Comentary on P.

Ricouer’s «Universal Civilization and National Culture»

Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization and National Culture," History and Truth, trans.
Chas. A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965) 276-7. 64. Butler 277.
P. Ricoeur, in ”Universal Civilization and National Culture” evokes todays challenge of trying to conciliate a
global civilization characterized by the access to progress with the struggle to keep one's own culture and
heritage.

While characterizing this "universal civilization" the author shifts the weight on technics towards scientific
spirit which isn't bound to any given location but is instead a "human dimension"; towards the
"development oftechnics" stressing the artificiality of men's relationship with nature by means of tools as
well as the ability those tools have to spread all over the world by means of communication; and towards the
"existence of rational politics" which Ricoeur explain as the simultaneous concentration of power/decision
making and the desire to give the largest number of people a voice in those same decisions. This universality
is exemplified by standardization of housing and clothing, as well as "transportation, human relationships,
comfort, leisure, and news programming".
On a second point Ricoeur stresses the significance on this civilization by implying that "it seams to
constitute a real progress". And by progress he refers both to phenomenons of accumulation and of
improvement, just as failures accumulate becoming sets of tools for the entire mankind in order to create an
economy of means.
Ricoeur confronts two notions; the "universal civilization", on one hand, and an individual society's "creative
nucleus", on the other.

The idea of "universal civilization" may appear completely negative at first; but for Ricoeur it has a positive
side. It is a "leveling" process for humanity; the universalization emphasizes an "awareness of a single
humanity", and though represents “a good in itself”. Along side this humanistic and somewhat harmonious
approach of Ricoeur, he is giving also a more critic view, more realistic and contemporary distinctionbetween
the local and the global.
He acknowledges the danger and sometimes inability of a local culture in dealing with alien technology
and/or values stating the paradox of becoming modern embracing "universal civilization" at the as returning
to the origins "reviving an old, dormant civilization" - how to civilise and at the same time sustain one’s
culture.

In the third and last point of this reading it is identified that the "creative nucleus of a civilization" is
constituted by values as institutions but that in order to achieve this creativity a given culture needs to be
renewed or it will die. In that same way, a culture needs to value that renewal before the world, history and
itself in order to avoid "a simple folkloric ornamentation".

Ricoeur identifies man an empathic being capable of relating to values and symbols which are not his own
projecting himself into another's perspective. Furthermore he says that it is possible to avoid a cultural
schizophrenia by "being faithful to one's origins and ready for creativity".
The text ends by implying that a true encounter with a different culture by means of dialog rather than
"shock of conquest and domination" is yet to be met, and its outcome would be impossible to anticipate.

Ricardo Leal – AHO – 2007