Thither's others - Giles Fraser's thought for the day

Thought for the Day, the homily slot on the BBC's main morning news radio program, used to play the really useful role of getting me out of bed when I was a university student. I had worked out that if I set the radio alarm to go off at quarter to eight and placed it out of my reach, then come 0750 I would be forced out of bed to turn the radio off.

I gradually became more used to it; it stopped working as a morning call to action, and slowly I began to enjoy it, although usually with remnants of the aversion to being preached to that has abated only slowly. There are occasionally some really thoughtful thoughts ---Mona Sidiqqi, for example, stands out. And sometimes, even when the thoughts are aggravating, they have pushed me to record a counter-thought (like here, on Catastrophes, or here on Exodus versus Odyssey).

This morning's thought by Dr Giles Fraser was particularly good --- maybe it struck me so because it resonates with what feels like a big thought that has been stalking me for a while about sameness and difference.

Fraser uses Jonathan Freedland's view that we have now seen the "human face of Iran", and, specifically, that the last 3 weeks of protest have developed in the West "a strong affinity" to Iranians in the streets to ask a big question about our common humaity. Does this "human face" do its work of transforming out attitudes because it emphasises the humanity that we commonly share (apparently Freedland's view)? or because it recognises the profound difference that unites us (Emanuel Levinas' view)? and does this foundational difference matter?

The thought that has been stalking me is that the distinction really does matter because within it lies a guide to how liberalism, in some of its recent incarnations, became so anti-pluralist. "Let the market solve it" is attractive if what we all share is the kind of thin nature assumed by modern economists; "let the tanks impose regime change, democracy and rule of law" is attractive if political value and social selves are given, invariant, and waiting only for an opportunity to be expressed.

More convincing, practically and philosophically, is that difference is irreducible and the starting point of our social selves. This makes the basic human impulse for politics that of hospitality rather than sympathy. If we base morality and politics in sympathy, then we will always be looking at ways of thowing away what really makes others others.We will think that conflict can be dissolved by easy universalism rather than real and respectful accommodation. 

I look forward to more on this during the conversation this evening between Susan Richards and Anatol Lieven around Susan's emergent recent history of ordinary Russians. It is the quality of difference, not sameness, that seems to permeate the extracts we have here on the site.