Globalization, Divergence and Cultural Fecundity: Seeking Harmony in Diversity through François Jullien’s Transcultural Reflection on China

In the age of global mélange, cultural diversity is facing increasing threats from the homogenizing forces inherent from globalization, highlighted by the increasing risks that Western thought spreads its standard categories, saturates the mental landscape and infiltrates into “weaker” cultures, leading to mental sterilization and deculturation (déculturation) globally. The cultivation of cultural fecundity has thus become a key issue of the age in resistance towards the sterilizing tendency under the pressure of global uniformity (l’uniforme). François Jullien, French philosopher and Sinologist, has established the concept of “divergence” (l’écart), being stimulated by the tension produced by “difference” (la différence), where “in-between” (l’entre) contains fertile cultural resources to exploit. Taking China as a philosophical tool and exotic resource, the stopover in China provides Europe with the opportunities to shake up the spiritual bindings, re-interrogate the European thought and think of its unthought-of (impensé). Hence, the ideal way of cross-cultural communication is to establish an eye-opening perspective from outside (dehors) by applying a strategy of “detour and access” (le détour et l’accès), with an ambition to promote global dialogism.