Intercultural philosophy is based on a dialogue, i.e., not just on a sheer juxtaposition of monologues, since such a juxtaposition would not lead to any new result and both partners would not be able to gain anything out of it. In order to achieve this result, one needs to be able to engage in a real dialogue. This is a less trivial issue than it may look like at first sight and in fact thousands of pages, from Plato to H.-G. Gadamer, have been dedicated only to the topic of how can dialogues and especially philosophical dialogues take place. The situation becomes even more difficult when in addition to the normal boundaries between people one needs to cross the additional bridge of cultures and of time. How can such a dialogue look like?
A.L. Leloir from render.fineartamerica.com
Genesis 32,22-32 contains the strange episode of Jacob wrestling with God. It is a single combat which cannot aim at the destruction of the other combatant, but rather at engaging closely with him. I will claim here that this is a good simile for the kind of dialogue one should look for in intercultural philosophy, especially when dealing with historical sources. In fact, one should not aim at destroying one’s opponent, but also not remain at the superficial level of a peaceful chatting. In order for the encounter to be really fertile, one needs to engage in a real combat, i.e., in a strict philosophical confrontation, being ready to have to admit one’s defeat and to change at least some of one’s assumptions. Vice versa, one’s opponent might also end up being defeated insofar as one might find out that they overlooked a possible objection or did not take into account some possible development of their theories. How can this practically occur?
In my experience, again, Jacob’s wrestling offers a good clue: One needs to get closer to one’s philosophical opponent. It is not enough to just cherry-pick an idea and expand it in a different direction in order to claim that a dialogue had taken place. Rather, one needs to be able to engage closely with a whole theory, possibly taking into account its context and its consequences. Now, a historical opponent offers in this sense serious disadvantages but also an important advantage. The disadvantages lie in the fact that an opponent who is no-longer alive cannot react, reassessing one’s views, explaining their point better, correcting misunderstandings and the like. Much more work needs to be done, consequently, by the partner who is alive and able to engage in the discussion. She will need to fill holes, reconstruct partially unexplained views, make implicit points explicit, expand theories to unexpected cases etc. She will have to be humble in her attempt, trying to substantiate each claim in the dead opponent’s own words. I am in this connection a strong believer in the principle of charity and I try to reconstruct a theory in the most charitable way. Nothing is gained, I think, by defeating a weak opponent, and it is even offensive to think that great thinkers of the past did not think of attacks which look evident for us.
The advantage of engaging with an opponent of the past lies, conversely, in their being far from the actuality. They do not need to be influenced by extra-philosophical issues, such as their opponent’s academical position or country of residence. This is particularly relevant when it comes to asymmetrical power relations, such as a star professor in a well-known university in the Anglo-American world engaging in a dialogue with an opponent coming from a very different background. Our opponents from the past do not need to feel intimidated. They will not be impressed by one’s pedigree and remain inflexible on their positions, even if they are out of fashion, such as idealism.
Some pointers to how such dialogues can take place are found in the type of Indian philosophical texts that are now known as ‘doxographies’ (see, for instance, the chapter on doxographies in Halbfass’ *India and Europe*). Basically, one must find a common ground for any exchange of thoughts to take place, and in my opinion this is not basically different between various schools of thought within one ‘culture’ (e.g., schools of Indian philosophy) and between ‘cultures’.
I am placing ‘culture’ between quotation marks because the word can be meaningfully used on different levels of abstraction: e.g., I believe that we may distinguish between something like French culture on the one hand and a more encompassing European culture on the other; also, we can distinguish between ‘Catholic culture’ and ‘Calvinist culture’ within one country; thus we can also speak of ‘Advaitin’ and ‘Dvaitin’ culture.
Last year a student of mine, Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette, succcessfully completed his doctoral dissertation (titled ‘The Point of Views’) about doxographies. We hope to see the book in print in the near future. But his work is certainly not the last word that can or should be said about the study of doxographies.
What is not so clear from your remarks is whether you are mainly concerned with schools of thought from different cultures (synchronically) or across time (diachronically), or both. I would argue that it does not matter all that much: thinkers in a remote past represent a different, time-bound culture, irrespective of where they were located geographically. I do not see any major differences (from the point of view of, e.g., a modern European scholar) in dealing with the writings of an author from ancient Greece or from classical India: both the old Greek and the old Indian represent other cultures, and in the case of both, they cannot respond to our remarks. For this reason, I too believe that we owe it to the ancient authors to assume a charitable attitude and to be grateful that we have their writings at all.
Thank you, Robert. I agree with you that differences in deśa-kāla-avasthā might lead to similar results (a text may be remote in time and/or space and/or cultural setting and in all three cases we will need caution in interpreting it).
I have been shortly in touch with Karl-Stéphan and I am happy to read that his book will soon be printed. I look forward to reading it.
Last, many thanks for mentioning the style of doxographies as a good starting point for how Sanskrit authors dealt with similar problems. I will certainly use this suggestion (and credit you for it!).