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ISUD News Bulletin

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Brown C.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2014

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nr 3

191-192

EN

The University of Craiova in Craiova, Romania hosted the 10th World Con-gress of the International Society for Universal Dialogue (ISUD) from July 4—9, 2014. The Congress was dedicated to the theme of “The Human Being: Its Nature and Functions.” More than 83 scholars from 19 countries participated in four days of dialogue and discussion. During the opening session of the Congress, Janusz Kuczyński, Honorary President and founder of the society, sent his warm greetings and invited the ISUD to host its next World Congress in Warsaw, Poland. Professor Kuczyński informed the participants that the University of Warsaw and the Polish Acade-my of the Sciences wished to help sponsor the 2016 Congress. Professor Kuczyński’s warm greetings and invitations were appreciated by all and set the tone for collegial and intellectually productive meeting. The opening day featured Keynote Addresses by distinguished professors Basarab Nicolescu and Georgia Zanthaki. Basarab Nicolescu is Professor and honorary theoretical physicist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scien-tifique (CNRS), Laboratoire de Physique Nucléaire et de Hautes Énergies, Uni-versité Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France, Member of the Romanian Acade-my. Georgia Zanthaki is Professor and Head of the Department of Philology, University of Peloponnese, Greece. Professor Nicolescu’s address entitled “How Can We Enter into Dialogue? Transdisciplinary Methodology of the Dialogue between People, Cultures, and Spiritualties” discussed the possibilities of inter-cultural dialogue from a trans-disciplinary perspective and Professor Zanthaki’s paper entitled “Moral and Social Values in the Ancient Greek Tragedy” discussed the philosophical signif-icance of moral values in Greek Tragedy. The first evening concluded with a banquet featuring Romanian cuisine. Old and new friends joined in celebrating the year of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the society. Congress participants enjoyed a variety of cultural events including: — the play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco staged at the National Theatre of Craiova, — the play A Letter … by Ion Luca Caragiale performed by the Theatre De-partment of the University of Craiova, — an open air concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra “Oltenia” of Craiova, — a daytrip to the native house and sculptures of Constantin Brancusi, the Tismana Monestery, and the Polovragi Cave — a reading of scenes featuring philosophical dialogues from Dr. Thomas Robinson’s play “Reaching for Democracy” by participants of the Congress. Participants celebrated a successful congress with a banquet featuring Ro-manian folk dancing and music by the renowned Zorina Balan. All enjoyed a spirited evening of song and dance as participants were invited to join the Ro-manian folk dancers. The Congress closed with its General Assembly and business meeting in which Professor Kuczyński’s invitation to host the 2016 World Congress in Warsaw was unanimously accepted. Participants elected Chris Vasillopoulos (USA) and Panos Eliopoulos (Greece) to second terms as ISUD President and ISUD Vice President while electing Charles Brown (USA) as ISUD Treasurer and Emily Tajsina (Russia) as Secretary. The new ISUD Board of Governors was also elected. The new Board now consists of Jean Campbell (USA), Hope Fitz (USA), Raghunath Ghosh (India), Columbus Ogbujah (Nigeria), Athena Salappa (Greece), Adriana Neacsu (Romania), Ashok Malhotra (India-USA), Amita Valmiki (India), Keqian Xu (China), Manjulika Ghosh (India). In his post-congress message to those who participated in the congress, ISUD President Chris Vasillopulos thanked the congress organizers and partici-pants for the generosity of their time and talents and for their spirited participa-tion in the panel discussions. President Vassillopulos writes that for many par-ticipants the extraordinary dinner/dance held near the end of the Congress was “the highlight of our visit to Craiova … The feeling that permeated the room, a feeling that transcended cultures, continents, academic disciplines and personal experiences, gave undeniable expression to what ISUD stands for: our common humanity and our common virtue.”

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Leopold, Husserl, Darwin and the Possibility of Intercultural Dialogue

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Brown C.

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2023

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nr 2

273-288

EN

Baird Callicott et al. have argued that Aldo Leopold developed a descriptive technique that has something in common with phenomenology and that it would not be farfetched to explore A Sand County Almanac as a kind of Heideggerian clearing in which usually unnoticed beings come to light. They further suggest that Leopold describes animal others as fellow subjects who co-constitute the world and that through his method of observation, description, and reflection Leopold reveals a “multi-perspective experience of a common environment” that discloses an inter-species intersubjectivity comparable to Husserl’s more formal descriptions of intersubjectivity. I shall argue that the similarities between Husserl and Leopold are stronger and deeper than Callicott et al. suggest. Husserl’s method is designed to expose what has been hidden by “ideological positivism,” while Leopold’s method is designed to reveal what has been concealed by what he labels “conventional physics. Both agree that what we might today call a “scientistic worldview” denies, devalues, and dismisses subjectivity, meaning, and value from rational discourse. In Husserl’s view this leads to cultural crisis and barbarism, while in Leopold’s view it leads to ecological catastrophe. For Husserl the only alternative is a cultural renewal rooted in a rethinking of the dominant scientistic worldview while for Leopold the alternative lies in the construction of a new ethical system. These two alternatives are deeply compatible. Finally, I will discuss the ways in which Husserl’s understanding of the intentionality of our subjective experiences and Leopold’s integration of the evolutionary and ecological kinship of humans and non-humans with the social sciences have important implications for the possibility of intercultural understanding and dialogue and thereby allow us to overcome the thesis of incommensurability that denies the possibility of meaningful intercultural understanding and dialogue.

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First Impressions—Lasting Memories: “As I Remember”

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Brown C.

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nr 2

59-76

EN

This essay is divided into two parts. The first part is an account of my own very personal impressions and memories of my encounter with Janusz Kuczynski’s vision of a “new form of universalism.” I focus on Kuczynski’s attempt to interpret “the meaning of recent history” in his day and times. This account does not aim at a definitive account of Kuczynski’s thinking but rather at my interpretation of what I consider to be the most promising and defensible version of his ideas. This is an account of my impressions as I remember them filtered through personal experiences over the past three decades. Other interpretations are possible and perhaps even necessary for a more complete account. The second part attempts to articulate what I consider to be the lasting relevance of those ideas. I attempt to say something about the meaning of “this moment in history,” unfolding in my place and in my times. I hope to point toward the lasting relevance of Kuczynski’s thinking by relying on those ideas to say something insightful about the ecological, social, and political events occurring as I write this essay, events that are shaped by a historical pandemic as my country erupts into massive political demonstrations seeking social and racial justice in my country.

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EDITORIAL ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY AS WORLD PHILOSOPHY

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Brown C.

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2023

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nr 2

5-7

EN

This issue of Dialogue and Universalism is devoted to the promotion and realization of intercultural and transcultural forms of philosophical reflection aimed at improving the fate of humanity and our shared co-inhabitants of Planet Earth. This project is simultaneously philosophical and practical. Ecological disruption, now occurring at ever-increasing spatial and temporal scales, is a threat to all existing life-forms and ecosystems, as well as to the integrity and stability of present and future human civilization(s). As I write this, in the summer of 2023, our globally shared climate crisis continues to worsen. With each passing year, the tragic consequences of the now many varieties of eco-disruption become increasingly clear. Runaway global warming becomes more apparent with ever increasing record-breaking temperatures. Extinction rates rise as wildlife habitat gives way to economic development. The frequency and intensity of wildfires in Hawaii, Canada, Africa, Siberia, and beyond become progressively more shocking. Sea levels rise as land-based ice sheets and glaciers continue to melt. These urgent issues present our times with the unprecedented challenge of learning how best to live in a new historical, biological, and geological era whose defining feature is a humanly shaped and ecologically degraded world. A growing number of geologists, geophysicists, and other Earth scientists have named this new geological epoch the “Anthropocene,” a term meaning the age of man. They argue that humans are now the ecologically dominant force on Earth as homo sapiens have become an elemental force of nature now controlling biodiversity and ecosystem processes as much as climate and geography. These geologists, along with climate scientists, environmentalists, and everyday citizens now recognize this new reality to be a profoundly important turning point for contemporary culture. A coherent and optimal response to the new ecological reality of systemic global ecological disorders calls for international and intercultural dialogue structured around diverse understanding(s) of what is at stake, of what is in danger of being lost, and of what may still be conserved, preserved, maintained, and protected. Although we live in an historical era with instant global communication, increasing political, economic, and cultural cooperation, the possibilities of constructive international and intercultural dialogue on the great issues of our time are seriously undermined by rising levels of xenophobic nationalism and the resulting retreat into ethnic separatism. The paradoxical reality of this new historical and geological era presents a special challenge to the discipline of philosophy. Philosophy began, in its various cultural manifestations, as an attempt to make better sense of ourselves and the world around us. Questions concerning the nature of the Good Life and how best to pursue it have never been far from the core aims of philosophical thinking in each of its cultural expressions. These questions have too often been lost in recent decades as the discipline of philosophy has become increasingly specialized, concentrating on ever more narrowly defined problems. The various forms of environmental philosophy that have emerged in recognition of local and global ecological problems are powerful reminders of the enduring importance of questions concerning the Good Life and the importance of holistic approaches to those questions. The papers in this issue of Dialogue and Universalism attempt to sketch a role for philosophy in our time and place; a role that begins with the recognition of a world that is progressively inhospitable to living beings, species, and ecosystems. These essays move towards forms of environmental philosophy(s) that self-consciously seek to construct intercultural or transcultural ways of making sense of our time and place and how best to envision what may still be possible and desirable. These essays are moving towards the construction of a globally inclusive discourse/dialogue needed to address the serious and interculturally shared issues of our time and place. Any realization of the possibility for constructing such globally inclusive and potentially overlapping ecological discourses/dialogues will largely be the result of a mutually cooperative process involving many peoples and cultures. Such a project can only emerge from grassroots efforts motivated by the internal dynamics within diverse communities of thought. These essays point beyond themselves and toward the project of creating a globally diverse and transcultural philosophical community through dialogue between and among the world’s cultural traditions. Such a project features a directionality, a movement towards something whose ultimate telos is not yet fixed nor fully defined and begins with an effort to explore similarities and differences between different cultural traditions with the goal of cultivating mutual understanding and respect. The cultivation of mutual understanding and respect further invites us to “step outside” one’s own culture and thereby see the world from new perspectives and to “build bridges between different cultures” thereby allowing the integration of culturally produced or culturally bound insights into a larger “transcultural framework.” This, in turn, opens the possibility of a dialogue in which our own views become subject to challenge and revision in light of what we may learn from other cultures and the hope that we may learn to rub seemingly discordant ideas together and spark new insights. In different ways, these essays acknowledge that the construction of such globally shared discourses calls for a recognition of the kinship between different perspectives, identities, and cultures that too often separate us. A common theme running through these papers, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, is the need for a more inclusive form of thinking that is open to a diversity of perspectives. These papers advocate a way of thinking that resists conceiving the world in terms of fixed and separate elements, atoms, particles, cultures, or monadic selves. Instead, they argue for what some see as an ecologically inspired way of thinking that reflects the ideas of ontological flux, mutual reciprocity, symbiosis, integration of differences, and transspecies kinship. These papers advocate ways of thinking that recognize the identities of people and things in terms of mutual and interdependent relations rather than standalone fixed essences. These essays extend the boundaries of philosophical reflection beyond its usual parameters by integrating data and insights from the natural and social sciences, literary criticism, and the world’s religious traditions. This approach moves toward considering the endless varieties of the different ways of making sense of things as essential moments within a larger and open-ended process. The Editorial team of Dialogue and University is deeply grateful to the authors for their efforts.

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The Dialectics of Identity and Difference

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Brown C.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2016

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nr 4

7-12

EN

This paper traces the history of the International Society for Universal Dialogue by reflecting on the tension between universalism and pluralism and the underlying dialec-tics of identity and difference. This paper argues that this tension is the source of crea-tivity and that dialogue, by its refusal to privilege one over the other, keeps this tension alive as it seeks ever better formulations and understandings of goodness, justice, and truth. This paper argues that philosophers are duty bound to honor their ideals and val-ues through the sort of reflection and dialogue that features critique, clarification, and renewal of those ideals and values. Only through this process (critique, clarification, and renewal) do those values remain bright and vibrant.

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Editorial: RACISM

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Brown C.

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nr 1

5-8

EN

There is some consensus that philosophical reflection and work aims to isolate and identify the essences of things rather than simply the specific manifestations of things. Philosophy seeks to uncover and thereby reveal the deepest and core structures of reality. This goal or task of philosophy is not simply an “academic” affair. It is intimately connected with projects of liberation, social justice, and the quest for a more humane, peaceful, and decent world. To change the world, we must first adequately understand the world. For this reason, philosophy is an intrinsically practical activity—although rarely recognized as such. During times of crisis and social upheaval, such as our own, this practical feature of philosophical inquiry becomes more and more vital. The traditional philosophical task of revealing the essence of things is often, and properly, understood to transcend the particularities of place and time. And yet, the projects of liberation, social justice, and the quest for a more humane, peaceful, and decent world are inherently timely. These projects require both an understanding of the essential nature and structure of the forces of oppression and the causes of injustice as well as an understanding of how those forces and causes manifest themselves in our unique moment in history. This issue Dialogue and Universalism is devoted to the promotion and encouragement of a deep philosophical reflection on the phenomenon of racism that aims at elucidating the essential structures of racism and the possibilities for its dismantling and cultural overcoming in our place and time. Although the phenomenon and tragedy of racism is global, the effects and lived experience of racism vary greatly. The essays published here typically reflect differing perspectives on the phenomenon of racism that emerge from within the generative histories of the home culture(s) and world(s) of their authors. This opening editorial echoes that pattern as it attempts to reflect on the current state of racial dynamics within the USA and from the perspective of this author. Just as the phenomenon of racism is experienced in many ways, the term “racism” is understood in varied and distinct ways. The word often serves as an umbrella term covering widely different practices, beliefs, prejudices, etc. While it has because common to recognize that racism is more than simply a belief or practice of individuals but also a systemic or structural feature baked into the taken-for-granted fabric of many societies, there is still no widespread consensus on how to properly understand the phenomenon of racism. Our moment in history is shaped by contradictory and contested cultural trajectories that are subject to acceleration, mutation, and tipping points. We are simultaneously moving towards ever greater forms of global integration and exclusionary enclaves of national, ethnic, and racial identities. At the very moment when the human capacity for a life of reason and a capacity for shared deliberation is needed most, we retreat into factionalism, delusions of exceptionalism, religious fanaticism, and the empty promise of authoritarianism. The lure of authoritarianism is increasingly tied to the rise of ethnic and racial nationalisms that are supported by exclusionary forms of identity politics. This is a fertile landscape for the propagation and cultivation of new and old forms of racism. The widely celebrated election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the USA led to proclamations of a new post-racial and color-blind American society. This new moment of hope and optimism now appears as a prelude to the rise of new varieties of American exceptionalism supported by new forms of openly expressed and celebrated white supremacism and white nationalism in the USA. In recent years, the USA has suffered increasing violence and hate crimes against members of Jewish, Latinx, Asian, and Black communities. In these circumstances it becomes easy to think of racism as more than a concept, a set of practices, or a systemic or structural feature of society but as a movement with its own direction and inner telos. Racism seems to be on the march— headed towards some destination that is not yet settled. Political ideologies such as Liberalism or Socialism not only encompass an interrelated and reinforcing body of conjectures, ideals, goals, and values about human and political life, they also sketch a broad trajectory or directionality that guides the continual development of their core ideas and practices. Living political ideologies are always unfinished as they point to aspirations that can rarely be clearly anticipated from where we now stand. The same is true for social and political conjectures that do not rise to the status of ideology. Notions such as “Western Chauvinism” “American Exceptionalism” or “White Supremacy” are more than a body of assumptions about the characteristics of a civilization, nation, or race but are also implicit guides to the development and the longed-for or imagined “rightful” place in the world of a culture, nation, or race. The phenomenon of racism is similarly structured by a set of beliefs, goals, practices, and value assumptions that offer a guide for constructing the future. The expression and impact of racism, regardless of its conscious intent, is implicitly tied to a body of thought and a set of practices that assemble a directionality as it involves a reference to something beyond itself. It is an aspiration, a goal, a telos without predetermined criteria for fulfillment. Like the best and worst of philosophical and political ideas, it points towards something to be worked out in ways that are difficult and perhaps impossible to predict. Fortunately, the inner telos and drive that animates much of the world’s racism does not rise to the status of an autonomous vital force or entelechy. The directionalities of each of the various manifestations of racism are subject to various steering currents within particular societies, currents that are constantly and consistently maintained by people and institutions. The growing intensity, scope, and direction of racism is influenced by broader social forces and the shifting, intersecting patterns of multiple forms of domination and hierarchy. In the USA, anxiety about a unique American Identity has escalated as religious affiliation has waned, immigration and shifting demographics have upset traditional power hierarchies, and rising economic inequality has heightened a fear of being left behind. Growing partisanship in politics has sharpened and solidified formerly negotiable and permeable differences. Political factionalism is becoming a new source of identity formation and now resembles a form of secular political religion that is increasingly expressed and self-identified as White Christian nationalism. Within this framework, the complementary and yet opposing instincts of social solidarity and factionalism are easily manipulated as the celebration of religious, ethnic, gender, and racial diversity becomes seen to many as an existential threat to traditional American Identity and prevailing social hierarchies. In this setting, racism becomes one more tool to magnify fear and conflict as overt and covert forms of racism are pressed into the service of legitimating and rein forcing the caste-like boundaries within traditional social orders. For such reasons as these, philosophical reflection requires both a point of view that is distanced from our everyday practical concerns and yet is attentive to the unique particularities of our time and place. Philosophers must do more than contemplate the world and the meaning of human existence. We must offer insightful understandings that provide roadmaps to a better future. We must continue to provide compelling critiques but also provide compelling alternative destinations/directionalities to the unfortunate conjectures of “Western Chauvinism” “American Exceptionalism” and “White Supremacy.” A promising direction here may be found in the influential and prevailing critiques aimed at the aspiration toward a “color-blind” society. Many of the essays in this issue begin with the premise that a powerful and vicious form of racism “color-branding” must be eliminated to end prevalent forms of violence, injustice, and racial hierarchies that are too often passively accepted. While the path toward the elimination of color-branding necessarily calls for a systemic and global rethinking of taken-for-granted color-branding practices, the contemporary understanding of a “color-blind” society points us toward the wrong directions as it leaves us blind to racism and racial injustice. When we do not see race or color, we are unable to acknowledge the manifestations of racially motivated patterns of social injustice and thus unable to analyze its root causes or the conditions of its possibility. The familiar prescription of a color-blind society aims to end racism by ceasing to speak about race. The seductive illusion of a color-bind society is no more than magical thinking and the empty promise “If we do not speak its name, it will not exist.” Color-blindness promotes the notion that race-based differences do not matter and overlooks the realities of systemic racism, thus depriving us of the language and conceptual framework to examine and talk about important features of racial injustice. Color-blindness aims at raceblindness and is a not a path to the elimination of racial or color injustice but a path towards blindness to racial injustice as well as blindness to the culturally enriching diversity of racial and ethnic contributions in art, music, and ways of seeing the world, i.e., blindness to the multiple forms of cultural enrichment and renewal necessary for vibrant, thriving, and flourishing cultures. The editorial policy of Dialogue and Universalism features the hope and belief that dialogue and discussion between clashing philosophical traditions, ideologies, and conflicting points of view lead to a synergy which not only enhances the discipline of philosophy but is necessary to promote the projects of liberation and social justice. The current aspiration of a color-blind society aims at silencing racial dialogue and silencing the perspectives of those whose lived experiences are shaped and animated by racial injustice and thus seems to us a dead end. Constructive paths forward must begin with the recognition of the plurality of our differences and similarities both within and between cultures. The essays included in this Dialogue and Universalism issue demonstrate philosophy’s commitment to the project of making the world a better place through philosophical reflection on the essential structures of racism and its various historical and cultural manifestations. In differing ways, these essays attempt to clarify those essential structures of racism, to critique the rational legitimacy of such structures, and to offer strategies for the dismantling and overcoming of those structures and their attempts at legitimation. And finally, these essays attempt to point the way toward a renewal of cultural life that is immune to the seductive temptations of power, caste, and hierarchy. Many of these essays are on the border of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, history, and political science and thereby reveal the practicality of philosophy and its productive relations with other fields of knowledge without losing any of its autonomy or identity. Their authors are situated in different cultures, in different socio-political situations, and feature different styles of philosophical and critical thinking. The resulting moments of tension, paired with the moments of overlapping consensus between these perspectives, provide multiple openings for creativity and future dialogue.

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Editorial: Values and Ideals: Theory and Praxis Part V Ecophilosophy for the Human and More Than Human World Human Values and Ideals. Their Role in Personal and Cultural Identities Moral Systems and Moral Practices

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Brown C. , Czarnocka M.

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2017

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nr 4

5-7

EN

This is the fifth and last in a series of Dialogue and Universalism issues featuring a selection of peer-reviewed papers submitted to the 11th World Con-gress of the International Society for Universal Dialogue, held in Warsaw, Poland, July 11–15, 2016. Its theme is VALUES AND IDEALS: THEORY AND PRAXIS. All the papers being the achievement of the 11th World Congress express the general attitude that a clarification and rethinking of the nature and role of values and ideals are a necessary step toward addressing many of the most vex-ing problems facing our world. Distorted understandings of the nature and role of values have diminished our ability to conduct rational public discourse, im-plement wise policy, or even imagine a better world. These papers suggest that the role of a philosopher must include active participation in the rebuilding of the human world through the clarification and renewal of moral discourse. Values are neither personal sentiments nor private feelings but arise sponta-neously from intersubjective efforts to make sense of things. As such, they are objects of public reflection. Values and ideals are the conditions of the possibil-ity of a meaningful and coherent world as well as a basic factor of individual and collective human existence. Values and ideals are worldly affairs belonging neither to the divine nor the Absolute. Our everyday experiences of a sense of fairness, a sense of compassion, and a sense that “we are all in it together” underlie our social nature and our bonds of attachment with family and community. Such experiences are the root and common ground of all moral and political reflection. These elemental forms of moral phenomena precede theory as they emerge through everyday praxis. They are the meaningful phenomena presupposed by discourse and theory. Attempts to dismiss values either as arising from the private or non-rational or to reduce them to a non-human ‘beyond’ serve to sever the connection between moral theory and moral experience. Severing the connection between elemental moral experience and rational public moral reflection robs us of the possibility of finding common ground for philosophical dialogue and practical politics. Our diminished capacity to imagine a better world and to promote rational moral discourse comes at a time when our shared world increasingly becomes a less secure and friendly place to live. Dramatic advances in economic growth, transportation, communication, and medicine coexist with rising economic ine-quality, shrinking food and health care security for all, war, enslavement, over-population, human trafficking, and feelings of alienation, as well as climate disruption and mass extinction.1 Pernicious forms of ethnic nationalism undermine the hope of authentic de-mocracy as they encourage the development of forms of self-identity tethered to the exclusion and subordination of others. The rise of neoliberalism, ethnic na-tionalism, religious fanaticism, and even fascism are among the many storms threatening our very lives today. Burns like a red coal carpet Mad bull lost your way.2 Those threats and conflicts, as well as difficulties in communication between cultures, nations, and citizens threaten a civilizational collapse. Some experts warn that human extinction is inevitable if the human world does not turn back from its path of self-destruction. These threats require more than superficial changes or technological fixes. They require the rebuilding of the very founda-tion of the human world. The rise of social pathologies begins as values and ideals are recast and dis-torted by the impersonal logic of the market, the idolization of individual self-interest, empire, and conquest. Glorification of individual triumph replaces au-thentic values. As hyper-individualistic ideology displaces the centrality of com-munity with the individual, the commitment to self-interest and rational choice theory replaces moral discourse with instrumental rationality. In such an envi-ronment, ideals and values first become individual preferences and then commod-ities to be traded. As the ideology of self-interest grows, we become blind and insensitive to our sense of value and goodness that make moral reflection, critique, and re-newal possible. The result is rising fear, uncertainty, alienation, anomie, and terror making the prospects for an authentic democracy increasingly difficult. As authentic moral discourse withers, our choices too often seem limited to either a global neoliberal world order or a retreat into an exclusionary ethnic nationalism. The present threats require a return to and a reclaiming of deep and ele-mental values such as care and concern for others, care and concern for truth, care and concern for our shared accomplishments. Such cares and concerns are conditions of the possibility of the good life. Such cares and concerns are both the source of great ideals and communal projects as well as the roots of social, religious, ethical, cognitive, and aesthetic systems. Such cares and concerns are the source of renewal and replenishment for stagnant and taken for granted cul-tural dead ends. The International Society for Universal Dialogue’s members participating in the XI World Congress were going a long and fruitful way when revealing and researching the multiplicity of ideals and values, their problems and the constant conditioning by them all the human world. We hope and believe that this Inter-national Society for Universal Dialogue achievement is not only an intellectual legacy of the society, but also its step in a battle for a better human world. We have published about 1000 pages of studies and essays devoted to the problems of values and ideals—an amazing evidence of the common extensive activity of the International Society for Universal Dialogue. This research, pub-lished in five Dialogue and Universalism issues, has not exhausted the panora-ma of issues of values and ideals. Philosophy—which is continuous flux—never offers any full or final conceptions. However, we believe that the International Society for Universal Dialogue made a worth step towards the elucidation of values and ideals.

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Editorial. Human Identity

51%

Czarnocka M. , Brown C. , Tajsin E.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2016

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nr 1

5-6

EN

From antiquity till modernity the problem of man has frequently been re-duced to the problem of human nature, i.e., the quest to identify and clarify the fixed and innate essence or defining characteristic of human beings. Numerous schools of contemporary philosophy undermine this traditional reduction of human identity to a common nature (essence) either by neglecting essentialism or, more frequently, weakening it. By rejecting the conviction that human nature is the only source of human identity and thereby removing the earlier held specificity of human nature new approaches to the problem of human identity became open. In those conceptions viewing human identity as a personal or social construction human nature ceased to be regarded as the exclusive source of human identity, i.e. as the only base from which all that is human emerges. These images of human being see the traditional focus on human nature as radically incomplete. To be human is to be engaged with constructing a human, especially a human self, i.e., to become a human self, person, individual, and member of community. The sources and materials needed to construct and real-ize a human are found in the natural and social world surrounding any individu-al person. Human identity maintains itself in a dialectical tension with its surrounding worlds. Thus, weakened essentialism maintains that human identity is made possible and constrained by both human nature and the culturally constructed and inter-subjective worlds in which humans are thrown. The presupposition of this con-ception of man may lead to two different conclusions: 1) in becoming human, a person absorbs elements alien to his individual self in the course of his exist-ence, so in the process of becoming human one’s primitive I is changed and even alienated by the world; and 2) particular humans are only partially individ-ual and autonomous since all are shaped and constructed within the parameters of natural and cultural history. On this view human nature becomes a set of innate—biological or other—predispositions, abilities or powers in the Kantian sense that are open to differ-ent realizations. In consequence of adopting the above-sketched presuppositions, the contemporary ways of investigating the problem of human identity largely abandon or ignore the idea of an innate fixed non-changeable human essence. Instead they search for human identity—a non-separable union of hu-man possibilities and their realizations. They hope to reveal what had been con-cealed by the focus on human nature, i.e., the diversity and totality of human becoming—becoming human. The problem of human being is replaced with the problem of human becoming. Thus, in contemporary philosophy human identity is mainly revealed by investigating the manifold spheres of human ac-tivities—the worlds of cognition, morality, values, religion, society, culture, as well as humanity’s immersion in and engagement with the more-than-human world. The idea of this Dialogue and Universalism issue, devoted to the problem of human identity, follows the above-sketched attitude. The papers included in the issue investigate human identity by examining various spheres of human activi-ties that are its manifestations. We would like to mention three papers demonstrating how cognitive repre-sentation, i.e. a connection between human cognition and the world, can be a promising explanative tool (not committed into copy theory of knowledge) if treated in non-standard ways. Two of them (authored by Enidio Ilario, Alfredo Pereira Jr., Valdir Gonzalez Paixão Jr., and by Małgorzata Czarnocka) take an inspiration from Ernst Cassirer’s conception of symbolic forms. The papers authored by Charles Brown, Małgorzata Czarnocka, Stanisław Czerniak, Debamitra Dey Marie Pauline Eboh, Jean-François Gava, Manjulika Ghosh, Leepo Modise, Spyros P. Panagopoulos, and Vasil Penchev are an In-ternational Society for Universal Dialogue legacy. They were submitted to the 10th ISUD Congress (Craiova, Romania, 2014).