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access to Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal
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THE DEFIANCE OF PLURALISM
Raimon Panikkar
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170 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
Reality belongs not only to the realm of the logos, but pert
also to the order of the mythos. "The Myth of Pluralism" wa
plicitly the title of a study of mine.2
It should be clear that I do not understand by pluralism wh
currently meant nowadays when people speak of a "pluralisti
ciety," "theological pluralism," or pluralisms of many sorts.
usage means a tolerant, open, and a more or less sophistic
stand which englobes, accepts, or finds a place for a diversi
lifestyles, doctrines, or religions. This is certainly a positive
and an indispensable ethical value, but I understand by plur
something more basic.3
Pluralism, as a word touching upon the nature of realit
polysémie. It has a long history. Some presocratics were supp
to be pluralists, and today there is talk about pluralism o
sorts: political, civil, demographic, practical, psychological,
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The Defiance of Pluralism 1 71
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172 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
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The Defiance of Pluralism 1 73
schools of Vedânta will state that brahman does not know that "it"
is brahman, being Isvara, brahman's Consciousness.
I am saying that knowledge, by its nature, demands a knower
(not necessarily an individualistic one). Any integral knowledge,
therefore, cannot prescind the "objective" knowledge from the
knowing subject. All knowledge is "personal knowledge," and this
is, to quote Polanyi, not an imperfection but a "vital component"
of knowledge itself. Pluralism does not make an objective state-
ment about the world. It simply implies the awareness that knowl-
edge is always the knowledge of a subject and that an absolute
Subject (assuming it existed) would have only an absolute objec-
tive knowledge of all that is knowable. For an absolute knower,
object and subject coalesce. But the absolute object of the abso-
lute subject covers the entire reality only under the assumption
that reality is totally intelligible, which is what pluralism does not
need to assume.6 The total intelligibility of reality is a gratuitous
assumption which is not necessary for the functioning of our
mind - unlike, for instance, the principle of non-contradiction.
The principle of non-contradiction puts an extrinsic barrier to
our reasoning mind: if we think A to be the case, we cannot think
the identical A to be a Non-A. The Non-A puts a boundary to our
intelligibility of A - which amounts to saying that to know A
entails not knowing Non-A. To assume, on the other hand, that
reality is absolutely intelligible leaves no room for any unintel-
ligible reality. Non-Being would be an illusion (which would give
to the vyavahârika an illusory status in relation to the
paramârthika, to speak in Vedântic categories).
Pluralism is incompatible with any absolutism. I am not saying
absolute idealism is false; I am stating that it is not warranted. It
may be presupposed or posed, but it is not necessary - besides
being against immediate human experience. And this is congru-
ent with the idea of the Divine as absolute Freedom.
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174 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
world, and Sâmkhya in the Indie scene, the concept has taken the
upper hand over all other states of consciousness.7 Now, con-
cepts are a special kind of objects. They are the rational distillate
of those states of consciousness which allow themselves to be clas-
sified as intelligible units. They do not have a life of their own;
they are (valid) where they have been conceived. Concepts qua
concepts need to be immutable, otherwise conceptual knowl-
edge would be impossible. If a concept changes its meaning, by
this fact it turns into a different concept, sometimes under the
same name. We need distinctions.
Here is where pluralism fits in: in the awareness that the world
of objects has no existence of its own. Objects are intellectual
entities; they depend on the subject which "puts them before"
our awareness. This subject is generally not an individual but a
collective society in a given time and place. These intellectual
constructs form a more or less complete universe, which is what
we generally call the world of culture. Now, the salient feature of
our present-day situation is the overwhelming predominance of a
single culture. The predominant culture today is a conceptual
culture of a Western, brand, although extended all over among
the "elites" of the world. It is this particular culture which has
created the world of concepts where "civilized" human beings
live. In this cultural world there is a place for tolerance, dialogue,
and condemnation, but there is no room for pluralism. Our
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The Defiance of Pluralism 1 75
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176 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
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The Defiance of Pluralism 1 77
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178 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
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The Defiance of Pluralism 1 79
logos or reason" that I criticize.9 I fully agree with Dean and with
Heidegger, from whom he cites, and with so many others since
Heraclitus's famous návra peí in Greece {Fragments 12, 49, 91,
etc.), and the Nâsadîya Sûkta (Rig Veda X:129) in India, that the
logos is a dynamic force that never ceases to unconceal ( аХфцС)
itself in unending process. I take for granted that we cannot
freeze the logos, that truth, even the "smallest" truth, is always infi-
nite and ultimately mysterious, that there is a fluxus quo which
will never permit us to freeze anything real, that reality and the
logos itself are open-ended. But pluralism affirms more, not less,
than this. It affirms more than an eschatological stance - even if
the eoxQTOv is "never" to come. For intrinsic coherence I do not
speak of an opacity of the logos. Logos for me entails intelligibility,
and the logos would cease to be logos if it were not intelligible. An
unintelligible logos (quoad se and not quoad nos) would represent
a contradiction in terms. But I do not subscribe to a panlogicism.
I am aware of the limits of the logos. Being has a partial opacity
that remains outside the light of the logos - or, in Christian
terms, because the Father, while equal to the Son (Logos), is not
the Son. I do not speak of opacity of the logos, but I believe that I
have insisted enough in saying that the logos is not the whole of
Man nor of reality and protested against the totalitarian pre-
tenses of a certain logos.
We can, of course, maintain that pluralism is wrong and give
our reasons. These will amount to saying that "our" system, or
basic-mini-system, is true, and thus any other explanation must
be short of the truth. I have said "basic-mini-system" in order to
make room for the most common objection against pluralism,
namely that there are some underlying principles which are com-
mon to all because they belong to human nature. They form the
human core which defies pluralism: "Don't kill your father,"
"Two and two are four," "We all want to eat."
This brings me again to the point regarding myth: any basic
system is valid only within a particular myth. It is the prevalent
myth at a certain period or place, but the myth is not universal.
We all know that there have been civilizations which considered
it necessary and merciful to kill the father-figure of the king, and
there have been other peoples which have not accepted the
translability into numerical figures of any real thing, so that two
houses are not only unequal to two pigs but also to two other
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180 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
Let us take a cue from this formulation and repeat that for me
pluralism is neither necessarily the celebration of variety nor al
ways to be desired. It may be so sometimes, especially when con-
fronted with exclusivistic and fanatical or narrow-minded
approaches, but in general it is a scandal to human thought, a
challenge to human intelligence, and a thorn to any culture. Plu-
ralism is rather the acknowledgement of our contingency, of our
limitation, of our inability to handle the problems as we would
like to solve them. It is the often painful but possibly cathartic
revelation (if the word is permitted without fundamentalist un-
derpinnings) of the other, who is unassimilable to us. And yet,
the other may be wrong, evil, an obstacle for consensus or for any
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The Defiance of Pluralism 181
Let me be precise:
(1) No single religion as such can be pluralistic. Religions can
(and I add, should) be open, tolerant, not absolutistic, but each
religion has a set of beliefs, practices, and rules which may be
different and even contradictory to the corresponding features
of another religion. Pluralism has nothing to do with a superfi-
cially conciliatory eclecticism.
(2) No single philosophy as such can be pluralistic either. The
moment that we formulate whatsoever, we do it claiming truth,
in a language and within a framework which is our context. And
even if we claim universality, this is our claim, which is not identi-
cal with an actual universality.
(3) Pluralism is not a supersystem, a metalanguage, a referee
in human disputes, an intellectual panacea. Pluralism is an open
human attitude, which therefore entails an intellectual dimen-
sion that overcomes any kind of solipsism, as if we - any we -
were alone in the universe, the masters of it, the holders of the
Absolute. As I wrote more than twenty years ago, while we can
understand plurality (it is simply a fact), we cannot coherently
understand pluralism (as a system) . A pluralistic system would be
an ideology in the pejorative sense of the word, a procrustean
bed into which we fit contradictory diversities just to serve our
purposes, a supersystem artificially concocted to dominate a
given situation. In this sense, I am "contra Pluralism." For de-
cades I have lived with universalistic Roman Catholics and in-
clusivistic Vedântins. As I have argued - sometimes exciting the
furor theologicus of "orthodox" Hindus and Catholics - the fa-
mous simile of the elephant in a dark room (identified diversely
as a pillar, a gigantic burst, an ivory piece, etc.) is the most bla-
tant example of an antipluralistic attitude: all the others are par-
tial, all say some truth, but only I (we) know the whole elephant.
The authentic pluralist knows that she does not know the ele-
phant either, and, based on the testimony of the others, doubts
that anybody knows the elephant. She assumes further that the
"elephant" which Vedântins, Catholics, skeptics, philosophers. . .
claim to know may well be either an empty concept or another
part of a still more complete living Being.
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182 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
Methodological Remarks
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The Defiance of Pluralism 183
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184 SOUNDINGS Raiman Panikkar
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The Defiance of Pluralism 185
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186 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
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The Defiance of Pluralism 187
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188 SOUNDINGS Raimon Panikkar
We have also ethical criteria, but they are not absolute. Each
culture segregates its own criteria - and discusses them, often
hotly. Let us recall the present debates about divorce, abortion,
the death penalty, war, capitalism, and the like.
I, for one, unambiguously condemn the dropping of atomic
bombs, the Nazi holocaust, and the hunting of Africans to bring
them as slaves to America, but I meet many people whom I re-
spect who defend similar practices as a lesser evil (Kurdistan,
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The Defiance of Pluralism 189
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190 SOUNDINGS Rairnon Panikkar
NOTES
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The Defiance of Pluralism 1 91
4. The bibliography I have collected covers over 15 pages, and all of the above
mentioned adjectives are actually used.
5. Sanskrit: apta, apnoto: he reaches, obtains, attains (because it suits my char-
acter); the Indo-European root being âp (ep): to hold, take, reach.
b. See my essay The Unknown Knower, in Reflexions sur la uberte humaine/
Gedanken zur menschlichen Freiheit/ Concepts of Human Freedom, Festschrift in
Honor of André Mercier on the Occasion of his 75th Birthday, éd. M. Svilar
ÍBerne: Lane. 1988) 133-59.
7. See my forthcoming book La experiencia filosófica de la India (Madrid: Et
1996) which shows that Indie philosophy deals also with other fields of c
sciousness and not exclusively with conceptual categories.
8. See my essay, Reflexões Interculturais sobre a Jnlosoha da Linguagem,
Presença Filosófica 5.2 (1979): 14-23.
9. See Dean's critique in Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, ed. L. Swi
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987) 171.
10. Richard P.Hayes, The Journal of Religious Pluralism 1.1 (19У1): b5.
11. Hayes 93-95.
12. See my Cultural Disarmament: The Way to Peace (Louisville: Westminste
John Knox Press, 1995) for further elaboration on this topic.
13. See my essay "The 'Crisis' of Madhyamika and Indian Philosophy Today
in Philosophy East & West 16.3-4 (1966): 117-31.
14. See my chapter "The Pluralism of Truth, m Invisible Harmony.
15. See my essay "Die existentielle Phanomenologie der Wahrheit, m
Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschafl 64 (1956): 27-54.
16. See my essay "Le fondement du pluralisme herméneutique d
l'hindouisme," in Demitizzazione e immagine, ed. E. Castelli (Padova: CEDA
1962) 243-69.
17. See, for example, my Los dioses y el Señor (Buenos Aires: Columba, 1967
18. See my The Silence of God, The Answer of the Buddha (Maryknoll, NY: Orb
1989).
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