Gupta Bina - Philosophical questions: East and West

Philosophy and the Global Context

General Editor: Michael Krausz, Bryn Mawr College

This new series addresses a range of emerging global concerns. It situates philosophical efforts in their global and cultural contexts, and it offers works from thinkers whose cultures are challenged by globalizing movements. Comparative and intercultural studies address such social and political issues as the environment, poverty, consumerism, civil society, tolerance, colonialism, global ethics, and community in cyberspace. They also address related methodological issues of translation and cross-cultural understanding.

Editorial Advisory Board

Ted Benton, University of Essex

David Crocker, University of Maryland

Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame

Elliot Deutsch, University of Hawaii

Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research

Jay Garfield, University of Tasmania

David Theo Goldberg, Arizona State University

Rom Harr, Georgetown University

Bernard Harrison, University of Utah

Ram Mall, University of Cologne

Joseph Margolis, Temple University

Jitendra Mohanty, Temple University

Ashis Nandy, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India

Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago

Amlie Oskenberg Rorty, Brandeis University

Mark Sagoff, University of Maryland

Margarita Valds, University of Mexico

Titles in the Series

Intellectual Property: Moral, Legal, and International Dilemmas (1997) by Adam D. Moore

Ethics of Consumption: The Good Life, Justice, and Global Stewardship (1998) edited by David A. Crocker and Toby Linden

Alternative Visions: Paths in the Global Village (1998) by Fred Dallmayr

East and West

Edited by

Bina Gupta

and

J. N. Mohanty

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Philosophical questions : East and West / edited by Bina Gupta and J.N. Mohanty.

p. cm.(Philosophy and the global context)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-0-8476-9285-9

1. Philosophy, Comparative. 2. East and West. I. Gupta, Bina, 1947 II. Mohanty, Jitendranath, 1928 III. Series.

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.481992.

This is a new venture on our part. The idea of putting together such a volume arose out of our experience of teaching courses on Philosophy: East and West. Eastern philosophy represents one of the most ancient intellectual traditions in human culture, yet it is generally ignored by Western philosophers. The neglect may stem from a prevalent bias that philosophy as a systematic inquiry, properly understood, is exclusively a Western phenomenon and hence absent in non-Western traditions. The editors of this anthology, trained in both Western and Eastern philosophy, clearly demonstrate that philosophy is more than a history of Greek and European thought.

In this work, we present the readers with the questions and challenges that philosophers confront today irrespective of their tradition. A dialogue across traditions is both necessary and desirable; perhaps it is inevitable. In order for it to be fruitful, it must begin with a sensitivity to both differences and commonalities, neither ignoring the differences nor attempting to reduce the one to the other. When similarities are uncovered, they are potentially revealing, while differences speak for themselves. And whatever unique insights are offered within one philosophical tradition can and should be grist for other philosophic mills.

Keeping the above in mind, the texts have been selected from different streams within the Eastern and the Western traditions, though the materials selected have been grouped under traditional philosophical categories: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and religion. We have also included a section on philosophical anthropology, a central concern of philosophy of the East and the West alike. Selections in each section are preceded by an introduction and followed by study questions and suggestions for further reading.

We welcome suggestions, comments, questions, and responses from the instructors who use this volume for their classes.

Above all, we hope this volume will contribute toward breaking the barriers between the East and the West, which specialists have set up over centuries.

In the history of Western thought, there is a strong and influential tendency to look upon philosophy as a Western cultural product. The word philosophy is Greek in origin. But is the discipline called philosophy also Western? Even such an eminent and perceptive philosopher as Edmund Husserl held that the expression Western philosophy is tautologous and the idea of non-Western philosophy a contradiction in terms. The present anthology could serve as a refutation of that narrow conception of philosophy. Happily, today most serious thinkers have come to accept that there are genuine non-Western systems of thought which deserve to be called philosophy.

If philosophy is a thinking consideration of things, then one cannot a priori restrict such thinking only to the West. If philosophy consists in attempts to answer ultimate questions about the nature of reality, the nature and methods of knowledge, the standards of moral judgment, and the deliverance of religious consciousness, then one unmistakably finds such attempts in Indian, Chinese, and Islamic thought. Metaphysics, epistemology, and logic underwent significantly sophisticated developments in India; metaphysics and ethics developed in China; all of these subdisciplines were cultivated in the Islamic world.

Now that science, technology (especially information technology), trade, and commerce promise to transform the world into a global village, it would be anachronistic if students of philosophy read only about Western philosophy, thereby acquiring the prejudice that that is all there is to philosophy. How sad it is that students of philosophy learn about Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche, and do not learn anything about Gautama and Confucius, or about akara and Ngrjuna, or about Avicenna and Al Ghazli.

The editors of the present anthology were inspired by the belief that there are at least three birthplaces of philosophy: India, China, and Greece.