Ethical Grounds of Cultural Dialogue: Challenges and Prospect*

Osman BILEN**

            It is necessary to point to the present fact that we are living on a small planet and diverse groups with diverse beliefs and ways of life occupy the world. Different cultural and religious traditions have in the past either ignored each other, or perhaps occasionally met they met each other in unnoticed ways. Today they not only meet but also interpenetrate; they meet not only each other but also jointly meet common problems and must together solve them. The more they interpenetrate, the more hopes for enrichment of our undertanding of each and also fears from each other icreases. In the last decade, cultural and religious diversity seem to be regarded as a source of concern, even a matter of alarm. Furthermore, some writers go far as to claim that cultural diversity is a treat for social and political stability of the world.  This reflects, as this presentation intends to argues otherwise, misperceptions about cultural diversity and even scholarly abuse and mishandling the concept of culture. In order to evalute the challenges of cultural and religious diversity, the prospect for a constructive dialogue of cultures, it is necessary to re-define what we understand by culture and what aspects of cultures requires to be included in a our reflections on problems posed by cultural diversity.   

For practical purposes, we can defined the term culture as a “system of values and meanings shared by a group or society, including the embodiment of these values and meanings in material objects.” Therefore, there are three elements of any culure. a) cognitive aspect: system of  knowledge, ideas or beliefs (about natural and supernatural realities), and practical experiences (i.e., practical applications of knowledge in pysical and social life)  b) Normative aspects of culture: norms or formal and informal codes of conduct. 1) Values: abstract ideas of , or about what is good, right, benefical, wise; what is bad, harmful, wrong, unwise. 2) Institutions: stable or formal ways of social activities. Family, state, school etc.. 3) Sanctions: rewards or punishments to enforce conformity to norms.  c) Material aspects of culture: material objects of a culture including artifacts used to enhance or shape pysical and social environment, such as tools and machines, clothing, language.

In the following, we will argue that the claim that cultural diversity poses a treat and there are concrete barries against a constructive dialogue between different cultural traditions draws from only a false conception culture, only a material conception of culture and from irrelevent  criteria (i.e., either historical,  religious, racial or political and geographical criteria ) to understand challenges of  cultural diversity..  

            History of our time compels us to have a more cognitive conception culture and to adopt an all inclusive perspective and interest in appreciation of cultures and practices other than our own. This raises the question of how we are to understand the relationship between cultural traditions of the world, or more specifically, does our new knowledge about each other simply accentuates the differences and possible discord; or does it point to essential, underlying similarities of values. Beneath the relative cultural variations is there a fundamental ethical and moral unity.

            In past, cultural and religious differences have been used as (or pretended to be) the basis for dividing humanity between them and us. In the context of our hope for a pluralistic social and political environment, it is necessary to take a moral position on the question of appealing to ethical and moral values for cultivating the commonalities and inclusivism, instead of fostering differences and dogmatic exclusivism.  The contrast between peoples of world on the basis of cultural and religious differences must be abandoned and must certainly be refused as a basis for pretensions.

There seems to a broad relationship between a local culture and how people perceive moral standards and religious and ethical underpinning of these standards. The degree of commitment to universally accepted standards of values is closely related to the cultural perceptions of the legitimacy of these standards. People are more likely to comply with the value standards when they accept the norms underlying these as valid or legitimate from their own cultural and moral perspective.  Thus behind cultural diversity stands the primordial ethical sense with which all men are born before acculturation makes them adherents of this or that cultural and religious tradition.  The explorations into these ethical-religious common grounds seem to be a worthwhile effort.

            For these considerations, it becomes omes necessary to affirm the existence and sanctity of certain basic moral and ethical values universally recognized. In the proposed Seminar work I intend to inquire into these common ethical and moral grounds for the possibility of more fruitful dialogue between diverse traditions.   The purpose is to evaluate the common ground that is not only morally binding, but which also maintains us at the same distance towards all cultures and which in this way creates a neutral, common space.