Lessons from Intercultural Philosophy: Getting Over Reductive Comparisons and Attending to Others

• Authors: Berger Douglas
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

But one thing that I have been trying to accomplish both through my own scholarship and my own professional work in academic associations in recent years is precisely what I have just mentioned, namely to make intercultural philosophy a truly multi-polar activity. Intercultural philosophy should not place the West at the center of its concerns and “compare” or “contrast” other cultural traditions to its heritage one by one. As a matter of fact, just as an aside, I must say I intensely dislike the expression “comparative philosophy.” It makes philosophy sound like grocery shopping, or picking out the best mobile phone; we compare products and choose the ones that most suit our fancy and our “needs.” We must perform such kinds of comparisons and make such kinds of choices in life, but that kind of activity is not really philosophical in any respectable sense.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski. Wydział Filozofii
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1(7)
• Pages: 134-140

Dates

published

2019-04-30

Contributors

author

Berger Douglas

• Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University

Identifiers

DOI

10.14394/eidos.jpc.2019.0010