Last update: 2022-04-22 09:45:28
1. A process under way
The theme chosen for the presentation of the review Oasis Al Waha Naklistan, promoted as the organ of the International Centre for Study and Research in Venice, can be fully elucidated only if situated in today's historical predicament, with all the complexity and conflictuality that go with it. I usually describe our present predicament in terms of the hybridisation of civilisations and cultures. Up to now this has seemed to me to be the most appropriate approach to interpreting the process I emphasise the word process that is under way, and the most suggestive in regard to pathways we can follow with a sympathetic but critical eye to it. I need only record the impressive datum that two billion people are on the point of migrating. There is plenty of historical backing for this formula of the hybridisation of civilisations and cultures; if used prudently in the terms for example of the Larousse French dictionary definition: "cultural production resulting from the mutual influence of civilisations in contact" it seems to me to be well suited to cast more light on the multiple complexity of the phenomena emerging from the unprecedented and inevitable interweaving of peoples, races, cultures, and religions which is forcing us not just to redefine the relationships between states but to think a new world order. At the same time I do not overlook the fact that we representatives of the religions are convinced that all peoples are ultimately part of a single human family, for they have in common an elemental experience (human nature?). We live in the certainty that there is a God who guides history.
To use the term hybridisation of civilisations and cultures to define the process under way in this era of travails, does moreover facilitate the task of interpreting the frequently searing content of the daily news, so that we can respond more adequately to today's increasingly complex problems in areas such as peace, war, terrorism, justice, freedom, rights, or democracies. It is of course important to add that by juxtaposing "civilisation" with "hybridisation" we protect ourselves from simplistic ethnic and anthropological misreadings.
2. Fundamental rights, democracies and religions
In the present context our reflections must focus on the social and civil articulation of this process of the hybridisation of civilisations, which involves religious men and communities being committed in the first person. One of the nodal points of the process of hybridisation is represented by the recognition or otherwise of the public value of religions.
According to scholars there is a conception in the United States - even though it may not be the prevalent one that generally allows the same fullness of recognition to the religious motivations of each citizen. The Founding Fathers themselves sought some kind of "secular state without state secularism"
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. The political and religious spheres are clearly separate, but the political sphere is disposed to dialogue with the religious because it is very conscious that government cannot produce moral citizens, whereas moral citizens are often inspired by religions to favour democracy.
Thus for example the faith of the evangelicals - Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals who are expanding fast beyond the United States in Latin America (Brazil), Asia, and Africa, and managing to make converts even in predominantly Muslim areas is closely interwoven with American culture. Whatever interpretation we want to make of these religious movements - which must certainly not be underestimated - they seem to me to confirm the claim that "There is an important lesson in American experience of religious diversity within a democratic political and social structure: the religious foundation of culture is broad enough to welcome those who try to live according to one of the three great Abrahamic traditions of faith [or at any rate to preserve] individual freedom of belief [or non-belief] and practice [or non-practice]"
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In Europe however we find ourselves living together in a situation in which "globalisation emphasises a situation of cultural neutrality: for today's western democracy all religions are 'equal' (in-difference). The public sphere is declared to be neutral towards the religions (...) The different religions are required and told to consider their universalism as a private fact, internal to their sphere of influence"
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Looking beyond these considerations of a contemporary historical order, there is a constantly growing tendency to oppose the universalism of religions in the name of human rights, the focus of an effort to give expression to a humanistic universal recognisable by all. This is supposed to be opening up a road to peaceful social coexistence in a pluralistic context.
None of us can fail to see the advantages that declarations of human rights possess. These have in fact had and still have a high negative value insofar as they constitute an ethical-juridical barrier to the invasiveness of political power in general and more specifically of state power, together with a high positive value insofar as they provide a language useful for ethical-juridical debate between subjects, cultures, and religions.
Nonetheless we cannot conceal the fundamental limits of these declarations. Their universality is inevitably "abstract". It relates to aspects of human "dignity" whose insuperable value is recognised to require juridical protection. Declarations of human rights depend on an aprioristic axiology with respect to historical conditions, and this of necessity proceeds deductively from an ideal anthropological model depending on a strongly committed consensus. Here is why the universality of such human rights is subject to accusations of being merely the universality of "a party"; especially on the part of universalistic traditions like the eastern ones which for the most part developed in isolation from the travails that brought to birth modern universalism.
Can religious experiences somehow get round this limitation and increase their capacity for the nurturing of society and thus become protagonists of a more adequate promotion of human rights? I suggest that a positive answer can be given to this question. We need to think the relations between the historical subjects actually at work in our society among which religions stand out by their unique importance and the criteria for their possible coexistence.
On this topic it seems to me to be of fundamental importance to recognise the datum that the humanum as such (universal dimension) is always and only given in the concrete life of men and communities (particular dimension). Thus every community of men, with the cultural manifestations that characterise it, is the expression of the universale humanum, but is so in the historically determined cultural forms that are proper to it. The anthropologically structural conditions of a culture are universal, but they live in historical and communal forms of activity that are always particular. If this is the structure of the cultures to which human communities and therefore also religious subjects give expression, it will also be the foundation of their historical relationship, the presupposition of their possible inter-action (hybridisation, interculturality). But if the structure is like this, it will also be impossible to deduce from it the form and the result of the encounter that is something we will only be able to know a posteriori. What will be the elements that are shared and/or recognised as universal is something that religious communities and their cultural expressions will define only in their historical encounter and conflict, admixture, and estrangement.
To favour this process a State is required that would be capable of giving space in an adequate form to a civil society plural in nature, and which therefore would never be lacking in conflictual aspects. I am thinking of a State which is not "detached" and which, though not developing a specific vision its own, is expressly at the service of the person and of the ultimate exigencies which constitute the person (the desire for freedom and happiness, for fulfilment), a State which at the same time would make its own the great values that are at the foundation of the actual democratic coexistence (civil and political liberties) generated by intermediate bodies. Therefore not a State understood as an anonymous void container to be refilled at pleasure (a weak option that would in fact be unrealisable), but a space, certainly not confessional, in which, without neglecting traditions, each can bring their own contribution to the construction of the common good, in the inevitable and respectful logic of comparison and recognition that alone preserves the true nature of power. That is why it is necessary and here I am thinking above all of Italy and Europe - to speak of "a new secularism"
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This new secularism can constitute progress with respect to the traditional category of tolerance, which accepts the presence in society and in the social order of religions and of different cultures without recognising or favouring their potential for positivity. In fact through this vision of the concrete universal of religious communities, the originality of each religious tradition in its universal scope would be recognised, and in this sense we would be obliged to go beyond the logic that admits a protection of the various cultural traditions to the extent that they have common denominators. From the juridical point of view this proposal makes it possible rather for the protection of religions to acquire a "differentiated foundation". For non-believers this would consist in the recognition of the benefit that a religion renders to the community; for believers, in the intrinsic value of their creed.
3. The logic of testimony
How can representatives of the religions tackle this fascinating task of building up society in terms of following with critical eye the process of the hybridisation of civilisations and cultures?
The road that I wish humbly to propose is the one which has seen come to birth the review Oasis and the Centre that promotes it. We can identify it in the theme of testimony, understanding this category in all its theoretical and practical force. Testimony challenges every man and every woman, inviting them to become personally involved, to pay with their persons, and not to prejudge the limits of what can be achieved in encounter and dialogue with the other. Given the risk implied by freedom that is never definable a priori, nobody can ever evade testimony. Human freedom can never be "deduced", for its full significance is given only in the act which embodies it.
Since as far back as Greek philosophy, the fact that freedom is for truth has represented an undisputed cornerstone for the European mind. It has been more difficult for European thought to understand the nonetheless ineradicaable principle of the truth of freedom, and yet the biblical revelation contains the theoretical nucleus of this principle. The truth is the encounter that takes place between the absolute transcendent foundation and the human person. The foundation is attested to the person in the individual act of freedom calling that person to involvement. The Truth is founded on a God who reveals himself in history to come to encounter us. In the Christian tradition then the truth, though maintaining all its character of absoluteness, is living personal truth. It is the very event of Jesus Christ, Son of God, who offers Himself to our finite freedom up to the point of allowing himself to be crucified. Truth therefore does not fear to commit itself to freedom. Oasis wants to follow the chequered paths of testimony. These are not at all identifiable a priori. Therefore Oasis is a work that is always in progress.
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1. Cfr. A. BESANçON, Situation de l'Église catholique, in «Commentaire» 113 (2006) 5-23, qui 11.
2. C. ANDERSON, Religione e politica nello spirito americano, in «Oasis» 1 (2005) n. 2, 96.
3. P. DONATI, Pensare la società civile come sfera pubblica religiosamente qualificata, in C. VIGNA S. ZAMAGNI (a cura di), Multiculturalismo e identità, Vita e Pensiero, Milano 2002, 55-56.
4. Cfr. A. SCOLA-G. E. RUSCONI, Prove di dialogo, tra fede e ragione, in «Il Mulino» (2006) n. 2, 369-379.
