ABSTRACT

The rise of the global South challenges epistemological universalism. For several centuries, it had been evident that truth constructed by the global North (that is, by thinkers in the European tradition) was universally true and anything constructed on other grounds was irrational and/or primitive. This can no longer be taken for granted in a world that is dominated by China as much as by the US and where publications in Chinese outnumber publications in English. The challenge of universalism seems to lead into relativism. Either there is one truth, which is true everywhere and for everyone, or there are multiple truths, which cannot be true at the same time and are therefore not really true at all.