Philosophy discussion

What do non-Western philosophical traditions have to teach us? Can the comparative study of other traditions help us revise our most fundamental conceptions, and therefore further philosophy? If so, how? Consider, for instance:

1) views of human nature,
2) understandings of what reason is and what it means to be rational,
3) what the criteria for wisdom (and/or knowledge) are,
4) what the good life is,
5) what is "really real,"
6) how the relation between mind and the rest of the cosmos is understood/configured,
7) what faculties are cultivated and prioritized,
8) what patterns of explanation suffice to satisfy the understanding (eg: the progressive banishment of explanation by final causes in our own tradition),
9) what the fundamental questions/problems are taken to be.

Hi Elena - are you setting us an assignment? ;)

I've recently come to think that Western philosophy - if only due to historical factors - is far more intimately connected to mystical approaches (eg, Hinduism, Buddhism) than it might care to admit.

Modern Western philosophy (ie, from Descartes onwards) tends to present itself as a strictly rational, logical business whose truths are as emphatically "non-mystical" as those of science or mathematics. Yet it emerged from, and was hugely shaped by, theological speculations that are themselves shot through with mystical ideas about the unknowable ultimate reality called "God".

Moreover, the very nature of Western philosophical speculations tend to bring them face to face with the ineffable. This was explicitly recognised by Kant who tried to show in his Critique of Pure Reason that metaphysical debates were an attempt to say what couldn't be said. In such a situation, silence was the most honest response. The connection here with (eg) the Upanishads should hardly need pointing out.

Another good example of the connection is Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which famously states that the very "truths" it contains are nonsense: an attempt to say what can only be shown. And Wittgenstein's account of simple objects (they have no features, cannot be described and cannot even be said to exist since denying their existence would be an absurdity) is strikingly like Denys' description of God. Denys was a Greek, of course, but there's not much in his writing that would've outraged a Vedic priest or a Buddhist monk. Nor would they have been strongly opposed to Wittgenstein's final comment in the Tractatus: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent". (A final point: the young Wittgenstein's connection to Eastern philosophy shouldn't be too surprising; he was strongly influenced by Schopenhauer who kept a copy of the Upanishads by his bedside.)

Well, since no one else wants my assignment, I guess I'll try my hand at it myself.

Philip, I very much agree with you that Western philosophy “is far more intimately connected to mystical approaches (eg, Hinduism, Buddhism) than it might care to admit.” There is actually an excellent history of philosophy written to prove just this, Tarnas' The Passion of the Western Mind. He basically takes up one movement in philosophy after another and shows its transrational commitments.

But I wrote this post not only with mysticism in mind, though this makes a big difference in the method of philosophy between East and West: the East has a way to ground the chain of reasoning experientially, the West doesn't. Western philosophy is thus doomed/blessed to go the way of autonomous reason.

I was curious also about the lineaments of other -intellectual- traditions. I have a hunch that philosophy is very much more determined by aesthetic commitments than it traditionally wished to acknowledge (take for example Plato's commitment to universal form or Descartes' requirement that ideas be "clear and distinct," both of which are purely aesthetic coordinates). I feel there are certain fundamental artifacts of thought in each worldview that determine the course of all reflection. It's as Whitehead put it:

"When you are criticizing the philosophy of an epoch, do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it necessary explicitly to defend. There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents to all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch." 

It is these fundamental constructions/suppositions that I am wondering about. Obviously, the Eastern traditions evince a higher valorization of intuition over intellection, whereas in the West we're usually diametrically opposed right on this matter, and it is this fundamental valuation that leads to the emphasis on mysticism and meditation in much of Chinese, Japanese and Indian thought. There also seem to be fundamental differences in form and therefore in patterns of conceptualization. Take the Chinese language for instance, which is syntactically weak and as a result not as suited to linear modes of thinking, and yet which allows for an infinitely greater array of poetic association than is possible in Western languages. So what I am interested in is in understanding how the aesthetic/cultural/valuational scaffolding offered by different traditions for reason to operate in differ, and what the end effect in reasoning is.

I wrote this on another thread, but it applies very much here: “It is pretty clear by now that reason is dependent upon non-rational, often-times culturally- and historically determined faculties. While we once assumed that the linear, abstract, conceptual cognitive mode cultivated by our culture, with its concomitant picture of reality is Reason itself, we came to realize, at around the time of Hegel, that our account of man, and therefore of reason, was in fact ethnocentric. We came to understand that all along, it was merely -our- reason, as we've configured it culturally, as we've directed it by projecting around it a world picture containing the ideal objects of knowledge we expected to find: forms and structures, essences to be discovered and defined through analysis, principles and laws, linear time and the fiction of “absolutely simple objects” - all of which are just idols and “aesthetic anthropomorphisms” (as Nietzsche called our projected lodestars for inquiry). These are not reason; they are the cultural signposts for reason. And yet we scarcely seem to imagine reasoning without them. The challenge posed for philosophy now is to find the golden grail of modernity, which is an account of human nature that is not ethnocentric.”

And we can't really do that without comparing our fundamental constructions with those of different traditions.

Interesting.

Are "absolutely simple objects"..can that be Mathematics?
(A triangle for example?)

but i gotta read these guys to know what they mean.

A nonethnocentric analysis of human nature is possible.
We just need to ask an alien...but then, what would they know about what it is to be human? heh

i am afraid human beings cannot rinse themselves of their human nature to have an objective look..
The eyes they look through have been programmed.
This riddle of pure objectivity is expressed best not thru words..
but a symbol- the yin/yang

The purest objectivity will always contain the kernel of the one who objectifies...called subjectivity

It is interesting in that the German Philosophers particularly (Kant, Hegel, Schopenheimer, Wittgenstein)seem to be the apex Rationalists- given their language is the most modular, and linearly complex language available.
Precision of terms is an obsession
(Which may be a definition of Philosophy)

i find what you said about language as being vastly underappreciated..
Oriental reading and writing, and perhaps thinking itself, is more "different" than we realize(as in brain function)

i think human nature defies description.
It is always expressed in some sort of cultural context, another aspect of sticky ethnocentrism.


How do we analyze human nature otherwise?
Take away culture and you have an animal..
no longer human

we can perhaps attempt to universalize at best
(conglomorate cultures)..
but there will be casualties.

The East begins with Unity and ends in differentiation
The West begins in differentiation and end in Unity
Their Religion does the opposite

The East loses ego
The West affirms it
Their Religion does the opposite

The reason the West is split, is because it cannot
process contradiction, irony and paradox the way the East does (by virtue of inherent unity)

The West stresses the future..
always moving towards some future event,that never comes (and a heaven that may or may not)
The East, the absolute reality of the Eternal Now

These differences are quite startling,
and should help to inform us of the dexterity of our natures.
What is preferred is ambidextrocity.
But do we have just 2 arms?

What would Shiva say?
:)

Elena wrote: "What do non-Western philosophical traditions have to teach us? Can the comparative study of other traditions help us revise our most fundamental conceptions, and therefore further philosophy? If so..."

Eastern and Western philosophies are and have been the products of clueless humans, so you will not learn anything of value from either of them. There is a new philosophy that fills this void - the Philosophy of Broader Survival. It will be the philosophy of the future.

Eastern and Western philosophies are and have been the products of clueless humans, so you will not learn anything of value from either of them.

This is a philosophical proposition--a self negating one. If you're right, you're wrong.

Numi wrote: "Elena wrote: "What do non-Western philosophical traditions have to teach us? Can the comparative study of other traditions help us revise our most fundamental conceptions, and therefore further phi..."

I read your page. Although I sympathize with some of the sentiments behind your propositions, I find the whole thing to be rather circular and, at best, unnecessary.

Skallagrimsen wrote: "Eastern and Western philosophies are and have been the products of clueless humans, so you will not learn anything of value from either of them.

This is a philosophical proposition--a self negatin..."

Exactly

Gun wrote: "Interesting.

Are "absolutely simple objects"..can that be Mathematics?
(A triangle for example?)

but i gotta read these guys to know what they mean.

A nonethnocentric analysis of human nature is..."

I don't know what you mean by your comments that Western philosophy "ends in unity". I see no evidence of that.

I like manner, I don't know what you mean by your comment that the West can't process paradox because of it's "inherent unity".

HOWEVER - it may be that the following is part of what you meant. My own view is that Western science, and in particular physics, is progressing toward ideas and understandings which line up quite nicely with Eastern thought. For example, "strange attraction" and "cosmic entanglement" begins to speak in scientific language about what the Eastern mind has referred to as the inherent connection of all things in the universe, or the teachings of "non-dualism" (Advaita Vedanta), and even the fundamental ideas of Atman/Brahman - "Atman IS Brahman". Tat Tvam Asi. (See "I Am That" - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Elena wrote: "What do non-Western philosophical traditions have to teach us? Can the comparative study of other traditions help us revise our most fundamental conceptions, and therefore further philosophy? If so..."

I would rather ask what Western philosophy has to teach us. It is able to define the problems of philosophy but cannot solve any of them. Non-Western traditions tend to normalize on non-dualism, which enables us to solve problems and answer questions.

So my answer would be that 'non-Western' philosophy has a great deal to teach us, in particular how to solve problems and answer questions and thus understand philosophy. I would say mainstream Western philosophy as we find it in our universities is dead, and that it can only be revived by opening the windows of the Academy to let in some fresh air.

I cannot grasp the reasoning behind dividing philosophy up into Western and non-Western. Philosophical ideas do not have nationalities. It implies ideological bias and limited scholarship.