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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
It is an obvious fact of history that human beings have always entertained and continue to entertain different conceptions of the good and lead very different lives both individually and collectively. This raises two questions. First, why do ways of life differ? And second, how should we respond to their differences? The first is an explanatory, and the second a normative question, and the two are closely related. The first question has been answered differently by different writers, of which I shall mention three by way of illustration.
1 The tendency is, of course, not confined to Western philosophy, and is to be found in almost all non-western systems of thought. I am concerned only with the former.
2 The writings of many Christian writers are deeply informed by the spirit of universal caritas. In criticising them I am only concerned to show how the ideas of even the noblest thinkers, when these are grounded in a monistic vision, lead to one-sided judgements on and even intolerance of other ways of life.
3 Although I concentrate on liberal attitudes to non-European societies, their attitudes to non-liberal ways of life within their own societies were often just as dismissive. The prolonged, painful, and often violent process by which liberalism came to be inscribed in the very structure of the modern European state offers ample evidence of this.
4 Although moral monism is intolerant of other ways of life, it has at least the great virtue of being concerned about the well-being of the entire mankind. Pluralism might be more tolerant, but it could also imply rejection of or indifference to outsiders. For example, many Hindu thinkers argue that their religion is ‘superior’ to Christianity and Islam because it cherishes plural paths to salvation and does not believe in conversion. While some Hindus genuinely accord equal respect to other ways of life, others reject conversion because they consider outsiders impure, or are totally unconcerned about them, or are afraid of weakening their caste system. The latter kind of tolerance is morally no better than aggressive monism.
5 I use the term human nature not in the standard mechanical or teleological sense but in the purely formal sense of what is distinctive to human beings and defines their species identity. In this limited sense, in which nature is equated not with essence or being but with identity, the concept dominates the thoughts of even such writers as Kant who defined human identity in non-natural and noumenal terms, Marx who defined it in historical terms, Sartre who denied that man had a nature, and the critics of the naturalistic fallacy.
