From comparative studies to hermeneutic cartography of world philosophy

In: Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta: Vestnik of Saint-Petersburg University. Filosofija i konfliktologija = Philosophy and conflict studies, Band 38, Heft 4, S. 473-486

Abstract

The radical change in the status of non-Western philosophical traditions was the trigger for the development of the methodology for studying philosophy between cultures, the revision of the nature of philosophy itself, which is a matter of metaphilosophy. Hermeneutic works appear on the fundamental fabric of philosophical ideas — basic concepts, their relationship to other ways of thinking, considering their potential and alternative productive lines. Thus, the history of comparative philosophy, through its stages, is formed into a single scheme of complementary philosophical activity and a single comprehensive metaphilosophical project. It is revealed through an "archival" approach (exploring single philosophical traditions in parallel), "equivalent" (comparing the existing traditions in the context of analogies and contrasts), and "problem solving" (using many traditions to provide philosophical solutions), and through a comprehensive hermeneutic project of "cartographic" concepts and their possibilities. This constitutes a theory of philosophy that draws on multiple perspectives of the interconnected traditions of East and West, implicitly participating in mapping the underlying eidetic structure on which philosophy does its work, and outlining conceptual possibilities around any idea. There is a need to study the ability of philosophy to form a broader hermeneutic understanding of the field of concept, giving rise to each philosophical problem, comprehended in their strengths and weaknesses and in connection with alternative configurations — under traditions, conditions, periods and cultures A view of global philosophy is formed, which brings us back to the old idea that philosophy stays above pragmatic goals, it takes on the eidetic fabric of ideas of the world — past, present, possible — as an object of a special kind of hermeneutic understanding, including applied problems in a broader speculative frame, that is, cleaned up through a comparison of radically different approaches. It is here, in philosophy as a study of the "structure of ideas themselves", that we will see a multicultural philosophy proving its indispensability.