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Paul Ricoeur

Universal Civilization and National Cultures

Originally published in History and Truth (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 271–84. Translated by Charles A. Kelbley. Reprinted courtesy of Northwestern University Press.

The problem evoked here is equally pertinent to highly industrialized countries ruled by well-established governments, and to underdeveloped countries which have just attained their independence. The problem is this: mankind as a whole is on the brink of a single world civilization representing at once a gigantic progress for everyone and an overwhelming task of survival and adapting our cultural heritage to this new setting. To some extent, and in varying ways, everyone experiences the tension between the necessity for the free access to progress and, on the other hand, the exigency of safeguarding our heritage. Let it be said at the outset that my thought does not result from any contempt for universal modern civilization; there is a problem precisely because we are under the strain of two different necessities which are both pressing.

1

How can we characterize this universal world civilization? Some have hastily characterized it as a technical civilization. Yet technics is not the decisive and fundamental factor; for the source of the spread of technics is the scientific spirit itself. Primarily, this is what unifies mankind at a very abstract and purely rational level, and which, on that basis, endows civilization with its universal character.

We have to keep in mind that if science is Greek in its origins and European through Galileo, Descartes, Newton, etc., science does not foster this power of unifying mankind because it is Greek or European but because it is a human dimension. It manifests a sort of de jure unity which controls all the other features of civilization. When Pascal writes that “the whole of mankind may be looked upon as one single man who constantly learns and remembers,” his statement simply means that every man, if confronted with a test of a geometrical or experimental character, is capable of arriving at the same conclusion providing he has had the required background. Hence, it is a purely abstract and rational unity of mankind which leads to all the other manifestations of modern civilization.

In second place we shall, of course, rank the development of technics. This development may be understood as a revival of traditional tools on the basis of

For many years, readers of Kenneth

Frampton’s writings on critical

regionalism have been presented

excerpts of this essay by Paul Ricouer

on identity, culture, and meaning. In

these excerpts, Frampton utilized

what is effectively Ricoeur’s problem

statement: that regional and national

cultures cannot sustain themselves

or adequately “absorb the shock of

modern civilization” and must instead

be constituted as manifestations of

world culture—a hybrid Frampton

interprets as “vital forms of regional

culture” that also appropriate alien

influences. i Here, Ricouer’s essay

“Universal Civilization and National

Cultures” is reprinted in its entirety

to allow the author’s full argument to

be made.

This essay helps to establish the

threads of conflict that lie between

the processes of modernization—be

they industrialization, globalization,

free-market capitalism, or the

effects of new technologies—as

they act upon local life. According to

Frampton’s interpretation of Ricouer,

the conflict constitutes an assault

of universalizing forces on local

and regional lifeways that must be

resisted.

Assimilation of universal civilization is

seen as tantamount to the destruction

of those regional cultures. What

Frampton fails to stress, however, is

Ricouer’s optimism about universal

civilization. Particularly, the fact that

it brings real benefit and progress to

humanity in the form of better health

and the availability of resources such

as food and water.

Throughout much of his work,

Ricouer was concerned with cultural

and individual identity in terms of

its formation and relation to history

and tradition. For him the self is

constituted by its relation to specific

places, experiences, and situatedness

within a social situation. The

encroachment of universal civilization,

while improving some qualities of

life, erodes those that are most vital

and creative—one’s attachment to

and knowledge of self in relation to

place. Such knowledge, while locally

derived, is key to one’s ability to

understand other places and peoples,

where sympathy and imagination are

invaluable. Just as for Wendell Berry,

for Ricouer the local and regional are

that into which local cultures must

“take root . . . in order to ceaselessly

invent.”

Paul Ricouer (1913–2005) taught at the University of Strasbourg, the Sorbonne, University of Paris at Nanterre, the University of Louvain, and the University of Chicago. He was among the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.

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that the largest possible number of men can take part in this decision. But I want to come back to the concept of the rationalization of power represented by an administration, because it is a phenomenon seldom treated by political philosophy, even though it is a factor in the rationalization of history which could not be underestimated. It may be said that we are confronted with a State, a modern State, when we witness the power capable of effecting a public function, a body of civil servants who prepare decisions and enforce them without being themselves responsible for the political decision. This constitutes a rational aspect of politics which concerns absolutely all the nations of the world to the point that it constitutes one of the most decisive criteria of the accession of a State onto the world scene.

It may be dangerous to speak of the existence of a rational, universal economy as a fourth factor. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to speak of it with even more caution than of the previous phenomenon, owing to the decisive importance of individual economic regimes as such. Nevertheless, a good deal takes place behind the scenes. Over and above the known massive oppositions, economic techniques of a truly universal character unfold. Calculations concerning contingencies, techniques of market-control, plans of forecasting and decisions, all of these have something in common despite the oppositions of capitalism and authoritarian socialism. We can speak of an economic science and an economic technics of international proportions; they are integrated in their different economic goals, but at the same time they create, whether we like it or not, converging phenomena whose effects seem to be inescapable. This convergence results from the fact that economics as well as politics is cultivated by the human sciences, which in their essence are supra-national, without a country. The original universality, with its scientific character, permeates all human technics with rationality.

Lastly, it can be said that throughout the world an equally universal way of living unfolds. This way of living is manifested by the unavoidable standardization of housing and clothing. These phenomena derive from the fact that ways of living are themselves rationalized by techniques which concern not only production but also transportation, human relationships, comfort, leisure, and news programming as well. Let us also mention the various techniques of elementary culture or, more exactly, the culture of consumption; there is a culture of consumption of world-wide dimensions, displaying a way of living which has a universal character.

2

Now what is the significance of this world civilization? Its significance is very ambiguous and it is this double meaning which creates the problem that we are treating here. On the one hand, it seems to constitute a real progress; still it is necessary for this term to be clearly defined. There is progress when two conditions are fulfilled: there is a phenomenon of accumulation and a phenomenon of improvement. The first is the easiest to distinguish, although its boundaries are unclear. I would readily say that there is progress wherever

the consequences and applications of this single science. These tools, which belong to the primitive cultural resources of mankind, have in themselves a very great inertia. Left to themselves they tend to coagulate in solid traditions. They are not transformed by something intrinsic to them, but by the repercussions of scientific knowledge; tools are revolutionized and become machines by means of thought. Here we encounter a second source of universality; mankind develops in nature like an artificial being, that is to say, like a being that creates all its relations with nature by means of tools which are constantly being revolutionized by scientific knowledge; man is a kind of universal contrivance. In this sense we can say that technics, considered as a revival of traditional tools in an applied science, has no fixed domain either. Even if it is possible to ascribe to such or such a country or culture the invention of writing, printing, the steam engine, etc., an invention rightfully belongs to mankind as a whole. Sooner or later it creates an irreversible situation for everyone; its spread may be delayed but not totally prevented. Thus we are confronted with a de facto universality of mankind: as soon as an invention appears in some part of the world we can be sure it will spread everywhere. Technical revolutions mount up and because they do, they escape cultural isolation. We can say that in spite of delays in certain parts of the world there is a single, world-wide technics. That is why national or nationalistic revolutions, in making a nation approach modernization, at the same time make it approach a certain cosmopolitanism. Even if—and we shall come back to this presently—the scope is national or nationalistic it is still a factor of communication to the extent that it is a factor of industrialization, for this makes it share in the universal technical civilization. It is thanks to this phenomenon of diffusion that we are able today to have a worldwide awareness and, so to speak, a lively sense of the earth’s roundness.

At the third stage of this universal civilization I would put what I call with caution, the existence of a rational politics. Naturally, I am not underrating the importance of political regimes, but one may say that amid the diversity of familiar political regimes there is the unfolding of a single experience of mankind and even a unique political technics. The modern State, qua State, has a recognizable universal structure. The first philosopher to have reflected on this form of universality is Hegel in the Philosophy of Right. Hegel is the first to have shown that one of the aspects of man’s rationality and, at the same time, of his universality, is the growth of a State which institutes laws and develops the means for their enforcement in the form of an administration. Even if we should sharply criticize bureaucracy and technocracy, we only achieve the pathological form peculiar to the rational phenomenon which we are elucidating. Perhaps we must even go farther: not only is there the single political experience of mankind, but all regimes also have a certain path in common; as soon as certain levels of comfort, instruction, and culture are attained, we see them all inescapably evolve from a dictatorial form to a democratic form. We see them all in search of a balance between the necessity of concentrating power, or even of personalizing it, in order to make a decision possible, and on the other hand, the necessity of organizing discussion in order

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growing number of men have the awareness of making their history, of making history; in this sense, one can say that these men are really joining the majority.

Lastly, I shall not scoff at what I earlier called the culture of consumption, from which we all benefit to some degree. It is certain that a growing number of men are today approaching that elementary level of culture of which the most noteworthy aspect is the fight against illiteracy and the development of means of consuming and a basic culture. Until these last few decades, only a small fraction of mankind knew how to read. Now, however, we may expect that in a few more decades, mankind will have surpassed the threshold of a first rudimentary culture by far, and this is unquestionably a good.

On the other hand, we have to admit that this same development presents a contrary character. The phenomenon of universalization, while being an advancement of mankind, at the same time constitutes a sort of subtle destruction, not only of traditional cultures, which might not be an irreparable wrong, but also of what I shall call for the time being the creative nucleus of great civilizations and great cultures, that nucleus on the basis of which we interpret life, what I shall call in advance the ethical and mythical nucleus of mankind. The conflict springs up from there. We have the feeling that this single world civilization at the same time exerts a sort of attrition or wearing away at the expense of the cultural resources which have made the great civilizations of the past. This threat is expressed, among other disturbing effects, by the spreading before our eyes of a mediocre civilization which is the absurd counterpart of what I was just calling elementary culture. Everywhere throughout the world, one finds the same bad movie, the same slot machines, the same plastic or aluminum atrocities, the same twisting of language by propaganda, etc. It seems as if mankind, by approaching en masse a basic consumer culture, were also stopped en masse at a subcultural level. Thus we come to the crucial problem confronting nations just rising from underdevelopment. In order to get onto the road toward modernization, is it necessary to jettison the old cultural past which has been the raison d’etre of a nation? The problem often comes up in the form of a dilemma or a vicious circle. The fight against colonial powers and the struggles for liberation were, to be sure, only carried through by laying claim to a separate personality; for these struggles were not only incited by economic exploitation but more fundamentally by the substitution of personality that the colonial era had given rise to. Hence, it was first necessary to unearth a country’s profound personality and to replant it in its past in order to nurture national re-vindication. Whence the paradox: on the one hand, it has to root itself in the soil of its past, forge a national spirit, and unfurl this spiritual and cultural re-vindication before the colonialist’s personality. But in order to take part in modern civilization, it is necessary at the same time to take part in scientific, technical, and political rationality, something which very often requires the pure and simple abandon of a whole cultural past. It is a fact: every culture cannot sustain and absorb the shock of modern civilization. There is the paradox: how to become modern and to return to sources; how to revive an old, dormant civilization and take part in universal civilization.

one can distinguish the phenomenon of the deposit of tools which we were just speaking about. But in that case, we have to take the expression “tools” in a very broad sense, covering both the properly technical realm of instruments and of machines. The whole network of organized mediations which are put into the service of science, politics, economics, and even of ways of living and means of leisure are dependent, in this sense, on the realm of tools.

The transformation of means into new means constitutes the phenomenon of accumulation, which is the reason why, moreover, there is human history. To be sure, there are many other reasons which account for human history; but the irreversible character of this history depends in large measure upon the fact that we work as fragments of tools; here nothing is lost and everything accumulates. This is the basic phenomenon, and it can be seen in fields which are on the surface quite removed from pure technics. Thus, unfortunate experiences and political failures constitute an experience which becomes, for the whole of mankind, something similar to a set of tools. It is possible that certain ways of careless planning, for example, those pertaining to rural populations, will spare other planners from making the same mistakes, at least if they follow the course of reason. Hence, there arises a phenomenon of rectification, an economy of means, which is one of the most striking aspects of progress.

But one could not attribute progress to any accumulation whatever. This development has to represent an improvement in various respects. Now it seems to me that this universalization is a good in itself. By itself, the awareness of a single humanity represents something positive; one might say that a sort of mutual recognition of men arises in the midst of all these phenomena. The multiplication of human relationships makes mankind a more and more compact network, more and more interdependent; and it makes all nations and all social groups a single humanity which develops its experience. It can even be said that the thought of nuclear destruction makes us a little more aware of the unity of mankind, since for the first time, we can feel ourselves totally threatened en masse.

On the other hand, universal civilization is a good because it represents the availability of elementary possessions to the masses of humanity. No kind of criticism of technics will be able to counterbalance the absolutely positive benefit of the freedom from want and of the massive access to comfort. Up to the present, mankind has lived, so to speak, by proxy, either through certain privileged civilizations or through some select groups. For the first time in two centuries in Europe, and since the second half of the twentieth century for the immense populations of Asia, Africa, and South America, we can now detect the possibility of a massive access to at least a minimum degree of comfort.

Furthermore, this world civilization represents a good, owing to a sort of shift in the attitude of mankind taken as a whole with regard to its own history. Mankind as a whole has experienced its lot as a dreadful fate; this is probably still true for more than half of mankind. But the massive access of men to certain values of dignity and autonomy is an absolutely irreversible phenomenon, a good in itself. We are witnessing the advance onto the world scene of great human masses who were heretofore silent and downtrodden. It can be said that a

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The first question will give me the opportunity to analyze what I hurriedly called the ethico-mythical nucleus of a culture. It is not easy to grasp what is meant by the definition of culture as a complex of values or, if you prefer, of evaluations. We are too prone to look for the meaning of culture on an excessively rational or reflective level, for example, by starting with a written literature or an elaborated form of thought, as in the European tradition of philosophy. The values peculiar to a nation and which constitute it as a nation must be looked for on a much lower level. When a philosopher works out an ethic, he gives himself to a work of a very reflective character; strictly speaking, he does not make up an ethic, but he mirrors the one which has a spontaneous existence in the people. Here, the values of which we are speaking reside in the concrete attitudes toward life, insofar as they form a system and are not radically called into question by influential and responsible people. Among the attitudes which interest us here, the most important are those concerning tradition, change, our behavior toward our fellow-citizens and foreigners, and more especially the use of available tools. Indeed, a set of tools, we said, is the sum total of all ways and means; consequently, we may immediately oppose it to value insofar as value represents the sum total of all goals. In fact, in the last analysis, these valorizing attitudes decide upon the meaning of the tools themselves. In Tristes Tropiques, Levi-Strauss analyzes the behavior of an ethnic group which, when suddenly confronted with a civilized set of tools, is incapable of assimilating it, not out of a lack of ability in the proper sense of the word, but rather because their fundamental conception of time, space, and interhuman relations does not allow them to give any kind of value to profit, comfort, or the capitalization of means. With all the strength of their fundamental preference, they hold out against the introduction of these means into their way of living. One may think that whole civilizations have thus sterilized technical inventions on the basis of a wholly static conception of time and history. Some time ago, Schuhl pointed out that Greek technics had been checked by the same conception of time which did not involve a positive evaluation of progress. The very abundance of slave-trading does not by itself constitute a purely technical explanation, because the brute fact of disposing of slaves must in addition be valorized in some way or another. If they did not bother to’ substitute machines for manpower, it is, because the value had not been formulated: diminishing man’s burden. That value did not belong to the group of preferences which made up Greek culture.

Thus, if a set of tools is put into use only by virtue of a process of valorization, then the question arises concerning where this deposit of values is to be found. I think we have to seek it out on several different levels. When I earlier spoke of a creative nucleus, it was with reference to this phenomenon, with reference to this multiplicity of successive layers which must be penetrated in order to reach the creative nucleus. At a quite superficial level, the values of a nation are expressed in its habitual customs and factual morality. But that is not the creative phenomenon; like primitive tools, customs represent a phenomenon of inertia; a nation maintains its initial impetus by means of its traditions. At a less superficial level, these values are manifested by means of traditional

However, as I indicated at the outset, this same paradox is met by industrial nations who long ago worked out their political independence around long- standing political institutions. Indeed, meeting other traditional cultures is a serious test and, in a way, totally novel for European culture. The fact that universal civilization has for a long time originated from the European center has maintained the illusion that European culture was, in fact and by right, a universal culture. Its superiority over other civilizations seemed to provide the experimental verification of this postulate. Moreover, the encounter with other cultural traditions was itself the fruit of that advance and more generally the fruit of Occidental science itself. Did not Europe invent history, geography, ethnography, and sociology in their explicit scientific forms? But this encounter with other cultural traditions has been just as great a test for our culture and one from which we have not yet drawn all the consequences.

It is not easy to remain yourself and to practice tolerance toward other civilizations. However much we may be inclined toward foreign cultures- whether it is through a kind of scientific neutrality or through a curiosity and enthusiasm for the most remote civilizations, or whether it is caused by a nostalgia for the abolished past or even through a dream of innocence or youth- the discovery of the plurality of cultures is never a harmless experience. The disillusioning detachment with respect to our own past, or even self-criticism, both of which may nourish this exotic feeling, reveals rather well the kind of subtle danger which threatens us. When we discover that there are several cultures instead of just one and consequently at the time when we acknowledge the end of a sort of cultural monopoly, be it illusory or real, we are threatened with destruction by our own discovery. Suddenly it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are an “other” among others. All meaning and every goal having disappeared, it becomes possible to wander through civilizations as if through vestiges and ruins. The whole of mankind becomes a kind of imaginary museum: where shall we go this weekend-visit the Angkor ruins or take a stroll in the Tivoli of Copenhagen? We can very easily imagine a time close at hand when any fairly well-to-do person will be able to leave his country indefinitely in order to taste his own national death in an interminable, aimless voyage. At this extreme point, the triumph of the consumer culture, universally identical and wholly anonymous, would represent the lowest degree of creative culture. It would be skepticism on a world-wide scale, absolute nihilism in the triumph of comfort. We have to admit that this danger is at least equal and perhaps more likely than that of atomic destruction.

3

This contrasting reflection leads me to ask the following questions:

1. What constitutes the creative nucleus of a civilization?

2. Under what conditions may this creativity be pursued?

3. How is an encounter with different cultures possible?

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if the artist has really communicated with the stratum of fundamental images which have made the culture of his nation. Each time a new creation is born, we shall also know in what direction the culture of the artist’s country is heading. As all great artistic creations always begin with some scandal, we can all the less forecast them: first of all, the false images which a nation or a regime form of themselves need to be shattered. The law of scandal answers the law of the “false consciousness.” It is necessary to have scandals. A country will always tend to give itself a favorable image or a right-thinking image. The artist, contrary to the tendency to be a conformist in his own milieu, rejoins his people only when that crust of appearances is shattered; chances are that in his solitude, being in contention and misunderstood, he will bring about something which will be shocking and bewildering at first and which will be retained long after as the authentic expression of his people. Such is the tragic law of the creation of a culture, a law diametrically opposed to the steady accumulation of tools which make up the civilization.

Then the second question is raised: under what conditions can the cultural creativity of a nation continue?—a quite important question raised by the development of universal, scientific, technical, judicial, economic civilization. For if it is true that all traditional cultures undergo the pressure and erosive influence of this civilization, they all do not have the same capacity for resistance and above all the same capacity of absorption. It is to be feared that every culture is not compatible with the world civilization born of science and technics. It seems to me that we can distinguish certain conditions which are sine qua non. Only a culture capable of assimilating scientific rationality will be able to survive and revive; only a faith which calls upon the understanding of intelligence can “espouse” its time. I would even say that only a faith which integrates a desacralization of nature and brings the sacred back to man can take up the. technical exploitation of nature. Likewise, only a faith which values time and change and puts man in the position of a master before the world, history, and his own life, seems fit to survive and endure. Otherwise, its fidelity to the past will be nothing more than a simple folkloric ornamentation. The problem is not simply to repeat the past, but rather to take root in it in order to ceaselessly invent.

There remains, then, the third question: how is the encounter with different cultures possible, that is to say an encounter which is not fatal for all? It would seem, in fact, that the result of the preceding reflections would be that cultures are incommunicable; and yet the strangeness of man to man is never total. Man is certainly a stranger to man, but always similar. When we land in a totally foreign country, as I did a few years ago in China, we feel that in spite of the greatest change of elements we have never left mankind. But this feeling remains blind, one has to raise it to the rank of a wager and a voluntary affirmation of man’s oneness. Such is the wager which Egyptologists formerly made when, in discovering incomprehensible markings, they postulated in principle that if these markings were made by man they could and should be translated. Certainly everything does not come out in a translation, but

institutions, but these institutions are themselves only a reflection of the state of thought, will, and feeling of a human group at a certain point in history. The institutions are always abstract signs which need to be deciphered. It seems to me that if one wishes to attain the cultural nucleus, one has to cut through to that layer of images and symbols which make up the basic ideals of a nation. I use these concepts of image and symbol here in the psychoanalytic sense; indeed they are not discovered by immediate description; in this respect, the intuitions of sympathy and of the heart are misleading; what we need is an authentic deciphering, a methodical interpretation. All the phenomena directly accessible to immediate description are like symptoms or a dream to be analyzed. In the same way; we should have to be prepared to conduct our research up to the stable images and the permanent dreams which make up a nation’s cultural resources and which feed its spontaneous judgments and its least elaborated reactions regarding experienced situations. Images and symbols constitute what might be called the awakened dream of a historical group. It is in this sense that I speak of the ethico-mythical nucleus which constitutes the cultural resources of a nation. One may, therefore, think that the riddle of human diversity lies in the structure of this subconscious or unconscious. The strange thing, in fact, is that there are many cultures and not a single humanity. The mere fact that there are different languages is already very disturbing and seems to indicate that as far back as history allows us to go, one finds historical shapes which are coherent and closed, constituted cultural wholes. Right from the start, so it seems, man is different from man; the shattered condition of languages is the most obvious sign of this primitive incohesion. This is the astonishing thing: humanity is not established in a single cultural style but has “congealed” in coherent, closed historical shapes: the cultures. The human condition is such that different contexts of civilization are possible. Yet this layer of images and symbols still does not make up the most radical phenomenon of creativity; it merely constitutes the outermost layer of it.

Unlike a set of tools which accumulates, sediments, and becomes deposited, a cultural tradition stays alive only if it constantly creates itself anew. Here we touch on the most unfathomable riddle in which one can merely recognize the style of temporality as is opposed to that of the deposit of tools. Here we have two ways for mankind to pass through time: civilization fosters a certain sense of time which is composed of accumulation and progress, whereas the way in which a nation develops its culture is based upon a law of fidelity and creation; a culture dies as soon as it is no longer renewed and recreated. One needs a writer, a thinker, a sage, or a religious man to rise up in order to start a culture anew and to chance it again with venture and total risk. Creativity eludes all definition, is not amenable to planning and the decisions of a party or State. The artist—to take him as one example of cultural creativity—gives expression to his nation only if he does not intend it and if no one orders him to do it. For if one could direct him to do it beforehand, that would mean that what he is going to produce has already been said in the language of everyday technical and political prose: his creation would be false. We can only know after the fact

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something always does. There is no reason or probability that a linguistic system is untranslatable. The belief that the translation is feasible up to a certain point is the affirmation that the foreigner is a man, the belief, in short, that communication is possible. What we have just said about language signs—is also valid for values and the basic images and symbols which make up the cultural resources of a nation. Yes, I believe it is possible to understand those different from me by means of sympathy and imagination, just as I understand a character in a novel or at the theater or a real friend who is different from me. Moreover, I understand without repeating, portray without reliving, make myself different while remaining myself. To be a man is to be capable of this projection into another center of perspective.

Then the question of fidelity is raised: what happens to my values when I understand those of other nations? Understanding is a dangerous venture in which all cultural heritages risk being swallowed up in a vague syncretism. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we have given here the elements of a frail and provisional reply: only a living culture, at once faithful to its origins and ready for creativity on the levels of art, literature, philosophy and spirituality, is capable of sustaining the encounter of other cultures—not merely capable of sustaining but also of giving meaning to that encounter. When the meeting is a confrontation of creative impulses, then it is itself creative. I think that among all creations, there is a kind of harmony in the absence of all agreement. It is in this way that I understand Spinoza’s excellent theorem: “the more we understand individual objects, the more we understand God.” When one has penetrated to the depths of singularity, one feels that it is harmonious with every other in a way that cannot be put into words. I am convinced that a progressive Islamic or Hindu world in which old ways of thinking would inspire a new history, would have with our European culture and civilization that specific affinity that all creative men share. I think that skepticism ends here. For the European, in particular, the problem is not to share in a sort of vague belief which would be acceptable to everyone; his task is expressed by Heidegger: “We have to go back to our own origins,” that is, we have to go back to our Greek, Hebrew, and Christian origins so as to be worthy participants in the great debate of cultures. In order to confront a self other than one’s own self, one must first have a self.

Hence, nothing is further from the solution to our problem than some vague and inconsistent syncretism. At bottom, syncretisms are always residual phenomena; they do not involve anything creative; they are mere historical formations. Syncretisms must be opposed by communication, that is, a dramatic relation in which I affirm myself in my origins and give myself to another’s imagination in accordance with his different civilization. Human truth lies only in this process in which civilizations confront each other more and more with what is most living and creative in them. Man’s history will progressively become a vast explanation in which each civilization will work out its perception of the world by confronting all others. But this process has hardly begun. It is probably the great task of generations to come. No one can say what

IDEAS IN REGIONALISM PAUL RICOUER

will become of our civilization when it has really met different civilizations by means other than the shock of conquest and domination. But we have to admit that this encounter has not yet taken place at the level of an authentic dialogue. That is why we are in a kind of lull or interregnum in which we can no longer practice the dogmatism of a single truth and in which we are not yet capable of conquering the skepticism into which we have stepped. We are in a tunnel, at the twilight of dogmatism and the dawn of real dialogues. Every philosophy of history is inside one of these cycles of civilizations. That is why we have not the wherewithal to imagine the coexistence of these manifold styles; we do not possess a philosophy of history which is able to resolve the problems of coexistence. Thus if we do see the problem, we are not in a condition to anticipate the human totality, for this will be the fruit of the very history of the men who will take part in this formidable debate.