Presentation of the Journal:

Undoubtedly, in the past couple of decades, academic philosophy has undergone a major transformation: not long ago, investigation of non-Western classical philosophies was limited to philologists and, perhaps, historians or Area Studies scholars, and contemporary philosophy from those same regions received practically no attention at all. As opposed to this, recently many universities have begun to recognize the importance of opening positions specially dedicated to, for example, Eastern-Asian or Indian Philosophy distinct from the study of literature, history and philology; this, though, does not mean that all is well: experts there may be, but dialogue between them and “mainstream” philosophers there is none. In fact, there is very little dialogue even among experts in different traditions. Given we believe that truly respecting and valuing non-Western philosophers requires both that we consider them equal partners in the philosophical discussions as other contemporary philosophers, and that we take their own traditional problems as serious as those we have inherited from the West, we consider it essential to open up spaces for such dialogues, spaces in which both the current conception of a philosophical paper and other alternative manners of presenting philosophical work can exchange ideas, worries, and interests. This, then, is the reasoning that gave birth to the Bulletin of Intercultural Philosophy.

There is a misunderstanding of the term “intercultural philosophy,” according to which it refers to a kind of exoticist and superficial bricollage, which understands cultures as essentialist entities closed in on themselves. But nothing could be further from the true objectives of intercultural philosophy. Intercultural philosophy assumes that every “culture” is already, per se, a socio-historical relationship. In this sense, a culture is a dynamic situationality. What intercultural philosophy highlights is rather the limits of philosophy practiced from positions of supposed universality, without reference to the historical situations that make it possible. Intercultural practice is, therefore, necessarily critical.
Thus, when we speak of “Latin American,” “Japanese,” “Chinese,” “Filipino,” “Indian,” “African,” etc., philosophy, we do not seek to essentialize these adjectives. On the contrary, we seek to establish a standpoint from which to provincialize the prevailing, predominantly European philosophy. These standpoints are provisional, historically constituted, but significant from a practical perspective.

We are convinced that the way to ensure that other philosophical traditions are studied seriously is through academic excellence. That is why the Bulletin of Intercultural Philosophy is committed to subjecting each article to a strict double blind peer-review process and our team of advisors is responsible for ensuring that the reviewers are specialists in each topic.

Place of publication: Kyoto, Japan