On the Project of the Global History of World Philosophy

Abstract

The article analyzes ongoing changes in history of philosophy, which are associated with the projects of “global philosophy” and “world philosophies”. The project of the “global history of philosophy” is analyzed, for which the concept of globality implies not only the worldwide coverage of the philosophical concepts, but also the specificity of technical and communication means, and the variety of methodological tools that can be used today in research on the history of philosophy. The possibilities of using interdisciplinary methodology are considered such as approaches of intellectual history, quantitative methods, methods of “distant reading” and methods of digital humanities. The specificity of the use of the concepts “world literature” and “world republic of literature” in literary studies and their potential for the development of research in the field of global history of philosophy are considered. The role of the formation of a global institutional environment for the development of modern philosophy is analyzed, in particular, the system of international philosophical congresses, as well as international Olympiads in philosophy for high school students, designed to promote dialogue between different regional and linguistic traditions and at the same time allowing to constitute their differences. The ethical and emancipatory aspects of modern research in the field of the history of philosophy are revealed, most clearly manifested in the project of the decolonial history of philosophy. The basis for criticism of radical versions of decolonization and appeal to local epistemologies within the framework of the general approach of modern global history is reconstructed. The assumption is substantiated that the problem of correlation and commensurability of various variants of local types of knowledge in the field of history of philosophy is not as acute as in history or social sciences. At the same time, at least at the level of declarations, the idea of a general field of philosophical knowledge and philosophical questions is preserved, to which representatives of different philosophical traditions try to give their own answers using different conceptual means and different approaches.