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For Western leaders, in particular, the agenda to "democratize" the world—an agenda officially
embraced by the current American administration—is only a variation on a series of similar
marching orders issued during modern and late modern times: orders or directives like those to
"modernize," to "Westernize" or to "develop" the world (with each directive predicated on the
accepted inequality between modern and non-modern, Western and non-Western, developed and
undeveloped peoples).
What is untroubling or undisturbing to policy makers, however, is of
necessity disturbing to political theorists or philosophers—as long as the latter remain faithful to
their task: the task of reflecting on what we are doing and of trying to make sense of what is
happening in the world. For reflective people, the contrast between the imposition and the
experience of democracy, between unilateral marching orders and shared standards of life, is
unacceptable and in need of reconciliation (or at least mitigation). Examining the arsenal of
options, sense-seeking people are liable to discover a pathway which steers clear of both of
unilateralism and mutual isolation (or incommensurability): it is the royal path of teaching and
learning, of pedagogy and genuine Bildung.
A clue along the way is given to us by the story of
the slave boy in Plato's Meno, which indicates that we can really learn only what we (implicitly)
already know and that teaching is a kind of (mutual) disclosure. The following pages follow this
hunch or clue, proceeding in three steps. First, I ask whether it is possible to learn across
cultures or (differently put) to substitute the canons of learning for the cannons of conquest.
Next, I comment on the meaning of canons of learning and on the quality of teaching as a mode
of learning. Finally, I shall try to draw lessons from these explorations for the enterprise of
promoting or "mobilizing democracy."
Canons or Cannons?
The notion of cross-cultural learning has been off to a bad start in our century. Even
before the dawn of the new millennium, the prognosis offered by political experts was often
Convention