Explorations in Indian Philosophy (eBook)

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Comparative Philosophy

Problems and Approaches

Comparative philosophy, which is to be systematically demarcated from comparative studies of culture, language, politics and other human discourses in content and methodology, is regarded as the philosophy of philosophies (Raju 1970: Preface). Its method is comparison; material, philosophical thought; and outcome, a global discourse of philosophical thought cutting across creeds and nations. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes comparative philosophy as “a subfield of philosophy in which philosophers work on problems by intentionally setting into dialogue various sources from across cultural, linguistic, and philosophical streams”. Accordingly, “the ambition and challenge of comparative philosophy are to include all the philosophies of global humanity in its vision of what is constituted by philosophy”. The term cross-cultural philosophy, used as its synonym, gives us an idea of its range and extent. It has the ambitious agenda of being an inclusive discourse comprising and subsuming all philosophical thought of the globe. Yet, however laudable are the aims and objectives of it, there has been some introspection about its achievements and reception from many quarters in the last decades. In 1992, B.K. Matilal confessed that comparative philosophy has had a bad reputation, and the reason for this may be the failure and lack of depth of early comparativists. Comparative philosophy is often spoken of in an apologetic tone by the protagonists and accepted at best with a patronizing manner by the mainstream philosophers who are not simply interested in cross-cultural dialogues. For that matter, even comparative literature which has made global inroads has been charged as lacking in methodology. But before laying blame squarely on the incompetence of the protagonists of comparative philosophy, I would like to point out that the situation is far more complex and that there are very many reasons for the retarded state of comparative studies in philosophy though I would also like to add that things are changing for the better more than two decades after Matilal had made his critical remark. One of the reasons for the alleged failure on the part of earlier comparativists to take off in a big way is the deep-rooted prejudices regarding alien philosophies held by otherwise eminent philosophers who were either unwilling or incapable of looking at other thought systems with an open mind. It will be important to review early attempts to find out the assumptions, methodology, reception and limitations of earlier attempts to have a proper historical and critical perspective.

Earlier attempts in comparative philosophy had lofty aims like producing unity of meaning and purpose of life with reference to a comprehensive system of values. Despite rooted prejudices and scepticism voiced from traditional quarters, comparativists shared a certain excitement and euphoria about their mission and vision in a world no longer divided into traditional boundaries. Most of them shared the belief that earlier cross-cultural encounters were a far cry from the methodological discipline with which comparative philosophy was to be armoured in solving complex issues. Writing in 1970, P.T. Raju, one of the earlier proponents of comparative philosophy in the last century locates the genesis of comparative philosophy to the cultural context where the East and West were merging both violently and non-violently with each other. Raju claims that it belongs to the twentieth century and believed that it was the most philosophical activity of the present. The instances cited by him of earlier inadequate attempts include the interface between Buddhism and Taoism in China in the first centuries of the Christian era and that of Vedāntic thought and post-Kantian idealist thought in Germany. Even though alien philosophies like those of China have been scrutinized by philosophers like Hegel, such cursory treatment lacks the required depth for want of serious engagement in the dialogue by the non-Western counterparts like the Chinese. In Asia the tradition is somewhat different. The migration of Buddhist thought from India to places like China, Korea, Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam resulted in meaningful dialogues between indigenous tradition and Buddhism. In China, philosophical history is characterized by the interface between Buddhism on one hand and Confucianism and Taoism on the other. However, there have been a lot of problems caused by linguistic and other cultural factors in the migration and assimilation of alien thought in many countries in the transmission of systems like Buddhism. Thus logic is a blind spot in Japanese Buddhism as the sophisticated Buddhist logic is difficult to translate and discuss in the Japanese language. Logic was practically absent in traditional China also. Coming to modern times, in modern India, the dialogue was initiated by Sri Aurobindo and S. Radhakrishnan. In Japan, Western philosophy was assimilated by a tradition reinforced by Mahāyāna Buddhism.

The projects envisioned by Raju are themselves not free from controversies and ambiguities. There have been a lot of sceptical voices even denying any legitimacy for comparative philosophy as a discipline. Raju records that R.N. Dandekar, a highly respected Indologist, even while chairing one session of series of lectures of the former on comparative philosophy maintained that comparative philosophy is neither possible nor desirable. The reason cited by him for comparison being impossible was that Eastern philosophies like the Indian are spiritual and practical in aim and outlook and Western philosophies are merely intellectual and this-worldly. Of course, such stereotyped perceptions can be refuted, as done by the author himself. It is not correct to designate all Eastern thought as spiritual and all Western thought as materialistic. The second objection seems to be more valid. Dandekar feared that comparison of concepts would result in subordination, presumably of the Eastern by the Western, and not coordination. Of course, there is some danger of a marginalized philosophy being subordinated in any comparative project, but Raju was optimistic of overcoming such dangers as he believed that subordination is not relevant in philosophical discussion. Raju prefers the term “complementing” to denote the project. This is possible when one realizes that one system of philosophy is inadequate by itself and another system will fit in a deeper and wider whole of which the former is a member (Raju 1970: 71). Whether East–West dialogue was conducted in this ideal way is another problem as stereotypes and deeply ingrained prejudices are hard to overcome, as we shall see subsequently.

Raju himself has a clear-cut methodological framework to address the problems inherent in any East–West dialogue. He maintains that the aim of comparative philosophy is to arrive at the unity of meaning and purpose of life with reference to a comprehensive and integrated system of values. He admits that there is no unanimity of opinion with regard to the methodology and aims of comparative philosophy, but this would be understandable given the nature of infancy of the discipline itself. Some of the elements in two streams of philosophy, like logic and philosophies of science and mathematics, are by their very nature universal and hence need not be addressed to. Comparative philosophy should rather focus on the vision of life immanent in different philosophies. Raju cautions against the European approach of viewing comparative philosophy as phenomenology of philosophies, as this would reduce the enquiry to mere sociology of philosophy probing the relation between a philosophy and its social milieu. The concern of the comparativist is humanistic and what is required is an approach which transcends all phenomena we undertake for study.

With regard to problems related to methodology, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes, following Martha Nussbaum (1997) “some difficulties facing the comparative philosopher”, viz. chauvinism, scepticism, incommensurability and perennialism.

•Descriptive chauvinism is that fault which consists in recreating the other tradition in the image of one’s own. This is reading a text from another tradition and assuming that it asks the same questions or constructs responses or answers in a similar manner as that one with which one is most familiar.

•Normative chauvinism makes proponents believe that their tradition is best and that “in so far as the others are different, they are inferior or in error”.

• Normative scepticism, arguably a scientific and dispassionate attitude to hypotheses without commitment, consists of narrating the views of different philosophies and suspending all judgement about their adequacy. Comparative philosophy, built on the premise that trans-traditional conversation will refine perceptions, however, does not require a suspension of all critical judgement since forming grounds for deciding among views is actually one of the fundamental tasks of comparative philosophy.

• Incommensurability involves the inability to translate some concepts in one tradition into meaning and reference in some other tradition, the fundamental difference of tradition...