Being in the World: Dialogue and Cosmopolis

Appendix D: Dialogue in Practice: Conversation with Members of a “Youth Forum”

217 Appendix D Dialogue in Practice Conversation with Members of a “Youth Forum”1 Q: We would like first of all to thank you very much for being with us today. For us, young people, it is a unique possibility to learn from you in an informal way. And we would like not only to learn from you but hopefully have an informal discussion. During the Youth Forum a lot of people with very different backgrounds met, and we were working together for a few days. The questions we want to raise deal with democracy and religion, and we notice that the relationship between Islam and democracy is very complex. So we would like to ask: What do you think, how complex is the relationship between Islam and democracy in reality? A: First of all I’m greatly concerned about democracy. In 2010 I published a book called The Promise of Democracy. What is that promise? In my view, the promise of democracy is that people can rule themselves. It so happens that 2009 was the year in which we celebrated a book written by Gandhi one hundred years ago: it was titled Indian Self-Rule. What is the point of Indian self-rule? It means that Indian people are not ruled by others, not dominated, not exploited; and this means that they have to rule themselves; Gandhi called this swaraj. The promise of democracy is this kind of swaraj, that I’m not ruled by others, nor do I rule others, but we all are able to rule ourselves. This means that we are able to control our selfish impulses and be responsible for our actions. What I advocate in my own book is this ethical conception of de- 218 Appendix D. Dialogue in Practice mocracy where people do not only pursue selfish interests, their own desires or impulses, but pursue the Common Good, what the Greeks called “the good life,” the life of goodness. Not the life of leisure, not la dolce vita, but rather a life devoted to goodness, to the pursuit of the Common Good, which is beyond our individual self-interests. My book was published in 2010, but I wrote it earlier (2009), just at the time when the world was suffering from the effects of excessive corporate selfishness, from the collapse of financial markets, the collapse of neoliberal capitalism as we knew it. So capitalism was seriously questioned at that time because the capitalist system is based on the profit motive, my profit, corporate profit, not a common profit. This crisis of Western markets demonstrated that we have to formulate a new conception of democracy. Not democracy that is built purely on private greed, but a democracy devoted to ethical standards, of justice and good life. This was basically also Gandhi’s argument. In Hind Swaraj, he said: “It is not just sufficient to drive away the British and to replace British governors by Indian governors. It is not sufficient that we are now dominated by native elites. What we need is really that we are able to govern ourselves.” This is a very important notion of government, of democracy as a regime, and we all have to learn about this. Frequently democracy is identified with liberalism or neoliberalism . Frequently democracy is said to mean economic or laissezfaire liberalism. But we have seen in the financial fiasco that this cannot be correct. This identification of democracy and economic liberalism needs to be revised or overcome. We have to find ethical standards to curb the relentless pursuit of self-interest. Where do we find these ethical resources? Well, we find them to some extent in the great cultural traditions. Gandhi found them in the great tradition of Indian culture, which is spelled out in the teachings of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita. Gandhi always had a copy of the Bhagavad Gita with him in his pocket and read verses of it in the evening. The Bhagavad Gita is like a bible for Indians . Of course, in Asia we also have other cultural traditions, such as Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Confucianism teaches that we only find ourselves in relationships with others. We are not isolated individuals; we cannot pursue only our individual in- Conversation with Members of a “Youth Forum” 219 terests. There are famous relationships: fathers/mothers, parents/ children, friends and friends, younger child to older child, and of course people to each...