Page 52 - Geopolítica del Mundo Actual. Una Visión Multidisciplinar

GEOPOLÍTICA DEL MUNDO ACTUAL. UNA VISIÓN MULTIDISCIPLINAR: Cultura de Paz, Conflflictos, Educación y Derechos Humanos
RETURNING TO CORDOBA
Ramin Jahanbegloo
Jindal Global University (Delhi, India)
We have a story of the meeting of Alexander the Great and Dandamis, reported by Paladius, translated into Latin by St. Ambrose in the 4th century A.D. and brought to us by the president of India, Dr. S. Radakrishnan. The story goes like this:
Alexander was greatly struck by the austerity of life and the majesty of the philosophical wisdom of the Indian thinker. After this meeting Alexander abandoned the view that the non-Greek world was barbarian and that its people were fit only to be slaves. According to Plutarch, Alexander looked upon the whole inhabited world as his fatherland. Shortly before his death, Alexander held a banquet to celebrate the end of a great war, and he invited to it nine thousand people from Greece and elsewhere. At the end of the banquet he prayed for peace and for a world of partnership based on a communion of minds and hearts.
We are also gathered here in Córdoba with the same task in mind: a sense of dignity of humankind and civic friendship. We are gathered in Córdoba to celebrate this city as a heritage of cultural interconnectedness, a symbol of diversity and a space for creative dialogue and inter-faith harmony. But in the final analysis, what do we mean, when we say that Córdoba is a city of dialogue? What are we talking about, exactly? It should be a simple enough question, especially to those who live in Córdoba. However, it does not mean that people of this city are more dialogical in nature than any other place in Spain, in Europe or around the Mediterranean Sea.
Consequently, one might live in Córdoba and not believe in the art of dialogue. Indeed, this must be increasingly obvious: no one can hope that all those who live in this city know exactly what it stands for. But to those who consult in their hearts
and minds an image of dialogue and peace, the name of Córdoba stands out as a space of hope.
As in the story of Alexander and Dandamis, Córdoba is a one great loving cup where men’s lives, their characters, their very habits of life can mix and unite together. And if part of this experience, what I called “Paradigm of Córdoba” is the process of transcendence, in the broadest sense of the word, meaning the respect of individuals for a unifying principle that transcends them, and that is the idea of “humanity”, then all cultures and religious traditions must be imbued in their differences with the spirit of that respect. This is why and how the “Paradigm of Córdoba” represents a common quest for a common ground.
I think, the most notable and creative nature of the “Córdoba Paradigm” is that cohabitation and coexistence are not only based on religious and legal principles, but on the idea of “empathy” (what the German philosopher, Johann Gottfried von Herder, called “Einfühlung”. This is a process of being “in feeling with” or “understanding” another culture. This process of mutual understanding was also a process of listening to each other and learning from each other. As such, the “Córdoba Paradigm” remains a successful model of associative reconciliation where Europeans of different religious communities contributed to advise and, most importantly, to encourage cross- cultural learning. But couldn’t we also say this for the Mediterranean region?
Let us not forget that the Mediterranean has been considered by many as the meeting point of the East and the West. And as Albert Camus underlines: “The tradition of “mesure” belongs to the Mediterranean world”. It is, therefore, clear that the “Córdoba Paradigm” is an exigency of
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