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David Summerhays with Charles TaylorInterviewCharles TaylorNovember 18th, 2012: On this frigid Sundaymorning, I received an email asking if I might beinterested in interviewing Professor Charles Taylor.I’m not sure how well Professor Taylor is knownelsewhere in Canada. In 2007, Taylor won the extremelyprestigious Templeton Prize, a sort of Nobel forPhilosophy. In Québec, he is best known for co-chairingthe 2008 Bouchard–Taylor Commission, appointedby Québec’s Premier to investigate widespread fears ofimmigrants, particularly Muslims, taking advantageof, shall we say, the largesse of the hosting society,– the pure laine* Quebecers. The Bouchard–TaylorCommission found these fears mostly groundless, toreto shreds most of the reporting, and gained its fame inparticular, for a series of controversial suggestions forthe “reasonable accommodation” of immigrants andreligious minorities (of which I am both).I’m proud – I think a little too proud – to saythat well before the hubbub of the Commission, I wasalready familiar with Professor Taylor’s work from mystudent days. I had a professor who told us no fewerthan three times that he was the most brilliant personalive. Out of curiosity, I’d picked up one of ProfessorTaylor’s books: Sources of the Self. Indeed, it resonatedwith me.At eighty-one Taylor is one of the greatest andmost influential of Canadian philosophers.These were the very intimidating thoughts swirlingaround my head as I stared at this offer on that coldSunday morning. In the end, curiosity won out overintimidation. I wanted to hear his perspective andI wondered if maybe Quakers across Canada mightbenefit from some of his wisdom.• • • • • • • • •David Summerhays (DS): The question I wantto ask is about dialogue. Since we Quakers don’t havepriests we have to learn from each other. I’ve heard yousay that dialogue is how we create solidarity with eachother in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religioussociety. Constitutions and laws are great but they’reinsufficient. I wonder where you see constructivedialogue happening in Québec – in Canada. I like tosay, “Two people talking does not a dialogue make”. Imean dialogue where people are really getting throughto each other. If dialogue is essential to creatingsolidarity in diverse societies like ours, where do yousee concrete examples of constructive dialogue? Whereare people or communities really getting through toeach other?Charles Taylor (CT): In some schools in Montrealthere are people from all sorts of different backgrounds.Where there hasn’t been any cause for one group tohave been raised up against the other, students justend up having friends who are Muslim or Sikh orwhatever. Just in the course of normal living, they feelthat as human beings they can relate to them.The society which has a high proportion of thatkind of side-by-side living is a society which is largelyimmune to the mobilization of hate or distrust bygroups who want to do that, because they just can’tsee their friend Ali or Fatima as a dangerous person.When they are told that all Muslims are dangerous,they say, “Those people are crazy”. That is what candefend us against the growth of absurd stereotypesthat easily circulate and stand in the way of our beingable to live together.You can’t mandate friendship. You can’t pass a law:“Get a friend”. Such relationships can’t be engineeredbut they can be encouraged. You can take smallsteps in the right direction to promote opportunitiesthat just might spark something and help out. [Thepolitical question is] to what extent do people becomemobilizable behind absurd stereotypes in order to18May 2013 - The Canadian Friend
direct them against Muslims or other groups? Kidswho have been to school together will say, “Forgetit”. They will never be mobilized. How can we reducethe number of people who are mobilizable [in hatecampaigns]?The image I have often used is that of the firebreak. When a prairie fire breaks out, somebodybuilds a ditch so that the fire can’t jump over it. Anyfriendship across these differences is a kind of mini firebreak in your society. The more you have, the moreyou are proof against these irrational “prairie fires” thatthese mobilizations against “the Other” constitute. Weneed to find a way of creating these fire breaks.DS: Certainly. On the other hand, authenticdialogue isn’t easy. In Christian-Jewish dialogue, forexample, it is very hard to talk honestly about thepolitical situation in Israel, West Bank settlements andso on. Even people who have known each other foryears and who can discuss many things find that veryhard [and] awkward, [even] impossible. Maybe it isalso a Canadian thing. Nobody wants to be impolite.CT: It is true that people often don’t say what theyreally think about “the Other”. Dialogues where thathappens are what I call “minimal, pacifying dialogues”that we use to convince each other that we are nottotal enemies. [Such conversations may have theiruses] but they aren’t enriching or revealing. Nor dothey lead to any deeper sort of friendship. That canonly happen when you can say: “I find that belief ofyours very perplexing”; “I don’t understand why youwant to say that”; “I think it a very questionable moralposition that you guys are taking”. All these things canbe said in a tone of voice that indicates that you reallywant to understand, and are not just trying to scorepoints in a debate.government, which I think is doing terrible things forthe future of Israel and Israelis.This sort of thing will get you stuck, because ifanyone is carrying the can for the official line then itis very hard to talk. As a Catholic I couldn’t talk topeople if I felt that I had to defend the present Pope[Benedict] all the time. The really fruitful dialogues,the ones that make these fire–breaks, are the ones inwhich nobody is carrying the can officially for anyposition. “I am a human being, I’m a Catholic. Here’smy faith. If you want to know why, we’ll talk about it.”That’s the kind of [dialogue] that really works. Thereis actually something tremendously rewarding aboutit, and that’s why I feel that we are missing these greatopportunities – humanly speaking – in our kind ofsociety. People are walled off from each other becausethey have so much suspicion. It is tremendouslyrewarding for atheists and Christians to be able to sitdown and talk, but if you have the sort of attitudelike [Richard] Dawkins, then there is no possibility ofdiscussion. There is also a corresponding attitude onthe part of certain Christians who say, “You can’t be amoral person if you are an atheist”. Then we miss outon tremendous spiritual enrichment.DS: How would you compare your understandingof ‘secularity’ with Dawkins’ militant secularism?CT: Well, there are two traditions of secularism inthe West. We can identify one with France that arisesout of a historical situation in which a Church that hadbeen dominant and had imposed itself on the wholesociety was challenged by a republican democraticmovement. The thought was: “We have to fightback against this Catholic outlook which at the endof the Third Republic was still largely monarchist”.Secularism involved putting religion in its place“...we have to think in terms of the kind of secularism that suits us, which is a secularism of howto live together in diversity not the secularism of defending ourselves against religious tyranny.”What is bedevilling Christian-Jewish dialoguetoday is the fact that many Jewish organizations haveslid into being apologists for the Israeli governmentas it now exists, and that makes it impossible to talkfrankly. It is really very regrettable.It is a mystery to me how it happened, becauseI think the majority of American and CanadianJews are rather dovish and open, but somehowtheir organizations managed to take this very strongapologetic stance on behalf of the present Likudand stopping it from overbearing the rest of society.And, of course, in that sort of situation, secularismhas an anti-religious or anti-clerical bias that is quiteunderstandable.The other tradition is the American, whichstarts off with the fact of tremendous variety amongProtestants. Different denominations were establishedin each of the states or colonies. How do you set upa federal government? The first amendment to theAmerican constitution states: “Congress shall pass noVolume 109, Number 2 19
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David Summerhays with Charles TaylorInterviewCharles TaylorNovember 18th, 2012: On this frigid Sundaymorning, I received an email asking if I might beinterested in interviewing Professor Charles Taylor.I’m not sure how well Professor Taylor is knownelsewhere in Canada. In 2007, Taylor won the extremelyprestigious Templeton Prize, a sort of Nobel forPhilosophy. In Québec, he is best known for co-chairingthe 2008 Bouchard–Taylor Commission, appointedby Québec’s Premier to investigate widespread fears ofimmigrants, particularly Muslims, taking advantageof, shall we say, the largesse of the hosting society,– the pure laine* Quebecers. The Bouchard–TaylorCommission found these fears mostly groundless, toreto shreds most of the reporting, and gained its fame inparticular, for a series of controversial suggestions forthe “reasonable accommodation” of immigrants andreligious minorities (of which I am both).I’m proud – I think a little too proud – to saythat well before the hubbub of the Commission, I wasalready familiar with Professor Taylor’s work from mystudent days. I had a professor who told us no fewerthan three times that he was the most brilliant personalive. Out of curiosity, I’d picked up one of ProfessorTaylor’s books: Sources of the Self. Indeed, it resonatedwith me.At eighty-one Taylor is one of the greatest andmost influential of <strong>Canadian</strong> philosophers.These were the very intimidating thoughts swirlingaround my head as I stared at this offer on that coldSunday morning. In the end, curiosity won out overintimidation. I wanted to hear his perspective andI wondered if maybe Quakers across Canada mightbenefit from some of his wisdom.• • • • • • • • •David Summerhays (DS): The question I wantto ask is about dialogue. Since we Quakers don’t havepriests we have to learn from each other. I’ve heard yousay that dialogue is how we create solidarity with eachother in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religioussociety. Constitutions and laws are great but they’reinsufficient. I wonder where you see constructivedialogue happening in Québec – in Canada. I like tosay, “Two people talking does not a dialogue make”. Imean dialogue where people are really getting throughto each other. If dialogue is essential to creatingsolidarity in diverse societies like ours, where do yousee concrete examples of constructive dialogue? Whereare people or communities really getting through toeach other?Charles Taylor (CT): In some schools in Montrealthere are people from all sorts of different backgrounds.Where there hasn’t been any cause for one group tohave been raised up against the other, students justend up having friends who are Muslim or Sikh orwhatever. Just in the course of normal living, they feelthat as human beings they can relate to them.The society which has a high proportion of thatkind of side-by-side living is a society which is largelyimmune to the mobilization of hate or distrust bygroups who want to do that, because they just can’tsee their friend Ali or Fatima as a dangerous person.When they are told that all Muslims are dangerous,they say, “Those people are crazy”. That is what candefend us against the growth of absurd stereotypesthat easily circulate and stand in the way of our beingable to live together.You can’t mandate friendship. You can’t pass a law:“Get a friend”. Such relationships can’t be engineeredbut they can be encouraged. You can take smallsteps in the right direction to promote opportunitiesthat just might spark something and help out. [Thepolitical question is] to what extent do people becomemobilizable behind absurd stereotypes in order to18May 2013 - The <strong>Canadian</strong> Friend
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