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Einen Schritt vorwärts, zwei Schritte zurück

Der Postkolonialismus und der Westen
  • Axel Honneth
Published/Copyright: November 20, 2025

Abstract

What transformations in “our” collective memory, in “our” conceptualisation of our institutional system, and in “our” moral universalism are necessary today to address the colonial crimes committed by our ancestors in the past? This paper will proceed in three steps: First, it will be shown that our social-theoretical tradition needs not only a postcolonial rereading of all the classical authors of the West, but also an inclusion of studies and literary products that have challenged this tradition from within the colonial experience. Second, a radical decentring of our key political-historical concepts seems necessary in order to be able to describe as belonging to “us” or even to attribute to “ourselves” the institutional conditions that the European states once created in the countries they colonised. And third, a revision of our moral universalism seems necessary because it presupposes a kind of anthropocentrism that seems unacceptable from the perspective of the descendants of the people colonised in the past.

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Published Online: 2025-11-20
Published in Print: 2025-10-27

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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