In Search of a Better World

On Culture Clash

I was very pleased to be invited to Vienna to see old friends again and to make new friends; and I felt it as a great honour to be invited here today by the Chairman of the Society of Expatriate Austrians to give a short lecture. His invitation stressed that the subject of my lecture was left to me. So he left to me, very kindly, all the agonies of having to make a choice.

The difficulties in making a decision were considerable. Obviously, I wished to choose a subject that interests me. On the other hand it should also have some relevance to the present occasion – to the meeting of expatriate Austrians in Vienna on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of the Austrian State Treaty – the unique event that terminated the occupation of Austria after the Second World War.

I doubt if the subject I have chosen fulfils these expectations. Remembering the Austrian State Treaty and the Russian occupation of Austria that followed the Second World War, my talk is dedicated to the problem of culture clash – a thing that all expatriates must experience.

My own interest in culture clash is connected with my interest in a major problem: the problem of the characteristics and the origin of our European civilization. In my opinion, a partial solution of this problem seems to lie in the fact that our western civilization is derived from Greek civilization. And Greek civilization – an unparalleled phenomenon – originated in a culture clash between the western and eastern cultures of the Mediterranean. The effects of this culture clash were deeply felt. Homer made it into a leitmotif of Greek literature, and so of the literature of the western world.

The title of my lecture, ‘On Culture Clash’, refers to a hypothesis, to a historical conjecture. It is the conjecture that a clash of this kind need not always result in bloody battles and destructive wars, but may also be the cause of fruitful and life-promoting cultural developments. It may even lead to the evolution of a unique culture like that of the Greeks, which later was taken over by the Romans when it clashed with theirs. After many more clashes, particularly with Arab culture, it was deliberately revived during the Renaissance; and, thanks to the invention of book printing, it became that culture of the West: that civilization of Europe and of America, which eventually transformed all the other cultures of the world, in the course of further clashes.

But is this western civilization a good and desirable thing? This question has been raised over and over again since at least the time of Rousseau, and particularly by young people, who are quite rightly always on the lookout for something better. It is a question typical of today’s western civilization, which is more self-critical and kindly disposed towards reform than any other civilization in the world. Before I go on with my subject of culture clash, I should like to answer this question.

I believe that our western civilization is, in spite of all the faults that can quite justifiably be found with it, the most free, the most just, the most humanitarian and the best of all those we have ever known throughout the history of mankind. It is the best because it has the greatest capacity for self-criticism, and so, for improvement.

All over the world men have created new and often very different cultural worlds: the worlds of myth, of poetry, of art, of music; the worlds of production methods, of tools, of technology, of business; the worlds of morality, of justice, of protection and of help for children, for invalids, for the weak and for others in need. But it is only in our western civilization that the moral demand for personal freedom is widely acknowledged and even widely realized, along with the demand for equality before the law, for peace, and for the minimization of violence.

This is why I regard our western civilization as the best to date. Of course it is in need of improvement. But, when all is said and done, it is the only civilization in which almost everyone is working together in order to improve it as much as possible.

I admit that even our civilization is very imperfect. But this almost goes without saying, since it is easy to see that a perfect society is impossible. For practically every value that a society should embody, there are other, conflicting values. Even freedom, perhaps the highest of all social and personal values, must be limited, since, of course, Paul’s freedom may conflict only too easily with Peter’s freedom. As an American judge once told a defendant who insisted upon his freedom: ‘The freedom of the movement of your fists is limited by the position of your neighbour’s nose.’ This brings us to Immanuel Kant’s formulation that the task of legislation is to allow the greatest possible freedom of every citizen to co-exist with the greatest possible freedom of every other citizen. In other words, freedom must, unfortunately, be always limited: limited by the law, that is, by order. This limitation by order is a necessary – an almost logically necessary – counterbalance to freedom. And there is such a counterbalance for all, or at least for almost all, the values that we should like to see realized.

For instance, we are learning at this very moment that the great idea of the welfare state has its limitations. It appears that it is dangerous to relieve a person of his responsibility for himself and his dependants; and in many cases it is perhaps even dubious whether we ought to make the struggle for life very much easier for young people. It seems that, for many people, life may be robbed of its meaning by the reduction of real challenges and of personal responsibilities.

Another example is peace, which we all desire more strongly nowadays than ever before. We want to do, indeed we must do, everything in our power to avoid violent conflicts, or at least to limit them. On the other hand, a society without any conflict would be inhuman. It would not be a human society, but an ant heap. Nor should we overlook the fact that the great pacifists were also great fighters. Even Mahatma Gandhi was a fighter: a fighter for non-violence.

Human society needs peace, but it also needs serious ideation-al conflicts: values, ideas, that we can fight for. Our western society has learned – from the Greeks – that the word has a much greater and more lasting effect in these conflicts than the sword; most effective of all, however, are rational arguments, if expressed simply.

A perfect society is therefore impossible. But some social orders are better than others. Our western society has opted for democracy as a social system that can be changed by words, and in places – if only rarely – even by means of rational arguments; by rational, that is to say, by objective criticism: by non-personal critical considerations, just like those typically used in science, particularly in natural science since the Greeks. I therefore declare my support for western civilization; for science; and for democracy. They give us the chance to prevent avoidable tragedy and to try out reforms, such as the welfare state, to assess them critically and to make any further necessary improvements. I also declare my support for science, so often maligned these days, which employs self-criticism in its search for truth and which discovers afresh with each new discovery just how little we know: how infinitely great our ignorance really is. All the great natural scientists were conscious of their infinite ignorance and of their fallibility. They were intellectually modest. If Goethe says: ‘Only rogues are modest’, then I should like to reply: ‘Only intellectual rogues are immodest.’

Now that I have declared my support for western civilization and for science, particularly for natural science, I shall soon return to my subject of culture clash. But first I should like to make a very brief reference to a dreadful heresy that is unfortunately still an important element of this western civilization. I am referring to the dreadful heresy of nationalism – or more precisely, the ideology of the national state: the doctrine that is still so often upheld and is apparently a moral demand, that the boundaries of the state should coincide with the boundaries of the area inhabited by the nation. The fundamental error in this doctrine or demand is the assumption that peoples or nations exist prior to the states – rather like roots – as natural units, which should be occupied accordingly by the states. In reality they are created by the states.

This completely unworkable demand must be contrasted with the important moral demand for the protection of minorities: the demand that the linguistic, religious and cultural minorities of each state should be protected against attacks by the majority; including, of course, those minorities that differ from the majority because of the colour of their skin, or the colour of their eyes, or the colour of their hair.

Unlike the principle of the national state, which is totally impracticable, the principle of minority protection, though not of course easy to implement, nevertheless seems to be more or less workable. The advances that I have witnessed in this area on numerous visits to the United States since 1950 are far greater than I would ever have thought possible. And, unlike the principle of nationality, the principle of the protection is quite clearly a moral principle, just like, for example, the principle of child protection.

Why is the principle of the national state unworkable anywhere in the world, and nothing short of insane, especially in Europe? This question brings me back to the subject of culture clash. The population of Europe is, as we all know, the result of mass migrations. From time immemorial wave after wave of people have surged from the steppes of Central Asia and encountered earlier immigrants on the southern, south-eastern and particularly on the fissured western peninsulas of Asia, which we call Europe, and dispersed. The result is a linguistic, ethnic and cultural mosaic: a chaotic jumble, which cannot possibly be disentangled.

Languages are, comparatively speaking, the best guides through this chaos. But then there are some more or less native or natural dialects and overlapping written languages, which themselves originate from glorified dialects, as Dutch, for instance, clearly illustrates. Other languages, such as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, are products of violent Roman conquests. So it is crystal-clear that the linguistic chaos cannot be a genuinely reliable guide through the ethnic chaos. An examination of surnames also makes this point. Although many Slavonic surnames were replaced by German ones in Austria and Germany, so that many traces were covered over – thus I knew a Bohuschalek, who, if I remember rightly, became a Bollinger – the traces of Slavonic-German assimilation are still everywhere. In particular, the numerous noble families in Germany whose names end in -off or -ow are obviously descended in some way from Slavs. However, this does not give us any further clues as to their ethnic origin, particularly where noble families are concerned, for whom it was natural to marry across greater distances; in contrast to, for example, the peasant serfs.

But now the crazy idea of the principle of nationalism has sprung up amid this European chaos, primarily under the influence of the philosophers Rousseau, Fichte and Hegel, and no doubt also as a result of reaction to the Napoleonic wars.

There were of course precursors of nationalism. But neither Roman culture nor Ancient Greek culture was nationalistic. Every one of these ancient cultures emerged as a result of the clash of the different cultures on the Mediterranean and in the Near East. This is also true of Greek culture, which probably made the most important contributions to our present-day western culture: I mean the idea of freedom, the discovery of democracy, and the critical, rational attitude which ultimately resulted in modern natural science.

Even the oldest of the Greek literary works to come down to us, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are eloquent testimonies of culture clash; indeed, this clash is their actual theme. Yet at the same time they bear witness to an attitude both rational and explanatory. In fact, the precise function of the Homeric gods is to explain the otherwise unintelligible, the irrational (such as the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon) using a comprehensible psychological theory: that is, in terms of the interests and petty jealousies of these all too human divine forms – divine forms, whose human weaknesses are apparent and who are also sometimes judged critically. Aries, the God of War, comes off particularly badly. And it is important that the non-Greeks in both the Iliad and the Odyssey are at the very least treated just as sympathetically as the Greeks, the Achaeans.

This critical and enlightened attitude recurs in those works in which, under the influence of the Greek struggle for freedom against Persian attacks, the idea of freedom was first celebrated; especially in the works of Aeschylus and Herodotus. It is not national freedom, but rather personal freedom, above all the freedom of the democratic Athenians, which is contrasted with the lack of freedom endured by the subjects of the great Persian kings. In this context, freedom is no mere ideology but a way of life which makes life better and more worth living. Both Aeschylus and Herodotus make this clear. They both write as witnesses of the clash of these western and eastern cultures, the cultures of freedom and of despotism; and both testify to the enlightening effect of this clash, which led to a conscious and critically distanced evaluation of one’s own culture, and hence to a rational and critical evaluation of traditional myths. In Ionia (a part of Asia Minor), this resulted in critical cosmology, in critical speculative theories about the architecture of the cosmic system and ultimately in natural science, the search for the true explanation of natural phenomena. One might say that natural science comes about as a result of the influence of a rational and critical attitude to the mythical explanation of nature. When I speak of rational criticism, I mean a criticism from the standpoint of truth: of the questions ‘Is this true?’ and ‘Can this be true?’

By questioning the truth of these mythical explanations of natural phenomena, the Greeks created the theories that led to the birth of the natural sciences. And by questioning the truth of mythical reports about prehistoric times, they brought about the beginning of the study of history.

But Herodotus, who is rightly called the father of historiography, was not just a predecessor of the study of history. It was he who actually discovered the critical and illuminating nature of culture clash, especially the clash between the Greek, the Egyptian and the Median-Persian cultures.

At this point I should like to quote an anecdote from Herodotus’ historical work, which is in fact the history of the military and cultural clash of the Greeks with the inhabitants of the Near East, particularly with the Persians. In this anecdote Herodotus uses an extreme and rather gruesome example to show that a rational person must learn that even those things which at first he takes for granted may be called into question.

Herodotus writes (III, 38): ‘Once, while Darius was King, he summoned the Greeks who were at his court and asked them at what price they would be prepared to eat their dead fathers’ corpses. They replied that nothing, but absolutely nothing at all, could induce them to do so. Then Darius summoned the Kallatier, an Indian people accustomed to eating their fathers, and asked them in the presence of the Greeks, who had an interpreter at their disposal, at what price they would agree to cremate their deceased fathers. At this the Kallatier gave loud screams of horror and implored him not even to utter such blasphemy. That is the way of the world.’

In relating this anecdote to his Greek contemporaries, Herodotus not only intended to teach them to respect foreign customs, but also to make them capable of criticizing things that they took for granted. He had obviously learnt a great deal himself through cultural confrontations of this kind; and he wanted to share this experience with the reader.

In England and America I am repeatedly asked for the most likely explanation for the singular creativity and cultural wealth of Austria and of Vienna in particular: of the unrivalled heights of the great Austrian symphonists, of our Baroque architecture, and our achievements in science and in the philosophy of nature.

Ludwig Boltzmann and Ernst Mach were not only great physicists, but also pioneering philosophers of nature. They were the predecessors of the Vienna Circle. Josef Popper-Lynkeus, the social philosopher, who might be described as a philosophical founder of the modern welfare state, also lived here. But here in Vienna concern with social matters was not simply confined to philosophical debate, but resulted in some remarkable practical achievements even in the time of the monarchy. There were the truly marvellous ‘People’s Universities’ (Volkshochschulen), there was the ‘Free School’ club, which became one of the most important seeds of the school reform movement, there were social relief organizations, such as the Society for the Protection and Salvation of Children, the Emergency Service, the Home for the Homeless and many others.

There is probably no real explanation for this extraordinary cultural and social activity and productivity. But I should like to put forward a tentative hypothesis here. Perhaps this Austrian cultural productivity is related to my topic, that is to say, to culture clash. The old Austria was a reflection of Europe: it contained almost innumerable linguistic and cultural minorities. And many of these people who found it hard to eke out an existence in the provinces came to Vienna where most of them had to learn German as best they could. Many came here under the influence of a great cultural tradition, and a few were able to make fresh contributions to it. We know that Haydn and Mozart were influenced not only by German, Italian and French composers, but also by Hungarian folk music and even by Turkish music. Haydn and Mozart were both newcomers to Vienna, as were Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. The genius of the musicians remains unexplained. But it was Beethoven who detected a ‘divine spark in Schubert’, the greatest genius, I think, ever to be born in Vienna.
A consideration of Viennese music might even lead us into drawing a comparison between Vienna from Haydn to Bruckner and Athens in the time of Pericles. And the circumstances were perhaps more similar than we might at first suppose. It seems that both, situated as they were in an extremely vital location between the East and the West, were immensely enriched by culture clash.

A lecture written for a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Austrian State Treaty. As I was prevented from attending in person, the lecture was read by Dr Elisabeth Herz in the presence of the President of the Federal Republic of Austria. Published in 25Jahrc Staatsvertrag, Osterreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna, 1981.