The challenges of studying the elements of diversity and unity in the human experience

The paper is a fruit of a series of informal symposiums and an elective course entitled "Orient-Occident", conducted by the author in 2016 and 2019 at the Institute of Intercultural Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The author identifies a set of issues commonly perceived as the main challenges of our age and focuses specifically on the challenge of intercultural relations in a "globalized world" to provide a critical examination of several misconceptions and conventional narratives surrounding this topic. The discussion serves as an introduction to a proposed approach to comparative study of texts of culture, developed primarily in the philosophical tradition and within the conceptual framework of the so-called New Humanism of Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) and combined with some additional components sourced from the works of Leo Strauss (1899-1973). The author argues that this approach provides a valuable exercise of imagination to students of culture and cultural diversity as it strives to strike a balance between the perception of diversity and unity in the human experience - a quality rarely displayed in contemporary cultural studies.