This paper critically examines the challenges and methodological problems in Western interpretations of Confucianism and Chinese philosophy in general. It argues that many such studies are shaped by unreflective Western epistemological assumptions, rooted in historically specific paradigms and power relations. To overcome these limitations, the author advocates for a transcultural methodological framework that problematizes the alleged incommensurability of culturally conditioned worldviews and seeks to transcend the binary oppositions of “East” and “West”. The paper discusses the persistence of Orientalist and Eurocentric tendencies in Sinology and the emergence of reverse Orientalism within contemporary Chinese scholarship. It contends that both discourses are bound to unequal global power structures and that a genuine understanding of Confucian philosophy requires a dialectical approach that critically reflects on these asymmetries while avoiding the pitfalls of cultural relativism and essentialism. The study concludes that transcultural philosophy offers the most promising framework for reinterpreting Confucianism as a dynamic part of global philosophical discourse and as a potential contributor to a more inclusive and humane world.
This paper examines how theoretical and ideological frameworks shape the interpretation of African and African American novels within a context marked by tensions among competing critical approaches. The central problem lies in the limitations of unilateral readings, whether Eurocentric or Afrocentric, formalist or con...
This essay explores the epistemic dynamics of translation and intellectual production in the Global South, arguing that the intellectual’s lived condition can itself serve as a productive site for theory. Taking as a point of departure Adonis’s An Introduction to Arabic Poetics (1990), the essay considers how Western...
African universities are replicas of Western universities. They are local instantiations of a dominant academic model based on a Eurocentric epistemic canon, a canon that attributes truth only to the Western ways of knowledge production; a canon that disregards other epistemic traditions. This canon tries to portray co...
N. Wamba, R. Chetty· RESUME | Revue d’Enquêtes &a...· 0 citations
Over the past two decades, calls for Global, post-Western and relational reincarnations of International Relations (IR) have elevated culture, civilization and cosmology as resources for decentring Eurocentric canons and pluralizing theoretical vocabulary. Culture, however, is not self-explanatory. It is better underst...
Emilian R. Kavalski, Maximilian Mayer· Pluriversal International Re...· 0 citations
This paper looks at the relationships among Japanese Confucianism, Confucian ethics and Confucianism as philosophy. It examines this relationship from three different angles: first, by examining the transformation of Japanese Confucianism into “Chinese philosophy”, which helped facilitate the Japanese national moralit...
This article critically examines the predominance of epistemologies from the Global North in defining and assessing women’s empowerment in African contexts. It argues that mainstream frameworks, particularly those focused on individualistic models and economic participation rates, often fail to capture Africa’s socio p...
Rosemary Achiaa Asamoah, J. Jayawickrama· Global Geopolitics· 0 citations
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