Is there any direct relation between rationality and pragmatics on the one hand and reason and ideology/ verity on the other hand?

Now I just addressed my issue with the general view on science to a second Japanese, notabene a student at Tôdai, and got immediate approvement right away for the second time. I felt both surprised and happy as I’ve talked to so many people in Switzerland and of other (Western) countries about it already that I felt like nobody would understand me. But there we go: Two Japanese (women) and both totally understand me. What am I referring to anyway? Well, my continuous sermon that science shouldn’t be considered – nor taught – as anything superior to any (other) religion. This especially goes for study courses at university. Let me explain this in (Swiss-) German terms as English ones have already got so much diluted – or simply come from a different point of view – that my argumentation gets clear: A “pupil” (“Schüler”) “learns” (“lernen”) different things in “school” (“Schule”) until he “graduates” (“mit einer Matur abschliessen”) before entering into “university” (“Universität”) and starting to “study” (“studieren”) as a “student” (“Student”). In (Swiss-) German, the terms are exchangeable. A pupil doesn’t study, nor is he a student. This term is reserved to students of universities. A Swiss-German pupil doesn’t simply graduate after high school, but gets a “Matur”, thus becoming mature. By the way, Japanese doesn’t differentiate between “learn” and “study” at all, but makes huge differentiations when it comes to learning in childhood, separating learning tacit knowledge (“narau”) from explicit knowledge (“manabu”) and so on. This all clearly leads to what university is all about in the German concept: A place where mature, independent and knowledgeable students start to think of their own, analyzing things in their own way and reinterpreting them or invent new things. American and especially Japanese university concepts – also more and more intruding into our German area with the bachelor/ master system don’t follow this principle. In fact, it’s just an extended school where you read some more textbooks and learn them by mind, not realizing that those are all theories, explicitly based on certain assumptions and to be questioned. University is supposed to point out this ambivalence and arbitrariness to their students and help them to question them – by teaching and focusing methods, even questioning those! But no, we end up learning some more “facts” – and believe in them. Religion is invention. Science is right or true. The more we learn the more intelligent we become. Look at all those self-confident, proud students with their books under their arms, boasting about how many philosophers’ and scientists’ papers they’ve already read, how much they understand about the world! They think to swallow truth and question themselves and their “studies” only when their textbooks explicitly tells them so. How wrong! How fallible! How immature!
And now I lament about that to that Japanese student who simply shrugs her shoulders and states that of course, it would be all invented but as long as everybody believes in it … There we go. Pragmatics at its core! How impressive! And that natural, that unconcerned like that’s the most obvious thing to her. I didn’t get that impression from any of my Western discussion partners. They always claimed a higher value for science, like intersubjectivity, traceability or a higher meaning of the underlying logic. No, she justifies the importance of science with mere pragmatics. You could still believe and explain everything with the old gods – it wouldn’t change much but that we’d rely on some fewer tools and would be ruled in more apparent ways. Why does the common Westerner wants or simply claims a higher value for science anyway? I couldn’t find any other answer but the same for religion: to proof himself right. To confirm his beliefs in order to be at ease. He doesn’t want to believe in the wrong thing out of conformity. He claims a higher standard. And even this makes him worse off: The truth is the highest value.
And this led me to my second big idea I’m working out these days: Westerners are more reasonable, Asians more rational. Again, I need to resort on German terms as the English ones are diluted while Japanese doesn’t make any difference at all: Reason has become the highest virtue in Western culture since the enlightment at the latest, though humanism clearly evolves around it already. (Take Erasmus as an example: “Cives mundi omnes sumus.” Note the plural.) Man tries to transcend, excel (and thus highly virtuous) himself to gain a new and higher level of in-“sight”, to become (more) objective, think beyond his short-term personal needs and interests, even beyond his death and thus will be able to do good for everyone. It’s no coincidence that reason also means the explanatory factor in logic but exactly therefore, it has become very diluted and overused in our today’s causally orientated (“kausalorientiert”), logical world. The German word “Vernunft” clearly and only means that since the days of Kant at the latest, not being ambivalent. On the other hand, rationality is about the ability to discern, abstract and interpret things in a way which finally serve your personal needs and interests the best. It’s what makes one egoistic being directly surpass another gaining an advantage over the other one.
Apparently, these two principles can easily be attributed to the notorious differentiation in political philosophy between “public” and “private” area, between “business” and “economics”, between “economy” and “state”. Both the republican and the liberal point of view are based on this differentiation, though the republican system clearly wants every single private person achieve that high virtue of being “reasonable” as well, ultimately becoming a citizen.
Although, this already hints at the problem of Asian cultures and democracy, the Asian perception may be even more unilateral: Not only can’t you expect private persons to be reasonable (as Hobbes thought, too: “Homo hominis lupus est.” Note the singular.) but you can’t expect the same thing of a state consisting of private actors! In short, there’s no reason – and that gets accepted! Thus, in case of Japan, it isn’t astounding that the democratic system is very liberal, asking few political decisions by its people (not citizens), but that it’s also highly “liberalized” in terms of run by several political cliques housed in one single party and deeply interconnected with private industry. The government is just like another business taking care of the people. Now of course, this goes completely against the “founding fathers” of the modern Japanese state, the shishi and rebellious bushi of the Bakumatsu- and Meiji-period who wanted Japan to outshine every other country and thus highly nationalistic. But was that really ideology? Didn’t Saigo Takamori fight out of loyalty to his Satsuma-daimyo? Didn’t most of all Genrô later spent most of their forces to both increase their power and make a name of themselves? There’s no proof for such a altruistic, ideological way of thinking like Enlightment philosophers did who didn’t even take over political posts in most cases. The same goes for those notorious Japanese managers who are supposed to act in the best will of their company. What’s their company anyway? Only the employees? Their families, too? What about the whole city (like in case of Toyota)? Or maybe whole Japan after all? What about their foreign subsidiaries? Again, there’s no proof, in this case not even a justified limit for altruistic behaviour and it’s easy to think that they act in very opportunistic ways, maybe restrained by peers or risk adversity preventing to overdue themselves as they wouldn’t find any other job or had to start at the bottom-line again.
Now, my question is: If this all held a certain plausibility, could there be drawn certain logical connections between the two different concepts in Western and Asian cultures? Doesn’t rationality only allow pragmatism anyway? Doesn’t reason call for truth after all? What do you want to base your whole call for higher values on otherwise? Just think of how much this thesis could actually explain! Think of the crusades, of enlightment, of terrorism in the West! Now think of lack of dogmatic religions, the close connection between state religion and emperorship in China, the ambivalent and vague conception of Shintô in Asia!
What do I want from you after all? I want you to question all this, not to only to getter better insight, close to the “facts”, but simply to make collaboration and coexistence with those different cultures easier as well.