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Title: Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference by Thomas P. Kasulis ISBN: 0-8248-2559-4 Publisher: University of Hawaii Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Two Ways to Describe Exprerience
Comment: If culture, as I tend to see it, is simply a way of doing and thinking, with Kasulis we have two orientations as cultures, namely, 'intimacy' and 'integrity' that have characterised over time, respectively, the west and east. The issue here is not to establish which of the two cultures is more important or better, let alone account for a state of conflict in the political sense (as an explanation that stems from adopting the "culture paradigm" of international relations, notably after Huntington).
Kasulis is more concerned with sharing with us the result of his observations. Namely, the existence of two fundamental and often antagonistic ways of doing and thinking in terms of how they (help) construct knowledge, analyse and explain events and experience. Simply put, as modes of describing experience.
Although such an approach resembles previous attempts to theorise and model cultures (by Geertz, Douglas, Lévi-Straus or Malinowski to name but the few that come to my mind), what is original and compelling with Kasulis is the explicitness of the argument and exposition. This is to the point of being extremely convincing that these orientations go beyond the typical cultural or civilisational divides: they are ways of organising action and patterns of thought regardless of our cultural context.
After an insightful introduction that maps antagonism as a source for (conflictual) misunderstandings, Kasulis attempts to approach culture as a habitual and recursive way of doing and thinking in broad terms (that does not exclude exceptions). If culture is any (broad) way of doing and thinking "cultural difference" with Kasulis results from a differential emphasis on one way of doing and thinking (rather than another), and hence a philosophical tradition comes into being in a 'symbiotic relation to its culture's values' (p. 20). How this takes place is not clear though - note that with Deleuze it arises from habit itself.
Thus, 'cultural difference' helps distinguish between 'intimacy' and 'integrity'. In simple terms, the former, explained in chapter 2, considers the world to be composed of interrelated units connected to each other through relations that are found inside such units. In contrast, the latter, explained in chapter 3, considers the world to be composed of independent units connected to each other through relations that are found outside such units.
Having developed these notions, Kasulis pursues with laying out the differences in terms of the manner each orientation delimits the construction of knowledge-production systems, rational argumentation as a tool of persuasion and investigation, and the way to construct reality itself - chapter 4. Furthermore, the difference in terms of aesthetic creation and interpretation, ethics relative to how the other is treated, and finally, the political construction of society as a collectivity - chapter 5.
In the final chapter, which in my view is the most important, Kasulis makes the general claim that either orientation, overall, is bound to predominate. He thus uses the notion of 'dominance' to explain the consequences of foregrounding either orientation, and warns us against attempts to impose an orientation where its opposite (historically) prevails. This is because 'such struggles for authority and for control of discourse' (p. 151) are conflictual (and not simply antagonistic). Thus, if we are to privilege trust and co-operation among different cultures, the solution seems to lie in 'tolerance'.
Yet, if tolerance (for differing orientations) is the starting point, how do we go about deciding that this is to be the case? Which orientation are we to use? A first solution to this difficulty is to consider that we are capable of using both orientations. However, Kasulis notes, we cannot know which situation or event calls for which orientation. A second solution lies in changing from orientation to another. This is not a better solution, since such an 'oscillation' tends to privilege one orientation rather than the other - 'intimacy' over 'integrity'. The solution for Kasulis seems to be an 'oscillation' between the two orientations with a dimension of 'reflectivity'. That is, being aware and using the two orientations as languages in that when one speaks the 'intimacy' language, one cannot at the same time be speaking the 'integrity' language.
And here lies the strength of this text: as languages, 'intimacy' and 'integrity' are two different modes for describing the same experience. They are two different forms to capture the same concern. This, in itself, is certainly not new. What is original is the realisation that Kasulis is right: that we tend to actually describe experience by means of two general languages, regardless of how these are called!
Overall, it seems to me that the approach to model culture and to explain differential and even conflictual behaviours through culture are not novel. Despite this, this text is an extremely valuable, brief and easy-to-read exposition of two useful descriptive means for a better understanding of the relationship between description and experience from within a philosophy of difference.
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Title: Zen Action/Zen Person by T.P. Kasulis ISBN: 0824810236 Publisher: University of Hawaii Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1985 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (Classics of Ancient China) by Confucius, Henry Jr Rosemont, Roger Ames, Roger T. Ames, Henry Rosemont ISBN: 0345434072 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 31 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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