Cosmopolitan Civility

Global-Local Reflections with Fred Dallmayr

Ruth Abbey, Ruth Abbey

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781438477381
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Prolific and pioneering, Fred Dallmayr has been an active scholar for over fifty years. His research interests include modern and contemporary political theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, continental political thought, democratic theory, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and cosmopolitanism. Dallmayr is also one of the founders of comparative political thought and his interest in non-Western political theory spans Chinese, Islamic, Indian, Buddhist, and Latin American traditions. In emulation of the vast interdisciplinary and international character of Dallmayr's work, this book draws upon senior and emerging scholars from an array of disciplines and countries, with essays that are philosophical (in the Western and non-Western traditions), cultural and/or political, and international. Dallmayr himself responds to the essays in a concluding chapter.

Chapter 1

Philosophy of Hope

EDWARD DEMENCHONOK

“War and Peace” III (5.10.51. II), Pablo Picasso’s surreal war scene, depicts a warrior with a dove, fighting with only a sword against a tank, with an innocent human face superimposed on the scene. That stark image confronts us on the cover of Fred Dallmayr’s aptly titled Against Apocalypse: Restoring Humanity’s Wholeness (2016). The image symbolically expresses the main theme of the book and its key message, which warns about the risk to innocent humanity in our “nuclear age”: the threat of war pushing the world to the precipice of apocalypse, opposed to the hope for peace that yet remains inherent in the human spirit.

Dallmayr’s deeply humanist position, with its opposition to violence and war and its commitment to human dignity secured by justice and peace, is the leitmotif of his numerous books and articles. His arguments reflect not only the intellectual reasoning of a philosopher, but also the traumas of a wounded human being (he was barely ten years old when World War II started). He tries to regain mindfulness and social consciousness and to warn of the problems plaguing our world. He implores us to seek solutions before it is too late. He confronts not only the external problems of injustices and violence, but also the internal problems that keep us mired in the status quo—stereotypic thinking, dogmatic mind-sets, and the internalized dependence of conformist “slave mentality.” From his ethical position, Dallmayr undertakes an uncompromising critical assessment of the current global situation, characterized by global disorder. He shows the groundlessness of neoconservative and neoliberal theories that preserve the status quo. He critiques the economic-political system that results in violence and human suffering and is pushing humanity toward the precipice of nuclear or ecological catastrophe.

To realize its transformative potential in a conflicted world and to respond constructively to internal theoretical and external social-cultural challenges, philosophy itself needs to undergo a self-transformation. The emerging philosophy introduces a new perspective on our understanding of what philosophy is, of its history, methods, and forms of articulation. In dialogue with other philosophers, Dallmayr actively contributes to this transformative endeavor. He presents a philosophy that is dialogic, intercultural, and cosmopolitan, and one which invokes religious, spiritual, and ethical resources for positive global transformations.

In this chapter, I analyze Dallmayr’s creative elaboration on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of history and on the conception of “event of Being,” articulating the view of human existence (Dasein) as potentially transformative, a being moved by care (Sorge) in an ongoing search for meaning and truth. Dallmayr’s contributions to the intercultural philosophical dialogue between Western and Eastern thought traditions are surveyed. I examine how Dallmayr’s intercultural analysis has led him to conclude that the concept of world care is shared by virtually all cultural and religious traditions around the globe. Finally, I briefly describe Dallmayr’s conception of the cosmopolis to come.

In Dialogue with Heidegger’s Legacy

Among influential philosophers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl-Otto Apel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Raimon Panikkar, Dallmayr holds a special regard for Martin Heidegger. He first published on Heidegger as early as in 1986 and was among the first in the English-speaking world to realize that Heidegger’s philosophical work “was much broader than the particular Nazi episode.”1 In 1993 Dallmayr published The Other Heidegger. He uncovered fruitful contributions of Heidegger’s work to contemporary social and political thought and delineated the contours of an alternative political perspective therein.

Heidegger lamented Western “mass society,” mass culture, and the depersonalized “they” (das Man), and criticized the instrumental reason and abuse of technology that inaugurated the “nuclear age.” He saw this as a crisis of Western civilization that threatens the future of humanity. He was concerned about the freedom and welfare of individuals as well as the whole of humanity and tried to identify alternatives for their rescue. As Dallmayr tells us, Heidegger “seemed to address precisely the questions that troubled me,” such as the question of “being.” In opposition to traditional formulations, Heidegger noted that “being could no longer be grasped as a substance or fixed concept but needed to be seen as a temporal process or happening, an ongoing ‘disclosure’ (and sheltering) of meaning in which all beings participate.”2 Dallmayr explicates Heidegger’s concept of Dasein, defining human existence as “being-in-the-world,” as well as his other key concepts, such as care (Sorge), solicitude (Fürsorge), letting-be (Seinlassen), event (das Ereignis), and dwelling (Wohnen), to move his political philosophy beyond the traditional paradigm, rooted in individual subjectivity, toward a view of human beings and society that emphasizes connectedness and “relationality.”

Heidegger’s writing powerfully expresses the fragility of human existence and acknowledges not only the possibility of the end of the human race, but also the fact that das Man has effectively created the means of its own self-destruction. Dallmayr embraces Heidegger’s personalistic defense of individual persons, seeking to liberate them from depersonalizing influences exerted by the social system. In Heidegger Dallmayr finds a thinker able to realize the dramatic situation of Western civilization and to see the root causes of its problems, which had burgeoned during the World Wars and the Cold War and have continued to escalate ever since. He creatively continues Heidegger’s line of thought. The qualitatively new perspective he highlights is that contradictions and perilous tendencies in Western society are now escalating to the level of being global problems, which brings us to the precipice of self-destruction—nuclear or ecological.

While recognizing the importance of Heidegger’s admonishments, Dallmayr, in a more hopeful vein, emphasizes the positive alternatives to the possibility of self-destruction. He brings together insights and ideas found scattered or latently present in Heidegger’s works, creatively developing them in the light of our contemporary situation. He relates what he gleans to some concepts of political philosophy and tries to find answers to such questions as “What is the status of individualism and of traditional Western humanism?” and “How should one construe the relations between self and other human beings bypassing the options of contractual agreement and simple rational convergence?”3 Dallmayr highlights Heidegger’s contributions to studies of the status of the “subject” as a political agent; the character of political community; the issue of cultural and political development; his notion of a “homecoming through otherness,” and the perspectives of emerging cosmopolis.4

Another connection between Dallmayr and Heidegger is the philosophy of history. In studies about Heidegger, scant attention has been paid to this topic, yet his critical revision of traditional conceptions and attempt to ground a radically new approach underlie his fundamental ontology. It is latently present in Being and Time (1927/1996), which analyzes the modern concept of time underlying the teleological representations of society and history. The book was a reaction against “temporal fetishism” and G. W. F. Hegel’s historicism, where history is viewed as a teleologically determined rational system. Within this framework, an individual’s role is limited by conformity to existing social trends and power structures. One can see the main features of historicism lurking behind contemporary theories of industrial-postindustrial society, of the “invisible hand” of neoliberal market economy, of the postmodern concept of the “end of history,” as well as of the neoconservative doctrine with its “imperial designs” and the messianic role of a “chosen nation.”

Being and Time is polemically directed against the concepts of historicism that Heidegger saw as the main error of European philosophy. He argues that “Da-sein and only Da-sein is primordially historical.”5 Only the human being as an individual really has history: “Temporality reveals itself as the historicity of Da-sein. The statement that Da-sein is historical is confirmed as an existential and ontological fundamental proposition. It is far removed from merely ontically ascertaining the fact that Da-sein occurs in a ‘world history.’ ”6 Heidegger believes that philosophy should liberate itself from this historicist aberration and open people’s eyes to the value of individual agency: “The existential and ontological constitution of historicity must be mastered in opposition to the vulgar interpretation of the history of Da-sein that covers over.”7 He continues, “the analysis of the historicity of Da-sein attempted to show that this being is not ‘temporal,’ because it ‘is in history,’ but because, on the contrary, it exists and can exist historically only because it is temporal in the ground of its being.”8 Individuals exist in time, but are not manipulated by it: by the very mode of their being, individuals themselves are time. Society “has” history, but human persons have the ontological privilege of “being history.” Dasein means that the individual is included in world history but not reduced by its temporary movement, is not predetermined by it, and has internal independence from it. From Dasein emanates the historicity of any other processes that result from human activity. Dasein is opposed not only to the vulgar view of history, but also to the sociocentric, sociological “being-from-society”; that is, the socially predetermined being. This approach aims to be a radical change in the philosophy of history.

Heidegger aims to dispel any notion of “historical necessity” to free individuals from their subjection to statist and hegemonic projects. An important concept is that of possibility (die Möglichkeit), which is related to other categories of fundamental ontology, such as understanding, project, destiny, existence, and Being. According to Heidegger, the category of possibility acquires its own adequate meaning only in relation to individuals or Dasein. Accordingly, “possibility as an existential is the most primordial and the ultimate positive ontological determination of Da-sein.”9 Being-possible is related to “to know” and to “to be able to.” Being-possible allows us to move from the sense of being powerless individuals subordinated to an inexorably predetermined future to one that embraces individual agency. Because it has a character of project and “because it is what it becomes or does not become, can it say understandingly to itself: ‘become what you are!’ ”10 In other words, “realize your own possibilities!”

In an ontological interpretation of possibility, one can see a human being who has certain vocations or callings, who feels destined for a certain form of existence and the achievement of a unique life. The existential “possibility” implies that personal possibilities are the living forces of our being, its energy or potency. Possibility-vocation can be interpreted in the way that an individual may view him- or herself as being sent into the world with a unique, subconsciously perceived mission, the understanding and fulfillment of which should be the overarching goal of life. Self-realization is considered as a process of self-transformation, which results in a radical ant...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Introduction
• Chapter 1 Philosophy of Hope
• Chapter 2 Fred Dallmayr’s Spiritual Cosmopolitanism
• Chapter 3 Anticipating Ethical Democracy in East Asia: Engaging with Fred Dallmayr
• Chapter 4 Toward a Mega-Humanism: Confucian Triadic Harmony for the Anthropocene
• Chapter 5 The Problem of Secularism: Rawls, Taylor, and Dallmayr
• Chapter 6 Between Berlin and Konigsberg: Toward a Global Community of Well-Disposed Human Beings
• Chapter 7 Learning and Scholarship: Unearthing the Roots of Humanism and Cosmopolitanism in the Islamic Milieu
• Chapter 8 Where to Explore the Political in Islamic Political Thought
• Chapter 9 “Docta Ignorantia” and “Hishiryō”: “The Inexpressible” in Cusanus, Dōgen, and Nishida
• Chapter 10 Paradigms of the Perfect Human and the Possibility of a Global Ethos
• Chapter 11 Upholding Our World and Regenerating Our Earth: Calling for a Planetary Lokasamgraha
• Chapter 12 Philosophy and the Colonial Difference Revisited
• Chapter 13 Dallmayr’s Reply to Contributors
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover