specific notion of secular evolution by postulating individual biological entities (assumed as already adult, i.e., being able to reproduce) and their contribution to the collective evolution of their species. Darwin set the model in motion through natural selection that fed from variability and chance fueled by reproduction and death. In his theory of evolution, he symbolized both the development of the individual organism (ontogeny) and the development of its species as a whole (phylogeny). It is useful to consider the concepts of ontogeny and phylogeny again in order to explain the distinctive contribution of Darwin’s account of evolution to how it is debated today. The difference between ontogeny and phylogeny is marked by reproduction and death, and this is the reason why Herbert Spencer’s view of evolution was a model based on the life and development of individual organisms, a mere kind of optimistic “ontogeny writ large” (Ingold 1986, 14). However, even if Darwin set the basis to differentiate between these two realms in the life of a species, his mechanisms for evolution relegated ontogeny merely to an organism’s reproduction and death. The bigger cosmological picture of phylogenetic evolution and the image of the tree of life (that assumes the common ancestry of all living entities) are the most relevant aspects of Darwin’s theory (Sober 1993, 7). But the mystery of ontogeny or how the individual lives of organisms affect evolution is downplayed in Darwin (Oyama 1985). Ontogeny and phylogeny are construed diachronically, even if nature is not regarded as historical in the human sense; and the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis organizes a deterministic role for the principle of natural selection that produces a cosmology that, while not teleological, cannot avoid being deterministic. This will be illustrated by the



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explanation of the Darwinian adaptationist perspective, which is a research program that Maturana and Varela—together with other biologists—criticize and oppose. Maturana and Varela’s Natural Drift In what follows, I attempt an explanation of the alternative ideas about evolution produced by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. They call evolution “natural drift,” which postulates the classical Darwinian continuity with our animal ancestors, but also a present organic continuity with, and dependence on, the natural world. The notion of natural drift embraces the idea of evolution but tempers its deterministic conclusions (most clearly expressed by the adaptationist program, based on the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis with Mendelian genetics). Rather, evolution as natural drift is posed as a stochastic complex process5; evolution “drifts” toward uncertain outcomes. The division between humanity and nature is displaced by the synchronic awareness of a division between system and environment, based on the subject-object divide as an epistemological principle. From this perspective, living organisms—embodied humans included—are organizationally closed to the environment but structurally coupled to it at the same time. This simultaneity is expressed by Maturana and Varela’s notion of autopoiesis that guides the idea of evolution as natural drift, but also the cognitive involvement of the living organism in its practical conscious business of maintaining itself alive. The account of evolution by Maturana and Varela differs from the Darwinian tradition in their perspective on time. It has been stressed that by producing a common evolutionary origin and a tree of life for all living organisms, Darwin put human beings and all other living organisms in the same family (Gould 1977, 50; Maturana and Varela 1987). He accepted strict organic continuity between our animal ancestors and human beings, but separated them again in the sociological and historical implications of the human ability to be moral—even if this morality was grounded in Darwin’s uncompromising philosophical materialism. Moral capacity is necessarily construed as something that emerged along the diachronic tale. In contrast to this, Maturana and Varela’s


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emphasis on synchrony dispenses with past progressive stages and concentrates on the problem of consciousness as it is lived presently, assuming an organic continuity with our animal ancestors, but also with the living organisms with which we share the earth right now. Any differences between human and nonhuman consciousness may be construed as distinct characteristics of our species and are liable to be studied as such. This transfers the symbological split between human and animal—mediated by moral or cultural capacity—to one in which human stands on the same temporal grounds as any other living organism, and the split is projected between the living entity and its environment. But this is not an alienating split; the organism is bootstrapped back to the environment through structural coupling. Maturana and Varela’s theoretical construction of evolution as natural drift is stochastic in that it does not pose an entirely random or deterministic path for evolution, displaying the essence of complex uncertainty. It has been observed by them—and by a number of other biologists who also resist the neo-Darwinian views on natural selection ( Jacob 1977; Stearns 1982)—that this “path” is more accurately situated somewhere in between deterministic laws and random drift (stochastic). The alternative posed by Maturana and Varela includes the biological-cognitive involvement of the autopoietic living entity in its ontogenetic development and its structural coupling with an environment that triggers changes in it. Maturana and Varela emphasize the synchronic and simultaneous essence of life. Darwinian natural history is relevant to the synchronic observer in order to explain how it is that the structural present came to be shaped, but a mechanical assumption along diachrony as to how evolutionary change takes place is seen by the two biologists as eminently deterministic. Their theory differs from the Darwinian tradition in its perspective on time, which emphasizes the cognitive involvement of the living autopoietic organism in its own ontogeny and development. In other words, while the Darwinian tradition stresses the observation of change in diachrony and holds this transformation through time as the essence of evolution, Maturana and Varela hold that this is a construction that is convenient to explain the “history of interactions” that led to the present structural actuality of the organism.6 But this history



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is only a construction for the sake of the observer; the essence of life is not its observed phylogenetic evolution but its present constant change. Nevertheless, Maturana and Varela’s account of evolution as natural drift remains faithful to the Darwinian basic nonteleological formulation and incorporates the explanatory principle of natural selection as portrayed in the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis. But this principle is regarded as only one of the factors that describes ongoing change in phylogenetic evolution among a number of other principles (mutation, migration, units of selection, random genetic drift, stasis, pleiotropy, genetic recombination) that should be considered in order to escape reductionist accounts of evolution (see Ingold 1989, 213; Sober 1993, 18–9; Varela et al. 1991, 188–93). The current discipline of biology is based on Darwinian nonteleological cosmology, which basically substituted creationist and teleological accounts. But it is important to stress at this point that modern (contemporary) evolutionary biology remains divided with respect to the role of Darwinian natural selection and its modern synthesis with genetics, which has become—at least to the adaptationist school—the single most important mechanism in explaining evolution. Maturana and Varela are engaged in a critique of the latter position mainly due to its deterministic implications about the phenomenon of life. [C]lassical Darwinism became neo-Darwinism during the 1930s as a result of the so-called modern synthesis between the Darwinian ideas based on zoology, botany, and systematics on the one hand and the rising knowledge in cellular and population genetics on the other. This synthesis established the basic view that modifications occur by small changes in organismic traits specified by heritable units, the genes. (Varela et al. 1991, 185–6)

Through natural selection, the fit survivors are seen to contribute to the gene pool of the observed phylogenetic development of a population in generational change. It could be said that the Darwinian paradigm suppressed grand teleological claims about nature by naturalizing teleology (Sober 1993, 83). What this means, according to Sober, is that adaptation is analyzed a posteriori as an effect of natural selection of advantageous traits in the ancestry of organisms. In other


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words, the telos is seen as the function of the observed trait, it is observed in the present adaptedness of fit organisms. Even if no grand teleological cosmic objective is posed, small local tendencies of optimizing fitness selections are assumed. This feature of evolutionary biology, together with the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis, very often produces a deterministic attitude in the convinced adaptationist biologists about the creativity inherent in natural selection. Adaptationism is then a kind of neo-Darwinism (congenial with socio-biology) that represents a thesis about the power of natural selection (119). It is not teleological because it speaks of fitness in terms of the fittest trait actually present in the observed population, and not the fittest of all the traits that we can imagine. But adaptationists adjudicate a creative force to natural selection that guarantees an optimizing natural trend in that the fittest observable trait will evolve; their models explain phenotypic traits through natural selection and all other nonselective important evolutionary processes are ignored (see discussion in Varela et al. 1991, 188–93). This is an extreme position that will serve to illustrate Maturana and Varela’s objections to the general attitude of unquestioned determinism inherent in the assumption that the genetic makeup and observed phenotype of an organism are the main vehicles of ontogenetic development and phylogenetic evolution. This view is also criticized by various other biologists7 in its most reductionist assumptions that tie phenotype to genotype through the “creativity” of natural selection, where this principle keeps an aura of autonomy that is accepted a priori in a similar fashion to the invisible hand of the Scottish Enlightenment in political economy. According to Maturana and Varela (1987), this view misrepresents Darwin’s celebrated non-teleological views on evolution: He [Darwin] states it was “as if ” there was a natural selection, comparable in its separating effect to the artificial selection that a farmer makes of the varieties that interest him. Darwin himself was very clear in pointing out that he never intended to use that word as anything other than an apt metaphor. But soon after, as the theory of evolution began to spread, the notion of “natural selection” came to be interpreted as a source of instructive interactions from the environment. (101)



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They consider the notion of selection as a metaphor or a productive mind exercise for the biologist (or interested scientist) who wants to understand the process of living; but not as an essential element of the process: “the whole body of changes that the observer sees as possible exist only in his mind, even though they are possible for different histories [of structural change]” (ibid.). Darwinian descent with modification is still part of Maturana and Varela’s theory of life, but it is essentially non-deterministic, as opposed to adaptationist accounts. Determinism still manages to apply to Darwin’s metaphor of natural selection in adaptationist accounts of evolution because it is construed as a creative agent, a mechanism that feeds from chance and death, but that is able to display intelligent behavior without being embodied by anything but the mystic corpus of a principle: It is commonly asserted by biologists of eminence and repute, that the truth of natural selection is now proven beyond any shadow of doubt, and that we can confidently expect the future of biology to consist of footnotes to The Origin of Species. Over the years these assertions have become increasingly strident and doctrinaire, as the thesis that Darwin modestly proposed to account for adaptive modification has been elevated into a total, all-embracing explanation for the phenomena of life. Alternatives that cannot be accommodated within the neo-Darwinian paradigm are consigned, along with creationism and other nonsense, to the waste-bin of what Dawkins calls “doomed rivals.” (Ingold 1989, 287)

However, there remain many unanswered questions that the paradigm does not address on the grounds that the future advance of scientific theory and technology will eventually answer all questions (Varela et al. 1991, 189). This reply is couched in the cosmological construal of modernity’s future as a “not yet” of progressive development: the cosmological importance of the advancement of science and technology in the modern world. Maturana and Varela (1987) suppress deterministic principles in their complex theory of life by postulating a stochastic mechanism of transformation. Changes are not “selected” in the general direction of optimization, but they move with life’s dynamism. As I mentioned earlier, their theory postulates that living organisms are


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organizationally closed to the environment in their constant autopoiesis and structurally coupled with it at the same time. This makes the element of randomness an aspect of coupling, and the element of structural determinism8 an aspect of closure—two aspects that act simultaneously and can only be separated artificially. [W]e have no unified picture of how the evolution of living beings occurs in all its aspects. There are many schools of thought that seriously question understanding evolution by natural selection; this view has prevailed in biology for more than sixty years. Whatever new ideas have been bruited about in terms of evolutive mechanisms, however, those ideas cannot discount the phenomenon of evolution. But they will free us from the popular view of evolution as a process in which there is an environmental world to which living beings adapt progressively, optimizing their use of it. What we propose here is that evolution occurs as a phenomenon of structural drift under ongoing phylogenic selection. In that phenomenon there is no progress or optimization of the use of the environment, but only conservation of adaptation and autopoiesis. It is a process in which organism and environment remain in a continuous structural coupling. (115; emphasis in the original)

In contrast to adaptationist diachronic accounts of phylogenetic evolution, living autopoietic systems preserve their integrity in organizational closure. The change of a system is determined by the structure of the system itself and not by the environment choosing anything naturally. However, being structurally coupled to the environment, random changes in the latter trigger changes in the organism that are nonetheless determined by its own structure. “To an observer,” says Mingers (1991), “it may appear that an event in the environment has brought about a structural change, but in reality, the structural change will have been concerned with maintaining autopoiesis” (320). That is, it will have come from within the structural possibilities of the living organism. From this perspective, the observer makes an artificial distinction between two independent organizations: the organism and the environment. These two organizations can be construed as independent only by an observer who separates them artificially, as they remain structurally coupled. Only through their actual unity can the organism keep its own internal dynamics and its autopoietic Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores


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integrity. This integrity depends on the organizational closure of the organism with respect to the environment, but the unity of environment and organism in autopoiesis depends in their keeping structural congruence, or the unity disintegrates. This congruence is not “instructive,” but it illustrates how the organism is simultaneously closed and coupled to the environment while there is autopoiesis: In the interactions between the living being and the environment within this structural congruence the perturbations of the environment do not determine what happens to the living being; rather, it is the structure of the living being that determines what change occurs in it. This interaction is not instructive, for it does not determine what its effects are going to be. Therefore we have used the expression “to trigger” an effect. In this way we refer to the fact that the changes that result from the interaction between the living being and its environment are brought about by the disturbing agent but determined by the structure of the disturbed system. The same holds true for the environment: the living being is a source of perturbations and not of instructions. (Maturana and Varela 1987, 95–6; emphasis in the original)

Structural coupling and autopoietic closure make chance and variability feasible in an analogous way to how the notions of competition (struggle) and death made it in Darwin’s theory. However, without the deterministic undertones of the neoDarwinian synthesis, they claim to favor a view that is more congenial with Darwin’s own non-teleological principle of descent with modification (see Maturana and Varela 1987). Both notions of autopoietic closure and structural coupling have consequences for the transgenerational level of interaction, that of phylogeny, where evolution leaves its marks. Heredity and variation are two corollaries of the sequential phenomena of reproduction and death, but also of the synchronic moment of reproduction through simultaneous autopoietic closure from, and structural coupling with, the environment and the parents. Those aspects of the initial structure of the new unity which we evaluate as identical to the original unity are called heredity; those aspects of the initial structure of the new unity which we evaluate as Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

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different from the original unity are called reproductive variation. For this reason, each new unity invariably begins its individual history with structural similarities and differences in respect to its forbears. (68; emphasis in the original)

Reproduction is described as a living unity that experiences a fracture that results in two unities of the same class: “In order for a fracture to result in reproduction, the structure of the unity must be organized in a distributed and non-compartmentalized way. Thus, the plane of fracture separates fragments with structures capable of embodying independently the same original organization” (61–2; emphasis in the original). The closure of autopoietic systems makes that the reproductive “fracture” between two organisms of the same class preserve organization during ontogeny while giving rise to structural variation through reproduction and death in phylogeny. Phylogenetic evolution or natural drift is described by Maturana and Varela (1987) as a longer history of interactions (constructed by the observer with respect to evidence) defined by death and reproduction. “A phylogeny is a succession of organic forms sequentially generated by reproductive relationships. The changes experienced throughout the phylogeny constitute phylogenetic or evolutionary change” (103–4). Phylogeny describes the most common and accepted (scientifically justified) speculation that explains how life started on earth through unicellularity.9 From the perspective of the observer, though, interaction, variation, heredity, and structural change is perceived as sequential in a diachronic temporal dimension that stops in death for the individual organism, but that goes on through reproduction for the species. But this sequentiality is necessarily artificial and constructed for the sake of the observer: Living beings (with and without a nervous system) [. . .] function always in their structural present. The past as a reference to interactions gone by and the future as a reference to interactions yet to come are valuable dimensions for us to communicate with each other as observers; however, they do not operate in the structural determinism of the organism at every moment. (124)



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This type of structural determinism is embodied by the organism’s structural actuality or “path dependencies,” it is an important realm of explanation for the observer to base her observations; but it is not congenial with the determinism of the adaptationist program: It is simultaneously structurally coupled to the environment and this illustrates an organism’s unavoidable existence within ongoing uncertainty. Structural determinism in Maturana and Varela’s theory is rather an illustration of how organisms keep their integrity in a closed autopoiesis that is coupled to the environment. Living organisms practically and consciously determine themselves through engaging in the natural business of keeping organically whole. This happens simultaneously in the ontogenies and co-ontogenies of living entities; and the disciplined observer positioned in a synchronic perspective should be existentially aware of her own practical involvement with the production of herself at this organic and biological level. According to the biological theory of autopoiesis, “to live is to know” (Maturana and Varela 1987, 174). This cognitive bottom line is meant to illustrate that living beings are structurally involved in the production of themselves with practical (spontaneous) intention, and human beings share this structure. That living beings have an organization, of course, is proper not only to them but also to everything we can analyze as a system. What is distinctive about them, however, is that their organization is such that their only product is themselves, with no separation between producer and product. The being and doing of an autopoietic unity are inseparable, and this is their specific mode of organization. (48–9)

Every system with organization that cannot be seen as organically created is distinctively an artificial human creation, an allopoietic system (a machine). By the same token, it is important to remember that everything that can be distinguished as a living system has received the projection of an in-built human ability to distinguish order. For example, a cat will have its cattish life independently of a human scientific observer identifying it as a living system or not. It is the observer who creates the representation with systemic


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characteristics; while at the same time the observer engages in the embodied practical enactment of a mutual co-determination between herself as the subject and her object of study. Maturana and Varela’s theory of evolution as natural drift leave behind the idea of an essential separation between the natural environment and the human world in portraying life as consciousness, thus highlighting the way in which human life is embedded in nature. The modern belief in the separation between the human and the natural world has become problematic. Scientific thought assumes methodological principles of domination and control over its object of analysis, even when the scientific discipline has started to question the human upper hand over the rest of the natural world. In contemporary green ethics, this has happened most notoriously in an evident critique construed as the destructive environmental consequences of intemperate technological control over nature. But also in political economy, methodologically, due to the growing margins of uncertainty observed in the global arenas of interaction (Giarini 1984). Twentieth century’s physical discoveries about the smallest known elements of matter (quantum physics) bear witness to a new convergence between human time and natural time—the one that Bergson described as real time (or durée) to stress its relevance for human beings, and that Darwin managed to separate from human time to the specializing advantage of biology. What this means is that the realm of morality and values is moving toward our relationship with the natural environment, observable in ubiquitous green living and the importance of global warming or climate change in our modern culture. About this, Gerard Delanty (1997) says: [N]ature has remerged as a new theme in natural and social sciences in recent years in response to the ecological crisis. Nature is increasingly being seen as a social construction. Social science can no longer suppose the objectivity of nature as an unchanging essence. In other words, the ontological distinction between humans and nature is breaking down. Both nature and society can no longer be conceived in terms of a model of time. (5)

This model entailed an ontological divide between animal time and human time. The representation of evolution as natural drift Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores


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proposed by Maturana and Varela is congenial with Darwin’s non-teleological one and is based on a synchronic model of time, which allows for animal time, and indeed the time of any living entity, to converge with human time. In this theory all living entities are seen as engaged in the organic production of themselves, and in so doing, they display an astounding degree of intelligence— especially the young. Emotional Cognition and Children Growing Up In this section I will resort again to the concept of autopoiesis in order to consider the aspect of emotional cognition in the production of persons. This is based on how Maturana and Verden-Zöler (1995) portray the essential role of love and play while children grow up, which leads to the all important role of the caretakers as attachment figures in this process and their ethical standing as they sustain and enable the children’s autopoiesis. It is important to stress that caretakers have not necessarily been found to be mothers, “[f ]athers as well as other adults—aunts, uncles, grandparents and even strangers—can become satisfactory attachment figures. Even friends can serve this purpose” (Oliner and Oliner 1988, 171). In the process of bringing children up, I hope to clarify how compassion ought to be a central moral principle with which to both approach children and their education. This universal moral principle will manifest itself in a wide array of diverse local ethics of care, which as Carol Gilligan has showed, should be given a central place in the imaginative and emotional production of persons. But Gilligan contends against the liberal universalisms of Kant, Kohlberg, and Habermas, and her discovery of an ethics of care is problematic in philosophy due to its particularistic essence. However, this essence is exactly what makes the ethics of care so important to the survival of our species. A culture of care is not only a central aspect of morality in an ideal way; as Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (2009) has shown, our ancestors’ abilities to create and engage in a culture of care and cooperation to bring up human offspring is central to explain how human beings evolved to be the sophisticated selves we are today. This is the reason why a fundamental emotional bond between the child and her caretakers ought to be considered as a realm of moral development into adulthood. It is Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

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important to contemplate how infants and children develop a distinct notion of self, how this is simultaneously related to their emotional involvement with this self, and also, how the role of the caretakers is involved at that level of intimacy in domestic interaction. This is the reason why emotional cognition ought to be central in figuring out how human beings become moral entities and has an essential connection with the domestic and particular ethics of care. The relation between these two notions can be posed in terms of how it is that children develop the ability to trust in the midst of a human group, which, as was discussed in chapter two following Eric Uslaner, remains as a value or even a tool for people to resort to during their moral lifetime. Barbara Misztal refers to Anthony Giddens’s (1990) notion of “basic trust,” “which illustrates how the development of trust in infancy determines the core of our ego identity” (Misztal 1996, 91). This brings about the psychological need of security that is based on the formation of trust in human relationships. In human interaction, from a present perspective, the experience of successful social coordination is based on trust, and even if we may refer to it in diachronic accounts of human life, its experiential substance lies in synchrony. Trust can be said to be developed organically within the most vulnerable situation of the human infant and can also be said to expand the circle of consciousness in the human self as she grows up. We can identify a trusting behavior in the present moment of experience, even if displayed by an animal. Newborn babies trust completely in a way in which only a human kind of environment allows them to; as I have discussed earlier, they are born from the organic womb into the “womb” of relationships and culture that allows the baby to produce a notion of self. The process of creation of this notion of self is far from safe in the same sense as a womb is to the fetus. The human infant faces both the hardship and the comfort of dependence at the same time: From the moment that it leaves the womb it is immersed in a psychological relationship with its environment and the people in it; if there are no people in its environment, the baby dies, its autopoiesis stops. Misztal also refers to a variation of trust in Giddens’s discussion; “elementary trust,” which can be seen as related to building security in the social environments outside the domestic realm. However, while



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one can see the difference between basic and elementary trust analytically (as in the difference between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft relationships), it is not clear just how these two realms of trust can separate in the ontogeny of living human beings. The difficulty of separating concepts in actual lived experience that can only be separated analytically lies at the center of the communitarian objection to separate the good and the right; and give the former to the private realm of interaction and the latter to the public one. From a synchronic perspective, we can argue that the production of either basic or elementary trust is related to the extended practice of an ethics of care that, on the one hand, is the biological environment necessary for the species to survive, and on the other is the initial approximation to human relationships and a meaningful ethical life. The caretaker is the one that embodies such ethics for the growing infant. I resort to Maturana and Verden-Zöler’s description of the role of an ethics of care in what they call human “conversations” that refer to the world of culture in which human beings abide. To them a culture of care is the basis to understand the biological relevance of how the child depends on an emotional involvement with her environment for her development. Here I argue that the ethical perspective of those who take care of children ought to be based primarily on a morality of compassion in order to produce decent adults who will be good citizens of their country as well as good citizens of the world. I will describe what this type of morality consists of in the last chapter of this book, but it is important to stress here that it is a morality lived in the form of an ongoing ethics of care, embodied in action and example; and not a mere ability to ref lect on abstract principles. Human autopoiesis is intimately entwined with the production of a culture of cooperation and care that eventually makes it possible for human beings to trust each other. Bringing children up entails the daily craft of trust within a culture of care, and this is carved in language and human action by imaginative and emotional involvement. The integument of culture that I have referred to before is like a protective sui generis substance or emanation of the daily business of human beings preserving their autopoiesis—the organic production of themselves. Maturana and Varela (1987) call this emanation the domain of “language and self-consciousness” (176)


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and they believe it takes place in the form of conversations. Autopoiesis is a term that contemplates all living entities as conscious and creative in experiential practical (spontaneous) intention—the production of themselves in an intelligent manner. This allows us to contemplate the human being at the same level of consciousness as any other living organism, because, as mentioned earlier, in this theory the mere act of living is also a cognitive act of knowing (“to live is to know”). This is a kind of embodied knowledge present in the synchronic theory about life that Maturana and Varela have produced: It is a description of how living beings are constituted that defies the traditional assumptions of biology. In this theory, even if they themselves do not formulate it in these terms, there is a symbological interplay of a dichotomy that describes the essential need of life to constantly move and constantly rest. In sequential diachronic time as movement, this is experienced as the unavoidable need of sleeping and waking, breathing in and out, living and dying; but in the perpetual present time—here and now—there is a world-overall living mixture of individual particular events that can only be seen as being constituted by discrete events in analytical description. The order of things that the authors of this theory want to describe is framed in a basic conceptual dichotomy of moving and resting, which points at two aspects of the same holistic phenomenon. In living organisms, their organization is permanent and stable, while structure is in constant movement. The organization of a living being is accompanied by its structure that engages in the constant dynamics of the processes that produce its integrity as a living entity. The simultaneity of life on earth is seen as sustained spontaneously with astounding intelligence by an immense variety of living organisms and a changing environment right now. The simplicity of the unitary cell allows us to identify its organization directly with the cellular wall that “contains” life, the boundary of the cell. However, in multicellular living beings organization is not simply a boundary, it is the form of the structural relations in constant change that makes it possible for observers to distinguish living entities and classify them as diverse species.10 I have already referred in the previous section of this chapter to how the integrity of these processes is sustained in living organisms as operationally closed



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systems; that is, their organization is closed to the environment, but their structure is coupled to it. We could still see them as “open” in that they do interact with the environment, but their closure entails that they can only do it in their own particular structural ways. This brings us back to the present moment of interaction and to the concept of ontogeny—the individual lifetime of single organisms—including human ontogeny. As I have explained in the previous section of this chapter, Maturana and Varela see the relevance of speaking about phylogenetic evolution to explain the emergence of different lineages of living beings and their history of structural drift (evolution), their path dependencies. But this is an explanation that is relevant to the observer; in ongoing living experience, phylogeny takes place at the same time as ontogeny. Ontogeny is currently taken to be as unimportant to biology as particular personal life-stories are unimportant to universal history. “The classical approach that is still alive in most textbooks,” says Varela (1991), “simply jumps from genes and gene frequencies to phenotypes and reproductively able organisms” (189). Much like in the contractual liberal tradition in political theory, the contracting individuals are seen as rational adult entities that surged like “mushrooms” (Hobbes [1651] 1948) from the soil and did not experience infancy or were not nurtured into adulthood. According to Sober (1993), the area of ontogeny or development poses various problems that remain unsolved in biology (22). As has been said before, Maturana and Varela’s theory addresses just this area by highlighting ontogeny instead of phylogeny. Susan Oyama (1985) also engages with the problem of the implied biological assumption according to which some development follows genetic rules and some does not, an assumption that “undergirds the opposition of biological to cultural processes, the mare’s nest of biological determinism and the whole nature-nurture complex” (11). According to this position, ontogeny, or the lifetime of individual organisms, is essential to understand how each organism comes to become what it becomes, which is not necessarily only encoded in genes or contained in the environment; it is constructed in developmental processes. In human ontogeny, the domain of language or selfconsciousness is important in a biological way to the survival of the


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species. When behavior symbolizes something other than itself, organisms “orient” each other’s behavior in co-ontogeny; this is what Maturana calls “languaging” that social animals (human and nonhuman) display. However, animals only language by means of physiologically determined traits or through common cognitive domains based on experience. Human beings use both of the latter domains of communication and coordination of behavior, but we also communicate by means of a separate domain of complex language as a characteristic of the species. And Maturana (1970, 1990, 1992) proposes that this is directly related to the way our nervous system works and its complexity (Maturana and Varela 1987; Sánchez-Flores 2005, chapter 3; and Varela et al. 1991), which is explained by the huge amount of neurons that lie between our brain and those that are directly connected to our senses and movement structure. In us, inter-neurons outnumber sensory/motor neurons by a factor of one hundred thousand (Mingers 1991, 322). According to Mingers: “The human brain is vastly more responsive to its own internal structures than it is to its sensory/effect surfaces” (325). These internal structures expand enormously the domains of possible behaviors for human beings, but they constitute relative relations between configurations of neuronal activity. What this means is that the complexity and plasticity of our nervous system make language possible, but the patterns of meaning and behavior themselves are not encoded in the system as if they were static representations of the world, like “pictures” or “engrams” (Varela et al. 1991). Language then is a product of human co-ontogeny originally based on physiological communication and a common domain of experience. In every individual, our communicative abilities eventually grow beyond our physiology and direct-experience cognitive grounds, toward interaction through the separate realm of language, which can be regarded as an autonomous domain of interaction. We can then language about imaginary behaviors that are supposed to be enacted, that may never be enacted, that were never enacted, or that cannot possibly be enacted; but we also definitely language through physiological and experiential common cognitive grounds. Language is part of the organic autopoiesis of human beings and is itself autopoietic in that linguistic symbols are self-referential, as Niklas



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Luhmann (1995) has proposed.11 According to Maturana, in the realm of simultaneity of embodied interaction, through language, cognition has no abstract content as a biological phenomenon. We create this content, as we see it embodied structurally by our physical involvement in interaction, or in what Varela et al. (1991) call “enaction.” However, to Maturana, this physical embodied involvement also unavoidably involves a psychology: The emotional standing of the human animal that interacts. The human animal is necessarily involved in an emotional manner with social behavior in order to enact it. In Maturana and Varela’s account of human life, imagination and emotions are not seen as a product of the brain itself, but of the dynamic and plastic structural coupling of the brain and nervous system with the social domain of interaction. Tim Ingold (1989) clarifies the link between embodiment and consciousness in the human domain by distinguishing between interactions and relationships: “To dissolve a relationship into its constituent interactions is to drain it of the very current of sociality that binds them as moments of a process, and that is of its essence. The creative unfolding of relationships, however, is also a becoming of the persons joined by it” (222). The human co-ontogeny that Maturana sees in language is emotionally sustained in what he calls conversations, which are analogous to Ingold’s relationships; and from an even wider perspective, are analogous to cultures or worldviews. Conversations, cultures, or worldviews are analogous with comprehensive conceptions of the good, which are tied to human practices that have specific standards, rules, values, and beliefs. The child relates to these through emotional cognition, and so the latter can be regarded as an essential aspect of the ethical training of children. Humberto Maturana and the psychologist Gerda Verden-Zöler explain the idea that worldviews, cultures, comprehensive conceptions, or what they call conversations, are sustained emotionally within human co-ontogeny in their book on child development Amor y juego (1995). Their ideas are congenial with Ingold’s view (1986) that persons exist as embodiments of relationships. From the perspective of the observer, they say that: [W]hat we see when we distinguish emotions in us and in other animals are domains of actions, classes of behaviors, and in our living


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we f low from one domain of action to another in a continual emotioning that is entwined with our languaging. To this entwining of languaging and emotioning we call conversing and we hold that all human life takes place in networks of conversations. (Maturana and Verden-Zöler 1995, 9; my translation12)

This representation of the biological function of human language supports the view that only in abstraction can individuals be seen as readymade entities that interact through the impulsion of their separate natures. On the basis of this theory, the liberal idea of individuality breaks down in considering human beings as members of a species that must develop organically within networks of emotioning and languaging, or within psychological relationships. As Ingold (1989) puts it, “[w]e rather start with social life, as progressive ‘building up’ of relationships into the structures of consciousness. This ‘building up’ . . . is equivalent to the generation of persons” (222; emphasis in the original). According to Maturana and Verden-Zöler, the first stage in human development and ontogeny is dominated by spontaneity in play, while the child grows up. In order to highlight the spontaneous side of growing up, Maturana and Verden-Zöler heavily criticize the instrumentality of modern discipline and its detrimental consequences for the self-respect of growing child; and they argue for letting children live in the full spontaneity of play. While I can see the point of their critique of instrumentality and the stress-related problems of modern society’s extreme functionalism, a purely spontaneous infancy and childhood could hardly be regarded as human at all. Infancy and childhood are elementary aspects of human development that I consider here as only mostly spontaneous during infancy because the disciplinary side of social interaction is already present in the background from birth, and is also an aspect of human ontogeny. The caretakers are the prime sources of such disciplinary background, and their role is entwined with the ontogeny of the growing child. During our early ontogeny, emotions are the essential evaluative tool that children have to develop their rational capabilities. As Nussbaum (2001) reminds us “[e]motions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are



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parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself ” (3). Our early ontogeny, as part of our history of interactions, shapes spontaneously the initial practical production of ourselves with respect to the world in which we live; but the relevant discipline(s) in the culture where one grows up are also taught during ontogeny, and what is learnt transcends the family circle. In her Maternal Thinking (1990), Sarah Ruddick approaches the world of the caretaker and her specific mind set as she provides an environment where she raises and nurtures children. Ruddick insists in using vocabulary that refers to this activity as maternal, because she wants to recognize that throughout history and cultures—even today mainly—it has been women who have taken care of children. According to her, bringing children up has generally been a feminine practice and occupied feminine imagination; gender has not been transcended (and to act as if it has is dangerous in her view); and the practice she refers to should not be confused with tending to the sick or the elderly (45–7). Nevertheless, in spite of her insistence on referring to parenting or caretaking as “mothering,” I would rather use words that are not gendered, as it is in fact irrelevant to the growing up of the child whether this work is done by men or women. It is sufficient to say that it is an essential aspect in the production of ethical adults. Ruddick refers, however, to three demands of mothering, or of taking care of children: preservation, growth, and social acceptability. I mention them in order to highlight the requirements of the specific kind of work that taking care of children implies, which is imposed both by the natural and social environments of the child and her caretaker(s). The first two are interdependent in that nurturing the emotional and intellectual growth of children supplements the basic one of preservation. The third demand is made—not by the child or her needs—but by the human group that the caretaker belongs to. The demand of social acceptability makes it important for the caretaker to train the child within the rules (formal, informal, and subtle) of the society where this growing child as a person will live. The three demands of taking care of children are essentially connected to the creation of persons and relationships, and of ethical education. This is where the basic elements are taught of how it is appropriate


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and ethical to behave in a specific social group. But also, this is where the need of a compassionate practice of parenting must be stressed for the creation of fully functional cosmopolitan citizens. According to Maturana and Verden-Zöler, in order for the child to become socially competent, she must develop the capacity to relate to the world emotionally. The spontaneity of growing up is linked to the simultaneous structural coupling and autopoietic closure of the nervous system with respect to the rest of our embodiment. This brings us back to the mechanisms through which human beings engage in the business of “bringing forth” their world in ontogeny. While the child gets to know the world, she must simultaneously create and expand her own psychic space that enables her to relate emotionally to people, things, and to ideas or ideals. According to Maturana and Verden-Zöler (1995): In this process the boy or girl learns the emotioning and the fundamental relational dynamics which will constitute the relational space that he or she will generate in their living, that is, what he or she will do, hear, smell, touch, see, think, fear, want, and reject, as obvious aspects of individual and social living as a member of a family and a culture. (10; my translation13)

Maturana and Verden-Zöler argue that the basic emotional set of references is built as a relational space in the intimate life of the infant’s bodily contact with the caretaker. They believe that this intimacy is related to the bodily rhythms that the fetus is used to during the time of pregnancy. To them, intimacy is an innate side of being human that springs in complete trust and acceptance of the natural relationship between the child and its parents or caretakers: the people who feed, caress, rock, speak, lull, and put the baby to sleep. As has been explained, according to Maturana and Varela’s theory of life, human embodiment lives in a continuous transformation of its structure, which is determined by past interactions of this present structure, but which is contingent to its coupling with the environment. As observers, we can speak of its history of transformation that takes place in ontogeny from its embodied point of origin: The undifferentiated stage of unicellularity in the epigenesis



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of the fetus. Verden-Zöler uses this notion to illustrate how the infant’s consciousness is in a similar state of undifferentiated awareness at the moment of being born; and how, in the spontaneity of play, she begins an analogous process of differentiation that will enable her to develop her full conscious human potentiality. And yet, this differentiation is complemented by the balancing side of unification that brings the child back to her own intimate relationships; to whoever takes care of her, who will train this child in the particularities of an ethical life through protective love. This kind of practice must be embodied in concrete relationships and is displaced from being conceived in abstraction; as it happens, it is enacted through a languaging of the kind that we share with nonhuman animals in spontaneous physiological and experienced common cognitive grounds, in touch, gestures, and the fulfillment of primary needs, not only physiological, but also—and most importantly to the ulterior conservation of autopoiesis—emotional needs. Maturana and Verden-Zöler propose that human consciousness arises from bodily rhythms and the f low of the sensory-motor configurations of coordinations in the close bodily contact that the child must undergo with whoever raises her during her infancy, but also during childhood in spontaneous play with adults and other children. Similarly, Ruddick’s maternal thinking (1990) gives an important role to spontaneous play: Soon children’s bodily lives reveal elaborate, imaginative play. Genitals, limbs, toes, and fingers may acquire distinctive personalities and names . . . Mothers in turn, respond to these bodies, cleaning, feeding, soothing, exciting, doting. Neither children nor their mothers could distinguish in their bodily lives between rich elaborate mental play and the “merely physical.” (206)

Play and a close emotional relationship with caretakers allows for the development of such sensory-motor configurations. According to Maturana and Verden-Zöler’s research (1995), they are simple and basic rhythmic abilities of balancing in order to produce symmetry and movements of equilibrium about a central point. These movements arise in the child “as a process of orientation and spontaneous bodily handling in the freedom of play” (94; my translation14).


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Maturana and Verden-Zöler consider that before language, in human ontogeny, the child must develop the cognitive configurations of sensory-motor coordinations that will enable her to distinguish practically her own embodiment from other similar embodiments that surround her. The biological role of discursivity in this context would be to help the child locate her own embodied presence within the ongoing conversation, culture, or comprehensive conception that she is born into, and also to sustain her own sense of self, and this is a social activity. Ruddick (1990) supports this idea: As children try on shifting identities, their ability to create a self is inextricably and often painfully mixed with others’ ability to recognize the self they are creating. A “self,” however fixed and personal it may seem, is always in the process of being socially constituted” (92).

And the parent or caretaker is involved in reassuring this construction of self by means of attention, which can be excessive or poor but nonetheless there in the ethics of care that parenting entails. Maturana and Verden-Zöler (1995) say that when the baby is born it is only an embryonic possibility of consciousness and of ref lection about itself (102); for this consciousness of self to unfold, the infant must detach her first notion of self from the embodiment of the adult (or adults) who she uses as her initial points of reference in life. This is an embodied as well as a psychological detachment, when the child has managed to internalize or “construct” her surrounding world as coherent and operative sensory-motor correlations in her own autopoiesis: The child at this point in the process of growing up has already lived the sensory-motor experiences that are a pre-requisite of the constitution of human consciousness: Free movement in a social domain as a realm of spatio-temporal relations in the acceptance of herself and of others. (103; my translation15)

The result of this detachment is an imaginary world that the child uses as her first approach to reality. But this is not a picture-like



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imaginary world, it is a non-static approach made of structural dynamic correlations that allow the child to interact at the simplest level of social coordination, in constant structural transformation and expansion. This transformation and expansion is never finished in the individual ontogeny of the growing child, not even in adulthood. It is an aspect of her human autopoiesis and is contingent to her constant interactions and her coupling with her environment. At a particular point in ontogeny this imaginary world achieves a degree of stability that gives grounds for the child to orient herself and live in it as an organic individual. This stable imaginary world is part of the child’s inner mind or an initial sense of reality in ontogeny, which according to Maturana and Verden-Zöler, is one where the social space is essential and far more important than the physical space. In that inner mind, the child manages her domain of relationships with entities that appear to be permanent and separable from the child, who the child imagines in emotional and experiential correlations. “In other words,” say Maturana and Verden-Zöler, “the child has become able to see in its mind the Gestalt (configuration) of human life as its own life in the cyclical movement of advancement and regress that space and time constitute” (ibid.; my translation16). But just as the age of the child when this happens is particular to the person’s ontogeny, also this configuration or Gestalt is particular to the conversation or comprehensive conception of reality where the child is born and grows up; always within the structural possibilities of human embodiment. At the point in human ontogeny when one becomes an adult, the wider realms of interaction become relevant for the growing person who determines and is determined by them. This is because this person, in every case, had to be a child and grow up in a particular culture and discipline. As we grow up, we realize that the conversations we hold can be brought outside the domain of family life to wider realms of interaction. In those realms, the group might be related by kin, but it can also be related by the (relevant) stories of interactions and history that produce collective identity and ideas of reality. These may be expanded to become vast planetary imaginary realms of correlations that human life sustains and creates and that end up creating and sustaining human


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life back—as in global interaction. Language is an important aspect of them; but so are culture and belief systems such as comprehensive conceptions of the good. Living in society implies some form of learnt discipline that is not organically produced and yet is based on the organic integrity of people. In order to preserve this integrity there are basic ethics of care that are never detached from the cultural milieu of the caretaker, and this is a constant practice all over the world as long as there are children to be taken care of. Ethical parenting then can be defined as a personal commitment to create a space of peace and safety where children can grow up into adults. In this endeavor, according to Ruddick (1990): [F]eelings are at best complex but sturdy instruments of work quite unlike the simple and separate hates, fears that are usually put aside in philosophical analysis . . . In protective love . . . feelings demand ref lection, which is in turn tested by action, which is in turn tested by the feelings it provokes, [but] protective love can never be reduced to the sum of its feelings . . . [Parenting] is an activity governed by a commitment that perseveres through feeling and structures the activity. (70; emphasis in the original)

The ethical orientation of care is then manifested in action and example in the process of parenting children into adulthood. Carol Gilligan (1982; Gilligan et al. 1989) has argued that an ethics of care is a legitimate orientation in the moral life of persons. Her work critically questions Lawrence Kohlberg’s claims of universality in his model of human moral development—based on Kantian metaphysics. Kohlberg’s highest point of moral development basically enshrines the abstract ability to universalize principles that rule human action. However, it is counterintuitive to conceive of such capacity for abstraction as the sole basis for moral principles. When Ruddick refers to the type of thought that those who take care of children display, one can get a hint of the pragmatic complexity that an ethics of care entails. When discussing about Kohlberg’s moral dilemmas in his research, Ruddick (1990) refers to abstraction as a partial source of knowledge in the forms of reasoning that parenting entails; because abstraction is a tool to simplify complexity, but the concreteness of parenting “requires



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inventing alternatives even when there seems to be none” (95). The realm of domestic life gives children their initial emotional abilities to engage in a pressing manner to their comprehensive conception(s) of good and self. Both moral reason and comprehensive conceptions are taught to children through conventional ethics, local and particular, which are always a bridge between experience and ideal ethical authority in society. An ethics of care then is an essential ethical orientation in the life of human beings and the role of parenting in the creation of persons strongly determines the kind of person the child will become: whether her personality will in turn be caring and nurturing or whether she will perceive the world as simply beyond her concern. In chapter two of this book I introduced Eric Uslaner’s findings about moralistic and strategic trust, the former referring to the ability to trust strangers that individuals brought up in caring and nurturing environments display, and the latter the kind of trust that we give to people and entities that we know well. The compassionate type of morality that I propose to complement the Western liberal judgmental type can be seen as an achievement of a specific parenting style. According to Peter Prontzos (2009), two poles have been identified that define the different styles of parenting in North America: The first is that of the “Strict Father” model, which is associated with a more rigid, individualistic, authoritarian, patriarchal, and conservative type of moral code. The Strict Father model celebrates traditional family structures and authority, and the father has primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family, as well as the authority to set strict rules for children, and to enforce the rules. The “Nurturant Parent” model, on the other hand, tends to produce children who are less rigid, more socially-minded, and who do not base morality on obedience. This model, although it has some aims in common with the Strict Father approach (such as selfdiscipline), has a different style and different priorities. (14–15)

I can imagine that in the rest of the world, one would find many more different poles or styles of parenting. However, what makes the difference in bringing up compassionate persons is the


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management of anger and violence over children in the domestic realm. As Prontzos reminds us; When children get what they need, they naturally develop into caring and feeling human beings . . . When babies and children do not get their basic needs met and they are sufficiently traumatized, for example, by emotional neglect, or physical abuse, or continuous criticism, (there is often more than one problem), the attachment process is disrupted and they cannot develop in an emotionally healthy fashion. (18)

The foundations of cosmopolitan liberalism are situated then at this level of human action; at the stage of bringing up compassionate persons who can embrace the tale of belonging to the human species and to the planet earth. In the present global arena of interaction, it is important to regard the ontological divide between humanity and nature as a useful fiction, an artifice for scientific observation, while simultaneously regarding childhood as an integral aspect of our extended individual selves. This brings me again to the potential in synchronic time for a different perspective on human morality. To be sure, the universal type of morality put forward by the Western liberal tradition of thought ought to preserve its anthropocentric focus: The judgmental aspect of our morality in the sense of history and the judgment of human deeds. However, the synchronic order of events in time helps us keep a mindful awareness about myth in our assumptions of childhood as a state of non-consciousness and of our essential separation from nature qua human beings. We are, after all, also an animal species and the synchronic perspective on time allows us to see the importance to ourselves of all other beings on earth as well as the harmony of ecosystems; and of regarding children and indeed all life on earth as conscious. I propose to consider our capacity for imagining an ability to feel universal love—even if only as a mind experiment—in order to establish an ideal that will complement the ideal of using the Kantian categorical imperative—being able to live according to universalizable maxims—as the expanded basis for moral decisions. I believe that both the freedom of creative imagination in pursuing universal



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moral principles and a synchronic openness of the heart in the simultaneity of compassion for all living beings are needed in the definition of a moral realm that is displaced from engaging in the business of othering. In order to achieve this in the legal, economic, and governmental structures of authority around the world, liberalism has yet to expand its conception of individuality beyond its anthropocentric confines—only thus will nature and childhood gain the central place they ought to occupy in moral ref lection and practices.




CHAPTER 4

HUMAN DIFFERENCE AND THE MULTICULTURAL DILEMMA

I

n the previous chapter, I referred to an alienated natural environment as the essential source of the habit of othering in the Western liberal tradition—the attitude through which it secures its own superior identity by looking down on a supposedly noncivilized, nonindividual other. This latter entity, the other, represents the childhood of the Western individual and rational self; this entity is seen as standing at a level of moral development that is closer to nature, from which the self emerges in its full primitivity. Nonwhite peoples (and also women and children) were seen as lagging behind the occidental identity and its civilized superiority; and would be deemed as “peoples without history,” primitive, even barbarian, and marked as such. The powerful figure of the “universal” individual in Western imagery is not racialized, nor gendered, nor othered—and is associated with white, male, rich people. We may think that we have left this story of supremacy behind in our cosmopolitanism, but it is still with us in the structure of our universalist liberal thought. Uncivilized peoples have been construed as different using markers that can be racial, physical, geographic, ethnic, gendered, deviant, or ideological; and I argue that even when such markers have been transformed today to be given politically correct names, our awareness of them continues to construct human difference. This difference lies at the root of the


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current limitations of abstract liberalism to serve as a philosophical basis for cosmopolitanism. Another important way to organize difference in liberalism is based on the definition of the abstract dichotomy individuality/human group. In demanding attention to the importance of human groups, the communitarian critics of abstract liberalism inherit liberalism’s own limitations. On the abstract liberal hand, the modern individual is construed as an essentially independent entity—a chimera given the actual neediness of people (epitomized by that of infants). On the communitarian hand, group identities are seen as nonporous, monolithic human spaces that rule people’s ethics and views of reality—another illusion as sociologists and anthropologists know that human identity is more complex and diversified than this. In order to illustrate the limitations of what I call Western liberalism (to differentiate it from cosmopolitan liberalism), I will resort to the theory of liberal multiculturalism whose champion is Will Kymlicka.1 His theory of multiculturalism emerges from the abstract liberal side of the debate in order to try to mediate between the two opposed positions in the contemporary debate: individualists and communitarians. I will argue that the multicultural dilemma comes from the problems related to, on the one hand, espousing the dichotomy group/ individual when looking at the complex phenomena of human identity and sense of belonging, and, on the other, the need of multiculturalism—especially as a policy—to resort to the use of racial markers on people to differentiate recipients of rights. As I have been arguing all through this book, human identity and sense of self ought to be expanded toward a compassionate acceptance of humanity as a species and of nature as our container; and this attitude locates itself beyond representations of self as either individual or collective and beyond physical markers on people. From his liberal position, Will Kymlicka supports the idea of rights for ethnocultural groups (within limits) to protect them from the dominant majority. However, he does not address the possible consequences of classifying people according to required criteria; the policy of multiculturalism construes people as belonging to clearly differentiated and discrete groups that ought to be the recipients of such rights. The problems of difference in a diverse society are complex and run through various levels of


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social interaction. In this chapter, I will concentrate on race as a required marker for rights of compensation and accommodation that people get under policies of multiculturalism; and the problems of classifying people that implementing these rights requires. Kymlicka also goes on about the success of the implementation of a Canadian multicultural policy since the 1970s due to a decrease in racism today; but he does not discuss alternative reasons for this to have happened. Kymlicka does not engage with the reasons why it is important to stress that policies of compensation be temporary (see Barry 2001) or with why it fails to address the underlying reasons of a structural relationship between poverty and race (see Smith 2007). This policy involves a “group-differentiated citizenship” (Kymlicka 1996) that allows the state to accommodate difference because, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, “accommodation of difference is the essence of true equality” (quoted by Kymlicka 1996, 153). However, in spite of embracing the need for group rights, Kymlicka’s individualist liberalism shows up in that he establishes the need to protect individuals from the arbitrariness that may come from either their own group or any other form of authority: Individual rights have priority over group rights for him. In spite of this Kymlicka recognizes that communitarian theory succeeded in showing that community matters in the creation of persons with moral depth; and so human groups ought to be protected from the homogenizing powers of universal individuality. Kymlicka’s multiculturalism conceives of group identities in the same way as communitarians do and thus concedes to their point that they are essential to us, so groups should get rights. According to Kymlicka (2002), an ideal multicultural society involves various cultures and lifestyles living together under the roof of a liberal polity in constant appreciation of each other and celebration of such diversity: Today [. . .] previously excluded groups are no longer willing to be silenced or marginalized, or to be defined as “deviant” simply because they differ in race, culture, gender, ability or sexual orientation from the so-called “normal” citizen. They demand a more inclusive conception of citizenship which recognizes (rather than stigmatizes) their identities, and which accommodates (rather than excludes) their differences. (327)


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The question here is how to move from exclusion and stigmatization of difference, through its recognition and accommodation, to its appreciation and celebration. I argue that to get to the latter both liberalism and cosmopolitanism need the principle of compassion and the ideal of universal love. The shortcomings of both the theory and the policy of multiculturalism come from simplifying the problems of difference in dealing with it as if difference came from clearly discrete nonporous groups and from individuals with very simplistic identities. I will complement my critique with an illustration of the complexity of racial difference, based on in-depth interviews with a small group of what I call “ethnic-looking, mixed-blood” people in British Colombia, Canada. This research will illustrate why liberal multicultural theory fails to provide an adequate answer to the problems of diversity: The oldest argument to say that liberalism in general fails to provide answers to the problems of difference refers to how, in its universalist reach, it ignores historical and structural inequality based on racial discrimination through color-blind policies. The communitarian critique is that individualist liberalism is based on the unrealistic conception of people as abstract autonomous individuals—unencumbered by duty, asocial, and thus, unreal. A newer argument supports the former and the latter, but also adds that both communitarianism and multiculturalism base their arguments on a simplistic and unrealistic conception of people’s allegiances and sense of belonging to inherited clear-cut groups and communities (Appiah 2006; Sen 2006). The communitarian point that individuality is not an abstract characteristic of humanity but a learnt set of behaviors, beliefs, and ways of life—it is modern culture protected by liberalism—is well taken. Nevertheless, their notion of closed off human groups as the sole source of our identity and cultural context is misleading at best. My research illustrates this, and it also shows that in the creation of identity by people who are attached to a strong sense of individuality, moral principles may arise from sources unsuspected by both individualist liberals and communitarians. In what follows, I will critically examine Will Kymlicka’s theory of liberal multiculturalism under the light of Canadian history and experience with its multicultural policy, which has been heavily criticized from a variety of perspectives.



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This critique is complemented by my conversations with a group of people who I consider as having an extreme experience of otherness: offspring from parents who belong to different races and ethnic backgrounds, who due to their mixed origins are denied complete membership to the groups where they come from. I narrate this type of experience for ethnic-looking mixed-blood people who grew up in Canada and parts of the United States and now live in the province of British Columbia. This group represents a diverse spectrum of physiologies that in almost any ethnic group are seen as other, as different, even to the groups in which they are supposed to belong by kin. The inner solutions for the construction of their own senses of self that they found in their situation of constantly being seen as other to the majority are very illuminating in an effort to move beyond difference. My research illustrates that a strong sense of individuality may be an inner solution due to rejection by groups, and that such individuality may be most empowered when it turns around and extends itself to others through the ideal of universal love and the moral principle of compassion. Will Kymlicka on Multiculturalism Will Kymlicka (1989) addresses the debate between liberal individualists and communitarians and tells us that both sides should move away from questions of what is the true nature of individuals and what is the importance of community, and should move to “more specific questions about the relationship between the state, society, and culture in liberal democracies” (165). He says both sides have lost sight of the legitimate concerns of the other side: Communitarians have not confronted the liberal worry that the authority and coercive means of state and society (community) may become tyrannical—and this is why the state should remain neutral. Liberals still take the existence of a diverse and tolerant culture for granted, as if it were a natural occurrence and not socially sustained. And yet he believes that much criticism of abstract liberalism—specifically John Rawls’s that is addressed here—rests on a misleading connection drawn between individualism and state neutrality (Kymlicka 1989). Communitarian critics contend that Rawls’s theory is too individualistic; it denies the need for a shared


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cultural structure that provides individuals with meaningful options. They believe that without the latter, the culture of pluralism will eventually die in favor of a mass culture of sameness. However, Kymlicka says this is not really a problem arising from posing a theory of justice that is too individualistic. If the culture of pluralism dies, this would be a social problem and society and its values ought to produce the cultural options to guarantee its traditions. He does not see why state neutrality precludes values from being produced socially when there is freedom of speech and assembly in liberal democracies. Here, Kymlicka resorts to Habermas and his deliberative liberalism, his idea that existing conceptions of the good ought to be evaluated critically for this is what free individuals do (176). He supports the liberal idea that individuals are very capable of rational judgment within a culture—and even against it. When the state is not neutral, it is easier that there be oppression of minorities. State action would distort free evaluation of competing ways of life, would rigidify the dominant ones, and would give an upper hand to political elites on the values of the polity. A theory of justice that defends individual rights does not deny the existence of society as a culturally alive entity, but he contends that the authority of society ought to remain in the societal domain and not in the state. And so, individual rights ought to be legitimately protected by the state. Nevertheless, Will Kymlicka also acknowledges the legitimate concerns of communitarianism about the importance of the groups to which people may belong. He also emphasizes the need for diversity to keep the vitality of a liberal society and the availability of cultural choices for its members. He adds an argument about the justice in providing such minorities with the means to perpetuate themselves and f lourish; and this amounts to public sanctioning of groups with rights. Brian Barry’s celebrated critique of multiculturalism Culture & Equality (2001) warns against the major problems of politicizing group identities. There is a very long history in the world of groups clashing with one another in violent ways due to such politization. To Barry and other liberals, the state should not encourage such differences, let alone sponsor them. This warning is also a major part of Jürgen Habermas’s refusal to accept without critical analysis the cultural value of what he calls world



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cosmologies. To him the horrors of the Holocaust took place in Germany due to the absence of such critical attitude toward the absolute value of an Aryan identity in detriment of the Jews. Kymlicka’s portrayal of multiculturalism does not even consider these warnings and seems to set them aside by proposing that universal human rights should hold public priority, but such rights should nonetheless be complemented by minority rights. His position remains on the liberal side because he insists that minority rights must be limited by individual freedom. What this means is that communities (or nonmodern world cosmologies) may demand privileges over their members that liberalism cannot accept because its main premise is that individuals ought to be free from arbitrary impositions. In his multicultural theory then, Kymlicka seeks to acknowledge the legitimate criticisms of communitarianism on abstract liberalism, yet he also seeks to preserve the priority of liberal principles with qualifications. Liberal societies ought to have a neutral state in principle, yet Kymlicka also points out that modern states have historically engaged in “nation building” activities, which include the production of a societal culture for national unity and functionality. This effectively means that the state will not be so neutral after all, there is a very realistic need for state-endorsed common principles embodied in common public institutions that operate in one common language (or a couple of them as in Canada). Yet, as has been mentioned, the wider majority in a country may try to impose its own values on minority groups, and this is what liberal multiculturalism seeks to avoid. Facing this reality, minorities that live within the borders of such state—and presumably hold different principles and speak different languages than the majority ones—ought to be given group rights to prevent being wiped out and oppressed by the majority. In short, as Kymlicka (2001) puts it, minority rights are consistent with liberalism if “(a) they protect the freedom of individuals within the group; and (b) they promote relations of equality (non-dominance) between groups” (23; see also Kymlicka 1995a, 1996, 1998). Kymlicka differentiates between two types of groups that may be protected under this scheme: national minorities who are previously self-governing, territorially concentrated cultures that wish


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to maintain themselves as distinct societies within a larger state or may even seek to create their own nation-state (such as Quebec, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Chechnya); and ethnic minorities whose source is immigration. The differentiation of these two groups is important because they seek different things and their existence comes as a consequence of different social and historical phenomena. National minorities exist due to colonization; these ethnocultural communities concentrated in a territory have been resilient to being assimilated into the larger dominant society and have managed to maintain their distinctiveness in spite of widespread attempts at assimilation. It is important to recall that rights came afterward, after long histories of struggles and violent confrontations—let us remember how terrorism first appeared in the political scenario of the Western world. When it was clear that national minorities were not going to disappear quietly and peacefully, concessions had to be made. Amid the latter were selfgoverning rights (devolution and federalism) or the right to keep their own nation-building privileges; such as an educational system in their own language or the right to go to work and interact with the wider society in their own language. In Canada, the latter reason is the source of two official languages: English and French. But such rights do not really come from the liberal largesse of the dominant nations; they are compromises reluctantly accepted by the national minorities and generally achieved in favor of the dominant majority so that their country would not split up. They are the product of a history of power struggles between unequal contenders where the weaker minority had to make do with the handouts of the stronger majority. Having clarified their origin, it is hard to see how such rights can be seen as coming from a liberal point of view, except in hindsight. Canada’s national minority par excellence is Quebec, whose struggle has shaped its political landscape in general: It is the neuralgic point of the struggle for the country to have two official languages, a historically important part of the reason why Canada is a federation instead of a unitary system that would be more congenial with parliamentarianism, and also the source of a conf lict that eventually produced the Canadian policy and ideology of multiculturalism. Quebec may complain that the federal government



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entrenched a Constitution without their consent and meddles in their provincial business too much; but the Aboriginals of Canada who are also national minorities were disempowered to a much greater extent by Canada’s original inhumane attempts at assimilation.2 Even when today there are efforts to give First Nations bands some independence to govern themselves, many of them lack the administrative and financial capacity to become an effective third level of government. Aboriginals in Canada are marginalized in poverty-stricken reserves, quarrelling among themselves for the limited resources granted to them, and those who leave this system of segregation find themselves in a similar position to the second group that Kymlicka defines—ethnic minorities—especially with respect to racism and equal opportunities. While it is true that Aboriginals in Canada may be defined as national minorities, the mechanics of the old assimilationist policies in Canada left them disempowered to such a degree that they can access only a limited amount of national minority rights. One can explain this difference between the national minorities of Canada as a result of how Aboriginals are scattered all over the country with no real strength in numbers (except the Inuit in the North); or because of the deeper cultural differences between English Canada and them as opposed to those between English Canada and French Canada. These and other explanations may have their merit, yet the brutal way in which Aboriginals were forced into assimilation points at a deeper trait in the European culture of colonization, one that we inherit today in the modern world and are at pains of letting go—the racist marking and differential treatment of the other-than-human colored people. Here, I will not engage any further with the groups that Kymlicka defines as national minorities mainly because there is a vast amount of literature specialized on this topic and on the particularities that characterize each different case in the world. Also, liberal multiculturalism in the literature is more readily related with what Kymlicka identifies as ethnic minorities: people who have moved into the developed world looking for better life opportunities and have different cultural habits and—very importantly—look different from white majorities. Ethnic minorities have typically left behind their own cultures and have done so wishing to integrate into the new society that


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they adopt. However, according to Kymlicka, they do seek greater recognition of their ethnic identity so they ask to modify the institutions of the mainstream society to accommodate their cultural differences. The typical example in Canada is that of Sikh men in the federal police force or Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) asking to be allowed to wear their turbans instead of the traditional RCMP headgear. And so ethnic minorities seek to integrate into the larger society and, to Kymlicka, integration is a very different term from assimilation. The latter would entail forcing people to accept a “thick” culture that includes views on how people should live their lives, which would entail impositions on individual freedom. Kymlicka (1998) tells us that liberal democracies must engage in nation-building and thus in promoting a specific set of common principles and also a common language for public institutions to work; but this type of nation-building refers to a “thin” societal culture that has room for many different lifestyles: Societal cultures within a modern liberal democracy are inevitably pluralistic, containing Muslims, Jews, and atheists as well as Christians; gays as well as heterosexuals; rural farmers as well as urban professionals; socialists as well as conservatives. Such diversity is the inevitable result of rights and freedoms guaranteed to citizens in a liberal democracy—including freedom of conscience, association, speech, and political dissent, and rights to privacy—particularly when combined with an ethnically diverse population. (27)

In Canada, immigrants—and also Aboriginals who leave their reserves—are ethnic minorities, as they are embodied in differentfrom-Caucasian phenotypes that seek a place in this modern polity. The kind of policies that Kymlicka refers to in order to accommodate the newcomers can be classified into two groups: The first refers to policies that seek to accommodate ethnic minorities (their religions, languages, historical presence, customs, and garments) and to allow them to f lourish. These policies engage in public actions such as revising school curricula (for greater recognition of their historical contributions), work schedules (to accommodate religious holidays other that Christian), and work dress codes (to let them wear traditional garments at work), and provide cultural



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diversity training for police and health care professionals, funding for ethnic minorities to preserve their cultures and languages, or to make the transition from their own tongue to the dominant one. The second group includes policies that seek to provide them with equal opportunities in their host societies, such as affirmative action programs, reserved seats in legislature and reserved government positions, and antiracism programs in the workplace, schools, and media (see Kymlicka 1998, 42 and 2001, 162). So Kymlicka’s theory provides ethnic minorities with accommodation rights and equal opportunities rights in a diverse and culturally vibrant liberal polity. Both types of rights emerge from the liberal principle of equality— limited, as we have said, by the individual right of freedom with priority over group rights in liberalism. In liberal societies, accommodation rights are justified because the culture of the dominant majority is woven into the practices of public institutions and it may oppress people who are different, so it ought to change to welcome the ethnic newcomers. One of the problems with the aforementioned theory is that it assumes the state ought to be neutral but it also assumes people in the majority who are perceived as nonethnic (generally white and Christian) also ought to be neutral and refuses them the right to hold dear certain symbols and aspects of their own culture. The theory does not consider that actual people in the majority culture may resent having to let go of certain figures and symbols; for example, the RCMP’s traditional headgear, or Christmas wishes in the winter holiday concealed as “season’s greetings,” or accept customs and garments that hurt modern individualist sensitivities, for example, regarding Muslim veiled women as a symbol of female oppression or Sikh children carrying knifes as a safety hazard in schools. These examples of how actual folks who consider themselves nonethnic have reacted to the presence of ethnic minorities show that Kymlicka’s thin societal culture—meant to serve common functional interests—can actually be rather thick. Another way in which accommodation policies are justified in liberalism is that the newcomers are supposed to “spice up” urban life and diversity. In an ideal world, these policies allow ethnic cultures to f lourish and their folklore to enrich everybody’s life with food, music, and diverse traditional customs and garments. But it is hard to


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know whether folks perceived as ethnic find themselves actually f lourishing under the light of accommodation rights. As pretty as “celebration of diversity” sounds, it is hard to visualize exactly what this means. As one of my students put it, “liking butter chicken does not amount to a celebration of diversity.” There is a lack of clarity when defining the goods produced by granting ethnic minority rights of accommodation. As Jeremy Waldron (1995) puts it; Are these goods secured when a dwindling band of demoralized individuals continues, against all odds, to meet occasionally to wear their national costume, recall snatches of their common history, practice their religious and ethnic rituals, and speak what they can remember of what was once a f lourishing tongue? Is that enjoyment of their culture? Or does enjoyment require more along the lines of the active f lourishing of the culture on its own terms, in something approximating the conditions under which it originally developed? (97; emphasis in the original)

If there is enjoyment due to cultural practice and exchange, it comes from people meeting other people, which is something that happens at the societal level in the freedom of spontaneity and mutual trust. This has more to do with present creativity, the constant “here and now” of social interaction with very suggestive possibilities of cultural syncretism. Unfortunately, not all cultural encounters are this happy. As I have said, Kymlicka’s theory seeks to address the problems of equality in the contemporary world from the perspective of compensation to the least advantaged due to the power of numbers (minorities versus majority). Equal opportunity rights, the second group of rights granted to ethnic minorities by multiculturalism, represent this type of compensation. However, in this type of rights, there is a veiled aspect of compensation based on history and race. Ruthless freedom of enterprise was the origin of our contemporary liberal democracies, which produced a vast diversity of economic and political power levels in nations and individuals throughout the world. The great economic powers of our day were built on the basis of slave trade and exploitation of both conquered people and resources. Powerful nations colonized the rest of the



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world and created a narrative of superiority that we all must deal with in the contemporary globalized world—both the (Caucasian) masters and the (ethnic) slaves. In Canada, this history created unequal opportunities for people of brown skin and slanted eyes; yet some ethnics—not without difficulty—managed to rise above their social situation. The narrative created the possibility for human ignorance, pettiness, and even wickedness to manifest itself in the form of racism. Equal rights policies of the kind that Kymlicka describes seek to compensate the least advantaged due to historical wrongs in the past and present incorrect notions of race about ethnic minorities. However, in the present, people who see themselves as nonethnic or the majorities in liberal democracies did not themselves commit the historical atrocities that are referred to in order to justify the type of compensation that is offered to ethnic minorities. Many of these folks may themselves be descendants of families stuck in poverty due to causes beyond their control. So equal opportunity rights and policies in affirmative action programs for people of certain ancestry produce not only resentment but also very real anger. Especially when they end up favoring middle class ethnics over lower and working class people in the majority—unfortunately one cannot find out what social class one belongs to from skin color or the shape of one’s eyes. Such anger then fuels racism and goes against the antiracist policies and campaigns that complete the package of equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation rights for ethnic minorities. Canadian Multiculturalism: The Perception of Race in Public Policy The Canadian example of multicultural policy—the first one to appear in the world—is very useful to illustrate how the liberal theory of multiculturalism falls short of addressing the most difficult problems of human diversity. One of the policy’s main problems is related to how it depends on social markers of difference in order to classify people and differentiate who ought to be recipient of ethnic minority rights; these people are referred to as “visible minorities,”3 for we can see that they are different due to race. In the case of accommodation rights, classification may come from


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the recipients of such rights themselves, as in Sikh men who also want to be policemen in Canada and were allowed to wear their turbans in RCMP uniforms. As we have seen, change of this kind in public liberal institutions and symbols is not without conf lict in the larger society, but at least it does not lead policy authorities to classify people according to their skin color and the shape of their eyes. In Canada, there are historical reasons for these two phenotypical characteristics to justify the ancestry needed to be seen as belonging to a visible ethnic minority and thus be given equal opportunity group rights. However, seen in the wider context of race in the present time, they may become arbitrary sources of privileges for ethnic-looking people who have been privileged individuals all of their lives—and this is a shortcoming similar to color-blind universalist policies: Compensation does not reach the most oppressed members of society. A problem that I find even more troubling because it is hidden is that singling out people because of their visibility—even if it is to grant them equality rights—may work toward perpetuating the prejudices that the policy seeks to combat. Race is a socially and culturally built category that relies on folk taxonomies about groups, castes, ideas of who belongs and who does not belong to “us” as a group. This is ref lected on the current meaning and use of the word ethnic that multicultural theory and policy use to designate the type of rights granted to newcomers who are visibly different from the majority in Western liberal democracies. In his book Beyond Ethnicity (1986), Werner Sollors discusses the etymological origins of the word ethnic and ethnicity, and speaks of two conf licting uses of these words: According to the contemporary definition of ethnicity, it is a shared cultural background and so everyone is ethnic, in the sense that all people and all peoples must have some kind of ethnic origin or ethnicity. So in this sense even white folks are ethnic; it would be absurd to exempt them from having ethnicity or an ethnic background. Yet this inclusive use of the word is in conf lict with its more vernacular use that defines who this other is in terms of food (as in the “ethnic food” aisle in the supermarket), dress, and also some specific racial markers. This vernacular use presupposes



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a contrastive terminology that refers to the point of view of whoever uses the term: The Greek word ethnikos, from which the English “ethnic” and “ethnicity” are derived, meant “gentile,” “heathen.” Going back to the noun ethnos, the word was used to refer not just to people in general but also to “others.” In English usage the meaning shifted from “non-Israelite” [. . .] to “non-Christian.” Thus the word retained its quality of defining another people contrastively, and often negatively. (219–20)

He tells us that all groups—not only those who consider themselves Caucasian—have a way of culturally defining themselves as centrally human and other alien cultures as less-than-human. And so, the essence of ethnicity has been seen as boundary-constructing processes that work in creating cultural markers to differentiate between human groups. Sollors cites Frederick Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969) to say that tracing the history of an ethnic group through time does not necessarily mean to trace the history of a culture simultaneously. Barth sees ethnic groups as defined by the boundaries that they build with stable continuity; yet culture changes from one historical context to another and lacks the kind of stability and clarity that the social construction of ethnic boundaries has. It is interesting to notice that in multicultural literature, ethnicity and culture are often treated as one and the same thing. However, what this discussion highlights is the lack of clarity about the specific components of ethnicity, especially in its relationship to race. Sollors (1986) says that race has been regarded as the most prominent ethnic factor, yet it is also considered only a dimension of the larger cultural-historical phenomenon of ethnicity. What one has to bear in mind is that the universalist conception of ethnicity (i.e., everyone has an ethnic background) finds common usage in the academic environment, while the idea of ethnic as other-than-us is pervasive in the public at large and is an element of the Canadian multicultural policy. It can be argued that the multicultural public policy in Canada contributes to building the classification of people as ethnic (brown skin and/or slanted eyes) or nonethnic (Caucasian) for the courts


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and public administration to be able to identify the recipients of rights that it claims to grant. In Canada, “ ‘[m]ulticultural’ often serves as a synonym for ‘ethnic’ or ‘immigrant’ ” (Roy 1995, 200) and the newest multiculturalism program of 1996 refers to the need for looking after “ethnic, racial, religious and cultural communities in Canada” (Canadian Parliamentary Research Branch 2006, 8). Rogers Smith’s research (2007) examines how American courts construct racial identities in their rulings; and this gives him the basis to produce a theory of how racial identity is built due to political processes and not solely at the societal level. All social sciences had traditionally believed the latter; “always, race and gender were exogenous variables, things created by biology, or economic or psychological imperatives, or pre-political social customs, practices, and traditions” (363). Ethnic identity and also racial identity are not only built by people’s own identifications and allegiances but also at the level of public institutions. Smith tells us that as civil and women’s rights movements in America challenged inequality, scholars came to regard racial and gender identities as socially as well as politically constructed. And yet they still treated race, gender, and other identities as “created in locations and through processes outside ‘high politics’ like legislatures, executive agencies, courts, and campaigns” (364) because it was easier to see them coming from biology or remote and exotic places. To be sure, formal political institutions are not the source of such identities, yet all of them arise in contexts that are politically structured to some degree, they are not purely pre-political. In his book Stories of Peoplehood (2003) Smith shows how elites produce such stories to win constituents for the political community that they hope to lead. These stories are “ethically constitutive” of the identity of members in such communities and they permeate their membership with “ethical worth” related to traits that are supposed to define members intrinsically. “These traits,” Smith (2007) tells us, “include ethnicity, religion, language, gender, race, territorial origins, and more” (365). Such identities are generally defined by group leaders and perpetuated by members when seen as ethically valuable. The problems arise from the f lip side of these types of definitions, when alien minorities are given a contrastive function and seen as inferior to the ethically valuable identity of the dominant



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group, as was the case in the racist past of all contemporary liberal democracies. Stories of doubtful ethical value in outsider groups endure in institutions and in social definitions of belonging— especially when the outsiders or other-than-us groups can be marked and differentiated by phenotypical characteristics—in spite of subsequent efforts at retelling the stories with a more positive hue on all of the involved. As has been mentioned, Canada was the first country in the world to adopt a multicultural policy and to retell its “story of peoplehood” in an attempt to become more inclusive. However the policy that implements such noble aspirations has been heavily criticized. Canada was defined as a multicultural society by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in the 1970s—a mosaic of diverse cultures and ethnicities, a vibrant society ruled by liberal principles of freedom and equality. This new story came as an inclusive move of its liberal leaders when the famous Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (set up in 1963 by the previous liberal government of Lester B. Pearson) discovered that “there were many vocal groups of citizens neither anglophone nor francophone who insisted on reporting their contributions to culture in Canada” (Cameron 2004, xviii). It was the Ukrainians that most vociferously “reminded the federal government that not all Canadians belonged to the first two forces, French and English” (Roy 1995, 200); and they gave Trudeau awareness about diversity in Canada and its potential political power. In Trudeau’s time, the federal concern about Canada’s unity sprang from Quebec’s threat of secession. The world at large found out about the strong possibility of Canada’s partition when French president Charles de Gaulle visited Quebec in 1967 and encouraged the crowds’ roaring with the separatist “Vive le Quebec Libre!” Against this social reality, Trudeau defended a unified Canada based in uncompromising individual rights and a multicultural view of Canadian society. He saw in ethnic minorities the symbolic strength that had the power to slow down the separatist impulse of Quebec. And so, he painted a picture of equality based on diversity that reminded Canadians that “every single person in Canada is now a member of a minority group” (Trudeau 1972, 32). His vision of liberal Canada included a constitution that would preserve its unity—entrenched in 1982


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(without Quebec’s consent)—and a bill of individual rights for all Canadians—the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He saw minority rights only as a derivative of individual rights and as a matter of equality. If it had been up to him, Trudeau would not have agreed to any group rights for national minorities in Canada (First Nations and Quebec). In his article “Understanding Canada” (2004), Samuel Laselva tells us that Trudeau was an “enigmatic figure,” a “philosopher turned politician,” a liberal that looked to the future, admired the American constitution, thought sovereignty resided in the individual—not the parliament—celebrated pluralism, and would have brought Canada to “a liberal utopia” (23). Trudeau was an important statesman that invented the idea of a multicultural Canada and sold it to the Canadian people. Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Daiva Stasiulis (1992) examine diverse arguments against the Canadian policy of multiculturalism that have come from various sources such as academic writings, public opinion, political parties, and ethnic minority groups. The conservative right in Canada adopted an integrationist position against multiculturalism calling for an outright ending of the policy, supporting immigration solely on the basis of economic reasons, and seeking the promotion of a united Canadian national culture. For example, in 1990, the Reform Party called for the preservation of the RCMP tradition in keeping a uniform dress code; that is, not allowing the use of Sikh turbans (373). The most vociferous critique of the policy came from Quebecois academia where it has been seen as undermining their claims to nationhood (Harvey 1985; Labelle 1990 and 1991; Rocher 1973). Abu-Laban and Stasiulis tell us that general academic opposition to the multiculturalism policy has taken the form of criticisms that either accuse it of serving assimilationist purposes (Brotz 1980; Hawkins 1982; Roberts and Clifton 1982), of co-opting and misrepresenting the more real and pressing interests of minority groups (Moodley 1983; Peter 1981; Ramírez and Taschereau 1988), or, more recently, of promoting divisiveness and lack of interaction between ethnic groups in Canada (Bibby 1990). Two inf luential works that espouse the latter kind of arguments are Neil Bissoondath’s Selling Illusions (1994) and Richard Gwyn’s Nationalism without Walls (1995). Kymlicka (1998) himself addresses these critiques that claim that



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multiculturalism has ghettoized Canada and does not allow immigrants to think of themselves as full citizens. Kymlicka, of course, argues the opposite: that the policy of multiculturalism has singlehandedly caused a decrease in racism; but he does not consider other variables that may have contributed to this development. Abu-Laban and Stasiulis (1992) show that the earlier arguments are echoed by some members of ethnic minorities who think that the policy “has not alleviated racism and discrimination” (377). They also point out that ethnic minority members have argued in the newspapers, at roundtables promoted by the government, and in parliament that the policy itself promotes racism. Abu-Laban and Stasiulis quote John Nunziata an ethnic minority member of parliament (MP) for the liberal party who has insisted that the policy is discriminatory. This shows that some immigrant newcomers and their Canadian-born and English speaking children resist being labelled “ethnics” to be given ethnic rights because they see this as a public admission that they are not full members of the Canadian society. In their review of the various sources of opposition to the Canadian multicultural policy, Abu-Laban and Stasiulis tell us that in spite of its many detractors and its paradoxical nature (finding unity in diversity or a multicultural society within a two-nation framework), multiculturalism in Canada allows for “ideological space” to pursue equality policies and “for a more inclusionary definition or discourse about membership in the Canadian political community” (381); to them, this is a “relevant and necessary policy” (367). As I have mentioned earlier, the Canadian nonethnic nationalist critique of multiculturalism perceives the policy as giving too much power to ethnic minorities where second generation immigrants slowly gain terrain economically, legally, and at the symbolic level of achieving accommodation for their cultural habits and garments. Abu-Laban and Stasiulis also stress that the policy is “under siege” not only on account of internal Canadian factors, but also due to larger trends in the industrialized Western world: a backlash against multiculturalism due to population pressures coming from poor countries. Today this has been made worse by 9/11 and the possibility of terrorist attacks on rich countries. Nevertheless Abu-Laban and Stasiulis point out that some ethnic


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minority people insist that the policy disempowers them. They see the latter critiques as inevitable due to the policy’s “high-sounding ideals that are seldom achieved” (380). As we can see, many critiques have been raised against the policy of multiculturalism in Canada, but here I want to concentrate on the critiques that have been raised by ethnic minorities themselves. Abu-Laban and Stasiulis quote liberal MP Nunziata as he addresses the House of Commons referring to the policy: “[It] is discriminatory because there is almost a suggestion that because one is part of the multicultural community, somehow one is inferior, is of a different class, is of inferior quality to Canadians who have origins that are French or English . . .” (376) . . . or Caucasian for that matter. Members of the “multicultural community” in Canadian eyes who can get equality of opportunity rights today are called “visible minorities” or “people of color.” At the time of the Royal Commission of Bilingualism and Biculturalism, in the 1960s, Ukranians may have been organized enough to show that they were also Canadian, yet not French or English; but today they would not be the recipients of ethnic rights because they are considered Caucasian or white—not members of a visible minority. In Canada, to be considered a member of a visible minority one has to have brown skin and/or slanted eyes. One may be considered a “member,” but this type of markers do not really describe an actual community—they are racial markers that the state uses to be able to identify who will be the beneficiaries of its multiculturalism program. As has been discussed such markers and the way they are used may perpetuate social perceptions and prejudice about who the outsiders are. The social construction of race perceives human classifications as emanating from nature, from biology. Yet it has been proven and accepted that there is no such thing as distinct human races; genetically, it is impossible to pin down exactly what it is that differentiates one human race from another.4 “Over the past generation,” Smith (2007) tells us, “many identities once seen as creations of biology, divine providence, or impersonal historical forces have come to be regarded as ‘social constructions,’ including racial, gender, religious, ethnic, and national identities” (362). Society and political authorities construct taxonomies based on folk perceptions



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of phenotypical difference between human groups, but they are not substantiated by evidence of clear genetic difference. So there are no human races yet there are “cultural operations which make them seem natural or self-evident” (Sollors 1997, 3). In his article “Mixed Blood” ([1995] 2008), Jeffrey Fish tells us that anthropologists know that race is a made up social phenomenon and that most social scientists should be ashamed to ignore it. The perception of otherness due to skin color or specific human phenotypes is based on tales that we as societies tell ourselves about whom we are and who others are. He explains that race is an invented social fact by referring to how “folk taxonomies” categorize people according to race very differently in the United States and Brazil. His own daughter (half white and half black) would be regarded as black in the United States and as morena, or brunette, in Brazil due to her lighter skin color. In America, when somebody has any black blood they are identified as black, whereas in Brazil—a heavily mixed country—the hues of skin color matter to be classified as belonging to one of the various tipos or racial types that they differentiate. In America, either you are black or you are white and the possibilities in between do not really matter. Also, white women may give birth to black offspring, but a black mother could never give birth to a white baby (and this may be seen as a racist social rule to identify racial purity with whiteness; one drop of black blood makes a person black in America). The president of United States, Barack Obama, is half white and he is considered a black person in that nation’s folk taxonomy. Some African Americans, most of whom are descendants of slaves, claimed during his campaign to become the candidate of the Democratic Party that Obama’s cosmopolitan ancestry has no historically legitimate claim to represent black America (since then, he has been adept at pointing out that the blood of slave ancestors runs through his wife’s and daughters’ veins). However, nobody really regards him as a white person, which is also part of his ancestry, his making as a person, his ethnicity. Fish ([1995] 2008) reminds us that race does not exist, there is but one human species and race is a social myth. And yet, social myths have an important dimension of reality in their sui generis mode; in building identities that people find dear and even vital to their sense of self. I have argued elsewhere that us human beings


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need tales and social myths biologically to sustain our species in the planet (Sánchez-Flores 2005). The communitarian arguments on this issue are well known: they have argued that these tales are the real essence of what it is to be human. Nevertheless, old tales of superiority and supremacy related to how people look have a pervasive way of staying with us and can become sources of oppression, especially when sustained by public institutions. Rogers Smith (2007) has argued that the way around colorblind policies (universalist policy that ignores and perpetuates difference) and color-aware policies (affirmative action and equality policies that stress difference) is to have a closer look to what he calls the “damaged-race” conception. He comments on how in America in 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled against racial segregation in the school system by saying that institutionally separating black children only on the basis of race is likely to produce feelings of inferiority from which they were not likely to recover, and this damaged them. In portraying institutional damage to black people this way, they were construed as inferior. This inferiority has become both interiorized and passed on to their own children and has also become systemic in considering black people damaged—marked and stigmatized—to become recipients of compensation. However, as Smith points out, nowhere was it expressed that such systems of segregation damaged white children too. This may seem like an odd claim because under the old order, whites received advantages in education, economic, political, and social opportunities. And yet Smith (2007) argues that the system also damaged them in two ways; it prevented society as a whole from developing its economic and material potentialities: “It is expensive and inefficient to maintain a society built upon hatred, coercion, and underutilized human capital” (378). And also, the system damaged whites in a moral way: “When a segregated education led many people to shape their lives around the vicious myth of their racial superiority, when it made them feel psychologically and materially dependent on unjust institutions, it did them moral damage” (ibid.). I would add an important dimension of damage that Smith fails to address: The buildup of anger and the subsequent erosion of trust in society. Communities become either ethnically segregated or perceived as dangerous at possible points of



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intersection. Barack Obama illustrates this point with a highly personal anecdote in his book Dreams from My Father (2004) when living with his white grandparents. One morning they had quarreled because his grandmother, Toot, had asked his grandfather for a ride; she was afraid to take the bus as she had done every morning before—a panhandler had been aggressive to her the morning before. When Obama offered to give her a ride if grandpa was tired, he found out that his grandfather’s issue with Toot asking for a ride was that her fear had been accentuated by the fact that the man who pestered her in the bus stop was black. Stanley, his grandfather, did not think this kind of reaction from his grandmother was right. Those words, according to Obama “were like a fist in my stomach” (88) they, and his perceived difference, made him feel “utterly alone” (91). Even though his grandparents gave him no reason to doubt their love for him, his grandmother “understood that black people have a reason to hate” (ibid.) and so black men could still inspire her “rawest fears” (89). Systematic and arbitrary oppression damages everyone in any given society. The buildup of anger in a society can have devastating consequences in terms of conf lict and violence. Smith tells us that if people are willing to admit that America’s racist past damaged all Americans and not only blacks, then the questions of equality ought not to linger on whether policies and laws are colorblind or whether they benefit races as distinct groups. Rather, the questions on equality should look at the contents of laws and policies to see if they alleviate or exacerbate race related patterns of disadvantage and judge every step in this direction on its own terms, as they are implemented. So this is a public policy (and also political) issue that ought to be addressed on both levels. However, Smith realizes that altering perception of racial identities so that they are not associated with systemic inequality is a complex issue. “These questions are not easy,” Smith (2007) tells us “especially the issue of whether race-conscious measures aid or damage the goal of freeing racial identities from their entanglement with structures of inequality” (385). Typically, abstract liberal and libertarian positions insist that universalist color-blind policy and legislation is the answer, but it has been widely argued that this only perpetuates the problems by ignoring them. What could then be the principles in


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law and policy that would lead society to a point in which ethnicracial identities were valued on their own terms and not associated to inferiority or otherness? Mixed Race Experience in North America I believe that the lives of a small group of ethnic-looking mixedblood people that I interviewed in British Columbia in 2007 may give us some pointers in this direction. They grew up in Canada5 and have had to deal with an externally imposed idea of themselves as inferior due to their looks, and also with a feeling of not belonging to any group. My respondents are offspring of marriages coming from different (socially made-up) racial groups. They are ethniclooking because they have either brown skin or slanted eyes—or both—and this makes them a member of a visible minority in Canada. As children growing up, due to their mixture of blood, these people had intense moments of self-ref lection for not clearly being sure about what their race was. Such ref lection—as opposed to mere existential ref lection—was very strongly related to race and ethnicity. They look different and are also perceived as different by every racial group with which they interact—including the two that they themselves and their parents come from. They experience a close awareness about discrimination that triggers in them constant ref lection on who they are and what that has to do with their ancestry and the way they look. This group is very small and diverse in terms of the heritage of the people interviewed, but also in terms of their origins, professions, roles, and affinities; however, they do have some social similarities. All of them are proud to have a loving nuclear family (in spite of some of them coming from dysfunctional families), all of them hold professional degrees except for one who is in the process of achieving it, all of them are Canadian, and all of them have a present middle class economic status—but most of them acknowledge to have come from humble origins. I interviewed people older than thirty years so that they would have closer experience of the racist past of Canadian policy. They talked to me about growing up in Canada and their relationship to all sorts of levels of human groups who they interacted with in this process and also who they interact with in the present. I used this method



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of inquiry because I thought it could yield a wealth of lessons from lived experience to abstract contemporary political theory. My aim was to investigate how people may create their own tools to transcend difference when it is socially perceived in them and selfperceived with respect to all ethnic groups including their own. They are seven ethnic-looking, mixed-blood people and the mix can be seen in table 4.1. Their special position in society as children from mixed marriages with this type of looks leads them to create a narrative of self that transcends folk classifications of race in various ways. This group of ethnic-looking, mixed-blood people is pushed to internalize a strong sense of individuality related to the self-perceived uniqueness of their situation (not really belonging to any socially ascribed racial or ethnic group). A huge variety of human situations may produce an isolated sense of self— modernity itself and urban life are accused of doing so. Nevertheless, these respondents’ thoughts on race related to loneliness, aggressiveness, (not) belonging, and the way to leave it all behind, I believe, are valuable sources of ref lection for contemporary liberalism. Their individual paths lead them to create a personal narrative about ethnicity that portrays it as nonexistent and, if identifiable, unimportant. They are pushed by their social circumstances to develop a way of overcoming the social myths of race and ethnicity Table 4.1 Age, ancestry, and “visible minority” phenotype of respondents Name i

Age in 2007 Mother’s ancestry Father’s ancestry Phenotype

Rod

52

Aboriginal

Ted

43

Half Aboriginal British and half British

Brown skin

Sita

37

German

Pakistani

Brown skin

Gordon

32

East Indian

Chinese

Brown skin and slanted eyes

Nancy

44

Aboriginal

Chinese

Brown skin and slanted eyes

Jim

58

Aboriginal

British

Brown skin

Carol

33

Japanese

Scandinavian

Slanted eyes

i

German

Their names have been changed to protect their privacy.


Brown skin

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in their own lives. Ethnic-looking people have a bigger chance of becoming victims of discrimination and I wanted to examine how experiencing discrimination may intensify the feelings of isolation due to their mixed ancestry while growing up. The sudden loss of dignity due to offensive deeds, behaviors, and utterances of racist bullies triggers ref lection on oneself and the association of brown and/or slanted-eyed people to abased social archetypes. It is important to mention that two of the respondents (Ted and Carol) claim to have never been bullied or discriminated against due to their racial looks; they may have noticed a couple of slurs addressed to them or their families, but in general they did not feel alluded or the offense did not touch them emotionally. If Caucasian people regard them as different, they are not moved. Of the two respondents who were not bullied, Carol’s skin is white and she looks Caucasian, except for the mysterious slant in her eyes whose origins cannot quite be placed. She thinks that the lack of bullying in her life has to do with the school she was attending and the particular personalities that she encountered. Nevertheless she was aware that her brother was bullied in school and she seldom experienced racial slurs directed at her family. Ted explains the lack of bullying in his life as due to his personality. He said: “[Discrimination is related] with what you project, that has a lot to do. Because people can take a shot at you but what matters is the effect it creates.” As he grew up, Ted was aware of racial stereotypes; he referred to people making jokes about Aboriginal people and drinking, but he didn’t take it in as an offense directed at him. These are some attempts at explaining why these two respondents do not perceive themselves as having been bullied; but it is important to point out that both of them have solid relationships with the families of their parents, and both of them come from middle class, functional families. However, in spite of them not having had a clear recollection of being bullied, this does not mean that these two respondents were removed from the experience of ref lection on ethnicity, race, self, human groups, and belonging. They did not have to face, deal with, and leave behind—or keep dealing with—a constant narrative (imposed and/or self-created) about their inferiority. Nevertheless, their experience as mixed-blood people facilitated them having what I call a “cosmopolitan outlook” on race and ethnicity. The rest of the people in the sample experienced and remember being Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores


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bullied or discriminated against due to their ethnic looks at one time or another while they grew up and to this day. This produced (and produces) in them as children, youth, and adults a wealth of emotions that go from outright anger to surprise and amazement, and in some of them, eventually also a sense of empowerment due to their awareness of independence from groups. As has been said, throughout their lives, there were many times when my respondents struggled with general rejection based on the public representation of one or the two ethnic groups with brown skin or slanted eyes to which they belong. Very tellingly, Rod refers to the ref lective self-awareness of archetypes in the media when he was growing up: I was younger and being inf luenced by the media, television and movies, and how First Nations people were portrayed it was a bit traumatic, it really was. Because as a young mind you’re thinking “am I bad? It looks like they’re saying that I am” and processing my thoughts and using media as a reference it seemed to be saying that, because of the color of my skin, I was not a good person and it was troubling ever since I was young.

The use of these archetypes in the media was reinforced for Rod by the rejection that he experienced from mainstream society. Both of Sita’s parents are immigrants, her mother is German and her father Pakistani; she knows that her brown skin gives her an ethnic look. This constantly marks her as an imagined outsider, not really belonging to Canadian society: It’s not only being dark [people constantly ask] “Where are you from?” “What’s your native language?” Everyday, I’m 37 years old, I’ve lived here [in Canada] all my life and to this day it’s not uncommon that I will be asked questions like that. And with a sense of entitlement from [. . .] your interlocutor, the person who’s asking— who is usually white—they see themselves a Canadians. They ask, “Where are you from?” Even though I speak with no accent, English is my first language.

Jim felt a sense of rejection by society’s prejudices ref lected in his white grandparents’ opposition to his parents’ marriage. When he tells the story of how his parents met and got married, an important Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

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part of it was his white grandmother’s efforts at splitting them up (his grandparents eventually accepted him and his mother). Due to his unique life-story, he moved to different households to live with both sets of grandparents and his own parents throughout his childhood. He recalls feelings of alienation in school due to his otherness: When I was in schools, I was always a little chubby half-breed that everybody picked on. So the teachers made me go out for a recess, but I couldn’t be in the playground because I always got beat up. So I spent my recesses in between the two doorways, in the vestibule of the school to sort me out as far as they could get me out, not involved.

This segregation designed only for him produced in Jim a sense of not belonging anywhere, of being a mere “observer” of a society that rendered him almost invisible. It is remarkable that the feeling of being nobody for him became a very real psychological experience of not-really-being-there. All of the respondents expressed in one way or another feelings of not belonging to the ethnic groups that they come from. Most of the people I interviewed in this group seem to have had a realization at one time or another that their mixed-blood status prevented them from belonging to any group. Nancy reports that she was rejected by her Native relatives because they did not see her as fully belonging to them: The racial slurs that came with being Chinese was something that I had to live with on a daily basis when I was in Ottawa so I thought I would get a break when I went to my [Aboriginal] grandmother’s place, but it didn’t stop and I would always live with a great sense of shame.

Rod reports having difficulty communicating with his Native relatives who to this day make him feel different due to his college education and even his healthy eating habits. He recalls: It seemed like the European people—which was my father’s family—weren’t accepting who I was because phenotypically, I’ve



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got dark skin, I look Native. So I don’t think they were very accepting and not just my dad’s family, but the European community [in general]. And the Native side of the family I felt that because I didn’t grow up on the reserve or that my father was German, then it just seemed like they weren’t very understanding of me. So there was a lot of early age being told what I couldn’t do or where I didn’t belong.

Gordon says that because he is ethnically indefinable, he has always felt like an outsider in any group and that created a lot of self-doubt as a youth and growing up: “I’ve never really felt like one group has tried to embrace me and said ‘Oh, he is one of us.’ ” He has talked about this with his older brother and they both share the experience of always being the token other in any group. He recalls having an idealized relationship of belonging to India and after finishing his first degree he had the opportunity to go there and study: There was a part of me that really thought that I would arrive in India and there would be this connect where, I don’t know what it was but I thought there was going to be that moment when I would just be like “my brothers and sisters, here I am.” And they would be in acceptance; they would look at me and go “oh, welcome home” or something. It was really, really romantic.

However, the encounter with Indian society and culture made him realize that he had nothing much in common with that culture and society; he describes his experience in India as a “major culture shock.” Carol had a similar experience in Japan, but she learnt at an early age that she did not really belong there and had no chance to romanticize the relationship. She recalls: Since I first went to Japan when I was four years old it was very evident there that I was white in terms of the reactions of everybody else. I was quite pale in complexion and that’s something that they strangely idealize. That’s something they would also say [. . .] “You’re white, you’re white,” that’s something that I learned right away, and also I didn’t speak the language so it was very evident that I’m not part of it. [. . .] Maybe a little . . . but I always knew that I was not part of it.


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And yet in Europe and Canada, a lot of people recognize her part-Asian side: People ask me, “What’s your background?” or “Where are you from?” I say Canada and they go “no, no, I mean where are you really from?” Generally people ask. But I go, “oh yeah” they kind of guess that I’m half white. It’s usually the other half that they wonder about. They may have an idea and they look for confirmation.

One of the consequences of never fully belonging to any group was that it allowed some of them to move between groups and social cliques, especially as children growing up. Arguably, this gave them a wider view of society, because even though no group ever considered them full members, they managed to interact with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds. Ted recalls: In Mission [there] was one of the last residential schools operating in the country and I played for their teams. My friends were from there and [also] non-Native kids from other groups. I felt some pressure there some times, about hanging out with “those Indians”—like that. And I had my other friends. There were the Indians and the other [white] kids, the rest of the population [who] did not mix with them at all, so I was kind of back and forth between them.

But Ted also had friends from other ethnicities that accepted him. This was revealed when I asked him if he had ever suffered discrimination; he told the following story: In the town I grew up, in Mission, there was a large population of Eastern Indians that had migrated there, and [for] a long time some of my four best friends were East Indians. So we’d be travelling in a car somewhere and more than once I got called a “tall paki” because my skin is dark and was taken for an East Indian.

Gordon describes a similar situation with respect to groups at school and he relates it directly to his indefinable ethnicity: Now I know that that kind of feeling of displacement as an outsider, maybe that was the start of feeling as though I could transcend groups, like I could f loat between cliques. And I think I really



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worked a lot at being more social. Obviously there were some cliques that I could never ever enter—because of the physicality of it: because I was brown or I was Chinese or I was just this small skinny kid and obviously I wouldn’t be able to hang out with the “joks,” I didn’t belong to that tribe physically. But I felt, and I still feel this way strongly, that because I’ve become indefinable, it gives me carte blanche in terms of fitting into various groups, because I don’t look a certain way, I don’t act a certain way, I can kind of f loat. I tried to be like a social butterf ly.

A commonality in all of the people in this group of respondents is that, when asked directly about it, none of them interpret their identity as attached to their ethnicity. All of them resist being classified as ethnically something in spite of using on themselves such social categories. They may describe themselves as Native, IndoCanadian, part-Asian, part-Caucasian, German, and so on, but they insist that this is due to social conventions. When asked if she thinks of herself as German, Sita replied: “Not so much. I don’t really think of myself as Indo-Canadian that much either to tell you the truth but it’s easier to say that because of the color of my skin. If I said I’m German, people would say ‘What’s German about you?’ ” Gordon reports never having truly felt any connection to his ethnic background; about this he said: “Sometimes I feel visibly more connected to some ethnic groups but I don’t think I’ve ever felt truly East-Indian or truly Chinese.” Gordon thinks of himself more like a hybrid, and he connects such feelings with the idea of being Canadian: “It’s funny, because if you say ‘I’m Canadian’ that is still a synonym for a hybrid or multiculturalism.” Along the same lines, when Nancy is asked to define her ethnicity, she replies: “I want to call myself a Canadian first and foremost, but there is even a step beyond that I would go for: I would call myself a member of the human race. I consider myself a human being first and then a Canadian.” In their own way, everyone in this group of ethnic-looking mixed-blood people managed to overcome the clash of ethnicity that lies within themselves by taking on board the realization that ethnicity is a social myth, it is made up and thus imaginary. They speak of their identity (when they are willing to define it somehow) resorting to various identity sources that are not ethnic or racial,


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such as roles, chosen community, profession, affinities. They choose the communities or groups that they belong to, or simply choose to not belong to any social group, they have friends and family as their community (especially their own nuclear family: chosen partner and children). It became obvious during the interviews that the common resistance in this group to being identified with ethnic terms comes from a vivid awareness that those terms are not only unimportant, but actually quite unreal. Ted presents a very clear matter of factual awareness about the unreality of ethnicity in his trying to pass for a Brazilian to “blend in” during his travels or when people threw racial slurs at him that didn’t correspond to his actual ethnicity. Gordon clearly realized how ethnicity, race, and all social ascriptions are imaginary as people have taken him at different times for a Philippine, a Mexican, a Peruvian, or a Polynesian. About these misrepresentations of his background he says: “It just really points the finger at that whole idea that it’s just so malleable, it’s just such a free fall, identity and nationalism and all this sort of stuff. It’s just make-believe and people hold on to it!” Rod refers to the unreality of the idea of belonging to a specific culture with an awareness of constant cultural change: “Culture is what we do every day and not only the paraphernalia of culture. People get caught up in whatever symbols of culture rather than seeing that the biggest and best part of culture should be our generosity and our hospitality.” He also defines a lack of reality in ethnicity with a sense of spirituality that transcends religion: I am a phenotype I have been identified all my life as this . . . who I am, because I look a certain way. But more and more as life goes on I just feel like all there is, is light and frequency, I mean, really, and I’m just this electromagnetic bulb of light and that’s how I feel. And I think that part of the reason that it would be helpful to think that way is for there to be a future on the planet that is getting smaller, I have to be able to let go of a lot of what I would think of as superficial differences and just help people.

As we can see all of the respondents in this group have some intimation into regarding race and ethnicity as imaginary or unreal, and this has created the possibility of getting closer to people of all



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groups, transcending “superficial differences.” In the end all of them came up with some kind of self definition that has nothing to do with ethnicity; if they define themselves as anything at all, it is really not related to race or to any of the ethnic groups where they come from. All of the respondents came up with a narrative of self that puts them above and beyond the issues of ethnicity and in some of them clearly the one ingredient that has allowed them to transcend this is love; manifested as compassion, forgiveness, and trust. Nancy worked, and keeps working through love and forgiveness, at overcoming the pain of the position ascribed to her in society due to her equivocal ethnicity. She recalls how both her parents would put each other down due to their races: Because I was a combination of the two [. . .] it took me a very long time to understand that I was actually “a mixed blessing” which is what I now call myself [. . .] I can go out there and prove that I am one of God’s gifts [. . .] I used to blame my father for being Chinese and my mother for being Native and for putting me on this world through all this turmoil, yet now I understand they did the best they could with what they had. And I’ve forgiven them just as much as I’ve forgiven myself for being who I am and I’ve moved on with my life.

Ted puts a lot of importance in his role as a father, having two small children. He tries to be a loving father and a firm basis for them to go back to, even if the world is a crazy place; he wants for them to know that their father is going to be there. Jim recalls how he overcame his feeling of being almost invisible, ignored, and alone in the world; after he converted into the Baha’i religion, he recalls: I realized, you know what, that’s not what’s happening at all [being alone, ignored]. What’s happening is that I’m not caring about the other people. That’s where the problem is. That’s why nobody cares about me and I’m spending all my time thinking about “poor me.” I had to drop that idea. I have to think about every other human being, if I show them love, then they will reciprocate. [. . .] I realized that if you consider yourself invisible, if you consider yourself apart


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from humanity then you will be apart from humanity, you will be invisible. So it’s not my responsibility to demand love, it’s my responsibility to give it—and then it just comes back. So that became my modus operandi. I stopped thinking about myself and just started thinking about what the needs were of those people around me [. . .] and by doing that the whole issue disappeared.

Gordon believes that having had to face loneliness throughout his life as a mixed-blood person makes him more empathic to other people. About this he says: “At times I feel like I can play or maybe slip into [other people’s] shoes a little bit and understand where perhaps people are coming from.” But to Gordon, the really tricky part is to have the ability to love oneself to be able at all to love and understand others: “Because also you’re the glasses that you’re seeing everything through. So if you can really love yourself you can love other people truly, because you’re grounded to ref lect that. But it’s tricky.” Rod’s narrative of self construes his most important role as being part of a community of like-souls who find themselves throughout life: “I would say if I were to describe my community it would be one of love, one of peace, one of a certain sort of eclectic consciousness that is very old—and I can feel it—it’s like a magnet in my life.” What these stories about themselves show is the most prominent commonality between the people in this group: All of them resort to a strong sense of individuality to be able to frame their narratives of self. As I have said before, individuality is not an abstract characteristic of people but a culturally inherited and learnt set of behaviors, beliefs, and ways of life. One has to be trained to behave like an individual to be able to function properly and cost- effectively in the modern societal culture. Rational individuality is a form of learnt skill; one has to be able to operate as such for the type of legal-rational interaction to work properly. This type of interaction was defined by Max Weber as an ideal type (a utopia, a conceptual tool) and identified with the modern world of liberal democracies. When Weber defined this ideal type of interaction, he meant for it to be a utopia because he realized the vast complexity surrounding actual people and not just the ideal form of rational interaction based on individuality. What the narration of these people’s lives



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shows is that, in the contemporary modern world, individuality is a type of “practice” in MacIntyre’s terms (1984). The excellence that this practice seeks is none other than the morality of the transcendental subject in Kant’s metaphysics. There is a solid and alive (liberal) philosophical tradition around the idea of individuality in a moral sense and this is why mere functionality does not refer wholly to what it is to be a modern individual in contemporary interaction. It refers to a moral tradition that goes back to the House of Abraham, yet found its first rationally Enlightened and secular formulation in Kant’s transcendental subject (see Sánchez-Flores 2005). So individuality is not only ideal behavior in these terms, but also constant practice in everyday interaction by people in liberal democracies. This skill can be procedural and competent in the mere workings of bureaucracy, but in modern interaction it entails—as has been proven by business ethics (the young branch of business administration)—an ideal substantive involvement of the moral rational self. This self is an aspect of modern culture that produces and reproduces the practice of individuality in contemporary life. All of the people in my sample belong to the culture of modern individuality; all of them are rational-modern beings that fit in functionally, psychologically, and culturally with contemporary modern urban life. In the absence of clear ethnicity this group of people resorted to the culture of modern individuality; they find through this culture the solace of belonging that they do not find in ethnicity. However, I found that the moral sense of individuality they espouse is not solely based on principled behavior of the kind Kant referred to in his categorical imperative—although all of them include strong regard for principled behavior in their portrayal of their life and aspirations. In some of the respondents, as has been shown, their moral sense of individuality is also at the same time very much based on the ideal of trusting and loving family and strangers, which produces a willingness toward empathy and compassion. An interesting finding in this particular group of people was that most of them, especially older respondents, resort to some representation of the importance that love has in their moral life. Loving behavior represents an important source of moral ref lection: the importance of love for oneself, at home shown for children and relatives, but


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also in the streets with strangers. A very clear common feature of all respondents as modern individuals is that they choose the human groups that they belong to or interact with and, to some of them, the idea of belonging to a group is definitely not close to their hearts. They join with people that are like-minded and create intentional communities or just friendship. My group of respondents illustrates how a person may look like the other of modern individuality according to local stereotypes (brown, Asian), and yet embody the modern individual consciousness that is generally related to Caucasian, rich, and male subjects. Can it be said that they have embraced white values? Some of my respondents have been accused of doing so, yet this view perpetuates racism paradoxically by those who are its victims. The dialectic is well-known: the master objectifies the slave by exploiting her, but it is not always seen that the slave objectifies the master by desiring her position. This dialectic perpetuates the relationship between the master and the slave, it creates no way out. In history, rebel leaders become dictators; many a Revolution has been fought on behalf of the oppressed and created new types of oppression. The dramatic figure of the dialectic of the master and the slave will never be solved historically solely by the authority of reason as Hegel would have it, or by principled behavior in the Kantian moral tradition. The only way out is not to desire the position of the oppressor, and instead, to hold her in a figurative embrace of love by means of the moral principle of universal compassion. This figurative embrace is a metaphor to illustrate how the problems of difference may be solved at a grassroots level. The people in this mixed-blood ethnic-looking group solved the problem of difference within themselves—a difference that defined them as not belonging to any group—by resorting to a very strong sense of individuality. However, it was clear to me that this type of individuality was not solely defined in terms of freedom, moral autonomy, and rationality. There was an added element to their individuality that empowered them to transcend their sense of isolation from human groups and to reintegrate themselves with humanity. In the case of the ones who reported to be most at peace with their personal lifetime of ref lection about belonging on the basis of race, this element was a kind of extension of themselves



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unto others. Some of them articulated this as love for oneself, for humanity, for everyone, a willingness to help and also to be generous with others who they did not know personally. The figurative embrace of love for the potential oppressor and the generalized other is useful to describe how the people I interviewed produced a narrative or an enacted idea of their moral self that is beyond ethnicity, and therefore cosmopolitan. In this narrative, they regard ethnicity as imaginary or unimportant, choose to appreciate themselves on the basis of their merits and compassion, and see in people, not oppressors, but potential friends. This all describes moral aspirations, because the frictions and realities of our everyday life may not always allow us to live up to our own ideals. The way I interpret these life stories is that they used the ideal of universal love as a moral guide and this in turn empowered them to transcend the narratives of inferiority imposed on them from a young age. The ideal of universal love and the moral principle of compassion are empowering because they help people dissolve the problems of difference both outside and within themselves, and can be used by all. A cosmopolitan attitude beyond ethnicity and race is lived in constant awareness that what we see as phenotypical differences in people and identify with otherness are really imaginary folk ways of categorizing people. This awareness makes it clear that one ought not to apply racial categories on others but let them apply those categories on themselves if they so choose to. This is an important social skill in diverse societies such as Canada. Multicultural Canada contains a wealth of people from all corners of the world and generations of Canadian born children from recent immigrants. Immigration is the one most important source of population growth for Canada and the country needs new immigrants if it wants to have population growth that can sustain the size of the economy. In the group of the eight richest (G8) countries in the world, Canada’s population growth is the highest in the group. This is not due to a high fertility rate (which in the 2006 census remained at 1.5 children per woman between ages fifteen and forty-nine, the same as in the 2001 census), but because of its high immigration rate (Statistics Canada 2001, 2006). According to the latest Canadian census, recent immigrants come steadily from Asia as was the trend


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since the 1800s, but the numbers of newcomers from Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa have shown an increase from the previous census (ibid.). These newcomers have ethnic looks and the Canadian nation has developed a story of peoplehood that attempts to make them feel welcome. The efforts of the Canadian policy of multiculturalism are commendable; but the danger is to crystallize this policy in a theory of multiculturalism that depends on defining difference through racial and ethnic markers and in turn sanction politicizing difference with a too clear definition of who is the historical oppressor and who the victim. Instead, a story of peoplehood that aspires to be inclusive of all human groups who choose to define themselves as such should have a clear cosmopolitan awareness about difference as emanating from self-definitions, and not definitions imposed by policy. This would allow for rights of accommodation and would make rights to equal opportunity be tied to educational efforts against racism but not to privileges based on race. Defining the tyrant oppressor according to skin color only perpetuates the problems of racism and veils how everyone—white, colored, slanted-eyed—is a potential oppressor and tyrant in different social situations. The metaphor of holding the oppressor in a figurative loving embrace seeks to represent that everyone, all people of all colors, may at one time or another seek to impose arbitrarily on someone else (children being the most vulnerable recipients of such impositions): No compassion for the oppressor translates into no compassion at all. This metaphor can manifest itself in human life in a number of ways, but here I want to stress its power as an individual discipline to avoid imaginary representations of otherness and dramatic dialectics of violence and rejection. These “dramas” are played out everyday all over the world, the most terrible ones end up in oppression, systematic discrimination, or worse—genocide. It is indeed a human trait to identify with other people like us, and to hold on to cultural uniqueness. This allows for such groups to inf luence our sense of self. However, cosmopolitan individuality, as a practice and an ideal in the terms described here—based on moral reason and also on universal compassion—can be the source of ref lection and heartfelt empathy in order to escape the dramatic



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excesses that sometimes human groups enact. About this Amartya Sen (2006) says: We are indeed inf luenced to an amazing extent by people with whom we identify. Actively promoted sectarian hatreds can spread like wild-fire, as we have seen recently in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Timor, Israel, Palestine, Sudan, and many other places in the world. With suitable instigation, a fostered sense of identity with one group of people can be made into a powerful weapon to brutalize another. (xv)

Such violence arises when out of anger and hatred people identify with only one group as the main source of their identity. Sen reminds us that it is more realistic to see people as having a multiplicity of affinities and affiliations. The atrocities cited by Sen refer to instigation that resulted in violence of one group over another in a relatively short period of time; but one can also refer to such brutalization of one group over another in a systematic and institutionalized way over long periods of time, like the colonization of the world by Europe and the systems of segregation around the world. This was the case in the Jim Crow kind of segregation that people with African ancestry suffered in America, or residential schools that Natives suffered in Canada, for which they receive compensation today in affirmative action programs. As I have discussed earlier, the problem with such programs is that they may work toward perpetuating ideas of inferiority in the abased other due to the notion of damaged-race (Smith 2007). I contend that the way out of the consequences of short outbursts of violence as well as the long-term consequences of institutionalized violence from one human group on another lies in a renewed notion of individuality: A cosmopolitan type of individuality that keeps present the “relevance of our many-fold affinities and involvements” (Sen 2006, 177) and applies moral principles in daily behavior as well as an openness of heart in universal compassion as a principle of moral interaction with others—close and distant others. Hence moral principled ref lection and behavior are important in modern individuality, but so is moral compassion in order to embrace the other—the stranger and potential oppressor—in a


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loving figurative embrace. This latter attitude would provide moral substance to Smith’s idea (2007) of considering how terrible systems of segregation have been not only to the oppressed, but also to the oppressors. What I refer to as the contemporary practice of a cosmopolitan type of individuality provides the ideals upon which legal and policy provisions of compensation may be revised in order to overcome the problems of difference in contemporary multicultural societies. I agree with Abu-Laban and Stasiulis that the Canadian policy of multiculturalism is important as a symbol of a national aspiration that ought to be revised in order to heal the social wounds inf licted by Canada’s racist past. This is also the case for any history of racial or otherwise oppression from one human group upon another. I have tried to show in this chapter that this would involve the principles of moral reason embedded in the liberal tradition of individuality; but it would also involve considering the importance of how multicultural (and cosmopolitan) individuals today have embraced and apply in their own lives the principles of universal compassion and trust in strangers to overcome the problems that arise from racial and ethnic clashes. Additionally, the discipline of universal compassion may also be used as a source of empowerment for the downtrodden, which serves the objective of building social trust amid diversity.


CHAPTER 5

CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

T

he reader will have identified the title of this concluding chapter with Karl Marx’s famous rallying cry in his 1848 Communist Manifesto.1 My version stresses the cosmopolitan aspect of the cry but it is not based in class consciousness. A cry for the citizens of the world to unite is inherently pacifist: It is inclusive of all members of the human species and calls for a revolution of the inner self. I have attempted to show throughout this book why our species needs a tale of belonging, an “ethically constitutive” story (Smith 2003) that is not based on othering. Marx’s story for his international communist drive to revolution was essentially based on seeing the capitalist exploiters as others, their existence as an obstacle to the actual f lourishing of working humanity. In my version of a rallying cry to revolution, there is no othering, not even the nonhistorical world of nature is seen as outside the human world for it contains life, all of it—human life included. The revolution that citizens of the world can unleash is a peaceful one, and starts at one’s own realm of consciousness. As I have stressed all along, it ought to emerge from a grassroots level and eventually conquer the world. This silent revolution will have consequences for political institutions and their legitimacy, but it will not and cannot come from political authority. This is the reason why I have located the transformation of consciousness in liberalism at an individual level. At this level, consciousness of self ought to still aspire to the ideals of Kantian moral reason but can no longer conceive of


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itself as morally able without aspiring to the ideal of universal love. In this spirit, liberalism ought to leave behind its Western supremacist pretensions and transform itself through the expansion of the individual self and the principle of compassion into what I call Cosmopolitan Liberalism. In cosmopolitan liberalism, individuality can conceive of all there is as an extension of its own realm of being and apprehend the idea that what once was seen as “other” is actually part of oneself. The ideal of universal love achieves this, if only as a mind experiment for the individual self to reach out to human diversity and see in it a source of pride in human cultural creativity. To be sure, this creativity has often proven to be violent and divisive, at times oppressive and exploitative. Peoples, social classes, castes, families, tribes, human groups have historically engaged in producing and perpetuating stories that have systemic elements of othering— denigrating, hurting, and taking advantage of other groups. As Rogers Smith has argued, it is important to produce new stories that will refuse to engage in these practices due to cultural values and beliefs promoted by political leaders. Smith (2003) proposes that this can be done by allowing stories of peoplehood to f lourish and compete with one another. However, I have contended that this rational and reasonable competition will not yield the desired fruits unless we come up with an overarching story for all of the human species with universal application that all human beings can identify with. This is why liberalism ought to embrace compassion as a moral principle based on an extended sense of self; which in turn expands the traditional egotistic notion of self-interest into an awareness that the well-being of others as well as that of nature ought to be important to my own self-interest. This extended sense of individuality allows for a truly cosmopolitan attitude that accepts, celebrates, and integrates in its own realm of being the vast human diversity of all people and all peoples. The story of peoplehood for the human species cannot be what I have called in this book Western liberalism, because this type of universalist liberalism contains the seeds of othering in the very structure of its philosophy about the self. I have shown in chapter three in this book that in Western liberalism the symbolic other is nature and by association, also all those peoples that this story places


C I T I Z E N S O F T H E WO R L D, U N I T E !

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closer to natural time (as opposed to historical time): women, children, “barbarians,” and also animals, and all other organisms. Liberalism should transform itself to embrace the ideal of universal love in order to become genuinely cosmopolitan. To be sure, it should preserve the gem of its cultural tradition, namely, ideal moral individuality. But it should also allow for such sense of self to extend itself to include distant others and even nature to be regarded as part of oneself—appreciate them as important in our own “scheme of goals and ends” (Nussbaum 2001). This and only this exercise opens up the possibility for understanding everybody’s position—including that of perceived or imagined tyrants and villains or that of the people who actually engage in exploiting and hurting others. This understanding, especially the hermeneutic of the heart directed at human wickedness, allows for the extended sense of individual self to reach beyond injustice. A sense of togetherness and one-in-anotherness realizes that whoever engages in oppression and exploitation is producing harm not only to the imagined other, but also to themselves, to the foundations for their own social environment—they are in a very real sense harming themselves. This realization ought to make the exploiters the objects of our compassion. If injustice is produced and reproduced systemically and carried out mindlessly by new generations, the harm is inf licted over and over again in all of the involved. This is the reason why practices of othering—racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and other forms—harm whole societies and not only the victims. The idea of having compassion for the oppressor may sound strange, but it works as a metaphor to represent the far reaches of universal love and why this concept ought to be seen and used as a guiding principle for our moral life in what I call cosmopolitan liberalism. Compassion for the oppressor does not mean that one should surrender oneself to this tyrant. Quite on the contrary, one ought to banish oppression primarily for the good of those victimized, but also and very importantly, for the good of potential victimizers. The figurative embrace of the oppressor ends the violence inherent in the dialectic of the master and the slave and creates the need to engage in the individual discipline of constantly observing our emotions. This is the reason why the realm of


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emotional cognition is so important for the expanded type of interaction in today’s global age. Our emotions drive us in much stronger and engaging ways than our cool power of rationality. This latter realm is the preferred space for contemporary liberal cosmopolitan philosophers to locate the solution to the lack of understanding that peoples and human groups display against each other (see Appiah 2006; Sen 2006; Smith 2003). However, rational thought and reasonableness discloses a kind of freedom that can only partially direct our ref lection about what it is that human beings owe to one another. There is a kind of freedom that the ideal of universal love promotes, which rationalism is displaced from seeing, namely, freedom from hate and fear. And this is the only type of freedom that allows us to apprehend the significance of others—close and distant others—to our own scheme of goals and ends, to our own self-interest. Freedom from hate and fear is essential for mutual understanding and for mutual recognition and is disclosed by the moral principle of compassion. This type of freedom is tremendously more empowering than the modern type, where the source of individual freedom comes from being able to fathom universal moral principles. In contrast to this, freedom from hate and fear emerges as a kind of awareness brought about by the extension of the individual self unto all that there is. This awareness is aspired to by constant practice of the discipline of enhancing our ability to deal with our own anger; which amounts to a conscious effort to develop our cognitive emotional competence to deal with others. I have explained the philosophical bases of the compassionate extension of individuality beyond its own subjective borders in chapter one of this book. Here, I want to stress that such borders cannot be pushed unless individuals engage in the active practice of observing their emotions and the places those emotions take them to. This applies in the domestic realm where children ought to be given a space of peace if we want them to become citizens of the world, free from hate and fear. And this also applies in the public realm, where we interact with strangers. According to the Western liberal ideal of individual self, we owe such strangers merely the deference of being polite to them—nothing else. According to the cosmopolitan ideal of extended self and the moral principle of compassion, those



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strangers are actually part of us qua human species and their well-being ought to be important to our own self-interest. The mindful discipline of constantly enhancing emotional cognition toward the importance of others produces the consequence of building an immediate and personal world of peace with sophisticated cultures of care. It should be an aim of public policy to support such realms of human existence where children are brought up. World justice can only emerge from the careful daily craft of such realms of peace that in actual living experience will take the shape of particular and local cultures of care. These cultures of care arise as a necessity for human life to be sustained because they are dictated by the immediate need of bringing up children in whatever social circumstances. They also always emerge within a larger local culture that manifests itself in stories, “conversations,” or shared meanings that eventually become part of the complex identity of self for human beings. Nevertheless, such identities may at times become closely related to a specific human group and as Smith (2003) explains in his theory of political stories, they require ethically constitutive elements that refer to the intrinsic worth of the ones that belong to such groups. Contemporary cosmopolitanism warns about the dangers of politicizing such identities. The danger, as Sen explains, has to do with achieving a polarization of identities as a consequence of hate-mongering for political objectives. In his book Identity and Violence (2006) Sen’s main premise is that human identity is a lot more complex and diversified than identity conf licts show and that human reason should not fail to always make us aware of such inner complexity. I argue that this awareness may be enhanced by reasonable consideration of who our complex selves are, as Sen suggests; but can only be a living source of inspiration in times of crisis—when our physical integrity is threatened—from seeing the other in oneself through universal compassion. This moral aspiration may take the form of a daily discipline as mentioned earlier; but also very importantly, it is an attitude learned from our parents and their own outlook toward life and others. A very important part of who we are is related to the type of domestic culture of care that brought us up into adulthood. Local and particular cultures of care naturally arise as a consequence of


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all peoples needing to bring up their young. However, the quality of those cultures depends as much on the political peace that stable legitimate institutions produce as well as on the inner peace of the people who take care of and are important attachment figures to infants and children. When Oliner and Oliner (1988) refer to altruism as a characteristic of those who rescued Jews from the Nazi regime during World War II, they speak of their personality and not of mere “abstract or philosophical preferences,” the values of care that rescuers displayed were “a key dimension of rescuers’ personalities—the way they characteristically related to others and their sense of commitment to them” (171). This means that, under the extreme circumstances of Nazi Germany, people showed such concern for fellow human beings—to the point of risking their own lives—out of a personal inner structure or enduring predisposition to caring for others that had been formed in rescuers by their parents. Oliner and Oliner found that the characteristics of the parenting styles in rescuers’ parents were nurturing, caring, loving, gave their children a sense of justice through their example, and also were respectful and caring toward others (chapter 7). The particular local ethics of care in which children grow up ought to be seen as the most valuable means to produce emotionally competent citizens of the world. The freedom inherent in extending the self in universal love unto others manifests itself in the daily life of the practitioner as an absence of fear and hate, which allows for an optimistic outlook toward life and a dedicated ethics of caring toward the young. Such optimistic attitude in life and ethics of caring for children are a work of love, a discipline, a constant observance of peace. The way Western liberalism has traditionally dealt with emotions is to control them with a number of mechanisms of fear and guilt embedded in the individual person through a longer history of judgmental morality. As I have discussed in chapter one, this type of morality’s ancestry is Judeo-Christian and so, it is clearly culturally situated. In cosmopolitan liberalism emotions are not to be controlled by cool rationality; they are seen as creative sources of human consciousness. Emotions ought to be observed and honored, come to terms with by regarding them as the vehicles of our self-transformation and production of our caring selves. Reason



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may sometimes fail us in this world of endless complexity, but our emotions will always be with us and may be used as the materials we have to create the person we want to be. Not all of us may have had nurturing, caring, and loving childhoods; but there is in us the power to transform our inner selves into extensive persons. About these type of persons Oliner and Oliner (1988) say: Involvement, commitment, care, and responsibility are the hallmarks of extensive persons. Disassociation, detachment, and exclusiveness are the hall marks of constricted persons. Rescuers were marked by extensivity, whereas nonrescuers, and bystanders in particular, were marked by constrictedness, by an ego that perceived most of the world beyond its boundaries as peripheral. (186)

Constricted persons are also the type that respond to hatemongering by giving in to what Sen (2006) calls the “illusion of singularity”: they polarize their own identity to an unreal extent that lasts the carnage—unless it is systematized by cultural belief into ongoing oppression and exploitation. This illustrates that emotions can also be very destructive when they are guided by hate and fear. This is the reason why a compassionate morality extends itself unto others to the point of embracing even the tyrant—imagined or actual. In such an embrace of others the self is free from hate and fear and strives to transform into realms of peace both the intimate sphere of domestic life and the public sphere of the generalized other—where strangers abide. What I want to say with this is that an absence of hate and fear then is not dependent solely on an external provision of social order and political legitimacy (which are of course essential). It also depends majorly on its constant creation that entails the moral discipline of observing our emotions and on the constant possibilities of othering strangers. Trust in strangers, or what Eric Uslaner (2002) call moralistic trust, is a cornerstone of social interaction especially in the global age and he shows that it can be seen as a value that is taught to children as they grow up. And so cosmopolitan liberalism amounts to a doctrine according to which compassion ought to be brought in as a moral principle of ref lection and constant discipline; and othering ought to be


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displaced from the liberal tradition altogether through this discipline. The consequences of this practice would be to create a universal story of belonging for the whole human species based in the togetherness and one-in-anotherness of universal love. This doctrine can find favor in all comprehensive conceptions of the good, all organized religions and sacred books, and also recently, in contemporary scientific research on the needs for human beings to f lourish. According to Peter Prontzos (2009), there is a wealth of recent research on the correlations that exist between childhood experiences and certain psychological predispositions that ultimately indicate that human beings are “hard-wired for compassion and cooperation. Not only is it natural to care for others, but nurturing relationships with family and friends are vital to our emotional as well as our physical health” (24). I have referred to local cultures of care as vital, but in cosmopolitanism, care can be extended to the outer world beyond domestic intimacy. So this discipline of moral compassion that the way I have defined cosmopolitanism entails is not a mere f light of fancy but an actual necessity for the species to survive and to sustain global interaction. However, it cannot be stressed enough that this discipline is one of observing ourselves—our emotions—when we interact with our loved ones as well as with everyone else that we may encounter on a day to day basis. The realm of freedom from hate and fear that the expansion of individuality creates can apprehend the idea behind the metaphor of compassion for the imagined tyrant. At some point or another we identify oppressors in many or all of the people that we interact with on a daily basis: one’s partner, our children, our colleagues, drivers in the street, policemen, rude people, rich businessmen, and so on. However, this is not a doctrine of surrendering and giving in to the whims of people who want to arbitrarily impose on us—and if we do give in, we do them a disservice as they become tyrants. Rather, it is a discipline that allows us to deal morally with the generalized other in our daily individual lives. The bases for a cosmopolitan liberal morality include considering the other as an end in itself, but also loving its absolute uniqueness, being in awe of its difference. According to Nishitani, the sharing of absolute difference is the basis for genuine acceptance; what he calls “true equality,” a compassionate appreciation of each



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other between strangers. Nishitani (1982) tells us that this “comes about in what we might call the reciprocal interchange of absolute inequality, such that the self and the other stand simultaneously in the position of absolute master and absolute servant with regard to one another. It is an equality in love” (285).2 The closest thing to the union of oneself and another in daily interaction takes place through the practice of trust that discloses its benefits throughout the passage of time. We can say with Eric Uslaner that trust comes from moral intuitions that were given us as we grew up; or also, as I have proposed here, as an aspiration with constant practice of care and extensivity of self. That is, we were made emotionally competent by the culture of care in which our parents brought us up and this in turn produces the emotions of compassion, empathy, and respect for others that sustain our moral behavior toward them. Fortunately, as free individuals, we are not determined by the culture of care or lack of it in which we grew up. People as individuals can also freely choose to practice the discipline of extending themselves unto others as if those others were part of themselves. I have argued that this takes place at the order of events in time that occurs in the f leeting present instant and discloses simultaneity. This is also the locus of compassion that fuels our moral imagination. I refer to moral imagination because (universal) morality can only be guided by ideals that may be fulfilled only imperfectly. But the need to postulate them in political theory is patent in the search for our human potential to decide and act as ethical beings and build a just world order. This would manifest itself in a society that makes the needs of children and their caretakers a priority (see Lakoff 1996) and in members of the human species in general at a grassroots level practicing the principle of compassion to escape the world of hate and fear. I propose to consider our capacity for imagining an ability to feel universal love—even if only as a mind experiment for now—in order to establish it as an ideal that will complement the already established Kantian ideal of people as transcendental subjects— ends in themselves—whose freedom enables them to apply the categorical imperative in their moral lives—being able to act according to universalizable maxims. Both the perspective of the transcendental subject and that of the compassionate extended self


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are needed as legitimate moral points of view to judge public principles and rules. It is important to say once again that moral reason, qua individual judgmental morality, cannot be left behind or substituted for compassionate morality: Both the freedom of creative imagination in pursuing universal principles and a synchronic openness of the heart in the simultaneity of compassion and trust are needed in order to seek world justice. However, none of these two aspects of our moral cognition on their own ought to be considered as the true source of our moral life. And so, I consider Kantian moral reason and compassionate morality as the two ideal transcendental axes around which we can organize the moral space of cosmopolitan liberalism, both of which are abstract principles that we can imagine as possible sources of our ethical behavior. “History symbolically ends,” says Northrop Frye (1982), “at the point at which master and servant become the same person, and represent the same thing” (91). Only within the realm of simultaneity can the liberal principle of tolerance be genuine: allow for the free existence of the other. However, only within the realm of compassion can tolerance be transformed into mutual acceptance. This will only come about as we practice the discipline of genuine cosmopolitanism based on moral rationality and the ideal of universal love. And so it is on these bases that I propose to all concerned individuals to practice compassion for themselves, for their children, for their neighbor, for the distant other, for nature in order to be able to wear the title of “citizen of the world.” As all citizens of the world do this, they unite with the human species in a figurative embrace of universal love.


NOTES

Introduction: Contemporary Cosmopolitanism 1. I will engage with the details of the communitarian critique to abstract liberalism in chapter three of this book. 2. An admirable effort to explain how this happened throughout the centuries is Eric Voegelin’s monumental work in several volumes, Order and History, that traces what he calls the “historiogenesis” or the creation of a universal type of valid cosmology for what is known as Western culture today (see Voegelin 1974). 3. The association of individuality with the Judeo-Christian tradition is illustrated in how any introductory course of political theory always deals at some point with the Protestant Reformation of Christianity. It is generally accepted that Reformation produced a movement in consciousness that deepened the awareness of individuality with respect to salvation and the relationship between God and the saved. 4. I will explore the aspects of our humanity that are alienated in the Western liberal tradition in chapter four of this book. 5. This tension is illustrated by the relatively recent discussion about the importance to freedom of expression of publishing images that are disrespectful to Islam; and by the older discussion about whether veiling women ought to be allowed in liberal democracies.

1

Compassion and a Tale of Belonging for the Human Species

1. For an in-depth explanation of this typology, see my Political Philosophy for the Global Age (2005). 2. A conceptual dialogical relationship corresponds to the idea of time in simultaneity in the same way as a dialectical relationship


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NOTES

3.

4.

5.

6.

corresponds to the idea of time as sequence. This notion arises from the paradigm of complexity in scientific observation. “A paradigm of complexity would be a paradigm where thought would not be controlled by logic, but logic would be controlled by thought. More specifically it would be a dialogical principle. The word dialogical itself establishes the limitations and possibilities of knowledge. Why limitations? Dialogical means it is impossible to reach a sole principle, or master a word, whatever it is; there will always be something irreducible to a single principle, be it chance, uncertainty, contradiction, or organization. But at the same time, dialogics, while it contains an intrinsic limitation, also includes the possibility of bringing concepts into play among themselves” (Morin 1984, 65–6). However, here I will only deal with time; for a thorough explanation of how language and legitimate linguistic structures shape each ideal type of reality, see Sánchez-Flores (2005). In this respect, the ideal primitive type is never left behind in human life, as the modernizing myth would have it. On the contrary, metaphorical verbal structures can never be abandoned even in the transcendental views of reality due to the essential grip they have in our human primitive (primary) construct (see Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Ricoeur 1967; Sánchez-Flores 2005; Voegelin 1974). The reader will notice that the primitive ideal type is left at the margins of the discussion in the present explanation about the synchronic and diachronic orders of events in time. This is due to its being the only non-transcendentalist ideal type, and thus does not present a transhistorical perspective on time (I explain this concept later) but a cyclical one that in global interaction exists only at a symbolic level; not anymore as an organizing principle of human life. We owe Northrop Frye the notion of the historical “not yet,” which he develops in his Anatomy of Criticism (1957). In this conception, Frye contemplates the “apocalyptic vision” as a permanent possibility that inspires the secular imagination. According to Lawrence Coupe (1997, 166), this apocalyptic vision does not mean to be constantly waiting for the literal catastrophe, it does not even refer to a religious doctrine, but to the imaginative anticipation of the not yet. This comparison is a metonymic recourse, because to assume that the constant present moment is the same as simultaneity in space is what Keiji Nishitani (1982) refers to as bad infinity, of the type


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that produces fear, rigidity, insecurity; that is, when the finite is perceived to go on infinitely. 7. Nishitani is the most outstanding figure of the Philosophical School of Kyoto. He studied philosophy in Heidelberg with Martin Heidegger, and had existentialist suicidal impulses facing the nothingness of nihilism. He then rediscovered his own religious tradition, Zen Buddhism, and with its help he reconciled with existentialism opening up very suggestive philosophical possibilities. 8. This perspective refers to a phenomenological position that carries out the eidetic exercise of seeing all that is perceived as mere appearance in order to question its validity as received knowledge. From that position a tolerant attitude can emerge paired with hermeneutic methodology or what I have referred to as a hermeneutics of the heart—understanding others and oneself through empathy. This attitude tries to interpret and understand the diverse conceptions of human reality that experience may bring. Now, this does not entail abandoning a critical perspective that may question the validity of certain human practices. It merely requires us to hold criticism until the exercise of understanding has been completed (see Ricoeur 1981). Once this has been achieved, compassion may reinforce the critical perspective from an absolute point of view that may be understood by all liberal and nonliberal positions.

2

Trust in Strangers and the Critique of Abstract Liberalism

1. Kant portrays human beings as transcendental subjects that are able to exercise their rationality and freedom by choosing their own moral principles through what he calls the “categorical imperative”: Principles or maxims that we come up with by testing them in universalizing their application to all circumstances and all people. This is, according to Kant, the sole source of categorical authority for moral decisions. 2. Lebenswelt in German; life world is a concept that comes from the philosopher Edmund Husserl and it made its way into sociology through Alfred Schutz. Habermas uses this concept to refer to the immediate meaningfulness of social and cultural interaction, of human exchange and meaning. In his sociological work, and from his critical Frankfurt School perspective, he is primarily concerned


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NOTES

3.

4.

5.

6.

with the rationalization and colonization of the life world by bureaucratic instrumentality and the logic of the economy (see Habermas 1984). And as MacIntyre (1984) reminds us, universalisms defined and sustained by specific communities that may want to impose them on the rest of humanity are also the source of fundamentalist terrorism (or of the equally destructive war on terror). Habermas says that he keeps neutrality on the matter of colonial imposition on philosophical basis. He openly admits that he regards modern rationality as the critical tool to constantly assess what he calls world cosmologies or nonmodern cultures. To Habermas, the absence of critique on the irrationality of Nazi cosmology led to the Holocaust during World War II. The survey question to which both Hardin and Uslaner refer to was developed by Morris Rosenberg (1956): “Generally speaking, do you believe most people can be trusted or can’t you be too careful in dealing with people?” To Hardin (2006), this question invites too many conceptions of trust “Unless we can show that responses in the vernacular correlate to responses in some more articulated account of trust, we generally cannot be sure what the survey responses mean” (61). The best example is Rhonda Byrne’s best seller The Secret (2006) and the whole positive thinking self-help industry that is a sociocultural phenomenon of the twenty-first century.

3

Beyond the Realm of Individuality: Nature and Children

1. Chapter four: “Human Difference and the Multicultural Dilemma”. 2. According to Gould (1977), the reason for our being born as embryos is related to our evolutionary specialization on a rather large brain: “Human brains [. . .] are so large that another strategy must be added for successful birth—gestation must be shortened relative to general development, and birth must occur when the brain is only one fourth its final size” (75). 3. The full name of this essay is: An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet and other Writers (1789). 4. Teleology has taken the shape, to name a few examples, of historicism in Hegel, of progress toward positivism in Comte, or of communism through revolution in Marx. In the social sciences, Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

NOTES

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6.

7.

8.

9.

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though, the persisting symbol of telos has been transformed from a telos of God into a Human telos (one that is seen as possible but not deterministic): Purposive intentionality, the need for substantive rationality, morality, the modern value of freedom, or again progress, as in the search for the ideal speech situation in Habermas. Stochastic processes are not entirely random or deterministic, they define the essence of complex uncertainty (see Maturana and Varela 1987). This notion is analogous to “past path dependencies,” following the historical neo-institutionalist insights about present dependence on context and particularity (see Hall and Taylor 1996). “Although the reductionist tradition remains strong,” says Hodgson (1993), “there have been further moves against genetic reductionism in biology in recent years. These are found in the works of Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin and Ernst Mayr, among others” (244). “The fact that a structure-determined system is deterministic,” says Maturana (1990), “does not mean that an observer should be able to predict the course of its structural changes. Determinism and predictability pertain to different operational domains in the praxis of living of the observer. Determinism is a feature that characterizes a system in terms of the operational coherences that constitute it, and in terms of its domain of existence as it is brought forth in the operations of distinction of the observer. Accordingly, there are as many different domains of determinism as domains of different operational coherences the observer brings forth in her or his domain of experiences” (70). “[C]ellular reproduction,” say Maturana and Varela (1987), “presents a special phenomenon: autopoietic dynamics is what makes cellular fracture take place in the reproductive plane. No external agent or force is needed. We can presume that such was not the case with the first autopoietic unities and that, in fact, reproduction was first a fragmentation that resulted from the bumping of these unities with other externalities. In the historical networks thus produced, some odd cells underwent reproductive fracture as a result of their internal dynamics. These variants possessed a dividing mechanism from which derived a lineage or stable historical succession. It is not clear how this occurred. These origins are probably forever lost to us. But this does not invalidate the fact that cell division is a special case of reproduction that we can legitimately call self-reproduction” (66). Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

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NOTES

10. But this business of classification is not without its deep and unsolvable paradoxes. See Gould (1977). 11. In his theory of social systems, Niklas Luhmann (1995) argues that language can never go beyond itself as it is self-referential; it is determined by its own autopoiesis. I agree with him on this, but do not follow him in his theoretical need to dispose of human consciousness altogether in order to reject the modern idea of individuality. Nevertheless, the reason I have introduced Maturana and Varela’s own notion of autopoiesis is because I want to argue (contrary to Luhmann) that language depends on human consciousness of self, be it individual in a modern idealized sense, or not. 12. [L]o que distinguimos cuando distinguimos emociones en nosotros y en otros animales, son dominios de acciones, clases de conductas, y que en nuestro vivir f luimos de un dominio de acciones a otro en un continuo emocionar que se entrelaza con nuestro lenguajear. A este entrelazamiento de lenguajear y emocionar llamamos conversar, y mantenemos que todo vivir humano se da en redes de conversaciones. 13. En este proceso el niño o niña aprende el emocionar y la dinámica relacional fundamental que va a constituir el espacio relacional que él o ella generará en su vivir, esto es, lo que él o ella hará, oirá, olerá, tocará, verá, pensará, temerá, deseará y rechazará, como aspectos obvios de su vivir individual y social como miembro de una familia y una cultura. 14. [C]omo un proceso de orientación y manejo corporal espontáneo en la libertad del juego. 15. El niño en este punto de su crecimiento ya ha vivido las experiencias senso-motoras que son un pre-requisito para la constitución de la conciencia humana: el libre movimiento en un dominio social como un ámbito de relaciones espacio-temporales en la aceptación de sí mismo y de los otros. 16. En otras palabras el niño se ha vuelto capaz de ver en su mente la Gestalt (configuración) de la vida humana como su propia vida, en el movimiento cíclico de avance y retroceso que constituyen el espacio y el tiempo.

4

Human Difference and the Multicultural Dilemma

1. Charles Taylor is also an important Canadian exponent of multiculturalism, but I deal only with Kymlicka’s version because it is firmly based on an abstract type of liberalism. Taylor’s Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores

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3.

4.

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multiculturalism criticizes such type of liberalism from his sociological-communitarian and hermeneutical position (see Taylor 1994). In the 1840s, residential schools for Native children started to open in Canada and were designed to educate Indians under assumptions of their inferior culture and character. They were meant to “kill the Indian in the child.” In the decade of 1870 the federal government started to have an important role in their development and administration as “joint ventures” with Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, and United Churches. All children of Aboriginal families were kidnapped and sent to residential schools. This policy dictated that they should be converted into Christianity and assimilated into the white majority view of civility—and by the way become a source of free labor for the vicinities of residential schools; communities lobbied intensely to have them established in their areas (Miller 1996). In those schools children were forced to forget their Native languages and generally got their cultures and identities beaten out of them. This policy of assimilation broke Aboriginals and their cultures to the point of being considered a form of “cultural genocide,” and resulted in an “epidemic of socio-cultural devastation”, (Schissel and Wotherspoon 2010, 115; see also Jaine 1993). The Employment Equity Act in Canada defines visible minorities as “[p]ersons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are nonCaucasian in race or non-white in colour.” So Aboriginals are not officially defined as visible minorities, but both these classifications of people fall in the ethnic category of physical otherness. There are some physiological racial differences in terms of resistance or higher probability of getting specific diseases, but this is based on statistical probabilities and some bodily adaptations to the various weathers of the world, not determined by the essential genetic makeup of different peoples. Some of the respondents spent some time of their lives in the United States of America.

5

Citizens of the World, Unite!

1. With Friedrich Engel. 2. Here, Nishitani refers indirectly to Hegel’s famous “dialectic of the master and the slave” in his Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) that represents all conf licts borne from human difference and hierarchy. According to Hegel this dialectic ought to be resolved through the raising of consciousness and rationality in history. Mónica Judith Sánchez-Flores



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INDEX Aboriginals, 135–6, 144, 151–7, 159, 165, 183n2, 183n3 abstract liberalism, 1–2, 11–14, 20, 49, 53–65, 68, 72–3, 83, 85, 87, 111, 122, 128, 130–1, 133, 149, 176, 177n1, 182n1 see also Western liberalism Abu-Laban, Yasmeen, 144–6, 166 accommodation, 3, 16–17, 83, 129–30, 136–9, 145, 164 adaptationism, 87, 99, 101–4, 107 affirmative action, 137, 148, 165 African American, 147–9 Age of Reason, 1, 55 see also Enlightenment, European allopoietic system, 107 Americam, see United States of America anomie, 41 anthropocentrism compare non-anthropocentric perspective, 37, 86, 93, 124 Apocalypse, 24, 178n5 appreciating others, 39–40, 76–7, 79–80, 129–30, 169, 174 Aristotle, 38, 62 assimilation, 16, 134–6, 144, 183n2


autopoiesis (Maturana &Varela), 104–5, 107, 109–12, 114, 119–21, 182n11 babies, see infants barbarians, 15, 85, 96, 127, 169 Barry, Brian, 129, 132 Barth, Frederick, 141 belonging, 3, 7–9, 12–13, 19–21, 41, 44, 46–9, 57, 60–1, 64, 128, 130, 140, 143, 150–6, 158, 161–2 benevolence, 34, 39, 79 Bergson, Henri, 108 Bissoondath, Neil, 144 Brain, see human, brain brain cells, see neurons brown skin, 16, 139, 141, 146, 150–3, 157, 162 Buddhism, 37–8, 46 Zen, 28, 179n7 Burke, Edmund, 57 business ethics, 161 Canada, 16–17, 129–31, 134–6, 139–46, 150, 153, 156–7, 163–6, 183n2, 183n3 caretakers, 87–9, 109–10, 116, 118–19, 175 caring, 77, 88–9, 123–4, 172–3 Cartesian philosophy, 35–6

196

I N DE X

categorical imperative, 71, 124, 161, 175, 179n1 children, 15, 17, 39–40, 77, 81, 83–5, 87–8, 109–11, 115–25, 127, 148, 150, 161, 163–4, 169–76, 183n2 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 144 Christianity, 36–7, 177n3, 183n2 citizens of the world, see cosmopolitan citizenship civic virtue, 13, 46, 54, 58–60 class analysis, 72–3, 139 classism, 83 climate change, 49, 84 cogito, ergo sum, 35 colonialism, 1–3, 11–12, 15–16, 73–4, 84, 96, 134–5, 138, 165, 179–80n2, 180n4 communitarianism, 2, 13–14, 27, 54–61, 65, 72, 76, 111, 128–33, 148, 177n1, 182–3n1 compassion, 3, 10, 12–15, 17, 20–1, 27, 29, 34–5, 37–40, 42, 47, 49–51, 55–7, 75–7, 79–81, 83–4, 86, 89, 109, 111, 118, 123–5, 128, 130–1, 159, 161–6, 168–71, 173–6, 179n8 compensation, 16, 83, 129, 138–40, 148, 165–6 conceptions of the good life, comprehensive, 9, 14, 54, 58, 60, 63, 65–70, 72–3, 75, 115, 120–3, 174 conscience, 11, 32–3 consciousness, 5, 9, 13, 17, 23–4, 28, 32–7, 80, 86–7, 89–90, 96–7, 100, 108, 110–12, 115–16, 119–20, 124, 162,


167, 172, 177n3, 182n11, 183n2 constitutive attachments (Sandel), 40, 60 co-ontogeny, 107, 114–15 cooperation, 66, 68, 71, 81, 88, 109, 111, 174 cosmopolitan citizenship, 17, 47, 111, 118, 167, 170, 172, 176 Cosmopolitan liberalism, 1, 3, 11, 13, 17, 20, 34, 85–6, 124, 128, 168–9, 173–4, 176 cosmology, 10–11, 19, 23, 28–30, 72, 87, 89, 94–8, 101, 103, 177n2, 180n4 cosmopolitan justice, see justice, global cosmopolitanism, 1–2, 4–6, 9–13, 16–17, 20–1, 27–8, 33, 40–2, 50, 57, 81, 84, 127–8, 130, 152, 163–7, 169–71, 174, 176 institutional, 6–8 moral, 6–9, 47–8 Covenant, 31–2 creationism, 101, 103 cultural mosaic, 16, 143 see also Canada culture of care, 88–9, 109, 111, 171, 174–5 modern, 2–3, 58, 60, 86, 95–6, 98, 108, 130, 161 “thick,” 136–7 “thin,” 136–7 Western, 2, 62, 65, 72–3, 135, 177n2 “damaged race,” 148–9, 165 Darwin, Charles, 15, 86–7, 89, 91–103, 105, 108–9

I N DE X

Dawkins, Richard, 103 de Gaulle, Charles, 143 defilement, 28–9, 31–3 democracy, 7, 45–7, 57, 61, 65, 69 deliberative (Habermas), 69, 132 demographic pressures, 49 descent with modification (Darwin), 103, 105 determinism, 98–103, 105, 107, 113 devolution, 134 diachrony, 15, 20–1, 24–6, 28, 85–6, 89, 95, 97–100, 106, 110, 177–8n2, 178n4 dialectic of master and slave, 38, 162, 164, 169, 183n2 dialectics, 21, 23, 36, 177n2 dialogical relationship, 22, 177–8n2 discrimination, 11–12, 83, 85, 130, 145–6, 150, 152–3, 156, 164 distributive justice, see under justice diversity, 14, 16–17, 19, 23, 27, 50, 54, 66, 94, 129–30, 132, 136–9, 143, 145, 166, 168 celebration of, 16, 129–30, 138 domestic life, 11, 41, 65, 89, 110, 123–4, 170–1, 173–4 dominant majority, see under majority durée, 108 Durkheim, Emile, 41 duty, 13, 62, 68, 70–1, 130 education, 39, 109, 134, 148, 164 emotional cognition, 88, 90, 109–10, 115, 170–1


197

emotions, 7–8, 10, 17, 22, 25, 29, 33–6, 38–40, 62, 75, 77, 79–81, 87–9, 97, 109–11, 115–19, 121, 123–4, 152–3, 169–75 emotivism, 62 empowerment, 3, 21, 44, 48, 61, 80, 131, 135, 146, 153, 162–3, 166, 170 emptiness of self, 36, 80 enaction, 115 encapsulated interest (Hardin), 78 Enlightenment European, 11, 62 Scottish, 102 see also Age of Reason epigenesis, 118 equality, 17, 57, 83, 85, 129, 133, 137–8, 140, 143–4, 146, 148–9, 174–5 compare inequality ethics, 7, 15, 27, 35, 47, 54, 62, 71, 89, 108, 128, 161 of caring, 37–8, 109–11, 120, 122–3, 128 of justice, 37–8 ethnic looking, 130–1, 150–2, 157, 162 ethnic minorities, see under minorities ethnicity, 4, 8, 38, 43–4, 72, 140–2, 147, 150–2, 156–9, 161, 163 ethnocentricity, 72 eudaimonistic judgment, see under judgment Europe, 1–4, 12, 16, 21, 27, 41, 55, 62, 72–3, 135, 165 evil, 4, 28–33, 80, 94

198

I N DE X

evolution (Darwin), 15, 56, 86–7, 89, 91–3, 95–106, 108, 113 exploitation, 13, 18, 44, 84, 138, 173 extended self, 17, 34–40, 75, 80, 84, 86, 124, 131, 168–9, 172–6 fact of plurality, 55, 72 family dispute, 68–75 far side (Nishitani), 36 federalism, 57, 134 feminism, 27, 72 First Nations, see Aboriginals Fish, Jeffrey, 147 folk taxonomies, 140, 146–7, 151, 163 freedom, 12, 15–17, 32, 42, 50, 53–4, 57, 59, 68–9, 71–3, 83–4, 133, 136–8, 143, 162, 170, 172, 175, 177n5, 179n2, 180–1n4 from hate and fear, 170, 174 freestanding position (Rawls), 14, 66–70 Frye, Northrop, 19, 26, 90, 176, 178n5 Gadamer, Hans, 21 Gemeinschaft (Tönnies), 42, 111 genetic engineering, 49 Gesellschaft (Tönnies), 41, 111 Giddens, Anthony, 110 Gilligan, Carol, 37, 40, 109, 122 global culture, 3, 22 interaction, 16, 22, 41, 122, 174, 178n4 order, 12 global justice, see under justice globalization, 3, 6–7, 9–13, 16, 19, 22, 27, 33, 38, 41,


49–50, 54, 74, 108, 122, 124, 139, 170, 173–4 God, 5, 30–3, 36, 46, 71, 73, 92, 94, 159, 177n3, 180–1n4 good, the, 9, 13–14, 30, 54–5, 57–60, 63–8, 72, 111, 115, 122, 132, 174 guardianship, 15, 84, 87 guilt, 28, 32–3, 172 Gwyn, Richard, 144 Habermas, Jürgen, 3, 14, 49, 54–6, 59, 66, 68–75, 88, 109, 132, 179n2, 180–1n4 Hardin, Russel, 55, 78, 180n5 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 73, 162, 180n4, 183n2 Held, David, 6–7 here and now, 10, 24, 38, 80, 112, 138 hermeneutic approach, 43, 179n8, 182–3n1 hermeneutics of the heart, 10, 20, 169, 179n8 historical ideal type of reality, see reality, ideal type of history, 4, 9–10, 12, 15, 21, 23, 25–9, 36, 44–5, 47, 57, 61–2, 73, 86, 95–7, 100, 113, 121, 124, 127, 138, 162, 172, 176, 177n2, 183n2 philosophy of, 26, 73 Hobbes, Thomas, 56, 60, 71, 113 Holocaust, 133, 180n4 human brain, 114–15, 180 difference, 14, 16–17, 34, 43, 72, 85, 127–32, 136, 139, 147–9, 151, 158, 162–4, 166, 174, 183n2

I N DE X

species, 8–9, 11, 17–18, 27, 42, 47, 84, 85, 90, 96–7, 147, 175–6 hybridity, 157 ideal types of reality, 22, 160 see also reality, ideal type of invisible hand (Smith), 92, 94, 102 identity, 8, 11, 17, 21, 27, 33, 42–3, 45, 60–1, 63–5, 72, 110, 120–1, 128–30, 136, 142, 146–7, 165, 171, 173 global, 9, 11, 17, 49, 128 individual, 33, 36 national, 6, 16, 146 politics of, 43, 132, 142 racial, 142, 146, 149–50, 157, 165, 173 transcendental, 31–3, 36–7 Western, 3, 127, 142 imagination, 13, 22, 39, 47, 76, 86, 88–9, 93, 97, 109, 111, 115, 117, 119, 124, 175–6, 178n5 immigration, 17, 134, 136, 142, 144–5, 153, 163 immortality (Kant), 71, 73 impartiality, 4–5, 71 Indians, see Aboriginals individuality, 3–6, 8–15, 17–21, 24, 27–38, 41–2, 50, 53–66, 68–9, 71–7, 79–81, 83–9, 113, 116, 123–5, 127–33, 136–7, 143–4, 151, 160–2, 164–70, 172, 174–6, 177n3, 182n11 inequality, 14, 16, 72–3, 130, 142, 149, 175 compare equality infants, 5, 41, 90, 110–11, 118–20, 124, 128, 172 information technology, 10, 49


199

Ingold, Tim, 90–3, 98, 101, 103, 115–16 instrumental rationality, 71, 116, 179–80n2 integration (Kymlicka), 136, 144 integument of culture (Frye), 19, 90, 98, 111 interlocking oppressions, 73 intimacy, 42, 75, 110, 118–19, 173–4 intuitive submission to experience, 24 Irigaray, Luce, 38 Jim Crow, 165 Judeo-Christian tradition, 1, 4–5, 10–12, 15, 20, 28, 30, 32–3, 36, 42, 55–6, 73–4, 96, 172, 177n3 judgment eudaimonistic, 38–9 similar possibilities, 39, 80 justice distributive, 66 see also equality global, 5–10, 20, 27, 33–4, 74 Kant, Immanuel, 32, 34, 37, 40, 46, 49, 56–7, 59, 65, 67, 69–71, 73–4, 109, 122, 124, 161–2, 167, 176, 179n1 Kantian republicanism (Habermas), 49, 69 karma, 28–30 see also sea of suffering Kohlberg, Lawrence, 37, 40, 109, 122 Kohn, Hans, 45 Kymlicka, Will, 16, 59, 128–33, 135–9, 144–5, 182n1

200

I N DE X

language, 19, 22, 25, 44, 88, 90, 111, 114–16, 120, 122, 178n3, 182n11 official, 133–4, 136 languaging, 114, 116, 119 Latour, Bruno, 22 liberal democracies, 60, 131–2, 136, 138–40, 143, 160–1, 177n5 liberalism, see under specific kinds life world, 69, 179–80n2 Locke, John, 46, 56 Lovelock, James, 84 Luhmann, Niklas, 115, 182n11 MacIntyre, Alisdair, 58, 62–4, 161, 180n3 majority dominant, 128, 134, 137, 142–3 nonethnic, 137, 139, 141, 145 Malthus, Thomas Robert, 93–4 Maturana, Humberto, 15, 86–8, 90, 97, 99–103, 105–9, 111–16, 118–21, 181nn8–9, 182n11 marriages, mixed, 17, 150–1, 153 see also mixed blood Mendel, Gregor, 94, 99 metaphysics, 6, 13–14, 27, 38, 51, 54–6, 59, 65, 69–76, 122, 161 method of avoidance (Habermas), 14, 70 minorities ethnic, 128, 134–9, 143–6 national, 133–5, 144 visible, 139, 146, 150–1, 183n3 Misztal, Barbara, 76, 110 mixed blood, 130–1, 147, 150–2, 154, 159–60, 162 moderate sense of peoplehood, 48, 50


modern culture, see under culture modernity, 1–3, 6, 19, 21–2, 24, 28, 30, 32–3, 41–2, 57–8, 69, 72–4, 95, 103, 151 moral point of view, 5, 14, 36, 38, 39, 69–74, 179n8 moral reason, 34, 69, 71, 123, 161, 164, 166–7, 176 moral sentiment, 34, 40, 75–7, 79 morality, 4, 10, 12, 14–15, 27, 33, 57, 62, 64, 70–3, 75–6, 95–6, 108–9, 175 compassionate, 12, 14, 34–40, 47, 55–6, 75, 80–1, 84, 86, 111, 123–4, 173–4, 176 judgmental, 4, 27–34, 37, 53, 84, 96, 99, 124, 172, 176, 180–1n4 see also Judeo-Christan tradition mothering, 109, 117, 119 multiculturalism, 15–17, 127–34, 138–46, 157, 163–4, 166, 182–3n1 mutual obligations, 59, 76 mystic ideal type of reality, see under reality, ideal types of mysticism, 12–13, 20–30, 34–7, 50, 55, 74–5, 80, 103 myth, 1, 7, 12–13, 15, 21–4, 30–1, 41–2, 46, 54, 86–7, 91, 97–8, 124, 147–8, 151, 157, 178n4 of the fall, 30–1 narrative unity of the human life (MacIntyre), 62–4 nation building, 133–4, 136 nation civic, 7, 45–7, 54 ethnic, 7, 45–6

I N DE X

nation-state, 7, 12, 134 national minorities, see under minorities nationalism, 6–7, 43–5, 133, 145, 166 Natives, see Aboriginal natural drift (Maturana & Varela), 15, 99–101, 104, 108, 113 natural selection, 15, 89–99, 100–4 natural time, 15, 89, 96, 108–9, 168–9 nature, 7, 12, 15, 17, 21, 30–1, 37, 53, 81, 83–6, 88, 90–101, 102–8, 111–13, 116, 118, 121, 124, 127–8, 146, 167–9 near side (Nishitani), 29, 36–8, 80 neo-Darwinism, 94–5, 98–103, 105 nervous system, 88, 106, 114–15, 118 neurons, 114 Nishitani, Keiji, 28–9, 35–40, 80, 174–5, 178n6, 179n7, 183–4n2 non-anthropocentric perspective, 24, 80, 86–7 non-teleological principles, 15, 89, 95, 101–2, 105, 109 “not yet,” 24, 26, 30, 36, 39, 103, 178n5 nothingness, 28, 35, 179n7 noumena (Kant), 71, 73 Nussbaum, Martha, 38–40, 79–80, 87–8, 116, 169 Obama, Barack, 147–9 objectivity, 9–10, 25–6, 62–3, 108 observer, the, 96, 100–4, 106–8, 112–13, 115, 118, 154, 181n8


201

Oliner, Samuel and Pearl, 89, 109, 172–3 ontogeny, 29, 96–8, 100, 102, 106–7, 111, 113, 116–18, 120–1 oppression, 12–13, 18, 38, 50, 54, 72–3, 84, 132–3, 137, 140, 148–9, 162, 164, 166, 168–9, 173 oppressor, the, 162–6, 169, 174 optimism, 14, 77, 79–80, 172 organizational closure (Maturana and Varela), 97, 99, 104–7, 112–13, 118 original position (Rawls), 39, 58, 65–9, 79 Ortega y Gasset, José, 57, 65 other, the, 1, 3, 11–12, 15–16, 21, 37–40, 42, 44, 49–50, 55, 72, 74–85, 96–7, 111, 124, 127, 131, 135–6, 141, 143, 147, 150, 154–5, 162–5, 168–75 othering, 12, 15–16, 84–5, 125, 127, 167–9 outsiders, 50, 143, 146, 153, 155–6 overlapping consensus (Rawls), 68, 70, 72 parenting, 89, 117–18, 120, 122–3, 172 parliamentarianism, 134 path dependencies, 107, 113, 181n6 patriarchy, 3, 11–12, 15, 46, 72, 83 patriotism, 47 peace inner, 24, 172 revolution of, 18, 27, 68, 81, 167, 172–3 space of, 122, 160, 170–1

202

I N DE X

phenomena (Kant), 71, 95–6 phenomenology, 11, 15, 20, 28, 30, 33, 35, 86, 179n8, 183n2 philosophical paternalism, 69 phylogeny, 96–8, 101–2, 104–6, 113 plasticity, 3, 20, 90, 98, 114 play, 109, 116, 119 Pogge, Thomas, 7 Political liberalism (Rawls), 13–14, 56, 65–6, 69–70, 74 post-metaphysical thought, 3, 54–6 postcolonialism, 10, 27, 38, 72–3, 96 postmodern thought, 10, 27, 72–3 poverty, 13, 18, 129, 135, 139 practical reason (Kant), 62, 70 practices (MacIntyre), 58, 62–3, 115 primary reality, 21, 23, 25–6, 31–2, 34, 41, 178n4 see also reality, ideal type of principles of justice (Rawls), 69 procedural republic (Sandel), 61 public autonomy, 69 public policy, 16, 128–30, 134, 139–41, 143–6, 148–50, 164, 166, 171 color-blind, 16, 130, 140, 149 race-conscious, 148–9 quantum physics, 108 Quebec, 134, 143–4 race, 1–4, 8, 11, 16–17, 41, 43–4, 72, 127–30, 138–42, 146–52, 154, 157–9, 163–6, 183n3 racialized people, 3, 12, 85, 127 racism, 3, 16, 83, 85, 127–9, 135, 137, 139–41, 143, 145–6, 147,


149–50, 152, 162, 164, 166, 169 radical critique of modernity, 65, 72–5 rational choice, 76–8 rational domination of the world, 24 Rawls, John, 13–14, 39, 42, 49, 55–9, 65–74, 79, 131 reality, ideal type of historical, 9–10, 13, 15, 20, 23–8, 30–1, 33, 36, 55, 85–6, 95, 178n5 mystic, 12–13, 20–1, 23–30, 34–7, 50, 55, 74–5, 80 primitive or primary, 13, 20, 23–30, 33–4, 178n4 reasonableness (Rawls), 42, 66–8, 70–1, 74 reductionism, 8–9, 101–2, 181n7 reincarnation, 30 reserves system, 135–6 see also Aboriginals responsible agent, 27–9, 33, 73, 92 retribution, 29 Ricoeur, Paul, 4, 28–33 right, the, 54, 59–60, 65, 111 rights, 16, 28, 46, 49, 83, 164 group, 16, 128–9, 133–5, 137–40, 142, 145–6 human, see rights, individual individual, 4–5, 13, 40, 46, 59–61, 69, 75, 87, 129, 132–3, 136–40, 143–4 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 56 Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 143, 146 Ruddick, Sarah, 117, 119–20, 122 salvation, 31, 33, 177n3

I N DE X

Sandel, Michael, 54, 60–1, 65 sea of suffering, 30 see also karma segregation, 135, 148, 154, 165–6 self-government, 57, 133–4 self-interest expanded, 30, 39–40, 55, 80, 168 individual, 30, 39, 41, 50, 57–9, 66, 68, 70–1, 76, 79, 168, 170–1 Sen, Amartya, 2, 8–9, 130, 165, 170–1, 173 senses of peoplehood, 43, 47–8 of trust, 43–4 of worth, 43–8, 142, 171 sensory-motor configurations (Maturana), 119–20 sequentiality, see diachrony simultaneity, see synchrony sin, 28, 31–2 skeptical humanism, see moral cosmopolitanism slanted eyes, 16, 139, 141, 146, 150–3, 157, 162 Smith, Adam, 79, 92 Smith, Rogers, 3, 7, 21, 42, 44–9, 142, 146, 148–9, 165–8, 170–1 socio-biology, 102 sociological imagination, 8 solidarity (Durkheim) mechanical, 41 organic, 41 Sollors, Werner, 140–1, 147 space of peace, see under peace Spencer, Herbert, 92–5, 98 spiritual Enlightenment, 29, 34–5, 75, 80 Stasiulis, Daiva, 144–6, 166 state, 73, 131–3, 146


203

neutrality, 54, 66, 68, 72, 131–3, 137 states system, 6–7, 9 stochastic complex processes, 99, 100, 103, 181n5 stories of economic worth, 42, 44–8 of ethically constitutive worth, 44–51, 57, 142, 167, 171 of peoplehood, 3, 7, 11, 41–8, 50, 142–3, 164, 168 of political worth, 42, 44–8 of supremacy, 1–2, 41–2, 45, 48, 127, 148, 168 strategy of evasion (Habermas), 14, 70 structural coupling (Maturana and Varela), 97, 100, 104–5, 113, 115, 118, 121 survival of the fittest (Darwin), 102, 194 synchrony, 10–11, 13–15, 20–6, 37, 50, 85–7, 95–7, 99–100, 104–5, 107, 109–12, 115, 118, 124–5, 141, 175–6, 177n2, 178n4, 178n6 tale of belonging for the human species, 12–13, 19, 40, 48–51, 57, 85–6, 124, 167–8, 174, 176 tales of supremacy, see stories Tan, Kok-Chor, 4, 7 Taylor, Charles, 63–4, 182–3n1 tax Global Resource, 7 Tobin, 7 telos, 62–3, 91–3, 95, 102, 180–1n4 teleology, 91, 93–6, 101–2, 180–1n4 terrorism, 145

204

I N DE X

“thick” culture, see under culture “thin” culture, see under culture time, see diachrony, natural time, synchrony Tocqueville, Alexis de, 57 tolerance, 16, 34, 55, 176 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 41 traditions (MacIntyre), 62 transcendence, 22–4, 37, 76 transcendental subject (Kant), 32, 57, 59, 71, 161, 175, 179n1 transhistorical point of view (Nishitani), 36, 38, 73, 178n4 transmigration of souls, 30 tree of life, 97, 99 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot, 143–4 trust basic (Giddens), 110–11 elementary (Giddens), 110–11 in fate, 31, 80–1 generalized, 79 moralistic (Uslaner), 79–81, 173 particularized, 79 in strangers, 13–14, 37, 55–6, 75–7, 79, 81, 166 strategic (Uslaner), 55, 79 tyranny of the majority, 57 uncertainty, 76, 99–100, 107–8, 177–8n2 unencumbered self (Sandel), 13, 61, 64, 130 unitary system, 134 United States of America, 49, 57, 61, 142, 144, 147–9, 165, 183n5 universal love, 3, 5, 10, 12–13, 17, 20, 34–5, 37–40, 47, 49–51, 55, 75–6, 80, 124, 130–1,


159–63, 168–70, 172, 174–6 universality, 4, 11–12, 14, 27, 55, 89, 122 universalizable principles (Kant), 17, 38, 40, 54, 71, 77, 124, 175 Uslaner, Eric, 14, 77–80, 110, 123, 173, 175, 180n5 Vallespín, Fernando, 69 Varela, Francisco, 15, 86–7, 92, 97, 99–103, 105–9, 111–15, 118, 181n9, 182n11 veil of ignorance (Rawls), 58, 71, 79 vengeance, 29–32 Verden-Zöler, Gerda, 88, 109–11, 115–21 views of reality, see under reality, ideal types of violence, 11–12, 17, 42, 48–9, 67, 73–4, 84–5, 89, 124, 132, 134, 149, 164–5, 169, 171–3 visible minorities, see under minorities Waldron, Jeremy, 138 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 92 Warren, Earl, 148 weapons of mass destruction, 49 Weber, Max, 22, 24, 42, 73, 160 Western culture, see under culture Western liberalism, 1–5, 10–2, 15–16, 19, 27–8, 33–4, 51, 81–7, 123–4, 127–8, 140, 168, 170, 172, 177n4

I N DE X

women, 15, 85, 87, 117, 127, 137, 142, 147, 169, 177n5 world cosmologies, 56, 70, 74, 133, 180n4 world justice, see global justice


World views, 5, 9 12, 27, 56, 67–9, 72, 79, 87, 90, 115 Yahweh, 31 Zen Buddhism, see under Buddhism

205

Cosmopolitan Liberalism: Expanding the Boundaries of the Individual

Suicide science: expanding the boundaries

Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences

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The Church of Liberalism

The Future of Liberalism

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New Masters of the Wooden Box: Expanding the Boundaries of Box-Making (New Masters Series)

Godless: The Church of Liberalism

Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences - Cognition

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The Achievement of American Liberalism

The Future of Liberalism (Vintage)

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The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries

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The Innovative Individual

Bilingualism and the individual

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LSD: The consciousness-expanding drug

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Cosmopolitan Liberalism: Expanding the Boundaries of the Individual

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Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences

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The Church of Liberalism

The Future of Liberalism

The Virtues of Liberalism

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New Masters of the Wooden Box: Expanding the Boundaries of Box-Making (New Masters Series)

Godless: The Church of Liberalism

Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences - Cognition

Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences - Cognition

The Two Faces of Liberalism

The Achievement of American Liberalism

The Future of Liberalism (Vintage)

Godless: The Church of Liberalism

The Achievement of American Liberalism

The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries

The Boundaries of Inner Space

The theory of the individual in economics

Cosmopolitan Urbanism

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The Innovative Individual

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LSD: The consciousness-expanding drug

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