Email This Post The bonus addition to our best ideas series is given by Bhikhu Parekh
Western thought has long been dominated by the view that while error is plural, truth is singular. We can be wrong in many different ways but can be right in only one way. According to this view, which we might call monism or singularism, there is only one correct way of understanding the world, only one true system of morality, only one true way of leading the good life, only one true religion, only one correct way of organising society, and so on. We are supposed to arrive at truth, be it cognitive, moral or religious, by means of reason, which is understood as a transcendental and quasi-divine faculty rising above the psychological, social, cultural and other constraints. This view has had both good and bad consequences. It has inspired most rigorous intellectual inquiries, rules of rational debate, and a determination to expose and fight errors. It has also however led to arrogance, intolerance, failure to appreciate differences, tendency to equate diversity with deviation, and much violence.
Cultural pluralism challenges this view of truth and goodness. It sees reason as a human rather than a quasi-divine or transcendental with all that it implies. Since it takes the view that human beings are culturally embedded, it argues that reason is shaped and structured by culture. This does not mean that they cannot criticise and revise their culture, but rather that they cannot transcend all its subtle and deepest influences and view it from a nonexistent Archimedean standpoint. They may replace one culture with another but cannot stand outside the realm of culture altogether. For cultural pluralism the world can be understood in several different ways depending on our conceptual apparatus, language, interests, purposes, the questions we ask and the kind of knowledge we seek and value. Like truth in general, moral truth or good too is also plural. Human capacities and moral values conflict and cannot all be integrated into a harmonious system without loss. Different cultural communities organise themselves on the basis of different visions of the good life, and foster different human capacities, dispositions and virtues. Every cultural community represents a particular form of human excellence with all its characteristic strengths and limitations. No culture is perfect or exhaustively embodies goodness, and none is wholly devoid of at least some degree of goodness.
Every culture therefore requires others as its critical interlocutors. In the course of a dialogue with them, it becomes aware of its specificity and acquires access to their values and virtues that it marginalises or ignores. When truth and goodness is assumed to be singular, no such dialogue is necessary. Its purpose at best is to expose the errors of and refute others in a spirit of aggression or patronising condescendence. In the cultural pluralist view, the dialogue is central to intellectual and moral life, it being the only way to acquire a fuller understanding of its subject matter.
Cultural pluralism is quite different from and should not be confused with relativism. For the relativist, truth is relative to and its validity is limited to a particular community. Like the monist, the relativist too assumes that truth is singular, the only difference between the two being that while the former asserts the universal validity of a particular view or vision of the world, the relativist limits it to a particular social unit. Cultural pluralism rejects both.
Cultural pluralism is a radical idea with profound implications. It immunises us against the seductive and all too common tendency to think that our view of the world, religion or system of morality alone is correct, and can rightly be used to judge all others. It thus breeds humility, respect for others, openness to dialogue, and the spirit of self-criticism. It also encourages us to see others not as strangers or a hostile threat but rather as conversational partners who bring us the gifts of self-consciousness and access to their treasures, and whose existence is a necessary precondition of our growth.
At the social and political level, cultural pluralism implies that public discourse cannot be conducted in a single conceptual or moral language and must allow for a diversity of idioms and languages. This puts into question the dominant and dubious view that a society cannot be stable unless all its members share a substantive vision of the good life. It also questions our conventional views of such central concepts as personal autonomy, equality, liberty and justice, all of which can be defined and related in different ways. It is hardly surprising that the dominance of cultural pluralism in recent years has destabilised the traditional moral, social and political philosophy, and forced as to rethink our conventional assumptions and redesign our social and political institutions. This vital task, begun by later Rawls and continued by his followers and critics alike, is likely to occupy us for the foreseeable future.
Lord Bhikhu Parekh is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and of the Academy of the Learned Societies for Social Sciences, and a Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Westminster
With a subscription to tpm you can read articles like this as they’re published, and much more
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Carrie Schneider, 0001_xml. 0001_xml said: PhilM- Ideas of the Century Extra: Cultural pluralism: The bonus addition to our best ideas series is given by B… http://bit.ly/gTRxlz [...]
Does there not still have to be one truth that transcends the deepest influence of culture on this pluralist theory, namely that “…truth… is… plural”?
So reason still has access to one truth and hence the theory contradicts itself.
The author says “this view has had both good and bad consequences.” But were he consistent these too would only be relative.
You can’t get away from saying that something just IS SO at some point.
My understanding of pluralism is that more than one point, platform, culture is valid and valuable. I do not believe that our society is on board with this, due to selfishness and vanity. I am not equating validity with Truth or Morality here. I am simply stating that we cannot begin to find Understanding and Civility, much less inclusion when we back ourselves into the I’m Right, You’re Wrong corners we seem to cling to. We are neither all right nor all wrong. I think there is no perfection in this world, and we are happier admitting it and learning from others. We can still hold to our own ideas and ideals once we are aware of and accepting of those of others. But to hold fast in darkness is dangerous and wrong-headed in my opinon.
I’m not sure, Carol, how I could hold, e.g. that child marriage was wrong if I accepted someone else’s idea that it was right.
And are you not yourself supposing that ‘Understanding, Civility and [...] inclusion”, or being happier, for example, are absolute values, and similarly for darkness, danger and wrong-headedness as absolute negative values?
I mean, if all views were equally valid, what would be the point of learning from each other?
One could raise the question, “can one be a cultural pluralist also about the truth of cultural pluralism? Could it be that the pluralist position is inconsistent?”
Such criticism has also been levied against Jainism (the religion which strongly emphasizes non-killing). For Jainism explicitly has a pluralistic view.
But we can easily get out this dilemma by using the language - metalanguage distinction.
Suppose that Ravi says, “It is OK if one society bans alcohol and another allows it. They are both acting according to their values and as a pluralist I respect both.”
One could then say to Ravi, “Well, you are inconsistent since one can be pluralist also ABOUT pluralism.”
But this problem need not arise. As Tarski showed long ago, a language cannot speak about its own truth without being subject to the liar paradox. (The statement S which says “S is not true” can be neither true nor false, and is paradoxical.)
However, if L is a language, there can be a metalanguage L’ above L which can talk about truth in L. L is then called the object language. L does not speak about its own truth, only L’s does that.
One could raise the question, “can one be cultural pluralist also about the truth of cultural pluralism? Could it be that the pluralist position is inconsistent?”
Such criticism has also been levied against Jainism (the religion which strongly emphasizes non-killing). For Jainism explicitly has a pluralistic view.
But we can easily get out this dilemma by using the language - metalanguage distinction.
Suppose that Ravi says, “It is OK if one society bans alcohol and another allows it. They are both acting according to their values and as a pluralist I respect both.”
One could then say to Ravi, “Well, you are inconsistent since one can be pluralist also ABOUT pluralism.”
But this problem need not arise. As Tarski showed long ago, a language cannot speak about its own truth without being subject to the liar paradox. (The statement S which says “S is not true” can be neither true nor false, and is paradoxical.)
However, if L is a language, there can be a metalanguage L’ above L which can talk about truth in L and there is no paradox. L is then called the object language. L does not speak about its own truth, only L’s does that.
So Ravi can assert in the metalanguage that certain statements in the object language are relative to culture, but his own statement is in the metalanguage and need not be relative.
Ravi need not go on to assert that his relativism is also relative.
So Ravi can assert in the metalanguage that certain statements in the object language are relative to culture, but his own statement is in the metalanguage and need not be relative.
Ravi need not go on to assert that his relativism is also relative.
“So Ravi can assert in the metalanguage that certain statements in the object language are relative to culture, but his own statement is in the metalanguage [] need not be relative.”
My point precisely, I think, if the ‘metalanguage’ is reason, not English or Hindi.
A “cleaned up” version of my last posting.
One could raise the question, “can one be a cultural pluralist also about the truth of cultural pluralism? Could it be that the pluralist position is inconsistent?”
Such criticism has also been levied against Jainism (the religion which strongly emphasizes non-killing). For Jainism explicitly has a pluralistic view.
Suppose that Ravi says, “It is OK if one society bans alcohol and another allows it. They are both acting according to their values and as a pluralist I respect both.”
One could then say to Ravi, “Well, you are inconsistent since one can be pluralist also ABOUT pluralism. So now you can’t claim that pluralism is true.”
But we can easily get out of this dilemma by using the language-metalanguage distinction.
As Tarski showed long ago, a language cannot speak about its own truth without being subject to the liar paradox. (The statement S which says “S is not true” can be neither true nor false, and is paradoxical.)
However, if L is a language, another language L’ above L can talk about truth in L. L is then called the object language. L’ is called the metalanguage. L does not speak about its own truth, only L’s talks about the truth of statements in L.
So Ravi can assert in the metalanguage that certain statements in the object language are relative to culture, but his own statement is in the metalanguage and need not be relative.
Let S = “alcohol should be banned” be in the object language, and S’ = “we need not ban alcohol” be also in the object language.
But T = “I respect both S, S’” is in the metalanguage. Ravi can assert the truth of the last statement, T, and still say that S, S’ are relative to culture.
So Ravi need not go on to assert that his relativism is also relative.
It is one thing to imagine a cultural pluralism where the different cultures are separated geographically. But for cultural pluralism to really work, then we would have to allow for geographically intermixed cultures. In fact this is the definition one finds most often to describe cultural pluralism.
Regardless of the language/meta-language distinction there are certain cultures that really cannot live side-by-side. Can feminists live side-by-side with traditional polygamists? Can Jews live side-by-side with violent anti-semites? How low can we go as far as marriage age and still all be OK with that?
If we declare that there are certain behaviors that are beyond the pale, then what we are calling cultural pluralism is really just pragmatism: we are all limited in our knowledge of the world so our individual ideas about what is right and wrong are probably incorrect. Lets agree to disagree, but continue to talk amongst ourselves until we come to the truth (or a close approximation) as a society. Over time we will almost all agree that certain behaviors are to be universally lauded or discouraged. Some behaviors will be OK for some, and not OK for others based on their genetics and/or social upbringing. Some behaviors will be “who cares”. Some behaviors, however, will be important points of contention that will have to be confronted and either accepted or rejected regardless of what a particular culture decides.
I think the main problem is the view that the search for truth is a good thing in and of itself. I think it is clear by now that we will never know the “absolute” truth. We don’t need truth to be singular or multiple. All we need to know is that if we go through our lives believing certain things about the world then we will be more or less successful than if we believe certain other things.
It is not useful to have a belief that Asian cuisine is superior to European cuisine. It is not useful to have a belief that classical music is superior to the blues. It is useful, however, to have a belief that unpremeditated murder should be avoided, or that women should not be treated as second-class citizens, or that young children should not be allowed to marry, or that cultural pluralism is bunk.
Parekh’s Dilemma: either the word ‘therefore’, at the beginning of the third paragraph, heralds a gross non sequitur; or it is stripped of anything resembling its conventional meaning, and its use is simply part of the charlatan’s smokescreen.
As a hedgehog, let me suggest there is one Absolute Truth, but due to our finite knowledge, no human can know this Absolute Truth. Rather, we can only make “leaps of faith”, when confronted by life’s mysteries, based on reasonable beliefs, found in religions which seek the Truth. Religions are not based in superstition, but do invoke the supernatural, as best explained by Mortimer Adler. Humans who seek the Truth should be open & humble, & respect brothers & sisters of other faiths.
[...] that I have been thinking about and (vainly) attempting to expound in such a manner recently https://philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1783 Awesome – not only does this combine two things I love (philosophy and HP) but I wrote my [...]
[...] To read more… « Demography and Destiny [...]
To Brian Brook,
Their probably is one Truth only. In fact how could it be otherwise. It is ‘whatever is the case’
Pluralism merely reinforces the certainty that we haven’t got there yet. or ever will.
HOWEVER and its a big however, its deeply specious to therefore imply that all such lesser culture-centric truths are equivalent.
Some truths are more true than others.