Overcoming Evil as Creation of Others as Enemies: Roots, Routes and a New Awakening of Plural Identities

Abstract

In my paper, I defend the thesis that the evil, in spite of its being multi-faced, has always one single origin to be located in the human being itself. One of the diverse facets of the evil becomes apparent in the attitude in which we treat our counterpart or the supposed “other”. My interest in this paper is directed to the specific facet of the evil occurring in any attitude that judges the “other” as evil. Such reductionist lines of thinking give one certain identity a dominant status within a society that is extremely dangerous because it can be seen as an origin of the development of radicalisms, as several occurrences in the history, as the persecution of the Jews, demonstrate. Reductionisms provoke an artificial war between the cultures. Plural identity models, as Amartya Sen’s (Sen 2006: 4f) or Jonathan Sacks’ (Sacks 2002: 54), in which the cultural diversity is seen as a value that has to be saved, could offer a fruitful approach towards a non-violent dialog between the cultures, towards a more open and liberal attitude in relation to the “other” and, as a consequence, towards a better functioning society in general. In the context of my analysis, I will also illuminate the actual situation of Europe. In that regard, I will examine the extent to which the motto of the European Union, “United in diversity”, is put into practice in terms of a real acceptance of the diversity. In this context, I will criticize an aggressively pursued policy of integration, whereby I will base my critique on the argument that there is no homogeneous receiving society nor a homogeneous migrant flow, for which reason a conception of integration that exclusively aims at the assimilation of the newly arriving immigrants to the receiving society is something unjustifiable. At that point, I will also show whereto the idea of homogenization can lead and de facto led. History is the proof therefor.

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