Guidelines of Law in Intercultural Position

juridical culture in Romanian context and the opportunity for reference points of iconic anthropology to
emerge in its discourse

Linte Marius Dumitru

Abstract
The paper focuses on different orientations of an issue related to Law, more specifically Human Rights, from the
intercultural perspective, starting from concepts such as diatopical hermeneutics, homeomorphic equivalent,
cosmoteandric responsibility - which Raymon Panikkar has used in his attempt to respond to the question that makes
the title of one of his articles: Is the concept of Human Rights a Western one - or from phrases such as glocal,
governance, judicial pluriverse which C. Eberhard associates to some paradigmatic mutations in what is called a
postmodern Law. If intercultural exigency suggests a fundamental pluralism situated in the profound horizon of the
views and methods responsible for the organization of individual and collective lives, then, within the dynamics of this
dialogic ambiance, some specifications of the juridical culture in Romanian context appear as necessary and pertinent.
Keywords: right, interculturality, interdisciplinarity, anthropology, iconicity

The international magazine for intercultural and transdiciplinary research INTERculture1

indicates its orientation by regarding interculturality in the polymorphic view of mankind's
different cultural traditions, therefore not only in the way univocally guaranteed by the framework
of modern culture; on the other hand, it also acknowledges transdisciplinarity by involving various
"scientific" disciplines as well as by resorting to other traditions of knowledge that rely on
recovering and promoting a popular and vernacular type of knowledge, therefore on what is called
ethnoscience.
The magazine, which focuses systematically on searching, discovering and highlighting
viable alternatives to the problems of the contemporary world, aims to embark on a journey into a
dia-logic environment that attempts to rely on the transcendence of the gap, or, better said, on the
integration, the recovery of the relationship between mythos and logos, theory and praxis, science
and wisdom, wisdom and love.
In two notebooks published in INTERculture under the title Dpasser la religion et la
culture des Droits de lHomme, de ltat-nation et de ltat de droit, which represent a "chronicletestimony" of the research that was carried out for 30 years at the Intercultural Institute in Montreal,
Robert Vachon2 states that the purpose of these pages is "not to deny people's rights and the Rule
of Law, or to denigrate this religion/culture of our times"3, but to be concerned with and question
the absolutism and hegemony of the myth of transculturality, transreligion and the universality of
these notions.
R. Vachon draws attention to the delicate nature of this intercultural endeavour which,
intent on approaching taboo issues such as the sacred notions/myths of Human Rights, NationState, development, democracy, civilization, can also make them appear relative.
Vachon seeks to get to the sources of the Western thought which assures its representatives
and supporters that they can be the only legitimate judges of human values, determining them to

Articol publicat n Proceedings of the XVI th Symposium YOUNG PEOPLE AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH , 1314 Noiembrie 2014, Timioara, Romnia, pp. 159-164.
1

The magazine was founded in 1968 by the Intercultural Institute of Montreal (IIM). IIM is a centre for intercultural
research, formation and education which promotes cultural pluralism and a new social harmony.
2
Robert Vachon was director of the magazine INTERculture and of IIM from 1970 to 1979.
3
R. Vachon, Mot de la rdaction, in INTERculture, Cahier 142, October 2002, p. 1.

believe that their own criteria about transgression is sensible and/or that their solutions for
transgression would be the implementation of Human Rights.
As to the purpose of the intercultural endeavour, Vachon underlines that it focuses neither
on glorifying other cultures, which have their limits and weaknesses, nor on denying the validity
and importance of Human Rights entirely. At the same time, however, he draws attention to the
necessary vigilance against totalitarianism, integrism and imperialism of the Human Rights culture4
(and of democracy) which may be tyrannical, fundamentalist and totalitarian, just as any culture
might turn to be, without being necessarily so.
According to R. Vachon, the theme of these notebooks, whose generic title we have just
mentioned, could be given other titles which may be considered significant from the point of view
of the positioning and orientation of their content: "Beyond the Nation-State and the Rule of Law
as the ultimate unit of political analysis", "Beyond the international right of the United Nations",
"Beyond the Westphalian model of political and international order", "Emancipation from the
political and legal culture of the West as the universal framework for reference", "Human rights,
a Western, universal concept".
"Is the Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept?" this is the question that Raimon
Panikkar, considered a mentor of IIM, uses significantly as the title of one his articles which reveals
the need to identify and state the particular nature of the concept of Human Rights in order to have
a clear understanding of the meaning, conditions and legitimacy of the universal character that it
is associated or credited with in one way or another.
To which extent and how can the idea of societal order and just politics be advanced and
structured within the framework and through the mediation of another culture, different from the
one that is built by means of the concept of Human Rights in its Western perspective? this
question seems to be, in Panikkars view, sensible as well as legitimate. It leads to another question:
why would the concept of Human Rights need to be imposed as the unique or the most proper and
well-founded concept able to bring order in a society?
In fact, Panikkar sees the matter of locating the concept in the West as one that also has the
connotations of mapping a certain mental, not only territorial, spatial, geographical horizon, leading
us inevitably towards a solid cultural (particular) vision, which brings about premises and
implications that revolve around this paradigmatic Western concept.
Panikkar advances a methodology which has in its diatopic hermeneutical structure a
homeomorphic equivalent through which the necessity of a "dia-logic" dialogue is preserved and
acquires the real consistency of actual meetings.
Thus, as Panikkar puts it, it is neither the translation nor the analogies of Human Rights that
should be looked for in other cultural languages,5 but the homeomorphic equivalent of the term. In
other words, if Human Rights represent the basis of applying and respecting human dignity, an
investigation must be carried out as to how and to which extent another culture fulfills its equivalent
need, which can be done once there is a common basis between the two cultures.
The reflection on and the intercultural critique of the concept of Human Rights prove to be
pertinent in the dialogic space of meetings, offering perspectives for an internal critique and for
A. Supiot draws attention to the risk of the Human Rights fundamentalism that may nurture the fundamentalism of
other systems of thinking and interpretations which can be used by these fundamentalist readings of Human Rights.
A. Supiot, Homo Juridicus, ROSETTI Educational Publishing House, Bucharest, 2011, pp. 22-23. See Supiot, the
above-mentioned work, p. 289.
5
The theme of this presentation is neither the critique of (inter)cultural perspectives on law (see B. Melkevik, for
example), nor the approaches which advance translations of Human Rights by/through other cultures promoted by
authors like A. Supiot, for example.
4

setting the limits of this concepts validity, providing both opportunities for extension within a
changed context as well as a mutual fertilization, thoroughly understood and revealed by displaying
various outlooks on Man and Reality under the common topic of pluralism. Thus, the Indian
thought presented by Panikkar constitutes both a sample-argument for a meeting between various
perspectives in an intercultural horizon, and a vector indicating that cultural and juridical traditions
should be discovered and developed by formulating homeomorphic standpoints which correspond
(or not) to Western rights.
For C. Eberhard, who is nowadays considered a supporter of interculturality and a follower
of Vachon and Panikkar, the emergence of pluralism is inevitable, and the limits and potentialities
of a mutation in postmodern law are made known within a new sphere of meanings and actions
under the sign of governance, the glocal and juridical pluriverse.6
Due to such an approach, the intercultural setting points to the necessity of an opening
towards other types of juridical experiences, sometimes radically different from those considered
to be universal and Western, and these experiences are created by juridical cultures between
which there are not only differences on the procedural level, but also on the profound level of
fundaments and founding postulates.
C. Eberhard stresses that intercultural exigency advances a fundamental pluralism located
at the level of the views about and the means to organize individual and collective lives, and not a
pluralism reduced to a mere pluralization of modern Western inventions and institutions.
Therefore, in this perspective promoted by C. Eberhard, the pair universalism/relativism,
which operated with abstractions in a sphere of ideas, is replaced by the pair global/local, which
points to the real world in a pluralist space as an alternative to a uniform and exclusivist
globalization.
As to this fundamental pluralism in accordance with intercultural exigencies, Panikkar
shows that Human Rights are like a window through which a certain culture provides a just order
for its people; however, the window cannot be seen by the people who live in this particular culture,
and therefore they need another culture which can be seen through another window. Then,
supposing that the human scenery is similar to and different at the same time from the one in the
former vision, Panikkar asks whether there should be only one opening left, while the others are
closed, done away with, even at the risk of the structure collapsing, or whether "we should widen
the openings as much as we can, and, most importantly, we should let people know that there are
- and there must be - a multitude of windows". Panikkar considers that it is the latter view that
points to a healthy pluralism.
On the other hand, says C. Eberhard, as far as intercultural dynamics is concerned, a means
for enrichment stems from exploiting the notion of dignity specific to Europe's modern juridical
culture, a notion which is considered a fundamental symbol of humankind. However, he notices
that in the particular view of this culture, dignity is embedded in the human being as an individual,
while other cultures pinpoint it in the person as a means of interpersonal relations; dignity is also
perceived as connected to the universe and/or as a link between the cosmos and the divine.
Hence, beyond the mutual answer, the intercultural dialogue requires a responsibility
towards the possible answers related to the course of such relations of the human being, which may
6

We aim only to mention, not to detail or comment on these concepts proposed by C. Eberhard regarding the pathways
of law's transformation in the postmodern horizon; such concepts put forward a transition from a juridical solar system,
which has the state in its centre, to a juridical galaxy, in which there are many regulatory centres supposed to be able
to form a pluralist whole; in this postmodern course of action, there is a need for a militant juridical attitude and even
for parajurists who are asked to get involved in creating such a Law outside the official structures.

actually represent a method for us to become more complex and enriched, even with regard to our
perspective on humankind and its dignity.
As Eberhard puts it, the attention to responsibility and its new forms of expression in
contemporary societies brings about a vital question on humankind and its meaning. It thus points
to a responsibility which takes into consideration this readjustment on three dimensions or plans
which he calls cosmotheandric responsibility.
According to Eberhard, cosmotheandric intuition advances a reality which is based on three
fundaments: the human being, the world he inhabits and fundamental freedom. For Eberhard, this
fundamental freedom representing life's underlying mystery can be perceived as the Divine as well
as our fundamental humanity.
This cosmotheandric intuition is supposed to be able to decline the challenges of our
contemporary world towards a new, threefold reading of "our contribution to life," and to involve
a triple refoundation of our "being in the world," which would trigger a cosmotheandric redefinition
of our responsibilities; by taking the cosmic and divine dimensions into account, such an intuition
could also lead to a horizon of insight and new meanings for the Western notion of human dignity.
But the term cosmotheandric was actually coined and used before C. Eberhard by R.
Panikkar who, asked what the difference between cosmotheandrism and theandrism is, gives the
following answer:
"I use the term cosmotheandric intuition due to the respect for the Orthodox Christian
Tradition7 which acknowledges 'theandrism' when mentioning theopoiesis or theosis, that is
'deification of man'. That is why I use the term cosmotheandrism, otherwise I would prefer the
word theantropocosmism. I add the cosmos8 to the theandrism of the Christian Tradition (...)."
It is significant that R. Panikkar, mentor of IIC, makes this reference to the Orthodox
Christian Tradition as a source of inspiration for cosmotheandric responsabilities. In fact, this
dialogic space advanced by interculturality asks for a milieu in which the resources of the Eastern
Christian tradition must be taken into consideration, including in debates about society projects, if
we are to give credit to C. Eberhard who argues that Postmodern Law does not create society
projects, nor does it launch policies, but it frames disputes and debates which lead to these society
projects or policies subsequently turned into legitimate, efficient and legal forms. 9
The Eastern Christian tradition has resources that have not been sufficiently explored or brought to
the fore with regard to, for instance, what today's constitutional sphere of supreme values like

It is worth mentioning, without getting into many details, that through his cosmotheandric syntagm, R. Panikkar
points to Eastern Christianity; on the other hand, although he uses the same syntagm, C. Eberhard considers that "the
underlying mystery of life" can stand for either "man's fundamental nature" or for "the divine," and comes to opt for
a location within the horizon of Buddhist illumination as a solution to living together in a responsible, solidary way,
in a society of "awakening".
8
R. Panikkar, Between God and the Cosmos/ A Non-dual istic Vision of Reality, Herald Publishing House, Bucharest,
2006, p. 114, trans. Cornelia Dumitru.
We need to mention here that the Christian Tradition included the cosmos in the dialogue between man and God since
its infancy. We can give the example of Maximus the Confessor who, in the 7th century, in his "Mystagogy," saw the
cosmos as a church, therefore as a space of the meeting between man and God. We are not to analyse Panikkar's
thorough understanding of cosmotheandrism as a non-dualistic vision, and what its relation with the Christian
Tradition is.
9
See Linte Marius Dumitru, The Old Man in Juridical Anthropology, in The Iconic Image: Antropologycal Sketches
vol. 1, Platytera Publishing House, pp. 245-246. See C. Eberhard, Les Droits de lhomme dans le jeu des lois.
Prolgomnes une approche anthropologique et dynamique la hauter de la complexit du XXI sicle, in Enjeux et
perspectives des Droits de lhomme, eds. J. Ferrand, H. Petit, LHarmattan Publishing House, 2003.

dignity,10 freedom, free development of personality, pluralism and the anthropologic model that
runs through them actually mean. Such resources also point to the reflection on the actual content
about man and community involved in the making of a constructive, non-individualistic purpose
of subjective rights, which the distinguished jurist and academician Val. Al. Georgescu11
highlighted, and of fundamental rights as well. Furthermore, they shed light on the form and type
of relation between persons, society, state, and on the types of associated12 juridical, community
and ethatic orders.
In a general sense, the preoccupation with the relation between Law and Religion emerges
again, and Francois Terr remarks that the interrogation on the sacred is necessarily brought up in
the discourse on Law.
In this respect, at the International Colloquy Droit et Religion organized by the French
Association of Philosophy of Law, George Uscatescu presented a study on the genesis of the
Romanian traditional law in its contact with Byzantine sources entitled Law and Religion in the
Romanian Experience, which was then published in the prestigious magazine Archives de
philosophie du droit (1993)13.
Among other things, G. Uscatescu writes about the presence of faith in juridical relations
(therefore, even outside canon law) and about a genuine baptism of the Romanian law through the
patristic spirit of the first Ecumenical Synods - a spirit founding "a new and true logos in the
European culture: the trinitary logos superior in its essence to any dialectic logos" - which brought
about a transformation of the spirit of law14.
We have to notice that juridical anthropology finds consistent resources in the horizon of
the Eastern tradition, especially in the present context, unable as it is to avoid the contact with
anthropological visions which guide, one way or another, the juridical topos as well as the
community, ethatic and/or unional order.
It is worth mentioning J. M. Trigeuad, co-editor and editor in chief of Archives de
philosophie du droit (1991-2005), proponent of personalist law and personalized law, who draws
attention to the importance of the hypostatic persons mystery and of the icon in the Eastern
Christian perspective.
As to the Eastern Christian space, the theme of pesonalized law and personalist law15, which
J. M. Trigeaud admirably explores and presents seizing upon the idea of nature and person in the
dynamics of juridical culture, placing the person and the mask, the author and the actor 16 on the
juridical scene, making distinctions between human nature and human person, 17 between the
relation according to nature and the one according to the person, between natural right, human
rights and the persons rights, showing the possibility of successively presenting human rights in
10

See M. D. Linte, On Dignity in Law and not Only, in Romanian Pandects, no. 6, year XXXVIII, Wolters Kluwer
Publishing House, Romania, Bucharest, 2011, pp. 103-129.
11
Val. Al. Georgescu, Subjective Law Facing the Renewal of Law, in Romanian Pandects, 4th part,1942, p. 76.
12
See M. D. Linte, The Order of the Body and/in the Juridical Sphere, Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2011.
13
See G. Usctescu, Law and Religion in the Romanian Experience, in Archives de philosophie du droit (Paris,
Sirey), Vol. 38, Droit et religion, 1993.
14
See M. D. Linte, Religion and Law/ Iconic Recourse, in The Iconic Image: Anthropological Sketches, vol. III,
Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2013, pp. 229-282.
15
See L. M. Dumitru, Image and Person in Law Personalist Law / Personalized Law in J.M. Trigeauds Approach,
in The Iconic Image: Anthropological Sketches, vol. II, Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012, pp. 207-283.
16
See Jean-Marc Trigeaud, Persona ou La justice au double visage, Studio editoriale di cultura Publishing House,
Genova, 1990.
17
J. M. Trigeaud, Mtaphysique et thique au fondement du droit, Bire Publishing House, 1995.

the light of the nature of things, human nature and the person, promoting Primary Law as "an
expression of the persons truth,"18 etc- can find a horizon of opening, orientation and insight
through iconic anthropology, which reveals the iconic image of the person as a means of rendering
the law iconic.
Therefore, iconic anthropology can offer further details to this way of exteriorizing the
persons interior, in the sense of a transition to the organization of justice and law, a transition,
according to J. M. Trigeaud s participative relation, from the prosopologic to the dikelogic
principle; it can also shed light on the universalism of difference specific to the prosopon in its
dynamics, and on the rapport with the universalism of similarity noted by the above-mentioned
author, etc.
In the same horizon of the emergence of apophatic, meta-rational personalism, Stamatios
Tzitzis believes that through the hypostas-person model, the Christian theology founded its own
teleology, and, by viewing the dignity of the person as the basis of subjective rights, it conferred
them the meaning of hypostatic rights.19 S. Tzitzis stresses that this concept of person, deprived of
the consistency of transcendental ontology, stood for the epiphenomenal mask in antiquity, while
in modern times, there has been a replacement of hypostas-person with reason-person in the sense
of ens rationis.
In his perspective on the person as an apophatic given, J. M. Trigeaud distances himself
from either a genericism specific to existentialist and rationalist metaphysics or from scientism,
which both hide the prosopon, and, according to the French jurist, are not able to assume the
singularity and the burden of profound existential experiences, while also determining a narrowing
of the singular to the particular, a process which was aggravated during the Age of Enlightenment.
With J. M.Trigeaud, personalist law entails a paradigmatic detachment from voluntary, positivist
law and also from natural law which, as long as it does not admit man's apophatic, meta-rational
content and his integrity as hypostas-person, inevitably endows man only with the role of a
character.
Hence, the issue refers not only to an affirmation of man's value, but also to an exploration
and acknowledgement of the content of such a value, to a transfer of its content to the juridical
sphere, and to the way in which this transfer necessarily brings about a perspective revealing a
human type and implicitly a societal model promoted and set up by this very human type.
As to the present approach of the Christian tradition within the Romanian spiritual space
and of its new resources, which can be taken into consideration in the intercultural dialogue and
in the endeavour to identify relevant elements for the autochthon juridical culture, we need to bring
Hieromonk Ghelasie to attention. At the end of the 20th century, he uses and highlights the trinitary
logic with regard to the apophatic mystery of man as hypostas-person, and associates this logic
with an iconic one, thus focusing on and revealing profound aspects of iconic anthropology in
detail.
Having made this hesychast reference, we have to stress that the purpose of this presentation
is to record the existence of such complex sources for the iconic anthropology20, which are not to
18
19

20

See J. M. Trigeaud, Droits Premiers, Bire Publishing House, Bordeaux, 2001.

Stamatios Tzitzis, Quest-ce que la personne?, Armand Colin Publishing House, Paris, 1999, p. 65.

See Ghelasie Gheorghe, The Memories of a Hesychast, vol I, II, Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2006;
Ghelasie Gheorghe, The Mystagogy of the Icon, Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2010; Ghelasie Gheorghe, The
Mystery of Filiation, Platytera Publishing House, Bucureti, 2011; Ghelasie Gheorghe, The Image of Man, Platytera
Publishing House, Bucharest, 2014.

be detailed here. We briefly presented their background and the bridges they can cross to prove
viable, formative, active and participative.
In conclusion, we believe that iconic anthropology, which has in Hieromonk Ghelasie a
startling expression within the Romanian space, brings forward reference points which are
welcome and appropriate at least in the sense of recovering and opening up multiple "windows"
towards man on different levels and dimensions required by the intercultural paradigm. These
reference points also prove valid as to a possible turning point in the history of juridical culture,
the emergence of personalist law and personalized law.

Acknowledgement: Aceasta lucrare a fost cofinantata din Fondul Social European prin Programul Operational
Sectorial Dezvoltarea Resurselor Umane 2007-2013 in cadrul proiectului Cercettori competitivi pe plan european n
domeniul tiinelor umaniste i socio-economice. Reea de cercetare multiregional (CCPE):
POSDRU/159/1.5/S/140863.