After Appropriation

Here is a link to a collection of essays on Comparative Philosophy edited by Morny Joy:
http://uofcpress.com/books/9781552385029

My own chapter, The Philosopher as Stranger: the Idea of Comparative Philosophy, is to be found here:
http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/48845/5/UofCPress_AfterAppropriation_2011_Chapter02.pdf

"The crucial thing about the coining of the term 'comparative philosophy' is that it seeks to acknowledge the political reality that we do philosophy now in a global rather than merely regional context, and in multicultural not monocultural societies, and that a monocultural philosophy is itself as it were a pale reflection of the tendency towards assimilation rather than integration. Although politicians regularly distinguish between these two terms, they also regularly conflate them. When we hear it declared that Muslims in the UK, for example, must learn to integrate themselves into some host community, it is hard to see how this isn’t simply a demand for assimilation. Assimilation is a one-way process, whereas integration is a reciprocal process. Nor is integration achieved simply by the presence of different communities living side by side in mutual indifference. It only takes place when the whole is altered by the participation of the parts in dialogue with one another, generating a new intercultural reality. The image of this in a philosophy that recognised and benefited from the new political reality is an enlarged and integrated canon."