Intercultural Hermeneutics

The term "intercultural hermeneutics " describes both theories of a scientific methodology of understanding others as well as the question of the conditions of human understanding, especially in intercultural concepts. The term is used in different shades in different disciplines such as literary studies , philosophy or intercultural theology .

Historical summary

The endeavor to translate something, to clarify a meaning, has been inherent in hermeneutics from the very beginning. Traditionally it was more a method of text exegesis , but in the 20th century it turns more philosophically - ontologically towards the more fundamental questions of understanding . Since 1980 at the latest, the preoccupation with interculturality has been widespread in most human sciences . Increased engagement with cultural systems means there is an increased need for reflection on the limits and possibilities of understanding.
Depending on the accentuation of the term, intercultural hermeneutics can denote a text-hermeneutic approach in literary studies, intercultural German studies or comparative studies ; a political or a philosophical project of intercultural understanding. The meaning of the term differs mainly in its distance from the original meaning, so it either puts more emphasis on methodology and interpretation or the fundamentals and conditions of understanding in general. For philosophy, for example, hermeneutics is a separate discipline today, which deals with both methods of scientific interpretation and the conditions of human understanding. The works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Wilhelm Dilthey represent a joint development stage, both in terms of text interpretation and in terms of the philosophical approach .

Stages of concept development

Information about the different meanings of the term "intercultural hermeneutics" gives a look at the stages of development of the term hermeneutics. The meaning of the term “hermeneutics” has changed significantly, and its use is not uniform even within individual disciplines today. Originally, the term referred to the carrying of a “context of meaning from one world to another” - not yet in a methodical manner, but dogmatically instructing; for example in the sacred area in the form of authoritarian expressions of will. Little has been preserved of the original meaning in the modern understanding of the term. The normative nature of the concept of hermeneutics survived only in the legal interpretation.

In modern times there has been a decisive change in the meaning of the term. The Reformation strives for a return to the “letter” of the Holy Scriptures and is directed against an allegorical interpretation. This led to a new methodological awareness that wants to be objective and free from subjective arbitrariness.

Dilthey described his project as an attempt to justify the general validity of knowledge in the humanities in analogy to the claim to objectivity of the natural sciences . He redefines hermeneutics as a universal method of interpreting the social, historical and psychological world.

Heidegger has reached the point at which the concept, understood as an instrumentalist method, turns into the ontological. Heidegger then interprets understanding as the basic movement of human existence, not as any behavior of human thinking among others.

After all, for Gadamer, language is the primary, immediate, and universal medium of understanding.
There are currently at least three uses of the term “hermeneutics” in concepts that deal with the problem of understanding other people's expressions of life, which refers to their different directions of questioning.

1. The methodological hermeneutics based on Friedrich Schleiermacher , which focuses on the "how" of understanding foreign utterances and at the same time aims at rules of interpretation.
2. Dilthey's “philosophical hermeneutics”, which is primarily aimed at the analysis and justification of the conditions of understanding.
3. Heidegger's “hermeneutics of facticity”, which is self-explanatory.

What is hermeneutic understanding?

Dilthey finds the foundation of humanistic objectivity in the intersubjective process of understanding. In the interpretation or interpretation of hermeneutics, the subjectivity of the interpreter meets intersubjectively observable - linguistic and thus intersubjectively objectified - rules of interpretation. Hermeneutics as an art of interpretation describes its - not necessarily written - objects linguistically and thereby objectifies them, making them accessible in the first place. The limits and conditions of such a project of making accessible are given very differently.

Demarcation

Understanding foreign cultures was first a topic of ethnology or ethnology or cultural anthropology. Ethnology captures a foreign culture from its own subjective perspective. As Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik notes, this subjectivity can never be fully grasped because this would require complete immersion, and the foreign consciousness would have to be nothing else or nothing more than its objectified alienations. The xenology is not primarily a hermeneutic-phenomenological science, it is not so much a representation understanding of foreign cultures as to the processing of the subject area in the context of political science . Their goal is not understanding, but communication in the political science sense. Philosophical hermeneutics is originally a theory of text exegesis that was also extended to foreign cultural texts and then also to the non-linguistic area. The intercultural philosophy combines theoretical and practical issues. It mainly deals with the tension between philosophical universality on the one hand and cultural identities on the other. Intercultural philosophy also raises the question of how reliably and with what means philosophical thinking that comes from a different culture or tradition can be grasped and needs intercultural hermeneutics as a general theory of understanding foreign cultural thinking. The conceptions of intercultural hermeneutics cannot always be clearly assigned to a subject, they often arise in an interdisciplinary context.

Hermeneutics in Dilthey and Gadamer

In the context of Dilthey's attempt to objectify the fundamentals of the humanities based on the general validity of the natural sciences, the term “understanding” is central. This basic principle of all humanities at Dilthey means the "empirical knowledge of the totality of human expressions of life". “Understanding” is the term used by Dilthey and others to describe the specific way of knowing the humanities, in contrast to natural science, which “explains”. Both the humanities and the natural sciences must gain general knowledge from experience. For Dilthey, the underlying problem is that of justifying the generality (objectivity) of empirical knowledge in both branches of science. The term induction short is important for solving this problem . The induction conclusion deduces from individual cases to a given life context, through continuous examination the knowledge of the humanities gains sufficient probability to be valid. Dilthey's conception is strongly linked to language as a “universal objectification medium” through which all possible objectifications can be opened up. However, his subject is a mere text hermeneutics because permanent fixation is a prerequisite for his concept of "general validity". For Dilthey, understanding is an act of transference, of putting “one's own self into a given epitome of expressions of life”. The question therefore arises as to how understanding foreign cultures can be possible with Dilthey, or where the limit of cognitive ability lies in this conception. For R. Knüppel, with Dilthey what “falls outside of one's own horizon of experience no longer has a point of comparison” for understanding. Understanding is primarily tied to individual standpoints, what exactly this limitation exists and to what extent Dilthey's claim opposes intersubjective validity or intercultural understanding in general is not clear according to T. Göller. It is possible that this is also a reference to the aporia implied in the hermeneutic circular theorem . In his approach of "philosophical hermeneutics", Gadamer no longer addresses a method of humanities or does not set up a theory of interpretation, but rather a kind of ontological deepening of the project. The "Dasein structure of Dasein" should - following Heidegger temporally and historically determined - be treated in relation to the historical tradition . Understanding is understood here as a human sensory experience and a historical process. It is not primarily a project of a method of understanding, but rather "liberated" from the concept of objectivity in science, the hermeneutics should "do justice to the historicity of understanding". The aim is not general scientific validity, but the acquisition of "insights" and the experience of "truths". Gadamer wants to clarify the conditions of understanding and show the "universality of understanding" for all human sensory performances. In “Truth and Method” he describes his project as an approach to show the limits of historical interpretation and to restore legitimacy to what he calls a “dogmatic interpretation”. He starts with an analogy to art because this area of ​​experience is always dogmatic for him to a certain extent. He describes understanding in art as "acknowledging and letting it count", and he quotes E. Staiger : "understanding what takes hold of us". For Gadamer, the experience of the " truth " with which we have to deal in art exceeds the possibility of methodical knowledge in principle. He states something similar for the humanities, in which the respective traditions must both be objects of research and “come to speak in their truth”. For Gadamer, tradition is primarily linguistic and writing is ultimately the “abstract ideality” of language. Therefore, for him, the meaning of a recording is repeatable, understandable. The interpreter brings his own horizon into the process of understanding, contrasts it with the text as a possibility or opinion. A kind of dialogue then leads to a merging of the horizon, a shift in the horizon of the understanding consciousness. The parallel coexistence of past and present in the text, which gives access to tradition through the text, enables Gadamer to understand.

The hermeneutic circle

In his conception, Gadamer addresses, on the one hand, the lack of freedom from prejudice in understanding, which, for him, legitimizes the humanities' claim to "humane" meaning. Belonging to a tradition enables hermeneutical understanding in the first place; For Gadamer, a central condition of understanding is to move in a common "dimension of meaning". The aim of the understanding is "agreement on the matter"; According to Gadamer, the task of hermeneutics was always to "restore the disrupted agreement". He also refers to the traditional theorem of the hermeneutic circle , albeit in a variant ontologically adapted to Heidegger. On the other hand, in Gadamer's conception, an “attunement” of the details to the whole is decisive for the success of understanding. In the process of understanding, the understanding of meaning expands in the movement of the parts to the whole and vice versa, that is, as "the interplay of the movement of the tradition and the movement of the interpreter". Anticipation of meaning as a possibility arises here only through common tradition; this also results in the possibility of anticipating what is to be understood through “having to do with the same thing”. Gadamer calls this common basis of “prejudices” “tradition”.

On the problem of understanding from traditional contexts

If the horizons of understanding are understood as the material accessible to appropriation , in view of the primacy of language and the fundamental role of tradition in Gadamer's work, a central and often criticized difficulty of this approach becomes clear: Written tradition cannot be expected in every case. It is true that Gadamer allows the humanities that deal with the non-linguistic past to “read” the “linguistic potential” of the remains of this past. As Heinz Kimmerle criticizes, with the universality of his hermeneutics and the insistence on the primacy of language, Gadamer also closes it off at the same time as opening up to other cultures and philosophies.

If the individual “horizons of understanding” are understood purely as what has become culturally , then, due to the relative independence of the various traditional contexts, an understanding outside of one's own tradition seems problematic in Gadamer's conception. If only because the priority of one's own tradition for the understanding consciousness means that the other, foreign is already perceived as mediated. Two radical positions can be derived from Gadamer: "Either he understands his universal hermeneutics, because it historically integrates the foreign into one's own, or the foreign escapes any possibility of understanding it at all." In the first case, this would be tantamount to imposing a foreign cultural perspective. in the second case there is a culturally relativistic position that fundamentally excludes mutual understanding. B. was emphasized by currents following the linguistic turn .

The problem of the Archimedean point or the justification of intersubjective understanding

There is no "Archimedean point" for hermeneutics , rather it has always been integrated into cultural and linguistic conditions. The justification of an intersubjective or intercultural understanding is therefore argued differently; in older hermeneutics, e.g. B. Wilhelm Dilthey about essentialistically interpreted anthropological constants. A similar conception can be found in a weaker form in Mall, who postulates "interculturally valid anthropologic overlapings".

In more recent cognitive science approaches, for example in Holstein, forms of cognitive universals are used.

The philosophical hermeneutics in Martin Heidegger , and, as it was taken up by Hans-Georg Gadamer , is the philosophical current that relates most strongly to inner reflection on gaining knowledge. Central to this philosophical hermeneutics is that every understanding starts from a constitutive prior knowledge. This becomes a problem, especially in an intercultural context. In philosophical hermeneutics, however, the problem of the time lag to a tradition is more central than the cultural difference. For classical text hermeneutics up into the twentieth century, the subject of which has always been intellectual works from a culturally and temporally distant context, reflection on the historical and cultural framework of the text has been a topic since the nineteenth century.

Intercultural text hermeneutics

Since the early seventies, the examination of questions of interculturality has also gained in importance within modern literary studies (both in national literary studies and in comparative studies ); so established z. B. an own intercultural German studies, also beyond the German-speaking area. It deals, for example, with the question of the culture-specific understanding of literary texts, according to which a broader interpretation base is available for texts if they are viewed not only from the perspective of the original culture, but also from a foreign culture.

In addition, the question is asked to what extent literary interpretation or understanding can contribute to a deeper understanding of a foreign culture. The main medium of this intercultural approach to understanding is literature, but intercultural text hermeneutics is also based on the question of how foreign texts can be understood at all, so here too there is a critical examination of hermeneutics in general and also of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics in particular. There are also different and diverging positions within intercultural German studies.

When examining intercultural reception, a distinction is made between B. Alois Wierlacher between cultural external and internal perspectives as two equally legitimate interpretative approaches. For him, the foreign and his own are relational categories that are experienced differently depending on the cultural perspective. Gadamer's endeavor to dissolve the foreign in one's own cannot be the goal for Wierlacher; rather, he strives for a “hermeneutics of complementary optics” that allows the alien and the own to apply equally. It is about “becoming familiar at a distance” in the sense of Helmuth Plessner , according to which the other is seen as the other and the alien at the same time.

Also Eberhard Scheiffele opposes the Gadamersche concept of understanding the "fusion of horizons". For him, neither assimilation nor identification nor confrontation is an adequate approach to foreign cultures. He emphasizes interculturality as togetherness, not as between and, above all, mutual understanding through “separation”. His “dialectic between affinity and detachment” aims to make the foreign accessible by looking at one's own from the perspective of the foreign.

Dietrich Krusche's model of "disjointed interpreting" distinguishes between text passages that require an interpretation within the original cultural context of a text and spaces that allow readings that go beyond the original context.

Horst Steinmetz, on the other hand, advocates the more radical thesis of the priority of the context of interpretation over the cultural background of the work. The text is viewed as the object of interpretation to be processed; the correctness of the interpretation is not necessarily determined by the inherent cultural background of the text, but by the meaningful conveyance of the text and context.

Some current trends in intercultural and comparative philosophy

"Intercultural Philosophy": The "Polylogue" by Franz Martin Wimmer

For Franz Martin Wimmer philosophy is in principle a project in which the claim to be intelligible regardless of culture is inherent; in their universal claim to validity and in the fundamental self-image of not wanting to be bound by tradition or religion. Methodically, Wimmer calls for a “ polylog of traditions” for intercultural philosophizing , that is, conversations with as many voices as possible. Only when the influence of a multitude of different traditions and cultures on one another is as extensive as possible is this level of the “polylogue” reached. A corresponding hermeneutics must be open, that is, guided by mutual interest; Understanding others must not lead to appropriating appropriation. In the process of encounter, it is not enough to simply make the other culture audible; it is also necessary to reflect on its justification and justification. Therefore Wimmer points out the importance of an intensified examination of the transcultural validity of logical laws.

"Intercultural Philosophy": Ram Adhar Malls "Analogical Hermeneutics"

For Ram Adhar Mall, a philosophy of hermeneutics must inevitably contain elements that are not universally a priori. Above all, it is necessary that she is aware of her own inevitable cultural bondage. It must be made clear that one cannot leave one's own place of understanding; but precisely for this reason it must by no means be set absolutely. Mall calls his approach "non-reductive" or "analogical hermeneutics"; It must be avoided that the foreign loses its independence and is only perceived by what is one's own. This form of incorporation in understanding is "always associated with some form of violence". The hermeneutic circle cannot be avoided for Mall, but it must by no means be dogmatic.

Mall's understanding of "understanding" in this context corresponds to a "weak consensualism" (according to N. Rescher ), according to which "consensus is an ideal that can be realized, but must not be hypostatized." Mall describes the unity idea as a regulative idea derived from the fundamental The need for mediation comes and represents a moral obligation.

Mall distinguishes three models of hermeneutics, of which only the third seems suitable as a program of intercultural hermeneutics or philosophy:

1. Identity model The
   unknown should be understood through the familiar. Mall criticizes the underlying concept of this model of a “total commensurability” of all cultures, religions and philosophies. Understanding of culture would have its limit where what is one's own, i.e. one's own culture, ends. For Mall, this concept takes itself ad absurdum, because the monolithic entities that are postulated here, e.g. B. “the Christian” as such, who can only be understood by “the Christian”, does not exist.
2. Hermeneutics of Difference
   This (postmodern) model of understanding, on the other hand, postulates total cultural incommensurability, which equally excludes intercultural understanding.
3. Analogical Hermeneutics
   Mall is based on areas of cultural overlap. These can affect the most diverse areas from biological-anthropological to political. The areas of overlap are not to be understood ontologically, but rather describe "the similarities to be achieved and substantiated on the basis of the empirical ". There must be no privileged conceptual system, but a conceptual concordance must be sought. Transfers can never be congruent, the other can be translated but never fully developed. Mall speaks of a " metonymic transfer."

The phenomenological approach within intercultural philosophy: Bernhard Waldenfels

A central theme in Bernhard Waldenfels' work is the definition of the concept of foreignness . Edmund Husserl's description of the foreign experience as "the accessibility of the originally inaccessible" seems to him suitable for treating the foreign experience as not covered from the start. He distinguishes deprivation of meaning and non-belonging as different forms of foreignness. For Waldenfels, this (relational) foreignness arises from a twofold irritation, on the one hand from social foreignness (expectation of equal treatment) and on the other hand from cultural foreignness (expectation of a valid order of reality). If understanding others - as is often the case in critical ethnology - is read as appropriating appropriation, then for Waldenfels this is a category error; the increase in knowledge about something only reduces the cultural, but not the social, foreignness.

Waldenfels tries to prevent the foreign from being reduced to what is simply not yet known by emphasizing the “incomparability of the foreign experience”, which defies comparison. The object in the foreign experience cannot be detached from its context, the order of discourse. Husserl's horizons of meaning reach their limits where foreignness is experienced as inaccessibility, as the “impossibility of one's own possibility”. Waldenfels divides the lifeworld into home and foreign. He interprets the assumption that all human utterances are understandable in principle as an overestimation of the possibilities of understanding, the postulate of the universal potential for understanding as a protective mechanism against the foreign. For him, strangeness is not “beyond one's own possibilities”, but rather an irritation of one's own order, something “extraordinary”.

Waldenfels speaks of an intertwining of what is one's own and what is foreign, there is always what is own in what is foreign and what is foreign in what is own, but both areas can never be brought completely into line. Strangeness is already inscribed in the peculiarity of answering to a strange - that is, from outside - question. For Waldenfels, interculturality is an inherent moment in the world of life as a cultural world, which per se is part of the foreign and domestic world.

Cultural relativistic comparative approaches from dealing with Chinese philosophy: Lutz Geldsetzer

Lutz Geldsetzer deals with euro and sinocentrisms in a comparative and philosophical way . Like Mall, he assumes that “centrisms” are necessary conditions for intercultural encounters, since every understanding is necessarily preceded by certain prejudices. Money setter compares z. B. the history of ideas and formal aspects or etymologies of equivalent terms used in Chinese and Occidental philosophy and philosophy history . Finally, he pleads for a differentiated conceptual awareness in dealing with the other culture, but without forgetting that there are enough similarities between the two philosophical traditions.

Approaches from investigations and codifications of African philosophy

Heinz Kimmerle examines the possibilities and limits of the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer style in relation to interculturality. He mentions two important aspects of Gadamer's conception:

1. the emphasis on the openness and incompleteness of understanding. With Gadamer, understanding cannot be complete, without understanding being restricted at the same time, because it can be disposed of.

On the other hand, Kimmerle emphasizes the priority of the hermeneutic question in Gadamer: the question has always been asked in the form of the other in tradition. Kimmerle describes both aspects, the incompleteness of understanding and the priority of the hermeneutic question, as prerequisites for understanding.

In addition, he mentions a “method of listening” as the third condition. He criticizes Gadamer's conception of "fertile prejudices". For Kimmerle, prejudices cannot be profitably "jeopardized", but can only be dispelled.

Kimmerle also criticizes Gadamer's optimism of understanding. Gadamer recognizes linguistic potential even in "pre-linguistic history"; Linguistics, however, as a universal "medium of hermeneutic experience" also guarantees universal understanding, which for Kimmerle is not tenable as a claim of intercultural hermeneutics. In dealing with African philosophy and in particular the analysis of the Western understanding of African philosophy, Kimmerle emphasizes a "dialogical approach". The development of a foreign philosophy is always guided by certain questions and presupposed contexts of argumentation, therefore "listening" for Kimmerle is the central element of the dialogue, under no circumstances should ready-made answers to the questions asked be expected; the minimum condition of willingness to listen is at the same time the maximum of openness that Kimmerle can afford in the current situation.

Approaches from comparative studies on Spanish and Latin American philosophy.

Raimon Panikkar

Raimon Panikkar points out that monoculturalisms can be represented very subtly, e.g. B. in relation to the concept of reason in modern natural sciences. According to Panikkar, these call for a universal, i.e. unique, reason and ignore the fact that this “general” reason also has a cultural origin and background. Panikkar replaces the more common term "culture" with " myth ", which means "rites, customs, opinions," of a people at a particular epoch. Panikkar denies the existence of cultural universals, that is, certain values ​​specific to all cultures. For him, “culture” is not an object like any other, because we have always moved within it. Culture is already the basis from which the objective world is grasped. Certain “human invariants” such as eating, sleeping etc. are common to all people, but the concrete way in which they are lived and experienced is again both culture-dependent and individually different. The insight that people in other cultures who live with other “myths” also have a full life is what leads Panikkar to interculturality. For him, however, “multiculturalism” is the absolute opposite: on the one hand, it is impossible; one's own culture always precedes experience with other cultures. A “pluriculturalism”, a coexistence of different worldviews without mutual contact, would be possible. Coexistence of cultures in their obvious differences, however, is obviously not possible in today's world. Panikkar states a factual incompatibility of cultures, less because they are incommensurable in themselves, but because they are of different strengths and cannot meet at eye level. Multiculturalism is not formal, but impossible because of the factual technological dominance of the western world.

Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, Hermeneutics of Strangers

Raúl Fornet y Betancourt deals with the intercultural-hermeneutical question from a philosophical-political perspective. He expressly draws attention to the use of a hermeneutic term that goes back to the ancient, before the modern turn. Fornet-Betancourt particularly emphasizes the etymologically original aspect of "translation". The starting point of his hermeneutics of the foreign is the basic insight that translation is a condition for understanding. In turn, he sees translation as a collective task in the sense of the translation community, e.g. B. from Toledo in the 11th u. 12th century. There the translating working groups were also life communities, the other was not an object, he was not translated, but functioned as a subject, as a co-translator. The stranger can also appear as a self-interpreter. This approach is political insofar as it calls for a policy of foreigners that improves our everyday dealings with foreigners. Fornet-Betancourt refers to the concept of the intercultural society, which is formed through the participation of its members, in contrast to a multicultural society, which promotes the preservation of separate diversity. This proposal for an interculturally motivated policy would not correspond to a leading culture , which would amount to the demand for adaptation to a majority culture , but for Fornet-Betancourt, on the contrary, it is about the intercultural transformation of the majority culture .

Linguistic-structuralistic and general cross-cultural approach: The intra- and intercultural hermeneutics in Elmar Holenstein

Elmar Holenstein distinguishes common intercultural theses into “platonic” and “romantic” . “Platonic” characterizes the thesis that states that individual cultures are by and large confronted with the same issues and problems and only their expression differs culturally. So if you disregard the various terms and return to “the things themselves”, communication is possible. The romantic thesis, on the other hand, postulates an indissoluble entanglement of meaning and expression as well as of text and context of a speech. Since one cannot be appropriated without the other, the gap between the individual cultural traditions becomes insurmountable; Translations from one form of life into the other seem hardly possible. Holenstein's hypothesis of a possible synthesis of both positions postulates not only the historically conditioned peculiarities of cultures but also common developmental characteristics. The ability to change perspectives - according to Holenstein actually already existing intraculturally - represents a basis that enables understanding beyond one's own cultural area.

Foundation of a hermeneutics of understanding others in the phenomenology of A. Schütz

Even Alfred Schutz phenomenological method of foundation of understanding the self in understanding can be read through the text hermeneutics addition, as a hermeneutics of understanding the. The question of whether the other belongs to their own or a foreign culture does not primarily arise for them. Schütz tries to ground the understanding of others in constitutional theory in self-understanding. He does this from the perspective of social science ; there the problem of interpreting foreign utterances arises in a specific way: their subject always interprets itself and expresses this interpretation communicatively. Scientific interpretation of “cultural products or structures” (both actions and artifacts) requires the separation of the perspectives “self” and “external interpretation”. This is where Schütz comes in and calls for reflection on the methodological consequences of this division into acting I on the one hand and interpreting I on the other. In doing so, Schütz would like to "trace back cultural objectivations and forms of social action to the 'meaning-setting and understanding processes of those acting in the social world' from which they are constituted". This constitution came about, both in meaningful own behavior and in interpretive processes of other people's behavior. In order to trace the constitution of meaning structures in their genesis, it is necessary for Schütz to trace them back to their “basic fact”. This basic fact of “understanding” or “meaning” - following on from the trend-setting phenomenological tradition of Husserl or “permanence” from Henri Bergson - is for Schütz in an “experience layer” that can only be accessed through reflection in the form of strict philosophical self-determination. Based on the determination of the meaning that constitutes itself in the isolated self in its inner time consciousness, Schütz tries to understand the “world of experience of the self”; as a world of experience constituted by past events. Second, he wants to show the interpretation schemes with which the ego fits into this world of experience, i.e. interprets itself. Only now does Schütz go from understanding oneself to understanding others, referring to the Husserlian concept of "natural world view". Understanding others is based on the "external interpretation". This is based on the assumption of the ego that each, including the other, strange ego carries out its conscious experiences in the same way. External design for Schütz is analogous to in-house design. This is possible through fictitious attribution of the motives for action, whereby Schütz already presupposes the intersubjective relation within the "natural attitude".

Hans Köchler's foundation of a hermeneutic "Civilisational Dialogue"

Hans Köchler assumes that there is no neutral, value-free basis for a cultural dialogue. Every interaction is preceded by a certain cultural self-image of those involved. For Köchler, communication is an expression of the “lifeworld” in the Husserlian sense. This becomes problematic if, for example, the western world makes demands for cultural universality. Köchler also locates intellectual demands for hegemony, for example in concepts such as Nietzsche's will to power . For Köchler, however, claims to control and ownership have nothing to do with “being in the world” in the Heideggerian sense. Globalization leads to a radical alienation from “ being ”, whereby the claim to exclusivity not only has a negative effect on the weaker discourse partners, but also on the prevailing community. According to Köchler, the ideological premises of communication must be exposed and a “dialectic of self-understanding” must be sought. Culture is the underlying basis of the perception of where language occurs. Köchler's dialectic of cultural self-image goes into this. Köchler differentiates between the descriptive and normative components of the self-image of a culture or “cultural era”: Self-image begins with the statement “that's how we are”, followed by practical implementation, self-realization. According to A. Oberpranchter, the problem underlying the understanding of culture is not diversity per se, but has to be traced back to the lack of responsible self-image, which in turn is a result of confusing the two underlying components of self-image. The dialogue cannot take place if a dialogue partner already puts his unreflected values ​​before the process of understanding; if, for example, political hegemony is confused with a cultural lead. A prerequisite for a responsible discourse is therefore first of all a critical questioning of one's perspective on one's own cultural background. Based on Hegel's dialectic of self-confidence , contact with foreign cultures is a necessary condition for the formation of cultural self-image. A limitation of understanding through a false cultural self-understanding according to Köchler can be overcome through tolerance and mutual respect, understood in the sense of a metanorm of the Kantian ethics .

literature

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Footnotes

1. ^ Fornet-Betancourt 2002. p. 52.
2. ^ Robert Holub: Reader-Oriented Theories of Interpretation. Hermeneutics. In: Raman Selden (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol. 8. From Formalism to Poststructuralism. 2008, p. 255.
3. ↑ Schaffers 2003, p. 354.
4. ↑ Fornet-Betancourt 2002, p. 52ff.
5. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Hermeneutics. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. P. 1063.
6. ↑ Göller 2000, pp. 20ff.
7. ↑ John Durham Peters, Samuel McCormic: Hermeneutics. In: The International Encyclopedia of Communication. Wolfgang Donsbach (Ed.). Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Blackwell Reference Online
8. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Hermeneutics. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. HWPh Volume 3, p. 1067.
9. ↑ Husuan-Erh Chen: hermeneutics between its own tradition and foreign culture . On the problem of the foreign in the hermeneutic theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Eric Donald Hirsch. 2008, p. 4f.
10. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 25.
11. ↑ Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik: Ethnology - Xenology - Intercultural Philosophy. In: Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik: Understanding and understanding. 2002, p. 18ff.
12. ↑ Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik: Ethnology - Xenology - Intercultural Philosophy. In: Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik: Understanding and understanding. 2002, p. 20ff.
13. ↑ Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik: Ethnology - Xenology - Intercultural Philosophy. In: Wolfdietrich Schmied Kowarzik: Understanding and understanding. 2002, p. 22f.
14. ↑ Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik: Ethnology - Xenology - Intercultural Philosophy. In: Wolfdietrich Schmied Kowarzik: Understanding and understanding. 2002, p. 9.
15. ^ Franz Martin Wimmer: Intercultural Philosophy . An introduction. 2004, p. 137.
16. ↑ Göller 2000, pp. 20ff.
17. ↑ Göller 2000, pp. 30f.
18. ↑ Göller 2002, p. 32ff.
19. ↑ Knüppel quoted from: Göller 2002, p. 35.
20. ↑ Göller 2002, p. 35.
21. ↑ Göller 2000. 38.
22. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 43.
23. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 45.
24. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 44.
25. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Hermeneutics. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. P. 10.620.
26. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method. Basic features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 1960, p. XV.
27. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method. Basic features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 1960, p. 370.
28. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method. Basic features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 1960, p. 366ff.
29. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method. Basic features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 1960, p. 465.
30. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 46ff.
31. ↑ Heinz Kimmerle: Understanding foreign cultures and intercultural philosophical practice. In: Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (Hrsg.): Understanding and understanding . Ethnology, xenology, intercultural philosophy. 2002, p. 294.
32. ↑ Hammerschmidt 1997, p. 128.
33. ↑ Hammerschmidt 1987, p. 130.
34. ↑ Pasternack 1998, p. 39.
35. ↑ Pasternack 1998, p. 55. FN7.
36. ↑ Kogge 2002, p. 26f.
37. ↑ Kogge 2002, p. 27.
38. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 67.
39. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 67ff.
40. ↑ Hammerschmidt 1997, p. 12.
41. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 67ff.
42. ↑ Hammerschmidt 1997, p. 12.
43. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 67ff.
44. ↑ Göller 2002, p. 80.
45. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 87.
46. ^ Mall quoted from: Thomas Göller: Kulturverlook. Basic problems of an epistemological theory of culturality and cultural knowledge. 2000, p. 87.
47. ↑ RA Mall: Anders understanding is not false understanding. The requirement for intercultural understanding. In: Understanding and Understanding. Ethnology, xenology, intercultural philosophy. 2002, p. 282.
48. ^ RA Mall: Unity in the face of diversity. In: Notger Schneider, RA Mall, Dieter Lohmar (Ed.). Unity and diversity. Heinz Kimmerle, RA Mall (series publisher):. Understanding the cultures. Studies on Intercultural Philosophy, Volume 9. 1998, p. 3.
49. ^ Thomas Göller: Understanding of culture. Basic problems of an epistemological theory of culturality and cultural knowledge. 2000, p. 89.
50. ^ Thomas Göller: Understanding of culture. Basic problems of an epistemological theory of culturality and cultural knowledge. 2000, p. 89.
51. ↑ RA Mall: Anders understanding is not false understanding. The requirement for intercultural understanding. In: Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (Hrsg.): Understanding and understanding. Ethnology, xenology, intercultural philosophy. 2002, p. 279.
52. ↑ Waldenfels 1998, p. 13ff.
53. ↑ Waldenfels 1998, p. 16.
54. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 90, FN 122.
55. ↑ Waldenfels 1998, p. 13ff.
56. ↑ Waldenfels 1993, p. 53.
57. ↑ Waldenfels 1998, p. 13ff.
58. ↑ Waldenfels 1993, p. 56.
59. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 76.
60. ↑ Pohl 1999. S. XVI.
61. ↑ Pohl 1999, pp. 287-303.
62. ↑ Kimmerle 2002, pp. 290ff.
63. ↑ Kimmerle 1993, p. 159.
64. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 76.
65. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 81 FN 98.
66. ↑ Panikkar [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , (accessed July 8, 2010)  
67. ↑ Fornet-Betancourt 2002, p. 49.
68. ↑ Fornet-Betancourt 2002, p. 52ff.
69. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 77.
70. ↑ Holstein 1998. 1998, pp. 257-273.
71. ↑ Knoblauch 1995, p. 12.
72. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 113.
73. ↑ Knoblauch 1995, p. 10.
74. ↑ Göller 2000, pp. 103-106.
75. ↑ Göller 2000, p. 113.
76. ↑ Oberpranchter 2007, p. 150.
77. ↑ Oberpranchter 2007, p. 151.
78. ↑ Oberpranchter 2007, p. 151.
79. ↑ Oberpranchter 2007, p. 152.
80. ↑ Oberpranchter 2007, p. 153 f.
81. ↑ Oberpranchter 2007, p. 156.
82. ↑ CV Simplice Agossavi