All are invited to a colloquium talk by Ralph Weber on Wednesday 12 February at 13:30 in AC02 LR208.

Title: “Global Philosophy and the Trouble with Positionality”

Abstract: Comparative philosophy is often presented today as “global,” “cosmopolitan,” “fusion,” or “post-comparative.” The intention is to have a more global scope in what counts as philosophy and, at the same time, to be more inclusive of standpoints. A key term is “positionality.” In this talk, I address a tension between globality and positionality and explore to what extent positionality can be translated philosophically into a sort of perspectivism, with the solution to the tension then coming to rely on the very possibility of a non-relativist perspectivism. Drawing on two stories, Jorge Luis Borges’s Funes el memorioso and The Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant (including its Jain version exemplifying the doctrine of anekāntavāda), I distinguish hard-to-reconcile variants of perspectivism. In this way, I intend to shed light on what exactly the epistemic value of positionality is for attempts to practice global philosophy and how to deal with positionality as an enabling and constraining condition.

Bio: Ralph Weber was born in 1974 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He studied Political Science (politics, economics and law) at the University of St. Gallen and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Further, he studied at the University of Hawai'i in Manoa and the University of Peking, after which he worked as teaching and research assistant at the Chair of Political Science (Prof. Roland Kley) at the University of St. Gallen, where in 2007 he obtained his doctorate and was teaching the history of political ideas and political theory until 2018. Between 2008 and 2014, Weber has been employed as post-doctoral researcher and senior researcher and lecturer (Oberassistent) at the University Research Priority Program “Asia and Europe” at the University of Zurich. In December 2014, Weber began his work as an Assistant Professor of European Global Studies at the Institute for European Global Studies of the University of Basel. In 2016, he successfully completed his habilitation in Philosophy (venia legendi: comparative philosophy) at the University of Zurich. At the University of Basel, he holds full examination and promotion rights in Political Science, Philosophy, and European Global Studies. In February 2020, he was appointed Associate Professor. From 2017 to 2021, Ralph Weber was president of the European Association for Chinese Philosophy.