Morality from an intercultural perspective: egocentric and allocentric attribution of responsibility
Final Report Abstract
The main thesis of the research project is that in different cultures allocentric (other-centered) or egocentric (self-centered) tendencies of ascribing responsibility prevail, which manifest themselves in moral practices. These practices and their linguistic expressions were successfully described in a first part with focus on the social practice of apologies and excuses in English, German, Russian and Japanese. In doing so, I drew on research on "blame" on the one hand and John Austin's "Plea for Excuses" and his "linguistic phenomenology" on the other, which I developed into an intercultural linguistic phenomenology using Ram Mall's intercultural philosophy. Thus, I was able to point out clear differences between the exemplary cultures studied, which have not yet been taken into account in moral philosophy. The description of the practices and their differences thus aims to enrich moral philosophical theses. In addition to this intercultural enrichment of the moral philosophical discourse, moral evaluations of cultures were also criticized in return, in particular the still very present idea of shame and guilt cultures (Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict). The allocentric and egocentric tendencies of attributing responsibility were proposed as an alternative description of cultures. These were clearly evident in a total of 400 collected newspaper articles and selected prose literature, which I use as situation descriptions in the sense of intercultural linguistic phenomenology. An egocentric assumption of responsibility was prevalent in Japan, while an allocentric attribution of responsibility to other people in the form of "blaming" was, as expected, much more common in Europe, although with different weightings in the UK, Germany and Russia. The differences between these and other European countries should be investigated in detail over the next three years. However, in addition to writing a habilitation, the focus was to be on the second part of the project: the interaction between moral practices and moral education (Kant, Herbart, Piaget, Kohlberg; Nishida, Nishitani, Watsuji). In this regard, I was unable to acquire another DFG/JSPS project together with Japanese colleagues as planned, partly due to Corona, but instead I implemented a DAAD/JSPS project with Prof. Satoshi Kodama (Kyoto University), which is dedicated to egocentric and allocentric tendencies in moral education in the context of bullying.
Publications
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„Entschuldige mal! Über den Sprachphilosophen John Austin und wie sich Japaner*innen (nicht) entschuldigen.“ Blog-Beitrag auf philosophie.ch – Swiss Portal for Philosophy
Pape, Carina
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„Verstehen wir einander überhaupt?“ Kommentar zum Gedankenexperiment im Rahmen der Gesprächsreihe "Philosophieren… mit Kindern und mit Erwachsenen", Mai 2021
Pape, Carina
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Reden ist Silber, Schweigen ist Gold? Invektive Elemente im interkulturellen Vergleich“. Interview in der Reihe Invective Talks.
Pape, Carina
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"Empörung – indignation – возмущение (vozmushchenie) – 義憤 (gifun). Moralität im Polylog der Kulturen“. In: Polylog als Aufklärung? Interkulturell-philosophische Impulse. Hrsg. Von Lara Hofner und Franz Gmainer-Pranzl. Wien: Facultas, S. 303-308
Pape, Carina
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(Un)Moralische Emotionen & Westernsplaining. Zeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie, 9(2), 79-104.
Pape, Carina
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„Hansei und die Kunst (nicht) über Heinz zu urteilen. Moralische Urteilsbildung im japanischdeutschen Vergleich“. In: Urteilsbildung im Dialog. Fragen urteilssensiblen Unterrichts. Hrsg. von Joe Bornträger und Peter Starke. Frankfurt am Main: Wochenschau Verlag, S. 126-139
Pape, Carina
