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This chapter details Mehta's model of the Pilgrim. The Pilgrim is a model for transcendental subjectivity. Mehta introduces this model because he believes there are implicit, provincial assumptions informing comparative philosophy and comparative philosophy of religion. These comparative enterprises seemingly presuppose that there is a subject position freed of cultural and contextual constraints capable of holding two philosophical positions within a comparative framework. Mehta problematizes such a position insofar as philosophies themselves pretend to such universality and non-partisan commitment. He suggests that this is not possible and so the encounter between cultural others becomes problematic, if not in fact outright colonial. Mehta's work indicates an awareness that philosophical hermeneutics quite plausibly engages in colonial conquests. This is the nature of the "philosophical" in Gadamer's hermeneutics. Accordingly, Mehta's Pilgrim reflects a what I call a "postcolonial hermeneutics." If philosophical hermeneutics is in the service of edifying, building up (Bildung) the self, then Mehta's emphasis on the ruptures and displacements of the self in its encounter with the other reflects a postcolonial sensibility. The chapter ends with a consideration of pilgrimage in an age often associated with the "Europeanization of the Earth."

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-5231-3_4

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