Analysis of Terms as an Instrument of Comparative Philosophy

The article continues the polemics on the problems of interaction of philosophical cultures in the era of globalization, which was started at the meetings of the Round Table "Geography of Rationality". The author gives answers to critical questions, explains the methodology and principles of her work with Indian philosophical texts. A short research of the meta-term "cognitive subject" is an example of her methods. The analysis of cognitive subject aimed to justify the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in Indian epistemic culture, the cornerstones of Western epistemic culture, since Modern times. The justification was carried out by comparing the generalized model of the cognitive subject, abstracted from the writings of empiricists and rationalists of the XVII–XVIII centuries, with the generalized models of the cognitive subject, reconstructed on the basis of authoritative writings of three variants of Indian epistemological teachings: Advaita Vedānta, Jainism and Buddhism. From the author's point of view, the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in India leads to the non-classical problem of pluralism of epistemic cultures, and the exploration of the meta-term "cognitive subject" allows us to find, on the one hand, intersections in the contents of epistemologies in Indian philosophy and Western metaphysics of Modern times, and on the other, their incompatible contents, which are specific manifestations of pluralism of epistemic cultures. For her reconstruction of the cognitive subject models the author takes the principle of "double perspective" in combination with the methods of hermeneutical and logical analysis of philosophical terms. The principle determinates the consideration of the theoretical object from two sides: European and Indian. Having appeared in the Western epistemic culture, these methods effectively work to objectify the results of socio-humanitarian research, thanks to which they are becoming increasingly widespread among non-Western cross-cultural philosophers. When the author applies the method of logical analysis to justify the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in India, she is guided by the rules of logical semantics and the principles of semiotics. The compared terms, Western and Indian, are considered as signs with their own meanings and senses. The senses are understood as sets of predicates important for solving the author’s task. The author of the article, taking into account the experience of famous philosophers, negatively assesses the possibility of solving the problem of unambiguously correct translation.

Past Continuous or Present Perfect? Continuity and Change in Contemporary Indian Philosophy

Contemporary Indian philosophy is a distinct genre of philosophy that draws both on classical Indian philosophical sources and on Western materials, old and new. It is comparative philosophy without borders. In this paper, I attempt to show how contemporary Indian philosophy works through five instances from five of its protagonists: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (his new interpretation of the old rope-snake parable in his essay “Śaṅkara’s Doctrine of Maya”, 1925); Daya Krishna (I focus on the “moral monadism” that the theory of karma in his reading leads to, drawing on his book Discussion and Debate in Indian Philosophy, 2004); Ramchandra Gandhi (his commentary on the concept of Brahmacharya in correspondence with his grandfather, the Mahatma, in his essay “Brahmacharya”, 1981); Mukund Lath (on identity through—not despite—change, with classical Indian music, Rāga music, as his case-study, in his essay “Identity through Necessary Change”, 2003); and Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar (on suffering, in his paper “No Suffering if Human Beings Were Not Sensitive”, 2021). My aim is twofold. First, to introduce five contemporary Indian philosophers; and second, to raise the question of newness and philosophy. Is there anything new in philosophy, or is contemporary philosophy just a footnote—à la Whitehead—to the writings of great thinkers of the past? Is contemporary Indian philosophy, my protagonists included, just a series of footnotes to classical thinkers both in India and Europe? Footnotes to the Upaniṣads, Nāgārjuna, Dharmakīrti and Śaṅkara, as much as (let us not forget colonialism and Macaulay) to Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel? Footnotes can be creative and work almost as a parallel text, interpretive, critical, even subversive. However, my contention is that contemporary Indian philosophy (I leave it to others to plea for contemporary Western philosophy) is not a footnote, it is a text with agency of its own, validity of its own, power of its own. It is wholly and thoroughly a text worth reading. In this paper, I make an attempt to substantiate this claim through the philosophical mosaic I offer, in each instance highlighting both the continuity with classical sources and my protagonists’ courageous transgressions and innovations.

Masao Abe

Masao Abe (阿部正雄, 1915–2006), was a prominent exponent of Japanese Zen Buddhism within academic circles in the West and made a distinguished contribution to comparative philosophy and interreligious dialogue. Abe’s Zen was shaped by the thought of the Kyoto school of Japanese philosophy and its principle of “absolute nothingness.” Abe linked absolute nothingness to the Buddhist principle of emptiness (sunyata) and based his engagement with Western philosophical thought and Christian theology on the Kyoto school’s appropriation of this Buddhist teaching. Abe began graduate studies in philosophy at Kyoto Imperial University in 1942, where he was influenced by Keiji Nishitani’s lectures on nihilism and the philosophy of religion. Shin’ichi Hisamatsu’s exposition of Zen challenged Abe’s youthful commitment to Pure Land Buddhism. After completing his studies, Abe worked as a professor at Nara University of Education (1952–1980), while also teaching periodically at Kyoto and Hanazono Universities. Starting in the 1950s, he began a study of Christian theology at Union Theological Seminary, with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, and Western philosophy at Columbia University. After his retirement from teaching in Nara in 1980, Abe became a visiting professor at Claremont Graduate University and subsequently at the University of Hawai‘i, Purdue University, the University of Chicago, and several other American and European universities. He also participated at the East-West Philosopher’s Conference at the University of Hawai’i and, with John B. Cobb, was co-chair of the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter (the “Cobb-Abe Group”). Abe’s version of Zen was influenced by D. T. Suzuki’s engagement with Western thought, and the philosophy of the Kyoto school, which began with the work of Kitaro Nishida and continued with Hajime Tanabe, Keiji Nishitani, and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu. Nishida, reflecting Japanese Zen teachings, articulated a logic arising within the standpoint (tachiba) of absolute nothingness (zettai mu), the “place” (basho) wherein all dualism is overcome. Nishitani and Hisamatsu would later link Nishida’s philosophy more explicitly with Buddhist teachings, especially the goal of “awakening” (jikaku) to the “emptiness” (sunyata) of all things in their “true suchness” (shinnyo). Based on these philosophical roots in the Kyoto school and following the example of D. T. Suzuki as an apostle of Zen in the West, Abe engaged in extensive comparative studies with Western philosophical thought and interreligious dialogue with Christians and Jews.

Adapting

Philosophy of action in the context of Classical China is radically different from its counterpart in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative. Classical Chinese philosophers began from the assumption that relations are primary to the constitution of the person, hence acting in the early Chinese context necessarily is interacting and co-acting along with others—human and nonhuman actors. This book is the first monograph dedicated to the exploration and rigorous reconstruction of an extraordinary strategy for efficacious relational action devised by Classical Chinese philosophers in order to account for the interdependent and embedded character of human agency—what the author has denominated “adapting” or “adaptive agency” (yin因‎). As opposed to more unilateral approaches to action also conceptualized in the Classical Chinese corpus, such as forceful and prescriptive agency, adapting requires great capacity of self- and other-awareness, equanimity, flexibility, creativity, and response, which allows the agent to co-raise courses of action ad hoc: unique and temporary solutions to specific, nonpermanent, and nongeneralizable life problems. Adapting is one of the world’s oldest philosophies of action, and yet it is shockingly new for contemporary audiences, who will find in it an unlikely source of inspiration to deal with our current global problems. This book explores the core conception of adapting both on autochthonous terms and by cross-cultural comparison, drawing on the European and Analytic philosophical traditions as well as on scholarship from other disciplines, thus opening a brand new topic in Chinese and comparative philosophy.