What is Pluralism? Diana Eck, pluralism.org, The Pluralism Project at Harvard
The plurality of religious traditions and cultures has come to characterize every part of the world today. But what is pluralism? Here are four points to begin our thinking:
- First, pluralism is not diversity alone, but the energetic engagement with diversity. Diversity can and has meant the creation of religious ghettoes with little traffic between or among them. Today, religious diversity is a given, but pluralism is not a given; it is an achievement. Mere diversity without real encounter and relationship will yield increasing tensions in our societies.
- Second, pluralism is not just tolerance, but the active seeking of understanding across lines of difference. Tolerance is a necessary public virtue, but it does not require Christians and Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and ardent secularists to know anything about one another. Tolerance is too thin a foundation for a world of religious difference and proximity. It does nothing to remove our ignorance of one another, and leaves in place the stereotype, the half-truth, the fears that underlie old patterns of division and violence. In the world in which we live today, our ignorance of one another will be increasingly costly.
- Third, pluralism is not relativism, but the encounter of commitments. The new paradigm of pluralism does not require us to leave our identities and our commitments behind, for pluralism is the encounter of commitments. It means holding our deepest differences, even our religious differences, not in isolation, but in relationship to one another.
- Fourth, pluralism is based on dialogue. The language of pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, give and take, criticism and self-criticism. Dialogue means both speaking and listening, and that process reveals both common understandings and real differences. Dialogue does not mean everyone at the “table” will agree with one another. Pluralism involves the commitment to being at the table -- with one’s commitments.
Rabbi Sharon Brous[1]
There is 2,000-year-old rabbinic dispute over what ought to be done if a palace is built on the foundation of a stolen beam.
One rabbi, Shammai, argues that the whole structure must be torn down, the beam retrieved and returned to its rightful owner. No home can flourish on a foundation built illegally and immorally. Another rabbi, Hillel, offers a different take: What sense does it make to demolish it? Let the thief pay for the beam, considering its full value as the foundation of what is now a beautiful home. Neither argues that you can pretend, year after year, generation after generation, that the beam wasn't stolen.
Neither suggests that time rights the wrong. Both understand that the theft, unaddressed, threatens the legitimacy of the whole enterprise. Something must be done to rectify the original injury.
Our country was built on a stolen beam. More accurately, several million stolen beams. Only they weren't beams. They were human beings. The palace they built was magnificent, but they have never been compensated for their labor. In that age-old rabbinic dispute, Hillel argues that the palace ought not be demolished, but instead redeemed, precisely because he wants to make healing and reconciliation possible.
We can't undo the past. But we can name it, take responsibility for it and do everything in our power to address what has been broken.
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority
“To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a non-allergic relation, an ethical relation; but inasmuch as it is welcomed this conversation is a teaching. Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; [getting new ideas into other people - Socraticmethod] it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain. In its non-violent transitivity the very epiphany of the face is produced.”
Ahem, Me: Carrying Heavy Burdens Lightly
http://esterthepurpleprincess.blogspot.com/
Dislocation imbues a creativity, a sharpness of vision that comes from living a life less-normal. In particular dislocation changes the way a person relates to values. A wanderer doesn’t set great store by bricks and mortar. Rather splendour can be gauged by measure of hospitality offered; any simple act of kindness will do.
Moreover the stranger, by their very nature, needles the societies they appear in. The wanderer is a walking provocation to the status quo. Our very existence presents a novel experience for the societies around is, something new needs to be countenanced. We, us wanderers, push our face—pink, or black, or shrouded in a veil, or wreathed in a turban—up against the window and ask questions about toleration, pluralism and possibility. These are deeply valuable questions; they offer a measure of societal decency. And they are questions that can only be asked in the presence of one who is different.