1 Historical Reflection and Awareness of Own Standards

In his essay Of Cannibals, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) wrote about peoples of the New World, discovered in his days, who were presented in circus like settings in Europe in the 16^th century:

I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in this nation, by anything that I can gather, excepting, that everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country. As, indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein we live: there is always the perfect religion, there the perfect government, there the most exact and accomplished usage of all things. They are savages, at the same rate that we say fruits are wild, which nature produces of herself and by her own ordinary progress; whereas, in truth, we ought rather to call those wild whose natures we have changed by our artifice and diverted from the common order. (Montaigne 1877: 230)

Montaigne’s reflections on the ‘level of truth and reason’ by which we judge unfamiliar cultural phenomena are no less relevant today than they were 450 years ago. Montaigne here demonstrates – for his period – already a remarkable ‘awareness’ of his ‘own standards,’ i. e. of his own cultural background and its public morality.

This shows that we engage – cross-culturally – with one another quite naturally on the basis of our own (political) standards and values; that is, today, if we take the American model as the de facto norm for so called ‘modern societies’, from the standard of a post-industrialized, individualistic, pluralistic, libertarian, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic immigrant society. But if we do so, we forget that the majority of peoples across the globe neither live in such societies, nor would they necessarily deem such a standard desirable. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), already remarked (in his Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind of 1784–91): “Senselessly arrogant would be the presumption that inhabitants of all parts of the world need to be Europeans in order to live a happy life.” This is probably as true today as it was 200 years ago.

We also tend to forget the historical process and the shaping factors that led to our standard. Value systems, as the core of cultures, have their origins in religious traditions. As to our own so-called Western culture, whether this is accepted or not, Christian ideas and values still form the basis of Western societies, although now mostly in a secularized fashion and therefore not easily recognizable; hence they might more appropriately be called post-Christian values.

This is to say, on a bedrock of Christian value orientation, a set of secular ideas and values developed: the ‘combination of individualism, rationalism, scientism and ideology of progress’ (Kim 1999). It became the driving force in turning Western-style modernization into an endeavour with a tremendous global or universalistic impact. In the course of this development, not only half of the globe was colonized by the Europeans, but a ‘one-dimensional order of progress’ was superimposed upon the world with its multitude of peoples. As the Korean scholar Yersu Kim, a philosopher formerly in charge of the UNESCO ‘Universal Ethics’ project, remarks:

This synthesis had such a pre-eminence in the minds and affairs of men that nations and societies were practically unanimous in accepting Westernization as the only means of ensuring a viable future. Under the banner of modernization, they abandoned customary truths, values and ways of life, and accepted their degree of Westernization as their measure of progress and regress. (Kim 1999: 9)

Thus, the ‘West’ (Europe and North-America) has successfully universalized its originally Christian based value system. This was achieved in the age of colonialism and imperialism with the development of science and (military) technology and driven by a quest for discovery. The new Western post-Christian secular ideologies, such as Liberalism or Marxism-Leninism, have inherited the universalistic ideals, the original missionary zeal and absolutist claim of its religious predecessors.

If we compare the impact of Confucianism in East Asia to that of Christianity in the West, we can regard Confucianism, as Tu Weiming has often pointed out – even though it is not a religion in the strict sense and historically as heterogeneous as Christianity – as a ‘functional equivalent’ to the Christian faith: Confucian values have exerted a profound and lasting influence on China (and East Asia) over a period of even more than 2000 years. Confucianism also claimed universal relevance of its teaching. Compared to Christianity, it lacked, however, the zealous missionary spirit. Instead, it spread to the rest of East Asia as an exemplary teaching of a harmonious social and moral order. Although Confucianism as an institution, unlike the Christian churches, disappeared with the end of imperial China, it formed and, to a certain extent as ‘post-Confucianism’, still forms the ethical basis of Chinese society. It even survived – from the May-Fourth Movement of 1919 till the Cultural Revolution – the major anti-traditionalist upheavals in mainland China. This has led to a new symbiosis of Confucian and Socialist values in present day China.

In addition, there seem to be many connecting points between Confucianism and Chinese Communism. For example, there are political goals with explicit reference to Confucian ideals such as achieving a society of ‘Small Prosperity’ (xiaokang shehui), if not of a ‘Great Unity’ (datong) – ideas which have their origin in the Book of Rites (Liji). Or take the tradition of emphasizing the role of the people and its welfare, the so-called ‘people-based thought’ (minben sixiang) which goes back to the Book of Documents (Shujing) and Mencius. Also, both doctrines are, in some ways, practical and society-oriented, and both appear to lack any interest in supernatural or cultic/religious themes. They both are, so to speak, ‘civil religions.’

2 Getting to Know the Respective Other Culture, in Particular, the Logics of its Value System

Themes for a cross-cultural dialogue might, first, be the respective philosophical and religious traditions. Although the influence of religions has ceded considerably in the European secular societies, it would be impossible to properly understand the post-Christian value system without taking into consideration the transformation process through which religious values have become secularized into socio-political ideals – or morals turned into codified law. The ‘habits of the heart’ (Bellah 1985) are shaped by traditions the workings of which elude our awareness.

The Chinese (and East Asian) traditions – Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism – are, of course, just like those of the West, very diverse, and yet we can find some common traits that are, collectively speaking, different from their occidental counterparts:

1. More important than faith in revelations or ‘teachings’ believed to be true (orthodoxy) is right practice (orthopraxy) among men.

2. Not the transcendent is the sacred but the secular (Fingarette 1972), the common or worldly, such as fulfilment of interpersonal duties (in Confucianism) or the natural (in Daoism/Zen-Buddhism).

3. The different schools do not compete with one another, nor do they try to oust each other; they tolerate one another and thus form a syncretistic unity.

Hence, Chinese religious/philosophical thought – different from the Western mainstream – does not pursue quasi-transcendent or epistemological questions (relationship between the world of senses and the metaphysical world); its focus, apart from being more inclusive than exclusive, is rather worldly and rationally pragmatic.

The different religious traditions in China have also led to a specific political culture with other priorities for the common good and living together in society. China and most of the East Asian countries give top priority to social harmony and stability. This preference is grounded in Confucian thought which has spread from China to Korea, Japan and Vietnam and which sees society or state modelled after the family, with consensus and harmony being essential for the survival of both. Even in Chinese Communism, this predilection is living on, as one can see from the proclaimed goal of wanting to reach a ‘harmonious society/world’ (hexie shehui/shijie).

We, thus, find here a tendency toward a culture of consensus, built on the social cohesion of families and relationships – in comparison to Western societies which, particularly in the modern age of liberal democracies, are based on a pattern of conflict and have the individual as their fundamental element. According to the latter, history, politics and society develop through conflicts between antithetical forces (election fights, labour disputes, class conflict, lately also gender war) and progress towards a liberated world of autonomous individuals.

Next to individual liberty, the main goal of the French Revolution was equality. Its backdrop was a class society in the ancien régime in which the majority of the bourgeois was dominated by a minority of nobility and clergy. Today, this ideal lives on as pursuit of ‘social justice.’ In Chinese society, patterned after the Confucian model of the family, in which we have a natural hierarchy between parents and children, equality was hardly ever an issue (apart from the Cultural Revolution). Instead, people were (and largely still are) seen in a network of relationships in which there is higher or lower status, mostly according to the principle of seniority or academic merit. We could thus characterize Chinese culture as a status-oriented culture, as compared to an equality culture in the West. This is also to say that moral requirements differ according to which roles are assumed in the family and in society – as mother or father, son or daughter, friend or neighbour and such. For this reason, Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont have characterized Confucian ethics as ‘role ethics’ (Ames 2020).

Hence, the Chinese society is more shaped by particular relationships and networks, emphasizing the principle of reciprocity as well as duties and responsibilities (this applies as well for other East Asian societies). In this context, it is interesting to note that the Chinese translation of the Western term ‘ethics’ – lunli – literally means ‘principles of human relationships.’ This is in contrast to the Western tradition which, with claims and rights in accordance to natural or positive law, sets universal rules and codes for everyone alike. For this reason we may refer to Fons Trompenaars’ distinction of universalistic vs. particularistic in describing Western and Chinese cultures respectively (Trompenaars 1993).

Against this backdrop of a value system, basically shaped by Confucianism, we might be able now to draw up basic elements of a Confucian ‘horizon of significance’: It is, most of all, the notion of an all-embracing sense of care: ‘benevolence’ (ren) or ‘humanness’ – that is, to behave as a true human being with concern for others. And this even goes beyond that scope, as the saying goes (attributed to Fan Zhongyan, 989–1052): “To take everything under Heaven as one‘s responsibility” (yi tianxi wei ji ren). It certainly inspired some of the finest features in Chinese culture. Thus, Fung Yu-lan (1895–1990) remarked in his The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy that Chinese philosophy aims

at a particular kind of highest life. But this kind of highest life, high though it is, is not divorced from the daily functioning of human relations. Thus it is both of this world and of the other world, and we maintain that it ‘both attains to the sublime and yet performs the common tasks’. (Fung 1947: 3)

As already mentioned, such a black-and-white dichotomy is – as a model – rather simplified. And yet, not only statistically speaking, but also because it highlights certain traits and trends, it is still justifiable – if treated with due caution. To illustrate this point, the value of social harmony might well be questioned by pointing out the many instances – from the earliest times until the most recent past – when harmony or consensus does not seem to have played a significant role in China. We should not overlook, however, that certain ideals (which are not the same as essences) do play a decisive role in the history of a civilization, even if these ideals – by nature – can never be fully realized. Regarding Western civilization, one might meditate for a moment on the notion that ideals such as charity, peaceableness, equality and the singularity of every person before God, have in their secularized or politicized forms – as social welfare, peace missions, equality before the law, human dignity and human rights – moulded our thought and practice in an undeniable way, although the 2000-year long history of the Christian Occident seems to have been a far cry from charity and peace. This is to say, we should be cautious dismissing the shaping power of certain ideals through history by pointing out singular incidents of non-congruence.

Due to the efforts of Tu Weiming, the positive aspects of Confucianism, as an inspiring tradition of ethics and of moral self-cultivation, have regained relevance. In the West, however, Confucianism is often regarded solely from its negative side, that is, to (mis)interpret it, zeitgeist conditioned, as a solely political and social authoritarian tradition – and to see Chinese Communism simply as a continuation thereof. The German Sinologist Fabian Heubel warned against this form of reductionism, emphasizing, instead, aspects of intercultural dynamics:

Instead of polemicizing against Confucian authoritarianism, it seems to me more useful to also understand Chinese socialism as part of a transcultural dynamic in which the old and the new, the Chinese and the Western communicate with each other in a paradoxical way. (Heubel, 2021:18)

3 Search for Common Concepts (Trans-Cultural Universals)

While making comparisons, we can either highlight the similarities or the differences. Having just focused on the differences, it would be worthwhile to also look for the similarities. In fact, the search for common concepts in different cultures has been the mainstream of cross-cultural endeavours for quite a while. These concepts are sometimes called trans-cultural universals. There is, for example, in the Confucian, as well as in the Christian tradition, the concept of the Golden Rule (in its positive and negative form); in Mencius we find ideas of an inborn goodness of human nature which correspond to those of Aristotle as well as to natural law and the modern notion of human dignity. Mencius also has the idea of ‘humane government’ (ren zheng), giving priority to the people and not to the ruler in the polity. Finally, we also find the ideal of the morally autonomous person, all of which has certain parallels in the history of Western thought.

We have to take into account, however, that these ideals exerted a different impact and led to a different philosophical and socio-political history. For example, the Confucian idea of moral autonomy of man did not bring about the notion of emancipation of the subject in the sense of Western philosophy, but a so-called ‘personalism,’ meaning that personal moral cultivation should lead to a heightened sense of responsibility for the common good – an attitude which we find, for example, in the tradition of the qing guan (incorruptible official). In short, what was called for was not self-assertion but the overcoming of selfishness; not self-realization, as it is fashionable today, but self-transcendence; in other words, cultivation of oneself from a small, egocentric self to a large, all-encompassing self (Tu 1985) – similarly in Buddhism the recognition of the fictitiousness, the illusion of the self is, in fact, enlightenment.

Hence, we have to be aware of the similarity trap and keep in mind that these similar philosophical or political ideals developed in different contexts, the main difference being that in Western thought there evolved around the period of Enlightenment and French Revolution an antagonism between state (government) and individual (citizen). This antagonism brought about the concepts of civil society and public sphere with the notion of citizens or intellectuals being critically and independently opposed to the state. In the Confucian tradition, however, the intellectual should be concerned about the welfare of the people and was always supposed to serve within the government; at the same time he ought to be a loyal critic of moral misconduct, an attitude which is certainly still alive and well in East Asian societies.

Neglecting this context, Western universalists mostly attempt to find traces of Enlightenment thought such as individual autonomy or notions of individual human rights, dignity, pluralism or democracy in the history of East Asian ideas, often combined with the reproach, that the Chinese, are not maintaining their own traditional standards and contradict their own tradition. According to such logic, a Chinese universalist could argue that Europeans or Americans find the ideals of charity, equality, justice, fraternity and peace in their tradition but that they are not living up to them, for example, in their relationship to people or countries from the Third World – or in their recent wars, be it against terrorism or for the sake of establishing democracy in other cultural areas of the world. Apart from that, East Asian universalists might rather look for other trans-cultural universals, perhaps, the idea of accountability, unselfishness, altruism, etc. This means, we have to proceed with caution while looking for such universals. It should not lead us to find logical mistakes or contradictions between tradition (or ideal) and reality in the other culture.

4 Openness Towards the Other and Willingness to be Informed by the Other

Other than Europe, East Asia can refer to an already more than hundred years long history of intercultural learning from the West. The following assessment made by an African might just as well hold true for East Asian intellectuals:

Which European could ever praise himself (or complain about) having put as much time, studies and effort into the learning of another ‘traditional’ society as the thousands of Third-World intellectuals who have studied in the school of Europe? (Miské 1981: 143)

This reveals a remarkable achievement in terms of mutual openness and readiness to learn from each other. It might give us an idea of what we as Europeans and also Americans have to catch up with in terms of cross-cultural learning.

The Sinic model might, thus, serve as a critical reflection of our own Western blueprint of the ‘good society.’ Such a critical reflection would entail a stock-taking as well as an extrapolation of the global implications of Western civilization into the future. In other words, we would have to ask what a civilizatory blueprint for the 21^st century could be like. By now it has become clear that the Western model – although having been an unprecedented success-story and being copied worldwide – has serious deficiencies and would not, in many ways, stand up to the standards of a civilization, at least not in the sense the word ‘civilized’ is commonly used today. (This insight prompted Mahatma Gandhi’s celebrated quip: asked ‘Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?’ he responded ‘It would be a good idea’ [quoted in Wallerstein 1997: 98].) The development of science has brought about a tremendous material progress; but the belief in scientism, as Immanuel Wallerstein pointed out, has also led to a separation of the true from the good in the social sciences, apart from the problem of their grounding in eurocentric presuppositions (Wallerstein 1997). We consider social pluralism to be a great emancipatory leap forward but are also becoming more and more aware of the social fallout, of the waning of solidarity and the rise of social anomie, the break-up of families or other traditional institutions which used to lend stability and cohesion to our societies – in short, the weakening of the social fabric. Where are the cohesive forces in our societies, in which its members are only seen as standing in contractual relationship with one another? Such questions might very well be at the top of the agenda of the 21^st century.

Because of basic ethnocentric attitudes, the tendency to universalize one’s own value systems is found in cultures or civilizations all over the globe. Having successfully universalized its originally Christian based value system, the ‘West’ shows particularly strong universalistic traits. There are for sure important universal messages in the Western (Christian and post-Christian) tradition, but there are just as important elements also in the Confucian tradition, not to mention contributions from other cultures. Particularly in view of the global dominance of Western secular values, they fulfil at least a locally valuable compensating or complementary function. Both the social problems in Western countries and the ecological crisis which we are facing today due to the dominance of the eurocentric development model should make us aware that the whole world might benefit considerably from alternative ways of thought, and we should therefore welcome the contribution of intellectuals from other cultures to offer their views on the solution of those problems that concern us all. For human flourishing on this planet, these non-Western values are just as important as our Western priorities. Thus, the well-known US senator J. William Fulbright once remarked on the necessity of intercultural education:

The essence of intercultural education is the acquisition of empathy – the ability to see the world as others see it, and to allow for the possibility that others may see something we have failed to see, or may see it more accurately. (Fulbright 1989: 217)

Hence, to open up to any other cultural tradition through intercultural dialogue means to become aware of the own conditioning through collective memories, experiences, history, zeitgeist, that is culture, and to be able to view one’s own standards as only relative – or better, as merely provisional and incomplete. With other words, intercultural openness and dialogue might help us – and this, of course, also holds true for people from any cultural background – in making us aware of the blind spots in our respective cultural, political and ideological orientation.

What may be needed then in terms of intercultural understanding is neither a theoretical nor an ideological but rather a pragmatic and hermeneutic point of view. In merging Charles Taylor’s and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s metaphors we could put the task like this: To approach the ‘horizon of significance’ of the other culture in full consciousness of one’s own ‘horizon of significance’. If this endeavour is pursued in an open-minded fashion, we may actually arrive, if not at a fusion, then at least at an overlapping of horizons. This would possibly enable us to regard the other concept of the human telos, coloured by a specific cultural background, as not simply a different but rather an enriching concept of the human enterprise on this planet.