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Navigating between the East and West
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by John Lim
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This August, Mathias Risse, a Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, will be co-facilitating the programs: Personal Leadership: Ethics, Power, and Decision Making; as well as Ethics in Public Life.
I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Risse for an exclusive interview. Mr. Risse’s primary research areas are contemporary political philosophy and decision theory. My questions to him stemmed from two places: the importance and relevance of his program for those attending in August as well as the situation where I am at in my own leadership journey.
When I mention to future potential attendees of this program that Mr. Risse is a professor of “political philosophy”, his expertise sometimes comes across as abstract and even irrelevant to one’s practical life. But in Mr. Risse’s words, “the business of political philosophers is to make well-argued proposals for how people should live together…for philosophy to be relevant, what we propose as worth doing must be in principle doable.”
What practical difference can the teaching of ethics make for individuals, particularly for those in positions of authority?
“Generally, ethics is about thinking about (how) to justify to others what we do, to the extent that it affects them. And of course, what policy makers do affects many other people. But often they do things rather unreflectively, perhaps only because things have always been done a certain way. Or they think about policy-making mostly as a matter of deploying social-scientific devices. Ethics seeks to make policy-makers sensitive to the need to justify their actions and give them both tools and practice in doing so.”
What do you believe is the most important ethical issue that leaders in Asia are being faced with?
“I’m not sure if there is one single challenge that applies across all of Asia. Asia encompasses a vast range of countries; each with its own unique set of problems. However, because many have emerged from authoritarian rule of any sort (domestic or alien), we can see a shared concern amongst many newly independent states over the moral maturity of its population. Individuals need to be empowered to look after their own affairs economically, and that requires state structures to provide education, rule-of-law governance, absence of corruption, etc. But individuals also need to be empowered to see themselves as politically responsible.”
Anyone with a position of authority is in fact, a “policy maker” and constantly put into situations where his or her decisions impact the lives of many others. These decisions should be ones that add sustainable value to a group – the person making these tough (and sometimes unpopular) decisions should know how to communicate and give a rational vision for others to follow. Even our most personal decisions impact those around us.
My next questions to Mr. Risse stem from the fact that I am a Canadian and Filipino with a Chinese background who has studied in the United States and China, worked in South Korea and is now working in Malaysia. I am interested in what learned men have to say about what causes differences between the East and the West.
What is the most common philosophical tension between the East and the West?”
I would say there are three differences that generate a fair amount of differences in the focus of philosophical thinking. In the metaphysical domain Chinese thinking has traditionally been concerned more with change, whereas the Greeks brought an emphasis on identifying what is truly permanent into Western philosophy.
A second important difference is the relationship between philosophy and theology and the practical relevance that that had. In Western thinking there is Greek philosophy (which is not very religious) but also Jewish and Christian religion, which is all focused on the one God.
Having emerged from Judaism, Christianity is originally an underdog religion but eventually takes over the Roman Empire and sets itself up as a power that stands in constant contestation with worldly powers. In China, religion never gains this kind of importance. Rule-of-law thinking, for instance, became much stronger in the West than in the East because the importance of theology made it possible and plausible to measure the state by standards outside of it.
And finally, there is much emphasis on the importance of family and clans in Eastern thinking, which both in theory and in practice comes at the expense of emphasizing the importance of the individual and the importance of the country. And this latter point is directly connected to the widespread resistance to the idea of human rights in China and other countries in East and South-East Asia.”
What advice (tools, frameworks, tips) can you offer individuals to successfully navigate between differing political and cultural contexts?
“There is always the learning of languages, and falling short of that is the option of spending time in different political and cultural contexts. We all have to cut corners given how demanding life can be but I’ve found that one can pick up quite a bit, no matter how tentatively, from just spending a few days here and there in different countries and cultural contexts.
Then there is the option of reading, both original writings and second literature. At this stage there is a fair number of bi-cultural individuals teaching both at universities in the West and in East and South-East Asia. They offer a wealth of insights to the interested reader. Persistence is always important: it is one thing to read or engage with a culture once for a limited amount of time. It is quite another to do so repeatedly over the years. The built-up effects can be quite astonishing.”
All of us can of course overlook superficial differences in culture. But when making optimal decisions in differing political and cultural contexts, one must recognize that challenges are usually value-driven, and as Mr. Risse says, defined by differing conceptions of the world. One has to enter these contexts expecting one’s assumptions to be challenged and provoked.
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