My way to Intercultural Philosophy

My way of philosophical thought led me from hermeneutics, via dialectics and philosophies of difference to intercultural philosophy with special attention for African philosophy. I studied hermeneutics with the theologians Gerhard Ebeling and Ernst Fuchs at Tübingen, Philipp Vielhauer at Bonn and the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer at Heidelberg in the 1950ies. Reading Hegel and Marx I came to accept the position of materialist dialectics. My favorite author was Ernst Bloch who combines his position of materialist dialectics with a critical interpretation of religion, especially Jewish-Christian religion. Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of Hegelian dialectics brought me to the philosophies of difference. The concept of the Other in these philosophies formed the entrance to contribute to the foundation and the development of intercultural philosophy.