Two possibilities for the future political unification of the world

A Sheep In Wolf’s Clothing: Parekh, A Political Diversion.

Specifically, Parekh describes culture as that which lies between the universal and the particular in human beings. What is universal (e.g., our biology) acquires—and is mediated by—different meanings that are associated with it by what is particular to any given culture. And likewise, what is particular to a culture (those things that distinguish one culture from another) are related to each other by virtue of being equally embedded in and limited by what is universal (e.g., our biology and existential conditions).

This means that human beings are neither completely opaque nor completely transparent to each other. Moreover, the relationship between biology and culture is not static for Parekh. Indeed, by joining the two concepts he yields what I believe is actually the most radical conclusion of the whole book. He writes that, “human nature does not exhaust all that characterizes human beings” (118).

There is also the human condition to take into account, and as active participants in evolution we are in a dialectic with nature, which shapes us. Furthermore, this dialectic has created a situation where… nature has been so deeply shaped by layers of social influences… [that] we cannot easily detach what is natural from what is manmade or social…. [In short] cultures are not superstructures built upon identical and unchanging foundations…but unique human creations…[that in turn] gives rise to different kinds of human beings. (122)

Parekh never actually proves this point nor does he ever spell out what the “different kinds of human beings” are. Nevertheless, like cultural relativism generally, I find it intuitively appealing for political reasons and not scientific ones—it is inherently unprovable and metaphorical in nature—because it forces us to consider the ontological status of cultural differences on an equal par with similarities. Such an understanding allows us to evade both the biological determinism and the cultural determinism of naturalists like Montesquieu and culturalists like Herder. Also, by embracing both the universality and the particularity of people and cultures we acknowledge an obligation to respond to different people and cultures more holistically.

However, the danger of believing in “different kinds of human beings” is that someone might come along and argue that some kinds of humans are more important than others, and that is why the idea of cultural relativism is so appealing to me. In effect, cultural relativism states that if one culture is valuable then all cultures are valuable. There are real differences between cultures that simply can’t be theorized coherently because the very notion of coherence only has meaning from a consistent set of cultural values.

Multiculturalism is itself such a set of liberal cultural values. It can be pragmatically applied to actual cultural conflicts, but cannot yield any meta-view on the inherent worth of culture as such. For that reason, the value of Parekh’s work lies in its attempt to theorize from an academic perspective on the practical consequences of cultural relativism. But Parekh denies the role that the assumption of cultural relativism plays in his formulation of “pluralist universalism,” and in doing so he misses the value of his own work...

Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian yogi, philosopher, poet, and a leader of the nationalist independence movement, wrote that there are only two possibilities for the future political unification of the world.

• The first is that of, “the control of the enormous mass of mankind by an oligarchy,” but he warns that this, “would lead to an unnatural suppression of great natural and moral forces and in the end a tremendous disorder, perhaps a world shattering explosion” (Aurobindo 407).
• The other possibility is: …the ideal of unification of mankind [that] would be a system in which, as first rule of common and harmonious life, the human peoples would be allowed to form their own groupings according to their natural divisions of locality, race, culture, economic convenience and not according to the more violent accidents of history or the egoistic will of powerful nations whose policy it must always be to compel the smaller or less timely organized to serve their interests as dependents or obey their commands as subjects. (Aurobindo 406).
• Works Cited Aurobindo, Sri. The Human Cycle; The Ideal of Human Unity; War and Self-Determination. 7th ed. Pondicherry, India: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997. Posted by Asramana at 8:50 PM