3.1.3. Unity and not Identity
In the Teilhardian world view, human races are complementary.
No race is supposed to claim superiority over others. In this way, Teilhard de
Chardin goes against Levy-Bruhl, Hume, Hegel, Arthur de Gobineau, Heide gger
and Gusdorf, just to name some western thinkers, who had considered the
African, especially the Negro-African race, as inferior to other races.
Teilhard de Chardin avers:
Races, countries, nations, states, cultures, linguistic
groups ; all the superimposed or juxtaposed, concordant or discordant, isolated
or anastomosed entities are to the same degree, though on different
planes, nataral; for they represent the direct extensions, in
man and on the human scale, of the general process included by biology under
the name of evolution..I
As a palaeontologist and cosmologist, Teilhard de Chardin
tends to reconcile East and West. The egocentric racial ideal of one branch or
one race draining off for itself alone all the sap of the tree and rising over
the death of other branches is therefore false and against nature. In order
that the tree reaches the sun, nothing less is required than the combined
growth of the entire foliage. From this analogy of the branches of a tree which
cooperate to reach the sun and therefore enhancing the tree's growth, Teilhard
de Chardin avers:
The outcome of the world, the gates of the future, the
entry into the super-human - these are not thrown open to a few of the
privileged nor to one chosen people to the exclusion of all others. They will
open to an advance of all together, in a direction in
which all together* can join and find completion in a
spiritual renovation of the earth, a renovation whose physical degree of
reality we must now consider and whose outline we must make clearer .2
I Ibid., pp. 204-205.
2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of
Man, New York, I959, p. 244.
*In the footnote of this text that we have quoted, Teilhard de
Chardin notes: "Even if they do so only under the influence of a few, an
elite."
Hence, collectivisation is not the work of some privileged
cultures or human races or civilizations. The doors of the future are going to
open themselves only through the impulse of all the civilizations together. The
Civilization of the Universal is not for some peoples, but it is the work of
all though some may lead the others in this panhuman convergence.
Since we are all from the same species, we must work to build
up a common mind and avoid racism. The increase of human consciousness favours
forces that tend towards dissolution but this is countered according to
Teilhard de Chardin, by a planetary impulse towards solidarity: the
Civilization of the Universal.
An ecumenical view of humanity emerged clearly in Teilhard de
Chardin's mind during his days. The call for the Civilization of the Universal
is based here on his principle that union differentiates in order to neutralize
all forms of racism. The collective must be personalized in order to heal the
cleavage. Individual races must become collective-minded.
The various races of man, in so far as we can still
distinguish between them, in spite of their convergence, are not biologically
equal but different and complementary like children of the same family. And
there is no doubt that it is even to this very genetic diversity that we must
attribute the extreme biological richness of mankind. Each race must therefore
strive to keep its identity, because the Civilization of the Universal means
unity in diversity and not fusion in identity. With all confidence, Teilhard de
Chardin thus says:
There is nothing in this, I think, to hurt anyone's pride:
provided, of course, that each one of us understands (like each member of a
family), that the only thing that ultimately matters is the general triumph of
all mankind by which I mean that globally it shall attain the higher term of
its planetary evolution...They accuse me of being a racialist, I am not. For
the racialist, mankind is divided into higher and lower races, any fusion of
the two being immoral and degrading. The biologically inferior races have, for
him, only one useful purpose, to perform the meaner tasks, and humanity will
never attain unity.I
I Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in Cuénot,
C., Teilhard de Chardin, London, I965, p. 30I.
Though different, all races are complementary and equal in
dignity. In effect, there are in Teilhard de Chardin's vision, some races that
act as the leading light of evolution and others that have reached a dead end.
Mankind is evolving towards a form of totalisation, and this process
necessarily entails a particular role for every race. The various races, though
different, are capable of coming together in synthesis. These races must
therefore share
[...] an attitude of sympathetic collaboration in a
unanimous effort towards "ultra humanization", for which every shade of
humanity needs the others in order to attain maturity.I
There is in fact a moral effort needed in order that this
collaboration among races may take place effectively. Teilhard de Chardin
states:
K Pour s'unifier et se concentrer en soi-même,
l'être doit rompre beaucoup d'attaches nuisibles. Pour s'unifier avec les
autres et se donner a eux, il doit porter atteinte, en apparence, aux
privautés, les plus jalousement cultivées, de son esprit et de
son cmur. Pour accéder a une vie supérieure, en se centrant sur
un autre lui-même, il doit briser en soi une unité provisoire.
[...] L'effort moral est nécessairement accompagné de douleur, de
sacrifice. »2
Human relationships are so complex that one needs to be very
careful in relating with the other person. There is a constant moral effort
that is needed. This entails a great spirit of sacrifice. Coming up together in
view of the Civilization of the Universal is not something so easy. Accepting
the values of the other culture or human race is not given. History teaches us
how the African race had always been considered as less human than the others
and it is on this basis that western man came to colonize the black man in
order to 'humanize' and 'rationalize' him.
I Ibid., p. 302.
2 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ecrits du temps
de la guerre (I9I6-I9I9), Paris, I965, p. I95. In order to come to unite
to itself, a being must cut itself off from all kinds of harmful bounds. In
order to come to unity with other beings and to offer itself to them, it must
harm its own being, the familiarities of his heart and of his mind. In order to
come to a superior form of life, centring on itself, it must temporally break
its self-unity. A moral effort necessarily entails some pain and some
sacrifice.
Claude Cuénot tells us that the views of Teilhard de
Chardin on the complementarity and collaboration of human races were not
accepted at UNESCO for example, though he maintained his friendship with Julian
Huxley, the Chairman.I
| 
