The issue of faith and reason is ancient and perduing. But today it reflects the profound change in attitude and even in culture which is taking place at this transition of the millennia. The particular theme is suggested by a recent encyclical, "Fides et Ratio," by Pope John Paul II in Rome. This takes an interesting strategic turn. Since the Enlightenment it has been commonly thought in academic circles that reason would solve all the human problems; faith was considered no longer necessary and was expected with time to atrophy and fade away.

In fact, it seems to be quite the contrary. The great hope placed in reason has now been strongly questioned by the postmodern philosophers who tend to be very skeptical about its powers. So much so, indeed, that there is danger that reason will be discarded entirely and supplanted by subjectivity.

In these circumstances the Encyclical says rather that we cannot do without reason, but that reason finds its great defense in faith. Faith as the received belief of peoples, elaborated on the basis of experience over the centuries. It identifies the basic character of reality as originating in an act of wisdom and love from an all wise and powerful creator, rather than in a senseless collision of matter. It presents humans as images of this wisdom and hence as having the competency not only to comprehend their physical and social universe, but to understand this in terms of the infinite wisdom and love of its transcendent source and goal.

Thus, rather than reason being all powerful and faith not being needed, the Encyclical suggests that we begin from faith — from our scriptures: the Qu’ran and the Bible — and there garner a sense of human life and destiny. To this there is need to add a strong development of philosophy working in its own proper terms. Thence, it will be possible to proceed to develop an adequate theology through cooperation of faith and reason in order to come to a more detailed and articulate understanding of the messages received long ago through the Prophets and their meaning for faithful progress in our day.

In this document then faith returns as the defender of reason to encourage those who have become discouraged with scientific reason to continue their work and to bring this to full effectiveness through cooperation with faith.

S. Huntington. This sheds light on a number of other contemporary writings. One is the work by Sammuel Huntington, now well-known throughout the world, entitled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. He notes there that a number of modes of understanding and of developing a world order have been surpassed. There were emperors in the past, but they are no longer. There have been nation states, but increasingly they are no longer self-sufficient and need to work with other nations within such international organizations as The United Nations, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund, etc. The idea of a nation state as a perfect society in the sense of being totally self-sufficient so that nothing else was needed seems a thing of the past. The ideologies which attempted within their single system to articulate the whole of life moved inexorably towards the Cold War extremes of the individualism of liberalism and the communalism of Marxist ideology, but now there is great pessimism not about their adequacy but about the ability of reason from which they sprang.

Today, as people look back over this century they see that it has been so violent and led to such destruction that many say we must destroy reason in order to free ourselves from this very dangerous force in the world. There is an anti-foundationalist movement to destroy all foundations, along with a general concern to remove all Absolutes, whether persons or principles.

Finding ourselves in a situation in which the previous modes of developing a world order seem to have failed, we now are forced to confront the question of what will be the new mode for developing a world order.

Huntington seeks the new modes of coming together on what gives people confidence and trust in one another. He cites these in pairs, the one is blood and the other is belief or, correspondingly, family and faith. In terms of these two elements we live, develop our horizons, elaborate our values, and have confidence in one another and in life as a whole. Consequently, the possibilities of coming together gravitate around these two elements of family relationships or blood and of faith or religion. Together they generate a culture and civilization as the way in which people understand and live their lives.

In this light he sees seven or eight major civilizations, which are characterized by a certain consanguinity and a basic belief system: Chinese, Islam, Christianity, etc. The future world promises to consist neither in a bipolar set of ideologies nor in a sequence of totally independent nation states, but rather in these civilizations in which people share understanding, concern, a belief system, and world view; these are the natural ways of coming together. Huntington judges to be mistaken rationalism’s consideration of this as a return to a prerational and superstitious stage, thinking itself capable of doing the work of belief. Instead, we appear to be in a post rationalist period in which a new set of human sensibilities and an urgent and promising new agenda is emerging.

F. Fukuyama. Another figure, perhaps equally famous with Huntington, is Francis Fukuyama, who wrote The End of History. It sees capitalism as now a matter of common consensus so that conflict has ended and with it history in Hegel’s sense of the term. But in a subsequent work entitled: Trust, Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity he carries this thought further to note that for prosperity in business there is need for trust between people. He acknowledges sets of virtues cited by Weber as keys to capitalism: diligence, saving, rationality, innovation, risk-taking, etc. But Fukuyama notes that these will not work in the economic order unless they are undergirded by a sense of honesty, reliability, cooperation and responsibility. If those are lacking and there is no trust, then initiative cannot go forward nor will it achieve its reward. This foundational set of virtues comes from the cultures, which in turn are grounded in faith.

Hence both thinkers at this turn of the millennium point towards the future saying that rationality has not been enough and will not be enough, and that there is need for an undergirding confidence and trust in culture built upon family and faith.

But will such a world proceeding on the basis of faiths, with the cultures and civilizations they generate, be one of order or of chaos, will it be peaceful or conflictual? Huntington says it will be a clash for he sees conflict as inherent in multiple identities. Indeed he foresees a mega-clash because it will be one of great populations and carried on with deep passion. For what touches one’s religious beliefs touches one’s identity most profoundly and evokes the strongest reactions. As a result he sees the world coordinated on the basis of civilizations as a situation of great conflict. We know too well that civilizations and beliefs can be involved in great struggles. Of course, Huntington is not promoting this, but he considers it to be inevitable future and seeks how to proceed in such a world.

In Iran one hears another view, namely, that it must be not a clash, but a dialogue of civilizations. This has been proposed as a theme to The United Nations and the world has responded positively. It is broadly realized, in other words, that we must find ways in which the relationship of civilizations, founded upon the relationship of beliefs, can be a positive dialogue. Contrary to the prediction of Marx and others, Huntington shows that religion is not atrophying and disappearing. Rather, it is so much the reality of the future that he makes it a main focus of much of his book. In so doing he raises, but does not seem to respond to the issues of how religions can be related positively.

Faith. Huntington considers that what people are concerned about is their self-identity. Others would say that self-interest is central, but he points out that one cannot speak of self-interest without having a self and knowing something about what that is. But to move from self-interest to self-identity is to touch on culture, family and faith. Hence, the search for self-identity is related by Huntington to the development and renewal of the search for faith.

He provides many different statistics to support his thesis that religion is not atrophying and disappearing as expected by the Enlightenment but showing new strength. Whereas the liberal supposition was that the more people were educated the less they would be involved in belief, it has turned out to be the opposite. This is true of Islam most of all. Where it was projected that the more people moved away from the village to the city the more they would be forgetful of their religious bonding, the opposite has proven true. Coming to the city means becoming more anonymous and this having to rediscover and reaffirm one’s identity, which is founded in one’s beliefs. Similarly, where increasing education was expected to militate against faith this has proven not to be true, and for the same reason.

Further, demographics indicate that in the future the populations which are more religiously oriented and have a higher birthrate will be increasing, while those more effected by a secular rationalism will have lower birthrates and decrease. The demographics notably favor the areas strongest in belief.

Moreover, he speaks of the increasing ability of those areas which previously were more isolated now to communicate in a world of intensifying global interaction. For the last 500 years Europe was the center from which first explorers, then merchants, and later industrialists went out to other parts of the world. Now the world is very much interconnected. Hence, Huntington projects a great shift in power in which the non-European areas will become much the stronger.

Overall he sees attention to faith as strongly increasing. Conversely, he is not hopeful about the liberal formula from the time of the so-called "Peace of Westphalia" according to which religion was removed from public life. First of all this is false, for he has argued at great length that in most of the world and for most people faith will not be removed from global interchange but will play an increasingly powerful role. Second it would be immoral because to force people to attenuate their faith or to remove it from the public sphere of their lives could be carried out only by forcing people against their will — which, in turn, contradicts the liberal position on freedom. This contradiction would seem to be quite operative at the present time when for participation in the international monetary system and interaction in trade, etc., a condition has been the development of liberal system, with which many identify the meaning of democracy. In this system religion is removed from the public square where only the secular is allowed. This, Huntington notes, is not only false and immoral, but dangerous because unreal. He concludes then to the prospect of a strong religious development and a markedly religious future which will ground and fortify the self-identity of most of the civilizations.

Conflict or Cooperation. Having thus concluded that civilizations will not lose their identity and slide into a universal univocous and indistinguishable uniformity, Huntington then seems to suppose that any identities are contradictory to all other identities. This is a very strong element in so-called Western rationalist thought. As essentially analytic, it tends to break things down into their minimal components. Thus, Descartes recommended seeking the minimal natures and to develop such ideas sufficiently clearly to be able to distinguish each from all other ideas. Such clear and distinct ideas were to be had not only of each minimal nature but of the connection between them. Thus everything becomes dissociated and there results an atomic sense of individuals contradictory one to another.

Hobbes would see that these identities are not only contraries, but basically conflictual as they compete in search of their own self-interest: "Man is wolf to man" and conflict is the natural state of man. The best one can do is to attenuate this to some degree. This supposition would seem to run through the thought of Huntington. Just after his article was published in Foreign Affairs, Tang Yijie, the specialist in Chinese culture and founder of the International Institute of Chinese Culture in Beijing, wrote an article about the thesis of Huntington for Science, the review of the National Academy of Social Science, Beijing. He considered Huntington to have misunderstood civilizations as attack modes, whereas in reality they are modes of understanding and appreciation. Indeed, for China harmony is the great value: to live the Chinese civilization is not to attack Islam or some other part of the world, but to seek harmony with nature and with other peoples.

Semou Pathé Gueye, philosopher and former Parliamentarian from Dakar, has suggested that Huntington has deceived himself. He rightly establishes each culture as a paradigm and provides extensive statistical basis for this. But he then proceeds to suppose that these paradigms are incommensurable after the term of Thomas Kuhn. But this term has been found to have some 60 different usages in Kuhn’s writings themselves. With no substantiation whatsoever Huntington supposes an incommensurability according to which civilizations can in no way understand each other and hence are destined to lurch toward clash and conflict.

Huntington would seem to be thinking in terms of self-interest, which he sees as contrasting and conflicting with others. This may be a characteristic of Huntington’s Anglo-Saxon context, but not of the world.

Religion. Instead, if the world will be organized on the basis of broad civilizations and if these broad civilizations are founded on religions, then the real question is whether religions are in essence conflictual or relational — and under what conditions; and what religions can do about attenuating or overcoming general conditions of conflict.

Here it is important to note that there are different levels of life. One is the economic, which works in terms of profit. This is marked by a sense of competition, because material goods if had by one cannot be had by another; things consumed by one are not available to others. The world, when seen simply on a material or economic basis, is marked by principles of competition at least, if not of conflict.

Second, if one moves beyond the economic to the political level, one finds a world ordered in terms of power, control and ascendancy over others. This too is a basis for conflict. Only when one moves beyond this to the level of the spirit does one find oneself at a level which does not in principle imply conflict. When one expresses an idea one does not lose it, but shares it with others; indeed doing so helps one better understand the idea. The goods of the spirit are not used up or held by one alone, but rather are best communicated and shared.

Consequently, if religion is archetypically the level of the spirit, the attitude it generates is not in principle one of conflict, but one of openness and communication. Dialogue then between religions, and between the cultures and civilizations they found, should be a something natural. In Christianity this is reflected in the notion of the "good news" or "evangelium" for good news must be shared. This is the reason why the message of the prophets must be shared and why they exercise so magnetic an attraction on peoples everywhere.

An organization of the world not in terms of economics or of power, but of the spirit should not in principle be a situation of conflict, as Huntington supposes. If these civilizations are based on religion and the goods of the spirit then the prospect is one of communication and sharing. Where this is not so one must ask why it is not so, and proceed on the principle that peace and cooperation are natural and can be made to prevail.

Professor Abdullah Laroui in his Islam et Modernité suggests that the situation into which we are moving should help to overcome conflict. He suggests that Christianity and Islam have been too close together, with Islam defining itself by contrast to Christianity. In such a situation of tension he suggests adding more horizons so that both are in a broader context with the Chinese, Hindus, etc., in order to reduce mutual tensions. The present period of globalization makes this possible and even inevitable.

Nicholas of Cusa. A figure who developed this theme most intensively into a well-rounded philosophy is Nicholas of Cusa, a layman working for the Pope at the time when Constantinople-Istanbul changed hands between the Eastern Orthodox Christian empire and Islam. Nicholas of Cusa was sent as a Papal Legate to Istanbul. When he returned to Rome he suggested that the situation might not be as disastrous as people thought. David de Leonadis has studied Cusa’s sense of unity in Ethical Implications of Unity and the Divine in Nicholas of Cusa (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998) and shows it to constitute a revolution in perspectives. Generally, with Aristotle our sciences and even our philosophy begin with physical things inasmuch as these are most prominent for us as sentient beings. Cusa’s perspective — like that of Shankara — begins rather in terms of the one creative source and goal of all creatures. Thinking in terms of the Almighty and its unity, creation forms a unity rather than a situation of conflict one with another.

Eugen Rice compares this to the difference between walking through a valley and seeing things serially one after another, in contrast to observing the whole valley from a hill top. Thence one can see all as in a picture that holds its many components in an integrating pattern with an overall beauty. Cusa proceeds in this fashion to note that to think in terms of the whole is to see the particular as the whole contracted. The whole is contributed to and realized in this world by the particular beings, which then are the whole in contracted form.

In this light, one is not just a speck of dust on the valley floor, but rather in a truer sense one is the whole contracted. Because of this one can no longer think of oneself without relating to others, for one’s definition, meaning and significance includes that of others.

This is not a situation of individuals or civilizations in conflict. Rather, it is impossible to think of oneself or to identify with one’s civilization without relating to others, for one’s definition of oneself includes the relationship to others. The same is true of civilizations. Thus, reality is not a set of individuals in a situation of conflict. Rather, the basic human reality is relational: to live and to thrive is precisely to build on that relationship.

In the sense of Nicolas of Cusa what we have then is neither a clash nor even, I would say, a dialogue of civilizations, but something much closer in which we share our concerns and efforts, Cusa’s vision then is not esoteric, but reflects each person’s basic experience in their family as supporting their development. There one’s happiness is that of the other family members and vice versa. This is the reality we live, and it is the philosophy of Nicolas of Cusa.

His vision is religious seeing all as one within the whole which reflects the divine. Moreover, it is dynamically religious being predicated upon the unity of the one source and goal of all. Hence, all are seen as being on pilgrimage from source to one goal. There are many paths, but all lead to the one God. Because the paths are convergent, the achievement of each is the achievement of all. If one can help one would be most happy to do so. It would be as much a fulfillment to help another person or civilization to proceed along their path as to help persons in my culture or religion to follow theirs. All are proceeding toward the same goal by the munificence of God by which he shares his goodness and draws all to himself.

This suggests a new way of reading and transcending the book of Huntington. With him it sees religion as a foundational organizing principle for the world. However, his supposition that the multiplicity of civilizations must be conflictual is transcended. If civilizations are in fact religiously founded and if the religions insist that there is one God, then we are not merely in a dialogue, but in a cooperative effort in which it is possible to overcome conflict and proceed through cooperation toward a shared goal.