Levinas and multicultural society

• The inherent beauty of the multicultural stew
• The illusion of utopian multiculturalism
  

You say that we have to start with realizing that at the core we are fundamentally the same. I don’t agree with this. At the basis of my own model, coming from Emmanuel Levinas, lies the recognition that we are fundamentally different. This is something we have to accept, we should not try to reduce the other - which is completely different - to the same, there should always remain a separateness between the one and the other. This part of Levinas’ philosophy is very difficult to explain, but I will try it anyway. You say that we are all the same because we laugh and cry, love and hate etc. But we have different fundamental values and a different cultural background. You can see that a stranger laughs, but do you really know how he feels? You can’t stand in his shoes, you cannot see through his eyes, you cannot know if you are really the same as a stranger, because you don’t know him. And this doesn’t count only for complete strangers, but for any other person, also for your partner, family and friends. You cannot stand in somebody else’s shoes and you shouldn’t pretend that you can by saying about somebody else what he thinks, wants and feels. In fact the book of Rudi Visker isn’t called “A philosophy of multiculturalism” - that’s the subtitle - it is something like (it’s difficult to translate): “To go to a stranger but to stay different”.

We are equal, natives and foreigners. We are equal, not because we are the same, but because we are all human beings. There is only one race, the human race. But we are not the same, we are fundamentally different. We have our own identity, we have our own values that we find very important and that determine the way we look at the world. Our values can be strongly opposed to each other at a fundamental level. You want to cook a nice multicultural stew where carrots, potatoes and meat together form a tasty meal. But cultures don’t always fit together so nicely. In reality the stew will be ruined by too much and far too strong chili peppers, which makes that people who aren’t used to hot spices cannot eat it anymore. You can no longer taste the carrot or a potato, you only taste peppers then. You can try to recognize what carrots and peppers have in common but that doesn’t solve the problem.

# posted by Levinas and culture @ 4:58 PM