Abstract
Understanding is a process in which otherness becomes identity, i.e. that which is still foreign becomes one’s own. Understanding is, consequently, the prerequisite for the expansion of identity, in so far as that with is newly experienced is connected intra-mentally and socially by one’s own structures of perception-processing and experience-content to a new experience, so that experience, which implies understanding, results. Understanding is thus a process of identification, and the formation of identity is a process of understanding. At the same time a distinction must be made between the epistemological aspect and the existential aspect of the conversion of otherness into identity. We can also model this on the dual use of the word “understanding”: The sentence “I understand the solution of an equation” implies a different and probably narrower degree of identification than the sentence “I understand you,” which involves at least a partial identification with the other person. Epistemically, it is sufficient to bring a set of things perceived, i.e. facts, phenomena, and events, into a consistent relationship with the existing processes of perception and judgement, thus with the conceivable and the conceived. I have then understood something “in its own context,” where to be sure also here by virtue of the conditions of perception and judgement brought over by myself, the other person can always already appear in my own light, and cannot appear otherwise. But in so far as foreignness is perceived, accepted, and permitted to remain in its state of opposition and inability to be immediately classified (no absorption of otherness), a difference remains between that which is learned mentally and that which is comprehended existentially. The process of identification, as a deeper and more existential process of understanding, goes beyond that: it possesses the other in one’s own patterns of perception, judgement, and values and, therefore, makes the other one’s own (“I make an opinion my own”), i.e. the identity of the subject is expanded.
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References
This truism is not yet sufficiently appreciated, though it is referred to again and again. Thus Friedrich H. Tenbruck showed anew in 1992 how the comparison of cultures in sociology developed under the political conditions of colonialism and post-colonialism, in order to respond to the ethno-centric theories and social practices and the related political expansion of European nations and — after the Second World War — the U.S.A. Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill asked about the “national character” of a group, and E. B. Taylor used the assertion of objectively-perceptible, cultural evolution to establish “survivals,” which had to be preserved or overcome, all under the normative lens of Western science. At the same time, science was stylized to an enterprise of objectively gaining knowledge, which appeared to prove the superiority of the Western, expanding cultures. With Herbert Spencer, the means to international understanding, which was supposed finally to overcome the prejudice-laden and nationalistic-interest-related pre-scientific perception of other cultures that each society produces, came into being from the objective-scientific comparison of cultures. Tenbruck summarizes: “As all of this shows, social science did not develop in its comparison of cultures merely an important instrument of scientific discovery, as is always reported. It reacted instead to the global rising nationalism that accompanied European expansion, a fact that is deliberately overlooked in the literature about the comparison of cultures. Behind its program stood — though it is frequently forgotten — a vital, practical interest, which arose directly from the real-world situation existing at the time, the global intensification of cultural encounters, which inevitably gave the mutual assessment of the cultures acute impetus and, therefore, constantly increased in urgency, and since then has increased in urgency in the one world even more…. For, as hindsight shows, the comparison of cultures was always tied to firm presuppositions about reality and about science” (Tenbruck, “Was war der Kulturvergleich, ehe es den Kulturvergleich gab?” Zwischen den Kulturen? Die Sozialwissenschaften vor dem Problem des Kulturvergleichs [Soziale Welt, Special Volume 8], ed. Joachim Matthes [Göttingen: Otto Schwartz, 1992 ], p. 21 ).
There were already two completely different alternatives at the beginning of the Latin tradition: Cicero, who described religio as diligence in the performance of rites, and Laktanz, who understood religio as being tied back to God.
Cf., for example, Charles Y. Glock and Robert N. Bellah, ed., The New Religious Consciousness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976 ). The following observations are taken, with slight modification, from M. von Brtick and Whalen Lai, Buddhismus und Christentum: Geschichte, Konfrontation, Dialog ( Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997 ).
Thus Michael Pye, for instance, distinguishes the following dimensions of religion: action, groups, states of mind, and concepts, as well as their respective intersections with other sociological and psychological data in general (Michael Pye, Comparative Religion: An Introduction through Source Materials [Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972]), or the social dimension, behavioral dimension, psychological dimension, conceptual dimension, and a “fifth dimension” of the inter-religious/inter-cultural influence of each tradition (Michael Pye, “On Comparing Buddhism and Christianity,” Studies, Tsukuba daigaku Tetsugakushisôgakkei Ronshû [Institute of Philosophy, University of Tsukuba], 5 [1979], pp. 1–20).
Cf. M. von Brück, “Wahrheit und Toleranz im Dialog der Religionen,” Dialog der Religionen,1 (1993), pp. 3ff.
Hans Küng, Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (London: SCM Press; New York: Crossroad, 1991); Küng and Karl-Josef Kuschel, eds., A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of World’s Religions (London: SCM Press; New York: Continuum, 1993); Küng and Kuschel, eds., Weltfrieden durch Religionsfrieden: Antworten aus den Weltreligionen (Munich: Piper, 1993); Johannes Lähnemann, ed., “Das Projekt Weltethos” in der Erziehung (Hamburg: E. B.-Verlag, 1995); Küng, “A Global Ethic and Education,” British Journal of Religious Education,18 (1995), pp. 6–21; Küng, ed., Yes to a Global Ethic (London: SCM Press, 1996; Küng, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Küng and Helmut Schmidt, eds., A Global Ethic and Global Responsibilities: Two Declarations (London: SCM Press, 1998). Recently, above all, the project of UNESCO: Yersu Kim, A Common Framework for the Ethics of the 21st Century (Paris: UNESCO Division of Philosophy and Ethics, 1999).
The literature on this theme world-wide is barely still assessable. In the interest of more information and public debate, Hans Küng, Count K. K. von der Groeben, and others founded the “World Ethic Foundation,” with its intercultural research, education, and promotion of encounter, in Tübingen in 1995.
One can perhaps see the commonality of the religions in the maturation of “self-centeredness” into “Reality-centeredness” (John Hick). Since about 1980, Hick has spoken of God as “Reality” and has also coined this formula in this context. Cf., for example, John Hick, “Religious Pluralism and Absolute Claims,” in Religious Pluralism,ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 193–213; Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martins Press, 1985); An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Disputed Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
Cf. M. von Brück, “Christliche Mystik und Zen-Buddhismus,” in Neu glauben? Religionsvielfalt und neue religiöse Strömungen als Herausforderung an das Christentum, ed. Wolfgang Greive and R. Niemann ( Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1990 ), pp. 146–66.
Cf. M. von Brück, “Mystische Erfahrung, religiöse Tradition und die Wahrheitsfrage,” in Horizontüberschreitung: Die pluralistische Theologie der Religionen,ed. Reinhold Bernhardt (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1991), pp. 81–103; and “Pluralismus und Identität: Erreicht die Mystik einen Einheitsgrund der Religionen?” in Pluralismus und Einheit (Tutzinger Materialien No. 70), ed. Jürgen Micksch (Tutzing: Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, 1992), pp. 19 ff.
This parallel was examined for the first time in Japan in detail by Shizuteru Ueda. Since then many other examinations have appeared.
Cf. M. von Brück, Einheit der Wirklichkeit: Gott, Gotteserfahrung und Meditation im hinduistisch-christlichen Dialog (Munich: Kaiser, 1986), esp. pp. 243 ff., where our understanding of the Doctrine of the Trinity is established in detail. Our short hint in the following text is related to the statements in Einheit der Wirklichkeit.
With the following observations and my claim to an inter-religious, historical hermeneutics, I hope to be able to show that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language games, when applied to the world religions, must not at all mean — and in that it would have weaknesses — that the religious language games would be impassable, as Peter Koslowski maintains (Koslowski, “Spekulative Philosophie als Brücke zwischen den Religionen,” in Die spekulative Philosophie der Weltreligionen: Ein Beitrag zum Gespräch der Weltreligionen im Vorfeld der EXPO 2000 Hannover,ed. Koslowski [Vienna: Passagen-Verlag, 1997], p. 34). The intertwining of identity and otherness in every language game, in so far as it is conscious and leads to internal and external dialogue (where the internal and external for their part are always newly construed and overlapping), is instead what facilitates communication, communion, and synergies.
Bernhard Waldenfels, “Das Eigene und das Fremde,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 43 (1995), p. 620.
J. May, “Vom Vergleich zur Verständigung: Die unstete Geschichte der Vergleiche zwischen Buddhismus und Christentum 1880–1980,” Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft, 66 (1982), p. 63.
Thus, Martin Buber’s dialogical principle (Buber, I and Thou,trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd. Ed. [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958]) is valid not only in inter-religious dialogue, but in every development toward humanity. Buber’s model is an “ontology of the between” (Michael Theunissen, “Bubers negative Ontologie des Zwischen,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 71 [1963/64], pp. 319–30).
John Cobb, Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism ( Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982 ).
Cf. C. Colpe, “Synkretismus, Renaissance, Säkularisation und Neubildung von Religionen der Gegenwart,” Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte,ed. Jes Peter Asmussen and Jorgen Laessoe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1975), pp. 441–523; Kurt Rudolph, “Synkretismus — vom theologischen Scheltwort zum religionswissenschaftlichen Begriff,” Geschichte und Probleme der Religionswissenschaft,ed. Rudolph (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 193–215; Ulrich Berner, Untersuchungen zur Verwendung des Synkretismus-Begriffes (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1982). Cf. also note 30.
In the sense of Ernst Troeltsch, cf. note 23.
Vasilios N. Makrides, “Fundamentalismus aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht,” Dialog der Religionen,4 (1994), pp. 2–25; Martin E. Marty, et al., The Fundamentalism Project,Vol. I-III (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991–93).
One can make the experiment: If a European meets another European on a Pacific island, he will perceive relatedness, i.e. similarity, and will greet the other as a neighbor, i.e. address him as a European. He would never do this in a context in which all were Europeans; he would detect the German language, or rather the Bavarian dialect, and identify himself by it.
Paul O. Ingram, The Modern Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Two Universalistic Religions in Transformation ( Lewiston: Mellen, 1988 ), pp. 15–16.
von Brück and Lai, Buddhismus und Christentum,pp. 356 ff.
Michael Pye has made the hermeneutical reflections of Ernst Troeltsch fruitful for the comparative hermeneutics of the religions (and religious movements): Pye, “Comparative Hermeneutics in Religion,” in The Cardinal Meaning: Essays in Comparative Hermeneutics: Buddhism and Christianity,ed. Pye and Robert Morgan (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), pp. 9–58. Many comments in this section are based on Pye’s observations. He has shown that, for Troeltsch, the question of the “essence” of a religion does not merely include the abstraction from historical data, by means of which these data are then assembled, synthesized, and interpreted once again, but is a creative act of the intersubjective self-ascertainment of a religious community, which means that the “essence” is never an “objective given,” but instead a spiritual-driving force, which reshapes each “given” again and again, and thus lets religion(s) come into being (with continuity and discontinuity) in a historical dynamic (Pye, “Comparative Hermeneutics in Religion,” pp. 13–17, with reference to Troeltsch, The Christian World [Die Christliche Welt,1903]). Troeltsch had developed these hermeneutic considerations in the debate about Adolf von Harnack’s text, What is Christianity? (Das Wesen des Christentums,1900), in which Harnack regarded only the teachings of Jesus as normative for the tradition and as the “essence” of Christianity, where the content of this teaching must be determined by reference to the historical Jesus.
Cf. Pye and Morgan, eds., The Cardinal Meaning,where this thesis is sufficiently substan-
Pye, “Comparative Hermeneutics in Religion,” p. 10.
Heinrich Ott, “The Beginning Dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism, the Concept of a ‘Dialogical Theology’ and the Possible Contribution of Heideggerian Thought,” Japanese Religions,II, 2–3 (September 1980), pp. 74 ff; and Apologetik des Glaubens: Grundprobleme einer dialogischen Fundamentaltheologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994), pp. 164 ff.
von Brück, Einheit der Wirklichkeit,pp. 196 ff.
The fact that religious studies is also tied to cultural norms becomes obvious in the dialogue, when it becomes clear from an external perspective that the concepts and methods of the European humanities disciplines are by no means universally accepted. The dialogical methodology proves to be a critical corrective for religious studies, which is reminded of its own cultural presuppositions. Michael Pye has shown this in the three “schools” in the European study of Buddhism (Anglo-German, Russian, and Franco-Belgian), “Comparative Hermeneutics in Religion,” pp. 18 ff.
See M. von Brück, “Wo endet Zeit?” in Was ist Zeit? Zeit und Verantwortung in Wissenschaft, Technik und Religion,ed. Kurt Weis (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag), 1995, esp. pp. 216 ff.
This is similar structurally to the statement that “the truth of the divine is unattainably beyond the truth of the religious person,” which Reinhold Bernhardt accepts as a universal concept of all religions. To be sure, both the concept of the “divine” and its relationship to the “religious” are extremely culturally variant. For that reason, I avoid them. Bernhardt’s claim that “respect for the truth-certitude of the person who believes differently” is the inter-religious dialogue’s only necessary basis of understanding is indeed correct, but unclear, because the readiness for self-change, i.e. for relativizing one’s own identity in the process of understanding (i.e. the readiness to learn in the sense of the observations above) is also needed (Bernhardt, “Prinzipieller Pluralismus oder mutualer Inklusivismus als hermeneutisches Paradigma einer Theologie der Religionen?” in Die spekulative Philosophie der Weltreligionen: Ein Beitrag zum Gespräch der Weltreligionen im Vorfeld der EXPO 2000 Hannover [Vienna: Passagen-Verlag, 1997], p. 31).
Cf. Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Den Löwen brüllen hören: Zur Hermeneutik eines christlichen Verständnisses der buddhistischen Heilsbotschaft (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1992), pp. 675 ff. The author understands basic human experiences as starting points for communication that appear more suitable than abstract concepts, which themselves refer again to basic human situations. He does not maintain that the basic experiences are the same in all religions.
von Brück and Lai, Buddhismus und Christentum,pp. 25 ff.
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von Brück, M. (2003). The Contribution of Religious Studies to the Dialogue of the World Religions. In: Koslowski, P. (eds) Philosophy Bridging the World Religions. A Discourse of the World Religions, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2618-4_8
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