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Kaspars Eihmanis. Pârdomas par starpkultûru hermeneitikas metodoloìiju
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conceptions of precise scientific discourse. On the other side, Chinese blaming the
West (I must excuse myself for still using such empty and ambivalent notions as
Orient, East, Occident and West) for an attempting to persuade them to become the
believers of the Western universalism, still find themselves trapped in Marxist theories
of history of philosophy, being mostly Western by origin. The never–ending accusations
of the misuse of unkindred and unfitting concepts on the one side and the
persistent strife to give a universal validity to its tradition, without becoming the part
of a more universal universalism, on the other side, will still dominate the hermeneutical
understanding of different cultures.
Ram Adhar Mall, who has elaborated on the concept of intercultural philosophy,
has defined it more precisely: “Europeanization stands for the software of Western
culture and religion, whereas westernization represents its hardware.” 4 Europeanization
is still being perceived as centred in itself, claiming universalised insights of
understanding human history and the human agent’s place in it. Both philosophers
belonging to different traditions, namely Chinese and Indian traditions, both seem to
agree that the modern science is neutral in its universalistic claims, whereas Western
philosophy and religion has remained deeply entranched with eurocentrist prejudices.
Although both strive to show that philosophy should be placed in the same category
as science, since no one should claim the absolute possession of it. Cheng Chung–
ying defines philosophy as follows:
“Philosophy is the core of a tradition because it is both a mode of thinking and
a normative direction of action towards ideal values of the tradition. Philosophy is
both the consciousness and the conscience of a culture and civilisation because
philosophical views, formulated by recognised philosophers and accepted by common
people over ages, inspire and guide culture and action.” 5 Cheng Chung–ying
has obviously chosen to lay stress on the connection between the tradition and
philosophy being its core, not considering the breaking–with–the–tradition character
of many philosophical ideas and philosophical currents. In the post–modern period,
which has seen too many radical iconoclasts of the tradition of Western philosophy,
no one still dares to pronounce the philosophy as being homogenic. Such a definition
might be applied to the Chinese tradition, which has always tended towards
universism of its concepts and homogenic character of the tradition embodied by
them. It can not serve as a suitable definition. And are there any for all purposes?
Ram Adhar Mall, whose ideas on intercultural philosophy we discuss in the following
passages, on the other hand feels the necessity to defend the universal application
of the term philosophy, arriving at the conception of interculturality: “The general
concept of philosophy possesses a universal connotation over and above its
particular, adjectival qualifications, such as Chinese, Indian, European, and so on.
This connotation gives us the right to speak of interculturality.” 6 The attempt to
generalise the term philosophy to the extent where it acquires the universal connotation
seems futile, since the most universal concept is the most emptiest one, though
the author writes that, “Intercultural philosophy does not deny the universal connotation
of the term philosophy; it only makes clear that its general applicability is not
a concrete universal but is on the line of the Wittgensteinian idea of a world language
that is not the name of a particular language but the name of the class of all
language games.” 7