Suchergebnisse

Taking a cue from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who is widely known as "the first American public intellectual," this essay is an attempt to define the critical function of comparative political philosophy in today's world of multiculturalism in the era of globalization which is in dire need of dialogue on a global scale. In the first place, Western modernity has overlooked and marginalized the non-West, the phenomenon of which is called Eurocentrism. All ethnocentrisms, including Eurocentrism, are myopic and have no place in the globalizing world of multiculturalism. This essay proposes that Eurocentric universality be replaced by transversality which is consonant with the multiple realities of the changing world. Transversality as a global imaginary allows all kinds of border-crossing and thus blurs traditional disciplinary genres. Thus it is at once intercultural, interspeciesistic, and interdisciplinary. In the second place, the role of comparative political philosophy radically shifts from the individualistic and anthropocentric tradition of "rights talk" to the ethics of responsibility based on the primacy of alterity. If, according to Levinas, ethics is "first philosophy," then responsibility becomes "first ethics."