Vincent Kundukulam
One of the cultural concerns of any generation is to build a healthy bridge between the past and the present. Living authentically in the present demands that we reorganize our tradition in terms of new interpretations. There is no doubt, humanity needs both tradition and invention. But to live stability and continuity without being a traditionalist or an extreme progressive is a difficult affair.
One means to resolve this issue is to let individuals and societies engage in constant self-criticism. The objective of referring to the tradition must not be bringing back the solutions of past to solve the problems of our time. It’s aim must beto provide resources for responding wisely to the world’s ongoing changes. In other words, the act of listening to the ancient wisdom must not be to satisfy our nostalgia but to get fresh perspectives on present-day realities. It necessitates that the oppressive customs and conducts are thrown away. At the same time, justice demands that vulnerable traditions are being preserved. Our search into the past has to be led by a sense of responsibility and solidarity towards the minorities. Communities cannot become hospitable to others without becoming multicultural. In other words, the cultural growth must be participatory rather than imposed.
The underlying issue in maintaining balance between stability and continuity is the fear of losing the identity. What makes people confused is the ambiguity about what to be kept intact and what to be left out from the traditional culture. Alasdair McIntyre (1929-), the Scottish-American philosopher, proposes the concept of ‘rationality of traditions’ as an effective criterion to discern what to be preserved and what to be dilapidated in cultural globalization.
What does McIntyre mean by the term tradition? It means not static archaic customs butliving tradition. He defines living tradition as that which has proved its problem-solving-capacity in the past. A tradition which has a commendable track record of successes in responding to relevant questions of a community in course of its life is a living tradition. It is different from traditionalism, which refuses to entertain alternative accounts of tradition. Traditionalism opposes to get corrected from within and outside its community. It does not have the capacity to accept challenges. It does not provide adequate space for people to negotiate with various local and universal narratives. In contrast, living tradition finds the way to radically reconstruct itself in its encounter with diverse narratives.
Having said this, McIntyre does not think that the living tradition is freed from conflicts. Absence of conflicts is not a sign of healthy tradition. What keeps a living tradition in good working order is the presence of competing subcultures and schools of thought. Living tradition is able to positively deal with internal and external challenges. It is capable of providing a radically new conceptual self-understanding without losing the basic continuity with the core convictions of old tradition. A community can really understand its own identity only if it can engage deeply in an empathetic debate with the rival traditions.
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