De-Essentializing the 'Eastern Wisdom'.

[Guest guest]

Responding further to Lars Martin Fosse's request for my 'ideal' curriculum

on philosophy, I copy below the Table of Contents from the book by

Sharfstein (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University), "A

Comparative History of World Philosophy: From The Upanishads to Kant". (SUNY

Press, 1998.) While I don't agree with many things it says, it is clearly

not Western chauvinistic. It also attempts to de-essentialize and

de-exoticize the so-called 'Eastern Wisdom' that a typical American student

either romanticizes or denigrates as social pathology. In many universities,

some Philosophy 101 is part of core curriculum for the humanities, but is

exclusively Western. This approach by Sharfstein puts 'equivalent'

philosophers across India, China and Europe as peers. If such a method were

widely adopted in mainstream philosophy introductions, more work would be

done along similar lines. Hopefully, this book is just a beginning. The

isolationist positioning of IP today makes it irrelevant to the students'

lives and turns it into ethnography or worse still into other-worldly in

many instances. (If the format comes out lousy for the tables below, request

me off-list for an attachment.)

 

Rajiv Malhotra

The Infinity Foundation

53 White Oak Drive

Princeton, NJ 08540

www.infinityfoundation.com

 

 

Contents

 

 

 

Preface

xi

 

Acknowledgments

xiii

 

Chapter 1. The Three Philosophical Traditions

1

 

Chapter 2. The Beginnings of Metaphysical Philosophy

55

Uddalaka, Yajnavalkya, Heraclitus, Parmenides

 

Chapter 3. The Beginnings of Moral Philosophy

79

Confucius/Mencius, the Buddha, Socrates

 

Chapter 4. Early Logical Relativism, Skepticism, and

Absolutism

113

Mahavira, Chuang-tzu, Protagoras, Gorgias, Plato

 

Chapter 5. Early Rational Synthesis

145

Hsun-tzu, Aristotle

 

Chapter 6. Early Varieties of Atomism

171

Democritus/Epicurus/Lucretius, "Guatama," and Nameless

Buddhists

 

Chapter 7. Hierarchical Idealism

205

Plotinus/Proclus, Bhartrihari

 

Chapter 8. Developed Skpticism

233

Sextus Empiricus, Nagarjuna, Jayarashi, Shriharsha

 

 

 

Chapter 9. Religio-Philosophical Synthesis

275

Udayana, Chu Hsi, Avicenna, Maimonides, Aquinas

 

Chapter 10. Logic-Sensitized, Methodological Metaphysics

329

Gangesha, Descartes, Leibniz

 

Chapter 11. Immanent-Transcendent Holism

367

Shankara, Spinoza

 

Chapter 12. Perceptual Analysis, Realistic and Idealistic

407

Asanga/Vasubandhu, Locke, Berkeley, Hume

 

Chapter 13. Fideistic Neo-Skepticism

467

Dignaga/Dharmakirti, Kant

 

Afterword

517

 

Notes

531

 

Bibliography

655

 

Note on Author

659

 

Index

661

 

 

The Three Philosophical Traditions

 

 

Chronology of Great Philosophers

 

INDIA CHINA, JAPAN

EUROPE

 

B.C.E.

Uddalaka (?8th cent.)

Yajnavalkya (?8th cent.)

 

Mahavira (599-527)

Buddha (563-483)

Heraclitus (fl. 500)

Confucius (551-479)

Parmenides (b. 515)

Mo-tzu (480-390)

Socrates (470-399)

 

Democritus (460-370)

Chuang-tzu ( 4th cent.)

Plato (428-348)

Mencius (371-298)

Aristotle (384-322)

 

Pyrrho (365-270)

 

Epicurus (341-270)

 

Hsün-tzu (298-238)

Arcesilaus (315-241)

Han Fei-tzu (280-233)

 

Carneades (214-129)

 

Lucretius (99-55)

 

 

C.E.

Nagarjuna (fl.200)

Plotinus (205-270)

 

Sextus Empiricus

(3rd cent.)

Asanga (f1. 350)

Vasubandu (f1. 350)

 

Proclus (410-485)

Bhartirhari (450-510)

Dignaga (480-540)

 

Hui-neng (638-713)/

Dharmakirti (600-660) Shen-hui (670-762)

Shankara (700-750) Fa-tsang (643-712)

Jayarashi (f1. 800)

Al-Farabi (870-950)

Udayana (f1. 1050)

Avicenna (980-1037)

Shriharsha (f1. 1150) Chu Hsi (1138-1200)

Maimonides

(1135-1204)

Dogen (1200-1253)

Aquinas (1225-1274)

 

Duns Scotus (1266-1308)

Gangesha (f1. 1320)

William of Ockham

(1285-1347)

 

Raghunatha (fl. 1500) Wang Yang-ming

(1472-1529) Descartes (1596-1650)

Spinoza (1632-1677)

Gadadhara (fl. 1650)

Locke (1632-1704)

 

Leibniz (1646-1716)

 

Hume (1711-1776)

 

Kant (1724-1804)

 

Hegel (1770-1831)

 

Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

 

Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Peirce (1839-1914)

James (1842-1910)

Dewey (1859-1952)

Husserl (1859-1938)

Nishida (1878-1945)

Russell (1872-1970)

Wittgenstein (1889-195l)

Heidegger (1889-1976)

Attachment: (application/ms-tnef) winmail.dat [not stored]

[Guest guest]

Dear Mr Malhotra,

 

INDOLOGY, "Rajiv Malhotra" <rajiv.malhotra@a...> wrote:

 

> Responding further to Lars Martin Fosse's request for my 'ideal'

curriculum

> on philosophy, I copy below the Table of Contents from the book by

> Sharfstein (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv

University), "A

> Comparative History of World Philosophy: From The Upanishads to

Kant". (SUNY

> Press, 1998.) While I don't agree with many things it says, it is

clearly

> not Western chauvinistic. It also attempts to de-essentialize and

> de-exoticize the so-called 'Eastern Wisdom' that a typical American

student

> either romanticizes or denigrates as social pathology. In many

universities,

> some Philosophy 101 is part of core curriculum for the humanities,

but is

> exclusively Western. This approach by Sharfstein puts 'equivalent'

> philosophers across India, China and Europe as peers. If such a

method were

> widely adopted in mainstream philosophy introductions, more work

would be

> done along similar lines. Hopefully, this book is just a beginning.

 

It is not a beginning. Already decades ago, the German philosopher

Karl Jaspers (Univ. of Heidelberg, later Univ. of Basel) wrote a book

titled _Die maßgebenden Menschen_ (we could translate this roughly

as "People Who Set Standards"), and he included among these people the

Buddha and Qiu Kong. In another book, titled _Die großen

Philosophen_ (The Great Philosophers) he included Nagarjuna. (Jaspers

came to my mind right away, but there may have been other European

authors before him who attempted the same; I do not know.)

 

Again it seems that your attention is excessively fixed on whatever

happens somewhere in the USA (where thinkers and authors like Jaspers

never received the high regard which they received in Europe. For this

there are cultural and historical reasons). There is a tendency among

Indians to be ignorant of or to ignore (or even to denigrate) whatever

is done by non-Anglosaxon non-Indians, and after years of living in

India I have grown accustomed to that. Hence I do not expect you to

have ever heard of a person like Jaspers; I have already mentioned

last time the situation at the Univ. of Utrecht in the Netherlands,

where Indian philosophy was compulsory for all beginning students of

philosophy, because I did not expect you to know about that either.

Again I think you should orient yourself better before you write still

more (also because soon somebody may appear and ask what right you

have to complain about Eurocentrism when your own range is similarly

limited). Once again I wonder whether this is right forum for you to

continue your critique and discussion, because it seems to be meant

for American non-Indologists and for 'Macaulayite' Indians, and not

for the international Indological community. Please consider what you

want to achieve.

 

[On a different note, in this context, we should be tolerant of

limitations of others. Jaspers was not an Indologist and did not read

Indian thinkers in their original languages, and yet he could

recognise the significance of a thinker like Nagarjuna. Did he think

Nagarjuna greater than other Indian thinkers, or that others did not

matter? No: but he simply had no means of learning about them as

thoroughly as he could about Nagarjuna. For the time being (and

certainly now, with the lull in humanist studies all over the world)

there are still some serious barriers in receiving the thoughts of

others over time and space in seriousness.]

 

Jaspers' books are available in 600 translations, and I

suppose the two books I referred to above are also available in

English somewhere. Have a look at them and then rethink how bad

'Eurocentrism' in academia is, and that academicians need not wait for

a book to be published in 1998 at an American university press to

realise that India is a part of humanity that is to be taken

seriously.

 

RZ

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "Rajiv Malhotra" <rajiv.malhotra@a...> wrote:

> Responding further to Lars Martin Fosse's request for my 'ideal'

curriculum> on philosophy, I copy below the Table of Contents from the

book by> Sharfstein (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv

University), "A> Comparative History of World Philosophy: From The

Upanishads to Kant". (SUNY> Press, 1998.)

 

Are ther no philosophical foundations for islam?