Hwa Yol Jung and the Question of Comparative Philosophy: A Review of Hwa Yol Jung’s Transversal Rationality and Intercultural Texts

Abstract

In an essay that is now a classic piece in understanding post-modern culture, JeanFrancois Lyotard wrote, ‘‘[e]clecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and ‘retro’ clothes in Hong Kong’’ (Lyotard 1989: 76). The boundaries have become blurred in both positive and negative senses. Geographical borders have loosened through everincreasing mobility as cultural exchanges become more accessible and are rapidly flowing through electronic exchanges in the cyberspace arena. Almost a quarter century after Lyotard described the present era as the time of eclecticism, the world has become more global, and the demand for cross-, inter-, and multi-cultural knowledge has become stronger than ever. In this context, globalization, cosmopolitanism, and world-citizenship have become some of the expressions with which the present time is defined and distinguished. These concepts, however, have not been newly created in our time, but rather have existed in philosophical discourse for centuries. One recent predecessor of these concepts can be found in modernist universalism, which many of the post-modern thinkers, including Lyotard himself, have rigorously challenged. In what sense, then, can we claim that globalization, cosmopolitanism, and world-citizenship positively define the post-modern era, without recourse to modernist universalism, and without risking the totalitarian tendency with which modernity and modernism has been frequently related? Reading Hwa Yol Jung’s recent publication, Transversal Rationality and Intercultural Texts: Essays in Phenomenology and Comparative Philosophy (Ohio University Press, 2011), one finds that one of the major concerns of the book is