ORIENTAL OTHER: ENLIGHTENMENT ORIENTALISM AND CHALLENGE OF FOREIGN (the example of Montesquieu’s Persian letters)

Abstract

This paper addresses Said’s view that every kind of Orientalism, as various discourses related to the Orient, is necessarily colored by the attitude of the Oriental as an inferior Other, pointing to the special literary and cultural climate of the 18th century, started with the humanistic initiatives of the 16th century. We first show how the attitude towards Orientalism devoloped, how it influenced the change of consciousness and how the cultural-historical framework was formed for the whole series of literary works that Aravamudan will classify as Enlightenment Orientalism. We point out how the Oriental, as an ever-per sisting European Other, played a vital role in the secularization of knowledge, anti-dogmatism, perspectivism and relativism, influencing the dominance of certain literary genres. The attitude towards the Other/Oriental has changed from the effort to annual and abolish it, through the attempt to understand and compare it with one’s own, to the assimilation and crossing of two cultures and civilisations by means of intercultural dialogue. Therefore, we will present, first, in brief, the cultural aspects of the challenge of foreign and oriental, and then, follow the ways of mastering under the foreign in the influential Montesquieu’s Persian letters. We will also take into account the view of Bernharnd Waldenfels in the role of the foreign in epistemological and identity reflections, showing that the challenge of the foreign necessarily stands at the beginning of every hermeneutics, as well as identity and epistemological reflections.