Beyond radical humanism. An attempt to critically confront Liebsch’s heterocentrism

Abstract

Methodologically, heterocentrism is the principal starting point of several recent Liebsch’s theoretical contributions, the meaning of which is simply to be taken as the protection of man. In one decisive sense, for him, keeping someone in a position of otherness already con­tains the germ of violence: making an other leads to alienating subordination. In this paper, we examine the (un)sustainability of the author’s universal interpretive thesis that the history of our culture is a history of violence: it turns out to be structurally unprovable and partly arbitrary. The starting point of such a generally negative attitude is what we call Liebsch’s conceptual moralism. Our research also re-examines Liebsch’s interrogation of the tradition of philosophy of culture as morally indifferent, as well as his criterion of acceptability of nor­matively impregnated culture in the form of the Derridean imperative of unconditional openness to the other as a guest.

Keywords

• burkhard liebsch
• philosophy of otherness
• radical humanism
• violence
• culture
• philosophy of culture