Moreover, there is a further troubling or disorienting factor: the basic asymmetry inherent in general agendas or marching orders. For clearly, like every other imperative, the injunction to democratise (or to mobilise democracy) erects an asymmetry between those issuing the injunction and those subject to it, that is, between those who “democratise” and those who are being “democratised”.

The discrepancy is not troubling for national leaders or policy-makers; being solely concerned with power and efficiency criteria, their vision typically stops short of ends. For western leaders, in particular, the agenda to “democratise” the world – an agenda officially embraced by the current American administration – is only a variation on a series of similar marching-orders issued during modern and late modern times: orders or directives like those to “modernise,” to “westernise” or to “develop” the world. What is untroubling to policy-makers, however, is of necessity disturbing to those of us not in power.

The contrast between the imposition and the experience of democracy, between unilateral marching-orders and shared standards of life, is unacceptable and in need of reconciliation (or at least mitigation). Examining the arsenal of options, we are liable to discover a pathway which steers clear of both of unilateralism and mutual isolation (or incommensurability): it is the royal path of teaching and learning, of pedagogy and genuine Bildung.

A clue along the way is given by the story of the slave-boy in Plato’s Meno, which indicates that we can really learn only what we (implicitly) already know and that teaching is a kind of (mutual) disclosure. I would like to follow this hunch or clue.

Learning across cultures

The notion of cross-cultural learning has been off to a bad start in the 21st century. Even before the dawn of the new millennium, the prognosis offered by political experts was often grim. In his well-known essay of 1993 (subsequently developed into a book), Samuel Huntington painted a sombre scenario of global politics in the decades ahead. “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural,” he proclaimed. Hence, “the clash of civilisations will dominate global politics” and “the fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future.” At the time of his writing, the globe was already divided between “the west and the rest”; but the most troubling emerging fault line yawned between the west and Islam (or “the west and several Islamic-Confucian states”).

The events of 11 September 2001 have done nothing to soften this faultline – a rift further deepened by ensuing “terror wars”. The shockwaves of these events have enticed even many learned intellectuals and political thinkers to subscribe to the “culture-clash” scenario.

What thinkers like Samuel Huntington ignore is that cultures and religions are not monolithic entities endowed with fixed and invariant traits. Contrary to the talk about “faultlines” and “civilisational identity,” all cultural and religious traditions are inherently multidimensional and composed of many different strands or layers, strands whose relationship is often tensional or obscure. Moreover, throughout history, cross-cultural learning has repeatedly transgressed these faultlines.

Since, in our present time, Islamic civilisation is frequently treated as beyond the pale of mutual learning and engagement, special attention needs to be given to this issue. Undeniably, Islam has historically often clashed with other cultures – including European as well as Indian (or Hindu) culture. But there is another side to this picture, as students of western history know very well. Examining the intellectual origins of medieval Europe, one quickly discovers the crucial role of Islam in the formation of European civilization – in fact, in the very effort to civilise and educationally uplift a still largely “barbarian” continent.

It was through the intermediary of mostly Arab philosophers and translators that the treasures of Greek and Roman antiquity – the core of the later classical “canon” – were transmitted or re-transmitted to the medieval heirs of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. How can one forget the richly energising and intellectually enlivening effect exerted by the works of al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) on the minds of European thinkers at the time?

The field of encounter

Can one overstate the importance of the legions of Muslim translators and transcribers involved in cultural transmission? From this angle, to portray Islam as beyond the pale of dialogue or engagement means to strike at the root of European and western civilisation as such. To catch a glimpse of medieval cultural symbiosis one only needs to visit the Spanish city of Cordoba where, in different town squares, the imposing statues of the Stoic Seneca, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd, and the great Jewish thinker Maimonides can still be admired. How much mutual learning seems to have happened in a relatively small space! Of course, all this happened before 1492, that is, before the expulsion of the Muslims and Jews from “Catholic” Spain – before that concerted effort of ethnic and religious cleansing that tried to reduce European civilisation to a uniform mould and single identity.

In the history of Europe – one needs to add instantly – cross-cultural learning has not been restricted to the encounter with Islam. On a more limited scale, learning and its transmission have also occurred between Europe and what is today called east Asia; the crucial name in this respect, even more than Marco Polo, is Matteo Ricci.

Contrary to some engrained western prejudices, the Mongol dynasty was seriously interested in learning from other civilisations, and especially from the west. The story of Matteo Ricci was complicated and punctuated by tensions or rifts – tensions having to do with the fact that Ricci was not a private traveller but a Jesuit and Christian missionary tied, however loosely, to instructions from Rome. With dedication and perseverance, he immersed himself in the study of Chinese language and culture, emerging soon as one of the most respected authorities in the field – respected even by leading Chinese literati at the time.

Quite apart from its encounters with European travellers and missionaries, Asia has its own rich tradition of cross-cultural and interfaith learning, a tradition stretching back over 2,000 years. Most prominent in this tradition is the encounter between Chinese Confucianism and Taoism, on the one hand, and Indian Buddhism, on the other.

As in the European case, the contact was instigated and carried forward by travellers, specifically travelling Buddhist monks who journeyed from India to China, facing great hardship on their long excursion. From China Buddhism in due course spread to Japan, Korea, and adjacent lands in east Asia; again, cultural-religious learning and transmission were the work mainly of travelling monks and scholars disseminating Buddha’s message by land and by sea.

In the case of Japan, a reverse itinerary was often required: due to the scarcity of available texts and trained teachers, Japanese scholars felt the need to travel to China in order to obtain genuine instruction. Easily the most impressive of these travellers was the monk Ennin, also known in Japan as Jikaku Daishi. Some four centuries before Marco Polo, Ennin crossed the sea to China where he spent about a decade, keeping a detailed record or diary of his extensive travels through the vast country (then under the T’ang dynasty).

Significantly, Ennin’s diary was titled “Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law (or dharma)” – which means that Ennin was a pilgrim in search not of wealth or riches or political power but of the right way to live (dharma, tao). Thus, at least in his case, the “canons” of learning took clear precedence over, and managed to silence, the “cannons” of military power and economic again.

In the recited encounters, cross-cultural learning was typically not an effort to foist a doctrine or established canon on alien populations, thereby subjecting them to foreign control. Rather, in almost every instance, great care was taken to find resonances for transmitted ideas in indigenous cultural and religious traditions, that is, to treat the latter as the very resources needed for genuine learning and transformation. In this manner, a measure of inter-human equality was preserved and the danger of unilateral violence or manipulation was avoided or at least greatly reduced. This, of course, is the secret of teaching and learning – or of teaching as a mode of learning.

Mobilising global democracy

What lessons might there be in this story of cross-cultural learning for the issue of mobilising cross-cultural, perhaps even global, democracy?

Such mobilisation cannot happen through “cannons” or military coercion and force. The attempt to use such force violates the axioms of mutual recognition and equal respect which are the requisites of the ethos of democracy. Despite the obviousness of this point, many policy makers and “world leaders” – notoriously slow learners – still privilege “cannons” over “canons” of learning.

According to some of these leaders and their intellectual supporters, the policy of a “world-class” nation should be to spread democracy worldwide, if necessary by force of arms. Nowhere has this policy been more clearly stated than in the book An End to Evil, written by David Frum & Richard Perle, two intellectuals close to the seat of American power. As the authors assert, American foreign policy should be committed to a global “war for liberty” and democracy, in pursuit of a world “in which all peoples are free to find their own destiny.” This goal, they add, will be brought into being, and can only be brought into being, “by American armed might and defended by American might” – irrespective of the glaring incongruence of means and ends.

The only proper way to mobilise democracy cross-culturally is through reciprocal engagement and recognition, that is, through a process of “canonical” learning leading to the cultivation of a sense of equality and mutual respect. I use the term “canon” or “canonical” here in a synechdocal fashion (as in a part that stands in for a whole) to indicate a certain cultural coherence.

Learning cross-culturally certainly does not only involve the study of canonical texts in a narrow sense, but the engagement in a broad configuration of lived experiences which Wittgenstein called a “language game” seen as a “form of life.” It is the difference or otherness of cultures (their “unknown” dimension) which renders learning necessary; it is their partial translatability which renders learning possible or at least not entirely pointless.

As one should note well, cross-cultural learning, properly pursued, involves a process of peregrination or alienation and hence of transformation – and not in a unilateral fashion. Those believing they have something to teach the world need to shoulder this process with particular intensity: they need to learn even more than their students. Hence, in the encounter all sides are put to the test or called into question.

Western advocates of democracy may discover that some of their beliefs have congealed into ideologies, perhaps even dogmas – requiring renewed self-scrutiny. Thus, they may have to re-examine some cherished assumptions: such as the “absoluteness” or absolute truth of “liberal” democracy in its association with free-market economics and a preference for “negative” liberties and human rights.

The outcome of the re-examination may well be a (partial) reaffirmation – but one which is liable to be tinged with a sober awareness of limits and a prudent moderation uncongenial to a “call to arms.” On the other hand, societies or cultures which are novices to modern democracy may find that – no longer threatened by western military domination – they can explore the new terrain without excessive risk or self-abnegation; in proceeding along this way, they may discover in their own traditions resources for the development of their own kind of modernity and their own version of modern democracy.

What can and needs to be done is not the unilateral export of western democracy to the rest of the world, but rather the creation of a space or arena where learning about democracy can happen and where democracy can take root in a democratic way, without coercion.

To some extent, cross-cultural global arenas already exist—but in embryonic or fledgling form: in the United Nations General Assembly, Unesco and some specialised agencies, supplemented by a host of regional institutions. The problem with the existing venues is that they are dependent on participating state governments whose policy agendas are typically oriented not toward learning but toward national power and economic self-interest. For this reason, efforts are presently underway to reform and supplement existing global institutions with more people-oriented arenas, such as a peoples’ assembly in the United Nations and similar transnational (not state-centered) institutions.

With the establishment and strengthening of global venues of this kind, people around the world would feel that they are no longer completely at the mercy of political and corporate elites and that they can vent their grievances in an open and non-repressive, that is, democratic way. Viewed in this light, global venues can be seen as spaces allowing learning to happen (in the German phrase, lernen lassen), especially learning about how to mobilise democracy and its ethos of equal respect.