A Genealogy of European Philosophy in the Context of the Darker Side of Enlightenment

The project presented addresses the question of eurocentrism in philosophy and the historiography of philosophy by drawing on postcolonial and poststructural theory. Europe and philosophy have two things before all in common: both are subjects of a narrative that is both special and peculiar; and that narrative, on the other hand, is special by virtue of its special subjects. This makes one the definiens of the other – at a certain point in history, they even appear to be interchangeable. The other trait shared by Europe and (European) philosophy is their claim to universality. This claim of one tradition alone, however, cannot be upheld any longer. Historical evidence has shown that several birthplaces of philosophy can look back onto very long traditions of practice. Furthermore, the European itself as the subject of history has become questionable in the light of postcolonial theory.

In 1791, just sixty years after Johann Jakob Brucker had for the first time written about a European philosophy in his Kurtzen Fragen zur philosophischen Historie, Dieterich Tiedemann not only exluded any non-European philosophy from the history of philosophy: He explicitly proscribes any mention thereof. Along with this exclusion arose the complete historization of philosophy as an academic discipline in 19th century universities, and the climax of a philosophy of history that gave cause and legitimacy to the brutal colonization of the planet by European powers. Both narratives engage figures of speech that first appear in the construction of a European philosophy. Hence, it represents a hiatus that offers both form and pattern for eurocentrism in philosophy.

The question I would like to pose in this talk is how the shift from a way of categorizing the other from a spacial arrangement to a temporal arrangement as proposed by Walter Mignolo has changed the order of knowledge in a such a way as to make it possible to speak of European philosophy as both the only, and universally valid philosophy. After a thorough explication of the history of eurocentrism in general and in the history of the historiography of scholarship, the claim to hegemony that was founded in the writing of the history of philosophy in early enlightenment will be analyzed by way of discourse analysis. Methodological background for this approach lies in the works of Michel Foucault and Edward Said. The demonstration of how it became possible to speak of European philosophy as the only and universal form of philosophy is not only relevant to the self-conception and practice of philosophy as an academic discipline. It can also contribute to the appreciation and understanding of cultural production in all regions of the world.