Really interesting study on the premises behind philosophy and contemporary studies of history or political science that explain why it's as Eurocentric as it is.
Really interesting study on the premises behind philosophy and contemporary studies of history or political science that explain why it's as Eurocentric as it is.
For Hegel, the Greek miracle lay in the separating out of mythology and philosophy, so that the articulation of questions about, say, the nature of time, could be addressed in a universal idiom that would not presuppose the existence of Chronos as a divine personification of time. For the ancient Persians, by contrast, to use Hegel's own example, reflection on the nature of time could only proceed through culturally embedded narratives inseparable from religion and lore.
Thus for Hegel only those expressions of philosophy that descend from the Greeks have any claim to universality, and thus only these expressions deserve to be exported from their place of origin throughout the world. This 19th-century Europeanisation of philosophy witnessed the destruction of millennia-old disciplinary divisions in India and China, notably, as newly subjugated institutions of learning rushed to model their curricula on those of European universities, creating neologisms for “philosophy” where these had not existed before.
This article it talking about academic philosophy as a broader discipline. It also goes into detail about the specific tendency that proscribes European traditions are general and universal and...
Is it Eurocentric or do we live in a European derived society, with a (historically) majority population of European descent?
This article it talking about academic philosophy as a broader discipline. It also goes into detail about the specific tendency that proscribes European traditions are general and universal and all others are unsuitable for analysis. It even talks about other, prior thought processes within the European tradition that did not have this bias and were consciously more ecumenical.
For example how Eurocentric is Asian philosophical thought? Or is it, as I suspect, steeped in Buddhism, Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism?
It's really not. Those traditions are ghettoized into "Eastern Philosophy" and not taken nearly as seriously nor part of the broader discourse.
Again, the traditional streams of thought have been completely ghettoized. They're studied through the lens of classics more than as philosophy, and insofar as they are studied as philosophy it's...
it has by no means enfolded the eastern traditions.
Again, the traditional streams of thought have been completely ghettoized. They're studied through the lens of classics more than as philosophy, and insofar as they are studied as philosophy it's as a subset of the main branch and interpreted through the lens of people trained in a Western discipline. Rajiv Malhotra has written extensively about this as it pertains to the Indian context, and his polemical nationalism aside, he's makes a pretty reasonable point that throughly catalogs the gaps in methods of analysis.
there have been numerous movements to secularize eastern Philosophy
The division between religious and secular is a Western thing borne out of the Protestant Reformation. The idea that you must separate these dimensions of human experience out from each other to be considered legitimate or taken seriously is a fundamentally Western philosophical framing. This really just reiterates the point that the Eastern ideas are only acceptable insofar as they're shot through a prism that makes them look like Western ideas. But this obliterates any true differences or senses of nuance they could have had.
While one may argue that Fajia is just real-politik invented by the Chinese
Yes. I would argue that. The explicit basis of the PRC is Marxism as interpreted by Mao and then some modern political/economic theory. The veneer of Legalism is just a nationalistic coat of paint to appeal to something in Chinese history, but it's not an internal development through a chain of philosophical inquiry. It's no different from Hindutva, which is just Hinduism coated fascism. The Hindu scholarship will necessarily take a back seat to the nationalistic politics, which is the tell. It's not the Hindu side of things in the driver's seat, it's a basically Western philosophical framing around what a religion is, it's role in society, what constitutes government, etc. being. They sound just like Evola when they talk, which should indicate that there's isn't much daylight between what they're saying and what European nationalists are saying, Hanuman iconography substituted for Catholic stuff not withstanding. The founders all studied in Oxbridge, they didn't come up through the Indian or Hindu scholarly traditions. It's not that different from Wicca or pagan reconstructionism. They may be doing their best, but it's basically trying to reinterpret old and largely dead traditions through an anachronistic lens.
Otherwise I'm not sure how calling eastern philosophy "Eastern Philosophy" is a "ghettoization".
They don't get the same chairs, the same journals, the same level of engagement in society. It's ghettoization because it's partitioned off into a corner where it doesn't get taken seriously unless it's reinterpreted. They're not approached as living traditions, they're approached as something pickled into a certain orthodox framing of what each category is.
Really interesting study on the premises behind philosophy and contemporary studies of history or political science that explain why it's as Eurocentric as it is.
This article it talking about academic philosophy as a broader discipline. It also goes into detail about the specific tendency that proscribes European traditions are general and universal and all others are unsuitable for analysis. It even talks about other, prior thought processes within the European tradition that did not have this bias and were consciously more ecumenical.
It's really not. Those traditions are ghettoized into "Eastern Philosophy" and not taken nearly as seriously nor part of the broader discourse.
Again, the traditional streams of thought have been completely ghettoized. They're studied through the lens of classics more than as philosophy, and insofar as they are studied as philosophy it's as a subset of the main branch and interpreted through the lens of people trained in a Western discipline. Rajiv Malhotra has written extensively about this as it pertains to the Indian context, and his polemical nationalism aside, he's makes a pretty reasonable point that throughly catalogs the gaps in methods of analysis.
The division between religious and secular is a Western thing borne out of the Protestant Reformation. The idea that you must separate these dimensions of human experience out from each other to be considered legitimate or taken seriously is a fundamentally Western philosophical framing. This really just reiterates the point that the Eastern ideas are only acceptable insofar as they're shot through a prism that makes them look like Western ideas. But this obliterates any true differences or senses of nuance they could have had.
Yes. I would argue that. The explicit basis of the PRC is Marxism as interpreted by Mao and then some modern political/economic theory. The veneer of Legalism is just a nationalistic coat of paint to appeal to something in Chinese history, but it's not an internal development through a chain of philosophical inquiry. It's no different from Hindutva, which is just Hinduism coated fascism. The Hindu scholarship will necessarily take a back seat to the nationalistic politics, which is the tell. It's not the Hindu side of things in the driver's seat, it's a basically Western philosophical framing around what a religion is, it's role in society, what constitutes government, etc. being. They sound just like Evola when they talk, which should indicate that there's isn't much daylight between what they're saying and what European nationalists are saying, Hanuman iconography substituted for Catholic stuff not withstanding. The founders all studied in Oxbridge, they didn't come up through the Indian or Hindu scholarly traditions. It's not that different from Wicca or pagan reconstructionism. They may be doing their best, but it's basically trying to reinterpret old and largely dead traditions through an anachronistic lens.
They don't get the same chairs, the same journals, the same level of engagement in society. It's ghettoization because it's partitioned off into a corner where it doesn't get taken seriously unless it's reinterpreted. They're not approached as living traditions, they're approached as something pickled into a certain orthodox framing of what each category is.