The Global Political Discourse of Dialogue Among Civilizations Mohammad Khatami and V Clav Havel

Global Change, Peace & Security
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The Global Political Discourse of Dialogue among

Civilizations: Mohammad Khatami and Vclav
Havel
Fabio Petito
To cite this article: Fabio Petito (2007) The Global Political Discourse of Dialogue among
Civilizations: Mohammad Khatami and Vclav Havel, Global Change, Peace & Security, 19:2,
103-126, DOI: 10.1080/14781150701358995
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Global Change, Peace & Security, Volume 19, Number 2, June 2007
The Global Political Discourse of Dialogue

among Civilizations: Mohammad Khatami
and Vaclav Havel
FABIO PETITO
(School of Oriental and African Studies)
The global political discourse of dialogue among civilizations emerged in the 90s in the
context of the political debate on world order and against the background of the two compet-
ing and powerful discourses of the clash of civilizations and the end of history. In the post
9/11 context and after five years from the designation of the UN Year of the Dialogue among
Civilizations, this political discourse has been increasingly the object of a double movement
of scepticism and hope. Unfortunately very little attention has been devoted by International
Relations and Political theorists to clarify and articulate its possible meaning as a normative
framework for the future of international relations. Within this normative horizon, this paper
shows how two statesmen-intellectuals, Mohammed Khatami, the reformist Muslim cleric
then president of Iran, and Vaclav Havel, the post-modern dissident playwright then
president of the Czech Republic, have been two of the most interesting proponents of this
global political discourse. Their visions, I would contend, allow us to trace more clearly
the contours of dialogue among civilisations as a global political discourse as well as to
begin a more in-depth theoretical articulation of dialogue of civilisation as international
political theory, an academic enterprise that has been largely ignored.
On the 4 November 1998, the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously adopted
the resolution proposed by the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mohammad Khatami
and designated the year 2001 as the United Nations Year of the Dialogue among
Civilizations. Since then the idea of dialogue among civilizations has been made the
object of a plethora of conferences and international meetings but very little attention has
been devoted by international relations and political theorists to clarify and articulate its poss-
ible meaning as framework for the future of international relations and this is even more
regretful when one notes that Khatami explicitly put forward this vision with this aim in
mind. Even after 9/11 and the well-known unfolding developments, the idea of a dialogue
of civilizations has remained largely unexplored by the academic community but mainly
used in public discourses as a kind of rhetorical antithesis to the largely discussed and
popular thesis of the clash of civilizations:1 providing sometimes a nice title for another
speech to criticize Huntington or, other times, a fitting rhetorical device to be mentioned
in the introduction or better in the conclusion to vaguely refer to some kind of undefined

Fabio Petito, Department of Politics and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, Russell
Square, London WC1H 0XG, UK. Email: ,fp1@soas.ac.uk.
1 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?, Foreign Affairs, 72, 3 (1993), pp. 2249; idem, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (London: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
ISSN 1478-1158 print/ISSN 1478-1166 online/07/020103-24 # 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14781150701358995
104 Fabio Petito
normative political necessity of opposite sign to the clash.2 In addition to this neglect, more
recently a growing number of public criticisms have been raised against this discourse by
pointing to its wishful and abstract thinking as well as to its illiberal and politically
dangerous nature.3
Against this background of academic indifference and growing public criticism, this
paper offers a conceptual reconstruction of the idea of dialogue among civilizations as a
global political discourse emerging in the context of the post-Cold-War debate on the
future of the world order as an alternative to the two powerful theses of the end of
history and the clash of civilizations. The paper shows how two statesmen-intellectuals,
Mohammed Khatami, the reformist Muslim cleric then president of Iran, and Vaclav
Havel, the post-modern dissident playwright then president of the Czech Republic, have
been two of the most outspoken and interesting proponents of this global political discourse.
Moving from very different cultural perspectives and historical political contexts, Khatami
and Havel have articulated two intellectually and politically challenging visions whose
critical discussion and scrutiny represent the larger part of this paper. These visions, I
would contend, allow us to trace more clearly the contours of dialogue among civilizations
as a global political discourse as well as to begin a more in-depth theoretical articulation
of dialogue of civilization as international political theory, an academic enterprise that, as
I mentioned, has been largely ignored and that I can only sketch in the concluding part of
the paper. While this paper provides an original critical reconstruction and interpretation
for both the visions of dialogue among civilizations examined, it is only marginally interested
in contrasting the two sets of ideas, as the main emphasis of the paper remains on outlining
the emerging common global political discourse of dialogue among civilizations and on its
possible theoretical articulation.
The Dialogue among Civilizations as a Global Political Discourse:

Against the Background of the End of History and the Clash of
Civilizations
The end of the Cold War bipolar opposition, strategically organized around spheres of
influence and managed through the common language of a realist ethics of statecraft,
brought about, among many other things, a widespread debate on the future of the world
2 Examples of this logic are the speeches, public reports, and publications produced in the context of the UN Year
of the Dialogue among Civilizations, ,http://www.un.org/documents/dialogue.htm., the UNESCO (UN Edu-
cational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) actions for dialogue among civilizations, ,http://www.unesco.
org/dialogue2001., the ISESCO (Islamic Organization for Education, Science, and Culture) conferences on
dialogue of civilizations, ,www.isesco.org.ma., and the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations (a
Russian-led initiative) meetings, ,http://www.dialogueofcivilizations.org.. The work done by these organiz-
ations is indeed valuable but it has unfortunately contributed very little to a clearer articulation of what dialogue
among civilizations can mean for the future of international relations. Also the most recent UN initiative for an
Alliance of Civilizations, co-sponsored by Spain and Turkey and launched in 2005which due to the overdose
of dialogue initiatives in the preceding ten years was named using the not less problematic notion of Alliance
has not been different in terms of such an intellectual aim: ,http://unaoc.org/.. All the webpages were
accessed 15 March 2007.
3 The accusation of wishfulness and abstractness is usually embedded in a realist understanding of international
politics while, more interestingly, the accusation of being dangerous is articulated by the opponents of what
Amartya Sen has recently dubbed a civilization-based thinking that can be deleterious not only when used in
the theory of the clash but also in its well-intended attempts of dialogue. See Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence:
The Illusion of Destiny, (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006). See also the recent criticisms of the initiatives of dia-
logue of civilizations, with specific references to the Mediterranean region, put forward by a recent EuroMeSCo
report, Getting It Right: Inclusion within DiversityLessons of the Cartoons Crisis and Beyond, (November
2006), on the grounds that they reinforce the very same Huntingtonian culturalist approach they want to confront;
,http://www.euromesco.net/images/gettingitrightdocfinal.pdf. (accessed 15 March 2007).
Dialogue among Civilizations 105
order and, more importantly for this discussion, the need to rethink afresh the normative
structure upon which a new international coexistence should be constructed. In this
context, two intellectual reactions soon became the unavoidable opposite references for
any discourse on the post-Cold-War international order: Francis Fukuyamas end of
history and Samuel Huntingtons clash of civilizations.4
For Fukuyama world history, after the defeat of communism, has reached its end as a
dialectical process and liberalism, now the only game in town, represents the only rational
model available worldwide in the now final consolidation of the linear progress of
humankind. From this perspective, the problem of the new normative structure of
international coexistence is greatly simplifiedif not finally resolvedby the globalization
of liberalism: the greater international homogeneity based on the liberal values of free
market, liberal democracy, and human rights provides the conditions to develop some
form of global governance or cosmopolitan polity to fulfil the Kantian ideal of a perpetual
peace; in the jargon of international relations, the final victory of liberalism, by extinguishing
or at least substantially mitigating the two defining features of modern international society,
anarchy and war, marks the end of the history of international relations as we have known
them.
For Huntington the ideological conflicts that had characterized the Cold War would be
substituted by cultural conflicts occurring along the fault lines of civilizations. The clash
of civilizations thesis puts forward not only a framework, what Huntington describes as
the best available geopolitical map, to understand post-Cold-War international relations
but also an argument for a new normative structure for international coexistence: an
international order based on a plurality of civilizations and grounded in a minimalist morality
of coexistence, mainly understood as an ethics of prudence and reciprocal non-interference
geared to prevent the threat of the clash of civilizations.5 To fully grasp Huntingtons
normative structure for world order it is necessary to consider its two main intellectual com-
ponents: first, the idea that global politics experienced in the last decades of the 20th century a
return of culture and religion as determinant factors in the formation of political identity; and,
secondly, a realist notion of politics with its focus, on one hand, on conflict, security, and
threat to be balanced, on the other, by an ethics of responsibility and prudence exemplified
by the classical principles of balance of power, non-interference, and deterrence now
applied not at the state levelas in the classical realist and neo-realist versions6but at
the civilization level.
Although these two (largely contrasting) theses originated as academic arguments, they
have rapidly become powerful political frameworks used by political actors to justify
political choices and decisions. Indeed the logic of the argument of the end of history
has been used by influential economic organizations such as the IMF and the WTO,
leading executives of multinational corporations (MNCs), mainstream human rights NGOs
as well as, for example, by the Clinton administration to support its democracy-promotion
strategy.7 Similarly, the clash of civilizations has been used by NATOs commanding
officers, international terrorist groups like al Qaeda, US foreign policy-makers supporting
4 F. Fukuyama, The End of History, National Interest, 16 (1989), pp. 316; idem, The End of History and the Last
Man, (New York: Free Press, 1992); Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations.
5 This argument is more clearly articulated in the book that followed his article. See Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations.
6 See H. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, (New York: Knopf, 1948) and K. N. Waltz, Theory of International
Politics, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
7 For the Clinton administrations largely liberal foreign policy discourse, see the two official documents A
National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, (Washington: US Government Printing Office,
July 1994 and February 1996).
106 Fabio Petito
a more aggressive policy towards China and the so-called rogue states as well as, for
example, political organizations campaigning against multicultural societies.8 Unsurpris-
ingly, after 9/11, the clash of civilizations was at the centre of the debate on how to
explain and make sense of this tragic event.
I take the idea of the dialogue among civilizations as being a third political reaction
to the end of the Cold War that, while not a synthesis of the two first ones, could not be
set and framed, I would contend, except against the background of these two intellectually
and politically powerful theses. As I have already mentioned, credit for the politicization
and popularization of dialogue among civilizations has to be given to Mohammed
Khatami, who in a series of public appearances since his election as president of Iran has
used this specific formulation.9 In a parallel fashion, during the years that followed the
end of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, Vaclav Havel, the then pre-
sident of the Czech Republic, expressed in his speeches and writings a similar concern for
the same set of issues that have been raised by Khatami, even if from a different perspective
and preferring to use the wordings multipolar and multicultural civilization and search
for unity in diversity.
Unquestionably, there have been other relevant political actors as well as political
forums that have discussed and argued for dialogue among civilizations, but Khatami
and Havel have been two of the most prominent world political leaders to do so
forcefully.10 More importantly, they have provided some original and intellectually
challenging analyses. Furthermore, and important in the economy of this discussion, the
selection of Khatami and Havel as representatives of dialogue among civilizations,
shows that this political discourse is cross-cultural also in its origin. Given the current
status of Western Islamic relationships, it would have been difficult to find two voices
speaking from two more distant civilizational locations, which they both proudly claim
as their own respective cultural traditions and from within which the former as cleric
and the latter as dissident have developed their own political engagement. In this
respect, this selection is arguably even more representative, and perhaps more revealing,
of the reality and nature of dialogue among civilizations. But, before we turn to a critical
presentation of the philosophico-political arguments of Khatamis and Havels visions, a
premise should be established.
I do not wish to examine Khatamis and Havels initiatives as a foreign policy discourse
sensu stricto, that is, as a set of ideas determining or influencing a particular course of
foreign policy or as a discursive strategy justifying or constructing a specific national
interest. To focus on dialogue among civilizations as declaratory policy and its impact
on Iranian or Czech foreign policy practice would be indeed an interesting investigation
8 For a critical analysis of the use of the clash of civilizations discourse, see Gerard O Tuathail, Critical
Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space, (London: Routledge, 1996). See also the interview of the
former NATO secretary-general Willy Claes with the Sudeutsche Zeitung, (2 February 1995), in which,
echoing Huntington, he argued that the West confronted a new enemy, Islam, at least as dangerous as was the
communist enemy. The interview provoked a considerable debate in Western public opinion and media. In a
recent book Huntington himself makes explicit the link between the clash of civilizations discourse and a position
against the growing multicultural nature of American Society. See Samuel Huntington, Who Are We: The Chal-
lenges to Americas National Identity, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
9 Particularly significant have been the interview Khatami granted to Christiane Amanpour on CNN in 1998 and
the speech he gave in 1999 at the European University Institute in Florence on the occasion of the first visit of a
president of the Islamic Republic of Iran to a Western country since the Islamic Revolution of 1978. See Marc
Lynch, The Dialogue of Civilisations and International Public Spheres, Millennium, 29, 2 (2000), pp.
307 330.
10 Amongst other actors we can mention the UNESCO, various UN agencies, the UN Alliance of Civilizations
high-level group, the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations, and NGOs like SantEgidio and the
Red Cross.
and could be explored from a variety of theoretical perspectives.11 It is, however, beyond
the scope of this paper and somewhat irrelevant to my broader inquiry, which remains to
delineate the contours of dialogue among civilizations as a global political discourse by
drawing on key elements of Khatamis and Havels visions for a more peaceful and just
world order. In this respect I shall limit my remarks to observe that statesmen can
indeed sometimes be at the origin of political visions aiming at the common international
goodespecially when they are intellectuals, as is the case for Khatami and Havelbut I
would recognize that there is an inescapable ambiguity in such an enterprise. Even assum-
ing the genuine nature of such visions, because of their institutional role statesmen continue
necessarily to speak from a specific national viewpoint in a much stronger way that an
intellectual doesalthough I ultimately would argue that even intellectuals in a different
sense cannot escape the cultural and linguistic tradition embedded in their political
community. This often takes the form of attributing or envisaging a kind of special role
for the nation-state they represent as an integral part of the particular international vision
they articulate. This is arguably the case for Khatamis and Havels visions but, as has
been stated, it remains largely irrelevant to this inquiry.
Understanding Khatamis Dialogue among Civilizations

Khatamis starting point is that todays world is searching for a new basis on which to
regulate human and social relations:12 it is exactly to respond to this evolving global
climate that Khatami proposed, in his 1998 speech at the UN general Assembly, that the
United Nations, as a first step, designate the Year 2001 as the Year of the Dialogue
among Civilisations.13 After outlining in the following section Khatamis reading of the
main sources of this new evolving global climate, namely the end of the Cold War and
the process of globalization, I will discuss three defining elements of his vision of dialogue
among civilizations as a framework for the future of international relationsthe participants,
the philosophical nature, and the aimand finally suggest an interpretation that emphasizes
the importance of the broader religious and philosophical context within which, I would
contend, his vision has been articulated.
Dialogue among Civilizations and the Post-1989 Context

Khatami argues that the post-1989 condition provides a new favourable context. The sources
of this new evolving global climate are the end of the Cold War and the process of globa-
lization, whose effects and possibilities in terms of political actions provide the essential new
permitting conditions for an alternative vision of world order based on dialogue among
civilizations. In particular, the collapse of the bipolar order opens up the possibility for a
just world order that is not the monopoly of any single power and that will finally be
based on pluralism.14
11 See, for example, J. Goldstein and R. Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Polic: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political
Change, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Henrik Larsen, Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis:
France, Britain and Europe, (London: Routledge, 1997); Karen Smith and Margot Light (eds), Ethics and
Foreign Policy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
12 Mohammad Khatami, remarks at the Symposium on Islam, Iran and the Dialogue of Civilizations, Palace of
Weimar, Berlin, 12 July 2000; an edited transcript of the discussion can be found in Mohammad Khatami,
Josef van Ess, and Hans Kung, Symposium: Islam, Iran and the Dialogue of Civilisations, Global Dialogue,
3, 1 (2001), pp. 1 13.
13 Mohammad Khatami, speech at the United Nations General Assembly, New York, 21 September 1998.
14 Mohammad Khatami, statement at the Eighth Session of the Islamic Summit Conference, Tehran, 9 December
1997, ,www.persia.org/..
108 Fabio Petito
The rejection of any unipolar form of international order has to go, in Khatamis view,
hand in hand with a critique of the predominant realist paradigm of international
relationsexemplified, by the Cold War mindset and US foreign policyas well as with
a commitment to the logic of dialogue. Using discernibly Habermasian language15,
Khatami in his famous interview with CNN called for American foreign policy [to]
abandon its instrumental rationality and stop considering others as objects [and instead to]
respect the rights of others and adopt an approach based on communicative rationality.16
The idea of dialogue among civilizations, in other words, entails a critique of power politics
in particular a rejection of Huntingtons thesiscombined with a commitment to a paradigm for
conducting international relations where morality has a prominent role. In his speech made at the
UN conference launching the Year of Dialogue among Civilizations, Khatami even more clearly
spelled out this concept and it is worthwhile here to quote him at length:
We ought to critically examine the prevalent paradigm in international relations based on the
discourse of power, and the glorification of might . . . From an ethical perspective, the paradigm
of Dialogue among Civilizations requires that we give up the will-to-power and instead appeal to
will-to-empathy and compassion. Without the will-to-empathy, compassion and understanding,
there would be no hope for the prevalence of order in our world. We ought gallantly to
combat this dearth of compassion and empathy in our world. The ultimate goal of Dialogue
among Civilizations is not dialogue in and of itself, but the attainment of empathy and
compassion.17
The second contextual condition is the rise of globalization and more specifically what
Khatami sees as its political opportunities and dangers for the construction of a new frame-
work for international coexistence: on the one hand, Khatami acknowledges the positive
effects of the increasing economic, political, and cultural interconnectedness and its inherent
push towards a convergence of peoples mindsets and ways of life; on the other hand, he sees
the dangers of equating this process with the globalization of liberalism as articulated by
Fukuyama and opposes any notion of world culture that is monolithic, overlooks indigenous
cultures, and implies the superiority of the Western liberal model.18 This tension represents
perhaps the main challenge to which the vision of Dialogue among Civilizations wants to
respond: what is at stake, according to Khatami, is the search for a model of international
coexistence inspired by the principle of unity in diversity, for we want a world that has
commonalties, co-existence, but that also has differences and variety.19
The Participants in the Dialogue among Civilizations

The issue of the participants to the dialogue among civilizations has raised several questions. Who
are the direct receivers of this call for dialogue? States, individuals, international organizations,
non-state actors such as NGOs, universities, churches? Whoassuming that we can agree on
the meaningfulness of a contested analytical category such as civilization and, as a consequence,
identify a plurality of civilizationsis supposed legitimately to represent the different civilizations
in this dialogue? Or, even more radically, which civilizations get represented?20 It could be argued
that in Khatamis formulation there is a degree of ambiguity on this issue: on the one hand, he
15 Lynch, The Dialogue, p. 307.

16 Mohammad Khatami, interview with Christiane Amanpour, CNN, 7 January 1998, ,www.persia.org/khatami/
s_khatami06.html..
17 Mohammad Khatami, address at the Dialogue among Civilizations Conference at the United Nations, New York,
5 September 2000, ,http://www.un.int/iran/dialog05.html. (20 September 2005).
18 Khatami, address at the Dialogue among Civilizations Conference.
19 Khatami, Symposium, p. 12.
20 I owe this point to one of the anonymous referees.
presents this proposal as an alternative paradigm for international relations and emphasizes the
important role states are called to play; on the other, he stresses how intellectuals (and unexpect-
edly also artists, poets, and mystics) should be central to this enterprise.21
This ambiguity at closer examination seems to apply only to appearances. In fact these
two dimensions or levelsthe relationships among states and among individuals (belonging
to different civilizations)become irreconcilable only if we believe international relations to
be the domain realists describe it to be: a competitive arena inhabited by strangethough
anthropomorphiccreatures called states condemned by their nature or by impalpable
(systemic) forces to behave according to their national interest.22 Khatamis rejection of
power politics entails not only the refusal of politics without morality and the consequent
re-establishment of the dignity of human beings (will-to-empathy and compassion) as the
measure for (just) world order, but also the belief that ideas and values, embedded in cultures
and civilizations, inform in a determinant way the whole political process on a continuum that
goes from the singular individual to the state apparatus. It is within this worldview that the
key driving role that Khatami attributes to intellectuals has to be understood:
It should not be doubted that the central role in true dialogue between cultures and civilizations is
played by the learned, by thinkers and the formers of public opinion. Scientists, artists and
intellectual elites are the listening ears and communicating medium of nations, representing
their spirit and psyche. They can chart new paths towards a new horizon in the dialogue
between East and West.23
This emphasis on the embeddedness of values in national communities and civilizations and
the idea that thinkers represent the spirit and voices of these communities can be regarded,
particularly in our positivistic globalized age, as both analytically problematic and
politically dangerous. However, contemporary scholarship in communitarian thought as
well as the growing field of sociology of civilization have shown that these different levels
of identity, from individual to collective configurations of increasing scale, cannot simply
be ignoredas social-scientific (rational actors) approaches have tended to door easily
disentangled from each other, as political and social theorization linked to modernization
theory or more broadly inspired by Enlightment assumptions have suggested.24 In other
words, the continuum intellectual nation civilization, which Khatami is implicitly using
in his argument, cannot be simply and easily dismissed as non-scientific.25
Furthermore, it is interesting to notice the kind of thinkers to whom Khatami is especially
entrusting the duty of engaging in a dialogue among civilizations: together with philoso-
phers, scholars and theologians ... great artists (and also poets and mystics) should undoubt-
edly get due recognition [in this dialogue].26 This apparently minor, and someone could even
argue politically irrelevant point, is revealing of the nature of the dialogue Khatami is
envisaging: this is a dialogue that aspires to be a thick conversation, opposing both

22 Probably this statement can be generalized to all state-centric and interest-driven theory of international relations
which excludes a central role for ideational and normative factors, in particular the rational choice approach. For a
classical locus see Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
23 Khatami, Symposium, p. 2, emphasis added.
24 For the communitarian positions see MacIntyre, After Virtue and C. Taylor and M. Walzer; for the sociology of
civilization see Eisenstadt, Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities and Arnason, Civilizations in
Dispute.
25 A similar approach can be found, in my view, in what has been described as the theology of nations of Pope John
Paul IIsee Andrea Riccardi, Governo carismatico. 25 anni di pontificato, (Milan: Mondadori, 2003)as well
as in the role that according to Arnold Toynbee creative minorities have in the birth and flourishing of civiliza-
tions. See D. C. Somervell, A Study of History: Abridgement of Vols I X in one volume, (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1960).
110 Fabio Petito
anti-foundationalist or relativist approaches that prioritize ethics and politics to ontology and
a social-scientific engineering of dialogue based on negotiation methodologies to reach
technical-limited agreements.27 This dialogue is always and, in different ways, a search for
truth and, as such, it does not aim to hide the deepest differences of the participants and
cannot separate the political and social realm from the real existential condition of the
human being. In Khatamis words,
Talking and listening combine to make up a bipartitesometimes multipartiteeffort to
approach the truth and to reach a mutual understanding. That is why dialogue has nothing to
do with the sceptics and is not a property of those who think they are the sole proprietors of
Truth. It rather reveals its beautiful but covered face only to those wayfarers who are bound
on their journey of discovery hand in hand with other human beings.28
Who represent or incarnate those wayfarers on their journey of discovery hand in hand with
other human beings better then the artist, the poet, and the mystic? In another passage in a
more direct way Khatami expands on this aspect:
Indeed, meta-historical discussion of such eternal human questions as the ultimate meaning of life
and death, or goodness and evil ought to substantiate and enlighten any dialogue in political and
social issues. Without a discussion of fundamentals, and by simply confining attention to superficial
issues, dialogue would not get us far from where we currently stand. When superficial issues mas-
querading as real, urgent and essential prevail, and where no agreement or at least mutual
understanding concerning what is truly fundamental is obtained among parties to dialogue, in all
likelihood misunderstanding and confusion would proliferate instead of empathy and compassion.29
The Philosophical Nature of Dialogue

These elements allow us to expand the analysis on the philosophical underpinnings of the
notion of dialogue put forward by Khatami. First of all, it is interesting to note how this
dialogue does not demand the use of a neutral language. In particular, the Rawlsian idea
of public reason as the only legitimate languagein the public political forum of liberal
democratic societies as well as of international societyin which discussions among
irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines can take place is implicitly rejected in favour of
a political discussion that does not neutralize or hide the metaphysical backgrounds behind
the idea of the politically reasonable but that, in a way, pushes them to the forefront
searching for an understanding at this deeper level.30
Secondly, although sometimes unequivocally phrased in Habermasian language with
strong emphasis on the argumentative authority of Reason, Khatami maintains that
dialogue, before anything else, is a search for emotional contact and sincere trust.31 In
this respect, the dialogue among civilizations envisaged by Khatami closely resembles the
model of global conversation articulated by Fred Dallmayr building on Michael
Oakeshotts association of conversation with interpersonal friendship.32 Expanding on
27 On thick conversation see Fred Dallmayr, Conversation across Boundaries: Political Theory and Global Diver-
sity, Millennium, 30, 2 (2001), pp. 331 447; see also Thomas, Taking Religious.
28 Mohammad Khatami, speech at the European University Institute, Fiesole, Florence, 15 March 1999, ,http://
www.persia.org/khatami/index.html. (15 January 2006), emphasis added.
30 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); idem The Law of the Peoples,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
31 For the centrality of reason in dialogue see Khatami, speech at the European University Institute; Khatami,
Symposium, p. 1.
32 Dallmayr, Conversation across Boundaries, p. 332. In a similar move Dallmayr rejects a strong separation or
distance between his model of conversation and the neo-Kantian model of cosmopolitan discourse proposed
by Habermas.
Charles Taylors discussion of the deficit of vernacular experience in the Habermasian

discourse model, Dallmayr describes a thick conversation or thick dialogue as
a communicative exchange willing to delve into the rich fabric of different lifeworlds and
cultures. The appeal in such exchange is no longer merely to the rational-cognitive capacity of
participants, but rather to the full range of their situated humanity, including their hopes, aspira-
tions, moral and spiritual convictions, as well as their agonies and frustrations. In this respect
thick dialogue remains closely attentive to the sufferings of vulnerable creatures.33
Does not this close attentiveness to the suffering of vulnerable creatures imply attaining that
empathy and compassion that Khatami sees as the ultimate goal of the dialogue among
civilizations?
One other element of the dialogical model put forward by Khatami is worth mentioning:
this dialogical engagement is not only a process through which a deeper mutual understand-
ing can emerge among different civilizations and compassion and empathy can be attained,
but it is also a process of discovery of the Self through the meeting of the Other and as a
consequence, I would contend, it is potentially a deeply transformative event. In one of his
speeches, Khatami has expressed this point in a rather poetic and politically daring way:
One goal of dialogue among cultures and civilizations is to recognize and understand not only cul-
tures and civilizations of others, but those of ones own. We could know ourselves by taking a
step away from ourselves and embarking on a journey away from self and homeland and even-
tually attaining a more profound appreciation of our true identity. It is only through immersion
into another existential dimension that we could attain mediated and acquired knowledge of our-
selves in addition to the immediate and direct knowledge of ourselves that we commonly possess.
Through seeing others we attain a hitherto impossible knowledge of ourselves.34
Similar paths have been explored in theoretical terms by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Charles
Taylor and recently their reflections have been applied to the specific issue of dialogue
among civilizations by Dallmayr.35 These theoretical elaborations share an emphasis on
the tranformative dimension of the dialogical engagement. The outcome of dialogue
conceptualized in such a way, however, is not some form of consensualism or rationally
reached agreement but rather what Gadamer refers to as a fusion of horizons, a possible
enriching change of the pre-judgements that we carry with us as the indispensable and
unavoidable starting points in any dialogical engagement. But what is this initiative
really aspiring to? What is the rationale, the aim of this call for a dialogue among
civilizations put forward by Khatami?
The Aim of Dialogue among Civilizations

Khatami has argued, in a politically unusual and provocative fashion, that one of the issues
that should be on the agenda of dialogue is: is there truth or not?; and, continuing along this
line of reasoning, he has asserted that if we accept these two assumptionsthat truth exists
and that man can generally get to the truththen the real aim of dialogue is understanding
[since] in dialogue based on understanding and sincerity, I believe we can get closer to the
33 Dallmayr, Conversation across Boundaries, p. 346. For Charles Taylors discussion along similar lines see
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1989) and The Politics of Recognition, in Amy Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism, (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994).
35 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. edn, trans. Joel Winsheimer and Donald G. Marshall,
(New York: Crossroad, 1989); Taylor, Sources of the Self; Fred Dallmayr, A Gadamerian Perspective on Civi-
lisational Dialogue, Global Dialogue, 3, 1 (2001), pp. 6475; idem, Dialogue among Civilisations: Some
Exemplary Voices, (New York: Palgrave, 2002).
112 Fabio Petito
truth.36 It could initially be argued that this is basically a Gadamerian response because for
Gadamer a hermeneutical dialogue has its ultimate purpose in understanding.37 But the
hermeneutical similarities do not end here. Ultimately, this global dialogue is, in
Khatamis view, a call for a deeper understanding between East and West:
West and East are not only geographical regions, but also kinds of worldview and ontologies. In
genuine dialogue, one can accept what is true in each outlook, highlight the better truths in each
by accepting their capacities, values and developments, and in a changing world look for the
common human element in the median between material and spirit.38
This quotation contains all the main elements to explain the rationale of the argument put
forward by Khatami. In a simplified and schematic way, Khatami is setting forth a series
of three related dichotomies: West and East, modernity and tradition, materialism and
spirituality. It is Khatamis persuasion that, in this particular historical moment, the path
for the progress of humankind and for the construction of a more just and peaceful world
order necessarily lies on the border between these dichotomies. In several passages of his
speeches, in fact, Khatami has stressed, on one side, the imbalance suffered by the West
with its over-reliance on rationality and its fascination with materialism, on the other, the
need for the East to embark on a critique of tradition and gain a genuine appreciation of
the critical approach of Western culture.39
This analysis is supplemented by Khatamis firm conviction that the Western techno-
political hegemony, grounded in its intellectual over-reliance on rationality, is already
experiencing a deep crisis at different levelsintellectual, political, and socialand if
the establishment of peace, security and justice in the world is to be achieved, [t]he next
century should be a century for turning to a kind of spirituality that the Oriental Man has
several thousand years of experience in its pursuit.40 Referring to a wide range of problems
that beset the world today such as the crisis in the relationship between humankind and
nature, the ethical crisis that has developed in scientific research, and the crisis in family
structures, Khatami reaffirms the centrality of the dialogue among civilizations in also
finding practical solutions, since it now appears that the Cartesian Faustian narrative of
Western civilizations should give way and begin to listen to other narratives proposed by
other human cultures.41
These criticisms, however, are balanced by Khatamis praise for Western culture and its
achievements. In this respect it might not seem straightforward to make sense of how
Khatami reconciles his own strong foundational starting point with an unconditional
openness to the transformative dimension of dialogue and to its unpredictability in terms
of result as expressed, for example, in the following passage: Dialogue is a bi-lateral or
even multi-lateral process in which the end result is not manifest from the beginning. We
ought to prepare ourselves for surprising outcomes as every dialogue provides grounds for
human creativity to flourish.42
36 Khatami, Symposium, p. 5, emphasis added.

37 The classical locus here is Gadamer, Truth and Method. See also Fred Dallmayr, A Gadamerian Perspective on
Civilisational Dialogue, Global Dialogue, 3, 1 (2001), pp. 64 75, reprinted in Dallmayr, Dialogue among Civi-
lisations, ch. 1, and Richard Shapcott, Justice, Community and Dialogue in International Relations, (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
38 Khatami, Symposium, p. 2
39 For the critique of the West see in particular, Khatami, Symposium, p. 7, and the speech at the European
University Institute. For a critique of the East it is also very interesting to look at the speeches that Khatami
has delivered in the context of the Islamic Conference Organization.
40 Khatami, speech at the European University Institute. For the same argument made from Christian standpoint see
William Johnston, Arise, My Love . . .: Mysticism for a New Era, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000).
41 Khatami, address at the Dialogue among Civilisations Conference.
42 Khatami, address at the Dialogue among Civilisations Conference.
Interpreting Khatamis Vision of Dialogue among Civilizations: The Role

of Sufism and Dialogical Theory
The above-mentioned apparent contradiction might well be resolved by stressing the
politically insincere or strategic nature of the call for a dialogue among civilizations and
pointing for example, to Irans national interest as the decisive factor in explaining this
call. From this standpoint, the declared openness to the surprising outcomes of the dialogue
would be nothing other then a costless rhetorical device. I have explicitly set out such an
option in the premise to this analysis but would in any event go as far as to say that I
assume Khatami to be genuine and serious regarding the necessity for dialogue among civi-
lizations. The criticism, than, would be likely to take the form of a question as follows: How
can someone who believes himself to be the possessor of Truthin this case as revealed in
Islamtruly show such an openness to the dialogical contribution of the Other? I hope to
have already shown that the understanding Khatami has of Truth, and the access humankind
has to it, is much more philosophically rich and nuanced then is generally expectedin the
Western worldfrom an Islamic thinker (this could be also said, perhaps to a lesser degree,
for religious thinkers tout court).43
Two American scholars of Islam, John L. Esposito and John Voll, whose analyses are
often seen to be broadly sympathetic to what they have called the makers of contemporary
Islam, have argued that Khatamis opening to the West should be put in the context of his
historical worldview of the fall and rise of civilizations and the emergence of new leading
civilizations.44 From this perspective,
dialogue is not a passive policy of accommodation, it is a competitive strategy to strengthening

and transforming Islamic civilisation . . . because, as the West itself evolves and possibly
declines, there is the opportunity for Islam to regain its position as the leading progressive
world civilisation.45
This interpretation of dialogue among civilizations as a learning strategy that has to be

enacted by the Islamic world in order to catch up with the technological and economic
achievements of the West can indeed find justifications in some passages of Khatamis
writing and public speeches, but I would contend that this is not enough to explain the full
meaning and rationale of his initiative.46 Rather, I want to suggest that Khatamis proposal
for a dialogue among civilizations is driven by the belief that, at this particular stage in the
history of humankind, getting closer to the truthwhether its ethical, political, social, or
even religious dimension is concernedinescapably requires a dialogical encounter
between East and West (on a large scale). In religious (Abramithic) language, that we
can reasonably assume would be familiar to Khatami, there is a kind of prophetic call to
humankind to find that deep ontological and humane unity that has been lost and this can
43 For example see this statement: The understanding of Truth is historical-bound and complete truth is never
acquired but rather genuine and constant search is the attitude that is more proper to it; Khatami, Eighth
Session of the Islamic Summit Conference.
44 John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and the West: Muslim Voices of Dialogue, in Fabio Petito and Pavlos
Hatzopoulos (eds), Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile, (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp.
237 269. See also, by the same authors, Makers of Contemporary Islam, (New York: Oxford University Press,
2001).
45 Petito and Hatzopoulos, Makers of Contemporary Islam, p. 629.
46 These views have been extensively articulated by Khatami in his Islam, Liberty and Development, (Binghamton,
NY: Institute of Global Cultural Studies at Binghamton University, 1998). In this respect, changes of emphasis in
the public speeches following the publication of this bookchanges on which I am going to build for a less stra-
tegic reading then Esposito and Vollscould also be explained by the fact that Khatamis thought has been
developing over time.
114 Fabio Petito
only be attained by recognizing that man is in fact the meeting point of the souls East and
the reasons West.47
Such an answer pointing to a kind of fusion of horizons, as outlined by Gadamer in his
dialogical model, is of great political relevance in itself, given the numerous misperceptions
within Western intellectual and political circles vis-a-vis the Muslim world. Not only that: it
is my contention that the roots of Khatamis arguments have to be traced to the very rich and
ancient philosophical tradition of doctrinal Sufism. Sufism is an interpretation of Islam that
prioritises the religious and spiritual dimension, focussing on mans interior walk of
perfection, which developed in the world of the Muslim confraternities in the very first
centuries of Islams expansion, but suffered a major setback in the 20th century as result
of the international rise of wahhabism and criticisms from various Islamic reformers.48
However, it is today the object of a renewed attention from a number of Muslim reformists
such as Abdolkarim Soroush in Iran, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan in India, and Syed
Muhammad Naquib al-Attas in Malaysia. These Islamic intellectuals have been exploring
new perspectives in the spirit of what another Iranian Islamic reformer Ali Shariati has
called the war of religion against religion.49 This religious matrix, it seems to me, is an
essential reference to locate intellectually Khatamis argument and to make sense of passages
like the following one:
There was a time when poets who promoted colonialism, such as Rudyard Kipling, used to say
that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Today, the vision of a uni-
polar world and the dissolution of all cultures and civilizations into the dominant culture of the
world is another expression of such a prejudiced and nation-oriented view. Goethe said, The East
is Gods, the West is Gods, and Iqbal, as if to indicate the origin of the German poets inspi-
ration, adorned his Message of the East with the Quranic verse that East and West belong to
God. The objective of both poets is to show a point where East and West meet. This common
point of contact, in both views, is the divine origin of humanity. The feeling of estrangement
the East and West have towards each other will be dissolved when each stops viewing itself as
an absolute phenomenon and see its self in relation to the other and in relation to this
common origin. This is how East and West help each other towards perfection.50
Here the Sufi sources and inspirations are evident, for, as Andrey Smirnov has recently argued
with specific reference to Ibn Arabi, Sufism maintains that the beautiful plurality of religious
beliefs finds a deep harmonious unification in the ungraspable and uncontainable greatness
of God.51 This also explains why many authors have pointed to its intrinsically well-disposed
attitude towards the process of inter-religious dialogue52 and Fred Dallmayr has listed it among
the kinds of spirituality of contemplation in action or mysticism of everyday life urgently
needed today for the creation of a more peaceful and humane global order.53
47 Khatami, speech at the European University Institute.

48 Marietta Stepanyants, Introduzione, in Marietta Stepanyants (ed.), Sufismo e confraternite nellIslam contem-
poraneo. Il difficile equilibrio tra mistica e politica, (Turin: Edizioni Fondazione Agnelli, 2003), p. x. See also
the chapter by Alberto Ventura in the same volume.
49 Marietta Stepanyants, Il sufismo nel contesto delle dinamiche politiche contemporanee, in Marietta Stepanyants
(ed.), Sufismo e confraternite nellIslam contemporaneo, p. 341; Ali Shari in Marietta Stepanyants, Introdu-
zione, in Marietta Stepanyants (ed.), Sufismo e confraternite nellIslam contemporaneo. Il difficile equilibrio
tra mistica e politica, (Turin: Edizioni Fondazione Agnelli, 2003), p. x.
50 Khatami, Symposium, pp. 34.
51 Andrey Smirnov, Il concetto di essere nel sufismo: quale spazio per una tolleranza universale? Il problema
della diversita religiosa, in Marietta Stepanyants (ed.), Sufismo e confraternite nellIslam contemporaneo. Il dif-
ficile equilibrio tra mistica e politica, (Turin: Edizioni della Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 2003).
52 See the chapters included in the section devoted to Sufism and interreligious dialogue in Marietta Stepanyants
(ed), Sufismo e confraternite nell Islam contemporaneo.
53 Fred Dallmayr, A Global Spiritual Resurgence? On Christian and Islamic Spiritualities, in Fabio Petito and
Pavlos Hatzopoulos (eds), Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile, (New York: Palgrave,
2003), pp. 209 236.
If this religious matrix is the first important source of inspiration of Khatamis vision of
dialogue, the second one is the philosophical tradition of dialogical theory. As I have
periodically indicated throughout my discussion, Khatamis initiative seems to express in
the international sphere the very same conceptual changes that at the level of philosophical
theory have been articulated by the dialogical approaches that have critically analysed the
mono- and logo-centric (Western) assumptions of philosophical thinking and tried, in
terms of political theorizing, to overcome the stalemate of the communitarian/cosmopolitan
(liberal) divide.54 To use Richard Shapcotts formulation, inspired by Gadamers hermeneu-
tics, dialogical theory would allow for a communitarian path to cosmopolitanism. It is
therefore not surprising that in the post-1989 era the greatest witness of 20th-century
European philosophy, Gadamer himself, could speak in the following terms on the need to
create new global solidarities:55
The human solidarity that I envisage is not a global uniformity but unity in diversity. We must
learn to appreciate and tolerate pluralities, multiplicities, and cultural differences . . . Unity in
diversity, and not uniformity and hegemonythat is the heritage of Europe. Such unity-in-
diversity has to be extended to the whole worldto include Japan, China, India, and also
Muslim cultures. Every culture, every people has something distinctive to offer for the solidarity
and welfare of humanity.56
Khatamis initiative of dialogue among civilizations can, therefore, be interpreted as a

transgressive and transformative dialogical journey in search of these new global solidari-
ties aiming at regulating peacefully the future multicultural and globalized international
society. As such, this normative vision is already in itself a proof of the possibility of an
original fusion of horizons, in this case between the recent dialogical turn in Western phil-
osophy and political theory and the tradition of Islamic spirituality and doctrine known as
Sufism.
Vaclav Havel and Unity in Diversity: Different Cultures within a Single

Civilization
As I have already mentioned, Vaclav Havel does not use the specific formula of dialogue
among civilizations and, more importantly, has in many respects a very different starting
point from Khatami: he is consciously and intentionally speaking from the very heart of
Western intellectual tradition and has also been politically among the strongest supporters
of NATO as one of the institutions embodying the Western political community for a
variety of reasons (and not only because of his institutional duty as the president of the
Czech Republic). Over the years following the end of communist regimes in Central and
Eastern Europe, however, he has developed in his public speeches and writings an insightful
and coherent analysis of the very same issues that have been raised by Khatami, to respond to
what he describes as the central political task of the final years of this century . . . the creation
54 For this debate see Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Communitarians, rev. edn, (Oxford: Black-
well, 1996). For the centrality of the communitarian/cosmopolitan debate in international relations normative
theories in the 1990s see Chris Brown, International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches, (Hemel
Hempstead, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992).
55 Richard Shapcott, Justice, Community and Dialogue in International Relations, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2001). See also Fred Dallmayr, A Gadamerian Perspective on Civilisational Dialogue,
Global Dialogue, 3, 1 (2001), pp. 64 75, reprinted in Dallmayr, Dialogue among Civilisations, ch. 1.
56 Thomas Pantham, Some Dimensions of Universality of Philosophical Hermeneutics: A Conversation with
HansGeorg Gadamer, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 9 (1992), p. 132, quoted in
Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism, p. xiii.
116 Fabio Petito
of a new model of coexistence among the various cultures, peoples, races, and religious
sphere within a single interconnected civilization.57
Havel believes that today humankind is entering an era of multipolar and multicultural
civilization and that the historical roots of this epoch-making change are to be found in the
end of the colonial era and the collapse of communism, the two main sustaining structures of
what he terms the artificial order of the last century.58 Havel uses, however, civilization in
the singular to emphasize that the emergence of a multicultural international society is taking
place at the same time as our planet is [being] enveloped by a single global civilization.59 In
other words, Havel has grasped the two faces of contemporary international society: at once
globalized and multicultural, or, in a more pessimistic tone, the central tension between
globalization and fragmentation.60 Using the metaphor of the common room already
artistically developed in some of his plays as a consequence of his own experience of
sharing a prison cell, Havel eloquently explains that
Our contemporary civilization could thus be compared to a common room in which we are
doomed to live together, but which does not change the fact that each of us is a different
being. More than that: as we become more numerous, and the conforming pressure of the
present civilization increases, we seem to be ever more irritated by others dissimilarities,
feeling an ever greater urge to defend our individuality against all that may tend to dissolve it
in some cosmopolitan sauceor even against anything that is simply different. 61
Against the Technology of World Order: The Search for a New Global
Ethos
To this worrying and potentially dangerous situation, Havel, following the call of the ethics
of responsibility to which he has entrusted his vocation as dissident first and as statesman
later, feels obliged to respond. Havel rejects the possibility that a viable political solution
for the management of this emerging multicultural and a multipolar civilization may lie in
some minor adjustments of the contemporary structure of international society or even in
some major institutional change within the present international framework. According
to him,
The salvation of the world cannot begin with the invention of mechanisms for coexistence, that is,
the technology of world order. The only way to begin is by seeking a new spirit and a new ethos of
coexistence. It is only from this that the techniques and mechanism can gradually emerge, by
which I mean the appropriate international organizations and negotiating systems.62
57 Vaclav Havel has articulated his thoughts on this topic in several public speeches, which have often been pub-
lished in various journals, newspapers, and books. The main source for my research has been the collection
of Havels speeches and writings entitled The Art of Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice, Speeches
and Writings 19901996, trans. Paul Wilson, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), and Havels official
webpage, ,http://www.vacavhavel.cz. (15 January 2007), where all the other speeches I refer to in the text
can be found. For the quotation, see Vaclav Havel, The Need of Transcendence in the Postmodern World,
speech at the Philadelphia Liberty Medal Award Ceremony, Philadelphia, 4 July 1994, published in The Art of
Impossible, p. 168.
58 Vaclav Havel, Europe as Task, speech at the 1996 Charlemagne Plenary, Aachen, 15 May 1996.
59 Vaclav Havel, speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank Group, Prague, 26 September 2000.
60 See for example Ian Clark, Globalization and Fragmentation: International Relations in the Twentieth Century,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
61 Vaclav Havel, speech at the Latin American Parliament, Sao Paulo, 19 September 1996. For a discussion along
similar line see also Havels articlewithin the exchange entitled Transcending the Clash of Cultures
Democracys Forgotten Dimension, Journal of Democracy, 6, 2 (1995), pp. 310.
62 Vaclav Havel, speech at the Indira Gandhi Prize, New Delhi, 8 February 1994, published in The Art of Impossible,
p. 158, emphasis added.
The rejection of the technology of world order is part of Havels broader reflection on the
state of politics in our postmodern condition.63 A full discussion of this issue would require
more space, but what is important for our purpose is to stress how for Havel the intellectual
response and political resistance to any form of top-down, impersonal, mechanistic, manip-
ulative social engineering and theoretical deduction whether in its communist or in its capi-
talist versionlies in the one true power that all persons have at their disposal, their own
humanity, since this is found in their own Lebensvelt, that is the natural world or the
world of lived experience or in Havels own words [that] flow of life which is always
taking us by surprise.64 This is why for Havel
it is not enough to take the set of imperatives, principles, or rules produced by the Euro-American
world and mechanically declare them binding for all. Different cultures or spheres of civilization
can share only what they perceive as genuine common ground, not something that few merely
offer to or even force upon others. The tenets of human coexistence on this earth can hold up
only if they grow out of the deepest experience of everyone, not just some of us.65
Havel, in other words, makes a similar argument to the one put forward by various
communitarian thinkers who have highlighted the relevance of the social ethics of really
existing communities in the search for a new global ethos in contrast to the rights-based cos-
mopolitanbut, first of all, Western-centric and liberalethos of the supposedly emergent
global civil society.66 Genuine universality can only emanate from somewhere, and in this
respect the liberal cosmopolitan tradition is just one of many and is rooted in a particular,
spatially confined part of the world. What must then come into play is the recognition of
the unspecial standing of liberalism and then an understanding of what else is out
there.67 This position, however, needs to confront the tension between the cultural contextu-
alism that is undoubtedly implied by a communitarian perspective, and the aspiration to
transcend it into some kind of universal ethos that is not based, to use the words of a
leading communitarian thinker, on the unencumbered self.68 But where should we look
for this shared minimum ethos to ground the tolerant coexistence of different cultures
within a single civilization?
63 On this topic, Havels thought is highly indebted to the philosophical works of Husserl and Heidegger, to the
specific Czeck tradition of politically engaged intellectuals that goes from Masaryk to Patockawhich Havel
strongly identifies himself withand, of course, to his own experience of confronting communist ideology
under Soviet occupation. See Walter H. Capp, Interpreting Vaclav Havel, Cross Currents, 47, 3 (1997),
pp. 114.
64 Vaclav Havel, What I Believe, in Summer Meditations, trans. Paul Wilson, (New York: Random House, 1993),
p. 66, quoted in Capp, Interpreting Vaclav Havel, p. 7.
65 Vaclav Havel, speech at the National Press Club, Canberra, 29 March 1995, published in The Art of Impossible,
pp. 195196, emphasis added.
66 Jean Bethke Elshtain, Really Existing Communities, Review of International Studies, 25, 1 (1999), pp. 141
146. For a sceptical view on the existence of something like a global civil society see Chris Brown, Cosmo-
politanism, World Citizenship and Global Civil Society, in Simon Caney and Peter Jones (eds), Human Rights
and Global Diversity, (London: Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 726; while for a radical critique along communitarian
lines of the notion of global civil society see Stephen Hopgood, Reading the Small Print in Global Civil
Society: The Inexorable Hegemony of the Liberal Self, Millennium, 29, 1 (2000), pp. 1 25.
67 Fabio Petito and Pavlos Hatzopoulos, The Return from Exile: An Introduction, in Fabio Petito and Pavlos Hat-
zopoulos (eds), Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile, (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 1
20. See also, in the same volume, the chapters by Richard Falk and Scott Thomas.
68 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982). For
an attempt to explore this path maintaining a great sensitivity to the increasing role that non-Western cultures and
societies play in the global arena see Fred Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter,
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), in particular the concluding chapter entitled Democracy
and Multiculturalism, pp. 20122.
118 Fabio Petito
The Need for Transcendence: Genuine Universality and Global

Responsibility
Havels response to this key question is developed in two stages: first, from a historical and
anthropological standpoint, a high degree of similarity in the moral standards of different cul-
tures and traditions is acknowledged; next, a second essential similarity is found in the fact
that the moral foundations upon which different civilizations or cultures are built have always
had transcendental, or metaphysical, underpinnings: It is scarcely possible to find a culture
that does not derive from the conviction that a higher, mysterious order of the world exists
beyond our reach, a higher intention that is the source of all things, a higher memory record-
ing everything, a higher authority to which we are all accountable in one way or another.69
These two critical points lead Havel to contend that All of this clearly suggests where we
should look for what unites us: in an awareness of the transcendental.70 This is according to
Havel, the only path, however narrow, available for contemporary global civilization to start
understanding itself as a multicultural and a multipolar one. But to understand better what
Havel has in another context explicitly referred to as the need for transcendence in the
postmodern world we also need to consider his analysis of the lack of global political
responsibility in our time and his argument that to restore humanitys sense of responsibility
for this world this responsibility must have a metaphysical anchor.71
If, in fact, on the one hand, Havel identifies in the emergence of a truly multicultural era
the main challenge for the future of international relations, on the other, he has constantly
been warning of the fatal threats that the contemporary technological global civilization is
increasingly generating: environmental problems, the growing social antagonism and econ-
omic injustice brought about by the global market economy, and the risks associated with
modern research and technology such as losing control over arsenals, nuclear proliferation,
the dangers of computer piracy or terrorism, and possible abuses of genetic engineering.72
As Havel has observed on several occasions the problem is not the lack of knowledge to
confront these impending threats, rather the fact that
the world is lacking in real determination to reverse [these] unfavourable trends. As if, through
some sort of inertia and against the call of common sense, the prevalent concept was that of apres
nous le delugethat is, immediate interests taking precedence over long-term ones. In my
opinion, this is so because the humanity of todaywithout being properly aware of itis
losing the age-old humility before the secret of the origin, the order and the intentions of
Being, that is, before that which reaches far beyond us; consequently, people are also losing a
sense of responsibility for the world as a whole, and of responsibility before the eyes of eternity.73
As a consequence, in the same way that the incapacity to face the challenge posed by the
plurality of spheres of civilization manifests itself in vain attempts to devise a technology
of world order, so all the projects designed to tackle these threats merely try to regulate
their impact using technical or administrative instrumentswhat Havel has described as
technical tricks to reduce the unfavourable impact of other techniquesbut never touch
the basic trends of development which breed these threats.74 In other words, Havels hypoth-
esis is that the crisis of global responsibility is a logical consequenceperhaps the most
69 Havel, speech at the National Press Club, p. 196.

71 See Vaclav Havel, speech at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 8 June 1995, published in The Art of Imposs-
ible, pp. 216 230; idem, speech at the Latin American Parliament; idem, address to the FORUM 2000 Confer-
ence, Prague Castle, Spanish Hall, 4 September 1997; idem, address to the French Senate, Paris, 3 March 1999
72 See Havel, New Years address by the President of the Czech Republic, Czech Television, Czech Radio, 1
January 2000 .
73 Havel, New Years address.
74 Havel, address to the FORUM 2000 Conference.
dangerous one politicallyof the modern (Western) conception of the world as a complex of
phenomena controlled by certain scientifically identifiable laws ... a conception which does
not question the meaning of existence and renounces any kind of metaphysics.75
This is why in order for Havel to articulate an adequate political response to this current
situation something like an existential revolution is needed: the need for transcendence is,
first of all, a call for full humanity, that is to regain awareness that we are not the creators but
mere components of the mysterious order of existence.76 This is a necessary precondition to
the creation of a new global responsibility, since according to Havel the atheistic nature of
this civilization coincides deeply . . . with the hypertrophic pursuit of individual interests and
individual responsibilities together with the crisis of global responsibilities.77 In sum, for
Havel the challenges posed by both the emergence of a multicultural and multipolar era
and the need for a global responsibility require a metaphysical anchor, i.e. an existential
revolution grounded in transcendence. It is in the identification of this common response
that the issue of international coexistence and global responsibility are rejoined.
Havel, however, is fully aware of the huge difficulties involved in such a course as well as
of the abstract nature of his exhortationhow to revive this awareness [of the transcenden-
tal] which was once common to the whole human race [and] how to do this in a way that is
appropriate for this era? is a question he poses frankly and dramatically.78 Not only that:
further challenging his own argument, he wonders whether there is any sense in trying to
turn the human mind to the heavens when such a turn would only aggravate the conflict
among our various deities.79 To this latter key questionwhich he has addressed on
several occasions especially after the clash of civilizations thesis became popularhis
response is twofold: firstly, he points to that spiritual dimension that connects all cultures
and religionsthe original spiritual and moral substance, which grew out of the same essen-
tial experience of humanity80as a unifying starting point for a new code of human
coexistence that would be firmly anchored in the great diversity of human traditions and in
their common pre-modern and pre-technological humanistic wisdom; secondly, in the
form of an exploratory hypothesis, he envisions a dialogue between different traditions
driven by a will to mutual understanding and whose purpose lies not in undermining the
individuality of different spheres of culture and civilization but in allowing them to be them-
selves more completely, which he has also described as a search for unity in diversity.81
The Practice of Dialogue of Civilizations: The Cases of Democracy and

Human Rights
It is interesting to note that the modality in which Havel envisions this political dialogue
differs substantially from the philosophical models based either on liberal proceduralism a

76 See Havel, The Need of Transcendence and his address to the FORUM 2000 Conference.
77 Havel, address to the FORUM 2000 Conference. Atheism, in this context, has to be understood as a much larger
and more structural phenomenon then the decline of religious practices (as well as the resurgence of some of
them) as shown, for example, by social statistics. In a passage from another speech, Havel states, It is true
that millions of people still go to their churches or shrines, pray to their gods, some, allegedly in their gods
names, even wage battles against other people. In reality, however, humanity behaves as if there was nothing
above us, as ifnotwithstanding the transient nature of our existence, and the limitations of our ability to under-
stand the meaning of thingswe were the makers, the masters and the owners of the universe. See Havel, New
Years address.
80 Havel, address to the FORUM 2000 Conference, emphasis added.
120 Fabio Petito
la Rawls or communicative rationality a la Habermas:82 roughly, it does not demand the use
of a neutral language such as the Rawlsian idea of public reason nor does it restrict the dia-
logical interaction to the Habermasian emphasis on the argumentative authority of Reason;
rather, elaborating on the philosophical nature of this cross-cultural dialogue in a discernibly
Gadamerian language, Havel contends that the preconditions for this [dialogue] are genuine
openness . . . and the ability to step beyond the confines of our own habits and prejudices.
Identity is not a prison; it is an appeal for dialogue with others.83 In other words, genuine
dialogue whose aim is mutual understanding does not require the neutralization of identity
nor the hiding of metaphysical differences behind the idea of the politically reasonable;
instead it is at the very heart of our different identities and communitarian belongings, in
the acknowledgment of the deep otherness of the Other, that understanding becomes para-
doxically possible.
Justifying the philosophical possibility and merits of such a dialogue is, however, not
enough to dismiss the charge of abstract thinking and is arguably of little political relevance
for future international coexistence: a practice of inter-civilizational dialogue needs to be
developed in order to show concretely how the dialogical fusion with non-Western cultures
and their non-liberal forms of politics can positively contribute to the construction of a more
peaceful and just world order. In this respect, there are two paramount political issues that
Havel has explored in his public interventions in the broader context of the call for a dialogue
among different cultures and traditions: democracy and human rights.84
In his article Democracys Forgotten Dimension, Havel argues against the idea that the
globalization of liberalism (a la Fukuyama) and in particular the US-led strategy of democ-
racy promotion can effectively prevent the conflicts that have developed along cultural lines
and that he seesin line with Huntingtonas the greatest threat to the future of international
relations.85 According to Havel, the idea that the rapid spreading of Western values (democ-
racy, human rights, civil society, and free market) will almost automatically result in the
modernization (read Westernization) of non-Western countries and, via the dissemination
of democratic institutions, in the cosmopolitan perpetual peace anticipated by Kant simply
ignores the strong demand for cultural authenticity coming from the non-Western world. It
also fails to address the mistrust and criticisms of
what many cultural societies see as the inevitable product or by-product of these values: moral
relativism, materialism, the denial of any kind of spirituality, a proud disdain for anything super-
personal, a profound crisis of authority and the resulting general decay, a frenzied consumerism, a
lack of solidarity, the selfish cult of material success, the absence of faith in a higher order of
things or simply in eternity, an expansionist mentality that holds in contempt everything that
in any way resists the dreary standardization and rationalism of technical civilization.86
Havel, however, believes that this great mistrust of democracy in many parts of the non-
Western world has less to do with democracy in itself than with a version of Western
liberal democracy that is hopelessly half-baked, that has forgotten its spiritual/transcenden-
tal dimension in the sense that has been described by Jacques Derrida as something that
82 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Jurgen Habermas, The
Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas MaCarthy, 2 vols, (Boston: Bacon Press, 1984).
83 Havel, speech at the National Press Club, p. 202. For a Gadamerian-inspired analysis see Fred Dallmayr, A
Gadamerian Perspective on Civilisational Dialogue, Global Dialogue, 3, 1 (2001), pp. 64 75.
84 For a discussion of democracy see Havel, speech at the Jackson H. Ralston Prize, Stanford University,
29 September 1994, published in The Art of Impossible, pp. 173182, and a revised version of this speech pub-
lished as Democracys Forgotten Dimension; for a discussion of human rights see Havel, speech at the National
Press Club; idem, speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Meetings of the IMF and WB Group; idem, speech at
the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva, 16 March 1998.
85 Havel, Democracys Forgotten Dimension, p. 5.
remains to be thought and to come (a venir) ... a democracy that must have the structure of a
promise.87 In other words, a democracy that is a set of possibilities that continually must be
sought, redefined and brought into being [and not] something given, finished, and complete as
is, something that can be exported like car or television sets, something that the more enligh-
tened purchase and the less enlightened do not.88
This is why referring to the global crisis of democracyand pointing in particular to the
increasingly evident crisis of democracy in the WestHavel argues that a possible way out
resides in a dialogue between East and West, in an interaction that is pursued without anyone
losing their own identity but which leads to the rediscovery of the original, long-forgotten,
transcendental roots of both civilizations:
Thusto put it in simplified termsif the East can borrow democracy and its inherent values
from the West as a space in which a reawakening sense of the transcendental can restore
authority, then the West can learn from the East what true authority is, what it grows from,
and how it conducts itself. I think in this context of Confucius, who so aptly described what it
means to wield genuine authority. His standards have very little in common with the ideas of
todays men of the whip. To him, authority be it in the father of a family or the ruler of a
state is a metaphysically anchored gift whose strength derives from his or her heightened
responsibility, not from the might of the instruments of power he or she may wield.89
The dialogical encounter results not in a pick and mix synthesis but in the rediscovery of a
deeper agreement hidden in the long-forgotten common existential dimensions of these
different traditions. This is an illustration of Havels more general hypothesis that the
moral basis for the creation of a new world order has to be found in a clear awareness of
its multicultural character, in a radical enhancement of its inner spirit, and in a concerted
effort to find the shared spiritual roots of all cultures, for they are what unites all people.90
The second concrete political issue that Havel has discussed in the context of his call for
cross-cultural dialogue is human rights. Havel is persuaded that the idea of human rights
needs to be a founding pillar of any meaningful framework for international coexistence,
but at the same time he argues that
it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is
to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a
departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely
scientific relationship to the world.91
As a consequence, Havel proposes to emphasize the spiritual source of human rights, even to
rewrite the Declaration of Human Rights in its language that deep down is available to all
great cultural and religious traditions. This dialogical encounter may bring this fundamental
realm of political coexistence closer to non-Western cultures, making life harder for various
autocrats who have sought to legitimate their evil actions by pointing out the otherness of
their cultures,92 and at the same time bring it closer to us who come from the Euro-
American environment, for we seem to be the ones who are most inclined to lose sight of
the spiritual dimension of the values we believe in, and of the metaphysical origin of the
rights we claim; and to regard documents like the Declaration of Human Rights simply as
some kind of good business.93
87 Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Todays Europe, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael
B. Nass, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 78.
89 Havel, speech at the National Press Club, published in The Art of Impossible, p. 201, emphasis added.
90 Havel, speech at the National Press Club, published in The Art of Impossible, p. 202.
91 Havel, speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Meetings of the IMF and WB Group, emphasis added.
92 Havel, speech at the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
122 Fabio Petito
Interpreting Havels Postmodern Multicultural Civilization: The Need for

Transcendence and Cross-Cultural Service-Learning
A few months before Khatami officially proposed in his speech at the UN General Assembly
that the United Nations designate the Year 2001 the Year of the Dialogue of Civilizations,94
Havel concluded his speech at the event commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights by saying,
I would deem it advisable if the United Nations became the scene of a quest for a common
denominator of spiritual values uniting the different cultures of our present world. The UN
should look for ways in which the entire system that is aimed to foster human rights, and all
the other rights and responsibility shared by humanity today, could be more deeply implanted
in this spiritual foundations.95
Havels analysis of the post-Cold-War multipolar and multicultural condition is striking for
its coherence and depth. The dissident whose ideas inspired the velvet revolution and who
knew all too well that the power of the powerless, in the words of his most famous essay,
resides in the pre-political existential resistance to conformity and uniformity, simply in real,
lived life that in its essence, moves towards plurality, diversity, independent self-constitution
and self-organisation96, could not but warn against the grand ideological blueprint of the
powerful technology of the New World Order. Both the emergence of a multicultural
and multipolar era and the need for a global responsibility require, in Havels view, an exis-
tential revolution grounded in transcendence sine qua non for a new universal ethos from
below.
Along strikingly similar lines, Richard Falk, re-elaborating his long-standing political
engagement for a more principled world order along cosmopolitan lines, has recently
argued that the project of a humane global governancewhat on other occasions he has
also described as globalization from belowrequires the contribution of the great world
religions. Inclusive forms of religious traditions can in fact create some countervailing press-
ures to neutralize the disruptive societal impacts of ascendant market forces by infusing the
struggles of the peoples of the world for democracy, equity, and sustainability with a vision of
human existence that is human-centred yet conscious of the relevance of our surrounding
nature, of the sacred, and of mysteries beyond the grasp of reason and machines.97 It is inter-
esting to note that, like Havel, Falks call for a religious orientation to inform the energies of
globalization from below has only secondarily a pragmatic function, i.e. it does not merely
ask for the recruitment of religions as a means of mobilizing and motivating people; primar-
ily, Falks argument, again in line with Havel, lies in the substantial belief that religion
remains the primary and strongest custodian of a pre-modern humanistic wisdom that the
technological and economy-driven Western societies have almost entirely forgotten.
Havels discussion of the cases of democracy and human rights in the context of the
dialogue between East and West points to the emergence of what the leading communitarian
thinker Amitai Etzioni, in his recent attempt to formulate a communitarian theory of
international relations, has called a new normative global synthesis: greatly simplified, a
synthesis between the Wests preoccupation with autonomy and the Easts preoccupation
94 Khatami, speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

96 Vaclav Havel, The Power of Powerless: To the Memory of Jan Patocka, in Jan Vladislav (ed.), Vaclav Havel or
in Living in Truth, (London: Faber & Faber, 1987).
97 Richard Falk, A Worldwide Religious Resurgence in an Era of Globalization and Apocalyptic Terrorism, in
Fabio Petito and Pavlos Hatzopoulos (eds), Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile,
(New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 181 208. See also Richard Falk, On Humane Governance: Toward a New
Global Politics, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).
with social order. This is not a mechanical combination of Eastern and Western elements but
rather it is akin to a chemical fusion and, even more importantly, it is inspired by a service-
learning approach, a sincere conviction that other cultures can make profound and true
contributions to the evolving new global architecture.98
Sketching Dialogue of Civilizations as International Political Theory

In the same way that modern political theory did not emerge from (and in) a vacuum and that
many of the key founding texts of modern political thoughtespecially the theory of the
statewere written as a very concrete response to the political problems and enquiries of
the day, the great issues of todays politics, arguably in primis its global predicament com-
bined with a growing worldwide political manifestation of cultural pluralism lacking a
shared understanding of world order, are calling for an adequate international political
theory of world order, that is, a theory of the normative structure for contemporary multicul-
tural and globalized international society.
Khatami and Havel have been two important national leaders-intellectuals and as heads of
state of their respective countries they had to confront the intellectual challenges of the
present global predicament after having played, in different ways within different contexts,
a revolutionary role in their respective domestic political arenas: Havel as the leader of a
velvet revolution contributing to the end of the bipolar era, and Khatami as the leader of
a reformist movement in a revolutionary country announcing the need for a peaceful
coexistence between the Islamic and the Western worlds and values. From my critical discus-
sions of their approaches, some conclusions can be drawn in order to sketch an international
political theory of the global political discourse of dialogue among civilizations.
First of all, since the dialogue of civilizations as global political discourse has been
framed against the background of the theses of the end of history and the clash of civiliza-
tions, it is useful to explore more in details the comparisons and contrasts with these two
theses.99 In a simplified and schematic way familiar to international relations mainstream
scholarship, it can be argued that the dialogue of civilizations shares analytically some essen-
tial assumptions with the thesis of the clash of civilizations while normatively is closer to the
approach endorsed by the end of history.
In fact, in contrast to the analytical and empirical argument about the globalization of
liberalism being the last stage of the modernization and secularization of the world, the dia-
logue of civilizations stresses the global resurgence of cultural and religious pluralism in
world politics and identifies in the quest for cultural authenticity the main present political
issue in the relationship between the Western and non-Western world. This explains why
both Khatami and Havel take Huntingtons focus on cultural and civilizational forces
seriously. But where Huntington sees the clash of civilizations scenario mainly as a social-
scientific prediction grounded in a primordialist worldview of politics, the political discourse
of dialogue of civilizations sees it as a dangerous possibility (or political construction)
produced by wrong policies that need to be opposed.100 The reactions to 9/11 in the
98 A. Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations, (New York: Palgrave,
2004), pp. 15, 25. In a footnote on p. 15 Etzioni writes, In a sense my whole book, which could be titled
The Dialogue of Civilizations, is a response to Huntingtons viewpoint. For Etzionis communitarian
thought see The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society, (New York: Basic
Books, 1996).
99 For a comparison of Huntington and Fukuyama see Kurtz Stanley The Future of History, Policy Review, 112
(2002), pp. 4358.
100 Here I am drawing on Hasenclever and Rittbergers categorization, within the context of peace studies, of three
theoretical perspectives on the impact of faith on political conflict, namely, primordialism (with which they
associate Huntington), instrumentalism (with which they associate the rational-actor approach minimizing
124 Fabio Petito
context of American public debate as framed by the powerful question Why do they hate
us? give a good idea of the kind of opposition I have in mind: on one side, the position
arguing that they hate us for what we are, what we believe and stand for, for our way of
life, while, on the other side, the second position stressing that it is not our identity which
is their problem but rather what we do in terms of foreign policies.101
On the normative side, it is self-evident that the proposal for a dialogue of civilizations is
formulated as a reaction to the clash of civilizations thesis. In simple terms, the former is first
of all designed to prevent the latter. The explanation whyfrom rather convergent empirical
considerations and analysesthe supporters of the dialogue strategy like Khatami and Havel
reach very different conclusions from Huntington has to do, I would argue, with the different
notions of (international) politics that these two positions assume: where Huntington
subscribes to a realist political framework, the dialogue strategy is committed to a more
idealist framework closer to the notion of politics implicit in the end of history thesis.
In the first case, struggle for power is perceived to be the unavoidable necessity of politics
and this condemns international politics to be the realm of conflict recurrence and repetition
that can only be partially mitigated by a consequentialist ethics of statecraft based on non-
interference. In the second case, both an idealist commitment to politics as a search for
justice and a liberal emphasis on cooperation and non-military issues prevail, and, as a
consequence, international politics is perceived as a realm where progress, however difficult,
is nonetheless possible on the base of an ethics of ends.
These two distinctionsnormative/analytical and realist/idealistessential to main-
stream approaches in international relations, are, however, from my perspective part of the
theoretical problems that a fully fledged international political theory of dialogue of civiliza-
tions will have to confront. What is more important for the time being, is to stress that this
preliminary comparative reading does not want to suggest that the dialogue of civilizations
as international political theoryi.e. as an argument for the normative basis of contemporary
international societycan be interpreted as a via media theoretical position between the
clash of civilizations and the end of history; rather it is my argument that if attention is
shifted from theory to practice, the radical distance of the dialogue of civilizations from
the other two theses becomes apparent. In particular, while the two envision, respectively,
a thin or thick102but essentially Western-centric and mainly liberalinternational
society, the dialogue of civilizations points towards and calls for the reopening and re-
discussion of the core Western-centric and liberal assumptions upon which the normative
structure of the contemporary international society is based.
From this perspective, the idea of a dialogue of civilizations as an argument for a norma-
tive structure of a multicultural and globalized international society represents a powerful
normative challenge to the contemporary political orthodoxy implicit in both the above-men-
tioned political discourses. This has been arguably reinforced by the developments following
9/11 that have shown the emergence of an apparently unexpected fusion of realist and
liberal/idealist arguments in what has been termed the American Grand Strategys imperial
temptation or ambition and variously described as imperial liberalism or Lite empire
and whose main idea could be well summarized as the attempt to remake the world in
the role of identity), and what they call moderate constructivism (with which they associate various dialogue
strategies for conflict resolutions). See Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger, Does Religion Make
a Difference? Theoretical Approaches to the Impact of Faith on Political Conflict, in Fabio Petito and
Pavlos Hatzopoulos (eds), Religion in International Relations: The Return from Exile, (New York: Palgrave,
2003), pp. 107 145.
101 For a critical discussion of this public debate see Mark LeVine, Why They Dont Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the
Axis of Evil, (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005).
102 I have borrowed the thick and thin distinction from Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at
Home and Abroad, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).
Americas own image.103 In other words, as Etzioni has convincingly argued, both the end-
of-history and the clash-of-civilizations arguments approach the non-Western parts of the
world as if they have little, if anything, to offer to the conception of a good societyat
least to its political and economic designor to the evolving new global architecture.104
This also explains why, in discussing Khatamis and Havels ideas on this topic, I have
periodically traced parallels with recent developments in philosophy and political theory
that have tried to critically analyse the Western- and logo-centric assumptions of philosophi-
cal thinking and argued for a dialogical approach that is capable of overcoming the stalemate
of the communitarian/cosmopolitan (liberal) debate. I have shown that this dialogical
approach, although with some differences of emphasis between the two visions discussed,
is largely compatible with the Gadamerian hermeneutical model of fusion of horizons
whereby the purpose of dialogue is not to flesh out rational points of agreementsan enter-
prise whose usefulness I am not questioning at allbut to obtain a deeper mutual under-
standing. Such an understanding based on a reciprocal willingness to learn is already a
transformative existential experience and leads to the possibility of creating, in the words
of Gadamer, new normative and common solidarities that let practical reason speak
again in a way that is appropriate to the new global predicament.105 In this respect, the recon-
struction of Khatamis and Havels thought suggests some theoretical and political lines of
thinking that need to be included in any forward-looking reflection on the normative structure
of contemporary international society which wishes to be sensitive to the call for a dialogue
among civilizations.
Firstly, if the normative structurethe global ethosof future global coexistence is to be
genuinely universal, it cannot only be liberal and Western-centric. Genuine universality
requires a sharp awareness of the presence of different cultures and civilizations in world
affairs; in many ways it must also spring from there. A fundamental void looms when this
global ethos reflects the tenets of cosmopolitan liberalism, a political tradition that forecloses
the centrality of cultural and religious identity in the everyday practices of really existing
communities, reducing politics to what Havel would polemically call a technology of
world order.
Secondly, any reflection on a principled world order based on dialogue of civilizations
must acknowledge something like a fundamental ethical and political crisis linked to the
present liberal Western civilization and its expansion and recognize that the dialogue of civi-
lizations seems to enshrine the promise of an answer, or rather to chart a path towards an
answer, as, in Khatamis words, every dialogue based on a presumption of worth of the
Other provides grounds for human creativity to flourish.106
Finally, the present international situation places on all of us a moral obligation to pursue
a politics of inter-civilizational understanding and engage in a concrete practice of cross-
cultural dialogue. It cannot be ignored that since September 11, 2001, in the very year desig-
nated by the United Nations the Year of Dialogue of Civilizations, the shadow of a future
103 See The National Security Strategy of the United States 2002, ,http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html.
(accessed 15 March 2007); J. Purdy, Liberal Empire: Assessing the Arguments, Ethics and International
Affairs, 17, 12 (2003, pp. 5164); Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite, Prospect, 83 (2003), pp. 36 43; Michael
Cox, Empires Back in Town: or Americas Imperial TemptationAgain, Millennium, 23, 1 (2003), pp.
1 27; G. John Ikenberry, Americas Imperial Ambition, Foreign Affairs, 81, 5 (2002), pp. 4460. A revealing
example of this fusion is the idea of a war to promote democracy, the so-called doctrine of coercitive democ-
racy-promotion which combines the typical liberal/idealist theme of the promotion of democracy with the
typical realist emphasis on war and military means.
104 Etzioni, From Empire to Community, p. 26.
105 Hans-Georg Gadamer, What Is Practice?, in Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence,
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), p. 87.
106 See note 39.
126 Fabio Petito
clash of civilizations came hammering down incredibly on the world with incredible
velocity and brought a growing atmosphere of fear and war into which we have been
rapidly drawn since those terrible terrorist attacks. Not only that: the search for a new
global ethos, that is unity in diversity, is needed today even more to defend the plurality of
world politics against any imperial temptation; for in the words of Gadamer the hegemony
or unchallengeable power of any one single nation . . . is dangerous for humanity. It would go
against human freedom.107 With this context in mind, a politics of understanding would
already be a great achievement. But to effectively face this challenge at its roots we need
to imagine a way out of this strict grid of choices imposed by the contemporary Western-
centric and liberal global order and move towards the construction of a multicultural and
peaceful world order.
107 Thomas Pantham, Some Dimensions of Universality of Philosophical Hermeneutics: A Conversation with
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 9 (1992), p. 132.

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Global Change, Peace & Security

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The Global Political Discourse of Dialogue

ISSN 1478-1158 print/ISSN 1478-1166 online/07/020103-24 # 2007 Taylor & Francis

The Dialogue among Civilizations as a Global Political Discourse:

Understanding Khatamis Dialogue among Civilizations

Dialogue among Civilizations and the Post-1989 Context

The Participants in the Dialogue among Civilizations

15 Lynch, The Dialogue, p. 307.

21 Khatami, address at the Dialogue among Civilizations Conference.

The Philosophical Nature of Dialogue

Charles Taylors discussion of the deficit of vernacular experience in the Habermasian

The Aim of Dialogue among Civilizations

36 Khatami, Symposium, p. 5, emphasis added.

Interpreting Khatamis Vision of Dialogue among Civilizations: The Role

dialogue is not a passive policy of accommodation, it is a competitive strategy to strengthening

This interpretation of dialogue among civilizations as a learning strategy that has to be

47 Khatami, speech at the European University Institute.

Khatamis initiative of dialogue among civilizations can, therefore, be interpreted as a

Vaclav Havel and Unity in Diversity: Different Cultures within a Single

The Need for Transcendence: Genuine Universality and Global

69 Havel, speech at the National Press Club, p. 196.

The Practice of Dialogue of Civilizations: The Cases of Democracy and

75 Havel, address to the FORUM 2000 Conference.

Interpreting Havels Postmodern Multicultural Civilization: The Need for

94 Khatami, speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

Sketching Dialogue of Civilizations as International Political Theory

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