Sarajevo Essays: Politics, Ideology, and Tradition

2. Tolerance, Ideology, and Tradition

2 Tolerance, Ideology, and Tradition Introduction: An Unexpected Movement The last few decades of the second Christian millennium have seen a widespread trend towards a heightened affirmation of religion in those areas of life, at both the individual and the social level, from which it seemed to have become detached in the West. This development, which has now become quite marked, must be seen in the context of long-term patterns of cause and effect. To interpret it, one must grasp the individual and social developments in the period that is seen as the beginning of our current reality. The second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth were characterized by the promotion of ideological models for the future , accompanied by a further evolution of the process that began with the Renaissance, in which the proposition “God vis-à-vis Man” is transformed into “Man vis-à-vis everything else.” This has been succeeded, in the second half of the twentieth century, by a decline in ideological fervor, the collapse of several of the great ideology-inspired movements, and an increasing trend towards religious approaches to this world of disillusion and despair. This has unfolded in the form of a widespread collision between two languages, the language of religion and the language of ideology, resulting in a development more complex than anything previously known: ideological language and secular experience embraced by religious organizations, and religious language and content again pushed to the social margins. By their own exclusive nature, ideological totalitarianisms have created generalized models in which the languages of tradition are almost completely ignored. Closely related theories and concepts have thus sprung up, which subjugate tradition to their own exclusive models. Where the language of tradition is silenced, or contradicts the language of ideology, tradition is simply, crudely denied. Even for experienced observers this paradox is hard to recognize, but 27 only once the content of “the crisis of the times and its indicators” is distinguished is it even possible to raise numerous vital questions. The attempt to identify responses to the universal essence of human language in the coming era demands that the multiple forms of contemporary knowledge be examined from the perspectives of ideology, modernity, and tradition alike. The example of tolerance reflects the complexity of this task.1 Tolerating the Other The contemporary notion of tolerance may be linked, simplistically at least, with modern Christian disunity. (This is a tentative connection, and its treatment in this essay is not meant to be taken as a generalization, but as a means of drawing conclusions that are applicable to the world as a whole to be reached.) In the Christian world, exclusivity towards movements generally defined as heretical, such as gnosticism, has as a rule ended in the annihilation of those who lacked the power to oppose “the generally accepted and established Church.” Individuals are therefore deprived of the right to a direct relationship with the source of the tradition that they belong to, guided by their own conscience and selfhood, unless this relationship wholly confirms the axiomatic rights of the established Church. From this perspective, Others are the exception, and their survival in the long term cannot be guaranteed in such an environment, since their rights are not encoded in the ruling interpretation of tradition. The Great Schism altered nothing in this model. To put it simply, it was formed as a balance of power, in which even the history of marginal encounters and conflicts is evidence of the fundamental equilibrium of the model. The issue of the Other was further exacerbated by Europe’s religious wars and the later schisms within Christian unity. Their presence on “both sides” made it imperative to identify reasons for tolerance. But the public good, in the main, was reduced to an exclusive interpretation of tradition, and in every marriage of political power and ideology based on tradition, the desire to exclude the Other was encoded. The reverse process has its foundation in the contradictions of differing interpretations of tradition, derived, in various languages and ideologies, from tradition, or traditio perennis, and the desire to establish the right of individuals to moderation and sincerity in the relationship towards themselves, the world, and God as their own potential allowed. The comprehensiveness and exclusivity of individual traditions are seen as obstacles to individual rights. Ethnic collectivism demands the repression of that exclusivity and the promotion of a national ideology as the context within which “rights” can be 28 Sarajevo Essays...