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Profile of Mohammed Arkoun
We have to pay a lot of attention, to always [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: We have to pay a lot of attention, to always pay attention to all forms of life. The hierarchy of forms of life can be a matter, but it should be threaten with infinitely many precautions in order to avoid given the man a privilege that he unfortunately gave himself in relation to other forms of life in the nature; and in relation to animals. We have animals for example that are very close to us and are capable of suffering like us, capable of feeling like us, but the desire for power precisely makes that the man probably haven't sufficiently defined a cautious and measured relation with a humanist perspective and a perspective of understanding to the other forms of life. The man despises other men like him, destroys other men like him, slaughters other men like him; therefore there is a deep matter that occurs here. Even within human beings which we qualified as equal to each other in rights and dignity, there are hierarchies we can note, and in which we are living and scandalous, unbearable and intolerable hierarchies settled in the life of men themselves. It simply means that the way we think today has not reached this level of humanism and liberalization despite all the progress recorded.
Yes, that is indeed a question difficult to [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes, that is indeed a question difficult to answer because the world now faces a historic conjuncture where a generalized crisis of the mind itself is being noted. A strong mind, an aware mind, a mind opened to a humanist vision of the organization of the society is needed to sum up a long history of capitalism and to look at capitalism as a contribution to civilizations, societies, but also as a system that has been marked by considerable failures from the point of view of human rights, of the fundamental respect of other people as being equal people. And yet capitalism didn't do that. Therefore a critical balance of capitalism must be made by all citizens of the world, first because those who have been injured by the wild development of capitalism since the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth century didn't yet speak, and it is necessary for them to speak with their freedom, with their history, with their memories that are wounded memories, that are suffering memories and it is necessary to involve these wounded and suffering memories in a speech process at the world level where those who still practise capitalism, it should be said, in a cynical manner and often as wild as at the time of colonization, so that they finally hear this speech and that a reflection on a possible after capitalism can be undertaken.
Globalisation certainly has two functions: [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Globalisation certainly has two functions: They are positive and negative functions. Globalisation under the supervision of states and societies cooperating with democratic states can significantly improve democracy because it creates contact possibilities between various cultures, various experiences for democracy improvement; and this can have a positive impact. Then, the question of dictatorship is related especially to new states that emerged from the independences, that is, in the fifties and sixties. Since the whole Africa and a great part of Asia were colonised by Europe. And, as they became politically independent new states emerged which, it has been noted since more than 50 years, haven't had enough as states before the intervention of great globalisation forces. Nations which haven't been able to install a conclusive democratic experience to improve democracy with an appropriate culture, with appropriate democratic intitutions. So, there's this great break, this huge gap that has been increasing since the fifties, between the West, that had a rich democratic experience in the past and and those countries which we call emerging, where democracy isn't yet enough developed. Now, democracy is a reference.
Yes. The African-American like the oppressed [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes. The African-American like the oppressed man in general, the man who lives in a humiliated minority, a marginalized minority generally knows the suffering of this marginalization. The suffering of this dismissal. And, that suffering becomes for the one who carries it a springboard to pass the suffering and to open eyes on what is positive in the majority denying him, in the state that despises him and don't grant him rights, in the people and the nation or in the culture, the culture itself that systematizes the dismissal and find legitimacies to this dismissal. It is therefore a deep tension that is a test of what we earlier called the man's dignity. The man develops his dignity, the man gets bigger and I think here about the experience of Nelson Mandela, I think about the experience of Gandhi, I think about the experience of all those who took the vow of poverty precisely to share the poverty of the other and the humiliation of the other. That is why the African-American likes and defends the country where he lives and that in addition treats him as inferior, treats him the way foreign black or white slaves were treated. There are also fundamental weaknesses of what we call our modern mind because the modern mind made us drift far from these extremely old problems and by rejecting values that are said to be archaic...
Yes the question of human dignity is a [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes the question of human dignity is a subject of studies and reflections and research and exchanges that is reserved unfortunately to humanitarian speeches and speeches about abstract human rights, completely abstract so much so that they don't necessarily take into account what is necessary understood under fundamental human dignity of the person. We only have to take a look at the confusions made everywhere between what we call the individual with his selfishness, especially in democratic countries, countries of rights that protect every citizen and reinforce selfishness in the individual, and the question of dignity must be precisely attached to a philosophy of the distinct person, of human and citizen rights. There is a human right that is the right of the respect of the dignity of every human person. There are philosophers who thought deeply about this question, unfortunately, the philosophical culture got out, almost got out of our preoccupations today which are pragmatic preoccupations. However the notion of human dignity, weather he or she is man or a woman, black or white, the question of the human dignity is fundamentally a matter of philosophical critique, of everything happening around the human, of everything that concerns the human. The term humanism for example which itself cares about human dignity, this term disappeared in the western language, the European language itself, apart from some surroundings that are still interested in philosophy and that still concerned with the fundamental dignity.
For various reasons, difficult to mention, [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: For various reasons, difficult to mention, there is a deep disparity between countries with a dynamic and modern economy and countries which are not able to modernise their agriculture and which will therefore depend more and more on the production of economically and technologically advanced countries. There's also the demographic factor that played, since the 1960s, in the whole world and especially in countries that stayed in the background from the point of view of political and economic progress. And therefore we have today a kind of system of inequalities that works and rules the planet. Inequalities system in terms of production means and in terms of the exploitation of resources and raw material in countries which are in search of development, waiting for development, making development efforts, and unfortunately the great international enterprises are mainly in the West, the technology is mainly in the West, so inequalities have deepened since the 1960s. I always say 'the 60s' because it is from this moment on that there has been a widening demographic gap between the West and other countries because of the lack of democracy, the lack of economic development options, capable of taking the excess of the population into care, since the population born in the 60s, 70s etc, will build a majority of young people compared with the population, and that's why there will be considerable imbalances in the economic demand. It is evident that young people need to start up in life and therefore a housing policy, an education policy, a supervision policy, and a policy to avoid unemployment are needed.
It is corrupted for sure, Corruption has [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It is corrupted for sure, Corruption has reached absolutely all societies, including the most democratic societies where the political control on the world of the economy and the manipulation of fortunes, of money, is very developed. And we encountered manipulations precisely within big businesses that correspond to a generalized despoliation of those who, for example, put their savings in stock markets, and then were told one day that the business completely underwent bankruptcy for reasons due to corruption. So there is something, a considerable danger that has grown in all socities. In the rich societies on a big scale as well as in poor societies which corruption makes even much poorer, and where the population is considerably weakened and cannot defend themselves since they don't have the political and legal rights that fully-fledged citizens in democratic countries can have while contesting, while posing the problem before the justice etc. They don't have any help. That's why corruption is the absolute bad matter of the century that made, alas, considerable damages and that even dismantles mentalities, because it discourages citizens and prevents them from developing hope to participate in equal opportunities, to be able to reach a decent life in societies, because of corruption. There are numerous countries that I know personally where one cannot even get for example a passport without paying money at all levels, from the guard who lets you enter a town hall or a police station.
I'ts an utopia. People have always dreamed [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I'ts an utopia. People have always dreamed of things going very well. But such an economic system is very hard to imagine at our time because of the worldwide economic disorder. During and after world war two people talked a lot of a new economic and monetary world order but until today this new order has never been released for different reasons which are also durable. The system of inequality has on the contrary reinforced between continents and between societes. Each society has become a system of inequality much more serious than before as even in developing countries different groups appeared who monopolised the economie and the control over an economie on which the majority of the population depends on who is jobless and who do not take part in the prosperity which can exist in these societes. These forces of division worldwide and within the different societes always prevailed until today over the forces of equal division and the forces who would make it possible for each society to participate in production and construction of a economic world order which everybody desires but which collides with production structures, political structures and cultural structures who avoid to advance to this ideal economic system everybody dreams of for which we have to work for and which we have to continue to imagine.
I'ts possible but you have to consider many [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I'ts possible but you have to consider many conditions hard to meet. There is a necessity to introduce a company culture. I consider as company culture the knowledge of the culture of all these workers inside the company who have different cultures because of their different cultural roots. All these workers have to understand the way to organise their participation in the company to develop a corporate responsability inside the company but also a responsability of an insertion of the company in the general structure of the society and the other sectors of society as the educative sector, the sector of scientific research and the political sector. All this has to be considered by an association of members of the company to sensitise them to the connection of the company to all sectors in the society within the company exists, but also to sensitise them to the relation of the products of the company with the society, to develop a commerce of exchange affected by a responsability vis-à-vis the other countries who are not able to compete with the big companys which are better equipped and better developped which are the countries of the occident, which, on their part, do not admit their responsibility to develop such a company culture which is receptive enough to all these problems which raises the construction of a new citizenship in the societes. today
We make always the experience of the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: We make always the experience of the inequality of women and of the nearly impossible challenge to change the mentality vis-à-vis the role of the woman in society and of their contribution to change the mentality themselves concerning the construction of a more harmonic society which is more open minded concerning equality in general. The traditional and archaic societes sattle the women with rules which are quiet alarming concerning the future of women in these societes which is equal with the future of the whole societes. Because if a societe doesn't considere the situation of the women all problems of inequality will consist. You have to consider first of all the musselman societes which are numerous all around the world and where exists a large number of citizens who are in favour of a maintenance of the islamic law system and who want the women to stay in a situation completely unsustainable vis-a-vis the position which women should have and vis-à-vis the voting rights women should benefit from in a modern society. I'm talking about the islamic example because of my own large knowledge about this religion but there are also other societys where women smart under a considerable backwandness in equality and we are inclined to forget that even in Europe and in this way in the countries of the Occident, women have to continue fighting for a larger equality.
The history of Africa is not written yet in [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The history of Africa is not written yet in the perspective of an anthropogical analyses of the circomstances in which the habitants of the african continent lived during centuries in a situations which reduced them to slavery and the slave commerce and which left a mark which is even today hard to overcome. I'ts a period in human history which brings up questions even today which are not brougt up in the right way and which can't therefore be answered in the right way. Furthermore the question of slavery and the question of colonisation which aggravated the african situation in the 19th and even in the 20th century has completely weakend the conditions of the construction of modern states on this continent and conditions of the developpement of modern cultures which permitted to the Africans to live in the same rythm as the other socities which delopped in the right way. But I have to add that Africa in comparaison to other continents had much more to suffer because of the phenomenon of slavery. Concerning the under-developpement, we know that in [Alcie]and even in North africa, the so called white africa, for example, there are so spectacular political failures that we have to notice an impossibility to obtain the level of the modern world and to adopt modern conceptions of law, of political practice and criticism of society.
Yes, is it this legitimate to amass material [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes, is it this legitimate to amass material goods whereas there are people who are not able to? That is the question. As it appears, it seems that the author of the question accepts the idea that it is legitimate to accumulate material goods without thinking about an equitable sharing of material goods in order to allow the others to benefit from it in the same way; and therefore there is an important matter of political legitimacy. And this is a question that touches the organization of political systems which accept to see inequalities developoing inside a same society; and to make accumulation on the one hand and to let people become impoverished, so that there is a monopolization of material goods by a class that provoked in history, since the 19th century, the famous struggle of classeswhich has been theorized by the marxism and which has created all the Communist movement that rested on the working proletariat as the industrialization started in Europe; and we know the consequences of this accumulation of goods in the hands of reduced social groups, of families, of big families, for example, or even now of developing corporations capable even to impose their power on the states and to weigh on the political working of states. So this is the posed question of this legitimacy and we must think about it, and unfortunately the struggles for the proletariat to emancipate societies, to emancipate exploited workers, and to change the way wealth is being distributed in societies...
I would say in an aggressive manner that it [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I would say in an aggressive manner that it is always necessary to think about transgressing the existing laws. Because the existing laws are the result of conflicts within each social group, from the smallest to the largest, from the most archaic to the most modern so here there is from the beginning the issue of the definition of the law ,that is, of the law managing order and disorder. The scandalous inequalities that result from the law and are imposed within a society. Therefore, it it always necessary to subvert the rules of the Law within a society. But think about this inteletuall subversion, cultural subversion. Not necessarily by demonstrations in the street and resorting to violence; This may happen, at it even happens moreover ,but a subversion that has not beem prepared and does not have the possibility to refer to a redefinition of the law shared bu a larger number of citizens of the world, within all the people of the world and well such a violent demonstration like a civil war does not succed to causes useless casualties. It other words, it should be given all its importance to intellectual subversion of all laa forms and I know a colleague in France, Mireille Dumas, professor at "College de France" who wrote a book about the imagining forces of Law, the new imagining forces of Law. That is an example of intellectual subversion.
This question poses the problem of our very [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: This question poses the problem of our very deficit, very imperfect, and very mythological knowledge of religions in general even in countries where this knowledge has been the object of numerous and various scientific researches since the nineteenth century but that doesn't concern the general public opinion and a culture shared by all citizens. We can note for example even in a much civilized country, rich in all point of view like the United States, a deterioration of the religion as a human experience of the divine and as spiritual experience of a man recognizing the other man, the other in general as having a vocation to spiritual and intellectual life and well we can see the domination of a superstitious religiosity, a religiosity that is a matter for mythology that even becomes, alas, the political ideology to the point that it inspires a general policy in an as important and as evidently respectable country in many point of view like America, the American society. In Europe, it is a little less maybe than in America but there is also a separation, one, that I will call the culture of the religious unbelief. That is to say, a kind of aggressiveness regarding what survives from religion in favour of an attitude that is called in French "laique" but that is secular, that is to say, systematic in relation to the status that should be recognized to the religion. Therefore, the culture of human rights is a culture that is founded on a modern conception of the rights; which is completely detached from all reference to religion. I don't say that it is necessary to reintroduce religion in the definition of human rights. It is necessary to reconsider the conditions of the expansion and application of human rights as they are defined in the modern declaration of human rights but at the same time to think about what is happening with religions today.
It is difficult to say it like that. It's [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It is difficult to say it like that. It's certain that international companies are becoming more and more powerful. But they are obliged to consider the presence of the states, and most of them do so, because every society needs the state. Governments change, but the state remains. And till now the state [is for its] presence, because it is necessary, and governments may of course differ one from another. It depends on political majorities. So, the relation varies as the governments change, that is, a majority takes over power and takes over political decisions and has got a strategy towards big companies and economics that may vary in course of time. So, we can not just put in equation in an abrupt manner saying that big international companies are more powerful than governments. And I still insist on the difference between state and government. States stay, goverments change, especially in democratic systems functioning normally. Of course in less developed countries, first of all there aren't enough big companies that can impose their power, but there has been an increase of corruptions concerning the management of the economy with less means than in highly developed countries. And so there is a different relation which is being established in underdeveloped and developing nations, and so it is something that is in expansion, and the states can be even more present.
Those criticizing China and the rise of [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Those criticizing China and the rise of China are perpetuating a human selfishness, engraved in the human, in every individual who wants to think about his own satisfaction, his own comfort, and who doesn't tolerate any threat on this comfort that could put him in lower conditions than those he constantly wants to improve and monopolize. This should therefore be the point of the question. At the level of human selfishness, which is always rejecting and opposing everything discerned as a danger that can modify his situation. China is a large country that is engaged today in an impetus that no power can stop, and it is therefore necessary to enter a deep communication with this country and to cooperate deeply with it. It is about having a new policy and a new look on the emerging world. In fact, China is not the only country fighting this struggle. But China is leading the fight in a continuous and successful way, because of the human wealth of China. More than a billion inhabitants in this country, so there is a human dynamic, a considerable asset making it possible. But India is also a huge country, extremely rich in cultures, with very eccentric cultures and also rich, and is developing a democratic experience; people talk less about it because India undoubtedly has a democratic style different from that of China, but it is also a world in its own.
Education systems are absolutely crucial [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Education systems are absolutely crucial although posing numerous problems that have not been taken sufficiently in charge even in rich countries, even in the advanced countries, in Europe and in America. What does it mean? It means that since the 1950s, 60s, 70s, the migratory movement of populations of the old dominated countries, colonized by Europe, became more pronounced toward metropolises, the old mother countries. And these populations who arrived as workers - and manpower was needed in these societies - have not been taken in charge by an adequate education system. I insist, in the rich societies that can make that work of creating possibilities of communication between elements of the society that don't look at each other as they still do today, in a hostile manner, and where immigration has become an essential theme in political campaigns to win voices by frightening populations about the invasion of barbarians, of new barbarians in the society. Now, if we take a look at the other societies outside of Europe and America, the school system is in even worse conditions than what we can describe still today in Western countries. Much worse because of the lack of antecedents of culture, of antecedents of intellectual history that can be taught to children, that can give to children the necessary intellectual tools to understand the world and to get settled in the present world as it is, and to reach this modernity guiding practically the whole world with knowledge and with references and with principles that absolutely don't coincide with cultures stayed archaic in a very big part of the world, called the Third World in the past, and that has today become the rest of the world, the residual of the world in relation to the world that advances and that advances making big steps, and that therefore creates awful inequalities in the domain of education systems. I know countries where the rich classes, I am speaking...
Because there has been in Europe, in the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Because there has been in Europe, in the history of Europe since the Middle Ages till now, an important matter that is the one of creativity, in the intellectual world, in intellectual and scientific life, as well as in political life, there has been a constant ceativity already starting from the 11th, 12th centuries, that gave to Europe an advance in comparison with all other cultures in the world, and that has created this considerable imbalance that becomes even more evident, paradoxically in a sense, since the fifties. That's the moment when the countries which were formerly colonized by Europe (which became very powerful in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, because of the scientific modernity, of the intellectual and political modernity), when these colonized countries took their independence, they could not introduce in their countries conditions to make people participate in this creativity that characterizes the historic development of Europe of the 16th century, and even before, of the 13th century, as I said, until our days. And then, there is a historic continuity of this creativity. If one compares the evolution of the Islamic world for example, which from the 7th century till the 13th century was also extremely creative and even more creative than Europe at that time, it was able to develop a civilization and a culture that one can qualify as modern, but after the 13th century, societies where the islam spilled stopped being creative, whereas societies like North Africa, like the Middle East are societies that benefitted.
Well, because we are dividing the world into [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Well, because we are dividing the world into civilized world, values worthy to be defended, and barbarian values on the other hand. There is a categorization of the humanity that is being made at a very high level of the contemporary mind, and it is being applied by a political power, and it rests on what one calls in Germany since Prussia the "Machtpolitik". The "Machtpolitik" has invaded minds; it has invaded the intellectual fields to the point to distort, to weaken the influence of intellectual critique about speeches trying to find false legitimacies today, by beginning wars on legitimation bases that don't have absolutely anything to do with what a new concrete humanism that can be made universal should teach in our contemporary societies. And in fact we can obviously see that the life of an American weighs infinitely more than ten thousand Iraqis who can die the way they are dying since a bit more than three years now; or the life of an Israeli is infinitely dearer and more valued than that of hundreds and thousands of people politically opposed to the policy that we know and that we don't need to qualify, that we are seeing today, and this is not the first time it occurs. Therefore, there is a point of fundamental weakness in everything we call human rights. The philosophy supporting human rights, what we called humanism for a long time and that...
I don't think that we can ask the question [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I don't think that we can ask the question that way because developing countries are currently in a political, legal, monetary, economic, social, cultural situation that is extremely complicated because of a policy that didn't take these problems in charge in time during the fifty years of independence, i.e. during the second part of the 20th century, and we are now in 2006. The question of micro-finance has therefore emerged like a possible answer to help the poorest and the most desperate, and to give back the hope to those who fight with all their strength to try to survive in societies where corruption plays a considerable role and where the politics, the states, let absolutely intolerable and loud inequality systems develop, without the possibility of a relief. And the initiative has been taken in Bangladesh which is precisely one of the poorest countries, most destitute, affected by the history of the second part of the 20th century. Mohamed Youssef, who I know personally, launched the microcredit from Bangladesh, and his experience has spread in other destitute countries, and in fact, the micro-finance must play a major role henceforth because poverty is there, inequalities are there. It is absolutely necessary to intervene to correct them, with the micro-finance to address to the most resourceless and to the most desperate. The macro-finance in badly organized countries and in countries where. . .
It's a matter of evolution of cultures, of [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It's a matter of evolution of cultures, of different cultures. There are cultures that have remained traditional and even archaic and which, as a matter of fact, are perpetuating the status of the women, the social status and the legal status of women that have always prevailed in the society, for structural parental reasons and economic reasons of solidarity between social groups. Women, for example, cannot get married with ennemy tribes and have to get married inside their tribes, within the tribe, in order to avoid the weakening of the tribe by marrying someone in another tribe, and that is one of the reasons of supervising the movement of women in the social groups, and that is also related to the sexuality problem and to the reproduction problem, and a group can certainly survive during centuries and milleniums only with men ensuring the protection of the groups, and therefore the reproduction is a key element that forces women to raise their children, to be next to their children, before the intervention of our modern means that have liberated the women, and moreover till now, those demographic matters, those matters of birth that women are involved in ...
I personally refuse to relate the question [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I personally refuse to relate the question of suffering to the question of drugs. I don't deny the importance of the question of drugs but suffering is richer to humanize the man than the drugs issue. Suffering in Christianity and in religions in general is indeed a place of enrichment and promotion of the human condition.To spiritually assume the suffering of men, the man's condition of suffering is a place of development of what is called spirituality that makes the man's dignity, that raises the man over all selfishness and that makes that the other becomes living for everyone, the other, I live the other as myself. The relation that I have with myself , I also live it while having a relation with the other that I integrate in the suffering that I can have by seeing nthe other for example in an intolerable situation and a situation of inequality in relation to the other, of domination etc. That it is the suffering that is part of the humanization of the human beings while drugs are practices that well developed unfortunately in our societies for suffering reasons, many, of those who are resorted to but who are limited to consumptions.
Yes, AIDS is only an element that relatively [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes, AIDS is only an element that relatively occurred lately and that is shattering all societies of the world where prevention and healing possibilities are practically non-existent. AIDS is bringing an additional upheaval to societies that have already been upset and submissive to untenable regimes for a long time and the responsibility which it is necessary to talk about is the one that took Europe by colonising the whole African continent and that has created in the African continent situations like the one is South-Africa that lasted so long with an apartheid, with an ordering of societies according to the race and according to the colour; but this matter also stretches over other white colonised countries. North Africa is white, north Africa is Mediterranean, north Africa participates in a culture that is very close to the one of Europe and however north Africa saw the setting up of the native code that settled a legal distinction between the status, the legal status of natives of every country and whole citizens who are colonists who came from the metropolises and who nourished during a long time the colonial system. And therefore it is necessary to absolutely consider the problem itself in a larger way and not to crystallize solely on AIDS which is of course a disaster of which it is necessary to take care, but unfortunately one cannot take care efficiently of the plague that AIDS is if we don't correct the economic, material, cultural general situation, politics of the African populations and it is therefore a report of responsibilities infinitely bigger which should be taken in consideration in order to finally; while installing another report with the governing who took the power after independences and who accentuated the situation we have spoken about.
Until now, until now violence nourishes [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Until now, until now violence nourishes violence. In the history of the Israeli Arabian wars since 1948, violence has not stopped to nourish violence; and to nourish anger; and to nourish hatred on both sides. The hatred of the Israelis for the Arabs and the hatred of Arabs for the Israelis is the result of an unstoppable chain of events encouraged, fed by arming, by taking political positions, by helping a group against the other. It has become a despairing evidence, it is not only intolerable, it is the despair to keep watching the systematic support of this violence that nourishes anger and nourishes hatred and nourishes hopelessness in a world demanding only hope, demanding only the recognition of the other if helped by a suitable speech, by an appropriated education system to end this infernal cycle that is devouring mankind and wrecking all individual and collective consciousnesses. The contemporary mankind is wrecked by the fulfilled violence nourishing violence and it seems as though consciousness are broken by the fact that there is no prospect to get out of this unstoppable chain of events that came after the Second World War, after the violence of the Second World War. We have moved from structural violence within societies to a systemic violence on a world scale. It is systemic which means it is stable, it is consolidated as long as the balance of power between worlds, between people, between societies, between states, between members of a same society, as long as these balances of power continue to be based on spreading violence and not the fight of violence and they are ways to fight it. all individual and collective consciousnesses. The contemporary mankind is wrecked by the fufilled violence nourishing violence and it seems as though consciousness is breaked by the fact that there is no prospect to get out of this unstoppable chain of events that came after the second world war, after the violences of the second world war. We have moved from strutural violences within societies to a systemic violence of a world sclale. It is systemic which means it is stable, it is consolidated as long as the balance of power between worlds, between people, between societies, between states, between members of a same society, as long as these balances of power continue to be based on spreading violence and not the fight of violence and they are ways to fight it.
What is a suburb in today's big cities? The [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: What is a suburb in today's big cities? The suburb is the shelter of people excluded from the society. It is the shelter of the impoverished of the society. Those who are packed into low-priced dwellings, that is to say, so-called social lodgings where populations are accumulated, that by essence on behalf of their condition develop resentments, revolts precisely like helpless people put on the fringes, repressed from the set of people who can advance in history; in exactly the same way, we have this situation in all big cities of the world where the wealthy classes, the rich classes allocate themselves a space on the whole of the urban space to protect themselves from what is called in sociology the dangerous classes. The so-called dangerous classes; who uses the word dangerous? It is surely not the inhabitants of the suburbs themselves; the inhabitants of suburbs express anger, an explosion of anger after they have undergone pressure for a long time, pressures that did not lead to any political change to their consideration. We are once more facing structural violence. It is the structure of inequalities defining every society that creates this situation of violence. And therefore, we should rethink, re-examine each society to find out the operating strengths; To encourage the expansion of structural violence, to remedy it and sociologically decrease the odds of this expansion inside the whole society and not only in certain suburbs or some cities because it is not necessary to treat a structural problem case by case and by splitting up.
Yes... The military budget problem for [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes... The military budget problem for powers can be explained by the persistence of the "Machtpolitik", that is to say the policy founded on the "Macht", the power. To maintain the power of domination, to maintain the position of hegemony in order to remain a great power that can speak in the world in such a way that it cannot be contradicted. And this completely distorts the functioning of international law and the question is to know why is it that modernity, that defined human rights, that taught human and citizen rights in the whole world and that is philosophically supposed to defend the rights of the human person; Why is it so that this modernity did not go past situations that we had before modernity in the history of societies? It is necessary to think about the failure of modernity to change the mentality of men as regards the conquest of power, the practising of power, the policy essentially aimed not only to preserve power but to increase it so that the power so acquired can be expanded on the whole planet. We are in the situation of a unipolar world with only one power without no other power capable of counterbalancing the wills, the political decisions made for the whole world, and this completely distorts the functioning of globalisation and delay the beneficial effects of globalisation. If it..., if the geopolitics of the map of the world changes by integrating a different dimension of power and a little more humanist dimension of the practise of political power in the present world as it is and of course the use of resources.
Because the Middle East has two bombs always [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Because the Middle East has two bombs always ready to explode and which explode constantly. The first is bomb of religions, the bomb of monotheistic religions that has never been deactivated in the course of history, by none of the religions present which till now are claiming themselves, one against the other, one against the others, every one against the others as bearers of peace and bearers of tolerance whereas history automatically denies this auto proclamation and this auto promotion of any religion to teach peace, tolerance and brotherhood. It is historically denied. That is the first bomb. The second bomb is that of oil, energy. The west would not be what it is, would never have been what it is without oil. And the oil policy, the policy around oil is at the centre of all wars taking place in the Middle East since the end of the second war. Let us add to it the immense, considerable, badly analysed, badly known issue, manipulated ideologically by all the present powers in Europe, in America and of course of the Arabian world and Moslem also, manipulated into various directions; The issue of the position of Israel, of the creation of Israel, of the state of Israel in the middle East. I cannot explain it in 3 minutes but it is q question that preoccupied me during my whole career. I wrote a lot about it. And it is one of the keys of our time and as long as these bombs are not definitely deactivated, the middle east won't know peace and much less than the west, the thought of the west as I said it already in many answers, the thought of the west is avoiding..., does not want to enter deep proceedings, it is preferable to pay a considerable sum, to organise so-called religious and intercultural debates where trivialities and vulgarities are constantly repeated in the way of [political correctness]. We therefore have a set of problems that unfortunately haven't yet been well addressed....
We cannot more prevent governments to go to [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: We cannot more prevent governments to go to war than we can prevent the state to exert as I said it to a previous question, to exert the monopoly of legal violence. The state exercises a control on the citizens that implies violence since every society is a system of inequalities maintained by a law that is recognized as a right codified in the Law. Therefore there is a conflict here between Law and justice in every group of humans and war inside the society may obviously not reach the murderous degree of wars between nations, between people, but the violence of the war within a society is of the same nature as the violence of other wars. It should be added that war is…, has..., exercises some necessary functions in the history of societies. Because in the history of societies, they have been privileges that are becoming hardened and are defended by a law resulting from a relation between forces. We then have rebellious social classes at a given moment against the existing order and they create civil wars within a society. And this makes it necessary to break a legal system covering inequalities, covering a structural violence operating inside the society. Therefore war is not desirable, it is not wanted but it is the result of structural forces, of relations between forces that operate inside the society and nowadays with the globalisation, the relation between forces operates within geopolitical zones.
Yes we are living an example of going over [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes we are living an example of going over national governments, of going over state nations in the west, in particular in Europe with the experience of the construction of the European Union. It is a unique example in the world of several powerful states, strong nations that contributed to the rise of modernity, of the new economy, of the new way to organize life etc; in societies that decides to pass the stage of the state nation to go to an opened stage of governance. It makes an extremely important distinction between what we call today Europe and the United States. Because the United States are not committed in such a way. The United States are a powerful federal state that collects all powers of the states it comprises; and doesn't absolutely question how to get out of the political conditions and the ideological conditions peculiar to the life of the state nation. The American federal state has all attributes of the state nation and what nation? And what state? and therefore this break-off has a range of an extremely important political philosophy; unfortunately the United States don't live this problem as a problem of political philosophy concerning the whole world. And we know the divisions that appeared lately between two European states at least France and Germany when it was about going to reverse Saddam Hussein and to launch the war in Iraq. There is on behalf of Europe a different look that appears in this opened hope by the construction of a new space of the citizenship in Europe, it is necessary to start of course by strengthening the European space of the citizenship but Europeans are saying, and recognizing, and wanting that this European space of the citizenship enlarges to the whole world. It is a big political hope and a big hope that has the value of the old eschatological expectations of religions that promised eternal life after this life and that galvanized and sustained the hope of peoples during centuries and it is a new shape of the hope now..
Yes since the Americans launched the atomic [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes since the Americans launched the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the mankind entered the era of unequal war, of the completely unequal war. The war of the almighty possessing a decisive weapon and of others obliged to go to war without having this decisive weapon at all. The unequal war. The unequal war is the one we saw repeatedly particularly since 1945 in the Middle East, war of 1967, war of 1973, war that we have just recently relived again in Lebanon. These are unequal wars. And these unequal wars are not recognized as such and this is even reflected in the vocabulary itself. Self-defence means that I am standing like a victim, and that all the victims have a right to a legitimate self-defence. It is therefore a way to deal with war and power in giving oneself the advantage, the advantageous position of a victim, and terrorism is not legal. It is an outlaw war and therefore a war without rules but who defines the rules of a war? What authority? These are matters that obviously worth being analysed and unfortunately since particularly the attacks of September 11th 2001, the vocabulary of legitimating insists on a Manichaean creation of two completely differentiated camps: a camp that has the legitimacy, the legitimacy of the law, the legitimacy of the moral, the moral of war as if war has a moral, a foundation, relies on believable philosophical ethics and considered from this legitimacy, considered terrorism as outlaw although there are humans expressing themselves on the other site...
Yes there is the principle of non [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes there is the principle of non intervention in people and states affair. This principle of non intervention betrays an indifference or a political strategy on behalf of powers involved from a distance in the slaughter, the murderous violence that actually ravages so many societies; particularly since the second half of the twentieth century and the earlier years of the twenty-first century. We do not tolerate such massacres in the name of I don't know what demands that have never been expressed, expressed precisely to give place at least to an appreciation, to an analysis to understand the reasons driving to these massacres of civil victims. Here also we discover that they are people withdrawing and saying "This is not our business anymore, we will not take care of it anymore". They are people still believing that the colonizers maintained a relative peace as they were present in societies; what is false when things are analysed closely but it is also true that after the colonial domination, the systems that followed, the national regimes that took over this domination created political conditions that unfortunately led to worse situations and that are creating historically programmed tragedies by policies conducted by a couple of political systems within a large number of contemporary societies. Therefore, it should not be said that we are tolerating these wars but situations of impotence have been created.
This question is adressed to the occidental [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: This question is adressed to the occidental countries, to the occidental democracies. These democracies are facing a drama we all witnessed, the drama of terrorism protesting against a worldwide situation , against the design of the world map, a map of force and prosperity and the map of rejection. A rejection of a world who has no more its geopoitical name given to it in the period between 1973 and 1989, the end of communism and the cold war, this world, which was neither allied to communnism nor to the free world, was given the name third world, because there was the first, the second and the third world. This denomination was chosen because of a political reality because these countries were making their first steps in economic liberation. This type of third world has become the rest of the todays world. There is the Occident and the rest of the world, the worlds waste product. And as there are countries who are treated like the waste product of an ancient arcaism who are officiale called terrorists, islamic fascists there is a terrifyingly division of people living on our planet. Thats not about justifieing the murderous terrorism but about listening to the humain suffering originating from prisons where whole peoples are living in.
You have to consider that the large majority [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: You have to consider that the large majority of these people are youths who are born after the 1960s and the 1970s. The population of the former third world countries has been a population of youth, where in the 1980s 70% of the population was aged younger than 20 years and where the differences of age to the rest of the population were significant. These youths who represent the majority of the population are victimised by the regime in their countries, which doesn't care about the needs of these youths. They don't even have the possibility to find a work which allowed them to enter social life in general. They do not have acces to an education, an acces to school and so on. But on the other hand the medias always report them, that other countries care a lot about their youths. There is a legitim desire of every human being to have these opportunities they are deprived of inside their own coutries. Therefore They are strangers in their own countries. It's a hard life to live. It's a failure of the post colonial countries who contributed to this tragical situation but it's also a failure of the democratic countries who made an agreement with these authoritaritan regimes to remain their economical relations especially concerning the export of goods to the consumers of these countries. All this without considerating the tragedies happening inside these societies caused by dictators who absolutely have to be judged by international courts who do not exist yet.
Yes this apparently naive question is [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes this apparently naive question is extremely important because it dares to speak about honest people. Of course they are honest people and they are numerous in their modesty, their humility and their condition of life. But as much as we can talk about these honest people reduced to despair, to hopelessness because they refuse to help the violence with violent people, at the same time, and well, leaders of our time hardly have an attention for these honest people apart making a benefit from this honesty that continuous to be a principle of life for them and that continuous to vote, to show evidence of civic responsibility, and of a civic responsibility that is effectively not respected by leaders. There is especially a political leader resignation in so-called advanced democracies. Why do I constantly insist on the responsibility of the advanced democracy ? Because they have the necessary resources, cultural resources, scientific resources, material resources, administrative resources, institutional resources, all necessary resources to take in charge the existence of honest people who want to develop solidarities of this simple moral of the honest towards oneself and towards the other and to build on the arrangements of these honest people the possibility to institute a speech of the authority that passes and is going to give a new more believable legitimacy to the political speech that remains a speech of political electioneering manipulation that disrupts the functioning of the democratic and also breaks up all the confidence that one continuous to place in the democracy to be in general a system emancipating people in general, and men, and women, and excluded with another policy than the one unfortunately that developed countries that are dawned and that are considered as big powers and it has especially been unveiled after September 11. . .
To choose the place to live in is aquite [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: To choose the place to live in is aquite modern and recent freedom. And in spite of liberties acquired with modernity the choice of the place where to live is limited by passports, by the international rights, by regulations, by relations between nations, limited for various raisons, They are economical, political, structural and therefore the conquest of liberty, in theory of the formal liberty to live where somebody wants exists but in the practice these liberties are completely limited as we see it with young people who are dying every day because they take the risk to get into an European country , to leave miseries and oppressions and injustices in their native country. Therefore it is not about a right that is available for everybody because granting such a right in the present situation of the world, the present situation of disparities between cultures makes it impossible to acquit this right from one day to the next without any kind of caution; I don't say a control but caution, the ideal obviously ; the day the law will reach in fact the possibility to grant this right without restriction to all men, that day the mankind will have cleared more than a limit, quite reached a degree of evolution desirable by all cultures, and by all nations. But for the meantime we have created on the contrary supplementary limits to the progression of this right to choose the place where we want to live, because there were various factors that made even more difficult the application of such a right. We spoke for example of demography since the sixties, of the economical gap between countries making that a country like Turkey for example that is showing a big desire to enter the European union and we see a majority of European are closing the doors to Turkey because Turkey is Moslem, because Turkey has a culture said to be completely different to European cultures and therefore is a clear example on this, this delay in the liberty to exercise the right to live
Yes these societies, this question [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes these societies, this question especially applies to North America and in particular to the United States. Canada is a different case, the African were not so numerous in America and therefore that is a question suitable to the American example. This question evidently expresses the role of Africans in the construction of the American nation and society, and the American power of today, A contribution that deserves being rewarded and that deserves recognition as well and we can note that the deep injuries let by slavery and the status of slave are far from being healed. Because the modern systems, the modern democratic systems in particular the modern liberal system, liberalism itself without control limits the freedom granted in the liberal system kills freedom, kill liberties, they have some perverse effects on the exercise of an equitable and welcoming democracy for all citizens that is also thankful for all citizens. And well this question sends us back once more to the failure of modernity to take into account what is missing in the modern thought to the promotion of the human dignity despite injustices. It is the impossibilities to think freedom before the arrival of modernity and the proclamation of human and societies rights, and of the citizen. Modernity did not yet have a right that integrates all citizens living in a country and that integrates the tragic memory of a certain elements of the population and it not only here the Africans; it is also about people coming from elsewhere
Yes it is necessary to recall that the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes it is necessary to recall that the democracy was born in Greece with philosophy and philosophical debate, philosophical controversy, philosophical method to construct the human subject, to construct the human subject from a philosophical definition of the constitution of the mind and the faculties of the mind to prepare it to an optimal exercise of freedom. This is the democratic experience and therefore democracy is going to depend on the attention of advancing at the same time without ever separating the vocation of philosophy to maintain the faculties of the mind awaked, to question, to reappraise the acquired truths and to question freedom without questions being repressed by some powers limited in their development . The origin the democracy, the roots the democracy are therefore this freedom given to the mind to express itself but to express itself with an intellectual responsibility, not a moral responsibility because moral is ordered by the social pressures. It is not a conquest of the mind. It is always the result of a balance of power within the society and the virtue, what we call the moral virtue is also the result of power struggle within social groups and yet democracy is about going above power struggle as foundation of right and as foundation of ethics and as foundation exactly of what maintains the liberty of the mind to contest everything that constantly results from the practise of every power because every power is practised with more or less established, more or less continuous and more or less totalitarian recourse to the present power. That is what democracy is and therefore with this definition the democracy is in fact the system suitable to the optimal blossoming of the human mind opened to all contentions, to the constructive contentions in order to define an ethics of conviction and responsibility, and the conviction being always submitted to the incisive questioning, demanding of philosophy that interrogates convictions.
The idea of just war date back from the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The idea of just war date back from the creators of christian catholic theologie, from the bishop Saint Augustin of Hippone who lived in the todays Algeria in the 4th century. He theorised for the first time the cocept of he just war which is at the same time holy because he comes from God who is teaching the truth. The catholiques started to use this idea of the just war to wage all their wars especially their wars against the islam until the modern age. Until the 18th century the modernity insisted on the idea of just war avoiding the reference to religion. The main idea of just war consists in showing that war can be justified by a secular and respectable right which has nothing to do with religion. But even the holy war continued to legitimate war by considering it as a just war. In other words, the holyness of war implicates his justness. In Reality both are connected. You autorise yourself on the one side in a religious way talking about holyness, about sacredness but on the other side there was a secularisation of the vocabulary due to the avoidement of any religious reference. But its a completely arbitrary difference because wars reality doesn't change therefore. Its remains a fight between powers which aims for subordinating the beatened and to do with him what the vanquisher desires. Its a fight between powers which defines nations historic destination. Some of them win and become imperialistic, some of them lose and have to bear the consequences.
If it is about answering the question if [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: If it is about answering the question if power can relinquish power, you would get caught in an utopia or a dream which do not allowe to solve these precise problems. This problem is not about touching the United States or to weaken them in anyway. America would increase if it would obtrude a moral authority on people,as it disposes of a militaire force of attack and deterrence which would allow him to make interventions as it already does but at the same time to proceed a politic of reconciliation of the United States with the rest of the world, opening the doors and the horizons to a politic of proposed authority. In this way people could accept an authority founded on a fundamental ethics of mutual respect and of a defense of victims instead of multipliing the total number of victims with bombings and an unbelievable technological and military force which puts the whole world in a situation of hopelessness and hate as it actually is. America didn't carry out a discourse about authority. Pope Johannes Paul the second lead a discours about authority and as we all know he was in this way able to attain the free conscience discipleship. He was the only voice to remain the discours because the christianity finally understood the urgency to give the people a voice of authority and not only a voice which is arrogant and which shatters everything.
Nobody is profiting from terrorism. Nobody [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Nobody is profiting from terrorism. Nobody can make a profit from terrorism. Because terrorism takes place within societies as I said it for the previous question. There has been terrorism for example in Algeria during a twelfth of years, from 1992 until about 2000, And then there were a murderous and atrocious civil war and this war did not benefit to those who led it with terrorism, neither to the Algerian society itself, nor even less, to the governments. And this is only an example. There are civil wars everywhere, in Ivory Coast, in Sri Lanka, in a lot of African and Asian societies and therefore terrorism is nowadays the expression of the imposed unequal war. Since there is a war and one side has the means to do war without loosing a human life, this is the ideal American war. They are even called clean wars, and to wage war without loss, to achieve a total victory by completely subduing a people or people even to a situation that is opposite to the elementary rights and the elementary ethics and well that creates an accumulation of hate, an accumulation of resentments, an accumulation of revolt aiming to express itself somehow and the fact of resorting to terrorism whereas those exercising terrorism don't have a political program at all to give at least a hope of liberation and end of inequalities through terrorism, the end of injustices and oppressions and well terrorism is limited to this eruption of violence by an accumulation, I repeat it, of revolts that make life difficult to bear as well to the consideration of leaders inside as to the consideration of a world system confirming the state of structural violence imposed to those living under totalitarian political systems.
And well it is the courage, it is firstly [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: And well it is the courage, it is firstly the political courage, of a certain number of leaders who must have the courage to recognize that they made some serious mistakes in the exercise of their political responsibility according to the ethics of democracy, who told lies to their peoples and who must learn their lesson from this lie as well for tragedies that have been caused by the political choices that have been made and of which we are recording failures and to give way to another policy in order to repair if possible and as quickly as possible the programmed politically tragedies by making a certain number of decisions particularly after the attacks of September eleven because after the attacks of September eleven two possibilities were opened : Give of course an answer to terrorism with the. . . , not to let terrorism develop but at the same time as one launches this struggle against terrorism, to announce a new politics of liberation of people and justice for a people what means not only to launch a struggle against a monstrous regime that is the one of the Iraq of Saddam Hussein against so many iniquitous regimes that oppresses peoples, that oppress youths and that maintain some whole populations under an absolutely intolerable domination. I don't say that the war is necessary, to make war to everybody but by diplomatic means and by the institution of a team-work the stake to way of a new international right including these intolerable situations of states exercising the absolutely impossible arbitrariness to consider and that should be unanimously condemned by a new international right with possibilities, of interventions in favour of peoples so. . . . .
It is one of the major contradictions of our [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It is one of the major contradictions of our time, the thought of our time, and the political thought of our time. Because the policy of the West that has the initiative of everything, the initiative of international law, the initiative of processes of judgement and appreciation in the world, of what happens in the world. Well the west and the thought of the west has prepared historical deadlocks and the Iranian bomb, the Iranian nuclear bomb, is due to..., is one of these historically programmed problems through political and successive decisions and policies determined to the consideration of a certain number of people in the world that increases a claiming rage in the collective memories of these people who have been oppressed by their own government. There is therefore a resentment to the consideration of governments that followed on another particularly in the Moslem society since the years 1950, 1960 and to this internal revolt against totalitarian and authoritarian power, added to a world geopolitics. The geopolitical tracing of places of influence and control exerted by the west on certain strategic regions and first of all the whole region called the middle east and since a couple of years people want to call it the big east...They...of the big middle east. And well this is a big problem for all western countries today and of course...
lt is necessary to start by saying that the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: lt is necessary to start by saying that the international right as it functions today in the world is the exclusive product of wills, of the political wills of the big European states and America, of North America, not of South America because this international right has been constructed during centuries, since the nineteenth century until now without the involvement of a large number of states that only emerged after the fifties, after wars of liberation. And all these states that lately emerged are some post - colonial states groping around to find their historic evolution rhythm, to find possibilities of a modern politics capable of leading their peoples to liberations and emancipations and it doesn't allow them to fully participate now in the confection of a new international right, the new international right should be built, it is to be imagined even at the stage of imagination of a new right. We are not already to define right. And it is even more difficult to imagine the creation of international processes of justice aimed to judge behaviours of a certain number of leaders, therefore a policy that decides in all, euh. . . , in all arbitrariness not only to decide for their country but for the rest of the world. We know that the United States were opposed to the creation of an international court of justice that was created, that exists at the Hague, but it is of course a beginning of an international course of justice to give a possibility of application exactly to a right that doesn't yet exist, I mean international that it is necessary to its wishes and that it is necessary to help to construct
Yes violence says Max Weber, violence..., [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes violence says Max Weber, violence..., the states exert violence, and states have the monopoly of legal violence. Resorting to violence is legalized by the law, the state, and all democratic or totalitarian states, democratic of course. What is democratic is, has fewer tendencies to encourage violence and relies more on justice but every state has the monopoly of legal violence. It is a deeply exact definition because violence is an anthropological dimension of the men's life in society and the man's life towards himself. One can exercise violence against himself. We exert violence on our relatives, our children, our wife, our mother. Violence is an under analysed dimension, is a badly known dimension in the society because religions taught us during centuries to simply reject violence between believers of the same religion, in the same religious community. But outside the community, violence still takes over and is the rule. Religions rule out each other in the name of the truth that they proclaim for themselves, that they claim for themselves and that they refuse to all other religions and all other systems of thoughts including the modern system since there are nowadays tensions between the religious and the modern conception of the truth and who says truth says justice. It is therefore justice that is in play, that is to say two major references organizing the life of men in society
Definitely... There is a modern version of [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Definitely... There is a modern version of colonialism but it means that the modern thought proclaiming itself in advance and daring to speak of governance, of values of governance, of humanist and humanitarian values; this modernity that effectively brought so much progress in the human comfort, in medicine, the comfort given by technology has completely failed as far as ethics is concerned, to have redefined a restrictive ethics, an ethic of conviction, an ethics of responsibility towards all people and towards rejected social categories, who are marginalized and obliged to live in situations of compressed revolt, in situations of oppression and injustice that are continuing exactly as in the time of colonialism. Therefore is it necessary to reappraise, to put into a crisis the modern political reason, the modern economic reason, the modern legal reason, the modern philosophical reason because they are still some idealistic philosophies developing all kind of abstract speculations on human dignity, of human rights, on humanism, without seeing the devastations this modern thought is developing that succeeds to legitimate structures of violence even in the most advanced democracies. We know it henceforth with the problems of immigration that have been managed badly and that are still being managed badly by this modernity that leads structural violence infiltrate everywhere instead of fighting it. This situation, unfortunately we cannot see an imminent solution because we have not been working on it.
Mohammed Arkoun:
The limit between personal freedom and [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The limit between personal freedom and collective responsibility, and well we should first of all try to surround the concept of personal freedom and the concept of social responsibility, we cannot go foward and answer this question without specifying what this notion of personal freedom is precisely about because personal freedom limits itself through the responsible usage that I make myself as person and citizen of the freedom granted to me by the right that is in application in the society where I live or that is in application in the international relations and therefore personal freedom requires a self-control, a control of me by myself to know how I can use my freedom for the good of the society and how this freedom for the good of the society can be limited by regulations so that for example I don't hold a speech that would be judged too subversive so for example by an important part of the population; if I criticize for example religions that have not yet gone through a certain number of limits asserted to personal freedom especially for women. Then you can see that personal freedom is a problem in itself that should be examined, social responsibility, here again like a citizen who is unemployed, is out of work, a woman citizen in a large number of countries should have the possibility to participate to corporate assets, to the property of the society, to advance the property of the society. Who decides all this? Hey well it is the law that reigns in the country. However the law that reigns in the country also has a history.
Yes pacific resistance is always desirable, [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes pacific resistance is always desirable, it is individually wished by all men but we didn't develop cultures of peace. In all cultures of the world including the Christian culture that taught since the gospels that it is necessary to resist violence by the integration of suffering of the human condition and to go past violence by the integration of suffering while sharing the suffering of the other; what itself a magnificent teaching but that has not been applied, that didn't give place to a theology of peace and a theology of peace that must necessarily begin by fighting the inherent violence to theologies developed by the monotheistic religions and the other religions in the world that are not monotheistic. I already evoked the question of the religious truth that becomes a belief and that becomes a knowledge applied by all supporters. The sermon of peace inside the religious communities touches as well members of the community as members outside the community. The members outside the community also have the same aptitudes for violence, the same relations to violence that exercises a monolithic conception of the truth and therefore we are in a permanent war condition and not in a condition of peace that, lasting and permanent because I repeat it doesn't have an education inside cultures of peace. It supposes a lot of conditions, in particular of education systems that give an important room to the education decisive that are the teaching of compared history of religions, compared history of religions and ideologies of modernity developed under the intellectual and scientific reign of modernity. It is necessary to redo all that history while widening our point of view, while widening the examination of problems while using another science that has been little used so far and that is anthropology. Anthropology as it is still taught today exhausts on the ethnography like the one of the 19eme that an anthropology that attacks to problems as those that we have just evoked: culture of peace and culture of violence, culture of unbelief, and culture of unbelief as ideology. These are problems
I don't like the word hero. I prefer the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I don't like the word hero. I prefer the word witness. The witnesses of moments of pain and moments of jubilation, of euphoria which reflect in a better way the humanity of man. And there have always been these witnesses, in every culture in history which we know today. There have been philosophical authorities since the ancient Greece, there have been spiritual and religious authorities which cultivated a kind of curiosity inside the religions which allows to exceed the institutional religion and the prison which the religion becomes sometimes with its repetitive rituals which nullify very fast the esprit of research which makes people advance and which forces humans to enrich themselves mutually. In the islamic tradition the word "Isnad" designates the authorities who transmitted the knowledge of experience since the experience of Medine,where in the name of the prophet the assumption was announced that curiosity has to be conserved and that the prophetic dialog has to be maintained which opens horizons of sensibility and action which associate with each other. And there have been spiritual authorities and not powerful authorities which saved this strive for innovation and axiom that we have to know before we act and not to act before we know. And that's what should mobilise us instead of heros which we prefer sometimes.
It's evident that creativity and [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It's evident that creativity and ingeniousness have to be encouraged in all areas and it's not acceptable to limitate them by patent laws which try to protect the subrogates of the author of an invention which is legitimate but only to a certain degree. And this degree has to be determined in every different case and in all societies and worldwide as an invention doesn't stop at the frontiers of a society or of a state but an invention concerns the whole world. And there is a legitimate right to protect the patents but only to the degree where there is menace of the reduction of creativity and ingeniousness of people which are not able to continue their necessary work and to complete their own invention. And that's a question about profit, about enrichment and about problems of rivalry. And I remember concerning AIDS that there are fights and rivalries between french and american scientists concerning the research about an AIDS drug.
Even if i'm not really competent in this [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Even if i'm not really competent in this kind of question, i will say yes. But these limits must be determined by experts in an accurate way. That's why it's difficult to work about this topic if one doesn't know the geological or climatic facts and the capacities needed to rebuild those ecological areas that were destroyed. All this makes the scientific research capable to mesure out these limits. In every case, even without the important question of ecological limits or the question of energy, it's important to respect the ecological environnement by treating it as a living place that's getting worse like our body that's getting worse by age or that is getting worse by precisely this environment and hygienical elements that are bad for our health. That is what should be a first limit. It is a cultural limit that every habitant of the planet has got to respect the planet and himself and to care about the physical and moral integrity of a human person. Therefore it is a philosophy and a philosophy that implicates the human beeing. That is the most certain limit to protect our ecology or to protect ourselves.
There surely are possibilities to controle [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: There surely are possibilities to controle every citizen in the world today by modern surveillance means and modern means of controle by society. But there are laws in the democratic societies that protect certain rights of private life and protect also the things that belong to the private life of the citizens. We need to hope that these rules that controle the function of these modern technologies will be reenforced to be able to continue to protect citizens against profanation in some kind of private and personal life. But I think, that our closeness and our personal lifes can be protected by our own, by our own behaviour in not letting penetrate these means of controle our personal life. This can be done by making and by participating at these laws and by cheering the rules that already exist and that protect citizens. Therefore, i don't think that there's a reason to be more alarmed because we, the citizens, are also able to oranize the protection and the defense of ourselfs. This menace exists and is real but its not out of the range of our own control.
It's the modern lifestyle which includes a [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It's the modern lifestyle which includes a comfort which makes every physical effort appear insupportable. The mechanical elevators in public buildings for example like in the metro and in the big shopping centres mulitplied and it's strange to see youth which are between 12 and 20 years old use these elevators or use mechanical stairways instead of going by foot. People use the elevators to gain time as they are faster than by foot. And it's comprehensive it people use them to temporise. And I say this as I've never seen neither a youth nor an adult which is as fit as a fiddle prefering to climb the stairs instead of using the mechanical stairways or the elevator. And that's an example which shows the menace of technologies which is enforced by a policy which goes against a minimum of effort. And we have to preserve that effort in our life for hygienic reasons and also to conserve this idea that the effort in the range of intellectual morality as well as in the physical life is something positive for a person. And all this is related to the economy of consumption which is at the same time a profit orientated economy and more we consume there is all the more profit.
That are creditable desires but they are [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: That are creditable desires but they are difficult to realise. As we totally broke with every kind of morality as we have to talk about morality and not only about politics. We have to live a durable life and this has to deal with controlling yourself and not to be in favor of overconsumption to encourage the disposible economy, an economy which is designed to use machines which are created to function for two month, three months or even six months, at most one year and which demand for a repairing which is too expensive or a new machine as surrogate which just exits from the factory and which is more modern and has a higher performance. The liberal economie if it functions, is in favor of disposible objects and in this way a durable way of life is no more compatible with an economie which encourages disposible products. And we do not only throw away the diposible products after the first use. We throw away a book after reading it as we think it can not last longer than three, six or nine months as there is a big movement in the economie and in the mindset of people which goes against a durable way of life.
....for the animals, for the plants. So [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: ....for the animals, for the plants. So that's why water in the Koran for example, is considered as an essentiel product which can not be monopolised but which has to be divvied equally between all creatures as it is the first condition to be able to survive. So it's not only a symbol but a vital exigence felt by everybody and its a vital exigence for the animals and the plants, even if they do not have an awareness, we know how a plant desiccates and dies, and that's worthy of our compassion as it did not obtained water. And once again the divide of water provokes political conflicts as for example the Jordan river in the Middle East. The Jordan is a river because it flows a little bit. It was a river, a little river but although a river and it is very famous in the Middle East, in Palistine and it has become the reason for a conflict but there are also other conflicts about water as above all potabel water becomes rare as there is the the problem of polluted water all over the world. And as the production of drinking water is more and more pricy and as the industry has to interfere to produce it, this creates a new kind of dependence, this creates situations which could lead to conflicts, to an aggravation of violence. And it would be careless not to take steps to prevent these conflicts by creating a waterlaw, a law which regulises the distribution of water all over the world.
I don't know if this question is about the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I don't know if this question is about the technologies in the range of biological discoveries, like the artificial insemination, like the clonage and everything which concerns the personnality of the human life and its protection so that it can not be selled or buyed. There are ethics committees in the majority of the countries where this menace exists. Governments take this problem seriously. I personally was a member of the ethics committee of science of life which has been created at the beginning of the 1970s in France. Within such a committee you discuss ethical problems which the modern technologies are posing and you discuss about everything concerning the human life and the attempts on human integrity. Today technologie is potentially noxious. As there is for example the development of arms, and the production of these arms, the circulation and the sale of arms allow the actual wars and also allow terrorist attacks. And that's a real menace and it poses a problem which has not being solved yet.
Mohammed Arkoun:
I already said something concerning the role [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I already said something concerning the role of the medias and the positive potential of the role of the medias in our current societies. I will not repeat myself but I have to insist that we are living in societies of consumption of spectacles, in a society of spectacles. Spectacles which represent a recreation for the population which wants to relax after a hard workday. And thats the society of consumption, where the consumption is a kind of recreation, a kind of relax. But this can not replace the culture of reflexion, the cultures where the intellectual ressources are actived to proceed and to understand what happens to us in the societies of consumption and what happens if we consume the spectacle without having the ideological conditioning this spectacle exposures us to, as this spectacle gives us a feeling of relax and even of joy as we watch television which offers primarily these spectacles. And these spectacles attract the majority of spectators and so there is the highest audience rating. So there is a decline of culture in the television which is accompagnied by the dicline of the entire culture which should better be offered to the spectators. So there are many problems which have not been solved until today.
That's the result of the continuously [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: That's the result of the continuously pressure of the market and of the profit orientated economy in all areas where considerable profits can be realised. So the commerce of the genetically modified organisms is a real menace for the public health, and the health of the people in general. And we are already victims of all these manipulations and interventions of the chemical industry and its preservatives. These preservatives are in the animals we cosume, in the skin of the animals, in the fishes, in everything in the food chain which is manipulated by interventions of artificial chemical additives which directly pose a threat to our personal life and it seems that these interventions are not enough controlled by a direct intervention of the political power. Because there are lobbies which exert pressure to get the necessary autorisations to be able to continue to circulate goods and aliments which should be controlled. That's a real menace, its known, the press is talking much about this issue. And it seems to me that the public opinion is very concerned and that people ask for political demissions.
This question is too simplifying as we have [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: This question is too simplifying as we have to distinguish between different scientifical disciplines. There are the so called exact disciplines as they are related to mathematic calculations and experiments in laboratories. If the experiment does not function, the set up gets changed and other experiments are performed until there is a coincidence between the aimed reality and the scientific result which allows to use this reality to create product for the domestic use. So we have to distinguish between these sciences and the human science and the science of society what we call soft science. Which means that it is very difficult to have objective results which reflect in very exact way the human life in a society, for example in Germany in the 10th century, in Germany at the age of Luther or to explain the collective memories which coexisted in the 19th century and during the two intereuropean wars between 1914 and 1918 and 1939 and 1945. These are the areas where objectivity is hard to reach.
What can we do? We have to rest inactive as [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: What can we do? We have to rest inactive as we see the countries unifying themselves at an international level to talk about this problem and we see dissonance and disagreement, we see a confrontation of countries which are in favor of ventured ecological politics and those which even refuse to participate to this contemporary movement of humanity vis-à-vis nature. So this once again a problem concerning political power and economical power. This fact shows that in general the countries play an important role but of course not every country. Mainly those countries that have more power to decide than those countries that must follow the decisions made by the most powerful nations that make the efforts ridiculous, perhaps not in vain, but ridiculous, that have been made by the citizens an certain civil societies or ecological parties who began to make public the topics of modern ecology without having a constant place in the hierarchy of political parties and without having enough influence to make their important ecological demands be followed. It's true that the ecological parties are badly prepared to inform about a culture of ecology by using scientific means or scientific knowledge and scientific culture to create sensitivity for the protection of nature and of creatures in all parts of life. THis is, i regret, neither possible with those parties that are, like other parties, more experienced in election campaigns than in informing the public opinion about an ecology that is based on the...[end of video]
If there will not be a policy of equalised [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: If there will not be a policy of equalised distribution of natural ressources on this planet, there will be incidents which will be more crude, more murderous and more inconsolable. There is no doubt. And thats not about frightening the occidental population but thats about a real menace as it is unthinkable to teach the Chinese or the Indians a lesson to make them consume less or to make them slow down their consumption. And we have to rethink our way to perceive the situation of power in the world, the way to perceive the acquiered privileges as there is a prehistory in the United States and in Europe concerning the discovery of modern technologies and the modern acquierements of science which are directly connected with the privileges the habitants of these parts of the world are profiting from. So we have to prepare this part of the world to think in another way and to abstain from violence to impose the dispossession of other countries to assure the continuity of comfort and advantages in the occidental countries. Thats what I call a new policy in the world, based on other principles than the principel of power and the principle of conquest and the principle of dispossession of the world which is very characteristical for the way in which the destination of our planet is managed since the powers of globalisation play a more and more decisive role concerning the impulsions, the demands and the choices which are imposed on the least by the strongest. I don't like all these expressions like "strongest" or "least", it reminds my of the tale written by La Fontaine but it also reminds me of the reality.
Architecture has an absolutely decisive role [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Architecture has an absolutely decisive role concerning the quality of human life in urban areas as well as in rural areas and so everywhere where people decide to live. Architecture has to connect the human being with its physical and ecological environment. So the architecture has to respect the existing climate, in cold and hot areas. There has been a considerable and pragmatical research about this issue in the traditional cultures and the traditional architectures. And the modern architecture with its great buildings, its big factories, its big monuments, its big public spaces, its offices has to be released in consideration of every job and every function to make work more comfortable and easier and to facilitate to the people living inside the building to mingle with each other, to contact each other. There is also the problem of the intervention of architecture in urban areas.
I dream of a futur where there is an [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I dream of a futur where there is an exchange of experiences between individuals and nations. And everybody introduces its knowledge about how human existence has to look like and what are the goals of this human existence which necessitates a complet change in the functioning of culture and a complete change in the system of transmission of knowledge which is accumulating in libraries, in books and which circulate between specialists without ever reaching the opinion, what we call the public opinion. That means that all the social classes which are obliged to a daily manual work and obliged to a everyday life and are deprived of any kind of participation like it once was in Athen. So we have to make them participate to the production of the most precious knowledge and to all the knowledge which allows to emancipate themselves. That presupposes the end of all nations which are striving for the power of the state, the power of the nation at the expense of the others. And that's what I call the negation of the exchange of human knowlege stipulated in cultures and produced by the people. So we have to overcome these ideological cultures and the nations and above all the religions and the religious communities which circumvented until today this type of communication.
It's surely a big opportunity. It's an [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It's surely a big opportunity. It's an occassion to improve the condition of human life by broading the communication between peoples, the communication and not the conditioning of peoples. It's the possibility to create a global conscience concerning the actual state of things. There is a considerable potential concerning education, information and emancipation of people. But the economical forces, the forces of the unique market, the forces of the open market, the forces of liberalism began to conquer this modern technologie and transformed it to have the highest audience rating, to have a higher profitability by sending commercials. And in this way they transformed an instrument of the civilisation, an instrument which could help to improve the life conditions in an instrument to condition in a psychological way all human beings on this planet by mispresented and manipulated informations. And in this way there has been the creation of a vocabulary which describes the world in one language or in two languages which are hegemonial and which will enforce the rapid disappearance of languages which are non written and so the disappearance of the oral cultures which assured the human existence since centuries. So there is also a huge transfert of opportunities to evil powers.
The human brain is much more precious than [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The human brain is much more precious than all machines that this brain is able to produce, as there is no machine which is not produced by the human brain. As the existence of a machine depends on the work of the human brain I see no reason why we should connect the human brain to machines. And furthermore there are already working connections. As the human brain diposes of a high-capacity computer, its opportunities to produce inventions and innovations and to bring up solutions are multiplied by the facilitation that the computer actually is. But the computer is still a product of the human brain. In this way the machines depend on the human brain and as if a machine is out of order it is the human brain which has to repair it or to produce another machine which is more efficient and which is not susceptible for defects. So this question suggests that the human brain is inferior to machines because of it is anterior but it is not the machine which produced the human brain.
We are far away of an education which [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: We are far away of an education which deserve its name. And that all over the world which includes the rich countries which would be able to pay an education which deserves its name. Concerning young children, we have to assure, that their teachers have a sufficing preparation as they teach in the elementary school and in the kindergarten. We also have to consider the parents, because children who come from a social setting which do not provides help and preparation, which is no company to the things learned at school, these children suffer at school. If it is very gifted a child will succed in getting out of this setting but there are many school drop outs which are due to this missing preparation on the part of the parents, a missing support and missing company. Concerning the adolescents at junior high school or high school, the formation of the teachers also leaves a lot to desire as they are not able to assure a decent education. That's why there is a lot of research about education.
We can say that every community is enclosed [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: We can say that every community is enclosed by its own heritage, is ritual life, its belief, by what it considers as true. This fonctions like a closure. In this closure there is knowledge which can come from outside if it is welcomed but there are communities which keep on being inpermeable towards everything which comes from outside and keep on living in a prison which they do not perceive like a prison. For them its the normal way of life because it coincides with their tradition. Today we challenge these cultures and these proper truth. As we recognize, that we can not keep on living with these truth that we consider as true and that we can not keep on living with these practices and beliefs which have never been verified. So we have to control our tradition from a point of view of the social science and to control our own heritages to exit these prisons which are theological, philosophical and ideological prisons as sometimes philosophy which is the intellectual exercice which normally keep a distance to the ideology, although contains some ideology.
There is a big diversity of knowledge and of [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: There is a big diversity of knowledge and of creation all over the world but the transmission of this knowledge raises unsolved problems. It's not necessairy to transmit to everybody the mathematical knowledge, the physical knowledge, the biological knowledge which are very special knowledges which demand presence in laboratories and it's the job of the researchers to trasmit this knowledge by teaching. But there are other kinds of knowledge which should by transmitted to the totality of the citizens of every country. That are the sciences of human and of society. And these sciences are badly transmitted in societies but they could give more safeness to every citizen to make him able to contribute to the society with critical knowledge and to improve the function of democracies above all in the electoral periods. The knowledge of the history of every society has to be transmitted and has to stay a living knowledge in every family and for every citizen as history allows to estimate the place of the country you are living in and to estimate historical solidarities of your country with other countries. And there is also the anthropological knowledge of the different cultural and ethno-cultural groupes which coexist in every contemporary society because of the waves of immigration all over the world. And thats also not transmitted in a sufficing way as the anthropolical culture is still ignored.
It's the desire to escape from the prison of [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It's the desire to escape from the prison of mind which I call the institutionalised ignorance. The ignorances which is transmitted by institutions to maintain whole people which are congealed in there repetition of this ignorance. And I want to give birth to the salutary truth and to defend them till death as they are universal values and virtues. Today we know that there is a false transmission of knowledge since several centuries, like the transmission of the knowledge figuring in what we call traditions, in the customs which existed even before the appearance of the great religions and in the religious traditions. And people added their own nesciences to the archaic nescience so we changed from a spiritual curiosity coming from the religions to a ritual formal reproduction of these religions.
Ideas, minds, culture are easy to sell, easy [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Ideas, minds, culture are easy to sell, easy to buy and it's easy to throw them away after using them for the first time. We are actually living in a civilisation of disposible minds, of disposible ideas, of a disposible culture. I see a film once and its rare that I watch it two times. I read a book, a roman once and I'm not willing to read it again. I read a book about sociologie once and I will write a reference book. If this reference book provide new thought-provoking impulses, to advance my intelligence of described realities I will keep this book and it will resist to this trend of disposible products and of consumption. This influences the personality and endangers the future of human education and of the insertion of human being in their environment, as their environment is a world of change, of trivia which are totally arbitrary and which causes the disappearance of what we call values. And the word value is difficult to insert into a conversation or into a book as the said values are the aim of a consumption which is related to the cyclical demand of the society. Today I ask for courage, tomorrow I'll ask for a certain abstinence or a certain obedient to the laws of economy as the oil is pricy or because certain foods are pricy. But that are cyclical virtues. They are no durable virtues which base the human subject on a durable humanism or a universal humanism which could be expanded to other cultures and other mindsets.
Yes, in the traditional religions, there was [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Yes, in the traditional religions, there was a teaching insisting precisely on this sensitivity to look at the world like a reservoir of signs referring to the creator of this world. And since men are invited to have a relation of love with this creator, through this, the man discerned in the nature so many messages sending back to the relation with God, to the spiritual experience of the divine. The other Christians of the middle age had a so sharp sense of the beauty of the environment, of the beauty of nature. They choosed the most beautiful places for the building of ..., of monasteries, of places of religious life and religious contemplation, In [the ....], in the Buddhism, in the Zen, in Japan we know how there is a whole sensitivity, strong sensitivity culture towards the beauty of the nature and the worship of this nature by gardens, the Japanese gardens are quite famous for it. Today our big cities, the urban civilization, moved us always from this intimacy with the beauties of nature and with its vibrations, with its living beings of the nature in their whole so that when we go to make, to spend one weekend in the country, we have a kind of surprise to suddenly find ourselves in a place of calmness, of peace which, where one has the desire to dive completely because we live in a time in which the urban life has considerably supplant everything that permits to live in communion with the nature , there is therefore something to cultivate and that is very important. . .
Thats a question which caracterizes the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Thats a question which caracterizes the actual situation of our civilisation and our relation to the evironment as fresh, pure and non polluted water becomes this rare, as it becomes nearly impossible for everybody on earth to dispose of pure water which was different in the past because of the ecological question, the respect of natural water and also because of the fact that water has been nearly completely replaced by industrial produced beverages. And Coca-Cola is the symbol of this industrial production which by its power of distribution and by the conquer of the liking even of young children as we know how they desperately demand from their parents to drink, drink and drink again Coca-Cola. So there are again powers which take a hand in the daily life of human beings and which make us depart from what we used to be acquainted with some years ago and the opposite of Coca-Cola on the one hand and fresh water on the other hand is a good illustration of this development. And this disruption is aggravating and nobody is able to say what will be the evolution of economy of tomorrow. What will become of the economic libarlism in the next ten years? And what will happen concerning this relationship between Coca-Cola and a glass of fresh water? And even if there is a glass of fresh water, it could be too irksome, it could contain too little minerals, it could be harmful, it could contain poison coming from the industry and so on. So that I will rather confide in a glass of Coca-Cola than in a glass of fresh water which is difficult to get. Thats a sign of our time.
We can learn a lot of things from [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: We can learn a lot of things from Africa. Africa is a continent which has a enourmos cultural richness as every culture has its own language which witnesses from the different ways of human evolution in different ecological, political and cultural conditions. Africa has been the setting of the first apparition of human life on this planet. African history, african sociology and african palaeontology are the origin of decisivly and important knowledge we have today and which makes us more modest and less arrogant, less cynical and less dominating as Africa lives on independently of which happened in the past. And this cultural richness allowed above all to these societies to develop a positive, human, and humanistic knowledge. We call these societies archaic, traditional or conservative, which is a value judgement which results of the so called civilised world, which gives names, which conceptualises the world since its conquests and this civilised world erasured all this knowledge and subordinated these societies to devastating powers, which are manipulated by nations or rulers, and which are not able to defend themselves.
I'll talk about it concerning Africa. There [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I'll talk about it concerning Africa. There are hundreds of local cultures and languages which disappear every day. There are linguists, historians of language which show off that there are 10 and more languages which are effaced every day as there is the hegemonial dominating pressure of what we call civilisation. Even the european languages are unequal and have to try to survive as we proceed to one dominating language, the esperanto. And the local languages, the dialects have little chances to survive. My own language is the Berber, a name which has been given to this language by the romans to the language which was spoken by the inhabitants of North Africa, from Lybia to Morocco, and this language disappears. There are attempts to save it, to save what is still there but these attempts are dominated by a policy which is in favour of a disappearance of this languages which are actually exist only partially. So I am personally concerned. So I know that's still too late to renew a certain number of languages which still disappeared. This makes us reflect on cultures, on the relation between cultures, and its the theorie of Darwin about species and the suvival of species, which is alsotrue for languages and cultures.
It has become difficult to attract the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: It has become difficult to attract the attention of the world. As the world is permanently bombarded by every kind of new ideas, theories and situations which arised in different cultures and different societies, urgent things which need the attention of the world, of the whole world and that's nearly impossible today. So we have to answer in a lapidary and rapid way and to give answers which approximate to the truth. If we want to attract the world's attention, we have to mulitply events and discussion forums like this so that all these questions are reviewed by all human beings living on this planet, by all citizens of the world to prepare them to the historical changeover to a world citizenship so that we are able to attract together this new attention which is necessary to proceed to a new age.
The most important story is one event. It's [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The most important story is one event. It's the 11th of september 2001 in Manhattan. The bad, tragical, and spectacular attack revealed the lies, the dismissals, the ommisials, the deceiving coherence the world continued to live in after the catastrophe, the other catastrophe, which has been World War two. 9/11 brings up the truth about the political demissions, and the tragedies which have been programmed by political decisions from 1945 to 2001. As you take a look on the historical origin of this attack, the political origin, the cultural, economic, human, urban origin of this event, on the rapid abolishment of traditional cultural codes which assured for centuries the cohabitation of peoples, big peoples and small peoples, which assured the security of the daily life of peoples, big peoples and small peoples. The rapid, radical, irreversible abolishment of these codes and I'm talking about thisas a witness as I come from a region in Algeria which is called "Kabylie" which is a region of oral culture since thousands of years, and which continued to be subordinated to this oral culture, to its cultural, traditional codes till the end of the algerian war in 1962. It's one example among many others. There are many examples in Africa, in Asia and even in the occidental societies. But this historical origin of the event has never been considered by the occidental mindset after the attack as the reactions to the attack were revenge, punishment, violence and wars. in Algeria which is called
Because the truth is not linear. It does [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Because the truth is not linear. It does not obey to a deductive logic or to a demonstrative logic. The truth is related to our existence to what life teaches us and what life makes us perceive as a indispensable fact of our existence. So the answers we can give to each question are related to our experience as the experience makes us believe that it is the truth. So there are not only the two possibilities, just and contradictive. There are many possible answers. So we have to be open minded towards the plurality of answers as they correspond to a plurality of experiences and each of them contains a witness we have to listen to concerning the way in which groups, individuals and isolated people experience the truth in their life and how they integrate this experience as truth in their life and how they try to transfer it to others as truth. So all these truth have to be transfered and have to be confronted with each other. In this way the truth is created by the comparation of different perceptions which rely on witnesses of different people.
I think describe it with three french [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I think describe it with three french verbs: disobey, convert, trespass. Trespassing all the cultural frontiers which are dividing people, trespassing all tabous I heritated from my tradition to not let me emprison by the repetition of cultural knowledge, behaviours and reglementations which are ruling my life inside my nation or my community. So people have to trespass all frontiers and all tabous. Furthermore they have to ask a tradtional question about god's law and on the opposite about the modern critical methods as a place of truth. They have to replace the positivistic historism by an open history which is open towards other levels of existence of a society to apply new critical interrogations as the new knowledge allows us to correct the ancient way in which the question of the reception of foundation myths has been treated.
Because the economy becomes more and more [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Because the economy becomes more and more ambitious. There is much economical pressure to produce more and faster and to realise profits which are necessary to invest and to proceed and to satisfy the needs for the numerous populations in all areas. And there is a kind of vicious circle between the demands and the exigence to produce. But there is also the danger of a concentration of places of production and a decline of consumers which belong to non-industrialised societies, and there is the tendency to only make consumers out of them whithout giving them the possiblity to participate to the production of the goods they are consuming and to the invention and the creativity we already talked about, as this is a need every man in the world has. There are also inequalities which are coming up and which deprive the majority of the societies from scientific knowledge and scientific research and in this way from technologie and which lowers them to a status of consumers. And in this way they always have to import goods without exporting goods and so they do not have a commercial balance and they are dependend of the producing countries because those dispose of the necessary technologies and ressources. So there is an accumulation of richness on the one side and a aggravation of poverty and dependancy on the other side.
You can't ask the question in this way as [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: You can't ask the question in this way as the demands of the market energise the continuity of research. The market provide the necessary ressources to allow the continuation of research and to proceed in innovation and invention. So the market has the important obligation to maintain the rythm of research and to make this research more copious. Actually there is the danger that the market subdues the research for a search for economical profits and that is promoted by those who own the industries and who use these industries only to make profits instead of being useful for the nations where they are located and which dispose of the technologies. And that's the adjustment of the function of the market in relation to the ideal function of scientific research. Scientific research is fundamental. It has to obtain priority compared to the market without denying the interests of the dynamic market as the dynamic market is necessary to support the possibility of research which is extremly pricy and which can not be continued without ressources. Concerning the military needs, we already talked about concerning violence, war and the will of the power, of the policy of power of the superpowers not only today but in every period of the imperialistic history, the colonial history, that's a big question which has to be answered.
In the ideal case its the responsibility of [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: In the ideal case its the responsibility of every habitant of our planet. If there is a sense in political and democratic participation, all habitants should be concerned and have to feel responsible for the ressources of the world. But the reality, as always, absolutely denies this vision of things and there are some people who own the biggest power and the most progessiv scientific ressources who use and abuse the ressources of this world as they take away from entire peoples their ressources which are on their territory. They always find out a way to acquire these ressources as the majority of societies which own mineral ressources does not disposes of the technology to assure the exploitation on there own and the owning states, the advanced states will come to exploit these ressources and thats called the expropriation of the world. The world is expropriated of its material ressources, of its human ressources as these human ressources are escaping from their states to go to states where there are payed better and where they can live a better life. And there is a big desequilibrium in the world which even becomes worse. Thats the origin of all disfunction in our world on every level. I say disfunction but I should say once more the spread of systematic violence.
The word "indigenous" from a ethomological [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The word "indigenous" from a ethomological point of view is not negative. It designates the first habitants, which appeared on a soil, on a geographical region on this planet. But the word"indigenous" has become an ideological concept and a concept of law which has been used by the frech, english and Dutch colonialists do designate the natives of a country which have to be differentiated from those people who came from the conquering countries and which installed themselves on this soil where they were not born on but where their children will be born to become themselves indigenous people. So I think the questioner uses this word in its sense of a categorisation of populations and in a way which designates the acces of these populations they had to a civilisation which behaved as if it was superior to the civilisation of the indegenous people. The conquerors came to them to civilise them, and to convey them to this civilisation in the way of charity, of love which is a historical lie which has been revealed by the history and which makes that everytime that the word indigenous is pronounced in front of the people who witnessed the period of colonialism, these people shiver with their souvenirs of the legal class which had been imposed to them by a country in their own country, on their own soil. So it would be very interesting to rewrite the history of the word indigenous as you consider the ethnical aspect.
The word manipulation is scary as it reminds [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The word manipulation is scary as it reminds me of an idea of propaganda, of psychological conditioning, of some ideological orientations and it is difficult to control these genetically manipulations. And there is also the human affection to dominate populations, to exploit populations to reach absolute inhuman goals like the search for ecomical richness or the search for power if there are particular states which use these genetical manipulations and do not respect the fundamental values of democracy. And the public opinion does not have enough information about this. Normaly there is every kind of manipulation without giving the population the possibility to estimate the dangers. And accordingly to its definition, a ideology will never allow to its citizens to reveal all strategies of domination contained in an ideology.
The truth and the facts, nutrition facts as [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The truth and the facts, nutrition facts as it is written on all medicaments in english, are the product of the language we use in our society. We masquerade the reality and we present it as the truth, as certainties which are determinating our options, our choices in our life and we don't even ask how this truth came off. And what we call facts, the deadpan fact, that's something which is not alive, and we don't know its historical, sociological or psycho-linguistic origin whithin the different societies. But the human sciences and the sciences of the society allow to discover that the truth is an imaginary construction, that our societies are imaginary constructions which are forcing us to imagine another existence in another society. And the societies themselves create imaginary processes, so that we consider them as places where the truth is unearthed and where the truth becomes manifest in. And they make that we consider them as places where we have to respect the facts as facts at the moment when they emerge as if there were no prehistory and as if these facts were in no relation with the collective memory, with languages and as if there were no difference between different languages concerning the apperception of facts as every apperception is the result of different events in the collective memory. That's a very important issue.
There three principal values. You have to [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: There three principal values. You have to allow your child to question, to expose its questions, to develop its desire to discover the world by questioning. There are unfortunately parents which repress questions who roar at their child if it asks too many questions instead of leaving the child its spontaneity in the world by questioning. If you act in this way you offer the possibility to a child to grow up in the best way. And as you answer its questions you can initiate it to listen and in this way to understand the explication and furthermore to give him the instruments to satisfy on its own its questions which come to its mind. So asking question, listening and to practice the instruments of thinking. And these instrument have to be developed by a preconceived pedagogy on the part of the parents and the first teachers at school which have to consider the sensibility of the child and the expectations of the child so that its skills, its imagination, its critical mind and its intellect begin to move and activate whith the help of those who offer ways to open its mind. And in this way a child can have a critical relation to its environment.
The most interesting in arts is the [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The most interesting in arts is the capability of man to create beauty. To create a beauty which asks, a beauty which collects a creativity which is even more enriching and which assure that the man is able to revive capacity to perceive an aesthetic emotion of everybody, which overbears all culturalfrontiers. Which overbears all the frontiers created by different languages, as the language of art act by the aesthetic emotion of forms, coulors and sounds which are accesible for all human beings. And it overbears the frontiers created by communication because of different languages. As you can not participate to an emotion if you don't master the language and its the emotion which constitutes the human being as human being and it is the act of creation of an artist which makes us communicate, the act ofcreation which the religions teached us to admire, to loveand to transform into an act of devotion. The act of creation of gods or of the unique god. We are talking again about the roots of human creativity.
The birth of intelligence of a child. The [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The birth of intelligence of a child. The manisfestation of an adult's desires to understand. The unlimited curiosity which is cultivated systematically at age of adulthood as well as at the age of infancy which makes us proceed in our own knowledge and in a knowledge which integrates the knowledge of others. The others are like a mirror which enriches me at the moment they regard me and they invite me to improve my curiosities and to orientate my curiosities to agree with all the others so that everybody is represented by everybody. You have to integrate "the other" as a constant partner, so we have to live with the achievements of the modern culture, which god as a living being represented in the religious experience of the divine during the age of the cultures which were informed by religions. And in this way the spiritual and the religious values of the ancient humanity reconciliate with another, modern humanity which is enriched by the experiences and the achievements of the modernity which allows us to break new ground which includes the past, the actual needs and the preparation of another future.
This question is interesting as it approves [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: This question is interesting as it approves the importance of the myth in the cultures and in civilisations. It approves the fact that what we call our cultures and our referencies to culural and intellectual values are based on foundation myths. And the bible is a good example. But these foundation myths are today a problem for the religious belief. And the modernity has the tendency to debase these religious beliefs as they are based on myths and not on positive knowledge of realities on which the values promoted by the narrations of the Bible, of the Coran, of the foundation myths of the hinduistic religion or the foundation myth of modernity as modernity itself is based on foundation myths and on foundation narrations of the the Enlightenment. So the particularity concerning modernity is the fact that modernity conquered the instruments of analysis which allow to discover and to cognize that it is based on foundation stories. This question is interesting as it accepts to base a better world on myths and not on positive knowledge which is controlled, which allow to have a more solid base, a base of history, of sociology and of political institution which more resistant and more solid than a mystical story. It's interesting.
Thats a question for specialists of energy [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Thats a question for specialists of energy and renewable energy. But we still do not sufficently master these energies to know in which way we have to orientate an energy policy which considers the actual energy consumption and the energy reserves of "easy energies" like oil or gaz that we consumed until today. But there is still enough of time to use renewable energies and to experiment with their rentability and durability just to reduce the fear people have about a general energy crisis in the future which comes along with a crisis of the entire contemporary humanity which is strictly consuming the easy energies, the energy which is easy accessible, which means petrol and gaz and electricity which is produced in a more and more important quantity by using nuclear power. But as we all know there is much fear about atomic energy.
Humanity is an abstract concept. It's a [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Humanity is an abstract concept. It's a global and diffuse vision of millions of people, of billions of people which do not have concrete existence. Humanity has no human face as I can regard or which regards me when I talk to it, as it listens to me or if it answers. So we have to firstly consider the human face to reach humanity. We can do so by communication between human faces and we have to integrate the concrete reality and the dimension of what we call humanity. And in this way humanity overcomes all nationalities and shows off that the affiliation to a nationality is something redundant and ridiculous. It's only a passport you need to travel from one country to another. It's also a special historical heritage. All countries in the world have a historical background which constitutes a totality of history, cultur, intelligence and creativity. And so the affiliation to a nationality is a historical background which sinks in my mind and in my life as I consider this historical background in a critical way and as I do not glorify or idealise it, to create an idea of a glorious nation which has the destination to dominate others as it already happened in the past. So nationality is something good as long as you able to control it and as the role of humanity serves as reference.
I just said to my neighbour that he should [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I just said to my neighbour that he should visit France to have good food. But it was a joke as France which has a good reputation concerning its kitchen is also a part of the general movement of consumption which is based on an alimentary production which takes place in factories, which is a massproduction, a production of frozen food, a fast-food production and this is related with the market economy, the liberal economy and the profit orientated economy. The societies of consumption are forming a whole civilisation which is at risk and the movement of this civilisation is this powerful that there are only little chances to stop or to decelerate it or at the least to establish a food hygiene or to return to quality food. But this is not compatible with the actual situation as the demand for food is very high. There have been question about the hunger in the world about states where the people are throwing away food whereas in other states the people die of hunger. But these facts are not considered by the big decision makers in the economy or in politics and by those who are enforcing this kind of culture which accompagny this economic situation in the world. We do not have a culture which offers new ideas to the economy to make it function in the right way.
That's an issue which has not been treated [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: That's an issue which has not been treated sufficently. Religion has only a little stake in these questions and that's a sign of our culture of belief, the culture of disbelief compared to the culture of religious belief. Religion has become the blind angle of our modern culture as the modern culture triumphed, as it took on the intellectual power the scientific power at the same time as the political power and the religions have been marginalised as object of studies and knowledge and it has been reduced to an object of belief which is private to different communities which are separated one from another because of these beliefs which are subjective and particular in every community. And now religion returns in the shape of menace, of fundamentalism and in the shape of terrorism. And our culture is not able to manage this return and we are afloated by a literature which continues to mess around with this issue and which continues to teach ignorance and to cirulate disastrous ignorances and which add violence to violence by the systematical demonisation of those which keep on being prisoners of fundamentalistic beliefs which we overbeared due to modernity. So thats another issue concerning the actual violence, the actual wars, and thats a blind angle of the transmission of the knowledge of our educational system and what the media are diffusing concerning this issue, aggravates the situation of ignorance towards the human experience which is contained in the Divan, in the religions but also in the laical spiritualities.
I think this fact is still [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: I think this fact is still irreversible. It's true that cities, their architecture and the urbanism builded under the demographical pressure in the years between 1960 and 1990. This is decelerating but the population is already there and it is immense. So this architecture and this urbanism will be replaced one day by other forms do give the new populations the possibilities to develop, to evolve in conditions which are totally different of those we have today in the metropolis. And there are not only differences in identity we have to regard or to conserve. And we have to use the right instruments like the development of the knowledge of different cultures which is about the insertion of man in different natural milieus. But the fight for identities is today rather about orientations and needs, ideological political urgencies than about the search for cultural identities and every human group made its own irreducible experiences about this. Irreducible because of a particular language and a particular ecological environment.
This question begins with a sentence which [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: This question begins with a sentence which seem to be real but which do not reflects the truth. White people have never been oppressed by slavery. Black people have a historical stigma as they are the descendant of slaves and until today there are forms of slavery which affect those who already suffered from this stigma of slavery in a physical and a mental way. So it's sometimes dangerous to talk about the truth. I'm radically against this expression "I am white, but even" because I as algerian often heard this expression not concerning white people and black people but concerning the people from north Africa as we are white but as we are anyhow considered as blacks. So we have to widen our point of view. We have to think about the vocabulary we use to avoid false truths which seem to be true in the way we say it. So we have to rethink everything which is contained in this question and if I had the time I would reveal all the untenable statements in this question which represent the entire character of attitude of white people in the discours with not only black people but Africans in general, or dominated people in general, or dispossessed people in general. As the expropriation at the beginning of the 3rd century reached a dimension which never existed in history as this has become a permament situation and as it is not only an episode of colonialisation or slavery.
There are too many things that an adolescent [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: There are too many things that an adolescent should learn from the highschool age on. The anthropological culture is underrepresented in the curriculars at high school. And you do not have to confound anthropology with the ethnography of the beginning of the 19th century which classified races and ethnical groups and regards them from outside. The anthropology does not regard any human collectivity from outside. It has a look from inside and admit them to the floor, as it respects them as an entire collectivity which has something to say and which has a cultural background. History is also neglected hy the educational system. To know my history by the collective memories which coexist in my society is a must if you want to get out of the ideological and arbitrary presentations of others, you have to reject them as they are barbarian and you have to fight them to erase them. We are at the opposite of the education we should give. The question asks what should a young adult read but we don't read no more. People prefer to watch television and do not read.
The internet can be used for every kind of [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The internet can be used for every kind of manipulation by different powerful groups, for every kind of ideologic driftage, political driftage, and in general for driftages which are damaging people. You can not deny this, this exists and the menaces exist and the states try to be vigilant but the civil societies just have to develop instruments of defense without excepting the help of the state. Because the state has no the constant concern about this instrument which is a mulitvalent instrument which can bring up the best and the worst, but which can also bring up opportunities for the people to grow and to strive for emancipation and better life. And the communitarism is a big menace for these driftages as we observe today that the actual societies are plenty of rivalries between social classes, between professional categories, between peoples and nations, between religions, between ideologies and philosophies. And these conflicts will not end and can not be reduced and the instrument of the internet can even increase them.
That's a scary future if you think about [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: That's a scary future if you think about cities like Mexico City or Kairo in which are living up to 17 million habitants or even more but the infrastructures of these very old cities especially in Kairo, Bombay, Carachi or Jakarta etc., are still the same as they have already been at the beginning of the 20th century in some districts. And the actual city policy is far away from considering the new problems of urban areas and the pressures on urban areas. The cities are becoming a place of confrontation, a place where the collective memory disintegrates, a place of social ruptures, a place where frustration accumulates, where people backtrack to their individual level or to the level of a group what we fearful call the communitarism which becomes more and more important in urban areas and not only in rural areas as it was before. So there is a problem of a new architecture, problems of urbanism. We have to create urban areas which are a discussion forum of different social classes, a place of common undertakings, a place of parting, a place of active and positive cohabitation instead of being places of panic, places which are divided in dangerous areas and areas of comfort but of a comfort which is more and more troubled by menaces coming from the surrounding suburbs which are difficult to control as the urban concentrations press down more and more on the governments.
Thats a question which is typically [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: Thats a question which is typically european, occidental and eurocentrical as it comes from Germany but it could also come from France or from the United States. In the United States as well as in Germany there are families which have four or five cars, one for each son or daughter and thats considered as normal. And if the chinese do not interfered people would cotinue to have several cars and to feed the car industry and everything would be great. But there is the perspective that each chinese could have a car or that each chinese family could have four or five car thats like terror as this destroys the tranquillity of our spirit as everybody profitated for a long time from this possibility. This is a way to ask questions without critizising the questioner. Thats about the mood of european and occidental subjectivity which considers the advantages and the privileges as absolutely acquiered and this already for a long time. And its not imaginable that they could be replaced by a form of equality, the right for everybody in the world to have a car as there are the Indians, which is also very populated, there is Russia, there is the entire african continent, so why not? So we have to exit this egoistical logic and to enter a more humanstic logic of distribution of chances and opportunities and not keep alive this division of the world where me, I can have and the other can not have.
The word egoism is just part of what makes [...]
Mohammed Arkoun: The word egoism is just part of what makes up failure - or rather, failures; it's not failure in its sigular form, but the failures of humans in their lives and, in particular, the passion of leading their lives in society. Humans have related to what they call the truth during all the times when truth has been tied to religious faith. Religous faith, which has been received, taught, transmitted, lived just like true knowledge. This has continued for centuries, and still continues today since today we still have numerous populations living in religious cultures, where the question of truth, relation to truth, is guaranteed; most notably in the montheistic religions by virtue of a god who teaches the true knowledge in all respects and without permitting doubt. Thus there is a problem of criticizing what people call the truth. And also truth itself - we live it in the framework of modernity, which has disposed of the reference to religion, but which also maintains a form of belief, the truth of which is taught by modernity. There remains a faith, and there remains a faith that works like knowledge and that also needs to be submitted to that same critical distance I just mentioned regarding the truth. Hence it is necessary to get to the bottom of things. As a matter of fact, the truth that is lived like an absolute reference will effectively create collective egoisms, collective encapsulations.
