Parallel with the globalization of all the relations between men, nations, cultures there is a clearly visible tendency to elaborate a global ethic which would be common for all the civilizations of the world. (Let us think, e.g., of Hans Küng's Projekt Weltethos.)
In a certain sense, a global ethic already exists, at least as an experiment: let us think to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to other similar documents related to it. But this Declaration, corresponding to its own name, only "declares" certain norms, enumerating them without any rational argumentation, any theoretical base.
Jacques Maritain, one of the authors of the Declaration, was convinced in person, that in principle there is a rational moral argumentation having universal validity (namely Thomistic natural law theory). But according to him (and to many others) it's enough to agree with one another in the practical moral principles, to which everybody adds his own theoretical base, according to his own religion, philosophy, view of life, so we shall have a moral, practical agreement without violating theoretical pluralism. [Maritain, L'Homme et l'État, Paris 1965. pp. 69-71.]
But what can we do, if, e.g., an important norm of the Declaration is inconsistent with one of the religions or, at least, it cannot be deduced from the latter? Why should, in this case, the believer of such a religion accept the norm in question? What shall we do, e.g., with a Moslem, whose own theoretical base not only fails to involve but even seems to exclude the equality of rights of the sexes which, at the same time, is among the most important principles of the Declaration?
And why shouldn't he even say that neither he nor we must accept this principle, because it is just its contrary that has universal validity? In this case he would only oppose a mere declaration lacking theoretical base to our one, lacking similarly any theoretical base.
When this is the case, we can ask: to which of the norm systems does this believer have to be loyal? Does he have to adjust his Moslem faith to the Declaration or vice versa? Can he be expected to attribute a greater authority to this latter than to his own religion, seen by him as revealed by God? How can we refute him if he says it is really his conception which have a universal value? Even when he refers to his mere faith, this argument will not be weaker than ours, because we also have only "declared" something, explicitely giving up the search for a rational base having universal validity. Isn't it possible, that he will accuse us of making an entirely western principle appear as a principle of general validity? This isn't merely a speculation. We can hear about some international conferences where people from the Third World denounce the Human Rights conception as a kind of "western cultural imperialism".
But we can find even within the western culture such conflicts of values, from different points of view. First of all, we have to say that the West as such does not exist. We must distinguish at least two main currents in western tradition: the pre-modern (classical and Christian) organic tradition with stress on man's social character, on common good meant as something more than a mathematical sum of private goods, on perfectionism of state etc., and the modern individualistic model, where society is nothing but the sum of individuals (each of them having his own conception on good life): their only duty is to respect the freedom of the others and the role of the state is minimalized, it has no right to prescribe or promote a certain way of life for all the society and it has practically only a procedural role etc. (Of course we could make many further sub-divisions within this two types.)
Nowadays it is this latter model which is dominant in the West (though there are also cornsiderable groups representing the former one), and this implies pluralism of worldviews wihtin the western world, too. And so the above mentioned intercultural difficulty is present in the framework of one culture, too: worldview being a private affair, the written (positive) law is the only source of norms which each citizen of any western country necessarily meet during his life. Since he may have any kind of worldview, it is not sure that his personal worldview will be able to base the list of human rights. People may - "by chance" - have a worldview favourable for these rights (e.g. when they accept an anthropology with metaphysical or religious base according to which the dignity or freedom of individuals is something sacred), and then they will agree with international and national documents on human rights. But those who have other philosophical or religious bases or have not any well-considered, systematical worldview may sometimes think that these documents represent nothing but a kind of positive law, without any further justification. In this case they will think that an act violating a human right is forbidden only because the written law forbids it. And since written law is evidently a product of human activity (e.g. negotiations, discussions, referendum etc.), it has not that stable, non-appealable character which is needed by a really sacred law, digne of authority, because it is evident that these rules can be changed by future human activity. They seem more a result of a temporary compromise between individuals following different goals than a law of eternal validity. It may happen that somebody will abstain from violating the right of others only because of possible sanctions of written law, without any inner motivation of his conscience. And, of course, in this case he has no reason for abstain from violation of rights when he can do it without being punished.
Paradoxically it was just the contents of this human rights conception which undermined the justification of the same rights. Early modern works and documents on human rights argued refering to God and/or natural law, in any case having a certain metaphysical background in a wide sense of this term. But, declaring freedom of thought, these authors made it possible to destroy this metaphysical background, leaving so human rights without defence. (E.g. it was in the name of the human freedom received from God that Jefferson fought for a freedom of religion including even the right to be an atheist.)
Some post-modernist authors, first of all Rorty, mean that the metaphysical background mentioned above was only a kind of "ladder", very useful for western societies to climb up to the height of actual liberal democracy but become useless or even dangerous today, when democratic and liberal values (including human rights) are already self-evident and they need no theoretical justification; so it is possible to throw away the ladder. But I think - because of the fact itself that other, non-western civilizations exist and they criticize our value system in the name of their own one - intercultural dialogue is necessary, and during this we need theoretical justification. But we need it even in discussions within western civilization. If western values are supported only by public opinion as self-evidences, there is no guarantee against spontaneous processes of this public opinion leading to changements which will be unfavourable for these values. If we want to control these changements, we need theoretical arguments, too (if we do not want to use merely administrative or repressive measures defending the given values simply beacause they are given), and of course we need this theoretical control even if we want to modify some details of our value system.
However, the presence of the post-modern view of human rights which gives up their justification is very frequent today, since many of the leading western intellectuals say there is no possibility to base rationally any moral rule, including human rights. According to a considerable number of thinkers of our post-modern time there is nothing but the different concrete cultures, each of them having its own mentality, its own specifical value system, its own traditions, without the possibility to establish a hierarchy of them. One says: there is no absolute and suprahistorical measure according to which we could compare them; we cannot find a conception of human nature which would be independent of concrete situations, and which could be the base of qualifying one tradition good, an another bad. Civilizations change, it is true, but in these changes there is no logic, no order. Everything happens "by chance", and if we wanted to characterize these civilizations very shortly, we could use the key-word of Rorty, "contingency". And, of course, there is no objective truth. The search for it is founded on surviving metaphysical prejudices. Man is completely the prisoner of its own tradition.
The result of this is a strong tendency insisting on importance of cultural identity, underlining the value of local traditions, creating a cult of ethnocentrism, denouncing all kinds of universalism as a kind of intolerance or fanatism. This cult is so strong, popular and wide-spread that even the adherents of the global ethic want to reckon with this new recpect for identity, and they often declare their intention to have respect for cultural identity and to maintain plurality of worldviews as far as possible, often choosing more or less relativistic solutions and excluding tentatives of conversion in traditional sense. But how can one reconcile global ethic and respect for local/cultural identity?
In this paper I want to argue for the necessity of a kind of universalism for the elaboration of a really well functioning global ethic.
There are different degrees of possible concessions made by adherents of global ethic in favour of relativism.
The first theoretical possibility examined by me can be called total relativism. In this case one simply accept the empirical fact that any civilization is different from any other one, with no search for common features either on practical, or on theoretical level.
This kind of cultural relativism is very popular today, because one hopes that this could secure the mutual tolerance in the relation of persons belonging to different cultural traditions. One believes that if no one of these cultures can be said the owner of the absolute and rationally demonstrable truth, each of them will have the respect for all the others.
This conception involves some difficulties. First of all: if every person is the prisoner of his own tradition, this fact in itself does not result necessarily in tolerance. It results in my tolerance only if my own tradition involves the prescription of tolerance. If I want to declare the universal validity of intercultural tolerance, I am inconsistent with my own thesis on non-existence of universal, supracultural principles. If I want to be consequent in my relativism, I can say nothing general on the behaviour of a culture towards another one. Anybody can do what he wants. If the members of a culture, according to their own tradition, want to use force to diffuse their own conviction, nobody can reproach them for this. And the rational communication of cultures is completly excluded.
The situation is in particular delicat when we look at the case of the coexistence of two cultures, from which one is relativist and tolerant while the members of the other say they possess the absolute truth. The first one can not furnish sure points of orientation, which are so desired by men and so necessary for a solid identity. The only sure point given by this relativist culture is the thesis on impossibility of finding the absolute truth by a rational argumentation. If such a thesis is once diffused and vulgarized, it, so to speak, "authorizes" the members of this relativist culture to choose any other culture which offers them the orientation points they need, and, at the same time, it dispenses them from the intellectual obligation of justifying rationally their choice. So they can, so to speak, take the plunge into the second, non-relativist culture, accepting it without any reservation, any critics. Even if this second culture is intolerant, they can accept it, because there is no supracultural, universal criterion, in the name of which one has to reject intolerance. If such is the case, it is not impossible that this second culture can gain over the majority of the population of the first, tolerant culture. This would not be a problem if the winning culture were really the possessor of the absolute truth, but this can never be controlled, because this winning culture, confronted with a culture denying the possibility of a rational intercultural discourse, isn't constrained to test its own tradition, to consider the possible rational objections etc. So relativism can conduce to the suicide of the culture which proclaimed it, and to the victory of and intolerant culture. Of course, this is just the contrary of the situation which was wished by the tolerant relativists.
But it is not only in the case of intercultural moral conflicts (more and more frequent in our western world becoming multicultural) that this kind of relativism seems to be insufficient. It leaves the problems unsolved even within our own civilization. We cannot ensure the sacred authority of our norms. If namely the only argument we have in favour of a certain norm is that it belongs to our tradition, than the violator of this norm can easily refer to the fact that tradition is not something fixed and aeternal but it is made and transformed by men, and the norm in question is also was made during the history, sometimes even by rejecting a contrary norm. Why couldn't we create now a new tradition? (In particular since the recognition of "progress" as a value is also an element of our tradition.)
In addition to these general difficulties of this kind of relativism we can find a problem from the point of view of global ethic, too. In the case of total relativism we cannot be sure that each culture will feel the need of a global ethic. If the content of a certain culture is completely contingent, there is no a priori necessity of the deducibility of such a need from its own traditional principles, born "by chance". If a Western partisan of global ethic refers to phenomena of actual global crisis which urges us to elaborate a common project to save the world and so a common global ethic, a non-Western will perhaps say that in his own worldview this phenomena have not to be interpreted as signs of crisis. And even when all the cultures acknowledge the presence of a global crisis, the solutions will be very different because of the diversity of fundamental moral principles of the different worldviews.
But perhaps a relativist will answer this way: "Yes, it is true that there is no a priori theoretical guarantee for the coincidence of norms of different cultures, still it is an empirical fact that there are many common rules, even when this coincidence is made only by chance. And if we find these common points, we can make a global ethic, the content of which will be a common moral minimum, accepted by the members of each culture on the base of their own value system and vorldview." [Like in the case of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but this time accepting only a minimalist system of common rules.] "So we can maintain our relativism and have a global ethic at the same time."
Well, let us see what can happen in this case. Let us suppose that we have already the list of common norms. We declare it as a global ethic and we add that the justification of it is each culture's "private business", since there is no universally valid worldview. (By justification I mean here both the deduction of the contents of norms from the basic principles of a worldview [saying what should people do, e.g. for the conservation of a certain cosmic order], and the motivation in favour of these norms, e.g. by promising other-worldly sanctions etc. These two kinds of justification may coincide, e.g. in hedonistic ethic, but this is not necessary.)
What will happen after this declaration? There are two possibilities. Either we say that the norms which don't belong to that common minimum can be different according to the worldview of every single culture, or we say that henceforward it is only the common minimum what is obligatory in each culture and the rest loses its validity.
The former version is perfectly compatible with relativism, but in this case one cannot understand the reason of the whole declaration of common minimum, since this is nothing but the mere description of the already existing situation. Everything remains as it was. And it is very probable that no culture will be satisfied with this minimum. Let us suppose, e.g., that there are only three different cultures in the world, each of them having its own norms considered absolutely necessary for the common goal, i.e. the solution of global crisis. Each culture wants to convince the others of this absolute necessity, because each of them thinks it is only a worldwide respect for these norms what can help us. The first culture has a, b and c norms, the second a, d and e, the third a, f and g. Well, the only common norm is a, which is in itself unsatisfactory according to each culture.
Let us see the other possibility, i.e. the common minimum as the only obligatory global ethic. If henceforward it is only the common norms which are valid everywhere, and all the cultures have to adjust themselves to it, there are two further "sub-possibilities", corresponding to two possible interpretations of the expression "common minimum":
a) The "common minimum" means the sum of common prescriptions (including prohibitions, because these can be expressed in positive form too, e.g. "Abstain from killing!" instead of "Don't kill!"). In this case, if we want to be consistent, we have to allow everything which is allowed at least in one of the cultures, even when the allowed behaviour is very strange or abominable for us. The West, too, must accept, e.g., cannibalism, because it is not forbidden in every culture without exception. But the main problem is the justification of the changements of former value systems: if the only possible justifying base is for each culture its own worldview, why do we have to accept a norm not deducible from our own worldview or even in contradiction with it?
b) The "common minimum" means the sum of behaviours allowed in every culture, i.e. by norm we mean, this time, permission. In this case every culture have to prescribe every behaviour which is obligatory at least in one culture. This solution also would have surprising effects for many cultures. E.g. Moslem countries would have to accept monogamy, while Western women would have to be veiled. Moreover, sometimes we would have to accept two incompatible precepts at the same time, e.g. if one of the cultures forbids human sacrifice and an other culture forbids the omission of human sacrifice. But here too, the main problem is that of justification, like in the case a): If the only possible theoretical base of justification is for everybody his own worldview, why does one have to accept a new rule, indeducible from his own value system?
It seems that we must find universal, supracultural points not merely in our practical behaviour but in its theoretical justification, too. We have to look for some common measure to which each civilization must adjust the content of its own value system.
But somebody will perhaps even now try to save something of the theoretical peculiarity of the different civilizations, saying: "Let us use the above mentioned division between the two components of theoretical justification. Now we will try to argue in a common rational language in favour of a common norm system, whose validity is so clear and convincing that one must accept is even against the norms of his own traditions, i.e. with this method we promote a kind of conversion, though only in moral level. So the content of the global ethic will be under the control of a universal rationality (e.g. if in a civilization murder was, up to now, allowed n the name of the local traditon, from now it will be forbidden in the name of a supracultural norm system), while the other element of theoretical justification, i.e. the motivation (e.g. promise of aeternal beatitude or insistence on the moral superiority of renouncing any further reward for good behaviour which has a value in tself and is its own reward etc.) remains the business of the different cultural traditions."
Let us suppose that we have already reached the agreement on practical rules, after a long discussion, during which we have made each civilization adjust its own value system to a rationally based, universally valid common ethic, without any critique of theoretical justification in so far as this refers to the motivation and not to the content of norms. Certain elements of that tradition had to change, other elements of the same tradition remained intact, including, e.g. the otherworldly rewards and punishments of virtuous and sinner respectively. Can these elements be yet useful for the members of the tradition in question? I think, in the case of a considerable part of worldviews we have to answer negatively, in particular when we consider religions. A religion often constitutes a whole, based on a certain sacred source, whose every element has the same authority, because of its divine origin or simply because the tradition is very ancient. (Or even when the different elements have not the same authority, it may happen that during the above mentioned adjustment to global ethic the religion in question has to give up one of its practical rules defended up to now in its sacred text by a point of very great authority.) Has the rest of the sacred source the same authority as before? Not at all! If believers see that the practical rules of the sacred source must be rectified, they can hardly accept the credibility of the rest of the same source. If this latter was wrong when it spoke about a certain prescription, is it sure that it is not wrong when mentions otherworldly sanctions?
But this means that, if we really want a serious global ethic, only two types of religions can survive the dialogue preparing this ethic: this religions must either have from their beginning a moral code already coinciding with the result of that dialogue, or have no fixed ethic (or, at least, their moral code must not be an essential, sacred, unchangeable part of themselves). Other religions may perish, while religions of the above mentioned first group will even gain a greater credibility than their earlier one, because of the coincidence of their moral code with that of our global ethic.
If the consequent construction of a new global ethic and the cult of the cultural identity seem to be irreconciliable with each other and we prefer the former, and so we must anyway give up the principle of conserving intact any kind of cultural tradition, we are freed of an other very uncomfortable practical difficulty, too. Since integrity of traditional systems is not our goal, we have not to raise the problem of the representation of different worldviews. If the participants of our dialogue were the different cultures as unities, as wholes, we would have to ask in the case of each tradition, each religion etc.: who has the right (or duty) to represent the worldview in question? How can we say whether a worldview is an independent religion or only a heresy of a religion? And should we exclude from dialogue heretics? But if we wanted to treat all the possible interpretations of a certain religion as equals, in the end we should perhaps invite every believer! We could enumerate yet the difficulties of this kind, but fortunately our goal is not a delicate equilibrium between different traditions, but an objectively valid, universally acceptable global ethic, and it is not between uncontrollable beliefs and traditions but between rational arguments that our dialogue happens, whose purpose is a supracultural system which in itself is the measure of all traditional moral codes. So we have not to reckon any more with the point of view of authentical cultural identity. Of course, participants of dialogue remain stll members of concrete civiliisations and they inherit a considerable part of their traditional worldview from which they can draw many good ideas and arguments. But the intended purpose of dialogue is a new, rationally based global ethic and not a set of revised local worldviews conserved as intact as possible, and so we need not in any prize the authorized representants of worldviews, since our question is not whether we may change a certain worldview so and so without violating its vital, essential, integral parts.
I confess, this is a kind of universalism, often denounced today as a kind of totalitarianism. But there is a great difference between earlier universalisms (e.g. modern western intellectual domination over the world) and this new one: up to now most of the worldviews considered themselves as the only possessors of absolute truth, with no necessity of modifying themselves but wanting to convert all the others, and this pretention was almost always based on "self-evident" statements, accepted without critique and reflection, only by refering to a traditional authority. The global ethic, on the contrary, can be a common work of different civilizations - and different individual thinkers! In theory anybody can give it his contribution, and, on the other hand, anybody (every civilization, every group, every individual etc.) has to measure his own tradition to the global ethic and then rectify himself according to this latter. This duty exists even in the case of the West: though its moral code is perhaps the most consciously, most reflectedly elaborated one, there can be many precipitate statements in it, too.
But how can we construct this global ethic? Is a rational argumentation in ethics possible at all? Isn't it excluded by the impossibility of deducing statements of value from statements of fact? Well, I think, it isn't. We can, in some sense, elaborate a universal moral system even accepting the gap between "Is" and "Ought".
First of all, we have to underline the difference between the existence of the gap mentioned above and the alleged impossibility of basing an ethic by rational arguments.
As people are necessarily active, they always make decisions. This is inevitable. Our activity is earlier in our life than our reflection, so even when later we want to cease to be active (e.g. by comitting suicide), this also is possible only after a decision. Decisions are based on preferences, which constitute a more or less consistent system. Some of these preferences are for me self-evident, some of them are derived from these, but the limit between the two groups is not fixed, the roles can change. But a preference as preference can be deduced only from an other preference. If you want to persuade me to do A, I may ask: "Why?" You will perhaps say: "Because doing A you can realize the value B or avoid the danger of C." If B is something good and important in my system of preferences or if C is an object of a "negative preference", i.e. something bad for me, you can persuade me to do A. But perhaps I hate B, or I like C, or they are simply neutral for me. Now, if you want to continue the persuasion, you must want me to want B and/or to reject C, i.e. you have to change my mind. You can do it also by manipulation or with psychiatric methods, without my consent and knowledge, but then you leave the sphere of ethics. If you want my consent, you have to argue further. Why should I like B or reject C? If I make a decision to change my value system this way, it is me who makes this decision, and even a decision about values or preferences (i.e. about bases of decisions) is necessarily based (like any other decision) on my preferences, values. So you have to demonstrate that my rejection of B or my preference for C is incompatible with my preference for a value D, and so on, perhaps ad infinitum, because it is not necessary that you will find in my system a value whose direct or indirect implications are incompatible with my preference for C or my rejection of B, and whose importance is so great for me that I prefer it to the integrity of the original form of my value system.
This means that there is no absolutely sure method by which one can necessarily persuade anybody to do a certain act, to obey voluntarily a certain norm. In this sense there is really a gap between facts and values, a true statement of fact (e.g. "If you do A you avoid C.") being in itself unable to motivate the acting person. But the impossibility of motivating always successfully any concrete person, i.e. changing somebody's personal preference structure does not mean the impossibility of building an ethic of rational argumentation.
First of all, we must see that the possibility of using a moral precept correctly does not precondition the presence of an irresistible inner motivation in favour of the precept in every person of the group to which the precept is addressed. If it were not so, we could not speak, e.g., about sin. The possibility of persuasion of concrete persons is something accidental from the point of view of an ethic. Now we must examine the precepts in themselves without considering whether they are obeyed in reality, and even the whole set of theoretically possible precepts without considering whether they have been or will be ever formulated by anybody.
The purpose of a norm or a precept is the promotion of a changement in the world of facts or, on the contrary, the preservation of a given situation of facts. In both cases, the precept implies the preference of a certain state of facts to other states of facts, which, so to speak, physically are as possible as the prefered state. When we ask if there is some peculiar, special precepts among the others, we can formulate this question also in this way: "Is the set of all the actual or possible states of facts an ontologically homogeneous mass, or are there some states of facts which have a peculiar, ontologically marked position?" I agree with this latter opinion. In everyday life anybody is able to use correctly the words "healthy" and "ill" when he speaks about a living being, i.e. anybody knows the difference between a "normal" and an "abnormal" functioning of a certain structure. (There are, of course, many other functioning structures, a living being is only one of the best examples.) The criterion of distinguishing this two kinds of functioning is called by Maritain "normality of functioning" (normalité de fonctionnement), which he identifies with the natural law in traditional sense. [op.cit., p. 79.]
In the case of man (and society) it is very difficult to define this "normality of functioning", because of our historicity. But one thing is sure: a structure cannot function without existing. Perhaps there are also other standards of the "normality of functioning" of human nature, but for the moment it is enough if we know that we have at least one sure point, a criterion which makes the mass of possible facts ontologically heterogeneous: there are facts serving this "normality of functioning" (or, more concretely, to the existence) of mankind, and there are others which don't serve it or which are even against it. If we know correctly the causal structure of the world, in principle we can say about an act whether it is favourable to the existence of mankind. By this we haven't left the empire of facts. We can tell somebody with a completely unimpassioned mind, without any disapproval: "If you act so and so, your behaviour is contrary to the existence (or, in general, to »normality of functioning«) of mankind." This can be a simple statement of fact. And when for us this "normality of functioning" is a value, it is not sure that we can persuade everybody to accept our value. A value as such is deducible only of other values. So if for someone this "normality of functioning" in itself isn't evidently a value, we have to try to find in his value system a value from which we can, immediately or mediately, deduce for him the importance of the "normality of functioning", demonstrating that its acceptance is required by the consistency of his own value system. Perhaps we find such a value in his system, but it cannot be said a priori sure. (And, of course, even when we find the value in question, we have to take into account, e.g., the possibility that consistency itself isn't a value for him!) And there is also a possibility to refer to facts. Let us suppose. e.g., that he thinks: "The best way to realize my principal value A is to destroy the world [or: to be neutral to the world]." In this case we can try to demonstrate that the statement "If I destroy the world [or: if I am neutral to the world], then I will realize the value A. " statement is false, i.e. there is no causal relation between his attitude to the world and the realization of A.
It is quite possible that we cannot dissuade him from acting against "normality of functioning". But it remains still a fact that his act is against "normality of functioning", and that in its objective consequences it contributes to an eventual destruction of the existence of mankind (e.g. when his act pollutes the environment), so he is factually a violator of natural law, and, in this sense, he can be said a sinner according to natural law in Maritainian sense.
But can we go on? What should we do when there is no inconsistency whithin the value system of our partner and he also knows correctly the causal relations between certain acts and the realization of his values? Then our only possibility is to attack his worldview as a whole. (This is allowed since we have given up the unconditioned respect for cultural identity, as we have seen above.) Now we can and must use statements of fact, whose veracity or falsity is in principle ascertainable independently of the values. Of course we don't fill the gap between facts and values, we don't demonstrate our values refering to facts. We only confute some statements of fact which constitute a descriptive background to his statement of values, and which were practically among the conditions with the knowledge of which he chose the value system or worldview in question. E.g. if he accepts his value system as the content of an alleged divine revelation, we try to demonstrate the impossibility of divine origin of the text in question. Or when his attitude toward the world is due to his belief in a dualistic worldview where the material world is created by an evil ghost, or he thinks that the world is only illusion etc., we have to demonstrate the falsity of this believes.
But what can we do if our partner acknowledges the truth of all the statements of facts we enumerated and still he says he was conscious of all these truths when he elaborated his system? E.g. he is a fanatical extremist of libertarianism, saying that the absolute value is freedom, including economical freedom even if this latter conduces to the destruction of the world (e.g. by an ecological catastrophe).
This man can consider himself in two different ways. Either he acknowledges in some sense the "deviancy" of his own preference system, considering himself a sinner from the point of view of the system of normality of functioning, and so, though he tries to realize his personal preferences, he acts against his own conscience, or he thinks that he belongs to a whole complete worldview whose every member has a personal preference system like his, and thet this worldview is as legitim as ours, and so there his preferences are not exceptional but regular.
In the first case he cannot feel offended if we try to use force against him. But we shall do this even in the second case if the normality of functioning is really important for us.
Of course, by this we leave the terrain of theoretical argumentation, whose limits, I think, are clear mow. All we can do is, on the one hand, to elaborate, besides the existence of mankind, the other standards of normality of functioning, too, and to define the human behaviour favourable for this, basing it on statements of fact expressing the known causal relations of the world, and, on the other hand, we can criticize the preference system of the others, so making it more consistent and based on a worldview as true as possible. Then we can say, formulating a kind of hypothetical imperative: "If normality of functioning belongs to the logically consistent system of your personal preferences constituting your conscience, then you have to act so and so when realizing your preferences."
Then we can only hope that this hypothese is realized in the case of the majority of mankind. But we have good reasons to hope this. As these standards belong to the normality of functioning, it is very probable that we shall find them in almost all the great civilizations (even if often in a very inconsistent form). The more a standard is fundamental and of vital importance, the more its negation is fatal for the existence of any civilization.
Since intercultural dialogue happens between civilizations being more than thousand (or often even several thousands) of years old (except the modern western civilization, if we distinguish it from the premodern European civilization, as I did it above), the mere fact of their survival shows us that they follow at least the most important standards of normality of functioning. And this probability of coincidence ensures us that our dialogue can be successful.
Still this hope in coincidences is not to mistake for the above mentioned search for common minimum. The possibility of coincidences is for us only a preliminary condition of the elaboration of a global ethic. These common points means only that in every great civilization we can find some preferences to which we can refer when criticizing one another in the name of our new global ethic based on normality of functioning which is different from the value system of every civilization existing up to now.
When a civilization refuses to adjust itself to global ethic, refering just to its millennial past, saying that if its own old tradition was up to now perfectly good for surviving and there is no necessity of change, what should we say?
On the one hand we can refer to the perfectly new actual world situation with its new challenges needing new solutions, and we can say that even up to now there was no absolutely static civilization, all the existing traditions are results of processes (sometimes by changes of almost the whole tradition, e.g. in the case of conversion), and that sometimes it was just the survival what was possible only by changing some elements of tradition.
On the other hand we must say that normality of functioning is more than simple survival. But what does this "more" mean? This question will be answerable only after the elaboration of the whole conception about normality of functioning.

Created: 5 March 1999 by Pluhár Emese