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polylog 54

Winter 2025

Erfahrung des »Fremden«

hg. von Franz Gmainer-Pranzl und Barbara Schellhammer

Franz Gmainer-Pranzl/Barbara Schellhammer

Die Erfahrung des Fremden in interkulturell-philosophischer Perspektive

Einleitung

Barbara Schellhammer

Sensibilisierung oder Selbstbehauptung? Zur Bedeutung einer responsiven Resilienz

The article reflects on the challenges of intercultural philosophy with Indigenous peoples. These challenges come from a colonial past, a collective history of injuries, that often leads to reactive behaviour between extreme sensitivities and ignorant assertiveness. The difficulties, metaphorically described as dancing on this ice, are embedded in current debates on dialectic dynamics between what is called ›identity politics‹ and ›cancel culture‹ as well as the term ›resilience‹ as promising remedy. By arguing for vulnerability as the underlying experience and primary term, Bernhard Waldenfels’ concept of ›responsive resilience‹ seems to be most promising to cultivate an atmosphere of healing and trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples engaging in intercultural philosophy.

Mathias Obert

Befremden in der Kultur: Einige Überlegungen dazu, was »chinesische Philosophie« nicht ist

This contribution aims at refuting the general opinion according to which philosophizing in China or Taiwan just corresponds to »Chinese Philosophy«. In an outline concerning the situation of nowadays academic philosophy there, the main focus is laid on research related both to European and North American Philosophy, as well as to pre-modern Chinese traditions of thought. By analyzing the peculiar historical interpenetrations and entanglements that have led to the present constitution of academic philosophy in that area, blind spots and paradoxies become obvious in view of discussing the consequences this has with respect to the question about »Chinese Philosophy«. A critical deconstruction of false »identities«, as well as »own« and »alien«, follows under the heading of »dismay within culture«. Furthermore, the complex linguistic condition of Chinese-speaking philosophy is clarified, in view of dangers and potentials connected with site-conscious thinking in Chinese language today.

Yves Vendé

Chinese Philosophy and Waldenfels’ »Phenomenology of the Alien«

This article explores the intersection of phenomenology and Chinese philosophy through the lens of intercultural dialogue and considers the inherent risks of violence in cross-cultural encounters. It first presents Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenological analysis of how encounters with the Other can lead to violence when boundaries are violated and otherness is pigeonholed into familiar categories. The second part traces historical examples of Chinese-Western philosophical exchange, from 17^th-century Jesuit translations of Confucian classics to late 19^th-century translations of Western works by Chinese scholars. These cases illustrate both the creative potential and violent risks of intercultural translation and interpretation. The final section shows how Mencius and Zhuangzi address violence differently: the former invites practising empathy and setting proper boundaries to prevent harm, while the latter criticises the violence inherent in categorisation and advocates preserving individual uniqueness. The article concludes by examining Iso Kern's phenomenological approach to Chinese philosophy, which offers a methodological alternative to static comparative philosophy.

Yukiko Kuwayama

Die Gefühlskultur und ihre Transformabilität: Von Ágnes Hellers Gefühlstheorie zu einer interkulturellen Gefühlsphänomenologie

This article explores the diversity of individual and cultural emotional habits, and their transformability. To gain a clearer understanding of what is »foreign« (fremd) in feeling, this article examines the distinction between the modes of feeling outlined in Ágnes Heller’s A Theory of Feelings (1981): 1. to feel something identifiable, and 2. to feel something not (yet) identifiable. By analyzing the processual, formative, and transformative aspects of culture of emotions (Gefühlskultur), the process of the concretization of feelings through Heller’s theoretical insights become clear. The article elucidates that a responsive and transformative phenomenology of emotion from an intercultural perspective has the task of taking both the two distinguishable modes of emotion and the diversity of emotion cultures into account. This method involves »articulated listening« to feelings while engaging with something foreign – a process that can accompany any transformation of the articulation of feelings and thus of personal emotional dispositions.

Bernhard Leistle

Begegnung zweier Fremder

Überlegungen zum Verhältnis zwischen Bernhard Waldenfels’ Phänomenologie und interkultureller Philosophie

Taking Waldenfels’ philosophy as point of departure, I characterize the relationship between his thinking and the project of intercultural philosophy as defined by mutual otherness in Waldenfels’ sense. Whereas clear indications of proximity and compatibility can de detected in Waldenfels (in particular the fundamental importance assigned to the phenomenon of interculturality), other basic motifs of his thinking, like that of a »preference for ownness« and of the responsivity of experience, have a distancing effect. To bring out this ambivalence more clearly, I use Rolf Elberfeld’s »transformative phenomenology« as foil of comparison, a program for open-ended intercultural philosophizing which is based on Waldenfels in certain respects and criticizes him in others. In conclusion, the relationship between Waldenfels’ phenomenology and intercultural philosophy eludes a unifying synthesis; as »alien« (fremd) to each other, they provoke the other to responding creatively in ways that cannot be predetermined.

Barbara Nieder

Von der Brüchigkeit des Begegnens

Martin Mühlich

Spannungsfeld Atmung.
Überlegungen zu einem alltäglichen, leibkörperlichen Phänomen

Cornelia Brandstötter-Gugg

Erziehung als Aneignung, Enteignung oder als Response