Interkulturell, transkulturell, cross-cultural - warum wir alle drei Begriffe brauchen

In my paper I will analyze and highlight the distinctions between the three mentioned approaches, and show how they should complement each other. Combining the three approaches necessitates philosophical understanding to open up to interdisciplinarity, working together with researchers and making use of research from the humanities and the sciences. Finally the intercultural approach should be enriched by making more explicit the workings of power in dialogue – making use of insights from critical and postcolonial theory.
The intercultural approach in philosophy (first introduced by thinkers such as Kimmerle and Mall), inspired by hermeneutics and deconstruction, put the dialogical character of philosophical understanding in the spotlight – the need for thinkers from different cultural traditions to listen to each other and let their concepts be changed in the process of dialogue. Dialogue presupposes the possibility of intercultural understanding – and therefore also transculturality – the ability for human beings to understand their questions as shared or common ones. Intercultural dialogue should progress slowly, however, to prevent repeating hegemonic knowledge systems under the cloak of a fusion of horizons. It should describe and address explicitly the historical forces of power play and oppression in human societies – following thinkers such as Foucault and Fanon. Finally intercultural philosophy should also make use of and promote the humble and hard work of cross-cultural research in the humanities and the sciences to undergird its striving for a more inclusive understanding of the world. This cross-cultural approach was introduced by Cheich Anta Diop, whose Afrocentric research into the transference of culture and language, has become a serious research paradigm in a time that recognizes the need of multi-centeredness to reach a mature knowledge of the place of human beings in the world.