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APPENDIX I

“THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF EUROPE, THE GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN AND A GLOBAL

SOCIETY: REFLECTIONS ON SOME RECENT WRITINGS BY HANS-GEORG GADAMER”

Dieter Misgeld

Presented at: International Conference on Hermeneutik, Universitaet Heidelberg. Heidelberg, Germany, 1989. Gadamer participated in the conference.1

Die angestrengte Bemühung um die Herstellung und das Halten des Gleichgewichts erweist sich in dem Moment, in dem die Balance gelingt, plötzlich als das Gegenteil dessen, was sie zu sein schien. Es war nicht ein Zuwenig an Kraft und Einsatz von Kraft, sondern ein Zuviel, das sie verfehlen liess.2

En fecto, hemos vivido en la periferia de la historia. Hoy el centro, el núcleo de la sociedad mundial, se ha disgregado y todos nos hemos convertido en seres perifericos, hasta los europeos y los norteamericanos. Todos estamos al margen poque ya no hay centro3

The quotation in German given above is from a little known essay by Hans-Georg Gadamer, entitiled: “Apologie der Heilkunst.” It expresses a theme central to Gadamer’s thought and a feature indicative of its persistent attractiveness: the search for a state of balance or equilibrium between past and present, between the ancient and the modern, between science and cultural/historical understanding, between partners in dialogue, and now also between “Europe” and an emerging world society. Just as modern scientific medicine may be blind to the fact that frequently it fails to heal because it leaves too little to the natural healing powers of the organism or the person’s determination to become well, thus exerting too much force rather than letting be what may possess healing powers of its own, so Europe may lose its own, the strength of its multiplicity of voices, as it strives for economic and political control and power.

The danger here is not that Western Europe (which is what Gadamer largely speaks of) may fail to succeed in the competition for wealth and power between large economic and political blocks, but that it may overexert itself in order to maintain its position, thus engaging in a strained and strenuous pursuit of balance, not knowing that this pursuit amounts to employing too much force rather than too little of it.

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Thus it becomes important, for Gadamer, to reflect on the distinctiveness of Europe with reference to a possible global society. The major reason for engaging in this inquiry is that Western Europe, a group of small countries on the outer Western edge of the Eurasian continent,4 has initiated the processes of modernization which now encompass the globe. One legacy of Europe, now a worldwide inheritance (“Erbe”), is the drive toward the mastery of nature, the constant expansion of the range of scientific control, and, as a consequence, the inclusion of societies, cultures and individual persons among the range of what is to be regulated by technologies and processes of administrative planning.

Just like Heidegger and many other critics of the primacy of technological making in the construction of a modern worldview Gadamer draws attention to the destructive effect of this primacy. We say that he introduces ecological considerations of a very specific kind when throughout his reflections on Europe, the distinctiveness of its history, and its relation to the new world of global interdependence, he identifies the dissolution of cultural traditions and inherited customs as the most significant and problematic consequence of modernization.

I call his reflections ‘ecological’, because they entail a view of a natural order of human life, a natural order which of course is historically created. This concern surfaced again and again in Gadamer’s writings during the last twenty-five years. It has as its theme the research for ultimate limits or ultimate universal conditions underlying the cultural reproduction of human societies.5 Thus the philosopher intervenes in contemporary culture, just as the physician would6 who knows of suffering and death as limits to life and who is aware of the fact that real healing can only occur as long as the natural forces of the organism are harnessed to the patient’s will to live, to become well and to accept his/her mortality. The philosopher gently reminds the educated members of the relevant societies (those who have a commitment to Europe in some form) that there are givens in the history of these societies upon which they can rely and to which they must refer in order to mobilize the power of cultural convictions which can counterbalance the exercise of force implicit in the apparently unstoppable processes of economic, technological, and industrial expansion which have remade the face of the earth.

It is with these considerations in mind that Gadamer turns to the Geistesw-issenschaften in particular. The Geisteswissenschaften and Europe therefore will be the theme of the next section of the paper. Here I trace and consider Gadamer’s claims, by accepting the frame which he establishes for it. Then (in section II) I shall question this view, which I call the “internal perspective” on Europe. Here I shall refer to representative critical views, views which express reservations about the “distinctiveness” of Europe as Gadamer perceives it and conclude by suggesting that the subtle “eurocentrism” of Gadamers’ reflections on Europe has to be put aside, in order to open the way for a questioning European traditions on the basis of experiences made in the third world.

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THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF EUROPE: THE INTERNAL PERSPECTIVE

For Gadamer the distinctiveness of “Europe” rests upon the distinctiveness of its cultural tradition. Europe’s Sonderstellung arises from the fact that on the one hand its history and its philosophical inheritance have given rise to technology and science as forces now encompassing the planet. On the other hand Europe also has produced cultural orientations and knowledge which do not fit into this process: These latter orientations have been expressed in the Geisteswissenschaften, to which Gadamer refers as a “European” inheritance rather than merely an accomplishment of German history and culture. Until recently the Geisteswissenschaften (Les Belles Lettres, the humanities or moral sciences) developed within the frame of national cultures, dependent as they are upon natural languages and the interpretations of culture and tradition implicit in them. The existence of the European nation-states which has been a cause of much grief and destruction during the past 200 years may become a positive asset of a pan-European consciousness, if it is understood with reference to the achievement of a diversity of national cultures, a plurality of voices no longer bound and restricted by the pursuit of national supremacy and power. Thus Gadamer presupposes the existence of a political frame for Europe, liberating it from the history of national conflict and of the pursuit of imperial goals so characteristic of the European past. We may claim that “European imperialism” has been victorious in the international domain insofar as European-based models of technology, science and economic and political progress have conquered the globe. But the cultural traditions which once might have set limits to this process of technological, scientific and administrative homogenization and hegemonization, have been shoved aside in this process and now need to be recalled in order to gently remind us of the need for and the benefits of conversation. Gadamer’s general model of dialogical conversation applies here. Conversation between cultures and languages is thought of as resembling the communication exchange between partners in dialogue: each culture may enter into a conversation with another culture on the ground of being convinced of its own value, while also being open to what the “other” has to say. Thus a common viewpoint and perspective may emerge in a most natural and unforced exchange of views.7

Europe has the privilege of having produced types of inquiry which are geared toward cultural conversation. This is the case, because in Europe a process of differentiation has taken place, which Gadamer believes to be unique: “Only in Europe there has taken place the profound differentiation and articulation of human knowledge and of human will to know which we associate with the concepts of religion, philosophy, art and science.”8 He believes that we do not find an equally well developed system of differentiations in other cultures, not even in non-European “high” cultures (“Hochkulturen”). The four concepts mentioned represent an entirely European way of thinking. The Geisteswissenschaften, we may say, are a recent result of this process of differentiation which began with Greek philosophy. But they also

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continue it. And Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode (“Truth and Method”) may itself be regarded as a philosophical reflection upon it which presupposes the separateness of philosophy from either scientific inquiry or religious belief, just to refer to two of the differentiations mentioned. The Geisteswissenschaften assume the role of Hegel’s philosophy of history because they form historical consciousness. They also give expression to it by recognizing the history-forming power of cultural traditions. In its turn this recognition of power of cultural traditions is not possible without recognizing the diversity of traditions. Europe is privileged and distinctive for both having produced a large diversity of cultures, traditions and languages and for having developed an intellectual consciousness responsive to this condition in the form of the Geisteswissenschaften. As such the Geisteswissenschaften have a critical function: they show the continuity of cultural traditions and can point to persistent features of human life. Among them Gadamer singles out the presence of religion or traditions and practices derived from religion in all human cultures and societies. The universal presence of religion or of attitudes rooted in religious dispositions is documented by the ubiquitous presence of funeral and burial rites, by the special care human beings take with their dead, a form of care not shown by any animal-species.9 In short, humans bury their dead and always do so with reference to cultural forms, to practices of remembrance and mourning, of expressing and containing sorrow and grief. All these customs and traditions definitely reach beyond the limits of religious practice administered by institutional religion or the churches. There are some forms of living and dying which accompany humanity everywhere: “These are fixed realities of human existence which cannot be shoved aside by any power in the world.”10

In my view, Gadamer emphasizes the universality of practices of burial and mourning because—following Heidegger (and Jaspers, perhaps)—he regards the boundary-conditions (Grenzerfahrungen) of birth and death as indicative of phenomena to which a scientific management of human relations can never do justice. For birth may be controlled and regulated, its natural course replaced by other forms of fertilization, as the development of reproductive technologies shows. Hitherto, however, it has not been possible to either abolish death or even significantly forestall its occurrence, by, let us say, doubling or tripling the life-span of even the privileged members of the most developed societies. The universality of death and dying, we may say, constitutes a bedrock of communality to life on this planet which is reassuring. It may even point to an internal limitation having the force of a grounding inhibition in contemporary civilization. While change is omnipresent, not everything will change. “I claim,” says Gadamer, “that the Geisteswissenschaften (so-called) possess an element of productivity unique to them. They may sharpen our eye for the power of persistence and continuity in life and thus remind us of experienced realities which matter for the future.”11 The Geisteswissenschaften thus draw attention to the unique qualities of a multiplicity of traditions, each irreducible to the uniformity of a technological world-civilization.

Clearly, Gadamer believes in the distinctiveness of Europe and its intellectual traditions, because only Europe has created a cultural form which can remind us of

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the force of tradition in cultural life and can do so, we might say, with “scientific” authority. Obviously, many cultures and societies continue to have an acute sense of the distinctiveness of their traditions, and some non-Western societies, for example China and Japan, or India and the Islamic nations, possess it to such an extent that they often remain impervious to penetration by “Western” forms of social organization. Their acceptance and most competent use of Western technology may often in fact be a means for screening and sheltering their culture from some Western values and practices. And certainly a balance between Western values and practices and their own is an issue in many Asian, or African, as well as Latin American societies and cultures. But Gadamer is correct to claim, that in most of the world’s societies claims on behalf of the persistence and continuity of traditions, or on behalf of the capacity of these traditions to continue to remain alive, are not filtered through a process of scientific inquiry (in the Western sense). Gadamers’ view is interesting and unusual, because he believes that the Geisteswissenschaften possess the capacity to point to what persists through the ages, such as certain religious or religion-based practices without, let us say, being instruments in a program of the politics of culture, i.e. of the planned cultivation of traditions, or without themselves becoming a form of the religious observation of traditions. His is not a view of traditions which assimilates the latter to the cultivation of folklore, of local and regional craft-industries, or of the maintenance of monuments and the establishment of reservations for the indigenous people of the earth. On the contrary, Gadamer primarily wants to encourage the development of a form of consciousness which, to speak with Habermas and others, has a certain action-orienting force. The cultivation of historical memory in the Geisteswissenschaften, or of comparative linguistic, religious, and literary studies12 sharpens our sense for the shortcomings of the present age, even for the shallowness of a global civilization, which neither builds upon experiences of true encounter between cultures and societies nor does it take its bearings from the mentioned limit-situations, ‘fundamental realities of human life’13 such as birth, and even more, death, which could be constitutive of a general experience of human solidarity.

Europe is distinctive for having produced a form of knowledge in the Geisteswissenschaften, an organized knowledge-system even (to speak with Foucault), which can provide practical orientation. Strangely enough, Europe, the continent which has most contributed to the separation of the present age from all previous ages of history in the mind of contemporary people14 and from which the least “traditional” of all societies in the world, i.e. the United States, has been settled, now becomes the continent which is to remind the world of the significance of lived traditions and of features of individual, social and cultural life which remain impervious to change.

The Geisteswissenschaften are regarded as capable of playing this role. But is this argument plausible? Is it possible to argue that the Geisteswissenschaften are exempt from the process of change which has led to the global expansion and employment of modes of acting and thinking (such as technological ones) which once originated in Western-Europe, then moved to North-America and Eastern Europe as well as Soviet Asia, thus unfolding their full force across entire continents?

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This argument could be maintained, if it were possible to extract the Geistes-wissenschaften from the history of which they also have been a part, a history which from the sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century resounded with the claims of European powers and cultures to represent the pinnacle of human civilization and development. Gadamer does not comment on this feature of European pride and arrogance and his is not the way of deconstructing its foundations, as it could be said of philosophers such as Horkheimer and Adorno, or of Foucault and Derrida. Gadamer appears to believe that the Geisteswissenschaften can bring the cultural Erbe (inheritance) of European history into play, in the context of the slow formation of a society of global responsibility, because he already presupposes a weakening or discarding of the imperial claims of Europe. This is due to the fact, I believe, that he begins from the German situation, the experience of defeat in two world-wars,15 and a deep suspicion of all attempts to conclusively master the conditions of life and of cultural and social reproduction.

There also lies in the background of Gadamer’s reflections on Europe and the Geisteswissenschaften a definite sense of distance from modem social science and modem politics, the distance which a German scholar of the humanities might feel, who experienced his formative years in a university-system proud of its segregation from politics and the clamor of public confrontation and ideological controversy.16 This holds even if it can be said that this self-interpretation of the German University rests on an illusion.17

Thus Gadamer does not simply refer to the Geisteswissenschaften as an existing form of knowledge organization, a set of documents and methods, of clearly identifiable object-domains and a history of their foundation. He only knows too well, that this history has been short, that the Geisteswissenchaften only emerged with German romanticism and historicism in full force, that therefore they belong into the history of the European nation-states, a history which like many others he regards with apprehension.

Rather, I take it, Gadamer is appealing to a possible normative meaning of the humanities. The humanities could and might understand their history better, if they were to recognize, that they have brought a plurality of cultural voices to expression, that they have contributed, possibly also helped bring about, the development of a form of consciousness, which teaches us to reflect historically in a variety of contexts. It is on the background of this formation of historical consciousness, that the post-World War II generations of Europeans (now perhaps especially of Central Europeans) can learn to be open to the wide range and variability of human social and cultural experience, and thus they can also learn to note that “history” may remain the same in some respects, for all peoples of this earth, as a totality of “catastrophes, tensions and of the manifold of differentiations’’18 occurring in it.

In reflecting on the central tension of the modern world, the tension between the forces of science and technology which constantly uproot settled ways of being, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the continued persistence of customs and traditions present underneath and also within these forces of almost

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self-propelling change, the European intelligentsia educated in the humanities may once again give an example of the spirit of moderation which in so many respects is fundamental to Gadamers’ unwavering respect for Classical Greek philosophy.19 Reflecting on the tension mentioned does not at all entail an a priori acceptance of the validity of existing traditions. Gadamer simply claims that those educated through the appropriation of the tradition of Geisteswissenschaften have a general, possibly a generalizable, respect for intellectual and cultural traditions outside those of natural scientific and social-scientific inquiry, or outside the history of technology and of modern party-politics. This respect prepares them for adopting a unique vantage point: they can avail themselves of knowledge which lends force to the question whether there can be a state of equilibrium between “relentless progress”20 on the one hand, and the preservation of long-standing conditions of life, on the other. We still need to find a solution to the querelle des anciens et des modernes.

But Gadamer does not claim, as some of his critics sometimes falsely assume, that the preservation of tradition as such is a solution. He does not argue, for example, that the variety of human languages in their entire range must be preserved. He certainly does not argue the case of a nationalist Kulturpolitik, the consequences of which he had witnessed firsthand in Nazi-Germany. Nor does he argue that the developing countries of the Third World must (of necessity and in order to preserve their identity) resist the pressures of modernization and close themselves off from the rest of the world, as some societies and cultures (e.g. China, Japan, Tibet, Nepal, Burma) once attempted. Indeed he observes that the goals of social and political development are far from clear,21 thus leaving room for the possibility and the right of Third World societies to make up their own minds, develop their own policies, with respect to what they might regard as a desirable future. And one might wonder, at this juncture, whether Gadamer might not have been more forcefully critical of the homogenizing and subordinating effects of the policies of development of dominant institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which impose policies of economic development originating in the market economies of the North upon the impoverished countries of the South.

But this much is clear: Gadamer does not propose a universally explicable solution to the conflicts between “modernity” and tradition which now occur everywhere in one form or another. He simply suggests that the “European” Geisteswissenschaften offer a model of reflection, to be applied by Europeans to their own history. They can thus give an example to the world, not by offering a solution to everyone, but by engaging in a process of self-acknowledgement22 which ideally could become accepted as a model of conversation between states, societies, and cultures across the globe. The discourse envisaged here hardly is suitable for the pursuit of power claims.

Thus the Geisteswissenschaften and Gadamer’s own reflections on the diversity and richness of the heritage of European culture culminate in the designation of a world-historical task which is to be seized upon everywhere: to practice respect

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for what is other and different from ourselves. If anything is to be preserved from European history it is this practice of respect, of the recognition and acceptance of that which is other than ourselves which already has been part of European history, wherever European people have felt enriched rather than threatened by the diversity of their cultures, histories, and languages.

The ‘gigantic task’ posed for all of humanity in our times is essentially the same as the one each of us is confronted with as an individual: to sufficiently control one’s preoccupations; one’s being absorbed in one’s wishes, desires, hopes and interests so that the other does not become visible or remains invisible.23 The task is to learn to let core convictions come out into the open so that others, be they individuals or cultures, can call them into question. In Gadarner’s perhaps somewhat idealized account of the European cultural inheritance, the capacity to do so appears as the major achievement of European societies, which are so densely related to one-another across profound differences of historical experience and language. The Geisteswissenschaften appear as the vehicle of the relevant processes of learning and can now manifestly assume this task, as the claims to power of European nation states recede into the increasingly marginal history of a Europe which once regarded itself as the pace-maker of global progress. Europe’s owning up to its history now shrinks down to the modest task of offering its experience with diversity to the world for judgment and appropriating appraisal, while the Geisteswissenschaften are incorporated into a tentative form of universal reflection on the ultimate limiting conditions of life which affect everyone and all societies and cultures. The philosophy building on them points to experiences which set limits to change, without being able to say what exactly these limits consist in. Yet there are and remain “unavoidable and unpredictable realities—birth and death, youth and age, native and foreign, determination and freedom.”24 Hermeneutical reflection on historical consciousness appeals to the remembrance of experiences of limits which occurs in all cultures and societies. As such it opposes the relentless pursuit of progress. Religion and art, philological and textual studies and the multiple forms of daily activity which have not yet been adjusted to the exigencies of industrial mass-production are the domains of human knowledge and practice to be explored when one endeavors to establish a counterweight to the merciless pursuit of ever increased production and of ever more powerful and convenient technologies, or of unlimited political power. The philosopher’s wisdom consists in drawing upon resources which may counterbalance these forms of frequently cancerous growth. Contrary to an old tradition in philosophy going back to Plato, the world-historically reflecting hermeneutic philosopher will not argue that he/she can define and anticipate in thought what is good for all. His/her intervention in the conversation between cultures requires a recognition of limits, just as the prudent practitioner of the healing arts will possess it, who would not claim to be able to control or dominate health (rather than certain diseases).

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THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF EUROPE: AN EXTERNAL PERSPECTIVE

In his reflections on Europe, Gadamer at times refers to the postcolonial world and in one instance he clearly describes the formation of the Third World as the beginning of a postcolonial order.25 This is a world which he regards as having grown beyond the reach of the former colonial, i.e. the European powers26 and which includes countries with cultural histories older and possibly even richer than those of Europe. He asks whether what Europeans (and North-Americans) have to offer in the form of scientific-technological knowledge and economic aid and expertise might not under present circumstances, appear as a new and especially subtle form of colonialism, which will also fail.27

And he observes that everywhere economic/technological progress and human/social progress are in a state of imbalance. This quasi-Habermasean view entails that we must ask what development might really consist in. This question cannot be raised, however, as long as it is assumed that economic/technological progress and the development of the natural and social sciences provide the standard of progress. Therefore we do not really understand what development in the sense of modernization could mean. There is a lack of clarity about its goals, as Gadamer says. For we do not know, and most societies on this planet do not know, at present, how to limit the force of technological and economic development, while realizing fully well the dangers and already realized destructive potential attendant upon it. Thus skepticism about progress—this major European inheritance accompanying its faith in progress—is warranted. Once again the humanist philosopher’s reflection may nourish it.

But one needs to point out that well-meaning reflections such as these derive their benevolent and kindly appearance from a major omission already alluded to: the omission of the violent history of colonial expansion and rule which defines so much of European and also of North-American history. It may even lie at its core, as Third World critics argue. It is, indeed, striking how little of this violence ever surfaces in Gadamer’s thought, steeped as it is in an urbane and not at all nationalist awareness of the history of Europe and a recognition of the major disruption of old historical continuities, which the two World Wars have brought about. This omission is as striking as is the absence of any sustained reflection on the holocaust, on Gadamer’s part, as an event completely subverting the self-confident humanism of German society and culture. Others have reflected on these dimensions of European history, indeed identified it as the true dimension of its history.28 The thought of Benjamin, Adorno, and Habermas or of Foucault and Derrida is unthinkable without a most developed awareness of the constant presence of violence and disruption in European history.29 Indeed, in many instances their thought serves to dismantle the belief that the culture and traditions of humanism or of philosophy itself can be maintained independently from an awareness of this presence. Humanism is profoundly intertwined with inhumanity. Therefore postmodernist philosophers prefer to write

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polemically of anti-humanism. And certainly Heidegger’s thought reaches into this dimension of European history, no matter how tainted his philosophy may be due to his profoundly disturbing embrace of German nationalism and, temporarily, Hitlerian fascism.30 Gadamer tends to smooth over this depth-dimension of European history. Therefore his plea for European cultural pluralism and diversity does at times appear to be no more than a species of positive thinking in the face of all that militates against it. It is as if the din of anger, the eloquent expressions of justified hatred and rebellion, as well as the poignant and absolutely irrefutable arguments against colonial rule, which not so long ago reached Europe from India and Kenya, from Algeria and Vietnam, had never really reached his ears. This may be due to the fact that the former German empire lost its colonies after the defeat of 1918.

But even if one exempts Gadamer as a German primarily formed by the period between the two world wars from a common “European” (certainly West-European) calamity, one cannot accept his interpretation of the cultural achievements of Europe without placing it into the context of global repression and conquest perpetrated by the European powers and continued in recent history by the United States.31 It also is the case, that the eastward drive of the Hitler-state was sanctioned by the claim that Germany needed space to expand and had a right to secure it, just as Britain or France did when they established overseas colonies. And here one must also add that Prussia always was a colonizing power expanding eastward and subjecting Slavic people to its rule.32

The conversational tolerance of hermeneutic philosophy is purchased, so it appears, at the price of concealing from itself the harsh truthfulness of those voices which directly confronted Europe’s imperial claims and its white supremacist ideologies, or the hypocrisy of its Christian mission. Thus the great theorist of colonialism, Frantz Fanon, himself educated in France and influenced by Sartre’s philosophy, spoke of the colonial city as divided into two separate halves, communicating with each other by a logic of violence and counter-violence.33 And Edward Said, the influential literary critic Palestinian theorist of the fictions of Asia and the Middle-East produced by West European scholars in the humanities, has shown what need there was for the European cultural elites to invent an Asia for themselves which turned it into a mysterious other, the “Other” which was held at such distance, that it became the very emblem and embodiment of complete otherness and difference.34 It was thus placed beyond the reach of a conversational sense and appreciation of otherness and difference. The mysterious otherness of the “oriental mind” (or, for that matter, of early Centro-American cultures, or of Africa as “the heart of darkness”) would place non-European peoples and cultures into a netherland of non-comprehension and miscomprehension, of a form of awe which facilitated conquest and occupation, because the other became an object of phantasy-projection, rather than the other as a partner in dialogue, i.e. of a sustained, and reflectively worked through encounter.

And forty years ago Aime Cesaire, the great poet of negritude from Martinique in the Caribbean, posed the most relevant question: whether the loss of the colonies by the European powers might not have had the effect that their own designs had

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been visited upon them.35 The brutalization perpetrated on behalf of and by way of racist ideologies was brought home with the terror of Nazism and Fascism. A most important voice from another and most formidable culture may be referred to in order to sum up what is at issue: “European civilization: it would have been a good idea.” This remark is attributed to Mahatma Ghandi.36

The very irony contained in this phrase reveals what is most hurtful to European self-confidence in the ensemble of voices which I have mentioned (and to which an infinite number might be added, reaching from the history of conquest and brutal settlement in the Americas to the history of slavery and enslavement perpetrated on African people). The phrase strikes at the heart of the European pride in its culture (Kulturstolz) which even Gadamer still presumes upon as a possibility and which is not in question in his thought. It is to be remembered: The pride in Europe’s culture, the belief that European civilization indeed is one, the very sense that despite conflicts between the European nation states their cultured elites had this—much in common, namely an appreciation of civilized attitudes and culture held in common across their differences, all this was nurtured by the perception of the European elites that there was a world beyond the continent of Europe which was not equal to them and also was theirs for the taking.

It is for these reasons that hermeneutic confidence in conversation as a form of bridge-building and a respectful engagement of the other as the other to ourselves, and thus like ourselves, can only be maintained at the price of blunting the blow to European self-confidence striking at it due to the gruesomeness of its history of violent conquest, of cultural/racial supremacism and the horrors perpetrated upon its own populations, especially the Jews.37 This is why it is false, as Gadamer (together with Heidegger) is inclined, to only concentrate upon the planetary expansion of technology and technique-promoting science as the failure of Europe to make available to the world what is its best.

At present it still remains important to face up to the dark legacies of Europe, the imperialist and racist ideologies which it has spawned, the intolerance and bigotry of much of European Christianity, the ethnocentrism of its cultural sciences. Thus there is a problem of power which lies at the very centre of the European Geisteswissenschaften. In many cases they have been a vehicle for the pursuit of European political and economic power, either deliberately or inadvertently. And it can hardly be denied, to say the least that many major documents of “Western” culture took a cultural supremacist position for granted just as much as a patriarchal one.38 The truth of the European heritage can only be gauged as its untruth is acknowledged; one has to accept that the cultural achievements of Europe frequently derive from the systematic suppression of the history of violence which has made these achievements possible. As the glittering luxury of urban centers such as Paris presupposes the immiseration of much of their population and the impoverishment of the countryside from Louis XIV to the late nineteenth century and the time of Napoleon the Third and of Hausmann, (the constructor of the boulevards in Paris),39 so the cultural wealth displayed in palaces and museums presupposes the conquests

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of Peru and India, of Mexico and Egypt, etc. The history of European intellectual and cultural development is not only accompanied and sustained by a ruthless pursuit and expansion of political, economic, and technological power, thus frequently turning knowledge and culture into a means and justification of conquest and oppression. But it also is accompanied by a history of almost world-wide suffering, a dark shape casting an enormous shadow over the cultural achievements of European societies. This history of the underside of European pride and cultural self-possession is now being written by European and North-American women, by postmodern critics of Western rationality, by critical theorists, and most of all, by writers of the Third World such as the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano, for example, who has reconstructed the entire history of the conquest of Latin America (even the Americas) as one of suffering and of ever new waves of disruptive economic and political invasion.40

A profound reflection on Europe, its diversity, heritage and future, as Gadamer intends it, should permit itself to be affected, to be mesurée au compas de la souffrance as Aime Cesaire says.41 The twofold histories of suffering, i.e. the holocaust (and other forms of internally produced persecution and oppression in Europe) and colonial and neocolonial oppression, have to become the focus of a reflection which critically confronts all those claims situating the cultural achievements of Europe outside the frame of its real history. This applies to Germany in particular. Thus the history of genocide, enslavement and subjection accompanying the rise of European “civilization” and of the humanities originating in it, have to be made the centre piece of pan-European self-critical reflection42 which would truly earn it global respect and which might, indeed, also include the facets of this history which Gadamer invokes. The philosopher who engages his or her history in this manner will be more like the surgeon and psychoanalyst of culture than the benevolent practitioner of the healing arts inspired by classical Hippocratic or Goethean models: he or she will remove the vestiges of cultural pride and pride in culture still enveloping an emerging pan-European consciousness. And he or she will confront the culture and its claims with the disillusioning insistence that diversity and emerging friendly neighborly relations between former bellicose nation-states do not as such free them from a legacy of violence which they perpetrated on “others” i.e. non-Europeans or Jews, women, gypsies, homosexuals and other internally subjected and persecuted groups. The philosopher responding to this condition will be a healer of culture (Arzt der Kultur) only by demanding the harshness of a self-encounter heavily invested with fear: He or she has to insist, that well meaning openness to the other (i.e. to non-European, non -North-American societies) cannot be achieved prior to this self-critical encounter. Europe cannot be reconciled to itself nor heal the wounds of its former and hopefully not to be regenerated imperial past without accepting the humbling and mortifying experience of having to think “its history together with the history”43 of those others to whom it once never seriously wanted to speak.

This means that they will have the first word. Europe is answerable. I take Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reflections to prepare the ground for this new and unprecedented conversation. The quotation from Octavio Paz’s great work on the history of Mexico

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which I placed at the beginning of this essay suggests that as this conversation develops, it will have many different focal points and dimensions. The plurality of European voices will be inscribed and surpassed by a further reaching plurality, no longer determined with reference to the ‘rich democracies of the North’44 as a centre that sets the pace of the conversation. One may hope this to be possible, rather than have the powerful economic institutions of the North dictate the goals of social development in such a way that the world outside Europe and North-America will never be able to speak with the authority owed to it and its peoples.

Octavio Paz’s expectation of a world without a centre stands for a state of affairs in which cultural conversation and the encounter between cultures no longer is hampered by political and economic dominance. It is the invocation of a utopian state rather than a description of the actual state of international relations. At present the world still suffers from the exercise of too much force, the heavy weight of European and North-American hegemony and power. Even the healing and balancing power of hermeneutic reflection can only come into its own, as all those European and European-based (i.e. North-American) conceptions of global health and well-being come into question, which still determine the pattern of development for most peoples of this earth.

NOTES

1 I am referring to the essays collected in Das Erbe Europas. Frankfurt 1989. Suhrkamp Verlag, especially to “Die Vielfalt Europas. Erbe and Zukunft,” pp. 7–34, and “Die Zukunft der europäischen Geisteswissenschaften,” pp. 35–62.

2 Hans-Georg Gadamer. “Apologie der Heilkunst.” In Gesammelte Werke Neuere Philosophie II. J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) Tübingen 1987, pp. 267–275, p. 271. The passage quoted builds on a famous verse from Rilke’s Duino—Elegies. All translations from these essays are by the author.

3 Octavio Paz. El Laberinto De La Soledad. Decimasexta Minipresión. 1987 Fondo De Culutra Económica. México, D.F. México, p. 152.

4 See Gadamer, Das Erbe Europas, 1989 as quoted, p. 40.5 See Hans-Georg Gadamer “Notes on Planning for the Future”. In Daedalus. Journal of the American

Academy of Arts and Science, Vol. 95, 2. 1966, p. 589.6 I interpret Gadamer’s reflections in this sense as analogous to Nietzsche’s reference to the philosopher

as the diagnostician and healer of culture (Der Philosoph als Arzt der Kultur). This analogy entails that the philosopher can claim no more competence as a social and cultural critic than any thinking person. This definitely is Gadamer’s view. He does not claim any professional competence in his reflections of Europe other than his knowledge of its history, seen through the history of philosophy.

7 See Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. In: Gesammelt Werke I. Hermeneutik I. Tübingen 1986. J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) p. 390. Gadamer, Truth and Method, New York, 1975, Seabury Press.

8 See Gadamer, Das Erbe Europas, as cited, p. 38.9 As cited, pp. 60–61.10 As cited, p. 60.11 As cited, p. 61.12 As cited, p. 60.13 Gadamer, “Notes on Planning for the Future,” as cited, p. 589.14 Jürgen Habermas. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, 1987, The MIT Press,

translated by F. Lawrence. This extraordinary and complex work has this distinctiveness of modernity as its theme. Habermas clearly links the distinctiveness of modernity and its separateness from

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previous ages to the principle first announced by Hegel, that the modern age has to generate its own significance and meaning from within itself and cannot rely on previous ages as models. Therefore the modem age is radically future-oriented. See Habermas, as cited, pp. 41–43.

15 See Gadamer, Das Erbe Europa, pp. 7–10.16 In his Philosophische Lehrjahre (Frankfurt 1977, Klostermann) Gadamer frequently acknowledges

that the University for him is a place beyond politics and that he has always understood it this way.17 Jürgen Habermas (mostly recently in “The Idea of the University: Learning Processes.” In: J. Habermas

The New Conservatism. Boston, 1989. The MIT Press) has frequently attacked the complacency implicit in the view that the German university can set itself apart entirely from the moral, ideological, political and economic struggles of the day. While his views certainly have changed over the years, he has always argued on behalf of a direct or indirect socially and politically emancipatory role of the university and of the institutionalisation of discursive debate in it. Adopting this position constitutes a break with the exclusiveness of German mandarin traditions. Gadamer cannot be expected to accept this position. But his recent essays on the university reveal considerable awareness of the social forces shaping it. See: Gadamer. “Die Idee der Universitaet gestern, heute, morgen.” In Die Idee der Universität. Versuch einer Standortbestimmung. Berlin/Heidelberg 1988, Springer Verlag 1–22. (No editor)

18 Gadamer, Des Erbe Europas, p. 52.19 This respect is still present in the two essays discussed here. But it shapes Gadamer’s entire approach

toward the modem world and especially his theory of practical reason. Practical reason becomes effective in concrete situations and in the deliberative weighing of alternatives of action with reference to something which is regarded as good. This theme of hermeneutic philosophy and of its application to the modern world is most fully worked out in Reason in the Age of Science (Cambridge, MIT Press 1981, transl. by F. G. Lawrence).

20 I am referring to the central theme of Frankfurt school social thought, the dialectical critique of progress and of Enlightenment rationality. According to this critique Enlightenment rationality consumes and destroys itself due to its relentless suppression of any mode of thought or experience not compatible with it. see especially Max Horkheimer and Theordor Adorno. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York 1972. Herder and Herder (first published in German in 1944. Amsterdam, Querido, as Dialektik der Aufklārung).

21 Gadamer Das Erbe Europas. p. 48. Gadamer grants that economic and technological progress does give an unambiguous meaning to development, but only as long as the latter is understood in terms of economic and social policy. In the «developed» world the awareness is growing that this cannot be the whole story, i.e. that development must mean something more and other than economic and technological progress. The best theory of development available so far from this perspective is Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1, and Vol. 2. Boston, 1984 and 1987. Beacon Press.

22 Jürgen Habermas The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge 1987. The MIT Press, may be regarded as a comprehensive interpretation and criticism of major traditions in European philosophy from this perspective.

23 Gadamer. Das Erbe Europas, p. 19.24 Gadamer “Notes on Planning for the Future” as cited, p. 589. Like many other formulations of his,

this sentence of Gadamer’s is somewhat vague. For it is patently incorrect to argue that birth and death are unpredictable realities. No social statistician would agree. Gadamer should have said, that birth and death appear as unpredictable in subjective experience, that someone’s death, in particular, is frequently experienced as unexpected and that birth still is an event which cannot be entirely manufactured, recent reproductive technology notwithstanding.

25 Gadamer. Das Erbe Europas. p. 49.26 In the essays considered in this paper Gadamer does not mention North America very much, nor do I.

The guiding assumption appears to be, that North American societies arose out of European traditions, that they have their basis in the traditions of scientific inquiry and in the pursuit of progress typical of Europe since the Enlightenment. Like many other German scholars of his generation Gadamer neglects the genuine independence of North American political thought and practice from European traditions.

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When he discusses tolerance, for example, he links it with the primarily West European experience (as he sees it) of diversity: that Europe ‘has been able to learn and had to learn, more than other countries, to live with others, even if others are, indeed different’ (Das Erbe Europas, p. 30) He fails to notice that the practice of religious and sometimes even of racial tolerance was developed earlier and much more fully in the United States, than in Europe. The failure of perception is due to the general neglect of democracy as a theme in his thought. I have decided not to pursue these questions in this essay, because they would have made my argument too complex and unclear. But see Dieter Misgeld “Modernity, Democracy and Social Engineering” (In Praxis International, Vol. 7, No. 3/4, October 1987/January 1988, pp. 268–285) for a relevant comparison of hermeneutical and pragmatist views.

27 Gadamer. Das Erbe Europas, p. 49.28 See especially Zygmunt Bauman Modernity and the Holocaust, Ithaca, New York, 1989. Cornell

University Press.29 It is impossible to mention any particular text here, because the theme of the self-destruction

of occidental reason runs through their entire work, the significant differences between these philosophers notwithstanding. But Adorno’s Negative Dialectics may be singled out, because Adorno was the first philosopher to place Auschwitz at the centre of his thought. pp. 361–36. After Auschwitz. See Negative Dialectics. New York, 1973, Seabird Press.

30 See the important recent book by Michael E. Zimmermann. Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, Technology, Politics and Art. (Bloomington 1990. Indiana University Press) on these issues.

31 I have in mind the messianic democratic imperialism so frequently attributed to the United States by European critics and now most frequently commented upon by Latin-American writers. The relevant criticisms are even given voice by moderate Latin American writers such as Octavio Paz (see note 3) and Carlos Fuentes. I am also aware that significant critiques of U.S. foreign and economic policy have developed in the United States themselves.

32 Hitler’s politics of conquest directly built on this tradition. In Germany, after the First World War, it was frequently argued by ardent (and racist) nationalists, that Germany had a right to expand eastward, as long as other nations claimed right to “their” colonies. Slavic people and nations were not even included in the conception of Europe entertained by the militant and anti liberal nationalists of the German proto-fascist Right.

33 See Edward W. Said “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology’s Interlocutors.” In Critical Inquiry. 15, Winter 1989, p. 206.

34 Edward W. Said. Orientalism. New York 1979. Random House. Said refers to Frantz Fanon’s famous book The Wretched of the Earth, New York, 1966 trans. C. Farrington.

35 Aimé Césaire Discourse on Colonialism, New York, 1972. Monthly Review Press.36 My colleague and friend Himani Bannerji has brought this remark to my attention. It does not appear

in the Mahatma’s published writings. I owe much of my awareness and understanding of the third world questioning of Europe to frequent and intensive discussions with Dr. Bannerji.

37 Jean-Francois Lyotard has moved in this direction of a critical reflection on European philosophy in his Heidegger et “les Juifs.” Paris 1988. Editions Galilee.

38 I believe, therefore, that there are significant analogies between the anti-colonial and the feminist critiques of occidental reason and rationality. Both motifs surface and frequently even merge in recent post-structuralist and deconstructionist writing.

39 The exceptional work by Walter Benjamin on Paris as the capital of the nineteenth century really is a study in the development of capitalist commodity production and of its cultural consequences. As such it makes the phenomena I mention here visible in striking detail. See: Susan Buck-Morss. The Dialectics of Seeing. Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge 1989. The MIT Press.

40 Eduardo Galeano. The Open Veins of Latin America and Memoria del fuego. I, II, III, Buenos Aires, 1982, siglo veintiuno editions. Translated into English as Memory of Fire. I, II. New York, 1985. Pantheon Books. Trans. C. Belfrage.

41 See Aimé Césaire Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Translated by C Eshleman and A. Smith as Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. Berkeley. University of California Press 1983, pp. 76/77.

42 In my view the best example of a critical reflection on the intellectual history of Europe building on European traditions themselves is Jürgen Habermas; The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.

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See pp. 336–367 and especially p. 367. Here Habermas criticizes the social Darwinism which he believes has been furthered by the critique of reason in recent West-European philosophy since Nietzsche: ‘Who else but Europe could draw from its own traditions, the insight, the energy, the courage of vision—everything that would be necessary to strip from the premises of a blind compulsion to system maintenance and system expansion their power to shape our mentality?’

43 E.W. Said. “Representing the Colonized” as cited in note 33, p. 223.44 See Roberto Madeira Unger. Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory. Cambridge, New York,

1987, Cambridge University Press.

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APPENDIX II

DIETER MISGELD’S RETIREMENT SPEECH

I want to tell you why I wanted to do something a bit different. I don’t know whether it’s different, whether other people have done this or not. I wanted to do a presentation and I did not know yet how formal it would be. I did not expect so many people to come, so the first thing I want to say is I very much appreciate your presence. It is wonderful that you have come, and it will encourage me to keep on thinking further about things which are still on my mind. I guess it never stops. There are a couple of people ahead of me in the process of how life goes and leaves us, and over which we have no control. They can tell me how that process proceeds further on in time. But I really do appreciate your presence and am very grateful for it.

There is something I owe, first to myself, and then to our students in the Philosophy Program at OISE and to my colleagues. It is this: I have always felt that I have not been quite visible as to who I am and where I come from. Perhaps to some, but to others not. In a sense, I always presented an abstract description of the world I come from and my response to it, which has taken me to another. Those who know of my roots in Germany, they may not know the kind of Germany it was, nothing like the kind of country you would encounter now. Some people who have accompanied me throughout my efforts to re-socialize myself, to become “North American,” may have some intuitions regarding these roots. Suffice it to say that I have not succeeded in transforming myself in this fashion. I have become very conscious of this as I got older. Ultimately this lack of roots led to my encounter with Latin America, the context in which I met Amparo, with whom I live, and there are people here who can testify a little bit to that although they may wonder what I have been up to.

I begin with something from my childhood. I was born in 1938. That was a little less than a year before the beginning of the Second World War, and I will just give you one memory. We were what then was called by the Nazi German authorities the new born citizens of the Third Reich, an illusion to apocryphal memories of medieval times. (by the way I should pass this around. There is a document which I have here, if anyone wants to see this. It’s shocking. This is my birth certificate. It has the stamp of the Hitler Regime on it. I’m sure someone would buy it for a lot of money. Well, one cannot destroy it. It’s shocking. Every time I look at it I see that I was born at the time when the Second World War began when the Hitler Regime was fully confident that it would dominate Europe and could commit all forms of atrocities with impunity—and did do.

I move from there to 1945, a couple of days after the Capitulation, which I remember very well. In the Czech part of what later became Czechoslovakia, today it’s the

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Czech Republic, in what then was a partially German speaking area (Sudetenland) to which we had been, as it was said then, ‘evacuated’. Evacuated was a fancy word for something that, for example, happens in Colombia today, the Sudan, Afghanistan, which is called ‘internal displacement’. This was more of a planned event. We were moved by the authorities to escape the bombings in the Ruhr Valley where I grew up, which was the most industrialized area in Germany. There were heavy bombings since 1943, largely by the RAF, for very understandable reasons. One of my first encounters in Canada was a gentleman in Elliot Lake who told me he knew my area totally by heart because he was the map reader in the bombings. He had read the maps of the area. He knew exactly where to put the bombs and he directed the pilots of the bombs. I was the oldest in a family of two women and five children, the oldest child in the group, while the men were who knows where (as soldiers, then prisoners of war. My father actually was captured in 1945 by the Soviet Army, when already almost having fled back into German territory, my uncle had fallen, had died as a soldier in 1944). We were very adventurous then because the adult world had kind of collapsed. I didn’t go to school until I was 8. I was sitting, actually, on an anti-aircraft gun. How did one get there as a boy? Because it was an attractive toy. If you turned the wheel of the anti-aircraft gun it would spin around, like a carousel. I got my brothers and cousin to sit on that, not knowing what it really was, of course, and not knowing that all around us in the field, there were ammunitions which had not detonated. This gives you a sense of what that world was like in 1945. I mention this because it has made me probably adventurous beyond reason. That is, I’ve never been able to stay in one place, and that may happen now as well. It has possibly opened me to a diversity of cultures and worlds, but it has also meant a high level of anxiety. That’s by way of introduction. My interest in Latin America came out of not being able to take roots in my original home country, and not being able to take roots in this country, so really not taking roots anywhere. We were told the Nazi ideology, for those who read about it, they know it said that everyone had their roots in their “soil” (Blut und Boden ideology). I have kind of lived the opposite, which is not uncommon in my generation. It is an overly determined response to the ugliness, and what we had perceived clearly to be extreme irrationality, if I may use that word, of that Regime. You know that there is a process in which I have come to touch on many things, and not settled down in any of them. In a way, that’s what I want to speak about.

I really thought of this initially as something that might be of interest to a few of our students, colleagues, friends, so that they understand a little bit more what is beyond the person you have known. In a sense, this presentation is a mixture of academic discourse, very political themes, and personal reflection. I hope it is going to be of interest. One of the good things about retirement is that you feel free to explore, improvise, experiment. But… actually, I still worry about doing something academically adequate. I came here with a briefcase full of books. I appear not to feel secure unless I carry them around. I thought that would be over, but it seems to still be an effort to become more fearless.

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But I begin at the other end, at the end of where I have arrived, with the help of people close to me and friends, and so perhaps I can settle down a little more and address the issues which have to do with Latin America.

I begin in the more formal way with the great writer from Uruguay, Eduardo Galeano, who is cited very often in “left’ and progressive Latin American writing, also in magazines about Latin America published in English. This is a text in Spanish. I proceed translating it. It appeared I don’t remember where, probably part of a text from a Mexican newspaper, called La Jornada, an excellent paper, definitely no friend of imperialism, nor of successive Mexican governments, frequently corrupt and exploitative.

It has to do with my recent interest, my ambiguous relation to human rights. The people who have followed me, and I get this in comments from students, always say I am very enthusiastic about human rights. I actually am not. I know too much about their use and abuse to simply attach much passion to them. I tried, but it doesn’t work. Critical reflection intervenes and makes us look at human rights just as one does at other schemes for generating improvements. I think human rights now have become too much part of the insidious regime which is now trying to encompass and supervise the world, the imperial power with its headquarters in Washington. I agree with many liberation theologians and others, that there is a difference between justice and human rights. Human rights gets to be the compensation for the poor, and justice for the rich, and the rest is left out. Some sort of rethinking in that area has to be done. I like what Galeano writes in a text that I found in Spanish version, during a recent visit to Chile. He says, “In 1948 and 1976, the United Nations proclaimed extensive lists of human rights, but the large majority of humanity has no more of a right, only has the right to see, hear and be silent. When are we going to begin to claim and to practice the right to dream?” This is called, the Right to “delirio,” a kind of holy frenzy, I guess. I was checking how best to translate it. Frenzy, frenzy of the imagination, you might say. Galeano continues: “When are we going to dream in the frenzied way? For how much time? When are we going to open our eyes beyond the nastiness of our situation, in order to imagine another world? When? The air will be clean of all the poisons which are now entering it. Oh, wonderful. When in the streets the cars will be stopped by the dogs. When people will no longer driven by the car, by the automobile. When they will no longer be programmed by the computer. When they will no longer by bought by the supermarket. When they will no longer be looked at by the television set. And, when the television set will no longer be the most important member of the family.” I thought that was a cute observation. “And let us be then compatriots of all of the will to justice, the will to beauty, and when those who are born can actually live, and when no longer matter borders other than those drawn on the map or of time.” Many things like that which are sometimes humorous, sometimes drastic comments; a list of rights that you will not find in any list of human rights, but which meets much more what we might aspire to under better conditions than we have now. I find this in Latin American writing, where writers are more important than philosophers and often express better what

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people aspire to. It is something which I have come to from the other end, where the great writers of my culture were steeped in something which I have had a hard time extricating myself from, even psychologically, which is what we call ideologically “cultural pessimism.” I want to begin at that end, because that is a German legacy, in order to arrive where Galeano is, and where hopefully I can belong.

I always wondered what retirement is like. Going out, right? Leaving, departing and so on. There’s a phrase in English which I always admired, “going out with a bang or with a whimper.” I sort of planned on going out with a whimper, but I think it turns out going out with a bang. I don’t know, it’s just the force of whatever it is that is within one, and the changed certain circumstances of recent years in North America, which for example, makes me look at Canada differently from the way I did when I began, when I joined the Left wing section of the NDP, then called the Waffle, which no longer exists. I find that there is nothing like that around. That’s something to reflect on, as well. When I say “Decline of the West”—There was a title, which I was originally thinking about called “Terrorist Civilization.” Of course, everyone knows what that’s a reaction to, perhaps an overreaction to. I want to place the term where it belongs: with governments and states and the more powerful, the more their inclination to become terrorist states. But I wanted to begin on the philosophical side.

In philosophy, since Karl Marx and Nietzsche, to mention two otherwise quite opposite thinkers who wrote in my mother tongue, there has been the sense that there is a terrorist strain in Western civilization, but increasingly I became uncomfortable with the term “civilization.” That’s why I changed the title to: “What is Civilization?” I no longer know how to use that phrase. It doesn’t make much sense to me, so I thought it was better to stay away from that. With “Decline of the West,” one has a very clear reference. First, there is a text that played a huge role in my culture before the Second World War, though it was published at the end of the First World War: “The Decline of the West” by Oswald Spengler. It reflected something which has played a huge role in German culture and the Weimar Republic, and I think has only gone today under very different conditions. One should never underestimate economic and political conditions such as the European Union, which not only changes Europe in the relation between the States but the internal character of consciousness considerably.

It is the question mark in “Decline of the West” that is the theme I want to pursue. So let me begin full force, like this: Besides being from Germany and growing up in its Western part during the Cold War, Jürgen Habermas and I have little in common. For starters, I’m not even 1/10 of his size, given his world stature as a theorist and political writer. But there is something important which we have in common, simply by belonging to the generation of Germans who had been adolescents or children during the last years of the Dictatorship. In Jürgen Habermas’ speech, on the occasion of the receipt of the Kyoto Prize in December 2004, he makes some memorable personal observations. He says, “I had the good fortune of being born late, old enough [that is really remarkably honest] to comprehend the enormous change occurring with

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the defeat of Nazi Germany, but too young in order to have to bear the guilt having been an accomplice.” The wonderful thing about this is that he does not attribute it to himself, as kind of his own moral achievement. He says, ‘the circumstance of belonging to a particular generation.’ Now this is very real for someone coming from Germany, because if you were at the right age, you would have been drafted into the Hitler Youth, and you would have been submitted to the indoctrination and with who knows what consequences—often horrific consequences. “We made our own,” he says. Karl Jaspers’ “distinction between collective guilt and collective responsibility. The latter yes, the other no.”

Karl Jaspers once wrote a little book, called ‘The Question of German Guilt’. The book is available in English. Jaspers was an influential philosopher, before Nazism a friend of Martin Heidegger, the greatest German philosopher of the twentieth century. Hannah Arendt, the well known political philosopher who lived in the US in exile, as a refugee from Nazism, remained a lifelong friend of Jaspers, who himself was a strong and clear sighted enemy of Nazism. Modestly, Habermas says, “the moral-political insights which were then gained without effort, joined with the revolutionizing of thought in general, and with the cultural opening to the West. A West which included Marx, Freud and Sartre, but ultimately with the embrace of democracy furthered by a bit of US inspired re-education, intelligently done,” as Habermas says at the time. And, we might add, a reeducation furthered by people such as Herbert Marcuse who was a German exile, a thinker of the Left, who then had returned from the United States, in fact, interviewed major theorists that had a connection with Nazism whom he had known before the War as quasi-colleagues, such as Carl Schmitt and a whole group of people. An amazing phenomenon that people like Marcuse would come back, and on behalf of the Office of Strategic Services, a predecessor of the CIA. At that time the focus was so different from what it became later. There are in-depth interviews done by Marcuse, which I’ve never seen, such as with Carl Schmitt, to this day known as a critic of Parliamentary Democracy, a critique which was influential during the later years of the Weimar Republic and which is frequently referred to even today (e.g. by Giorgio Agamben, the now influential Italian philosopher). Of course, Marcuse, just like Hannah Arendt, had been a student of Heidegger’s. Here one is reminded of the terrible tragedy and moral disaster which Nazism meant: also a disaster befalling especially Germans of Jewish descent, such as Arendt and Marcuse, who never did return to Germany to live there, continue their totally disrupted lives and careers, although they did return for longer visits and maintained relationships—to their credit—such as Arendt in particular with Heidegger and her old friend Jaspers. Those then were among the people propelling re-education, a task also continued by the Frankfurt school, such as Horkeheimer and Adorno, who saw it as their task, after returning to Germany in the 1950s to help establish liberal democracy in The Federal Republic of Germany. This ‘reeducation” was mostly directed toward the Intelligentsia.

The re-education in my case meant a different thing. I wouldn’t say that it was just that, it meant that I was sent with many others as an exchange student to the

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United States, and I lived in Chicago in a family which was very nice and good with me. But it also had a sense of mission, i.e., I was to learn that America was better than where I came from, which at that time was easy to do. Habermas, for his part, has reflected on intellectual influences, more than I could have, at the time, and he indicates the importance of his encounter with John Dewey, a philosopher who I learned to appreciate at OISE (and pardon my colleagues) here, the only thinker besides Paulo Freire who really made me think that I could find a home in education. I never really had, I have to admit, that relation to education as a field.

What Jurgen Habermas and I had in common is this re-education, and therefore a fascination with the US and the growing curiosity in the fifties and sixties about the US. As an exchange student I certainly experienced that, and then came the late sixties, and the protests and upheavals. You may remember the huge mobilizations in Germany and France. In fact one year, the year when I went to Canada, I visited a Canadian colleague who brought me to Sudbury where I began teaching. I visited him in Strasbourg, Alsace, the third largest city of France, and I had to walk all the way across from the German side to Strasbourg, which is on the Rhine and very close, right on the other side from the Eastern shore of the river, the German side. There was a general strike. Absolutely nothing moved; not a taxi, not a bus, nothing. Everyone was meeting in the Universities, especially unions and students, and discussing forever. The same happened on the German side, quite often, without a general strike. That was quite a phenomenon. At that time, of course, a change happened. The protests, the upheavals, the rediscovery of the other half of Germany, the entire world of the Eastern Bloc, the Communist system, and the reasons why it existed, increased contacts with the East, and then the War in Vietnam. As that then changed, that led us to ask questions which one did not ask about the Western system and the United States before. It became important to re-educate the previously re-educated unwitting innocent children of Nazism, i.e., we had to re-educate ourselves. I had the opportunity to do so here, in Canada because coming into contact with the radical opposition through the Canadian Union of Students, for example. They had contact with and were collecting funds for the Black Panthers, and with people who had contacts with the American Indian movement. They taught me to see some of the fundamental problems, in the US and in Canada, of which I had known little earlier on. This is perhaps the reason why I, more than Jurgen Habermas, have developed a much stronger sense of distance in relation to the United States, i.e., the dominant code of culture of the US. Thus I notice that e.g. John Dewey never addressed the issue of racial oppression in the US, of slavery and of the destruction, the deliberate genocide practiced against the native population.

In a recently published collection of essays and interviews entitled “The Divided West,” Jürgen Habermas goes to great lengths to show how he is not anti-American when he criticizes the Bush/Cheney/Rice unilateralism in foreign policy, or calls it, as I do, “imperial liberalism.” For he fears anti-Americanism in Germany may mask reactionary attitudes, lead to the rejection of modernity, addressed by and frequently derived from the cultural pessimism implicit in the “Decline of the

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West” philosophies following Spengler, elements of which can also be found in the philosophy of Heidegger. Habermas is very afraid of tendencies such as a wish to return into the fold of a uni-cultural, ethnically homogeneous world. In reading this, I experienced the advantage of having been born 10 years later, of not living in Germany, and having developed a different perspective, and by having given, during the last fifteen years, increasing attention to Latin America, and at times also to the non-Western world with the help of some people.

As much as I appreciate how Habermas, and also Jacques Derrida, before his much to be regretted death last year, and also Richard Rorty, have taken steps to make clear how deeply they implored the new belligerence and imperial mentality emanating from Washington, after 9/11—in this case, these great intellectuals really lagged behind, as often is the case, the consciousness of many ordinary people, the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions who have migrated up from Northern South and Central America into the US. Millions of undocumented workers from Latin America in the United States. They all know, whatever their political views, that the great power to the North has never had their well-being in mind or at heart. Otherwise they wouldn’t be migrating as they do. From the never ending harassment of Cuba, the devastation of Haiti, the destruction of the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua, the counter-insurgency murders in El Salvador, to the present dismantling of Mexico. The grim and deadly campaign against any form of the Left in Colombia, to the new harassment of Venezuela, absolutely nothing that holds the promise of some kind of liberation, self-determination, the fulfillment of the Bolivarian promise has ever been tolerated, certainly not helped by the United States. This is a very, very sad story, and as one looks at that, our sins and failings in my country of origin become one among other failings.

There is a memorable essay by Octavio Paz, the famous Mexican writer, dating back to the 1950s, which I think was written for The New Yorker magazine. Paz asked “Why is it that the US, this great country which is a shining [as he thought at the time] example of democracy internally, always operates as an Empire beyond its borders?” A good question. A question which we still have to find an answer to. One answer, better than asking a Canadian, is to ask a Mexican who still hasn’t lost his or her mind to the beguiling commercialism of Wal-Martization (half of the food distribution system in Mexico is now owned by Wal-Mart) They will say, “Yes, we understand. That is a good question.” Habermas and other old Europeans are still too worried about being anti-American. There isn’t much to brag about in the US when it comes to democracy, nor in Canada. Electorally camouflaged plutocrasies. That would be a better term. Owning one’s own gun. This is the vindication of human rights as individual rights. Comparative international analysis shows that the press and the media in the United States in recent years have been more conformist than they were in the last ten years of the Soviet Union, that is, the Soviet Press thus a comment made by Johan Galtung, the well known Norwegian peace researcher. Arms production at a level unheard of in human history. The army, as one analyst argued in Harper’s Magazine, actually becoming the model democratic institution for the

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poor in the United States. The relentless continuation of policies of execution, i.e., the Death Penalty. We all remember how many death warrants George Bush signed. That was never held against him in elections. And Guantanamo style jails, super jails around the world, according to a report in the Manchester Guardian. Thus we have reason to fear the world’s greatest democracy, and be aghast at the total servility displayed toward it in this country. Richard Rorty, the great American philosopher of our times, was more to the point than Habermas and others shortly after 9/11 when he wrote in a memorable short piece in The Nation, “the present government of the U.S. consists of a cynical oligarchy with no concern whatever for the well-being of most of the population of the United States itself.” I believe that the problem reaches even deeper. A country with a messianic sense of mission has two options. It can transform its sense of mission into a slow process of constructive cooperation true to its norms of social justice, and do so internally as well as externally, or it will attempt to transform the world in its image, the world so totally recalcitrant to such efforts that only massive destruction will result. Here Heidegger, as well, was ahead of Habermas. He sensed the destructiveness to come. The destruction is extended, in particular, to countries and societies whose march into the future is to be based, whether they want it to be so or not, on the destruction of almost all forms of State intervention or regulation, and on the demolition of all forms of communal and collective solidarity. There’s a beautiful piece by Pierre Bourdieu, the recently deceased renowned French sociologist, which says, “Neoliberalism means the total destruction of all forms of collective and communal solidarity.”

There’s a very nice short piece Frank Cunningham wrote with someone else which was published in The Toronto Star, commenting on the Rae Report on Student Funding, a few years ago. It shows that even without our saying so, social democratic thinking is now impregnated and invaded by neoliberal/neoconservative conceptions. That’s very commonly visible in the decline of social democracy in Europe. We are facing something extremely formidable, which seeks the destruction of all forms of collective solidarity, which seeks the individualization of all conduct following the market exchange model based on the model of commercial exchange. And this turns everything into, as Heidegger said, “standing reserve,” ready to hand, as something to be used and abused, and just consumed. Everything becomes an item of consumption, of use, not respecting the integrity of things or other people. This will encourage a race to the death for the control of all resources.

The following may strike you as surprising and shocking, perhaps: but this is why Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are right when they hold conventions under the title ‘Saving Humanity.’ The threat is as great as they say, and to everyone including Americans.

I come to saying all this through thinking that there are obvious reasons for raising this point this way—the point about the transformation of everything into items of use/abuse, including human beings. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, at all. I do know that my position is fairly radical and drastic. I came to it through thinking about the decline of the West and how to extend it to our world. I’ll extemporize a

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little bit further about this. It is what struck me in reading philosophers and someone like Richard Rorty. There’s a book of his, based on lectures delivered at Harvard University called “Achieving our Country,” which is quite interesting, particularly the first part where he tries to reconstruct an American tradition of social democratic progressive liberalism. He’s got very interesting sources. I didn’t know there was such a formidable well-developed tradition in the United States. Not just John Dewey but far beyond. When you read what he wrote in “The Nation,” you realize that he knows that this will never happen again in the United States. This is not a possibility. Of course, those of us who are closer to revolutionary theory know that these kinds of situations, what is developing now in the United States, require a much stronger response than what progressive liberalism is capable of in its present time. Yet reading Rorty, one can see creeping in a malaise of culture and society, which of course was very present in Germany since Nietzsche. It was a powerful theme that some people refer to as the leap from cultural pessimism to revolutionary conservatism to any number of epithets that you can find for this. I begin to think that there is something like that now in North America, a sense of cultural malaise, of disappointment and frustration. I also began to think that it is not strong enough. And retrospectively, glancing back at Germany, and Weimar culture of the 1920s, I became aware of the fact that this was really, if you want to speak in class terms, a middle class phenomena, the cultural pessimism of all these ideas of following Nietzsche, the version of Nietzsche that then was current, which is very different from the post-structuralist interpretation of Nietzsche. People like Ernst Jünger, for example, an interesting thinker, much feared. I think people are afraid to read Nietzsche because he was seen as a precursor of the Nazis, but that is really not the case. An adaptation of Nietzsche to the First World War and the emergence of the industrial era, which in Germany was experienced very strongly because it was so rapid, driven by the State, and in direct competition with the Imperial powers of Western Europe, Britain and France. It reached into all areas of society. I grew up in the most heavily industrialized area in Germany, then in Europe, so I can tell you what that looks like. It’s not a very nice picture. It led to the destruction of the landscape in 10 or 20 years. The building of massive settlements, the massive importation and resettlement of workers from the East. I grew up in a middle class world. But most of the population was Polish, from Eastern Europe, workers or originally rural people, coming from peasant economies. They were not called immigrants, but they were brought as manual labour, as miners. These people never voted Nazi, for very understandable reasons. They knew the Nazi’s were not their friends, and they were also on the Left. There was a strong Communist Party, there was the Social Democratic Party, and there were unions, and they would not share that insane project of racial superiority. When I think of cultural pessimism in this context, and what has surfaced in philosophy, writing from Nietzsche, Spengler through to Jünger, I think of what has been reconstructed in North America as “reactionary modernism” (e.g., in a book by Geoffrey Herf). There are parallels to this in the thinking of the Left, the Frankfurt School, where there is always this interplay with the traditions of cultural pessimism and heroic

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nihilism, of early bourgeois Nietzschean nihilism. In a subterranean way, not always surfacing explicitly, but certainly something that in the work of Adorno is a very strong feature. This was really the thinking of the educated middle class, which was closely linked to the very powerful presence of the German State in the development of modern Germany. Germany developed a formidable education system from which I benefited by learning much Latin, which helps me to learn Spanish. But it had its definite drawbacks. This thinking entailed the fear of a massive dictatorship, the dictatorship of mass thinking, mass feeling, that the individual would be lost in the mass. Read Heidegger’s Being in Time, ready-to-hand ruling every day existence, non-individuated existence—the idea that the only way an individual existence could come about is by facing death, the only place of freedom for the individual. That kind of thinking never existed in the liberal democracies of the Anglo-American world. I’m not now evaluating, just describing this strange radicalism, obsessively preoccupied with the collapse of older structures of community yet not even being able to name them. That was very characteristic of most German thinking. Consider the Dialectic of Enlightenment, which is the Left Wing alternative to Heidegger, written by Horkheimer and Adorno, when they were driven out of Germany as Leftists, as Jews, as agnostics, as everything that was bad in the litany of Fascism. They begin, in one famous section, in the first chapter, by saying “The enigmatic readiness of the masses to fall under the sway of any despotism.” That’s completely wrong. Not even in Germany the masses fell under the sway of any despotism. The Polish and East European population of my city never accepted Nazism, and when they were Communists, they were Communists because that was a very plausible project for the working class at the time. It had nothing to do with falling under the sway of despotism. Lenin was far away. Lenin is not all that much of a despot either, but Stalin at the time was certainly very far away, and was not a friend, given the Hitler – Stalin Pact.

Thus cultural pessimism was a middle class phenomenon. I began to think more about this, how so much of what we have looked at and intellectualized reflects the pre-occupations of some very small groups in society. Those of us who are in philosophy, I think, are especially prone to see the world in terms of the thinking of a small ‘elite’ who then tries to present this as the whole picture, and this in some form the Frankfurt School did for a while. This is what Heidegger certainly stood for and what was so broadly received into the German intellectual world. I think that the “Decline of the West” thesis is really not worth following through on, even with respect to our situation. That’s my conclusion, because it has to do with the preoccupations of sections rooted in society which have become disoriented. I see this in a different form now with us.

The Bush theme of democracy—who can say no to that? In a certain way it gets to be universally accepted. That’s why it succeeds up to a certain point, but then of course we know that the campaign is phony, and it is completely disrespectful of the diversity of cultures in the world. One may not forget that in reality there can be about 10 different understandings of democracy, they cannot all be reduced to the

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market style democracy that the United States has developed. Nor to a two party system; in fact we know that there are no two parties. If I look at the proposals for remaking Eastern Europe and Asia that comes from Ms. Albright or Brzezinski, the former security advisor to President Carter, and then the Bush group—it’s all the same. They have different schemes, but each of them thinks that they can manipulate the world as they see fit. They think they can become God-like administrators of the future fate of humanity. You might that think cultural pessimism might be an antidote to that. I can no longer think so. It takes a much stronger and consistent form of resistance. The German misgivings about modernity run under the cover of “Decline of the West” when people were looking for spiritual solutions, reading Eastern sources and philosophers from India and so on as was occurring in Germany in the 20s. That doesn’t lead anywhere. It no longer applies to us. It does not apply to us in the North of the Americas.

The assimilation of Third World thinking, especially of Latin American thinking, is an important thing because these battles have to be fought for a much longer time with much greater clarity, and are still unresolved. If you ask me, I think the Achilles heel of the United States is in Latin America, as much as it is in the Near and Middle East. Change will not happen in the form of an organized Latin America standing up to the United States. It will be in the form of what is done now in Venezuela. Hopefully, something like that will develop in Colombia. It will happen through the massive migration, what I call the Mexicanization of the United States, which will change the United States profoundly because there will be a very different cultural presence with a very different preoccupation. It will, in the long run, not forego the kind of communal thinking that is so present in so many of the less privileged classes of the Mexican population, who are doing the migrating.

In any case, maybe I should conclude there. I mean there are three, four different versions of this which I have written. I have really worked very hard at thinking how best to formulate this, but maybe I should come to an end there.

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APPENDIX III

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DIETER MISGELD1

BOOKS

Misgeld D. (2006). From hermeneutics of the ancient text to the text of emancipatory politics (Collection of essays and interviews compiled, interviewed, edited and translated by Hossein Mesbahian). Tehran, Iran: Kouchak Publication.

Misgeld, D., & Brabeck, M. (Eds.). (1994). Human rights education. Special Issue of Journal of Moral Education, 23(3).

Misgeld, D. (1993). Hacía un Nuevo Humanismo Modernidad, Derechos Humanos, Educación. Santiago de Chile: Programa de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarios en Educación. (with a preface by A. Magendzo, translated by G. Espinoza. Reviewed in Chile, Mexico, Colombia and England.)

Misgeld, D., & Nicholson, G. (1992). Hans-Georg Gadamer on history, poetry, education. Applied hermeneutics (Edited Collection). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Meja, V., Misgeld, D., & Stehr, N. (Eds.). (1987). Modern German sociology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. (Cloth/paperback 1990.)

BOOK CHAPTERS

Misgeld, D. (2005). Violence, non violence and the possibilities of non-violent resistance. Mexico. Misgeld, D. (2005). Accountability and education in human rights education. A critical perspective.

Santiago de Chile. Misgeld, D. (1998). América y las Américas. Reflexiones sobre una visión post-Deweyana del mundo

de las Américas. In G. Papadimitrion-Cámara (Ed.), Educación para la paz y los derechos humanos. Distintas miradas (pp. 107–129). Aguascalientes, Aguascal, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, Y Associación Mexicana para las Naciones Unidas, Mexico, E.F: Mexico.

Misgeld, D. (1994). Hacía un nuevo humanismo: derechos humanos, democracia y modernidad. In G. Papadimitriou (Ed.), La Educación para la Paz y los Derechos Humanos (pp. 11–16). Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes.

Misgeld, D. (1994). Antifoundationalism, human rights education and the critique of instrumental reason. In A. Magendzo (Ed.), Educación en Derechos Humanos: Apuntes Para Una Nueva Práctica (pp. 21–32). Santiago, Chile: Corporación Nacional de Reparación y Reconciliación.

Misgeld, D. (1994). Pädagogik und Politik: Wider eine postmoderne Wende in der Kritischen Pädagogik. In H. Sünker, D. Timmermann, & F. U. Kolbe (Eds.), Bildung, Gesellschaft, soziale Ungleichheit. Internationale Beitrage zur Bildungssoziologie und Bildungstheorié (pp. 172–198). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.

Misgeld, D. (1993). Habermas. In The encyclopedic history of modern Germany. Ottawa: Carleton University Press and Garland Press Inc.

Misgeld, D. (1993). The Frankfurt school. In The encyclopedic history of modern Germany. Ottawa: Carleton University Press and Garland Press Inc.

Misgeld, D. (1992). Modernidad, Postmodernidad y Democracia Social. In J. Vergara (Ed.), Teoria Critica, Modernidad y Postmodernidad. Bogota: Ediciones FLACSO de Ecuador, CLACSO y editorial Tercer Mundo.

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Misgeld, D. (1992). Moderne, Postmoderne und Sozialdemokratie. In W. Marotzki & H. Sünker (Eds.), Kritische Erziehungswissenschaft─Moderne─Postmoderne I (pp. 9–33). Germany: Weinheim, Deutscher Studienverlag.

Misgeld, D. (1991). Modernity and hermeneutics: A critical theoretical rejoinder. In H. Silverman (Ed.), Gadamer and hermeneutics. Continental philosophy IV (pp. 163–181). New York, NY: Routledge.

Misgeld, D. (1991). El Diálogo entre Culturas y la Búsqueda de un nuevo Paradigma para la educación y la discusión de los Derechos Humanos. In A. Magendzo (Ed.), Introduction to Superando la Racionalidad Instrumental? (pp. 12–24) Santiago, Chile: Programa Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Educación: Santiago.

Misgeld, D. (1991). Moral education and critical social theory: From the first world to the third world. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Handbook of moral behavior and development (Vol. III, pp. 163–177). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Misgeld, D. (1990). Poetry, dialogue and negotiation: Liberal culture and conservative politics in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s thought. In K. Wright (Ed.), Festival of interpretations (Essays in Honour of H. G. Gadamer) (pp. 161–181). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Jardine, D., & Misgeld, D. (1989). Hermeneutics as the undisciplined child: Hermeneutics and technical images of education. In M. J. Packer & R. B. Addison (Eds.), Interpretive investigations (pp. 259–273). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Misgeld, D. (1988). Modernidad, Postmodernidad y Democracia Sociol. In Democracia y Participacion (pp. 169–196). Santiago, Chile: Cerc. Editiones Melquiades.

Misgeld, D. (1988). Common sense and common convictions: Scientific sociology, phenomenological sociology and hermeneutics. In F. van Holthoon & D. R. Olson (Eds.), Common sense: The foundation for social science (pp. 235–274). New York, NY: University Press of America.

Misgeld, D. (1987). The limits of a theory of practice: How pragmatic can a critical theory be? In E. Simpson (Ed.), Antifoundationalism and practical reasoning. Conversations between hermeneutics and analysis (pp. 165–182). Edmonton: Academic Printing and Publishing.

Misgeld, D. (1986). Practical reasoning and social science. In S. Glynn (Ed.), European philosophy and the human sciences (pp. 71–103). Glover, England: Avebury Philosophy of Science Series.

Misgeld, D. (1985). Education as cultural invasion: Critical social theory, education as instruction and the pedagogy of the oppressed. In J. Forester (Ed.), Critical theory and public life (pp. 77–120). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Misgeld, D. (1985). On Gadamer’s hermeneutics. In R. Hollinger (Ed.), Hermeneutics and praxis (pp. 143–172). Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.

Misgeld, D. (1976). Critical theory and hermeneutics: The debate between Gadamer and Habermas. In J. O’Neill (Ed.), On critical theory (pp. 164–184). New York, NY: Seabury Press. (Also published in Great Britain by Heinemann Educational Publishers.)

Misgeld, D. (1971). Achtung (Kant’s concept of respect for the moral law). In J. Ritter & K. Gründer (Eds.), Vol. I, Historisches Woeterbuch der Philosophie (pp. 75–76). Basel & Stuttgart: Schwabe and Company.

REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Misgeld, D. (2000, April–June). El Reto de la Educación en Derechos Humanos y las Realidades Hegemónicas de las Américas. Gaceta, 46, (Puebla, Pue., CDH Puebla), 11–22.

Misgeld, D. (1998, May–December). Multiculturalidad(es) e historia en las Americas. Una mirada del Norte. Revista Justicia y Paz. Información y Analisis sobre Derechos Humanos. Mexico, Centroamerica, Caribe, XII, 48–53.

Misgeld, D., & Magendzo, A. (1997). Human rights education, moral education and modernization: The general relevance of some Latin American experiences. Journal of Moral Education, 26(2), 151–168.

Misgeld, D. (1997). L’éducation mondiale dans une perspective locale. Revue des sciences de l’éducation, XXIII(7), 1–17.

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Misgeld, D. (1995). Coming to terms with conflict: The terrain for moral education in the Americas towards the 21st Century. Proceedings, 2nd International Conference on Moral Education. The Institute of Moralogy, Chiba, Japan, Kashiwa.

Misgeld, D. (1994). Human rights and education: Conclusions from some Latin American experiences. Journal of Moral Education, 23(3), 239–250. (Special Issue: Human Rights Education, D. Misgeld & M. Brabeck (Eds.).)

Misgeld, D. (1994). Return from Chile: Social solidarity, A dimension of social science. The Ecumenist (Journal for promoting Christian Unity), 1(2), 29–33.

Misgeld, D. (1992). Pedagogy and politics. Some reflections on Henry Giroux’s critical pedagogy and its postmodern turn. Phenomenology and Pedagogy, 10, 124–142. (With a response by H. Giroux.)

Misgeld, D. (1992). Pedagogy and politics. A critique of Henry Giroux’s critical pedagogy. Ciudad Danias, 1(1). (Journal of Instituto de Educación en Derechos Humanos, Santiago, Chile).

Misgeld, D. (1991). Education and pragmatic thought. Reflections on the relation between Utopian thought, pragmatic thinking and pragmatism as a philosophy. Comenius (The Netherlands), 2(4), 3–26.

Misgeld, D. (1991). Philosophy and politics: On Fred Dallmayr’s ‘critical encounters.’ Human Studies (Reidel), 14, 15–22.

Misgeld, D. (1987/88). Modernity, democracy, and social engineering. Praxis International (New York, Oxford, Zagreb), 7(3/4), 268–285.

Misgeld, D. (1987). Kritische Theorie und Postmoderne. Soziologische Revue, 10(4), 380–388.Misgeld, D. (1986). Modernity and social science: Habermas and Rorty. Philosophy and Social Criticism,

4, 355–372.Misgeld, D. (1985). Critical hermeneutics versus neoparsonianism? A critique of Habermas’ theory of

communicative action (Special Issue on Jürgen Habermas). New German Critique, 35, 55–83.Grahame, P. R., Jardine, D., & Misgeld, D. (1985). Communicative competence, practical reasoning, and

the understanding of culture. Phenomenology and Pedagogy, 3(3), 201–206.Misgeld, D. (1985). Self reflection and adult maturity: Adult and child in hermeneutical and critical

reflection. Phenomenology and Pedagogy, 3(3), 191–201.Misgeld, D. (1983). Critical theory and sociological theory. Review article of (1) Habermas, Theorie

des Kommunikativen Handelns (2) J. B. Thompson, D. Held (Eds.), Habermas, Critical Debates (3) W. Bonns, A. Honneth (Eds.), Sozial forschung als Kritik, (4) R. Goertzenn, Jürgen Habermas: Eine Bibliographie. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 13(4), 97–105.

Misgeld, D. (1983). Communication and rationalisation: A review essay of Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des Kommunikataven Handelns. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 8(3), 433–453.

Misgeld, D. (1983). Phenomenology, social science and the social science professions: The case for the integration of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and critical social theory. Phenomenology and Pedagogy, 1(2), 195–217.

Misgeld, D. (1983). Common sense and common convictions. Scientific sociology, phenomenological sociology and the hermeneutical point of view. Human Studies, 6(1), 109–139.

Misgeld, D. (1981). Habermas’ retreat from hermeneutics: Systems integration, social integration and the crisis of legitimation. Canadian Journal of Social and Political Theory, 5(1/2), 8–44 (5th Anniversary Issue).

Misgeld, D. (1981). Science, hermeneutics and the Utopian content of the liberal democratic tradition. New German Critique, 21(22), 123–144.

Misgeld, D. (1980). Ultimate self-responsibility, practical reasoning and practical action. Human Studies, 3, 255–278.

Misgeld, D. (1979). On Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 9(2), 221–240.Misgeld, D. (1977). Discourse and conversation: The theory of communicative competence and

hermeneutics in the light of debate between Gadamer and Habermas. Cultural Hermeneutics, 4(4), 321–344.

Misgeld, D. (1976). Enlightenment, emancipation, liberation: An approach to foundational inquiry in education. Interchange, 6(3), 23–38.

Misgeld, D. (1975). Research as an occasion for self-reflection. Interchange, 6(4), 58–62.

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NON-REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Misgeld, D. (1996). Human rights and global citizenship: Issues for educators. Orbit (OISE/UT), 27(2), 16–19.

Misgeld, D. (1994). The forbearance of horror: Human rights education as a form of prevention. In K. Price (Ed.), Manual for working with survivors of torture. Toronto: Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

Misgeld, D. (1992). Two reports for Newsletter. Toronto Action for Chile Committee.Misgeld, D. (1991/92). Two reports for Newsletter. Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.Misgeld, D. (1984). Some reflections on peace. Spring Wind (Buddhist Cultural Forum, Zen Lotus

Society), 4(1).Misgeld, D. (1975). Social imperatives and individual rights. Proceedings of Conference on Need

Assessments, sponsored by the Ministry of Education and OISE, 103–116.Misgeld, D. (1973). On Heidegger’s philosophy. Laurentian University Review.Misgeld, D. (1972). Between philosophy and science: The critical theory of the Frankfurt school of social

research. Laurentian University Review, 4(2), 22–35.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Misgeld, D. (1968). Bibliography on Hans-Georg Gadamer. In H.-G. Gadamer (Ed.), Kleine Schriften (Vol. III). Tuebingen, Germany: J. Mohr/Siebeck.

Misgeld, D. (1967). Bibliography on Karl Loewith. In K. Loewith (Ed.), Natur und Geschichte (pp. 465–473). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

BOOK REVIEWS (FOR REFEREED JOURNALS)

Beiner, R. (1999/2000). Philosophy in a time of lost spirit. Essays in contemporary theory. University of Toronto Quarterly, 69(1), 309–310.

Torres, C. A., & Puiggion, A. (Eds.). (1999, November/December). Latin American education: Comparative perspectives. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 31(6), 732–736.

Apple, M. (1997). Cultural politics and education. Educational Policy Analysis Annals (Electronic Journal), 4(18).

Peters, M. (Ed.). (1996). Education and the post-modern condition. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 21.Luhmann, N. (1994, March). Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft Soziologische Aufklaerung, Unlimited

observation, unlimited observability: Niklas Luhmann’s self-perpetuating systems-theory. Contemporary Sociology.

Habermas, J. (1995, March). Justifications and applications. Review of Metaphysics.Luhmann, N. (1994). Gesellschaftstheorie. Contemporary Sociology.Gallagher, S. (1993, October). Hermeneutics and education. Canadian Philosophical Reviews, 13(5).Macedo, S. (1993, September). Liberal virtues. Review of Metaphysics.Luhmann, N. (1993). Beobachtungen der Moderne. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 18.Garz, D., & Kraimer, K. (1992). Qualitativ-Empirische Sozialforschung. Journal of Moral Education,

12(2), 169–170.Howard, D. (1991). The Politics of Critique and of T. Rockmore, Habermas on Historical Materialism.

Ethics.Benhabib, S. (1987, Spring/Summer). Critique norm and Utopia. New German Critique, 41, 178–185.Jay, M. (1985, August). Adorno. Contemporary Sociology.Keat, R. (1984, September). The politics of social theory. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 14(3),

406–410.Kortian, G. (1983). The metacritique of J. Habermas and of Geuss: The idea of a critical theory. Philosophy

of the Social Sciences, 13(4), 97–105.Slater, P. (1982). Origin and significance of the Frankfurt school. Canadian Philosophical Review.

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Friedman, G. (1982). The political philosophy of the Frankfurt school. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 7(2).

Coulter, J. (1980, February). The social construction of mind: Studies in ethno-methodology and linguistic philosophy. The Sociological Review, 28(1), 192–195.

Habermas, J. (1976, June). Theory and practice. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 6(2), 183–189.Habermas, J. (1975). Theory and practice. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 1(2), 247–253.Habermas, J. (1972, December). Knowledge of human interests. Dialogue, 11(4), 639–643.Habermas, J. (1972, March). Toward a rational society. Dialogue, 11(1), 155–159.Wein, H. (1970, December). Kentaurische philosophie. Dialogue, 9(3), 473–477.

NOTE

1 Misgeld’s complete bibliography is too long for it to be possible to mention all of his works here. His curriculum vitae contains 24 pages and his publications are divided into the following sections: Books (5), Chapters in books (24), Articles in refereed Journals (30), Books, articles/book chapters translated or published in other languages (25), Technical Reports (9), Papers read at academic conferences and by invitation in academic departments in Canada, USA, Europe, Latin America (120 or more), Book Reviews in refereed journals (25), Papers in unrefereed but academic journals (4), Small research reports (23), Bibliographies published in books (2), Publications in non-academic journals, newsletters (4). The selected bibliography contains only sections of his publications.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Hossein Mesbahian, former post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, is now an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tehran, Iran, where he teaches phenomenology, twentieth century continental philosophy and modernity and postmodernity. His research over the past ten years has focused on non-Western perspectives of Western contemporary continental philosophy and philosophical issues. In particular, his research examines questions about Western modernity, globalization, ideology, human rights, the idea of the University, and the fate of Western philosophy in Iran. He has published two books and more than 20 articles in journals such as Paideusis (Canadian Journal in Philosophy of Education), Falsafeh (Journal of Philosophy), Metaphyzik (Research Journal on Metaphysics and Related Topics), Journal of Philosophy of Religion Studies, and Historical Perspective & Historiography. His forthcoming book is Modernity and its Other: The Logic of ‘Inclusive Exclusion’, in which he scrutinizes the origin of Western modernity, its claim to universality, and its antagonistic nature as established in the work of Jürgen Habermas. He is a graduate of the philosophy of education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

Trevor Norris is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada, where he teaches philosophy of education, foundations of education and political theory. His research examines the intersection of education, politics and philosophy, in particular, philosophical approaches to globalization, (neo)liberalism, citizenship, and democracy, with a specific focus on the political and pedagogical implications of consumerism. A 2011 book with University of Toronto Press, Consuming Schools: Commercialism and the End of Politics, investigates the origins and nature of consumerism in Western political, pedagogical and philosophical thought and its impact on the democratic functions of education. He is co-author of Questioning the Classroom: Perspectives on Canadian Education (2016), which engages key philosophical questions and major debates in Canadian education. He is editor of Strong Democracy in Peril: Promise or Peril (2016), which examines the democratic theory of Benjamin Barber. A second key research area explores the teaching and learning of philosophy in schools. His work is translated into several languages, including: Japanese, French, Polish, Farsi, Spanish, and Turkish. He is a graduate of the philosophy of education program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

Trevor Norris (left, with son, Forest Hart Stasko-Norris), Hossein Mesbahian (middle) with Dieter Misgeld (right), Toronto, Spring 2014