Understanding Eastern Philosophy

by Ray Billington

Presents both a comprehensive overview of, and an introduction to, the key philosophies of the East and how they compare with those of the West. The text examines the key tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Yin and Yang, and Confucianism, comparing and contrasting them with Western religions. The book is also a response to increasing doubt in the West about the value of formal expressions of religious belief, and the concurrent search for other sources offering a spiritual dimension to life. It challenges theism, particularly Christianity, with its belief in a personal God bestowing a certain version of "truth," and rejects the idea of the immortality of the soul.

Genres: Philosophy

Kindle Edition

First published September 4, 1997

Reviews

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a solid job for one that bites off so much in a single go. Eastern Philosophy is a large subject, and to try to outline the major premises of its varied systems and also compare them to Western / Abrahamic notions (when Western schools are sometimes no more different from Eastern schools than each side is within,) and to do so in under two-hundred pages is a daunting undertaking.

For the most part, I felt the book did a fine job of meeting its objective. A fair amount of selection and simplification is required. I will say the part describing karmic doctrine didn't seem consistent with what I was taught and seems more in line with the early Western scholars who started writing about Eastern Philosophy but could not help but couch the subject in a Western / Abrahamic frame because it was what they knew and was invisible to them. I say this as one who is no big fan of Karmic philosophy, though for another reason (one which is also mentioned in this book.) I've always been told that the central idea is to do selfless acts in order to escape the karmic cycle. Billington, like others before him, states it as do "good deeds" and then he puts forth the critique that this won't help because doing good for one's own benefit is fraught with peril. My understanding from Sanskrit scholars is: first, Hindu philosophers were aware of this paradox from the beginning and that's why the emphasis has always been on "selfless" acts; second, the Abrahamic bifurcation of all actions into good and evil is not so much a thing in Hindu thinking (most actions are inherently neither.) I should point out that there is a lot of internal conflict within these philosophies (e.g. differences between Buddhist and Hindu thoughts on Karma) and that Billington does elsewhere reflect on the differences between Eastern and Western thinking about good and evil.

The first two-thirds of the book is organized by schools of thought (beginning with the Indian ones and working toward Chinese / East Asian schools) and the last third deals with a series of fundamental philosophical questions.

If you want a quick outline of Eastern philosophical ideas, this book gives a good look at them, particularly if one is interested in a comparison to Western ideas. The book also spends a fair amount of time in discussion of what a religion is and how one differs from a philosophy.

[Ihor Kolesnyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Доволі посередній вступ до "східних" філософій. Надто мало критичного осмислення, забагато історії (від якої вже втомився і є набагато кращі книги по історії філософії Індії).

Легко сприймається людьми не в темі, але які хочуть дещо розширити ерудицію книгою із переважно об'єктивною інформацією.