"The Ala Earth Ethics and Its Potentials"

The focus of this presentation was on how the notion of environment can lead to additional ethical thoughts that serves but goes beyond the environmental good. Ala is an environmental ethics in the Igbo-African world. Ugwuanyi's claim is that the extant ethical theories and principles have some challenges which can be overcome through an engagement with the ethical views that are embedded in the notion of Ala. He began by mapping out some challenges in extant theories and practices of ethics which he considers to be exclusivist, conflicting, alienating and fundamentalist. Then he explained the conflict of virtues that arise from this scenario and how the notion of ethics harboured by Ala has the potential to lead to a different ethical orientation and outcome. He explored the four principles embedded in Ala namely-peace, power, authority and morality-suggesting how they provide grounds for a fresh ethical thought. He characterized these as comprehensive ethics that makes harmony and equilibrium core ethical principles and how this minimizes the challenges offered by extant ethical theories and principles. To achieve these objectives he: revisited some challenges of extant ethical beliefs and principles;(ii) revisited some challenges of extant ethical beliefs and principles; (iii) articulated the Ala belief and the ethics emanating therefrom;(iv) explained how Ala amounts to an environmental ethics with wider and deeper ethical value;(v) elaborated this with wider potentials of Ala Earth ethics.

„The Dynamic Web We Live In: Bantu Philosophy as Phenomenology of Human-Nature Relations”

In the much-disputed classic Bantu Philosophy (1945/6), Placide Tempels attempted to critically describe our human being-in-the-world as he understood it from his Congolese interlocutors. To this end he connected the conceptual framework of Bantu languages, rooted in Bantu Life-worlds, to a Flemish-Dutch conceptual framework, rooted in Latin scholastic tradition and modern European phenomenology. As the quote shows, he was aware of the dangers of such a work. He deemed it necessary, however, to a) make Europeans take African thinking seriously, and b) to rethink human-nature relations. 

I will clarify Tempels' contribution to an African eco-phenomenology by
(i)     discussing letters of Tempels that clarify how Bantu Philosophy should transform static conceptions of being, dominant in scholastic catholic philosophy, into a dynamic and wholistic conception of being as identical with force; 
(ii)     demonstrating how the French and English translations of Bantu Philosophy obscured key conceptual choices Tempels made to this end. 

The first point will show Tempels Bantu Philosophy to be part of a wider movement of the 1930sand 1940s among catholic philosophers, to adopt concepts from existential philosophy and phenomenology to rethink ontology from the experience of a situated being that participates in this being (“Dasein”).
The second will show a way out of the thicket of transiation / interpretation issues around Bantu Philosophy. The two moves should help to understand Tempels' translated Bantu conceptions as African eco-phenomenological understanding of human-nature relations. For this understanding he choses the image of the spider's web, which transports any movement that occurs in one of the threads through the whole web, as key metaphor.

 "An Undecided Dimension of Depth: On the Question of the Place in the Thought of Kitaro Nishida"

In this lecture, Professor Masatake Shinohara attempted a certain kind of address to the dimension of depth that exceeds our present possibilities, the dimension that remains hidden all along. Such dimension belongs to the place in which we always already find ourselves but simultaneously transcends our conscious grasp. Thus, in its concern with the ontological ground upon which the human artifice as the condition for human existence has been built, this presentation tried to problematize the idea that the place where humans are emplaced is solid and stabilized. In contrast to the common understanding that the human condition is sustained as solid and durable, Professor Masatake Shinohara proposed that we are now challenged with the realization of the radical uncertainty that is always just underfoot. 

In this respect, the work of Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945), one of the founders of the modern Japanese philosophical tradition of thought, can be reformulated in its formulation of the question concerning the dimension of depth that is rooted within the profound vastness of place. Yet, Nishida also characterizes the place as that which is not merely external to the self but determines the mode of existence of the self. By way of the engagement with the thought of Nishida, she proceeded with a question of place that is characterized as the contradictory dimension that is not merely external to the self but is not continuous with the self. First of all, the place within which the self is emplaced is characterized as the hidden dimension that is expected to be revealed at the depth of the active self. This is also a dimension of alterity that simultaneously embraces and transcends the self who inhabits it. More specifically, the place as the dimension of alterity can be understood in the interest of the earthly dimension that environs humans but is irreducible to the human artifice.  Thus, being uncontained by the boundaries that constitute the realm of the human artifice for the everyday life, it would be assumed to go beyond the limited horizon of everyday experience in a way that announces the possible futural dimension in which the imaginal form of coexistence among humans would emerge.

"Cultural Flesh and Intercultural Phenomenology: Theory and Practice"

In contrast to Eurocentric conceptions of philosophy, the author explained in what sense and in what way his apprenticeship and practice of philosophy in Hong Kong since the very beginning is an intercultural affair: serious philosophical practice is necessarily a matter of intercultural understanding. Not satisfied with Derrida’s deconstruction of the Eurocentric pretention of Husserl’s Idea of philosophy as “pure theoria”, the author tried to make sense of the intercultural nature of contemporary philosophical practice by the concept of “interworld” (“inter-monde”) suggested by Merleau-Ponty. The paper also explained the necessity of intercultural understanding in the establishment of philosophical truth. It went on to explain the relevance of the concept of flesh (la chair, 肌膚存在 ) and cultural flesh, proposed by the present author, in providing the ontological basis of the inter-world and inter-cultural understanding. The paper also highlighted some of the results of the author’s research in intercultural understanding in philosophy from the phenomenological approach, published in his 2016 book Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding. Toward a New Cultural Flesh (Springer), with which the author was awarded the Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology for the best book in phenomenology by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, USA, 2019.

"Human and the Future of 'the Earth'"

The present Research focuses on the relation between human and the Earth in terms of their physical/natural and theoretical/metaphorical aspects. Subsequently, two kinds of reactions are introduced, to what is now called the perils to, and crises of the Earth. To comprehend and confront the Earth in the contemporary world is essentially technical/scientific, whereas philosophers comprehend the Earth and its relation to human on another level, by the grasp they have on mankind's fundaments of life. With reference to notions of a few philosophers, particularly Nietzsche's and Heidegger's, and to opinions of some contemporary scientists about the future of the Earth, the present research explores the gaps and challenges between philosophical attitude and technical attitude. The main purpose of this study is to encourage reflection on the future of the Earth by relying on philosophical methods and traditions, and also to stimulate cooperation in discussions and controversies surrounding the topic. The desired end is the reconciliation of opposing orientations and to propose an intercultural treatment for the future of the Earth.

“Being Between: Comparative and Transcultural Philosophy”

This essay argues that comparative and transcultural philosophy are interdependent, and so opting for only one of the two is an impossibility. The comparative approach persists as long as we distinguish identities and make differences. As long as people do not speak only one language, the need to move between different languages and to translate, and thus the need to relate and compare different possibilities of philosophical articulation, will remain. Any attempt to free oneself from the problem of cultural identity is doomed to failure, as it leads to further entrapment in the very same problem. Comparative philosophy works with more or less fixed identities, transcultural philosophy transforms them and thereby creates new identities. Those two approaches combined constitute what I call intercultural philosophy. 
In this essay I try to explain the relation between comparative and transcultural philosophy by connecting François Jullien’s “comparative” and Martin Heidegger’s “transcultural” understanding of “Being” (Sein) and “Between” (Zwischen). In part 1 I argue that by turning Between and Being into opposing paradigms of Chinese and Greek thinking, respectively, Jullien causes both to become more or less fixed representatives of different cultural identities within a comparative framework: Greek thinking ossifies into traditional metaphysics, and Chinese thinking ossifies into the non-metaphysical thinking of immanence. Part 2 argues that Heidegger takes a decisively different direction. He explores the Between in Being, and even makes an attempt to think of Being as Between. Heidegger’s invocation of “Greekdom” is undoubtedly Eurocentric. But, ironically, Heidegger’s “Greek thinking” is less Eurocentric than Jullien’s “Chinese thinking”, because he discovers the “Chinese” Between in the midst of “Greek” Being. Part 3 touches upon the task of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. While modern Chinese philosophers frequently speak about Chinese philosophy in European terms, Heidegger’s work points to the possibility of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. Because Jullien and Heidegger both connect Greek and Chinese thought, it seems to me that the discussion of their different approaches is helpful in clarifying perspectives for intercultural philosophy between China and Europe.

Daoist wuwei in the Anthropocene
Wei wu wei 為無為 has been interpreted as indifference and inaction, minimalism and adaptability, and responsive resonance and releasement. Despite the depoliticization of wuwei as a mystical state, a flexible knack, or a reflexive flow, its early meaning was ethical, political, and social. In the Daodejing 道德經, wuwei concerns the art of rulership and the ways in which peoples and things “anarchically” organize and nourish themselves. “Nature” (ziran 自然) consists of the interactive self-patterning and participatory self-ordering of the myriad things (wanwu 萬物) correlated with wuwei and the shared nourishing of life (yangsheng 養生). Daoism has been criticized as opposing action vs. inaction, complexity vs. simplicity, culture vs. naturalness, hierarchical society vs. “primitive” freedom and equality. Its point is participatory relationality: it fosters simplicity in complexity, naturalness in culture, responsive attunement in activity, and reciprocal self-ordering. Daoist wuwei concerns the appropriate uses of things and technologies, indicating an alternative response to the Anthropocene.

Prof. Dr. Mathias Obert, National Sun Yat-Sen University Taiwan:
„Als Phänomenologe unterwegs in japanischen Gärten“

On Contingency and Event

I would like to do an attempt of comparative consideration between Japanese philosopher Shūzō Kuki (1888-1941) and French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). In his essay titled "Metaphysical Time"(1931), Kuki says that "the once-only and infinite life is worth living". In my view, this apparently paradoxical term "the once-only and infinite" expresses the core of the time theory of Kuki. On the other hand, Derrida uses a similar expression. For example, he says, "the event cannot appear to be an event, when it appears, unless it is already repeatable in its very uniqueness", that is, he proposes the "idea of uniqueness as immediately iterable" (in his essay in 1997, "A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event"). It seems that these two formulations share something in common in the fact that both have the same philosophical task to think at the same time the singular uniqueness and the infinite iterability.

How can we bring these two formulations together? Although both have different shades of meaning, couldn't we argue that the two correspond to one another very profoundly? I would like to make clear the measurable proximity between the philosophy of Kuki and the thinking of Derrida. For this purpose, I would like to make a correlation between Kuki's contingency theory in his book The Problem of Contingency (1935) and Derrida's thinking of the event, which is also no other than the thinking of contingency.Weniger anzeigen

Some phenomenologically instructed requests to Zhao Tingyang's concept of Tianxia

In my contribution, I would like to go into more detail on some of the prerequisites, basic terms and forms of understanding that my colleague Prof. Zhao Tingyang developed using the time-honoured "Tanxia" concept. Above all, I would like to emphasize that Zhao's analyzes make an important contribution to the question of our understanding of the "world" insofar as it is global and system-wide. However, whether and to what extent this global approach does not itself represent a renewed infusion of a "universalization of particularity" is to be explained in more detail with my inquiries, which tend more or rudimentary towards "intercultural" and "post- and decolonial" questions.

Inspired by the phenomenological research tradition, my analyzes are primarily aimed at the respective constitutional processes that can show "how something becomes what" as what it can be understood and is able to convince in the first place. To this end, I would like to critically question the following problem areas addressed by Zhao Tingyang:

1) What does "methodology" mean when "Tianxia" – the topic or subject of the research itself - is used "as methodology"?
2) How do "the order of coexistential" and "relational rationality" relate to each other?
3) Who is speaking and from what location when a “world without an outside” is presupposed?
4) How does the inner structure of a "system logic" assumed throughout the book relate to those parameters "mutual benefit" on the one hand and "virtue" on the other hand, which are said to be dependent on "mutual rescue"?
5) How does the “one world”- approach with its inclusion paradigm relate to that aspect of the “diversity of the world” resp. of the worlds" to each other, which as such should be "protected"?
6) If the "Tianxia" term - however traditional - has already produced those great concepts of Daoism, Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism and others that have established themselves primarily in China - especially with regard to their different ways, nuances, systematics, historical Formations, etc. - what should then be special about the author's approach - unless he merely reports on a history of thought and life in China that wants to be understood as "all-encompassing"? In other words, what is the key to propagating “the world as a political subject” (cf. Introduction, Chapter 1), in which not only ethos and ethics, custom and morals, individuals, families, clans, countries, etc. are taken into account? Where are the “rights” of the individual and the citizen, which, as we know at least since H. Arendt, are the first to (co-)found and concretely implement the “political space”? The “entitlement to rights” makes people human, very concrete, real. As important as “rites” are, which are constitutively inscribed in every legal procedure and thereby draw attention to the necessary mutually owed and shown respect, they still prove to be life-world “dwellings” of previous or future legal claims. Generally speaking: "Harmony" necessarily requires "disharmony" in order to be able to create "becoming" from "mere being".

The topos of a new "world politics" often used by Zhao could, in contrast to its sole return to the venerable "Tianxia", lead to what I believe to be a deeper challenge, according to which the respective claims of the different worlds of thought and life become aware of each other. A future world policy would then not only have to take a much stronger look at the sometimes very different self-images and the concepts associated with them, it would also result in the intercultural approaches and, as a result, post- and decolonial forms of thought and theories mentioned at the beginning . Not to mention that the comprehensive concept of "nature" required a readjustment of the connection between culture, nature and humanity, if only because of the impending "climate catastrophe".

The Limits of Tianxia

Tianxia ist ein zentraler Begriff der klassischen chinesischen Philosophie. Wörtlich übersetzt bedeutet er „Alles unter dem Himmel“. Neben anderen Aspekten bezeichnet er das politische Ideal einer Weltordnung. ZHAO Tingyang hat diesen Aspekt des Tianxia in einem 2016 erschienen und seither in zahlreiche Sprachen übersetzten Buch aufgegriffen mit dem Ziel, das „idealistische Konzept des Tianxia realistisch darzustellen“, um es für die Gegenwart interessant zu machen. ZHAO legt besonderen Wert darauf, dass es sich beim Tianxia um eine integrative, die gesamte Welt umfassende Ordnung handelt, die „kein Außen kennt“. Anders als die politische Philosophie des Westens, die seiner Ansicht nach auf nationalstaatliche Konzepte zurückgreift und deshalb immer einen Ausgleich suchen muss, vermag das Tianxia Frieden und Sicherheit für alle allein dadurch zu gewährleisten, dass es von der Welt ausgeht. Zhao zufolge entstand das Konzept des Tianxia im 11. und 10. Jahrhundert vor unserer Zeit, angetrieben vor allem durch den Herzog von Zhou. In die Philosophie des Tianxia sind Elemente des Daoism, Moism, Guan-zi, Confucius, and Xun-zi eingeflossen. ZHAO ergänzt sie durch einzelne Momente liberaler politischer Philosophie.

In der vierteiligen Vorlesungsreihe der GIP-Lectures wird der Begriff Tianxia und insbesondere Zhaos Anpassung dieses Begriffs an die moderne politische Philosophie gewürdigt und kritisch diskutiert.

Tianxia – Alles unter dem Himmel. Eine kritische Würdigung

Tianxia ist ein zentraler Begriff der klassischen chinesischen Philosophie. Wörtlich übersetzt bedeutet er „Alles unter dem Himmel“. Neben anderen Aspekten bezeichnet er das politische Ideal einer Weltordnung. ZHAO Tingyang hat diesen Aspekt des Tianxia in einem 2016 erschienen und seither in zahlreiche Sprachen übersetzten Buch aufgegriffen mit dem Ziel, das „idealistische Konzept des Tianxia realistisch darzustellen“, um es für die Gegenwart interessant zu machen. ZHAO legt besonderen Wert darauf, dass es sich beim Tianxia um eine integrative, die gesamte Welt umfassende Ordnung handelt, die „kein Außen kennt“. Anders als die politische Philosophie des Westens, die seiner Ansicht nach auf nationalstaatliche Konzepte zurückgreift und deshalb immer einen Ausgleich suchen muss, vermag das Tianxia Frieden und Sicherheit für alle allein dadurch zu gewährleisten, dass es von der Welt ausgeht. Zhao zufolge entstand das Konzept des Tianxia im 11. und 10. Jahrhundert vor unserer Zeit, angetrieben vor allem durch den Herzog von Zhou. In die Philosophie des Tianxia sind Elemente des Daoism, Moism, Guan-zi, Confucius, and Xun-zi eingeflossen. ZHAO ergänzt sie durch einzelne Momente liberaler politischer Philosophie.

In der vierteiligen Vorlesungsreihe der GIP-Lectures wird der Begriff Tianxia und insbesondere Zhaos Anpassung dieses Begriffs an die moderne politische Philosophie gewürdigt und kritisch diskutiert.

Published in 1977 (but translated into English only in 2014), Muntu in Crisis is undoubtedly Fabien Eboussi Boulaga’s most famous philosophical essay. As such, it has had a long-lasting influence on debates on African philosophy, especially in the 1980s. One of Eboussi Boulaga’s main theses in this book is that “philosophy is an attribute of power,” and in particular of Western power, which must be put at the service of African emancipation. The author argues that this is only possible through the transfunctionalization of philosophy, i.e., the process by which this discipline is brought to signify elsewhere and differently. Therefore, the Muntu’s effort to submit (Western) philosophy to their needs, requires in the first place the critique of this discipline, by which it must be cured of its domination content when it comes to its relationship with the indigenous, the subjugated and the colonized. The entire Muntu in Crisis can thus be considered as Eboussi Boulaga’s own attempt to engage the critique of (Western) philosophy.

Depending on who and what is being married, marriage can be an important event and a beautiful thing. William Blake, one of the foremost Romantic poets is famous in the book, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” for attempting to marry the “energetic creators” (hell) and the “rational organizers” (heaven) in a unified vision of the cosmos. In this talk, and inspired by Blake, I aim to preside over the marriage of the “I” or an I mode of being and a “We” or a We mode of being — a marriage that is fostered by some of the elements of social contract theory which, I argue, provide for the possibility of a rational self in community. Because this marriage attempts to demonstrate the prospect of a union of individualism (a predominantly Western/liberal ontological outlook) and non-individualism (a predominantly non-Western/communalistic ontological outlook), it potentially positions itself as a self-effacing and commune-inducing worldview that could be deployed to resolve the renowned and notorious dispute between radical communitarianism and moderate communitarianism.

In this lecture languages are seen as different perspectives of seeing the world, and in order to improve intercultural understanding, one should not rely on interpretors or translation programmes which deliver ready made transformations into the world of our own own language structures. This does not prevent language imperialisms and the conviction that our own way of thinking and speaking is universal. Rather should one strive to know more about other possibilities of seeing the world in other languages, in order to complete one’s own views. Intercultural communication can only be succesfull if other ways of seing the world are not leveled and neglected, but respected and seriously taken into account.

I will introduce and outline the concept of ‘ecological phenomenology’ that Maria Heim and I developed in the study of classical Indian texts: On the one side, it is a method of analytically describing experience, in which the context always matters and determines the way we can absorb a text’s particular set of descriptions. ‘Context’ in this methodological sense includes: the genre with its literary conventions and lexical registers, the stated purposes of the text, and the narrative or other locating devices by which the significance of the textual passages in question is foregrounded. Ecology here is hermeneutic, and permits shifts of scope and constitution. On the other, it is  a philosophy of the nature of experience  intrinsically bodily in nature. Here, ecological phenomenology argues that the analysis of the bodily manifestation of subjectivity is always dependent on context. ‘Context’ in this philosophical sense includes: material constituents of the objective body whose boundaries and features vary, ambient features of the sensory range, affective artefacts in the environment, norms of conduct, and the dynamics of social identity. Making some intercultural comparisons with certain strands in the Western Phenomenological traditions, I will suggest that ecological phenomenology allows for the emergence of a conception of bodily being that could engage fruitfully with post-Cartesian ideas about the body in Phenomenology.

Zur Person: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ppr/people/chakravarthi-ram-prasad

I will introduce and outline the concept of ‘ecological phenomenology’ that Maria Heim and I developed in the study of classical Indian texts: On the one side, it is a method of analytically describing experience, in which the context always matters and determines the way we can absorb a text’s particular set of descriptions. ‘Context’ in this methodological sense includes: the genre with its literary conventions and lexical registers, the stated purposes of the text, and the narrative or other locating devices by which the significance of the textual passages in question is foregrounded. Ecology here is hermeneutic, and permits shifts of scope and constitution. On the other, it is  a philosophy of the nature of experience  intrinsically bodily in nature. Here, ecological phenomenology argues that the analysis of the bodily manifestation of subjectivity is always dependent on context. ‘Context’ in this philosophical sense includes: material constituents of the objective body whose boundaries and features vary, ambient features of the sensory range, affective artefacts in the environment, norms of conduct, and the dynamics of social identity. Making some intercultural comparisons with certain strands in the Western Phenomenological traditions, I will suggest that ecological phenomenology allows for the emergence of a conception of bodily being that could engage fruitfully with post-Cartesian ideas about the body in Phenomenology.

Zur Person: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ppr/people/chakravarthi-ram-prasad

The title of the talk can be deconstructed through a set of 2 questions (1) can we have a phenomenological reading of indigenous thoughts, and (2) can there be an indigenous philosophy at all?

Taking a position that there is not one but many philosophies, based on differences in civilizational/cultural lives, languages, and belief systems, it is quite obvious that there are multiple ways of philosophizing.

Considering that indigenous thoughts are built upon an embedded world where selfhood is collectively shaped, it will be an interesting exercise to examine if phenomenological approaches can meaningfully engage with an unique ontology. Further, if descriptive ontology can provide meaningful reading of the indigenous thought, perhaps the idea of an indigenous philosophy can be put forward. A historical reading of animism and its possible alternatives may pave the path towards a discourse of indigenous philosophy.

Zur Person: https://www.jnu.ac.in/content/bhagatoinam

Zhuofei Wang geht in ihrem Vortrag der Frage nach, wie sich die ursprünglich aus der europäischen Denktradition stammende Disziplin der Ästhetik zu einer zeitgemäßen und interkulturell orientierten Ästhetik transformieren lässt, um die außereuropäischen Traditionen mit einbeziehen zu können. Ausgehend davon führt Wang das jüngst entwickelte ästhetische Konzept der Atmosphäre ein, um hier zu vermitteln. Anhand von verschiedenen anschaulichen Beispielen beschreibt sie, wie sich durch das Konzept der Atmosphäre das ästhetische Denken jenseits von Begriffen wie Schönheit für andere Traditionen und Fragestellungen öffnen lässt. Auf dieser Grundlage plädiert sie für eine interkulturell ausgerichtete Ästhetik, die sich von einem herkömmlichen ästhetischen Essentialismus befreit.

Zur Person: https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/fb2/institute/philosophie/team/dr-zhuofei-wang/

In order to highlight the interdependencies of supposedly individual cultures, the article aims at a reconstruction of the coinage, transfer and translation of the term ‘culture’ in the European-African-Antillan context from the 1940s up to today. Since it has become obvious that all cultural processes are intertwined with elements of different background, the cultural constitution can no longer be adequately described by discursive opposites such as Black vs. White, European vs. African and so forth. The argument therefore goes that the cultural composition needs adequate new terms and that the old term of the ‘individual’ should be replaced by the new term ‘dividuation’ which underlines the processuality, intermixing and mutual participation of all cultural entities. It moves from cultural theories of Leo Frobenius, Jean-Paul Sartre and Leopold Sédar Senghor to arguments of Edouard Glissant, Achille Mbembe, Gilles Deleuze and ‘African’ filmmakers such as Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Jean-Marie Teno and others.

Professor Ott is professor of aesthetic theories at HFBK Hamburg/Germany; research topics: poststructualist philosophy, aesthetics of film and art, theories of space, affection and dividuation, of artistic knowledge and (post)colonial concerns, African and Arab films. Member of the research cluster “African Multiple”, University Bayreuth/Germany. English publications: Timing of Affect. Epistemologies of Affection, ed. with M.-L. Angerer and Bernd Bösel (Zurich: diaphanes, 2014); Dividuations. Theories of participation (London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2018);

Polyloge bringen die Überzeugung und Haltung interkulturellen Philosophierens auf besondere Weise zur Geltung: vorurteilslos, kommunikativ und argumentativ Beiträge aus unterschiedlichen kulturellen Traditionen miteinander ins Gespräch zu bringen. Ob sich auch Menschen mit religiösen Überzeugungen auf solche Polyloge einlassen können und wollen, ist umstritten – und auf jeden Fall ein Thema theologischer Forschung, die sich ernsthaft mit Fragen interkulturellen Philosophierens auseinandersetzt. Diese Spannung zwischen religiösen Wahrheits- und Heilsansprüchen einerseits und polylogem Philosophieren andererseits sowie die Möglichkeiten und Grenzer einer theologischen Rezeption interkultureller Philosophie werden im Vortrag thematisiert.

Franz Gmainer-Pranzl ist Professor und Leiter des Zentrum Theologie Interkulturell und Studium der Religionen an der Katholisch-Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Salzburg.

(In French with Q&A in English/French)

Eboussi Boulaga ouvre Christianisme sans fétiche par un court chapitre consacré à la colonisation comme « extirpation », par référence aux campagnes d’Extirpation menées par les catholiques espagnols au 16^ème siècle au Pérou, « le précédent latino-américain » aidant, dit Eboussi, « à comprendre la situation africaine ». L’Extirpation coloniale est triple. Elle est Extirpation du lieu, Extirpation de la relationnalité et Extirpation du futur. L’unité du territoire, de la capacité de construire des relations et de se rapporter de façon non téléologique, non linéaire et répétitive, au temps, est ce que consacre pour Eboussi le terme de « civilisation ». L’Extirpation est alors proprement, sous son triple aspect, « décivilisation ». Répétant, trois siècles après les extirpateurs du vice-roi du Pérou, l’inversion caractéristique de la politique d’Extirpation qui fait passer l’attachement aux relations concrètes, sensibles et intellectuelles, qui fondent la communauté pour une dépendance idolâtre, l’Extirpation coloniale en Afrique (et tout particulièrement au Cameroun) a pour unique intention et pour effet certain la mise en « crise » de la politique, c’est-à-dire son empêchement –l’altération et la dégradation de son domaine distinctif : celui de la conception et de la réalisation commune des projets par l’échange des idées et des paroles. Dans la mesure où la politique est, pour Eboussi, « ce qui donne valeur à la vie en commun », la forme coloniale du gouvernement des hommes, qui, appuyée sur cette inversion, dé-politise la politique, « sape jusqu’aux fondations de la politique » au cœur même de l’exercice politique, entraîne donc nécessairement avec elle une totale dépréciation de la vie commune – c’est-à-dire tout bonnement de la vie. Cette forme de gouvernement politique paradoxal, proprement anti-politique, repose en outre sur une conception de l’exercice du pouvoir comme guerre généralisée et permanente contre une population spécifiquement ennemie. L’anti-politique d’extirpation ne se contente pas, en effet, d’une simple confrontation avec l’infidélité chronique des gouvernés : elle contre-invente elle-même cette infidélité en vandalisant les solidarités qui structurent en profondeur la société qu’elle se soumet, en produisant, par l’incitation à la haine, par la séparation, par toutes sortes d’exactions, le pire régime de désordre et de violence qui soit. Elle organise ainsi elle-même la régression à l’état de nature pré-politique qu’elle déplore et qui justifie son intervention transcendante sous la seule forme d’une action répressive. De ce qui constitue la condition de possibilité du socius humain, à savoir l’évitement délibéré de toute conventionnalisation fixiste, de toute collectivisation coercitive, par un travail de constante différenciation, elle fait un chaos, « une mer de dissemblance » – une impossibilité de vivre ensemble.

In this talk, Okeke provides a conception of intercultural philosophy and contrasts it with that of comparative philosophy. He argues that whereas the goal of comparative philosophy is to ‘investigate the possibility of constructing a philosophical universal from cultural particulars’, that of intercultural philosophy should be to ‘open a collective vista, a path to new ideas informed by a realisation of mutual limitations in order to extend the frontiers of knowledge. He identifies three prominent challenges that confront an intercultural philosopher and demonstrates how they could be addressed through the approach of Conversational Thinking.

Islamic Feminism: The Iranian Narrative

Islamic feminism speaks ‘in the name of’ women who refuse to choose between the ‘road to feminist emancipation’ and their ‘belonging’ to Islam as a culture and a religion. Islamic feminism is not only a ‘posture’ but a ‘performance’; a struggle that aims to surpass the ‘resistance identity’ to ‘project identity’ by actively engaging in a hermeneutical discourse with the Holy text as an embodied subject. Women’s hermeneutical engagement with the text will actualize those potential of the text that is abandoned and neglected by the patriarchal approach to it during the last 14 centuries. However, women’s participation in and support for the Islamist movement provokes strong responses from feminists across a broad range of the political spectrum. One of the most common reactions is the supposition that women Islamist supporters are pawns in a grand patriarchal plan, who, if freed from their bondage, would naturally express their instinctual abhorrence for the traditional Islamic mores used to enchain them.

While Afsane Najm Abadi, one of the prominent figures of Iranian feminism, believed that post-colonial discourse is an ‘inaccessible space’ for discussing about Iran, as the discourse of colonizer and colonized leaves no space for the ‘neither-nor’ zone, but others like Minoo Moallem and Ziba Mir-Hosseini discussed that both the translational discourse of the modernist and reformist Iranian elite from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the Islamist Fundamentalist approach to gender in the post-revolutionary Iran were a reaction to the Western concept of civilization and the western account of Persia.

This presentation aims to reflect on the Islamic Feminism from an Iranian perspective and how certain historical moments led to the realization of Iranian Muslim woman’s identity, fighting simultaneously two entangled battles against colonial discourse of a civilizing mission of West and patriarchal representation of religious identity. Although, Islamic Feminism is not the only feminist movement that is traceable in Iranian modern history, by providing an historical overview, I will discuss that the Iranian approach to Islamic Feminism is a part of a more profound political and religious movement that is known as ‘Islamic Reformism’.

Der Vortrag thematisiert den Anspruch des Fremden in der Philosophie. Ausgehend von der Klärung der Begriffe des "Anspruchs" und des "Fremden" geht er der Frage nach, warum sich (nicht nur) das westliche Denken schwer tut mit Fremdem. Daran anknüpfend formuliert er drei Thesen, wie das Philosophieren mit "Fremdheitsanspruch" gelingen könnte. Dies geschieht vor dem Hintergrund der Erfahrung des interkulturellen Philosophierens mit indigenen Menschen in Kanada.