GLOBALIZATION AS DIVERSITY IN UNITY

GEORGE F. McLEAN

THE EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL CONCERNS

          During the 1950s and 1960s the development of technological capabilities made it possible to design vehicles with sufficient thrust and precision to be able to break the bonds of earth and soar towards the planets. By the end of the '60s, as projected by President Kennedy, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. What he saw there was of little interest -- a barren rocky terrain, alternating between great heat and frigid cold. But what he saw from there was of the greatest consequence. With a few of his predecessors in space exploration, he was able for the first time in human history to look at the Earth and see it whole. Throughout the millennia humankind had always seen fragments, piece by piece; now for the first time the earth was seen globally.

          At the time, astronomers sought avidly to learn about the moon. But for philosophers the questions were rather what would be found about humankind, about relations between peoples and about their presence in nature. More importantly, they wondered if this would change the way in which people understood themselves in all these regards: Would this intensify the trend to see all and everyone as an object? Or could it contribute to overcoming alienation and anomie, to transforming antipathies into bonds of friendship? But, if this were to take place, would life be reduced to a deadly stasis? Though the stakes were high, the philosophical questioning at first was languid. Now, at the end of this millennium these questions of globalization emerge with a full and fascinating force.

          Why now rather than then? This would seem to relate notably to the end of the Cold War, especially if this be traced deeply to the roots of the modern outlook as a whole. At an earlier colloquium in Manila, Professor Lu Xiaohe¹ pointed out how, at the very beginnings of modern times, Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744) identified the limitations of the new way of thinking as bearing the potential to lead to violent opposition for lack of an adequate capability to take account of the unity of the whole. If the Cold War was the denouement of this fatal flaw, and the world is no longer structured in a bipolar fashion, then it is no longer the parts which give sense to the whole, but the converse: the global is the basis of the meaning of its participants.

          Proximately, this is a matter of communication and commercial interchange, but their full deployment depends in turn upon a politique of positive human cooperation in an integral human project. Thus today we reread Kennedy's words about bearing any burden in defence of freedom in terms of his positive context, namely, his invitation to all humankind to transcend limiting divisions and to join together to make real progress. Of this his promise to break beyond a divided planet and go to the moon by the end of that decade was symbol and harbinger. The process of globalization transcends regional concerns not to deny them, but to respond to them from a more inclusive vantage point in terms of which all can have their full meaning and the opportunity to work together to determine their own destiny. This is the heart of the issue of globalization and cultural identities.

          Until recently the term `globalization' was so little used that it warranted only two lines in Webster's Unabridged International Dictionary.<sup>2</sup> For the term `global,' however, three meanings are listed:

          - the first, geometric, namely, a spherical shape;

          - the second, geographic, namely, the entire world, with the connotation of being complete. This was extended by the ancient Greeks to signify perfection itself: Parmenides spoke of the One, eternal and unchanging as being spherical.

          - the third, qualitative, namely, the state of being comprehensive, unified or integrated.

          It is interesting to note that Webster's saw this third character of global as implying "lacking in particularizing detail" or "highly undifferentiated." Today's challenge is more complex and more rich, namely, to achieve a comprehensive vision whose integration is not at the expense of the components, but their enhancement and full appreciation.

          For insight on these issues I would turn to Nicholas of Cusa, born almost six hundred years ago (1401-1464) at a special juncture in Western thought. Often he is described as the last of the medievals and the first of the moderns. In the high middle ages Thomas Aquinas and others had reunited the traditions of Plato and Aristotle on the basis of the Christian discovery of the special significance of existence. In this synthesis primacy was given to Aristotle whose structure for the sciences began with Physics as specified by multiple and changing things, whence it ascended to its culmination in the unity of the divine life at the end of the Metaphysics.³ The ladder between the two constituted a richly diversified hierarchy of being

          John Dewey⁴ stressed -- perhaps too strongly -- the relation of that ancient hierarchic world view to the Ptolemaic system in which the earth is the center around which the sun and the planets revolve at a series of levels in a finite universe. He traced the development of the modern outlook to the change to the Copernican heliocentric model of an infinite but undifferentiated universe.

          Nicholas of Cusa bridged the two. He continued the sense of a hierarchical differentiation of being from the minimal to the infinite, but almost a century before Copernicus (1473-1543) he saw the earth as but one of the spheres revolving around the sun.

          His outlook with regard to the relations between people was equally pioneering. As Papal legate to Constantinople shortly after it had been taken by the Turks -- much to the shock of all Europe -- Cusa was able to see the diversity of peoples not as negating, but as promoting unity.

          These broad and ranging political, scientific, philosophical and theological interests qualified him as a fully Renaissance man. In time he was made a Cardinal in Rome, where he was buried. (As a student my interest in his thought was stimulated by living for many years but two doors from his tomb.) More recently, I directed the dissertation of Dr. David De Leonardis, Ethical Implications of Unity and the Divine in Nicholas of Cusa.⁵ Expanded by the addition of sections on economic, social and religious unity, this was published by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy in 1998. This paper emerges from that exploration which is summarized in the set of tables drawn from that work and appended here as figures I-VIII.

          It will proceed by looking first at the manner of thinking involved and second, at Cusa's reconciliation of unity and diversity in a harmony which Confucius might be expected to find of special interest. On these bases, thirdly, it will look at the special dynamism with which this endows his sense of being. Fourth, it will sample briefly some of the implications which this global vision could have for contemporary problems of economic, social and religious life, sketched in figures 4-7 and to be explored more extensively in the separate sessions of this conference.

GLOBAL THINKING

History

          Any understanding of the work of the mind in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa must be situated in the context of the Platonic notion of participation (mimesis or image) whereby the many forms fundamentally are images of the one idea. For Plato, whose sense of reality was relatively passive, this meant that the many mirrored or were like (assimilated to) the one archetype or idea. Correspondingly, in knowing multiple things the mind as it were, remembers having encountered and been impressed by, or assimilated to, the one archetypic idea which they image, all converging progressively toward a supreme One. For Cusa, with Plato, this appreciation of the One remains foundational for the knowledge of any particular. Here it is important to note how Cusa reconceives the nature of this One, not only, but also, in global terms.

          To this Aristotle, whose thought began from the active processes of physical change, added a more active role for mind. This not only mirrors, but actively shapes the character, if not the content, of its knowledge. As an Aristotelian Aquinas too considered the mind to be active, but in the end the objectivity of its knowledge depended upon a passive relation to its object: beings "can by their very nature bring about a true apprehension of themselves in the human intellects which, as is said in the Metaphysics, is measured by things."⁶

          Cusa's sense of "mind" unites both emphases: the original measures the image, which in turn becomes like, or is assimilated to, the original. Sense knowledge is measured by the object; this is even part of its process of assimilation to the divine mind.⁷ But as E. Cassirer⁸ notes, Cusa shifts the initiative to the mind operating through the senses, imagination, reason and intellect. Rather than being simply formed by sense data, the mind actively informs the senses and conforms and configures their data in order that the mind might be assimilated to the object. Thus both "extramental objects and the human mind are measures of cognitive assimilation, that is to say, we become like the non-mental things we know, and we fashion the conceptual and judgmental tools whereby we take them into ourselves as known."⁹

          But in saying this Miller seems not to have reached the key point for our concerns for global awareness -- or of Cusa, for that matter. This is not merely the classical realist distinction between what is known, which is on the part of the thing, and the way in which it is known which reflects the mind by which the thing is known. Cusa has added two moves: First, the One of Plato is not an ideal form, but the universe of reality (and this in the image of the Absolute One); second, the human mind (also in the image of the divine mind) is essentially concerned with this totality of reality in terms of which global awareness with all its knowledge is carried out.

Discursive Reasoning

          In his study on mind,¹⁰ Cusa distinguishes three levels of knowledge, the first two are discursive reasoning, the third is intellection. The first begins from sense knowledge of particular material objects. This is incremental as our experiences occur one by one and we begin to construct a map of the region, to use a simile of L. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.¹¹

          But for Cusa the knowledge of the multiple physical things by the lower powers of sensation and imagination raises the question of the unity of things which must be treated in terms of the concepts of reason and intellect.¹² For the forms in things are not the true forms, they are clouded by the changeableness of matter.¹³ The exact nature of anything, then, is unattainable by us except in analogies and figures grounded essentially in the global sense grasped by our higher powers.¹⁴

          But while sense knowledge is inadequate for a global vision, Cusa considers innate knowledge or a separate world of ideas to be unnecessary and distractive. Hence, he concludes (a) that sense knowledge is required; (b) that both the physical object and the mind are active in the assimilation or shaping of the mind, (c) that in this process the mind with its global matrix is superior in that it informs or shapes the work of the senses, and (d) that it is unable fully to grasp the nature of the object in itself.

          As a result discursive reasoning as regards physical objects is limited in a number of ways. First it is piecemeal in that it develops only step by step, one thing at a time, in an ongoing temporal progression. Hence, on the macro level discursive reasoning can never know the entirety of reality. On the micro level it cannot comprehend any single entity completely in its nature or quality. This is true especially of uniqueness or identity which for humans are their personal and cultural identities.

          The paradox of attempting to think globally in these terms is that as we try to form overall unities we abstract more and more from what distinguishes or characterizes free and unique persons so that the process becomes essentially depersonalizing: hence the drama of globalization as the central phenomenon of the present change of the millennia.

          In the 20th century the technological implementation of depersonalization reached such a crises that millions were crushed or exterminated -- hundreds of thousands in pogroms, six million in the holocaust, 50 million in the Second World War, entire continents impoverished and exploited. In effect the limitations Cusa identifies in discursive reasoning simply are now no longer tolerable, and new modes of thinking are required in order to enable life to continue in our times.

          Cusa recognizes a second type of discursive reasoning, namely, that of mathematics, which does not share the limitations noted above. But here the objects are not living beings, but mental objects of the same nature as mind. Hence the mind can pivot on itself, using its own resources to construct and process concepts and to make judgments which are exact because they are concerned with what is not changing or material.¹⁵ This is Humes's world of relations between ideas.¹⁶ But as it deals only with the formal, rather than the existential, it cannot resolve the above-mentioned human problems but serves to exacerbate them to the degree that its mode of discursive reasoning becomes exclusive.

Intellection

          Hence Nicholas of Cusa turns to a third mode of mental assimilation, which is beyond the work of discursive reason, namely, intellection. Eugene Rice contrasts the two approaches to knowledge by likening discursive reasoning to a wayfarer walking through a valley and encountering things one by one, whereas intellection is like being on a hill whence one surveys the entire valley all at once.¹⁷ The latter view is global and the particulars are understood as component parts; each thing has its proper reality but is also an integral constituent of the whole. It is important to note that the unity of the scene as known by intellection is constituted not by a mere assemblage of single entities juxtaposed in space or time, but by multiple participations in a unity. (Indeed, as we shall see in the next section, the multiple things in the physical order also are limited images of the whole.)

          Were we to express this in terms of modern thought, the distinction of analytic and synthetic modes of thought would help, but not at all suffice. With Descartes the moderns undertook a search for knowledge that was clear in the sense of identifying the simple natures of each thing and distinct in the sense that such knowledge should be sufficient at least to be able to distinguish one type of thing from all others.¹⁸ This gave primacy to the analytic process of distinguishing all into its component set of simple natures. The supposition was that these were finite in number, that they could all be identified clearly and distinctly by the mind, and that they could then be reassembled by equally clear and distinct links in a process of synthesis.

          This has marked the modern mind and set its goals and its limitations. Having determined that only what was clear and distinct to the human mind could qualify for inclusion, due to the limitations of the human mind, it was inevitable that the uniqueness of each entity would be omitted as not clear to the human mind and that organic character of the whole also would be omitted because synthesis could assemble only what was clear and distinct.

          For Cusa in contrast, intellection is knowledge in terms not of the parts, but of the whole in which all participate. Here the intellect grasps the meaning and value of the whole. It works with the imagination and reason to work out the full range of possibilities and to grasp how the many fit together: it "depends not upon the number of things which are known, but upon the imaginative thrust of the mind" to be able to know "all the multifarious possibilities which are open to being."¹⁹ Finally it is guided by the senses to know which of these possibilities are actual. The significance of the actual beings is not merely what we can garner by the senses, but what is known primarily in terms of the whole by the intellect.

          The Aristotelians build knowledge from concrete, changing and hence limited things. Cusa's more Platonic heritage has him build knowledge rather in the global terms of the whole and ultimately of the One of which the mind as well as things are the images. Where these were but form for Plato, for Cusa they are existent, sharing in the active power of being.

          The Enlightenment was so intent on knowledge that it wound up tailoring all to what it could know clearly and distinctly. As with the Procrustean bed, what did not fit these specifications was lopped off and discarded as hypothetical or superstition. Cusa's attitude is notably different for it includes humility before reality, which it recognizes, and even reveres, especially where it exceeds the human capacity for clarity of conception and power of control.

          The human mind, he would recognize, has limitations at both ends of the scale of being. Even a minimal being cannot be exhaustively known. Like attempting to make a polygon circular, no matter how many sides are added, more remain always possible; a circular shape can never be attained in this manner. Such knowledge, though partial and incomplete, is valid as far as it goes, but it always can be improved upon. One can only project the circle by the thrust of the imagination.

          Knowledge of the Absolute, in contrast, cannot be improved upon. Moreover, it is basically unreliable, for there is nothing to which the Absolute can be compared.²⁰ Hence, the negative way of saying what God is not and the recognition of our ignorance in that regard constitute the relevant real knowledge, for which reason Cusa entitled a major work: On Learned Ignorance.²¹

          We have seen the limitations of knowledge constructed on the basis of multiple limited beings understood as opposed one to another. Unity constructed thereupon not only never manages to grasp such beings fully but simply discards what is not known. Thus the uniqueness of the person cannot be recognized and is lost. Conversely, the unities which can be constructed of such contrasting reality remain external and antithetical so that, to the degree that it succeeds, discursive reasoning is in danger of oppressing the uniqueness of the participants. This is the classical dilemma of the one and the many; it is the particular challenge of globalization in our day and the basic reason why it is feared as a new mode of (economic) imperialism and oppression.

          Cusa's suggestion of another mode of thinking whereby we think in terms of the whole is promising, indeed essential for our new age. But it faces a great test. Can it take account of diversity? If so, how can this be understood as within, rather than in opposition to, unity? Is it possible to conceive diversity as a contribution to unity rather than as its negation?

          Parmenides had shown unity to be the first characteristic of being by opposing being to non-being. In these terms each being was itself and nothing less. But such reasoning in terms of the opposition of being to non-being bespoke also contrast and opposition between beings, each of which in being itself was precisely not any other being. Today the global reality makes it necessary to ask whether there are more positive and relational modes of conceiving multiplicity.

A GLOBAL STRUCTURE OF UNITY AND DIVERSITY

          To summarize then, we have seen the new global political, cultural and economic phenomena in which we are situated and in terms of which we are called to act. In looking toward the thought of Nicholas of Cusa, we saw that such a global response requires a new dimension of thinking. The characteristic modern discursive reasoning with its analytic approach of breaking all down to its minimum components and reassembling them synthetically, proposed by Descartes in his Discourse on Method, proceeds essentially in terms of parts rather than of the whole, of the discrete without taking account of the overall unity.

          As pointed out by Dr. De Leonardis, this entails that relations between peoples and conflict resolution can be carried out only in terms of compromises which leave no one satisfied and plant the seeds of further conflicts. Now, if the means for conflict are so powerful as to be capable of overwhelming the means for survival, we are faced with the imperative of finding how to proceed in terms of a capacity to grasp the whole.

          This pointed to Cusa's power of intellection, joined with that of the imagination, to project what we cannot clearly conceive of the individual person and the divine, to protect what we can only acknowledge of our creative freedom and that of others, and to promote the growth of which we are capable but which lies hidden in a future which is not yet.

          As such, knowledge is directed toward an ordered reality -- ours and that of the entire globe -- the central questions are not merely epistemological, but ontological and ethical, namely, what is the global whole in which we exist, and how can we act in relation to other peoples and cultures in ways that promote a collaborative realization of global community in our times?

Unity

          In response to this question Cusa would begin by identifying four types or levels of unity:

          1. Individual unity -- the identity by which each exists as itself in contrast to others.

          2. The unity of each individual being as within the whole of being. This is important in grappling with the issue of globalization in our times and is within the focus of the remainder of this chapter.

          3. The unity of the universe by which the individuals together form not merely a conglomeration of single entities, as with a pile of rocks, but a unified whole which expresses the fullness of being. This may be the central contribution of Cusa's thought for a study of globalization.

          4. Absolute unity -- the One which, being without distinction, plurality or potentiality, is all that being can be, the fullness of being, and hence not subject to greater or lesser degree.²²

          The fourth is central and foundational for a metaphysics of the issue of globalization. Here, however, we shall focus rather on the ontology and its ethical implication. This directs our attention to the second and especially the third of Cusa's senses of unity to which the recent development of a global awareness also corresponds, namely, to the whole or total universe in which we have our being, live and intersect with nature and with others.

          This has been appreciated in various ways in the past: in the totem which was the unifier for the life and universe of primitive peoples, in the myths which united gods and nature in a genetic whole, in the One of Parmenides as the natural first step for metaphysics, and in the eschatologies and the classical hierarchies of being, to cite but a few. Now, however, after a long period of analytic and atomic thinking, under the impact of technologies which make conflict too costly and inundate us with global communications, there is special need to take up once again this sense of unity.

Contraction

          The situation is delicate however, for in so doing it is imperative to avoid the kind of abstractive thinking described above, in which personal uniqueness is dismissed and only the universal remains.²³

          Cusa's solution is found in the notion of contraction, that is, to begin from the significance of the whole and to recognize it in the very reality of every individual, so that the individual shares in something of the ultimate or definitive reality of the whole being. One is not then an insignificant speck, as would be the case were I to be measured quantitatively and contrasted to the broad expanse of the globe. Rather I have the importance of the whole as it exists in and as me -- and the same is true of other persons and of the parts of nature.

          The import of this can be seen through comparison with other attempts to state this participation of the part in the whole. For Plato this was a repetition or imaging by each of that type of the one ideal form. Aristotle soon ceased to employ the term participation as image (mimesis) because of the danger it entailed of reducing the individual to but a shadow of what was truly real. Cusa too rejected the separately existing ideas or ideal forms. Instead what had been developed in the Christian cultures was a positive notion of existence as act²⁴ whereby each participant in being was made to be in itself. This is retained by Nicholas of Cusa.

          But he would emphasize that the being in which this person or thing participates is the whole of being.²⁵ This does not mean that in a being there is anything alien to its own identity, but that the reality of each being has precisely the meaning of the whole as contracted to this unique instance. To be, then, is not simply to fall in some minimal way on this side of nothingness, but rather to partake of the totality of being and the meaning of the whole of being and indeed to be a realization of the whole in this unique contraction or instance. It retains its identity, but does so in and of the whole.

          De Leonardis formulates this in two principles:

          - Principle of Individuality: Each individual contraction uniquely imparts to each entity an inherent value which marks it as indispensable to the whole.

          - Principle of Community: Contraction of being makes each thing to be everything in a contracted sense. This creates a community of beings relating all entities on an ontological level.²⁶

          Let us stop at this insight to explore its implications for diversity. Generally, multiplicity and diversity are seen as opposed to unity: what is one is not many and vice versa; to have many beings is to imply contrast and even possible conflict. When, however, each individual is appreciated as a unique contraction of the whole, others which are distinct and different are complementary rather than contradictory; they are the missing elements toward which one aspires and which can help one grow and live more fully; they are the remainder of the whole of which I am part, which supports and promotes me, and toward whose overall good my life is directed. Taken together they enhance, rather than destroy, the unity. This, of course, is not true of Parmenidean absolute and unlimited One which is the complete and full perfection of being, the fourth instance of unity cited above. But it is true of the third of the above unities which are precisely the reality of global unity, and the second type of unity which is its components seen precisely as members of the global whole.

          Hierarchy. After the manner of the medievals, Cusa saw the plurality of beings of the universe as constituting a hierarchy of being. Each being was equal in that it constituted a contraction of the whole, but not all were equally contracted. Thus an inorganic being was more contracted than a living organism, and a conscious being was less contracted than either of them. This constituted a hierarchy or gradation of beings. By thinking globally or in terms of the whole, Cusa was able to appreciate the diversity of being in a way that heightened this ordered sense of unity.

          Lovejoy wrote classically of The Great Claim of Being²⁷ in which each being was situated between, and in relation to, the next lower and the next higher in the hierarchy. We had, in other words, our neighbors with whom we shared, but there was always the danger that we were correspondingly distanced from other beings. Thus the sense of the human as "lord of nature" could and did turn into exploitation and depredation. Cusa's sense of beings as contractions of the whole unites each one intimately to all other realities in one's being, one's realization, and hence one's concerns. This converts the sense of master into that of steward for the welfare of the parts of nature which do not possess consciousness or freedom. These become the ecological concerns of humankind.

          Another approach, built upon this sense of each distinct being as equal inasmuch as each participates in the whole, would image overall reality as a mosaic. But Cusa's sense of each of those pieces as also a contraction of the whole went further by adding the importance not only of each to the whole as in a mosaic, but of the whole in and by each being. Unity then is enhanced and is the concern of each being to the full extent of its own reality understood as an integral participant in the whole.

          However, both these metaphors of a chain of being and of a mosaic are static. They leave the particular or individual beings as juxtaposed externally one to the other. Neither takes account of the way in which beings interact with the others or, more deeply, are even constituted internally by these relations to others. What Cusa sees for the realm of being is relationships which are not external juxtapositions, but internal to the very make-up of the individuals.

          Internal Relations. This internal relationship is made possible precisely by a global sense of the whole.²⁸ For this Cusa may have drawn more directly from the Trinity, but this in turn is conceived through analogy to the family of which individuals are contractions, especially as this is lived as the interpersonal relations of a culture grounded in such a theology. The philosopher can look into that social life as a point of manifestation of being. Indeed, hermeneutics²⁹ would suggest that this constitutes not only a locus philosophicus whence insight can be drawn but also the prejudgments of philosophers which constitute the basic philosophical insights themselves. The critical scientific interchange of philosophy is a process of controlled adjustment and perfection of these insights.

          In a family all the persons are fully members and in that sense fully of the same nature. But the father generates the son while the son proceeds from the father. Hence, while mutually constituted by the same relation of one to the other, the father and son are distinct precisely as generator and generated. Life, and all that the father is and has, is given from the father to the son. Correspondingly, all that the son is and has is received from the father. As giver and receiver the two are distinguished in the family precisely as the different terms of the one relation. Hence each shares in the very definition of the other: the father is father only by the son, and vice versa.

          Further, generation is not a negative relation of exclusion or opposition; just the opposite -- it is a positive relation of love, generosity and sharing. Hence, the unity or identity of each is via relation (the second unity), rather than opposition or negation as was the case in the first level of unity. In this way the whole that is the family is included in the definition of the father and of the son each of whom are particular contractions of the whole.

          To highlight this internal and active sense of contraction and hierarchy Cusa uses also the analogy of a seed.³⁰ This is able to develop and grow only by heat of the sun, water from the clouds and nourishment from the earth. Hence each of these elements of the whole are interrelated in mutual dependence. Moreover, thereby the seed brings new being into existence -- which in turn will be creative, etc. Finally, by this action of the sun and clouds, the seed and the earth as contractions of the whole, the universe itself is made fruitful and unfolds. But this is identically to perfect and fulfill the universe. Hence, the plurality of beings, far from being detrimental to the unity and perfection of the universe, is the key thereto.

          Explicatio-Complicatio. Cusa speaks of this as an explicatio or unfolding of the perfection of being, to which corresponds the converse, namely, a folding together (complicatio) the various levels of being the perfection of the whole is constituted. Hence Cusa's hierarchy of being has special richness when taken in the light of his sense of a global unity. The classical hierarchy was a sequence of distinct levels of beings, each external to the other. The great gap between the multiple physical or material beings and the absolute One was filled in by an order of spiritual or angelic beings. As limited, these were not the absolute; yet as spiritual they were not physical or material. This left the material or physical dimension of being out of the point of integration.

          In contrast, Cusa, while continuing the overall graduation, sees it rather in terms of mutual inclusion, rather than of exclusion. Thus, inorganic material beings do not contain the perfection of animate or conscious being, but plants include the perfections of the material as well as life. Animals are not self-conscious, but they do integrate material, animate and conscious perfection. Humans include all four: inorganic, animate, conscious and spiritual life.

          Thus, the relation to all others through the contraction of being is intensified as beings include more levels of being in their nature. On this scale humans, as material and as alive on all three levels of life, plant, animal and spirit -- play a uniquely unitive and comprehensive role in the hierarchy of being. If the issue is not simple individuality by negative and exclusive contrast to others (the first level of unity) but uniqueness by positive and inclusive relation to others, then human persons and the human community are truly the nucleus of a unity that is global.

A DYNAMIC GLOBAL ORDER

          Thus far we have been speaking especially in terms of existence and formal causality by which the various beings within the global reality are in specific degrees of contractions of the whole. To this, however, should be added efficient and final causality by which the ordered universe of reality takes on a dynamic and even developmental character. This has a number of implications: directedness, dynamism, cohesion, complementarity and harmony.³¹ Cusa's global vision is of a uniquely active universe of being.

          1. Direction to the Perfection of the Global Whole: As contractions of the whole, finite beings are not merely products ejected by and from the universe of being, but rather are limited expressions of the whole. Their entire reality is a limited image of the whole from which they derive their being, without which they cannot exist, and in which they find their true end or purpose. As changing, developing, living and moving they are integral to the universe in which they find their perfection or realization and to the perfection of which they contribute by the full actuality and activity of their reality.

          This cannot be simply random or chaotic, oriented equally to being and its destruction, for then nothing would survive. Rather there is in being a directedness to its realization and perfection, rather than to its contrary. A rock resists annihilation; a plant will grow if given water and nutrition; an animal will seek these out and defend itself vigorously when necessary. All this when brought into cooperative causal interaction has a direction, namely, to the perfection of the whole.

          2. Dynamic Unfolding of the Global Whole: As an unfolding (explicatio) of the whole, the diverse beings (the second type of unity) are opposed neither to the whole (the third type of unity) or to the absolute One (the fourth type of unity). Rather, after the Platonic insight, all unfolds from the One and returns thereto.

          To this Cusa makes an important addition. In his global vision this is not merely a matter of individual forms; beings are directed to the One as a whole, that is, by interacting with others (the third type of unity). Further, this is not a matter only of external interaction between aliens. Seen in the light of reality as a whole, each being is a unique and indispensable contraction of the whole. Hence finite realities interact not merely as a multiplicity, but as an internally related and constituted community with shared and interdependent goals and powers.

          3. Cohesion and Complementarity in a Global Unity: Every being is then related to every other in this grand community almost as parts of one body. Each depends upon the other in order to survive and by each the whole realizes its goal. But a global vision, such as that of Cusa, takes a step further; for if each part is a contraction of the whole, then, as with the DNA for the individual cell, "in order for anything to be what it is it must also be in a certain sense everything which exists."³² The other is not alien, but part of my own definition.

          From this it follows that the realization of each is required for the realization of the whole, just as each team member must perform well for the success of the whole. But in Cusa's global view the reverse is also true, namely, it is by acting with others and indeed in the service of others or for their good that one reaches one's full realization. This again is not far from the experience of the family, but tends to be over looked in other human and commercial relations. It is by interacting with and for others that one activates one's creative possibilities and most approximates the full realization of being. Thus, "the goal of each is to become harmoniously integrated into the whole of being and thereby to achieve the fullest development of its own unique nature."³³

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY ISSUES

          There is much more to be said on these topics. The role of the imagination should be exploited to understand the nature and role of cultures. If a global outlook be evolved in which unity is promoted by diversity, then the progress of world unification could be, not at the cost of the multiple cultures, but through their deployment and interaction. Strategy could move beyond the dichotomy of business and begging to the true mega project for the new millennium, namely to develop a global community in which all are looked upon with appreciation, and progress is evoked by mutual respect.

          For this Cusa's global view has pervasive implications. To overcome past human tendencies to subdue and exploit nature, some would want to eliminate the unique role of humans in the hierarchy of being. Cusa would recognize the equality of all as irreducibly individuals within the whole. Yet he would also recognize the unique position of humankind in that hierarchy as integrating all possible levels of the being, inorganic, living, conscious and spiritual, within the One existing being. To express that humankind realizes all the types of possibilities of life, Cusa uses the term "poss-est".

          This, however, is not a license to plunder and exploit the rest, but it is a commission and destiny to assist in bringing out of others and of the whole the realizations not otherwise possible for them. It is then the view of Teilhard de Chardin³⁴ that it is precisely in man that we must look for further global evolution.

          The relation of person to person also is shaped notably by such a vision. Generally it has been seen that order rather than conflict is the condition for the exercise of freedom. This is to appreciate the whole globally, rather than merely as a set of contrasting individuals. It is this context which truly enables and promotes the exercise of human freedom.

          To see each as a contraction of the whole provides each not only with equality, but with definitive status as endowed by the significance of the whole. I cannot be instrumentalized, much less reduced either abstractively or concretely to a least common denominator. Thus equality can be promoted without the reductionism entailed by egalitarianism. At the same time, by thinking in global terms it becomes possible to see that diversity is the key to enriching the whole and thereby drawing it closer to the fullness of perfection.

          De Leonardis says this well when he concludes that:

          human endeavors can be successful only to the extent that they achieve this integration whereby the isolation of the lone individual is overcome by social participation and the emptiness of alienation is transformed by unifying love into an active and liberating communal existence.³⁵

                                                               NOTES

          1. Lu Xiaohe, "G.B. Vico and the Contemporary Civil World", in Wang Miaoyang, Yu Xuanmeng and M. Dy, Civil Society in a Chinese Content: Chinese Philosophical Studies XV (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1997), pp. 37-45.

          2. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Springfield, MA: Merriam, 1969).

          3. XII, 71072b 26-19.

          4. Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon, 1920).

          5. (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998).

          6. Idiota de Mente / The Layman: about Mind, tran. and ed. Clyde Lee Miller (New York: Abaris, 1979).

          7. Trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinnes (New York: Humanities, 1961).

          8. The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).

          9. De Veritate, q. 1, 8. "Truth in the intellect is measured by things themselves," ibid., I, 5.

          10. De Mente, 4, p. 53 and 55.

          11. Miller in De Mente, intro., p. 24.

          12. De Mente, 7, p. 63.

          13. Ibid., p. 65.

          14. Ibid., p. 59.

          15. Ibid., p. 65.

          16. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Chicago: Regnery, 1960), pp. 14-21.

          17. Eugene Rice, "Nicholas of Cusa's Idea of Wisdom," Traditio 13 (1957), 358.

          18. Descartes, Discourse on Method, 2.

          19. D. De Leonardis, p. 60.

          20. Henry Bett, Nicholas of Cusa (London: Meuthin, 1932), p. 180.

          21. Trans. G. Heron (London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1954).

          22. G. McLean, Plenitude and Participation: The Unity of Man in God (Madras: University of Madras, 1978).

          23. Of Learned Ignorance.

          24. G. McLean, Tradition, Harmony and Transcendence (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1994), pp. 95-102.

          25. Of Learned Ignorance, pp. 84-88.

          26. De Leonardis, p. 228.

          27. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (New York: Harper, 1960).

          28. Of Learned Ignorance, I, 9-10.

          29. H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1975).

          30. Dato Patris Luminum in Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa's Metaphors of Contraction (Minneapolis: Banning, 1983), p. 25.

          31. De Leonardis, pp. 233-236.

          32. Ibid., p. 235.

          33. Ibid., p. 236.

          34. Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper, 1959).

          35. De Leonardis, p. 241.