Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 2008/1: Interkulturalität

In the 20th century the European sciences have tried in different ways to develop post-colonial forms of knowledge. Since the 1920s, under headings such as »intercultural«, »multicultural« and »transcultural«, discourses have arisen in the USA and in Europe in which, until the present, new perspectives and structures in the sciences have developed. The article offers, on one hand, a discourse analysis of these three headings until 1980 and makes clear by way of examples how complicated and deep the challenges are for knowledge discourses in Europe within the scope of the research perspective of »interculturality«.

In the context of the controversies surrounding »globalisation« and In the context of the controversies surrounding »globalisation« and »multiculturality« the comparative study of cultures has the task of aiding intercultural communication and of contributing to the success of intercultural understanding. The model of contrastive cultural comparison discussed here is claimed to have applacibility to every possible study of other countries (»Auslandswissenschaft«) and to be able to provide the Geisteswissenschaften with an intercultural orientation.

The view in intercultural philosophy that there is philosophy in all cultures, does not hold in relation to Indian thought. Since modern times a vibrant Indian philosophical tradition has been lacking. Against the background of a reconstruction of the logic of negation in the classical texts of Indian thought, the essay asks for the causes of the end of this philosophical tradition. It shows that its causes can be found in a dialectic of the self-repeal of reason and in the dependence of Indian philosophical thinking upon religious tradition.

In contemporary Arab-Islamic philosophy there is increasing interest in the criticism of conceptions of culture and identity. The paradigms of these criticisms can be studied in an exemplary way in the works of the Moroccan philosopher Mohammed 'Abid al-Garibi. They reflect the close relationship between the problem of identity and the question of the »heritage« of Arab-islamic philosophy. The topics discussed include al-Garibi's rejection of the ahistorical interpretations of the religious, orientalistic, and Marxist Salafiyya and the extent to which his criticism of these intellectual currents is based upon a rational revival of the critique of Arab-islamic culture. Finally, the essay considers the basic ideas of a critique of »arabic reason« and its reformulation of Rationalism and seeks to show that al-Gabiri's return to Averroes opens up a new way out of the intellectual crisis in Arab-islamic societies.

Three exemplary models of how philosophical thinking is defined in the encounter with different cultures are critically discussed: 1. the self-centred model, in which other cultures are seen as preliminary stages of one's own way of thinking, 2. the competitive model, which calculates different traditions according to comparitve strengths and weaknesses, 3. the model of philosophy based upon the distinction between scientific and mythical ways of thinking, and which determines the value of philosophical assertions by reference to the employment of specific methods of representation.

The concept of the pre-political, which fits with the »liberal« vocabulary, has its origin in two political thinkers, who, following very different political and normative conceptions, contributed to the radical questioning of rationalistic and teleological concepts of politics. Hannah Arendt was a critic of totalitarianism, Carl Schmitt affirmed the decisionist setting of aims. Both approaches are considered in this article. The aim of the essay is not so much to compare their conceptions as rather to expose the meaning of the notion of the pre-political for the concept of the political.

Ernst Cassirer and Ernst Bloch are considered from the standpoint of the philosophy of culture as the object of comparative study. Instead of considering possible mutual correlative influences, their work is considered with regard to a possible systematic comparison. Bloch's Materialism, like Cassirer's Philosophy of symbolic Forms, can be read as a kind of philosophy of media, if we take »medium« to mean the dimension in which meaning is generated. Against this background Cassirer and Bloch make use of different means to thematize the mediality of culture.

This essay reconstructs Foucault's lectures on the »Hermeneutics of the Self« as a critique of the Cartesian model of self-knowledge and as an attempt to rehabilitate, with reference to Kant, a form of life centered on the own self. Critical evaluation of this »anachronistic« version of the hermeneutics of the self focuses on the issue of how this philosophical approach to the self can or should confront the question what and who we are.