The common ground of humanity - principle of universality - includes related article

If North and South are to meet, both must make an effort-the North to stop thinking it has a monopoly on universal values, the South to incorporate the principle of universality within its own value systems.

THE European Enlightenment ushered in a new conception of humanity, based on the idea that certain fundamental characteristics-the need for individual autonomy and freedom, the ability to think for oneself by exercising the power of reason, the aspiration to progress--are common to all human beings. Over and above all differences of race, nationality, region or class, the individual was acknowledged as belonging first and foremost to universal humanity.

This truly modern view of the individual seen independently of all his or her religious and social affiliations was developed in the West from the time of the Renaissance onwards and assumed its final form in the eighteenth century. Since then, however, the West has betrayed it.

No sooner had the bastions of feudalism and absolutism in Europe been rocked to their foundations or toppled than the principles of humanism, which had hitherto been articulated with crystal clarity, gradually came to be swamped by the demands of financial and industrial capitalism, for which the French Revolution had opened up great prospects. A scheme for exercising world domination began to take shape, boosted by the astonishing achievements of industrialization, From then on, Europe would export to other societies not the unabridged message of a universal humanity but rather a piecemeal collection of universal characteristics, chosen to cater for the requirements of colonization in those societies. Generations of eminent European thinkers did their utmost to resist this betrayal of the principles of 1789. By doing so, they saved their honour, but they did not change the course of history.

The clash between universalist ideas and the urge to dominate continues to this day. The prime concern of the ruling political and economic classes is to hang on to their positions of strength and sources of wealth in what used to be called the Third World. The profits they reap from a trading system based on inequality, the exceptional sums they make from the sale of arms, the pressures they can bring to bear as a result of the indebtedness of the poorest nations--all these are arguments strong enough, in the eyes of many governments and private companies, to ensure that their interests prevail over vague and half-hearted talk of worldwide solidarity.

These interests are being defended all the more fiercely today because their future seems less assured than it once did, because of the general instability of the world economy and because of the growing frustration and unrest which they arouse. In some extreme cases, their' defenders justify their actions by aggressive ideologies based on claims of national, cultural or even racial superiority.

In the countries of the South, where the choice between fundamentalism and democracy is starting to be posed, such attitudes are grist to the mill of fundamentalism. Confronted with a West whose power is so manifestly geared to safeguarding its own privileges, those who subscribe to the universal principles of freedom and equality--which came from the West in the first place--find themselves on the defensive against opponents who are intent on dismissing all such universalist pretensions as mere camouflage to cover up injustice and inequality on a global scale. Fundamentalism uses the selfishness of the rich as a pretext for giving an aura of respectability to the selfishness of the poor and insisting that communities should keep themselves to themselves.

Some leading intellectuals and a handful of statesmen in the West are trying to grasp these home truths from the developing world and to develop a strategy which is receptive to the universal hopes of freedom heralded by the widespread emergence of people as individuals in their own right. But the stakes involved in such a change are too high for the burden to be shouldered by a handful of thinkers alone. It demands a drastic shake-up in people's attitudes generally, and a radical transformation of the very nature of the ties binding the North and the South.

AN IMMENSE MORAL PRIVILEGE

Apart from the self-interest of the major powers and the calculations of international financiers, so far-reaching a change comes up against a fundamental feature of Western consciousness. It would entail making a sacrifice whose psychological consequences would be incalculable. It would mean that the West would have to face the loss of the immense moral privilege it has enjoyed for the past five hundred years--that of being the motive force of universal history.

Throughout the period marked successively by the Renaissance, the age of the great inventions, the intercontinental voyages, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and finally colonialism, European society gradually forced everyone else to dance to its tune. Other parts of the world had to adjust their ways of thinking, acting and producing in order to fit in with European demands; they even had to take lessons from Europe when they came to resist European domination. The West felt it was justified in considering itself to be the heartbeat of the world and in assuming that its own new ideas and discoveries, not to mention its own spiritual, moral and aesthetic experiences, had an immediate and universal validity.

Now it faces the threat of losing the power to speak for others and to create in the name of all. The graft of individualism that it has implanted all over the world is beginning to take in the most varied soils. It is giving rise to modern democratic movements which are rooted in desires, fears and dreams that are different from its own, and through which a host of rapidly changing societies are trying to assert themselves, forge their own identities and set their own stamp on the future.

The West is thus called upon to adapt to a contemporary world that will move in increasingly unpredictable directions, and whose inner resources and secret workings will often tend to slip from its control, for they will draw on memories and loyalties that are not its own. As the West is forced to take on board intellectual landmarks and constructs which it has had no part in making and which will be transmitted and given universal relevance by citizens from other shores, it will have to think in terms of a future which it is no longer alone in desiring or shaping. It will have to learn how to become once more one element in human society among others.

The West already realizes that although its historical reign still continues, it is no longer absolute; that although it may have invented the concept of the modern individual, it no longer holds exclusive rights to its invention; and that other possible models for man are emerging. But the West has not yet come to terms with this change nor agreed to pay the price for it. To do so would mean abandoning the benefits it has reaped from a historical situation in which it has for so long been able to identify the promotion of its own cultural landmarks with the forward march of civilization and the furtherance of its own interests with the welfare of humanity.

FROM THE SPECIFIC TO THE UNIVERSAL

In these closing years of a millennium that has seen the peoples of the world emerge one after the other from tribal, national or regional isolation, become caught up in the maelstrom of a common history and feel that they share a single destiny, it is becoming clear that this destiny will be democratic only if two conditions are met. The peoples of the West and the peoples of the South will have to find a new way of relating their own specific values to the values they have in common. Let the former stop thinking that what is good for the West is good for the world, and let the latter start to mcorporate a modern, universal dimension into their own particular value systems.

In taking it for granted that it held the key to universality because it had invented the concept of the modern individual, the West not only overestimated its own genius but also depreciated its own achievement. It forgot that other cultures and civilizations have, especially in art and religion, reached out to values transcending space and time in a bid to encompass the human condition in all its mystery;. that they have produced accomplished expressions of universal preoccupations in metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and rational thought; and that the West drew on all these sources before creating in its turn a new vision of modern Man.

This new vision is destined to unite the whole of humanity, for several reasons. It is the culmination of so much that has gone before; it draws inspiration from so many sources; it marks the completion of so many initiatives and experiments cut short by the vagaries of history. It responds to the potential which is latent within all people but was previously confined within the straitjacket of their many local allegiances. Now, without denying any of these allegiances, it can illuminate them all.

The idea that modern Man is a creation of the West that people elsewhere in the world can only emulate by adopting Western ways and surrendering their own identity is 'a misrepresentation of the West's essential contribution to humanity. That is the mentality that underpinned colonialism, corrupting the minds of the colonialists and tormenting those of the peoples they colonized. This double misunderstanding can now be avoided.

THE FRAGILE FLOWERS OF FREEDOM

It is not for the West to export to others a value which belongs naturally to it but would be alien to them. Instead, the West should help others to adopt, of their own free will and in their own way, a value that is needed by all. That value was first formulated by the West and long monopolized by the West for its own ends. Now the West must serve the value it created. Let the West protect the first, timid shoots of freedom that need the universal nourishment provided by human rights if they are to take root in very different political and cultural soils.

Until now, the only way in which the peoples of the South could try to protect their personality was through confronting their identity with that of others and rejecting out of hand everything they regarded as specifically Western. It is true that they have come to acknowledge modern science and technology as necessary aspects of the universal, but they have remained convinced that these could easily be superimposed on their own, unchanged identity. Now they are starting to realize that the concept of the individual human being is the driving principle behind modern universalism. They will have to come to terms with this realization by voluntarily doing violence to a part of their innermost selves, by reappraising the core of values in which the tyranny of the community, the habit of despotism and the temptations of fatalism and superstition are all closely intertwined. The democratic imperative requires, in short, that they must accept. a mutation and regeneration of their very identity.

For intellectuals in the South who support democracy, the time has come to accept this challenge. They must do so if they are to follow the same path' as their counterparts in the West and the East and are to embark on the road to membership of a global community experienced as an intrinsic part of their own individuality. And they must do so in order that all' those societies which, in five hundred years of disorder and violence, have moved from the stage at which their identity was defined by community and religion to the stage at which it is defined by the nation can together, in a spirit of solidarity, embark on the era of planetary identity.

Science and the world community

Some have claimed that European culture has a universal mission. This, essentially, is supposed to distinguish it from all the others. Its essence is at the same time defined as a creative activity of superior dynamism. Its expansion is considered as the natural consequence of this superiority. European culture still seems to spread throughout the world, whereas the other cultures remain purely local and hold their ground with difficulty.

Universality and superiority-these are comforting conclusions for Europeans. But there is a fallacy here. That European civilization created the entity of a modem world unified by the streamlined wing of the aircraft and by the radio wave is a historical fact. This, however, was not the work of jurists, theologians, politicians or writers, but of engineers and scientists. So what we should ask is which parts of 'European' world civilization are truly universal and which are of purely local importance. As soon as the question is clearly put, the reply is clear. The true universal factors are modem science and modern technology, with the philosophies that have made them possible ....

Furthermore, it is wrong to assert that science, whether pure or applied, was entirely shaped by the European Renaissance. There were long centuries of preparation during which we see Europe assimilating Arab learning, Indian thought and Chinese technology. It is hard to represent the physico-mathematical hypotheses of Galileo without the aid of Indian numerical notation. The Arsanal, in which Galileo set the scene of one of his Dialogues which changed the world, could hardly have functioned without mastery of a typically Chinese technique, that of casting. Likewise, the first phases of science in Europe were neither so laborious nor so fraught with difficulty as has been claimed. On the contrary, there were periods when great discoveries could be made just by lifting a scalpel, once the basic technology of the discovery had come to light. It is thus impossible and even absurd for Europeans to think that science is their private property. It is not something they can protect by an everlasting patent. Science has always belonged to the world community.

Joseph Needham British historian of science The Dialogue of Europe and Asia, 1955

MAHMOUD HUSSEIN is the joint pen-name of Bahgat Elnadi and Adel Rifaat, respectively the director and editor-in chief of the UNESCO Courier. Egyptian-born political scientists, they have lived for 25 years in France, studying the problems of the Arab world and, more generally, of the societies of the South. Their most recent work is Versant sud de la liberte: essai sur l'emergence de I 'individu dans Ie tiers monde (1989; "The Southern Slope of Liberty: an essay on the emergence of the individual in the Third World").

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