Introduction To Comparative Philosophy

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.

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.

Revised version of lectures delivered by the author on the Sir Hari Singh Gaur Foundation Lectures on Comparative Philosophy, at Saugor University in December 1955.

Our world has evolved in such a way that we can no longer reduce it to just a market - it has also become an agora, where philosophers exchange world-views in order to understand one another. Europe has lost its position at the centre of the world and should stop pretending it holds the one true religion, philosophy, economy and science. Instead, we should turn our attention to fulfilling the dream of Erasmus reflected in his statement: "I wish to be a citizen of the world". First and foremost, we should learn to play fair when comparing different cultures and not rely on exlusively western criteria. This book explains how a comparative model, based on the paradigm-free axes of energy and information, accommodates the current world-views of Taoism, Buddhism and Rationalism - representing Chinese, Indian and Western heritages respectively - and shows how science and religion interrelate within such a global framework.

This unique introduction to comparative philosophy brings together Chinese, Indian, and Western philosophers of roughly the same sort, of comparable stature, on the same philosophical topics and issues. Discussions are arranged in traditional clusters -- logic, epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and social and political philosophy. Compares equals to equals -- logicians with logicians, metaphysicians with metaphysicians, ethicists with ethicists -- e.g., compares Indian, Chinese and Western empiricists, utilitarians, hedonists, egoists, atheists, theists, monists, pluralists, idealists, materialists, dualists, skeptics, relativists, political realists, etc. Treats the strictly philosophical arguments as roughly similar across cultures, but presents the larger cultural contexts in which they occur as considerably different. For anyone interested in comparative philosophy.

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.