Wielokulturowość, dialog, pogranicze. Krzysztofa Czyżewskiego koncepcja etosu pogranicza w kontekście teorii wielokulturowości i dialogu

Abstrakt

In today’s world we can observe a considerable rise of society’s cultural diversity. Western societies are more and more internally diff erentiated and the word multiculturalism has become a part of our glossary for good. Th is phenomenon is, by many, seen as a threat to their own identity and integrity. A xenophobia, a fear of strangers appears. The alternative for this seems to be to blur diverse identities and eff ace differences between various groups. In connection with the emergence of these phenomena rise a need for a theoretical refl ection aiming to resolve these problems. The matters of multiculturalism, dialogue and alterity call for explanation. The purpose of this article is to take into consideration dilemmas connected with the phenomenon of multiculturalism by reaching into the fi elds of arts that are concerned with these problems – especially social sciences, philosophy of dialogue, and also Krzysztof Czyżewski’s conception. At first, the article reaches into the beginnings of the European refl ection on the variety of cultures: deals with the issues of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, examines the European culture’s way to dispose of its own ethnocentric closure and takes into consideration diffi culties related with accepting a purely relativistic model of perceiving other cultures. Afterwards this work presents various conceptions and definitions of the term multiculturalism, as learning to know them helps to understand this phenomenon better. After outlining this background, the article reaches to the philosophy of dialogue, to seek, in the concepts of Buber, Rosenzweig, Lévinas, and Tischner, answers to the dilemmas related to the necessity of living in modern, diversifi ed communities. Philosophers of dialogue teach how to properly understand dialogue and the meeting with the other. In the philosophical perspective, they outline new thinking, which demands to see the essence of humanity in relation I-You, I-Other. The article tries to show how they emphasize, in diff erent ways, the need to respect the autonomy of the other, which can not be rejected during the meeting. They interpret any attempt to blur the diff erence of the other, as a camoufl aged way to convert what is strange and foreign to something mine and accepted. This leads thereby to identifi cation of the other with me and to violation of its otherness. The work ends with Czyżewski’s concept of the ethos of the borderland. It becomes like a buckle that closes all previous considerations, showing how to solve the dilemmas of identity and otherness in multicultural areas. Ethos of the borderland, a kind of code of life at the intersection of cultures, religions and nations, sets the path of mutual recognition of each other’s identity in order to build agreement. It is not afraid of diff erences, and instead of removing them, it affi rms them, to erect above them a bridge of meeting. Th e ethos teaches to perceive the existence of different cultures as a chance of mutual enrichment of various others. Forgotten, but present through the ages in the lands of Central Europe, the ethos of the borderland, rediscovered by Czyżewski, seems to be the answer to many of the numerous questions that increasingly multicultural Europe asks itself.