Comparative Philosophy

This classic comparative study of the world's three great philosophies-Western (including Jewish), Indian, and Chinese-surveys the three philosophical traditions from their beginnings to the present time. However, in examining the traditions, Professor Raju has been less occupied with separate doctrines and individual thinkers than with essential characteristics and general trends. He has analyzed and compared these features within the traditions and explored the parallels and divergences among them. For the general interested reader, the interchange among the philosophies will be especially valuable. For the students of religion and of philosophy, the work is a standard guide and reference work.

This original and accessible text is more than an introduction to comparative philosophy in the East and West. It is also a guide to 'philosophizing' as a thinking process. In addition to outlining the presuppositions of different traditions, it discusses their methods and techniques for reasoning in what the author calls four dimensions of 'philosophical space': object, subject, the situational and the aspective/perspective dimension.

Comparative Philosophy without Borders presents original scholarship by leading contemporary comparative philosophers, each addressing a philosophical issue that transcends the concerns of any one cultural tradition. By critically discussing and weaving together these contributions in terms of their philosophical presuppositions, this cutting-edge volume initiates a more sophisticated, albeit diverse, understanding of doing comparative philosophy. Within a broad conception of the alternative shapes that work in philosophy may take, this volume breaks three kinds of boundaries: between cultures, historical periods and sub-disciplines of philosophy such as metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy. As well as distinguishing three phases of the development of comparative philosophy up to the present day, the editors argue why the discipline now needs to enter a new phase. Putting to use philosophical thought and textual sources from Eurasia and Africa, contributors discuss modern psychological and cognitive science approaches to the nature of mind and topics as different as perception, poetry, justice, authority, and the very possibility of understanding other people. Comparative Philosophy without Borders demonstrates how drawing on philosophical resources from across cultural traditions can produce sound state-of-the-art progressive philosophy. Fusing the horizons of traditions opens up a space for creative conceptual thinking outside all sorts of boxes.

How do differences in language influence comparative philosophy? Although the Orientalism famously described by Edward Said is rare today, Steven Burik maintains that comparative philosophy often subtly privileges one tradition over another since certain conceptual schemes are so embedded in Western languages that it is difficult not to revert to them. Arguing for a new approach that acknowledges how theory and practice cannot be separated in comparative philosophical endeavors, Burik provides nonmetaphysical, deconstructionist readings of Heidegger and Derrida and uses these to give a new reading of classical Daoism. The ideas of language advanced therein can aid the project of comparative philosophy specifically, and philosophies generally, in trying to overcome ways of thinking that have dominated Western philosophy for twenty-five hundred years and still frustrate intercultural encounters.

This is Volume IV of seven in the Philosophy of Religion and General Philosophy series. First published in 1926 this is a study of a method designed to attain a positive by way of the comparative or compared philosophy.

This anthology explores how Chinese and Western philosophies could jointly and constructively contribute to a common philosophical enterprise. Philosophers with in-depth knowledge of both traditions present a variety of distinct comparative approaches, offering a refined introduction to the further reaches of Chinese philosophy in the comparative context, especially regarding its three major constituents - Confucianism, philosophical Daoism, and the Yi-Jing philosophy. This book examines various issues concerning philosophical methodology, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic, and investigates both the living-spring source of Chinese philosophy and its contemporary implications and development through contemporary resources. The balanced coverage, accessible content, and breadth of approaches presented in this anthology make it a valuable resource for students of Chinese Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, and other related courses.

This collection of essays is an exercise in comparative philosophy of religion that explores the different ways in which humans express the inexpressible. It brings together scholars of over a dozen religious, literary, and artistic traditions, as part of The Comparison Project's 2013-15 lecture and dialogue series on "religion beyond words." Specialist scholars first detailed the grammars of ineffability in nine different religious traditions as well as the adjacent fields of literature, poetry, music, and art. The Comparison Project's directors then compared this diverse set of phenomena, offering explanations for their patterning, and raising philosophical questions of truth and value about religious ineffability in comparative perspective. This book is the inaugural publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa, USA). The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. Specialist scholars of religion first explore this topic in their religions of expertise; comparativist philosophers of religion then raise questions of meaning, truth, and value about this topic in comparative perspective. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.

Breaks through the cultural barriers between Western, Indian, and Chinese philosophy and demonstrates that despite considerable differences between these three great philosophical traditions, there are fundamental resemblances in their abstract principles.