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Intercultural Understanding: Max Weber and Leo Strauss
Ahmad Sadri, Mahmoud Sadri
Introduction
For much of human history intercultural understanding has been
precluded by fantastic folkloric and mythological conceptions about
inhabitants of exotic lands. What the contemporary academic lexicon
defines as xenophobia, ethnocentrism and prejudice have often been
the very basis of judgments about the ways of life and belief in
other societies. The western social sciences evolved in part by
serving or rebelling against such judgments in the course of the
last three centuries.1 They have sometimes fallen prey to pitfalls
of both extremes. But vacillating between these extremes, we
contend, has gradually enabled the social sciences to identify and
articulate the central problems involved in acquiring valid
knowledge of other societies. 2 Thus, to ignore all the social
sciences' substantive, methodological and critical achievements 3
concerning the intricacies of intercultural understanding and
research may represent an unglamorous naivete in which problems and
solutions seem deceptively facile and final. Still, Leo Strauss'
unhesitant denunciation of the social scientific approach toward
intercultural understanding calls for a review of his intriguing
invitation to an alternative method of understanding other cultures
and societies. It also requires a reappraisal of the
accomplishments of the social sciences in this respect. The focus
of the present evaluation, therefore, is Strauss' criticism of
social science in general and his critique of Max Weber's
methodology and sociology in particular. An exegesis of the
anthropological and sociological implications of a Weberian theory
of intercultural understanding will conclude this essay.
1. Of Strauss
Leo Strauss considered modernity as narrowing, rather than as an
"enlargement of the horizon" of classical thought, 4 and thus
Politics, Culture, and Society 392 9 1988 Human Sciences Press
Volume 1, Number 3, Spring 1988
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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 393
regarded "enlightenment" as "obfuscation. ''5 Still, some
Strauss- eans have insisted that the study of the modern social
sciences, an obvious progeny of the above currents, "constitutes an
excellent example of the cast of his mind and the way in which he
proceeded. ''6 They further assert that Strauss, despite his lack
of interest in the new social sciences as an important intellectual
movement, felt a "severe moral responsibility"* to study "almost
all of the literature ''7 which they produced.
Judging from Strauss' works, however, one can not conclude that
he studied such disciplines as anthropology and the philosophy of
social science with any seriousness, or that he solved,
transcended, or successfully sidestepped issues raised and
discussed by the modern social sciences regarding intercultural
understanding and evaluation. An understanding of Strauss'
political philosophical orientation requires an appreciation of his
early intellectual interests and gravitations.
Without disregarding the Straussean dictum that we must
understand a writer "as he understood himself or desired to be
understood," we can establish that Strauss' project was motivated
by subtle paradoxical sensitivities sharpened by ethnic and
historic frictions and taxed by the catastrophic emergence of
Fascism which brought unprecedented enmity and violence to his
refined native culture. The existing consensus about the effects of
Strauss' background on his intellectual interests is authenticated
by his own recollections of himself as "a young Jew born and raised
in Germany who found himself in the grip of the
theological-political predicament. ''1~ A sympathetic commentator
underscores Strauss' own assessment: "He was born a Jew in a
country where Jews cherished the greatest secular hopes and
suffered the worst terrible persecutions. ''11 Similarly, a critic
maintains that "as a Jewish thinker he experienced the conflict
(between reason and religion) within himself. ''12 Far from
relativising the content of Strauss'
* One should bear in mind, however, that the morally outraged
Strauss was neither the first nor the only scholar to suspect the
intent and the validity of social sciences or to warn against
dangers of their practice, s However revolutionary Strauss'
teachings might have sounded to his American students who
admittedly had until then been exposed to nothing but liberal,
modernist and abundantly tolerant academic environments, 9 his
rhetoric strikes familiar chords for those who study defensive
postures of the intellectual elite of civilizations in crisis. In
one such instance with which the authors of this paper are
intimately familiar (Iran of 1950's to 1970's), a rising generation
of scholars criticized the demoralizing effects of skepticism,
universalism, and the pure tolerance advocated by the western
social science s . The rhetoric of these theologians, literary
scholars and social philosophers against relativism and
historicism, and their belief in the knowability of absolute
truths, universal criteria of justice, and the validity of
traditional and religious heritage closely parallel the Straussean
arguments.
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394 Politics, Culture, and Society
ideas, these observations are meant to complement our compre-
hension of Strauss' thought in relation to a specific intellectual
and historical context. .13
Strauss' project of recovering the pristine principles of
"reason and faith," or of Greek "right thinking" and "Jewish right
acting" from dual fountainheads of intellect and morality located
in Athens and Jerusalem, 14 represents an obviously simplified
intellectual geography. *.1~ The hypothetical assumption that such
a bi-focal tunnel vision may be the result of Strauss' belief in
the existence of "separate and discrete cultures" with "no actual
relations with one other," and that he, therefore, simply wished to
"enter upon possession of his own inheritance by reenacting the
genesis of his own civi l izat ion.. , as a western man. . ,
minding his own business ''16 is plausible only if we ignore
Strauss' conviction that the Judeo-Greek heritage constitutes the
sole repository of eternal and universal notions of truth and
justice. Indeed, it was on this basis that he criticized the modern
social sciences for their "recognition of all civilizations as
equally respectable," and for their acceptance "as morality,
religion, art, knowledge, state, etc., whatever claimed to be
morality, religion, art, etc. ''17
Strauss' swift and sweeping judgments, which dismiss or doom to
inferiority (and worse) all that does not belong to or vacillate
between Athens and Jerusalem, must be understood as a contribution
to the polemarchian and ultimately Xenophonean notion of justice:
"justice does not consist in helping eve- ryone. . , not even in .
. . helping all good men" but only "in helping one's friends, i.e.,
one's fellow citizens, and in hating [which does not exclude
"hurting"] one's enemies. ''is Strauss seems to have advanced this
imperative beyond the sphere of international politics to the world
of intercultural and intercivilizational understanding.
"Transcending city," argued Strauss, "means transcending justice.
''19 It is strange that Strauss would advocate intercultural value
judgments without recourse to a broader notion of justice and
without detailed and close knowledge of non-western cultures. His
understanding of the world outside the Occident
* The distinction between relationism and relativism first
introduced by Mannheim--and inspired by Scheler--may inform a
nonreductionist sociology of knowledge, Strauss himself engaged in
this type of analysis when he described the socio-psychological
background of Max Weber's thought.
** Even within the confines of such projects the Straussean
dualism is not the only conceivable formula. Nikos Kazantzakis, the
Bergsonian philosopher-poet, for example, has introduced a "Cretan
glance" overlooking the fateful convergence of the Greek and the
Indian worlds.
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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 395
hardly exceeded Edmond Burke's pictograph of "the great map of
mankind" or Gibbon's image of a "world of barbarism and savagery."
In this respect Strauss was merely a consumer of what Edward Said
calls the "orientalist vision: .... A vision by no means confined
to the professional scholar, but rather the common possession of
all who have thought about orient in the west. ''2~ It is not
surprising, therefore, that Strauss' grasp of such contemporary
issues as "underdevelopment" hardly exceeds that of a layman.
2~
As an alternative to the social scientific approach Strauss
argued for the logical possibility and utility of the knowledge of
ultimate truths concerning social and cultural phenomena. His noble
propositions, however, usually remain hypothetical. For example
Strauss bids at one point:
Let us assume that we had genuine knowledge of right and wrong,
or of the Ought, or of the true value system. That knowledge, while
not derived from empirical science, would legitimately direct all
empirical social science; it would be the foundation of all
empirical social science... If there were genuine knowledge of the
ends, that knowledge would naturally guide all search for means.
There would be no reasons to delegate knowledge of the ends to
social philosophy and the search for the means to an independent
social science. Based on genuine knowledge of the true ends, social
science would search for the proper means to those ends; it would
lead up to objective and specific value judgments regarding
policies. Social science would be a truly policymaking, not to say
architectonic, science rather than a mere supplier of data for the
real policymakers. 22
While the knowledge of the "true value system" may not be
logically impossible to acquire, nowhere does Strauss provide an
explanation as to how it could actually be reached. The sequence of
"would be's" and "ifs" in Strauss' Athenina project, may well
deserve a Laconic retort: I~.* Strauss does not always stop at the
consideration of a possibility. He would also argue for the
undemonstrabil ity of an impossibility. Notice, for example, his
objection to Max Weber, whom he had dubbed "the greatest social
scientist of our century: ''2s "He never proved that unassisted
human mind is incapable of arriving at objective norms or that the
conflict
* The Laconians, also known as Spartans, had a flare for brevity
of speech. The proverbial Laconism of Spartans is exemplified in
their one word reply to their hostile neighbors. Locked in an
inconclusive siege, the commander of the Athenian army wrote a
wastefully long letter, elaborating on the horrors that awaited the
Spartans if their city were captured. The Spartan response was
truely laconic: "If."
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396 Politics, Culture, and Society
between different this-worldly ethical doctrines is insoluble by
human reason. ''24
Strauss attempts to refute an assortment of (conveniently
summarized) "historicist" and "relativist" claims in a manner
consistent with the above strategies. He maintains, for example,
that the variety of notions of right does not prove the
"nonexistence of natural right or the conventional character of all
right. ''25 The history of ideas, he observes, simply demonstrates
the succession of ideas. "It does not teach us whether the change
was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected.
''26 Even Strauss' more substantive arguments on the possibility,
utility, and indeed, necessity of arriving at universal and
knowable criteria of truth, justice and cultural excellence are
wanting in substance: "All human thought, and certainly all
philosophic thought, is concerned with the same fundamental themes
or the same fundamental problems, and therefore there exists an
unchanging framework which persists in all changes of human
knowledge of both facts and principles. ''27
Strauss' exegeses of political philosophy and modern social
science hark back to the Socratic question of "how man ought to
live," a question which in Strauss' view is "susceptible to a final
solution. ''2s Hence his critique of modernism, enlightenment, the
social sciences, conventionalism, relativism, historicism and
positivism. Strauss apparently thought his project for recovering
the absolute and unchangeable "principles of right of goodness"
could be achieved without venturing beyond the pale of Occidental
civilization. Yet he seemed to enjoy taking rhetorical shots at
whatever lay beyond. Strauss' intercultural frameworks consist of
such incriminating dichotomies as "superior and inferior," "genuine
and spurious," "true and false," "just and unjust." Understandably
he keeps his distance from details that would blur the starkness of
his contrasts; nevertheless he makes his views sufficiently clear
by deploring the very practice of comparing "our standards with
theirs," and by conveniently identifying "ours" as "civilized" and
"theirs" as "cannibal" societies. 2~ The closer Strauss comes to a
concrete comparison of actually existing instances, the easier it
becomes to assess the empirical worth of his arguments.
Despite his vituperatives against the social sciences' lax and
lazy relativistic attitude in intercultural studies, Strauss'
advocacy of the self-evidence of the superiority of western
standards fails to provide a viable and vigorous alternative. For
self-righteous claims to superiority of exponents of various
cultures especially when they are made at the expense of
intellectual fairness, or when they are informed by mere opinions
and myths about other cultures,
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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 397
constitute the very problem of intercultural understanding and
not its solution. The appeal of Strauss' naive relegation of non-
Occ identa l cultures and c iv i l izat ions: lies in its nosta lg
ic ethnocentr ism which offers soothing comfort and
self-confirmation to those who are weary of encountering the vortex
of intercultural understanding. By rejecting the Kant ian
separation of facts and values, of scientific investigation and
judgmental evaluations Strauss collapses the Weberian distinction
between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology,
anthropology and history, and the dogmatic disciplines such as
jurisprudence, ethics and aesthetics. 30
Thus, the attitude of Straussean anthropologist is that of a
judge in a "Tr ibunal" - -an allegory of which Strauss is extremely
fond. Possible uneasiness about this dubious promotion, however, is
dissipated as the Straussean judge finds out that he will preside
over imaginary cases which are already tr immed of all of their
complexities and reduced to a series of dichotomous antinomies.
Perfect mythological symmetries reduce the dimensions of the
cultural world to a dualistic projection. Surely, "humani ty and
barbar ism," "knowledge and notorious nonsense," "civil ization and
cannibal ism" cannot be equated. .31 Given the nature of these
cases, the task of the anthropologist/ judge could not be a
difficult one, unless, of course, the judge happens to be a
"generous liberal" who thinks good is equivalent to evil. For those
who fail to see the differences in such black and white terms,
Strauss points out where to look for the crucial differences:
The sociologist of religion cannot help noting the difference
between those who try to gain the favor of their gods by flattering
and bribing them and those who try to gain it by a change of heart.
Can he see this difference without seeing at the same time the
difference of rank which it implies, the difference between a
mercenary and a nonmercenary attitude? Is he not forced to realize
that to attempt to bribe the gods is tantamount to trying to be the
lord or employer of the gods and that there is a fundamental
incongruity between such attempts and what men divine when speaking
of such gods? ''*.32
* The common mythologically imbued and ideologically charged
lexicon of Western man is constitutive of Strauss' world view, with
respect to the charge of Barbarism we shall not belabor the
obvious. Cannibalism, as W. Arens has demonstrated in his
ground-breaking work "The Man-Eating Myth," is a persistent and
rarely challenged racial slur that is invented and used in the
frontiers of many cultures and civilizations.
** The intrinsic religious value of a "devotional offering"
unless it is unceremoniously characterized as "bribing the gods,"
cannot be judged to be inferior to a dispassionate Deist "religion
of reason" which is espoused by Strauss' revered master Herman
Cohen and his disciples.
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398 Po~it}cs, Cutture, and Socie~/
The Straussean judge thus reserves for himself the privilege of
deciding in what respect the contending cultures must be compared.*
Besides, by mislabelling devotional offerings as "bribing," Strauss
denies the native the chance to be understood as he understands
himself or wishes to be understoodY This, as we have seen, is a
courtesy that Strauss readily extends to the sages of his own
culture. To relate Xenephone's thought to its "historical
situation," Strauss maintained, "is not the natural way of reading
the work of a wise man." This use of a double standard in the
service of ethnocentrism comes so naturally to Strauss that he
assumes its self-evidence. 34 He thus explains the reluctance of
the Occidental social sciences to declare the superiority of the
West as a childish game in which the participants refrain from
saying a certain word despite their inner certainty and urge to
appro- priately do so. ~ This is the Straussean "spade." He assumes
that everyone sees it as clearly as he does but only a few have the
courage to jettison the conventional niceties of the liberal social
sciences and call it by its proper name.
Yet, Strauss' rejection of the social sciences is not
categorical. The historicizing, retativizing and reductionist
effects of certain social scientific methods and theories seem to
annoy Strauss only when they are applied to the Occidental
intellectual legacy. When talking about Hinduism, for example, he
apparently has no compunctions about espousing the most overt type
of functionalist reductionism: "Why do Hindus believe in their
karma doctrine if not because they know that otherwise their caste
system would be indefensible? ''36
In this case, Strauss must not have cared, for he must have
known that this sort of approach has been used by the vulgarizers
of a school of thought that even in its original form aroused his
indigent rejection, namely Marxism. The obvious implication of
Strauss' interpretation of karma doctrine is that he understands
the classical Indian thinkers better than they understood
themselves. Had these classical thinkers been Greek, however,
Strauss would emphatically dismiss such an interpretation. In fact
he did explicitly reject the implication that we are better judges
of the situation in which a given Greek classical thinker
thought:
* In the contentious sphere of religious disagreements this is a
tremendous advantage to grant oneself indeed, If one were to grant
the same advantage to a Moslem scholar dedicated to the cause of
absolute monotheism we would find both Judaism and Christianity
(not to mention Hinduism) relegated to various levels of
inferiority because of their common theological weakness: belief in
anthropomorphic Gods.
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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 399
We cannot be better judges of that situation if we do not have a
clearer grasp than he had of the principles in whose light
historical situations reveal their meaning. 37
Strauss disputes the validity of the historicists' claim to a
better overview all the more decisively when such claims are based
on perfunctory treatment of these classical texts.
And even if it were true that we could understand the classics
better than they understood themselves, we could become certain of
our superiority only after understanding them exactly as they
understood themselves. Otherwise we might mistake our superiority
to our notion of the classics for superiority to the classics.
3s
In the hasty judgment he passes against the karma doctrine,
Strauss seems to have fallen victim to the naivete he so eloquently
deplores here.*
That the karma doctrine preceded the caste system and is
believed in by non-Hindus who disdain the caste system does not
enter Strauss' exposition. He does not even entertain the
possibility that karma doctrine was linked to an oppressive social
order by a reinterpretation of its original meaning and that the
two may be conceived of as separate entities, as ideas and
ideologies.
Strauss refuses to treat the doctrines that occur within his
range of thought, between Amos and Socrates, with the same
unforgiving harshness. 39 In these cases he fails to warn against
the possibility of individual or group self-deceptions. Rather, one
must understand the masters as they understood themselves and
practice exactly what Strauss berates the social science for: "bow
without a murmur to their self interpretation. ''4~
At this point the picture of the presiding judge in the tribunal
set up to examine the values and standards of other cultures fades
into that of a cringing student seeking an audience with the
masters. "Judging" is thus postponed indefinitely, because of the
graveness of the task of understanding. Also, the social implica-
tions and unintended consequences of an idea are sharply separated
from the idea itself. But Strauss' Xenophonean interpretation takes
him further. The analytical separation of the ideas from their
social functions, which he parsimoniously withheld from the aliens
for
* Can we not dismiss this as an oversight of an accomplished
classicist who was not after all known for his mastery of the Ind
ian civil ization? No, because Strauss h imsel f makes swift
intercultural judgments pivotal to his thought by criticizing the
circumlocutions and noncommitta l language the social sciences use
in intercultural studies.
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400 Politics, Culture, and Society
fear of evincing excessive generosity is not even worthy of his
friends. What was too good for the goose turns out to be not good
enough for the gander. Let us illustrate by comparing the
aforementioned treatment of the idea of karma to Strauss' critique
of Weber's theory of Calvinism.
Strauss perceived an implied accusation (one which is not likely
to have been intended) in Max Weber's linking of the Protestant
ethic to the advent of capitalism. Of course, unlike Strauss, Weber
did not ask the rhetorical question: "Why do Calvinists believe in
'predestination' if not because they know that otherwise their
capitalist system would be indefensible?" Rather Weber maintained
that it was a reinterpretation of Calvin's ideas which dovetailed
with the development of capitalism. But even this leaves something
to be desired from Strauss' point of view; Weber should have
explicitly condemned Calvinism by calling it a corruption of
Calvin's ideas. The Straussean observer ought to take sides. This
means that on the one hand he is expected to announce, with what
amounts to Feuerbachean determination, that the karma doctrine is
nothing but an ideological facade for the caste system. On the
other, he is expected not only to dissociate Calvin's ideas from
later Calvinism but also to go the extra mile and condemn Calvinism
as a regrettable degeneration of Calvin's intentions. 41
In the Straussean view social sciences that do not partake in
this mode of partisan social philosophy stand accused of rudderless
relativism if not treason.* Strauss attempts to buttress his
position by attaching a hypothetical social scientific study of
concentration camps from which all allusions to cruelty would be
carefully deleted. 42 But, one may wonder, if it comes to pondering
the worst scenarios, would the committed social philosophers fare
any better than the non-committed social scientists? If social
scientists are liable to stop at explaining and thereby to
implicitly condone evil and its social organization, would it not
be only appropriate that
* Strauss elaborated a quaint intellectual conspiracy theory
according to which the Germans avenged their defeat by striking
back in the academia of the United States: "It would not be the
first time that a nation, defeated on the battle field and, as it
were, annihilated as a political being, has deprived its conquerors
of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them a yoke of
its own thought." American social science stands accused of being
vulnerable in this sinister scheme.
Allen Blooms's best selling "The Closing of the American Mind"
while echoing the master's view almost verbatim, assigns a more
innocent role to the American intellectuals from Arendt to Riesman
as the unwitting pawns of a "German Connection" singing "a song
they do not understand translated from a German or ig ina l . . . "
See, Leo Strauss, Natural Right History, op. cit., pp. 2, 4. Allan
Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, (New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1987 p. 152).
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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 401
the committed social thinkers, the engineers of the "natural
order" and the advisers of the state, tremble at the possibility of
creating or perpetuating the very evil that once organized would be
dispassionately studied by the hypothetical social scientists?
2. Of Weber
Before examining Weber's theory of intercultural understanding
it may be helpful to offer a brief, classificatory note on
alternative theories or assumptions that have informed the Western
philosoph- ical and social scientific investigation of other
cultures. At the risk of some simplifications and without claiming
to either exhaust the varieties or delineate the fine details of
the controversy, we deem the following dual taxonomy heuristically
fit for the purposes at hand.
1. Essential ism: The fundamental presupposition of this
category, which comprises empirical and rationalist genres is the
belief that what is worth knowing about a given culture that is,
the "truth" of that culture, exists independently of both the
intentionality of the natives and the cognitive orientation and
value relevant interests of the investigators. By sifting through
the heap of false or trivial opinions or data, essentialists hope
to discover the objective truth about a given cultural world. True
science, they contend, must be free of the value relevant (ideal)
interests of its practitioners as well as those of its subjects.
Besides, they must account for those cognitive preferences that are
somehow linked to the investigator's cultural world. The
essentialists are wearily aware of the former but do not perceive
the latter as such. If we define cognitive preferences as a set of
guidelines which determine how to select, organize and disseminate
the important data once the subject has been selected, the
essentialists could not be said to possess cognitive orientations.
They are rather possessed by them, for they conceive of themselves
as selfless instruments of a science that goes on to accumulate
information about, or to correct the image of the world according
to its pristine principles. In this process neither the
investigator nor his subjects need to intervene as the unimportant
and the untrue are supposed to be automatically and systematically
eliminated by the turning wheel of deductive reasonings or
inductive generalizations. Whereas the empirical essentialists
generally seek to justify their criteria of "objective truth" by
emulating the generalizing ambitions of the natural
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402 Politics, Culture, and Society
sciences, the rationalists usually presuppose the possibility of
arriving at such criteria through the application of the methods of
"right thinking." Nevertheless, as a rule, an overt explication of
or justification for these objective criteria of truth remain
implicit in both types of essentialism. Apparently the strength of
such claims lies in not questioning their presumed self
evidence.
It is ironic that before the rise of neo-rational essentialism
represented by Strauss, a vague but nearly ubiquitous empirical
essentialism had found expression in the social sciences, namely in
the early anthropological theories of the savage mind and in the
sociological theories of cultural evolution. Thus, the earlier
social sciences led the quest of Occidental culture to organize
cultural diversity into a universal hierarchical order or to
transform geo-cultural differences into rungs of an imaginary
chronological ladder of progress.
2. Relativism: We classify under this rubric all those theories
that reject the possibility or usefulness of arriving at universal
and objective criteria of truth, and supplant them instead with a
variety of context-dependent and often ultimately incommensu- rable
criteria of distinguishing the significant, the true and the just
from the unimportant, the false and the unjust. Here the subjects
of intercultural understanding become sovereigns in their
respective domains. They undertake to introduce, if not to
initiate, the empathizing investigator to the intricacies of their
world by defining and defending their fundamental concepts and
systems of thought and judgment. The duty of the investigator is to
"understand," i.e., to capture the prevailing sense rather than to
try to make sense out of the alien universe of discourse. By
recognizing the authenticity of the self understanding of the
natives, the relativists explode the unity of the essentialists'
objective world; parallel cultural universes are discovered as the
image of one real world confronting many delusional ones fades
away. At the same time relativism implodes the essentialists'
favorite universal duality of true and false; all shared beliefs,
insofar as they are anchored in their respective contexts, are seen
as equally rational. Rationality is redefined as "conforming to
norms."43
Contemporary anthropology and certain segments of modern
philosophy have recently reasserted relativism with new vigor,
provoking vitriolic rebuttals from the essentialist school. 44
Without trying to belittle their decisive methodological
differences, especially regarding the relevance of the "native's
account" to a scientific understanding of his own culture, we
merely wish to point
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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud $adri 403
out a common weakness in both of these camps, namely, their
underestimation of the importance of the investigator's value
relevant interests and, cognitive orientations. Essentialists
elevate their cognitive orientations to the level of
epistemological truths and, while marginal ly aware of the
influence of value relevant interests in their scientific work,
view the latter as a minor impediment to be overcome. The
relativistic theories, however, are widely unref lexive and even
ventr i loquis i te insofar as the invest igator 's ideal (value
relevant) interests and cognitive preferences are concerned. They
often seem to view themselves as the selfless curators of a
cultural museum whose task is to record and meticulously preserve
the varieties of cultural universes of discourse.
It is exactly this common blind spot in most of the essentialist
and relativist theories which sets them apart from the Weberian
project. Weber bridged this gap and laid the foundations of a
unified approach for the study of "distant peoples," i.e., those
who lived before or live apart from us. The potentialities of this
approach, however, are not fully developed. With respect to the
historical past Weber's solution finds expression today in
Gadamerian hermeneutics, but a Weberian theory of intercultural
understanding has not yet been exhaustively explored. It is
symptomatic of this one-sided development of Weberian methodology
that Alfred Schutz viewed only the study of the "world of
predecessors" as problematic (because of the lack of "the common
core of knowledge" available to the world of contemporaries). 45 He
presupposed the understand- ability and thus the homogeneity of
"contemporary civilization." It is of course by no means
self-evident that the "common core of knowledge" belonging to the
medieval European burger would be more accessible to the
contemporary Occidental man than that of Indian yogis, Siberian
shamans, Japanese Zen masters or Ghaderi sufis.
Instead of neglecting or attempting to eliminate or circumvent
the historical and geo-cultural distances, Weber recognized them as
instruments of, rather than as obstacles in the way of,
understanding. Just as a hermeneutical consciousness of our
rootedness in time renders destructive prejudice into constructive
historical insight, an awareness of our defined presence in geo-
cultural space can turn cultural distance into intellectual
leverage for understanding. In studying distant peoples, therefore,
the human interests of the investigator present a Janus face: their
denial or their self-righteous assertion impedes understanding but
an awareness of them turns this blind spot into a lens which allows
the discriminating gaze of inquiry to focus on issues of
importance.
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404 Politics, Culture, and Society
Neither the embedded ethnocentrism of rational essentialism nor
that of early anthropological and sociological studies affects
Weber's theory of intercultural understanding. Weber's is a new
"ethnocentrism," one which instead of echoing the self-righteous
claims of a dominant culture, testifies to the conscious adaptation
of the science of man to the spacio-temporal limits of human
knowledge. Without the advantage of such an Archimedean point,
i.e., a particular value-relevant and scientific interest, it
becomes impossible for us to scientifically study the distant
worlds of our predecessors or those of our "alien" contemporaries.
Against the essentialist denial and the relativist neglect of the
presuppositions of the social sciences Weber stated: "The question
as to what should be the object of universal conceptualization
cannot be decided 'presuppositionlessly.' -46 Even within
contemporaries of a given dominant cultural world the development
of new ideas depend on a certain cultural distance: the
quasi-proletarian intellectuality and the intellectuality of the
peripheral regions of greater cultural centers, Weber observed, are
better poised to utilize this Archime- dean advantage and to
revolutionize the dominant systems of thought. Freedom from certain
binding social conventions seems to unleash the creative impulse
that can overturn overarching cultural world views. 47 "The
possibility of questioning the meaning of the world presupposes the
capacity to be astonished about the course of events."48 In
intercultural studies an even more radical "freedom" from the
conventions and opinions is available to the investigator. The
geo-cultural distance can be scientifically reduced to the
differences in cognitive orientations and value-relevant
interests.
Thus, a Weberian anthropologist would not set himself the goal
of achieving an empathic appreciation of the culture as experienced
by its natives. Indeed apart from his doubts about accessibility
and verifiability of such a knowledge 49 Weber shared Strauss'
concern over the individual or group self-deceptions of the
subjects:
. . . the 'conscious motives' may well, even, to the actor
himself, conceal the various 'motives' and 'repressions' which
constitute the real driving force of his action. Thus in such cases
even subjectively honest self-analysis has only a relative value.
Then it is the task of the sociologist to be aware of this
motivational situation and to describe and analyze it, even though
it has not actually been concretely part of the conscious intention
of the actor; possibly not at all, at least not fully. 5~
It is obvious that in his studies of alien civilizations Weber
did not hesitate to use the famil iar categories of the Occidental
civilization. He freely spoke of "confessional relationships"
of
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Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 405
Hindus to their gurus 5t and of "knighthood" in medieval JapanY
He elaborated on the "petit-bourgeois ''~3 strata in ancient China
and on the "welfare state" and "democratic religions" in India. ~4
Weber observed cross-cultural parallels between the continental
influences of France and Hellenic cultures in Europe and those of
China and India in Asia. 5~ He underscored the similarities of
Confucian and Greek philosophies, 56 liberally quoted the Communist
Manifesto to describe the plight of Hindu lower castes ~7 and
compared the Quaker silent meditations to the apathetic ecstasy of
yogis. ~8.
It would appear from these considerations that Weber was more
interested in asking his own questions about the particular
developments of alien civilizations than in trying to attain an
empathic understanding of them. This tendency characterizes Weber's
agenda in contra-distinction to that of the relativist school.
Unlike some rational essentialists, like Strauss, Weber excludes
normative evaluations from his social scientific investigations.
Therefore, those who wish to substantiate the superiority of their
own standards through the study of other cultures will find Weber's
principle of "value neutrality" unconducive. Weber seems to have
assumed that the inevitable distortions imposed on the alien
culture due to the geo-cultural distance between the subject and
object remain relatively benign as long as they are not compounded
by evaluative judgments. It should of course be stressed that for
Weber, opting to pursue "a science as a vocation" does not deprive
the social scientist from his or her right to pass value judgments
on moral and ideological issues as long as he refrains from tracing
the genealogy of his moral judgments back to a dispassionate and
scientific study of facts.
At any rate the predominance of the observer's cognitive
orientation in the study of the alien culture remains problematic
as it may perpetuate the unfair advantage of the observer over the
observed. The problem of onesidedness of the intercultural studies
has been the central theme of a prolonged debate between the
relativist and the essentialist camps, with little gain on either
side. Despite their attempts either to justify the Occidental
scientific bent for logical discourse, or to discover parallel
logical universes, they never transcend the direction of the
inquiring gaze which
* Some of these cross cultural references are pedagogical;
others bear a tinge of irony, and, of course, a small fraction are
redolent with Weber's fascination with the developments of the
modern Occidental sciences. Indeed, Weber was very nearly
reductionist when he attempted to explain religious experiences
with the help of the pathological lexicon of modern psychology 59
or when he hoped that one day the dissimilarities of Occidental and
Oriental rationalism would be accounted for by the sciences of
comparative neurology and physiology. 6~
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406 Po}itics, Culture, and Society
invariably originates in the West. As to the fairness of their
respective arguments, one can hardly decide which of the two would
be more offensive to the "natives:" the ostensibly more charitable
exegeses which reduce natives' worlds to flat logically closed
universes or insistent accusations that their universes of
discourse are not logical enough.
The present reconstruction of Weber's anthropological method-
ology suggests that instead of trying to dissolve the qualitative
differences between cultures into one universal ranking system, or
to create a Gulliverian world of many cultural islands, the
investigator must recognize not only his own right but also that of
any culture to construct images of other cultures on the basis of
its own cognitive approach and ideal interests. The result would be
an irreducible variety of cultural images that reflect one another
and know each other not despite but because of their differences.
Only through this mutual recognition can they look at one another
through the prisms of their cognitive orientations and value-
relevant interests. These mutually reflective cultures, thus, would
enter into a crescendo of ever-changing and ever-enhancing
knowledge of each other.* Instead of denying to themselves the
benefits of geo-cultural distance, the Occidental scientists must
recognize it as such and reserve the right of the others to do unto
their culture as they do unto others. This would make the process
of intercultural understanding a reversible one. Once the current
reification of cognitive orientations and ideal interests is
dissolved, all would regain a right to their interests which at
once distort and make accessible the "relevant" portions of the
other culture.
This shows that the relativists' quest for the unification of
subject and object, even if possible, would not be conducive to
intercultural understanding, which occurs only when the
investigator strikes a tenuous balance bestriding the intercultural
seesaw. Those who assimilate an alien culture so well that they "go
native" may only achieve intercultural intuition, not systematic
intercultural knowledge. A native Bushman who studies Western
medicine and a European who masters Acupuncture return to their
respective native lands as practitioners of, and believers in, an
exotic art of healing. Indeed, these cultural converts may at
certain points ponder their internal conflict in terms of a
quasi-essentialist partiality toward one culture or a stoic
existence in the relativized
Professor Arthur Vidich, who has provided the authors with the
benefit of his insights, has suggested a less optimistic trajectory
than that envisioned by the authors: "the 'cressendo' is one
possible outcome of the process of mutuat recognition you describe,
but it strikes me as an optimistic outcome. Why is a cacophony not
an equally possible outcome, at least for all but the 'scientists'
and investigators."
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Ahmad .Sadri and Mahmoud .Sadri 4-07
twilight between the two, but their solutions remain private and
unsystematic.* The worlds of Occidental social science fiction
(e.g., Carlos Casteneda's works) and literature (e.g., Conrad's
Heart of Darkness) are replete with the theme of travelers or
social scientists who indulged the temptation of "going native."
The social scientists of the third world who have considered the
matter from their side of the fence and with a more serious tone,
have dubbed it "Occidentosis," "brain drain," etc. In either case
cultural conversion of individuals contributes little to
intercultural understanding, which is a matter of collective
confrontation of different ideal interests and cognitive
orientations.
Having briefly outlined the antfhropotogical aspects of
intercul- tural understanding, let us turn to the sociological
domain. Here the value-relevant interests of the investigator in
conjunction with his cognitive predilections play a significant
role in the selection of the subject matter and in the formation of
appropriate ideal types. This is most apparent in social history
and comparative sociology. The recognition of the investigator's
ideal interests does not diminish science to the private tale of
the individuals for these interests are themselves shaped by the
socio-historical circumstan- ces. Neither does Weber's method of
studying distant peoples turn the social sciences into a
civilizationatly determined utilitarian enterprise. Weber had
already attempted to correct a different version of this
misunderstanding in his critique of Eduard Meyer's limited
definition of historical interests. The latter restricted the scope
of historically relevant facts to those elements that have been
"causally effective" in bringing about the "Present." Weber
responded to this by broadening the concept of ideal interests to
encompass much more than what is deemed to be causally effective
from a particular historical point of view. Even the study of alien
and vanquished civilizations, such as those of Aztecs and Incas,
can become the subject of our value relevant interests. Such a
study can, to say the least, function as a heuristic device for the
study of analogous cultural developments.
This knowledge may function positively to supply an
illustration, individualized and specific, in the formation of the
concept of feudalism or negatively, to delimit certain concepts
with which we operate in the study of European cultural history
from the quite
* Dilemmas of self-understanding as well as those concerning the
social image of the cultural converts have been explored by Georg
Simmel and Robert E. Park in their conceptualizations of "the
stranger" and the "marginal man," and by Thorstein Veblen's
discussion of "the intellectual preeminence of Jews in modern
Europe."
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408 Politics, Culture, and Society
different cultural traits of the Incas and Aztecs; this latter
function enables us to make a clearer genetic comparison of the
historical uniqueness of European cultural development, sl
The Weberian social scientist no longer needs to conceal or
neglect the fact that he, like his subjects, is also a finite human
being who is bound to his own historical and geo-cultural time and
space. An examination of Weber's studies in the field of
comparative sociology bears out the above conclusions. He viewed
alien civilizations from an Occidental Archimedean point and
organized his empirical data around the nuclei of his value
relevant interests. Weber's most important value relevant interest
concerned the reasons behind the nonemergence of modern capitalism
in the Orient.
It is a well known fact that Weber's interest in the development
of Occidental capitalism led him to perceive non-Western societies
as a "set of gaps and absences ''62 which ranged from autocephal-
eous cities, particular political, religious and legal structures,
and voluntary associations, to such epiphenomena as gothic vaults,
spatial perspective in painting and harmonic music. 88 What is less
known is that Weber followed the same "Eurocentric" approach in his
studies of American society, underscoring the lack of mass party
system, strong church organizations, labor movements and other
distinctly European institutions. Weber's solution seems to elude
essentialism but it is equally averse to relativism. His approach
is more comparable to a theory of social scientific relativity in
the domain of intercultural studies.
Both Weber and Strauss inherited and--for different purposes--
utilized the "discursive currency" of the Western Orientalism. 64
The important difference, however, is that Weber acknowledged the
existence of the dilemma, tried to assess and minimize its impact
on intercultural research, and even devised a method to use the
distorted loci of the anthropological hermeneutics to the advantage
of a non "presuppositionless" social science. Leo Strauss, on the
other hand, categorically rejected the Weberian--or any other
social scientific--solution, reverted back to the apparent
objectivity of an "orientalist vision," and tried to lend credence
to what Levi Strauss has called "a primitive science of the
concrete" and the patently discredited discourse it represents.
Reference Notes
1. An example of such contentions could be found in the early
European debates concerning humanity and rationality of the
American natives which emerged
-
Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 409
in the wake of the Spanish conquests of the Americas. This
presented the Occident, for the first time since Rome, with the
moral and practical dilemma of justifying and perpetuating its
domination over vanquished civilizations. A rediscovery,
modification and implementation of Aristotle's doctrine of "natural
slavery" epitomized the response of the era to this problem. The
theory was deemed applicable to "people less capable of using their
reason," hence the attribution of irrationality to the inhabitants
of the newly invaded continent, The controversy over the
rationality of native Americans is best illustrated in the debates
between Jaun Gines Sepulveda, the Spanish Aristotlian who strongly
supported the application of the doctrine of natural slavery to the
"irrational '~ Indians on the one side and Done Bartolome De las
Casas, the Spanish clergyman who tried to demonstrate that Indians
were in fact "rational people" who fulfilled all of Aristotle's
requisites of the rational good life on the other. See Mahmoud
Sadri's Problem. Areas of Rationality, State, Culture and Society,
(Fall 1985)), and M. T. Hodgen's Early Anthropology in the 16th and
17th Centuries, (Philadelphia, Princeton University Press,
1984).
2. Clifford Geertz has recently formulated this problem as the
attempt "to understand how it is we understand understanding not
our own." C. Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York, Basic Books, 1983),
p. 5.
3. As regards the critical history of the social scientific
discourse this essay acknowledges and presupposes the work of
Foucautt and Edward Said. See: Michel Foucault, The Order of Things
(New York, Pantheon books, 1970)~ Edward Said, Orientalism, (New
York: Pantheon books, 1978).
4. Leo Sta-auss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy,
(Chicago: The University of Chicago P~ess, 1983), p. 228.
5. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, (Glenco: Free Press,
1958), p. 173, 6. Allan Bloom, "Leo Strauss," Political Theory,
(Vol. 2, no. 4, 1974), p. 37. 7. Ibid., p. 375~ 8, Leo Strauss,
Natural Right and History~ (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1953), pp, 1-8. 9. Dr. Werner J. Dannhauser describes
himself before meeting Strauss as "a
relativist ill at ease in his relativism." See: W. Dannhauser,
"Leo Strauss, Becoming Naive Again," American Scholar, (Vol. 44,
Autumn 1975), p. 637; Also see: H. V, Jaffa's account of his
pre-Straussian stage in New York Review of Books, (Oct. 10,
1985).
10. Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, (New York:
Schocken, 1965), p. 1. 11. Allan Bloom, op. cir., p, 373. 12. M. F.
Burnyeat, "Sphinx Without a Secret," New York: Review of Books,
(May
30, 1985), p. 33. 13. Max Scheler, Problem of a Sociology of
Knowledge, tr. M. S. Frings, ed. K,
W. Stikkers (London: Routtedge and Kegan Paul, 1980); Karl
Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, (London, K. Paul Trench & Co.,
1936); Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History.
14. Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, pp.
147, 332. 15. Nikos Kazantzakis, Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, tr. k.
Friar, (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1958), p. xviii. 16. Leo Strauss, "On
Coltingwood's Philosophy of History," Review of Metaphysics,
(Vot. v. no. 4, June 1952), p. 563. 17. Leo Strauss, Natural
Right and History, p. 5, 55. 18. Leo Strauss, City and Man,
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp.
72-3; Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 150. We are
indebted to Dr. Barnyeat for drawing our attention to these
quotations in his N.R.B. article.
19. Leo Strauss, Xenephon's Socratic Discourse: An
Interpretation of Economics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
t970), p. 123.
20. P. J. Marshall and G. Williams, The Great Map of Mankind,
(London: J. Mo Den and Sons, 1982), pp. 1, 3.
21. Strauss was apparently oblivious to the critical literature
that exposed meaning, origins and the future of underdevelopment
when he offered his conjecture about the meaning of the term: "The
expression underdeveloped nations.. , implies
-
410 Politics, Culture, and Society
the resolve to develop them fully, i,e, to make them either
Communist or Western." Sep: Leo Strauss, City and Man, p. 6. Such
judgments may be consistent with the Xenophobian duty towards one's
enemies only insofar as the following Arabic proverb holds: "people
are the enemies of that which they do not understand," E. Said,
Orientalism, op. cit. p. 69.
22, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 41. 23. Ibid., p.
36. 24. Ibid., p. 70. 25. Ibid., p. 10. 26. Ibid., p. 19. 27.
Ibid., pp. 23-4. 28. Ibid., p. 36. 29. Ibid., p. 3. 30. Max Weber,
Economy and Society, Vol. 1, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich.
(Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1978), p. 4. 31, W. Arens, The
Man-Eating Myth, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 32. Leo
Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 50-51. 33, Ibid., p. 57. 34,
Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, (New York: Cornell University Press,
1968), p. 24. 35. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and IIistory, p. 52.
36. Ibid., p. 130. 37. Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, p. 195, 38. Idem.
39, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 42. 40. Ibid., p.
55. 41. Ibid., pp. 59-62. 42, Ibid., p, 52. 43. Peter Winch, The
Idea of a Social Science, (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey:
Humanities Press, 1970). 44. See: Rationality, ed. Bryan R.
Wilson (Oxford: Basil Balckwell, 1979). 45. Alfred Schutz, The
Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh and
F. Lehnert. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press,
1967), p. 120. 46. Max Weber, Methodology of the Social Sciences,
ed. E. A. Shills and H. A.
Finch. (New York: Free Press, 1949), p. 48. 47. Max Weber,
Economy and Society, Vo]. 1, p. 507. 48. Max Weber, Ancient
Judaism, (New York: Free Press, 1952), p. 207. 49. Max Weber,
Rosher and Knies, (New York: Free Press, 1975), pp. 179-80, 50. Max
Weber, Economy and Soc&ty, Vol. 1, pp.. 9-10. 5I. Max Weber,
Religion of India, eds. Hans H. Gerth and P. Martindale (New
York: Free Press, 1958), p. 327. 52. Ibid., p. 333. 53. Ibid.,
p. 12. 54. Ibid., p. 142, 240. 55. Ibid., p. 329. 56. Max Weber,
Religion of China, eds.: H. Gerth and P. Martindale (New York:
Free Press, 1957), p. 175. 57~ Max Weber, Religion of India,
eds, H. Gerth and P. Martindate (New York:
Free Press, 1957), p. 175. 58, Ibid., p. 163. 59. Ibid., p. 149,
303; Max Weber, "Social Psychology of World Religions," in From
Max Weber, eds. H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1946), pp. 245-46.
60. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, t930), p. 31.
6]. Max Weber, Methodology of the Social Sciences, p. t56. 62.
Bryan Turner, For Weber, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981),
p. 276. 63~ See especially the author's introduction in The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism, pp. 13-31.
-
Ahmad Sadri and Mahmoud Sadri 4It
64. That Weber and Strauss subscribed to an orientalist vision
of the non western world is substantiated in Weber's case, by Brian
Turner and in Strauss' case in the first part of this essay. See:
Edward Said, Orientalism, op. cit. p. 72; Claud Levi Strauss, The
Savage Mind, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); B.
Turner, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study, (Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1974); B. Turner, For Weber, Essays on the Sociology of Fate,
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).