Yet, attention to culture and cultural diversity is quite recent in philosophical and religious circles. If Aristotle is right in saying that philosophizing begins with wonder, then certainly it is something to wonder about that today’s key issue of cultural identities and the relations between them has come so recently to human attention. It was not until the World Congress of Philosophy in 1988 in Montreal that the issue of culture was publically recognized as a philosophical issue, and even then under the strenuous objections of many for whom culture was still the exclusive domain of anthropology. At the same time scholars in the religious field were attempting to work out the basic terminology of "culturation," "inculturation," "enculturation," etc. Today, however, we describe the major contemporary challenge in terms of the problematic posed by living in a world we describe precisely as "multi-cultural" and "multi-religious." We must ask then what is this new awareness of culture in terms of which we now describe even our own identity, and in terms of which we are so recently and so strenuously challenged?

At the same time, the Protestant Jan Masaryk, who was to be the founding father of Czechoslovakia, sent off to Vienna the young Jewish scholar, Edmund Husserl, with two gifts. One was the small gift of a writing case; the other was the huge gift of an introduction to the Catholic Professor, Franz Brentano, who was steeped in its long tradition of scholarship relating to the Spirit since the early days of the Church. As structured with the help of the Islamic and Christian study of Aristotle in the high Middle Ages and nurtured in the spiritual explorations of Teresa of Avila and other masters of the spiritual life this tradition enabled Brentano to bring to light the significance of intentionality as the distinctive interior life of human consciousness.

This creative emergence of being into time via the dasein or human consciousness has two implications: the one is culture and hence multi-culturality, the other is religion and hence a plurality of religions.

Culture. First, the emergence of being via, and as, human consciousness engages both intellect, will and imagination. It is a matter first of human freedom, that is, of self-determination and self-responsibility. This is also a matter of human self-creation, for the emergence of being into time through the exercise of human freedom is most properly a matter of disposing or shaping one’s being in the very process of its reception

Religion. Moreover, if culture is awareness of God’s creative gift of being and our overpowering responsibility for shaping this divine gift, then it is but natural that we thank God for this gift, seek his help in bearing this burden, and live in founded hope that a faithful life will lead to fulfillment in his love. As all of this is the essence of religion, at its base life is ultimately religious. It is not surprising then that Huntington should conclude empirically that in fact each civilization is rooted in a great religion and, conversely, that each great religion generates its own civilization.

This problem arises from a special conjunction—the perfect storm, so to speak. On the one hand, there is the new self-awareness of human freedom as creatively shaping, and thereby constituting each culture as unique. In a highly diversified world this entails an ever more intense awareness of the multiplicity of cultures and civilizations. On the other hand, there is the process of "globalization" which brings these cultures and civilizations together in increasingly intense interaction with one another. Together these generate a new mode of the classical issue of unity and multiplicity, now in terms of the relatedness of the many cultures, religions, civilizations and peoples which constitute our world.

First, the uniqueness of each culture. As a culture is created by the free self-determination of a people it is unique to that people. Like each act of freedom it is not only from that agent, but is the responsibility of that agent and could be done by no one else. Each culture is the distinctive manner in which a specific people realizes its life or esse. It is according to its own formative decisions and commitments for which that people is responsible.

Cultures then are unique inasmuch as each people realizes its life or being, not as an univocous instances of the same specific type, but in its own existentially proper manner as shaped over time by the creative exercise of its own freedom making its own decisions and commitments. It is crucial to the exercise of human freedom then that the cultural uniqueness of each people not be compromised, but rather maximized. There must be no dismissal of human creativity, no lobotomy of peoples in search of a common or universal least-common-denominator. The real challenge now is rather to be able to live fully our unique identities in the newly global context.

Second, similarity between cultures. This lies paradoxically in the effort of each people to live its own proper culture in its own way, that is, not univocally, but according to an analogy of proper proportionality. Just as the esse or life of people A is realized according to the pattern of life which people A has developed through the centuries, so also the esse or life of people B in is realized according to the nature or creative efforts developed by people B shaping its own pattern of life. Thus

Esse or life of people A Esse or life of people B

Essence or culture of people A Essence or culture of people B

The similarity lies in each person or people striving to live its life or esse to the fullness of the essence or nature or pattern of life that is its own culture.

Where before philosophers spoke of an abstract, universal and inivocous nature (e.g., rational animal), now however it is possible to take account from within of the long exercise of freedom by a people in their concrete circumstances. The nature according to which we live is not a generic freedom, but the actual cumulative freedom that has constituted our culture as the pattern in terms which we see, judge and act. Similarity in these existential terms is realized not by diminishing or compromising one’s identity or culture, but in the living of it to the full.

Third complementarity between cultures. The unity between cultures is complementary according to an analogy of attribution. A being acts and causes according to its nature or essence. Hence, the cause of the esse or existence of each of the multiple peoples or cultures must be Being whose very essence is to be (esse), that is Esse itself (Ipsum esse). As such it is unlimted, infinite and hence unique. Plato’s insight regarding participation means that all else are limited effects, participations or images of this One. But if each culture is a limited but unique manifestation of the One infinite existent the facet each expresses must be complementary to all other such manifestations.

Fourth, the convergence of cultures. The relation between cultures must be one of convergence. Living is a matter not of theory but of teleology for, as noted, all are not only from the One by the efficient causality of the creator, but also are in pursuit of that One as goal and Omega: each culture, in pursuing its own unique and limited perfection, pursues more ultimately the perfection which is one and infinite. Therefore, as mentioned above, each culture is not only both similar in being a pursuit of its own perfection by an analogy of proper proportionality and complementary by an analogy of attribution based on efficient causality. Moreover, all cultures are convergent in that each in its own distinctive manner tends toward the one divine or infinite perfection in an analogy of attribution based on final causality. In striving actively for their own perfection as images the same one perfection all draw together in a convergent manner. This dynamic pursuit of perfection is the way Iqbal contrast the more theoretical, detached and distant work of philosophy to religion, which he pictured as active, engaged and uniting one with another.

A first implication of the recognition of a culture as being the cumulative freedom of a people is that all means or structures for living together must avoid any sense of domination or suppression of the freedom of the other, any reduction of the other to either a clone or a client. Rather stress must be placed upon recognizing others as fellow free and creative humans. All are pilgrims on the path of development in search of peace and justice. This is the condition of human growth is the search for ever more full participation in truth, goodness and beauty. This entails a number cautions regarding things to be avoided while revealing a number of principles and conclusions.

It cautions against:

- a pseudo generosity, based on the supposition that what one has worked out should be imposed upon all others;

- a pseudo stability, which for a limited time can come from overwhelming power ruthlessly applied;

- a pseudo peace, that comes from suppression as practiced in the so-called realpolitik.

 

Instead, for living together it is necessary to recognize:

1. that all are created equal and therefore free

- and hence that peace lies in the mutual promotion of the pursuit of human fulfillment;

 

2. that the human person is essentially relational

-and hence that our futures are so bound together as to require mutual recognition, respect and cooperation; and

 

3. that peace can be had only from the free pursuit of

harmony

- and hence that in a global age "blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall possess the land."

 

From this we can draw the following principles for life in a multi-cultural and mutli-religious world.

- that skills for responding to, and cooperating with, other cultures are more important than ideological pseudo justifications of oppression;

- that the only real safeguard is not closure upon one’s own protection, but openness of heart to the existential concerns of others and the cultures they have struggled to create; and

- that the true realpolitik is that imaged by Isaias, namely, all peoples each on their own pilgrimage and all converging on the one holy mountain where God will be All in all.

 

The hope then – and the task of this new century – is that, as we approach the Divine center and in so doing draw closer to one another, we will be able to hear and appreciate the hymns that are the lives of other peoples, raise our voices together, and unite all peoples, cultures and religions in a great symphony of peace.