World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

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ally structured world and organize their lives and social relations in terms of a culturally derived system of meaning and significance. Second, different cultures represent different systems of meaning and visions of the good life. Third, every culture is internally plural and reflects a continuing conversation between its different traditions and strands of thought. This does not mean that it is devoid of coherence and identity, but that its identity is plural, fluid and open."
As a matter of fact, multiculturalism was in the process of making for a long time, perhaps very long time. Rightly understood, the emergence of the multicultural society is not sudden. History knows no hiatus in its course. The periodization of history under the labels of ancient, medieval, modern and postmodern has a liberal element of academic arbitrariness. Today the world is one; the Chinese, the Indians, the Europeans or the Americans mingle in academia and in the market place. The philosophical excursion into the emergence of multicultural society requires us to undertake an exploration of many human horizons, proximate and distant, contemporaneous and historical. What is more, humans being essentially Dasein, projective in character, the fuller implications of emergence can be better understood if we look forward, more intensely and imaginatively, to the future which slowly, at times not so slowly, are coming up. Modern science and technology has played the most important role in bringing the people so close to one another.
Culture is one of the most operative terms of multiculturalism. Culture (Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning 'to cultivate') refers to the cultivation of human mind in terms of customs and traditions, values and virtues, language and literature, art and architecture, music and dance, and above all, an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning, the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize a community. In 1952, A.L. Kroeber and Klyde Kluchohn have given 164 definitions of cultural aspects of human beings comprising of the content and the intent of culture, its universalistic character, the hierarchical status and the pluralistic features. The universalistic features are based on the distinction between humans and the animals, the former can create symbols, typologies. conventions, belief systems, reason, subjectivity and emancipation. Humans can even create symbols not understandable by means of five senses. There may be negotiating aspects of culture particularly in the context of hierarchies of cultures - central/marginal, mainstream/subaltern, literate/illiterate, west/east, and so on. Raymond Williams in Culture and Society has enumerated three features of culture; namely, culture as a way of life, culture consisting of norms and principles and finally the documentary aspects of culture such as oral/written aspects, museums, archaeology, symbols/meanings, etc. Sri Aurobindo in Foundations of Indian Culture
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