Comparative Philosophy

Once again, Manyul Im’s questions compel me to share his thoughts with you:

C2 is, I think, the most daunting challenge for comparative philosophy because it opens the door for infantilizing the philosophical traditions one is comparing them to. While the act of philosophizing knows no cultural boundaries, Philosophy proper is a Western concept and when used as the metric whereby other philosophies are measured, all too often it establishes that Western philosophy is superior simply by how the different traditions are engaged. Prof. Im touched on this concern in an earlier post, a review of Jiyuan Yu’s The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue, when he asked, “I wondered how things would look if instead of trying to read Confucius, Mencius, Mozi, Xunzi, or other Chinese philosophers as virtue ethicists, Aristotelians, Humeans, Kantians, or consequentialists someone did a close comparative exegesis from the other direction: try to read Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Mill, Hursthouse, Slote, or some other Western philosopher as a Confucian, a ritualist, a Mohist, or Daoist.”

This unidirectional bias within comparative philosophy creates the idea that various philosophers outside of the Western tradition are a sort of watered down version of some Western Star. An interesting example of this is the Essay of the Year (1) chosen from the journal Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy which can be read for free here. As opposed to taking the more expected road and painting Confucius in a communitarian light, Cline instead opts to shoe-horn Confucius into the Rawlsian liberal tradition so that he can illustrate the therapeutic elements of the Rawlsian tradition as opposed to the more widely recognized theoretical ends. But in that way, the paper begins and ends with Rawls, with Confucius being more of a rhetorical device than a philosopher worthy of merit. The point wasn’t to cast light on the truth, per se, or even elucidate sound philosophical concepts but rather to use one set of philosophy to bring out aspects already present in another.

I recognize that D4 addresses this criticism to a degree, but then the question becomes how to properly implement it? The Cline essay comes quite close to D4, insofar as it deals with the concept of justice across traditions, and given D2, it is difficult to imagine it going any other way. So, what is the best way forward?

1. Erin M. Cline, “Two Senses of Justice: Confucianism, Rawls, and Comparative Political Philosophy.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy VI.4: 361-381

Oh really??? This particular sentiment shouldn’t slip by unfazed…

Philosophy is constrained by cultural boundaries, which is why philosophy, the “love of wisdom”, is strictly prohibited to civil settings where within them philosophical inquiries, investigations, and dialogues may begin! Other than the United States, Europe, Russia, and East Asia, I can’t recall any worldly philosophical contributions by any particular author that should be taken as authoritative regarding the meaning of life, words, and / or concepts. The reasons for this should be obvious … powerful cultures produce powerful philosophies. All the rest don’t amount to anything worth reading (and wasting your time with).

Therefore this “comparative philosophy” sounds like BS. Who cares about an African thinker … there is only the West and East to compare!

Furthermore, First Philosophy divided itself between West & East at a middle point sometime in the BC era.

All the ancient wise men are connected.

Let me be proven wrong…

Well, recently there have been plenty of African philosophers. Just because you haven’t heard of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There were also pre-modern philosophers, but because written language was relatively rare in Sub-Saharan Africa, most of the philosophical traditions are more cultural/oral as opposed to, errr, written, but that is to be expected. Check out Kawadia for a modern engagement of traditional African philosophies with modern philosophies. And North Africa is loaded with philosophers – the Library at Alexandria saw to that.

Now I will agree with your general thesis to a degree, only insofar as philosophy requires a leisure class and that areas without such a class cannot develop a deep system of philosophy, but so what? More importantly, what does this have to do with the topic at hand? Kawadia is a rather vital example of comparative philosophy. Furthermore, I think your focusing on that sentence at the expense of the one following it is a mistake.

Edit: As for ancient thinkers being connected, there is simply no evidence for it. While Alexander did allow for the spread of various ideas and Rome continued this trend, the sort of ancient thinkers we are talking about would be long since dead.

When I attempt to learn a foreign language, I start by learning cognates. This is not possible in learning, for purposes of comparison and contrast, different philosophical systems without assuming that certain ideas are common among them. Such comparison does not necessitate reference to some superior philosophy from which diverse ideas and issues are derived. No such absolute exists. It depends on understanding what the different philosophical systems have in common and what ideas each has that deviates from commonality and why. I would think such deviations are rare or nonexistent in that philosophy of any kind appears based on the human experience of existence in societies, on common abilities to communicate despite geographical or ethinic differences and on the ontological and existential questions most humans, whether extant aborigines or college professors, continue to ask and respond to. The apparent “universal” or norm is the question, not the answer.
(See my last post in “Nouns vs Verbs” about Chinese philosophy as compared with that of the West.)

So, comparative philosophy is simply comparing the philosophical works about a certain concept that were created in one culture, to works about the same concept created in a different culture? If so, then what is the purpose of comparative philosophy, and what knowledge is to be gained in this way? I can see how this might increase your understanding of the cultures involved, but I don’t see how this will help you understand the concepts.

Ierrellus,

Well, one of the most common means whereby cognates are identified is in the act of translation. I’m most familiar with Chinese philosophy, so the example I’ll use is from there. When Legge wanted to translate the Four Books of Confucianism into English, he opted to translate “ren” as “benevolence”, largely because he was heavily influenced by a theological movement out of Scotland that stated that benevolence, the Christian concept, was the basis for all human relationships. So when he saw that Confucians latched onto the notion that this humaneness, literally “two-peopleness”, he glossed it over to the benevolence that he liked so much. So already there is a shift, because an essentially 19th century Scottish Christian notion was retroconned into Confucianism. This, and other interpolations like it have heavily influenced not only students reading Chinese texts in translation but also the interpretation of the texts by the Chinese themselves. Near the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th, various Asian countries have held a fascination with Western countries, embracing a sort of Social Darwinism and seeing that the West was on top, decided to adopt many of their ways. So for a time there were many pseudo-Christian interpretations of Confucius. This sort of blending is still very apparent in many of the publications that come from Hong Kong, where Eastern and Western cultures have been blending for quite some time. Though most likely that will change as Hong Kong reintegrates over time. The conversion of Korea to Christianity is a somewhat similar story, though a good deal more overt.

TheZeus,

Well, I suppose it all depends on your view of the unity of the issues covered in philosophy as well as their completeness. I, for one, think that people are more similar than not and tend to ask the same sorts of questions given the same situations. A good book is “Holy Feast, Holy Fast” by Caroline Walker Bynum, in that it shows how rational, and even human, it was for women in the European Middle Ages to engage in all sorts of strange forms of asceticism, like eating nothing but the pus from their own sores. It seems very strange until you follow their reasoning and then it would seem even stranger for them not to have eaten the pus from their own sores! So seemingly alien practices actually give rise to ends that would seem congenial to us and even the means whereby these practices arose are understandable and reasonable. It is more-or-less the same with all philosophical endeavors, in that seeming differences occlude the common humanity and human ends being met by the pursuit.

Given this, it is also worth noting that no system is complete and perfect. So while they are all approaching similar ends, none of them are able to quite make it. But they may be, indeed, often are incomplete in different and complimentary ways. So when similarities are compared, elements that are missing in both can be examined. Some of them will be purely cultural/situated and may no longer apply. Some of them will be distasteful and ought be expunged and their absence in one system is proof positive that their absence can exist without contradiction, or at least serves as an initial starting point from which to build that thesis. Others will be delightful, but absent in one tradition or the other. Seeing their presence will alert us to an absence, or more likely a seeming absence, that can now be recognized. The essay I linked, for example, fleshes out the Rawlsian notion of justice using the Confucian concept of yi.

It really isn’t different from any other type of philosophy in that regard. Taking various concepts developed by various philosophers and developing from there. Marx built off Hegel but with a materialistic bent. In the same manner, Cline tried to build off Rawls but with a Confucian bent. All that separates it is the notion of familial resemblance. I’ve said before that comparing philosophers cross-culturally sheds more light on both (for example, Confucius has more in common with Aristotle than he does with Zhuangzi, who in turn has more in common with Sartre than he does with Xunzi who has more in common with Hobbes, and so on.) Despite that, we can compare Confucius, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi on other grounds that makes such a comparison worthwhile as well. Just as examining Aristotle, Sartre, and Hobbes can be telling in its own way. So cognates and culture provide different aspects for studying various concepts.

Yes, the archeological dig into a history of ideas in order to find who said what and what was meant by what was said in any particular cultural epoch is often muddled by purposeful anachronism on the part of scribe and other interpreters. This reminds me of the many priests and King James scholars, who, given the task of translating the Bible, added their own homilies and used current, politically correct meanings of words.
That being said, I still believe a comparison of philosophies from different cultures is possible simply because all such cultures are human as are all philosophical speculations. Don’t humans share basic concerns? And couldn’t that be the cognate or Rosetta Stone?

The biggest hurdle, which is implicit in all of this, is cultural reductionism. While it can be said that all peoples in all cultures have similar questions looking for plausible answers, it is the cultural assumptions that makes even reasonably accurate comparisons iffy at best.

Xunz, We have both read eastern philosophy extensively. We each have our own sort of emphasis, but we share in common the problems asociated with trying to find that place where we intuitively grasp understanding. I don’t know how many translations you have of the Anelects, but probably as many or more than I have of Dao De Jing. Why? All in the effort to sift through the multiple perspectives of multiple translators hoping to find that… kernel of understanding within the culture that produced the material.

After almost twenty years of study, I can readily admit that I still haven’t managed to pierce the veil of cultural differences and the hidden mindset we all suffer. While comparison can and will be made, I see no way to find anything but the most generalized of observations. Comparative philosophy is an area that has to be so narrow as to say nothing of import, or to be dangerously generalized so that knowing isn’t really “knowing”.

Thanks Xunzian, that is interesting. I think I understand.

Ierrellus,

Sure, translation is interpretation. But is that a bad thing? While I think understanding the particular context where a philosophy arose, to limit it to just that context is necessarily to condemn it to the dustbin of history. So I don’t think that such interpretations ought be viewed as perversions of some original perfect message, but rather a representation of the continued refinement and, ideally, improvement of the original philosophical vision.

As for your second point, I agree. See my response to TheZeus below your’s.

Tent,

I’m not sure I see the problem. If one wanted to compare huge concepts, sure, there are always going to be problems. Especially if one treats various traditions as a monolithic whole. But as long as one is specific, I don’t see too much of a problem. See D2-D5.

Xunz,

As I see the problem, what is specific is nested within those huge concepts and while one may tease out something specific to be compared, it still is related to those huge concepts in ways that are never discussed.

For example, the word “Tian” has a number of meanings within Chinese culture, all depending on the context and grammar being used. Translated into english, we get the word “heaven” which also has several meanings dependent on context and grammar. But what isn’t discussed is that the Chinese concept implies no creator, but simply creation. The english notion assumes a “one behind many” creator. Little wonder the amount of confusion when trying to fit one concept into a culture with a different concept. The words tian and heaven have similar vague meanings comparitively, but the perspective generated by each word is quite different and only understandable within those “huge concepts”.

It seems to me that to do comparative philosophy, one would have to have immersed themselves in both cultures in order to grasp the subtleties of how the specific relates to the huge concepts. Undoubtably, there are people capable of this, but they could only talk to each other. The average student might grasp the vague generalities, but not the intricate subtleties.

I think the cultural differences affecting philosophy in the East and the West can be described as follows.
Eastern philosophy, at least that derived from Confucius’ writings is primarily concerned with humanism, with what would be required of a just state populated by right-thinking individuals. The yin yang schools of thought were concerned with complementation of “opposites”. The best way I can express that is to think of a battery whose positve and negative poles join to make electrical energy. Eastern philosophers also took as given concepts of a whole comprised of interdependent parts.
Western philosophy appears to have been constantly dividing into independent schools of thought. Only recently have some writers attempted to express philosophy with reference to multiple disciplines–anthropology, biology, history, sociology, etiology, etc. Western philosophy still seems, despite learning of biospheres and ecology, to eschew concepts of a whole and to see a complementation of “opposites” as a weak argument from those who haven’t the knowledge or balls to take a side.

Tent,

Sure, it is true that in order to do good comparative philosophy, the comparative philosopher must know what they are talking about. But that is true for anything. While linguistic biases still remain, which is why some scholars don’t translate various foreign words, I don’t see them as insurmountable. Nor do I see, with caveats included, such a discussion being impossible. I mean, a lot of the differences are fairly subtle. Tian started out as a sky god, and while not a creator-god, sky gods have a great deal of similarities cross-culturally. Indeed, so much so that pagans viewed them as being entirely interchangeable! Now, in China this concept became more and more abstracted until you basically have something that exists as a metaphysical principle only by the time of the Warring States period, and in the West the concept became ever more concrete. But the starting points were fairly similar. The example I always like to use is comparing chess with xianqi. They both started out as the same game, but developed in radically different ways, but despite that they are still recognizably share the same origin. Sure, Heaven(God)/Tian distinction is not perfect, but such a gloss can be made and the effectiveness of such a gloss can be debated. Same deal with benevolence/ren, gentleman/junzi, ect. I mean, the whole point is identifying similarities and differences and seeing how they hold up!

But, in short, all I think that is demanded is that people know what they are talking about. Isn’t that obvious?

Ierrellus,

I think you hit on it with your second part: synthesis vs. fragmentation. In China, even in disagreement, synthesis is the norm. Whereas in the West, even in agreement, fragmentation is the norm. Daoists bend over backwards to point out that, but for a few misunderstood items, Confucians are saying the same thing. Confucians, Buddhists, the whole lot do the same. Of course, somehow once the misunderstood items are corrected, the system always ends up favoring the position being advocated (who knew?). In the West even amongst the same school, people try to stand out. Rawls will point out where he is distinct from other Contractarians, let alone members of other schools. Logical Positivists will say that Existentialists are babbling about nothing. And so on. A lot of this is simply cultural, the Promethean ideal of the West vs. the Confucian view of the East, to paint with a broad brush. Since comparative philosophy is a synthetic movement, it makes sense that its staunchest advocates are in the various East Asian departments.

Maybe a few disasters might convince the West to think in terms of ecology and synthesis. It doesn’t seem likely, given the Western ideals of rugged individualism and cowboy, just shoot 'em, ideas of how to deal with those who have opposing views. Conciliation will have to come from the East!

The Western, rugged individualist, cowboy mentality will probably die with its boots on and its gun cocked before it could dare compromise.

Meh, the counterpoint to that is that the meek Easterner won’t ever get anything done. Plus both of us can find various philosophers, East and West, that exemplify the other’s stereotypical mentality. And we can certainly find individuals! But as a whole, the trends hold and I think both sides have a good deal to learn from each other. The West needs a more communitarian outlook, as thinkers like McIntyre and Sandel have noted, but the East needs a more individualistic outlook, as thinkers like Lu Xun, and Mishima. Comparative philosophy ought be the moderation of the extreme positions our cultures have adopted.

Ever since colonialism, the East has been involved in such a pursuit and at full steam. In their zealousness, however, they run the risk of running past the mark or perhaps adopting the worst elements of both. Disregard for the individual plus industrialization leads to lethal working conditions that the West did not face, and the West’s industrialization was pretty freakin’ lethal. Little Emperors, a legacy of the very necessary one child policy, leads to a very seriously inflated sense of self worth, and so on. At the same time, well-meaning but incompetent New Agers fetishize the new in a very Western way but apply it to Eastern philosophies, creating a tasteless gruel. Balance is tricky.

Those whom it hurts to think hard will settle for stereotypes. Hopefully, some depth of thinking can allow comparative philosophy. If so, what would that entail?

I think that is up to the philosophers and their tastes. Right now I’m toying with the notion of integrating Constructive Empiricism to my Yangming/Yulgok/Fuzhi philosophy. I need to do some more reading on CE, but so far it seems to fit better than instrumentalism, so I may have to shift my thinking.

As for other examples, many people on this board already do it unknowingly. Nietzsche, for example, was heavily influenced by Zhuangzi. Confucianism influenced Leibniz and other Enlightenment thinkers as well such as Bayle, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. Now, we can argue that all of these individuals were aware of a very distorted version of Chinese philosophy, filtered through many layers of heavily biased translation, plus cultural chauvinism that was all too common in their time, but that doesn’t change the influence in an absolute sense, it merely modifies how we receive it.

I thought philosophy predated even the Greeks…going back to ancient Babylon, and Egypt to some degree. Although I guess the Socratic method is an important distinction.

I agree with Irrellus’ view of synthesis v. fragmentation. David Brooks has an op-ed piece in the NYT that reflects on some of the themes of the Olympics and differences in the collective v. individualist world view.

I’m not sure exactly what this means. If it’s about being constructive in terms of the goal is to ‘build upon’ our understanding of the big questions of the human condition, then I agree. But of course it’s okay to deconstruct as a methodology, like challenging apparent inconsistencies in a particular view.

This condition seems sort of artificially constructed…who says that a ‘standpoint above or between traditions’ is necessarily neutral? Or who gets to establish that, anyway? And wouldn’t it be the nature of an ‘advance’ that dictates the course of the standpoint that results?

I guess, but it’s such a personal thing that everyone probably does it anyway, despite his or her best intentions, lol.

IMO, the important thing is that the goal of doing the comparative stuff remains the quest for the larger philosophical truth, or to engage in philosophical as an intrinsically necessary comparative activity, and not for cultural distinction or hegemony. I’ve been a fan of the Kyoto School (Nishida Kitaro) for years precisely because of their rigorous discipline in the comparative stuff (primarily between Mahayana Buddhism & the Western classics), to the extent that they at times seem to have more insight into Western thought than a lot of Westerners do. It’s interesting how the Japanese are so good at that! Also, I appreciate that they don’t seek resolution or dissolution of the dissimilarities between East and West. Just as they don’t worry about justifying the preeminence of one over the other, but instead focus on creative interpretation of difference. Too bad the West hasn’t returned the favor in equal measure; maybe we’d have more interesting stuff to read in these modern times, instead of, as Whitehead noted, perpetual footnotes to Plato.

I basically agree with this, but think it’s such a huge challenge. Even when you accept that dealing with translations of varying quality means you have to read pretty much EVERYBODY’S version of something that you can find (not to mention other peoples’ analyses of the subject), that still doesn’t address the challenge of understanding the differences that exist within traditions. And when it comes to studying Eastern philosophy as a westerner, you have to develop a healthy skepticism about the standpoint of any translator.

Being, becoming, duality, nothingness, the ego-self, the particular/the universal, the relative/the absolute, freedom, intention…I’d say there’s plenty that comes under the category ‘common concern’. It’s just that the questions are asked differently, and so the reasoning takes off in different directions. Another reason why the comparative enterprise is so fundamental, IMO.

I’m not sure I understand this. I don’t think I’d ever want to seriously consider distinguishing concepts/problems from individual thinkers because my interest is about learning how they got to a particular conclusion or formulation of an idea. And I think every philosophical thinker is ‘engaged in comparative work.’ How could it be otherwise?

Eh, I view it as one of those things like “science”. We can trace things vaguely science-like back to the Greeks, the Babylonians, and so on . . . but what we really understand to be “science” doesn’t come about until the European Enlightenment and is very much a product of that environment. Same deal with philosophy. While I don’t think the lexical fallacy is a valid fallacy, I do think that naming an activity does elevate it to a previously unrecognized level. Philosophy occurs everywhere, humans are curious beings so that is to be expected. But what we think of when we describe philosophy as a discipline started in Greece, probably with Thales.

That is how I took it. And I agree that deconstruction has a place, but given that comparative philosophy is by its nature synthetic, I don’t see it as having much use in this particular field. Even using it reflexively to test one’s model, it can really only go after one leg, and then the other as opposed to both at once.

Well, this is just a marker of the procedural tradition that runs academia. And in this case, I think it is fairly fitting. There are plenty of philosophers who have entered the ring saying that one tradition or the other is better/right/what-have-you and then gone on to show that, despite being flawed and more than a little bit silly, the other tradition still has some merit insofar as it manages to grasp onto a few of the notions of the superior tradition. Do we need more of that? Is that an honest engagement of the traditions? A position in between is at least neutral insofar as the two traditions being compared is concerned. In the grand scheme of things, that is a different issue, but does that really matter here?

Oh, no doubt. People will almost certainly have a favorite. But it behooves them to try and moderate that.
[quoterIMO, the important thing is that the goal of doing the comparative stuff remains the quest for the larger philosophical truth, or to engage in philosophical as an intrinsically necessary comparative activity, and not for cultural distinction or hegemony. I’ve been a fan of the Kyoto School (Nishida Kitaro) for years precisely because of their rigorous discipline in the comparative stuff (primarily between Mahayana Buddhism & the Western classics), to the extent that they at times seem to have more insight into Western thought than a lot of Westerners do. It’s interesting how the Japanese are so good at that! Also, I appreciate that they don’t seek resolution or dissolution of the dissimilarities between East and West. Just as they don’t worry about justifying the preeminence of one over the other, but instead focus on creative interpretation of difference. Too bad the West hasn’t returned the favor in equal measure; maybe we’d have more interesting stuff to read in these modern times, instead of, as Whitehead noted, perpetual footnotes to Plato.[/quote]
I agree. I also really dig the Kyoto School, no surprises there.

I’d agree with that completely. It is good to identify challenges like this, so we can be mindful of them and overcome them. And I agree about the differences within a tradition. But I think they addressed that pretty well in the next section.

I agree completely.

To a certain extent, sure. But if all we are doing is comparing two individual philosophers, aren’t we (for the most part) just doing philosophy? Also, what can really be gained from it? Does saying that “Nagarjuna is not a Nietzschean” mean much? Wouldn’t it be better to compare, as Nishitani did, things like emptiness in both traditions? Now, individual philosophers will necessarily pop up in such a comparison, but they don’t take center stage. As for thinkers engaged in comparative work, I agree with the broad statement that all philosophers are engaged in comparative work, but given the subject of this thread it deals with comparative philosophers. It would get pretty meta pretty quickly if one were to compare Nishitani to, say, Heidegger.