Descartes' Take on Diversity

Descartes' Take on Diversity

A good friend of mine is currently traveling in East Asia. He made the following observation to me in an email:

As a generality, travelers are the nicest and friendliest people you come across. But once you talk to them, you see that niceness express itself in a standard of no judgement or pursuit of objective truth. In the traveler's culture, everyone's views are equally valid and interesting. Questioning it is rude. No one is interested in pursuing the truth. 

This reminded me of some thoughts I had on the topic of diversity, which - apparently - I had never expressed in a blog post. 

"Diversity" has become an increasingly popular value in the post-modern age. This has its pros and cons. The major benefit that a society which values diversity lends itself to the mentality of, "Eizehu chacham? ha'lomed mi'kol adam - Who is wise? He who learns from everyone" (Avos 4:1). More exposure to diverse ideas and values yields more opportunities for learning new ideas. 

However, Western society's embrace of diversity has also lent strength to the trends of pluralism, subjectivism, moral equivalency, and the like. There are many people who feel that tolerating all views necessitates accepting all views as equally valid. Knowing the regular readers of this blog, I'm sure I don't think I have to elaborate on the falsity of that epistemological stance. Suffice it to say, this is an ugly side effect.

Years ago I started reading Descartes' Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Science. I came across a short excerpt which put a different spin on the value of diversity. Descartes writes about the value of travel, saying:

It is useful to know something of the manners of different nations, that we may be enabled to form a more correct judgment regarding our own, and be prevented from thinking that everything contrary to our customs is ridiculous and irrational, a conclusion usually come to by those whose experience has been limited to their own country.

In other words, we tend to have a supreme confidence in the correctness of our own customs and cultural mores. By default, we view the ways of others as "ridiculous and irrational." Descartes is pointing out that by exposing ourselves to different people from different cultures, we will come to realize that they have exactly the same degree of confidence in the correctness of their lifestyle as we do in ours. This, in turn, will bring us to the realization that this entire feeling of correctness is totally subjective, and provides absolutely no indication about objective truth.

Now, a subjectivist would use this as a jumping-off point to say, "See? We're ALL deluding ourselves! Nobody really knows what's going on!" But Descartes took the opposite approach, saying that this realization of our own self-delusion will "[enable us] to form a more correct judgment regarding our own [way of life]." The first step in clearing away the sanctimonious haze that surrounds us to become aware of it, and a good way to become aware of it is to recognize it in others.

To sum up the main point: not only can diversity help us to learn from others who are right, but it can also help us to appreciate just how many people think they're right about their derech in life, but are actually wrong; hopefully, this will help us to spot this same way of thinking in ourselves, and better enable us to correct our mistaken ways of thinking.