| Chapter Introduction: | Introduction to the Handbook on Prejudice |
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to the perspectivism of human cognition and behaviour, which is due to the differences of cultures, languages, political systems, and geographical regions. Johann Gottfried von Herder and Friedrich Nietzsche were the philosophers of this perspectivism, refuting the claims of universalism and objectivism. By insisting on difference and particularities, they paid tribute to the insurmountable limitations of human cognitions, feelings, and values, but they did not automatically devalue or denounce whatever happened to be something other than one's own and proper heritage, tradition, or style.3 They only insisted on starting from this root and sticking to it by developing its potential. Complementing bias with respect becomes a way of understanding oneself and learning about the other.
Bias points to a very basic fact: humans never stand on neutral ground. Their attitudes and thoughts are always shaped by a particular position within a culture, a society, a historical period, or a larger or smaller group of people. Pure objectivity may work as a theoretical and methodological premise in the sciences, but in the humanities, it is “a noble dream” (Novick 1988). Hans-Georg Gadamer has therefore argued that prejudice has not only a negative but also a positive side. As a hermeneutic philosopher, he argued that we cannot but be entangled in traditions of texts and the readings of texts. As we are existentially shaped by time and are therefore always the product of earlier periods, we are never entitled to the tabula rasa of a radically new beginning from scratch. Given this disposition as historical beings, he claimed that humans have not only to become aware of their cultural heritage, but have also to work on its basis in rewriting it and developing its potential. The specific cultural legacy, the tradition into which one is born, is for Gadamer not an accidental but an existential factor. To recover, to reclaim, and to re-own a tradition is the appropriate way to change it and keep it alive. It is also the appropriate way to develop a cultural identity. To claim, seize, and develop one's cultural heritage is a way of transforming a tradition into a dialogic and invigorating component of the present and of preventing it from growing obsolete, inert, and strange. We may conflate Gadamer's positive use of prejudice with the term bias; his concern is