COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY. EVOLUTION IN UNDERSTANDING HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

Communication between Europe and other regions in the world existed (more orless) depending on various circumstances, close to the beginning of Christianity. Import of silk,taking over certain “know-how” – like producing paper, silk, porcelain, steel, or printing), variousinventions (compass, gun-powder, seismograph, etc.), or numerical systems (Arab-Indiannumerals), went from East to West, between 100-1500 AD. A bit later, in colonial times theimport of certain goods went on (coffee, tea, cocoa, spices, shawls, porcelain, or furniture). Thenext step was interest for Oriental culture, which followed Enlightenment times in Europe, andthe discovery of values and ideas of the heritage of Asian cultures, gaining momentum during the19th and 20th c. This took various forms and was developed in various fields. The first was relatedto language studies (in particular Sanskrit, which was considered as a proto-language of Indo-European languages). The second was comparative literature; third comparative mythology, religion,and mysticism; the fourth was comparative philosophy; the fifth, history of art, comparativeaesthetics, and transcultural art philosophy; sixth was comparative psychology. “Oriental” studiesmeant that certain humanistic sciences took over the heritage of various culture of the East,“comparative” meant that in such cases the historian makes comparisons between western andeastern philosophies (noticing differences, similarities, or analogous ideas), while “transcultural”meant that the general standpoint went over Eurocentrism, which considered that certain culturalvalues, or creations, were a privilege of Europe, or European discoveries, which other culturesjust had to take over in later times.