Multiculturalism is a hallmark of our times, and it brings with it a challenge to our societies and to our political institutions. How should we react to the diversity which pervades our societies? Two main leading contemporary ways of thinking give opposite answers to this question. On the one hand, the tradition of the Enlightenment assures that human reason is universal and encourages us to overlook cultural differences, in order to define procedures for political decisions that work for everyone. On the other hand, postmodernism claims that our reason is not as universal as modern philosophy assumed, and we can only cope with the current social situation by making cultures live one next to the other, without attempting to reach a shared view. Both positions make rational debate among cultures politically irrelevant. This essay offers an interpretation of practical reason, which shows that the truth is somewhere in the middle between the two leading positions. The upshot is that a dialectic among cultures is a necessary ingredient of the practical processes of development that our multicultural societies need to go through.
