Intercultural philosophy approaches dialogues through a variety of anthropological, socio-cultural, and political presuppositions. Anthropologically, it presupposes that human beings are able to reflect on their own culture and transcend their own point of view through dialogue. As Ramose puts it: “In the dialogical encounter, it is possible to assume the point of view of the ‘other’ in the quest to understand and change reality” (2020: 285). Socio-culturally, it presupposes that cultures are not closed entities but dynamic systems that can be extended, modified, and criticized (Paul 2008: 18–21). Politically, it presupposes that the dialogue participants can recognize each other as different but equal at the same time with regard to their role as participants (Kimmerle 2004: 70–72).

If we look at these three presuppositions from a decolonial perspective, several problems emerge. The anthropological presupposition risks conflating general commentary about human ability to shift points of view with empirical claims about the ability of specific actors to shift their point of view under specific socio-historical conditions. As decolonial scholarship highlights, hegemonic actors commonly establish highly successful mechanisms for minimizing, invisibilizing, and misrepresenting the points of view of colonized people even under conditions of well-meaning dialogue. For example, biodiversity conservation increasingly identifies Indigenous peoples as key stakeholders but also often creates superficial forms of dialogue that expect Indigenous peoples to integrate into bureaucracies of environmental governance and to frame their knowledge through academic language (Nadasdy 2003). The participation of Indigenous peoples therefore becomes a tool for dominant actors to legitimize themselves instead of assuming the point of view of the “other” in the sense of Ramose. The socio-cultural presupposition creates tensions with decolonial debates about deep differences between cultures that limit the prospects of fruitful interaction and mutual understanding. As we will discuss in section 3, decolonial emphasis on “radical alterity” and “incommensurability” can cast doubt on the very possibility of fruitful intercultural encounters and may even misframe every external influence as a form of colonial violence (Táíwò 2022).3 Finally, the political presupposition appears to gloss over existing power inequalities. Every intercultural dialogue is so pervaded by power inequalities that it is impossible to deny them in a dialogical model. Instead, it will be necessary to consider carefully the persisting power inequalities throughout a dialogue and develop tools for challenging them.

Taking these concerns seriously has substantial implications for the ambitions of intercultural philosophers to identify principles that are required by intercultural dialogues. In the work of many intercultural philosophers, their approach has been oriented towards the ideal of a symmetrical, equitable dialogue (Weidtmann 2016: 73). Such an orientation suggests a number of principles for dialogue as they have, for example, been elaborated by Jürgen Habermas in his analysis of the implicit presuppositions of communicative action (1983; 1998). We will therefore revisit the following five principles that underlie an intercultural dialogue that assumes symmetry and equity between the dialogue partners:

A look at these dialogue principles from a decolonial perspective reveals a number of shortcomings. If we take into account colonial history, it will not be sufficient to assign to each speaker the right to express their opinions, because relations between colonizing and colonized people often generate testimonial and hermeneutical injustices. Testimonial injustice occurs when colonial prejudices cause an audience to doubt a speaker’s credibility (Fricker 2013: 1319) or to fail to recognize a speaker as a knower (Dotson 2011: 242). Hermeneutical injustice occurs when colonial power inequalities are reproduced on an epistemic level so that the collective interpretative resources of the colonized are systematically “ignored, dismissed, marginalized, or silenced” (Koggel 2018: 241). Cross-cultural dialogues are often drenched both in testimonial and hermeneutical injustices. In academic philosophy, for example, linguistic inequity is one major mechanism of testimonial injustices as philosophers who write with small grammatical mistakes or even just speak with accents are commonly assigned less epistemic credibility (Chapman et al. 2021). Linguistic issues also illustrate the prevalence of hermeneutical injustices in academic philosophy as entire traditions of thought are rendered invisible through the increasingly monolingual structure of the mainstream of academic philosophy (Gobbo & Russo 2020; Schliesser 2018).

In this case, additional dialogue principles might have to be introduced to enable a renewed recognition of these resources. One way to reintroduce these hermeneutical resources would be to adopt Nancy Fraser’s proposal of counterpublics and organize small, protected groups within the intercultural dialogue that are encouraged to “invent and circulate counterdiscourses” in order to challenge the prevailing interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs (Fraser 1992: 123).4 Such counter-discourses could also help to identify and dislodge oppressive concepts that block access to one’s hermeneutic resources and their application (Falbo 2022: 354).

In a similar vein, these dialogue principles seem to address power inequalities to some extent but might not be sufficient. If power inequalities are deeply ingrained in the communities that participate in an intercultural dialogue, mere dialogue principles might not be able to guarantee the minimum level of equality that is needed for such a project. In such a case, it might be helpful to resort to an external facilitator who can point out existing power inequalities that undermine a dialogue or tacit norms that restrict free speech (Bicchieri 2017: 158).

The final question with regard to radical alterity concerns the question whether the dialogue principles are understood in the same way by all dialogue partners based on their ontological, epistemological, and axiological commitments. A question that might emerge regarding rule (4) is, for example, which amount of “constraint” is acceptable according to the dialogue partners. Can both sides agree on a preliminary definition of “constraint” or is it rather necessary to make possible equivocations explicit and take these equivocations as a starting point of further reflection on the dialogue (Viveiros de Castro 2004). For example, if one dialogue partner assigns specific authority to their elders to exercise some sort of constraint, this could serve as a starting point for a reflection on the role of seniority in dialogues.

The fifth rule on switching from dialogue to meta-dialogue (5) can help to add or revise dialogue principles, introduce an external facilitator, or come to an agreement on certain linguistic meanings. It can also play a crucial role for specifying and contextualizing intercultural dialogues by determining the scope of the dialogue and the question of who should be involved (e.g. experts, community members as individuals, or communities as groups). Another question that can be discussed on this metalevel is whether the dialogue is open to all speakers, only to those who self-identify with a specific cultural identity, or even only to those who are accepted as group members by specific cultural communities.

After having addressed the first question on the presuppositions of intercultural dialogues and the second question on dialogue principles, we now proceed to the third question on the attitudes that are required from the dialogue participants so that the dialogue can facilitate mutual understanding. Kimmerle, for example, proposes an attitude of listening to one another (Kimmerle 2004: 69–70). An additional attitude might embrace open-endedness regarding the result of the dialogue. An intercultural dialogue does not necessarily have to lead to a consensus, an agreement, or a fusion of horizons and can still support mutual understanding. A further attitude might be the willingness to engage in communication for communication’s sake and not for strategic reasons, e.g. to manipulate or convince the dialogue partner (Cooke 1994: 159). If dialogue partners merely try to convince one another, intercultural understanding becomes impossible. Another attitude that is relevant is the openness and willingness of involved actors to be influenced and transformed by others. It means that dialogue partners (or their ideas, knowledge, worldview, etc.) may be changed or transformed by each other. If dialogue participants are not committed to be potentially transformed, they should not engage in a dialogue.

These attitudes can also be criticized and supplemented from a decolonial point of view. First, colonial history has privileged Western conceptions of dialogue and the underlying attitudes. Iris Young has criticized the Western prioritization of speech that is assertive and confrontational, formal and general, or dispassionate and disembodied over other forms of speech (Young 1996: 123–24).5 In many cases, the labeling of passionate speech as a sign of the speaker’s irrationality can even amount to epistemic silencing (Bayruns García 2019). Following Young, attitudes that underlie tentative, exploratory, or conciliatory forms of speech could be incorporated into intercultural dialogue. Second, power inequalities might not arise directly in the attitudes of dialogue participants but still be present at a structural level. In this case, an attitude of unmasking hidden power inequalities might prove useful. Third, radical alterity can help to concretize what “listening to one another” could mean. Sass and Dryzek (2014: 21) provide two examples in which listening does not only involve the moment in which dialogue partners listen to one another’s speech but also the reply that they give. Among the Tswana people, an aggressive reply would usually be considered a vice. And in the Merina culture of Madagascar, people would often regard it as rude if a speaker is interrupted or challenged during their speech.

In sum, there are a variety of ideas within decolonial scholarship that can sharpen philosophies of intercultural dialogue. These ideas comprise an investigation of the colonial history of presuppositions, dialogue principles, and attitudes; a focus on the power inequalities that might still be present in them; and respect for the possibility of radical alterity that makes a univocal definition of them difficult. Table 1 provides a structural overview of these ideas.6

Ramose’s (1999) seminal work on ubuntu may be considered a prime example of epistemic decolonization in the sense of Grosfoguel’s (2007) emphasis on endogenous intellectual traditions instead of reliance on Western frameworks of poststructuralism in earlier postcolonial studies. In his critical discussion of Grosfoguel’s work, however, Ramose (2020: 271) insists that “backed by the philosophy of ubuntu, we would rather opt for mothofatso and not ‘decolonial’.” Mothofatso refers to “re-humanisation of human relations” (2020: 304) in the Sotho language cluster of the Bantu-speaking people. The term is related to the ethical principle motho ke motho ka batho, which can be translated as “to be a human being is to affirm one’s humanity by recognizing the humanity of others and, on that basis, establish humane relations with them” (Ramose 1999: 37). As such, mothofatso calls for an ethical revolution that not only contrasts the dehumanizing logic and experience of colonialism but also stands on its own as an alternative grounding of positive intercultural encounters. While Ramose’s critique of calls for a decolonial turn is multifaceted, two elements are especially pertinent for a discussion about the relation between decolonial and intercultural philosophy. First, Ramose argues that framing philosophies like ubuntu as decolonial conceptually still prioritizes coloniality and undercuts its intellectual standing as an active, homegrown philosophy. In this sense, Ramose asks “why should ‘decolonial’ return to Africa […] not only as a reminder that there were colonies in the continent but also as the harbinger of a purportedly new epistemic paradigm to deal with the already challenged epistemological paradigm?” (2020: 302)

Second, Ramose suggests that centering on coloniality as the dominant frame of interpretation risks mispositioning African philosophy by making it “cognitively impossible” (2020: 284) to engage in dialogue and adopt different viewpoints: “‘colonial difference’ is not tantamount to radical epistemological inexpressibility, leading to inevitable solipsism. On the contrary, the immediacy and directness of experience is mediated by expressibility, which is the possibility condition for dialogue. In the dialogical encounter, it is possible to assume the point of view of the ‘other’ in the quest to understand and change reality.” (2020: 285) Rather than centering on coloniality, Ramose therefore suggests focusing on mothofatso as a core contribution from ubuntu that grounds a philosophy of re-humanization and thereby realizes what Ramose describes as ontological equality of all human beings. Such a move does not only shift philosophical attention from coloniality to ubuntu but is also meant to build the basis for genuine intercultural and liberatory dialogue about dynamics of de- and re-humanization.

Both of Ramose’s key concerns reappear in Táíwò’s “Rethinking the Decolonization Trope in Philosophy” (2019) and his more recent book Against Decolonisation (2022) that develops a polemical case against decolonization discourse based on a critique of Ngũgĩ’s (1992) and Wiredu’s (1997) calls for linguistic and conceptual decolonization (for a decolonial response, see Emmanuel 2021). While Ramose and Táíwò differ in their respective emphasis on ubuntu and modernity, two of their key arguments converge. First, Táíwò argues that the decolonization trope risks making colonialism the “singular pole for plotting the grids of understanding and narrating African life and thought” (2019: 150). Second, Táíwò suggests that this use of colonialism as a singular pole is both descriptively and politically flawed as it precludes intercultural exchange by instead framing any type of external influence as a colonial imposition and form of violence.

Both the descriptive and normative critique are developed as part of Táíwò’s broader project of distinguishing colonialism and modernity as argued in depth in his How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa (2010). On the descriptive side, Táíwò challenges colonialism as the singular event that defines Africa historically or contemporarily. According to Táíwò, such a framing misunderstands the complexity of intercultural encounters in African history and thereby also leads to misrepresentations of the current state of African life and thought. On the normative side, Táíwò argues that these misunderstandings encourage a misdirected nativism that rejects all kinds of intercultural encounters as colonial domination.

Addressing calls for conceptual decolonization, for example, Táíwò warns of unintended consequences of using coloniality as a singular pole in interpreting the reality of intercultural and conceptual exchange—“Yorùbá, my ‘own African language’ is infused with Nupe, Portuguese, Arabic, Hausa” (2019: 148) just as many European languages have been used by African writers from Léopold Sédar Senghor to Chinua Achebe. While Táíwò reflects on the importance of embracing Indigenous languages, he argues that conceptual decolonization risks misframing external linguistic influences exclusively as destructive colonial imposition. Moving beyond linguistic questions, Táíwò warns that the decolonization trope risks rendering everything external or modern into colonial oppression: “if, say, philosophy was to be an integral part of colonization, we cannot claim to decolonize while retaining philosophy. […] This is why it is crucial that we not be careless in attributing more to colonialism than can be supported by the historical record. For illustration, if modernity were part and parcel of colonialism, it is clear that a decolonized society would have no truck with it” (Táíwò 2019: 143).

As we have highlighted in the previous section, decolonial scholarship challenges intercultural scholarship to move beyond idealizations of equitable dialogue by engaging with the deeply unequal reality of dialogues that are shaped by colonial structures. Ramose and Táíwò turn this challenge around: If colonial structures are the starting point, how does decolonial scholarship move from a critique of an unequal reality to positive visions of intercultural encounters? While this challenge is helpful in clarifying the possibility of nativist misinterpretations of decolonization, we think that Táíwò is far too quick in moving from the diagnosis of a possible misinterpretation to a wholesale rejection of decolonization discourse regarding African philosophy, historiography, political science, and academic language. Even if it is misleading to turn colonialism into the singular pole of analysis, coloniality remains a relevant pole of analysis in African cultural and political life. Even if it is misleading to reject all external influences as forms of colonial violence, it remains important to question when intercultural encounters are actually mutually beneficial.

While Táíwò (2022: 19) presents the choice between a narrow historical interpretation of “colonialism” according to which Africa has been successfully decolonized and a broad culturalist interpretation that turns all intercultural encounters into “colonialism”, the reality of decolonial discourse is much more complex in highlighting colonial continuities without rejecting the possibility of fruitful intercultural encounters. In the context of African philosophy, for example, Chimakonam and Ofana (2022: 606) depart from similar considerations as Ramose and Táíwò when worrying about scholarship that focuses exclusively “on the differences that exist among worldviews and experiences while overlooking the importance of social collaboration between different socio-cultural blocs.” At the same time, they take their intercultural view to be decolonial in aiming at “dismantling the hegemony imposed by coloniality. Where coloniality seeks to erode the particular cultural worldviews in favor of an absolute instance, decoloniality seeks to restore and recognize the validity of various local epistemic formations” (2022: 614). Along similar lines, Mbonda’s (2021) recent book suggests the following three steps of the decolonial project: critique of hegemonic and universalist reason (deconstruction), a critique of colonized reason (emancipation and epistemic disobedience), and a reconstruction of knowledge within the framework of a common transcultural space (migration and translation). The first and the second steps ensure that the decolonial project addresses the problem of hegemonic, universalist, and colonized reason (Eboussi Boulaga 1977; Mbembe 2013a), while the third step opens the door to a common space where some sort of intercultural dialogue can take place. But for that dialogue to be meaningful and fruitful (i.e. respectful of the equitable conditions of intercultural dialogue), the first two steps should be met first (Mbonda 2021).

Chimakonam, Ofana, and Mbonda remind us that there is no intrinsic conflict between decolonial perspectives that highlight unequal realities and intercultural perspectives that aim for equitable encounters. In fact, much of decolonial scholarship retains intercultural elements and does not fit Táíwò’s characterization of the decolonization trope as a rejection of everything that is external (e.g. Chilisa 2019; Mbembe 2013b; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018). The real challenge is not a theoretical but a practical compatibility—how do we embrace equitable forms of dialogue without compromising on the political edge of decolonization when challenging oppressive structures in intercultural encounters? In addressing this question, intertwining decolonial and intercultural scholarship becomes of crucial importance.

We characterized decolonial scholarship through three tenets. First, emphasis on the persistence of colonial history instead of the myth of a postcolonial world of harmonious intercultural dialogue. While Táíwò warns against treating coloniality as the singular pole that defines everything else, neither Ramose nor Táíwò deny that colonial history has had an important impact on political and intellectual life in Africa. While decolonial scholarship indeed involves the conscious decision to highlight coloniality, this does not mean that coloniality constitutes the singular pole that takes priority in interpreting all aspects of political and intellectual life in Africa. Indeed, emphasizing decoloniality in contexts of colonial oppression is entirely compatible with a multi-polar approach that can embrace positive intercultural encounters in other contexts. The rich tradition of intercultural philosophy in Africa (e.g. Gyeke 2013; Oluwole 2014; Ramose 2007) provides plenty of resources for spelling out such multi-polar opportunities despite uncompromising insistence on decolonial framings in the face of oppressive colonial structures.

A second tenet of decolonial scholarship is the emphasis on power inequalities in intercultural encounters that challenge idealized assumptions of equitable intercultural dialogue. Assuming conditions of equitable dialogue can be misleading in practice if the reality of dialogue is deeply unequal. However, both Ramose and Táíwò are concerned that decolonial framings may have unintended consequences of undermining the very possibility of dialogue through their exclusive focus on inequality and oppression. While decolonial scholarship indeed highlights that colonial structures remain deeply entrenched in intercultural dialogues, it is not committed to the view that such structures dominate every dialogue without any prospects of improvement. Pointing out the political complexity of non-ideal dialogues also means not simply inverting the ideal of equitable dialogue into a characterization in which every dialogue reduces to colonial oppression. Intercultural dialogues are complex and typically involve both inequalities and opportunities for mutual understanding to different degrees. Indeed, navigating between challenges of external colonial oppression and fruitful external exchanges has been a continuous theme of both African philosophy and politics. Six years after Ghanaian independence, Nkrumah (1963) famously theorized the persistent cultural and economic power of colonialism while simultaneously acting as the president of Ghana and embracing influences from China to the United Kingdom to the Soviet Union when deemed in the interest of the people. Cabral exemplifies an unapologetically internationalist philosophy that embraces the crucial importance of modern science and external borrowing (2016: 123) while simultaneously advocating for a “return to the source” in which Indigenous tradition becomes central and “national liberation is necessarily an act of culture” (1973: 42–43). For Cabral, external borrowing and returning to the source are both crucial in the articulation of a future beyond Portuguese colonialism. The cases of Nkrumah and Cabral could easily be complemented with cases of other African revolutionaries from Fanon (1961) to Nyerere (1987) to Sankara (1988), who were equally uncompromising in centering on colonialism and embracing external influences where seen as supporting emancipatory goals.

We emphasized radical alterity as a third tenet of decolonial scholarship that challenges overly optimistic promises of intercultural understanding by focusing on deep epistemological, ontological, and axiological differences between actors. Highlighting these differences challenges a simple integrationism that assimilates Indigenous and other colonized perspectives into dominant frameworks without taking their tensions into account. Again, however, this does not mean that decolonial scholarship is committed to characterizing intercultural connections exclusively in terms of radical alterity. Instead, intercultural relations are permeated by what Ludwig and El-Hani (2020) call “partial overlaps”: On the one hand, they involve sufficient overlaps in epistemological, ontological, and axiological assumptions to allow for fruitful dialogue and co-creation of knowledge. On the other hand, these overlaps always remain partial and thereby highlight the methodological and political challenges of navigating difference in cases of deep disagreement and power differentials (Kramm 2021). Decolonial scholarship highlights practices of marginalizing perspectives that do not integrate into dominant frameworks. Highlighting radical alterity in this way, however, is entirely compatible with sensitivity to finding overlaps that provide common ground in intercultural encounters (Dussel 2016: 45).

To sum up, intertwining intercultural and decolonial scholarship provides an opportunity to move beyond the nativist caricature of a singular pole that interprets all intercultural encounters as a clash of mutually unintelligible worlds that are exclusively understood through colonial oppression. Decolonial scholarship can highlight these elements in an uncompromising manner without suggesting that all intercultural encounters need to be interpreted through a singular pole of coloniality. On this basis, decolonial scholars could facilitate intercultural dialogues based on principles that make colonial history, power inequalities, and radical alterity explicit. And they could promote epistemic virtues that foster awareness of colonial history, power inequalities, and radical alterity. Engaging with insights from intercultural philosophy can help decolonial scholars to articulate a position that is non-compromising in challenging coloniality without generically reducing intercultural to colonial encounters. Table 2 below provides a brief summary of these insights.