Our philosophy

The Humanities are a product of society. All the sciences are. But the Humanities are more so than other sciences. For they produce the knowledge that societies need to gain clarity in their functioning, to identify and formulate the challenges they face, to determine their limits and potential, and to define the values they should hold and the kind of life they should strive for. They formulate knowledge about the past, present and future on the basis of available concepts and categories. The Humanities are thus part of paradigms in which the desires, hopes, expectations, aspirations, fears, uncertainties, aptitudes and inaptitudes of given societies are inscribed.

The Humanities also produce societies. They produce meaning and the instruments of meaning production. They organize the circulation of knowledge. The knowledge they produce is shared by many people; they structure beliefs, modes of perception, frameworks of representation, affective capacities and interpretive grids... In this way, they participate in the production and reproduction of cultures. They contribute to the construction of connective structures, modes of understanding the world, and common intellectual horizons.

As long as nations, and the states founded on them, still constituted a framework for organizing societies and economies that was considered natural, rooted in history and politically legitimate, it seemed obvious to place the humanities at the service of the nation. Even if the Humanities like to talk about Man in general, and even if their knowledge claims to have universal value, it is clear that they have not gone beyond the horizon of knowledge organized by the nation. It (the nation) remains the framework within which societies reassure themselves of their identities and set themselves apart from other societies. This is how the sciences of the mind and of man have contributed to the construction of the self, the Other, hierarchies, localizations and categorizations.

This is why the Humanities are criticized for being ethnocentric. This criticism is made from two perspectives. Firstly, from a humanist perspective that insists on the uniqueness of Man. From this perspective, the splintering of humanity into several sub-groups - a splintering implied by the nationalist perspective - appears problematic. We cling to the idea of the uniqueness of the human race beyond all diversity, and are therefore less interested in what separates people from each other than in what sets them apart. The emphasis is on what brings them together, on what makes them human, and thus makes them grow. From this perspective, it is assumed that everything depends on intellectual posture, and that it is possible, through intellectual procedures and appropriate concepts, to lift all epistemological blinkers and adopt a transcendental perspective. However, it is doubtful whether it is possible to develop such a perspective that transcends historical, social and even political stakes, conceptions and interests. The second critical perspective on the humanities as ethnocentric is postmodernism. Postmodern thinking calls into question all great narratives, including the Nation. Moreover, in the context of globalization, the nation is considered obsolete. Greater emphasis is placed on notions of fluidity, mobility and the shrinking of time and space. All values still attached to the logic of exclusion and particular identities are considered obsolete. Despite globalization, despite mobility, despite fluidity, no one can claim that the old asymmetries have disappeared, and that the capacity of nations, cultures or religions to serve as poles of identification or instances of appeal has disappeared or is in the process of disappearing.

In my view, the only way to overcome or at least limit ethnocentrism lies in the cooperative production of knowledge and knowledge-generating tools across all barriers. Such cooperation has always existed in Europe. In Europe, there's a long history of knowledge transfer and contact between scientists from different countries. Journals and forums enable personal and intellectual exchanges between scientists. This enables the circulation of ideas and paradigms, the emergence of discussions and the development of common languages.

However, the international field of scientific cooperation functions like other fields. It tends to reproduce and naturalize asymmetries generated by history. As a result, the circulation of knowledge does not generally take the form of exchange, but rather of dissemination. There are powerful centers of knowledge production. The power of these centers is undoubtedly based on the quality of the knowledge they produce, but it is above all based on their ability to make this knowledge accessible to others.

Possession of powerful channels of dissemination ensures a position of power in the production of knowledge and ideas. It is in this sense that critics from the South have spoken of epistemological imperialism.

It so happens that the development of peaceful coexistence between North and South is the greatest challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Following in Frantz Fanon's footsteps, the German philosopher Axel Honneth has identified the problem of recognition as a source of conflict between people and societies in the world today. The structural disparities in the production and circulation of knowledge about man reflect a lack of recognition of one another, of the North by the South. And these disparities necessarily lead to ongoing tensions and conflicts. Moreover, when we consider that the production of knowledge about man is generated by society, and that science provides these societies with intellectual tools to stabilize their self-understanding, it becomes clear that knowledge can aggravate or attenuate conflicts.

Some years ago, a discussion developed among Africanists in Germany about the value and structure of a science of Africa. As part of this discussion, many stressed the need for cooperation with African researchers and institutions. In this context, many were thinking above all of programs relating to development policies, and therefore of aid to these institutions. The deficits and weaknesses of research institutions in Africa are well known, as are the difficulties of all kinds that African researchers face in their daily lives. But it would be simplistic to view scientific cooperation between Africa and Germany solely in terms of development policy.

During a meeting at the German Foreign Ministry, my colleague and friend Michael Lützeler wrote a summary that I'd like to quote here:

Because new approaches are being developed outside Germany, it can only be enriching for international and innovative Germanistics to develop a network of contacts with foreign Germanists, which in no way excludes the relationship with German philology.

It's interesting that Lützeler uses the example of Germanistics, which is thought to have a natural center, to emphasize that a practice is developing outside Germany that is both fascinating and stimulating. At the recent congress of African Germanists in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), DAAD representative Dr. Luckscheiter attested to having experienced another way of doing Germanistics, one that he found captivating. Despite infrastructural deficits and the resulting difficulties/weaknesses, there are still things being done in Africa, things that could be offered as part of a cooperative production of knowledge with Germany. That's why philosopher Ulrich Lölke and I, as part of our joint contribution to the above-mentioned discussion, raised the issue of epistemological enrichment for German colleagues in the context of scientific cooperation with Africa:

It is even more important," we wrote at the time, "to evoke the epistemological contribution