Tradition vs traditionalism (1)

Tradition vs traditionalism (1)

By Ignas Kleden

This is the first of a two-part article examining the relations between the concept of tradition and political thinking.

JAKARTA (JP): Tradition and traditionalism are two closely related concepts which, however, are quite different. Balinese, for example, are Balinese because they have grown up in their tradition. They are trained to speak the Balinese language as their mother tongue, are brought up to behave like Balinese, and become familiar with some ideals which, according to the values of their culture, are worth striving for.

In other words, tradition is a terminus a quo, a point from which one sets out on one's journey. However, tradition need not be a terminus ad quem, a point one is damned to head for or to arrive at. The fact that we cannot live without tradition need not imply that, willy nilly, we must be traditionalists.

By "traditionalist" I mean a person who holds that tradition is not only a starting point, but also the course one is expected to run, and even the goal which one is expected to achieve. Traditionalism is based, evidently, on the assumption that man is culture-made. This is certainly true, but this truth becomes so easily misleading if it is too forcefully emphasized or over- generalized. To say that man is culture-made is as true as to contend that culture is man-made. This mutual interplay or dialectical relationship between a human being and his or her culture can never be exaggerated.

In the modern cultural history of Indonesia the late Sutan Takdir Alisyahbana is no doubt the most articulate and the most outspoken -- in many cases even pertinacious -- proponent of the proposition that the culture of modern Indonesia was yet to be built since, he said, we could not have recourse to the traditional culture which produced the temple of Borobudur. According to him, that sort of culture belonged to the past, to tradition, whereas the culture of a new Indonesia should be oriented towards the future; that is, towards the search for new ideals and visions, and could not be built upon those traditional values and traditional knowledge.

Looking back, he said, would only cause pride about past achievements and would tend to have a mesmerizing effect. As it turned out, while rejecting the Indonesian tradition, Takdir looked for another tradition and settled on one originating in the European renaissance. I would argue that what he had in mind was not the rejection of tradition as such but, rather, the rejection of the traditional way of sticking to tradition, which is traditionalism.

The opponents of this stance used to argue that the culture of modern Indonesia could not be modeled on western patterns. Of course, the negative sides of western culture should not be taken over unnecessarily. Also, we have our own cultural values, on which to base new education and to build a modern way of doing things. Instead of taking over the western schooling system, for example, we would be well advised to revitalize the traditional school systems, such as the pesantren (Moslem traditional boarding schools) and to provide them with new content.

The western education system can be a breeding ground for modern qualities, but it can also be a place in which young people become inculcated with the excesses of western modern culture. Among those excesses, critics usually include the tendencies towards materialism, egocentrism, individualism and intellectualism, which they say could endanger the so-called eastern values, such as spiritualism, harmony, togetherness and the central role of refined manners and cultivated feeling.

In his response to this argument, Takdir argued that such reasoning was constructed on a mistaken premise. It was mistaken, he said, because it mistook the excesses of western values for those of Indonesia, whereas in reality those values which were overdone in western countries were still lacking in this country.

In effect he posed the question: why be afraid of materialistic attitudes, while the people here are not yet able to sufficiently appreciate material things?; why should we be so concerned about intellectualism given the fact that most of our people are not yet aware of the tremendous mental capacities which they were for a long time deprived of, along with almost all of their rights, during the long period of colonization?

In consequence, Takdir argued, instead of getting scared about excessive individualism, we were obliged to encourage the individualistic attitude in order that the society as a whole could rest on strong individuals as its reliable members. On top of all the substantial arguments Takdir also raised an argumentum ad hominem by hinting that all the leading proponents of the traditional culture were, in fact, graduates of the western education system.

The debate concerning the nature of modern Indonesian culture is now known as the polemik kebudayaan (the culture debate). It contains something fundamental, in the sense that it laid down a paradigmatic tenet from which many other conceptions derive or, at least, can be derived. From the point of view of social science this debate is comparable (both in terms of its significance and the intensity of the debate) to some other debates which took place among German-speaking social scientists, and which have now become a basic reference in social science discussions.

In a sense, the culture debate in Indonesia can be compared to the Methodenstreit among the members of the Vienna Circle in Austria, at about the same time, namely in the early and mid- 1930s. Both disputes were concerned with the question of applicability: the latter with the applicability of the methods of the natural sciences to the social sciences; the former with the applicability of a western value-system to Asian countries. It can also be compared to the Positivesmusstreit in the late 1960s, concerning the question whether social science could be purely empirical or had, of necessity, to be normative as well.

Some parallels obtain between the cultural debate and the positivism dispute. In each case we are faced with the question whether a culture can become an empirical determinant for those living within it. On one side the argument is, ultimately, that we can only be so and so and cannot be otherwise because we were born and grew up in particular culture.

Alternatively, might not culture be a set of normative guidelines for one's own behavior? Since norms are collectively and socially established, it follows that they are subject to change if the collective or the society feels that such change is necessary.