De-Essentializing the 'Eastern Wisdom'

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Allen commented:

 

> Fri, 11 May 2001 14:56:10 -0400

> "Allen W Thrasher" <athr

>De-Essentializing the 'Eastern Wisdom'.

>

>I believe Columbia's great books program has had for a long time a

>substantial non-Western component, by the way.

>

>Allen Thrasher

 

As someone who taught for some years in this program, I can

report that this is not at all the case. In "[introduction to]

Contemporary Civilization [in the West]" (the central, required,

sophomore seminar on ethics/political philosophy), while the Qu'ran

is still required reading, there is nothing left of documents east of

Greece besides the Bible. Al Ghazali had been on the required list

for a brief spell, I believe, but was gone by the mid-90s.

 

Part of the problem is that these courses are *designed* to

be Euro-centric (hence the course's (full) title specifying "in the

West"). As a result, while in my own teaching I did introduce some

"Eastern" sources such as Al Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun (which are

still, of course, well within the Hellenic philosophical tradition),

I did not feel it was appropriate (or even possible) to try to

"balanceWestern" sources with "Eastern." Even Gandhi, which I

read with my classes, was added because we later read Martin Luther

King, Jr. (and Gandhi too is well within a "Western" intellectual

world). There is just not enough time as the course is currently

designed to add any substantial number of sources from Asian

traditions. The best that could be done with these courses as they

stand, I felt, was to try to guide one's students in a reading of the

texts which situated them within a larger Pan-Eurasian context (which

is, unfortunately, not intellectually possible for most of the

English, Philosophy, PoliSci people who teach the majority of

sections. . .)

 

You may, however, be referring to the "Asian Humanities" or

"Asian Civilization" courses (which program I also taught in). It is

worth noting that these courses are *not* part of Columbia's required

program and are not given much consideration by the regular core

program administration. The Asian traditions are ghettoized into

these courses and are (in general) not given a treatment at all equal

to that given the "Great Books" of the West, nor has development and

funding of these courses been at all comparable. In short, while

there are fantastic scholars of Asia who teach there (in departments

of Asian Studies and/or Religion), Columbia has a *long* way to go

before its general education program has at all integrated anything

of intellectual history beyond Euro-America. . .

 

Best,

 

C.K.W.

 

 

 

--

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Christian K. Wedemeyer, Ph.D.

University Instructor of Tibetan Studies

Department of Asian Studies Asien-instituttet

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