Christoph Antweiler (Bonn): Humanism beyond the West: Anthropological Basics for a Realistic Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

How can we conceive of globality as an entity without playing unity and diversity off one another? While recognizing the need for pursuing some common orientation in our interconnected world, we end up finding more questions than answers. What might a humanism look like that does not move too rapidly to universalize the views and historical experiences of the European or Atlantic world? How do we keep the terms “culture” and “humanity” from being misused as verbal weapons? Is a cosmopolitanism conceivable that proceeds from an understanding of humankind as one entity but does not then end in wishful thinking or require us to re-design cultures to fit some sort of global template?

This talk will approach these questions from a cross-cultural perspective. Societal values should be set by a political process and thus we cannot derive them from science. But any realistic value-orientation needs empirical knowledge about humans and their cultures. A crucial point for a cosmopolitan humanism is empirical knowledge about commonalities between cultures (cultural universals) as well as among all people (biotic universals). I advocate a broad concept of anthropology as a “Wissenschaft vom ganzen Menschen”.

Prof. Dr. Christoph Antweiler, Universität Bonn

Curriculum Vitae

Der Kulturanthropologe Prof. Dr. phil., Dipl. geol. Christoph Antweiler ist Direktor des Instituts für Orient und Asienwissenschaft (IOA) und Professor für Südostasienwissenschaften an der Universität Bonn, sowie Vorstandsmitglied der European Association of Southeast Asian Studies (EUROSEAS), Mitglied des International Advisory Board Humboldt-Forum (Berlin) und der Academia Europea (London). Zu seinen Forschungsgebieten zählen Fragen der politischen Ökologie, Prozesse regionaler Identitätsbildung, kulturelle Universalien und kulturelle Evolution sowie Konzepte des Kosmopolitismus. Der regionale Fokus seiner Forschung liegt auf den Gesellschaften Südostasiens, insbesondere auf Indonesien.