Agenda for a South-South Philosophical Dialogue

Abstract

http://dx.doi.org/10.13185/BU2013.17101

The intercultural dialogue that has been developing since the beginning of the21st century as a cultural and political priority should have an interphilosophicalglobal dialogue as its epistemological and ontological foundation.However, given the asymmetric relation between the Global North and theGlobal South, it is necessary that this global dialogue begin with an interphilosophicaldialogue among the world’s post-colonial communities. Thisessay argues that it is imperative for philosophers of the South to come togetherto define and claim for themselves a philosophical practice—generating itstopics and methods from its own historical, socio-economic-political realitiesand traditions—that is critical of and goes beyond the European “I” which, byvirtue of its colonial history, has asserted itself as the universal standard ofhumanity and philosophy. In asserting the particularity of their own traditionsand the creative possibilities of their own situations, dialogues among thephilosophers of the South work towards the realization of a pluriverse, whereeach culture will be in dialogue with all others from the perspective of acommon “similarity,” enabling each to continuously recreate its own analogical“distinction,” and to diffuse itself within a dialogical, reciprocally creative space.