Ric Vatner's Blog

Posted By Ric Vatner on October 10, 2009

On Wednesday I gave a talk at Ariel bookshop in Paddington on Why and How Eastern Philosophy developed differently to Western Philosophy.

As I said in my opening, my task is to look at the development of philosophy in the East and the West over the last 2,500 years in approximately 30 minutes. That’s a minute a century.

Of course the topic was far too huge to do it justice but after 8 or 9 complete revisions I got it down to the allotted time (well it went just over 40 minutes) but question time went on for over two hours and even then the MC had to close the meeting or it would have gone on longer.

I don’t think that was entirely due to my speaking prowess although as you know the right audience makes a big difference and in many ways they contribute to the quality of the “performance”. And on that night I did feel we had a simpatico as my dad used to say.

But in all honesty I think the topic is of great interest to people these days. There is a feeling, one could almost say a hope that Eastern Philosophy can provide answers to some of the pressures we experience these days in our everyday life. And I believe it can.

Bye the way for all you who are screaming out “what’s this Eastern Philosophy, there’s no such thing”. I agree you cannot take the huge body of philosophical texts from all over the orient and lump them together under the title Eastern Philosophy. They are all so individual that that is a blatant misrepresentation. Of course they are not one homogenous body of work so it is silly to label them as though they were. But it is an easy label to fall in to the habit of using and I really mean the diverse philosophies from countries in the Orient as opposed to Europe and North America.

So where does Islamic philosophy fit in? Well from what I can see if someone is using the terms Eastern and Western Philosophy, they generally lump the mediaeval Islamic texts in with the Oriental philosophies. I’m not really sure about modern Islamic philosophy. In fact, I haven’t read any modern Islamic Philosophy or any commentaries on it that didn’t seem to be mainly religious argument rather than pure philosophy. Which funnily enough is a criticism often made about Chinese and Indian texts.

But who is making the criticism? More often than not it will be a western reader, be it an amateur or professional philosopher, but whatever the case their “criticism” is often misplaced I feel. Sure a lot of the great Chinese and Indian Philosophers were religious but from about 800 AD most philosophers in the west were Christian of one type or another and that certainly doesn’t mean that their works are not great philosophy.

The thing that makes me smile is that western philosophers regularly refer to Eastern Philosophy as Mysticism or Religion rather than as philosophy but it is the great mono theistic religions that promise a better life in the next world whereas in China Confucianism and Taoism seem to be happy to teach a philosophy that helps you to live in peace and contentment in this life.

So which one is Mysticism or religious-philosophy and does it really matter?

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Categories: Life, Love & Philosophy, Public Speaking, World Affairs
Tags: Eastern Philosophy, Islamic Philosophy, Mystisism, Religion, Western Philosophy