Qing ((sic)) Gan ((sic)) and Tong ((sic)): Decolonizing the Universal From a Chinese Perspective Part 2

Cartesianism is deified as the mythical beginning of Modern Western Philosophy. This paper draws on evaluations of the epistemology and colonial context of Cartesianism from Latin American philosophers to show how the Cartesian project of universalism has been detrimental to non-Western cultures. In contrast to this exclusionist universalism, this paper provides an alternative model of universalism that is premised on the interaction between embodied particulars. It stresses how, in this Chinese conception of universalism as resulting from feeling (gan, (sic)) and response (ying, (sic)), the agent is expected to subdue her own ego and its desire to impose itself onto particulars. This imposition would be an obstruction that impedes the free flow of interactions between particulars and so acts as an impediment to participating in the "universal." This reconstructed Chinese conception of universalism resonates with Enrique Dussel's self-reflexive understanding of Modernity and Aime Cesaire's conception of the universal.