Eastern philosophy\nIn the West, the terms Eastern philosophy, refers very broadly to the various cultures, social structures philosophical systems of "the East," namely Asia, including China, India, Japan, and the general area. Most Western universities focus almost exclusively on Western philosophical traditions and ideas in their philosophy departments and courses. When one uses the unqualified term "philosophy" in a Western academic context, Eastern philosophies had traditionally been overlooked in the past, but increased connections between "East and West" in recent years have served to bridge the culture gap by a large degree. \n
Zen Buddhism\nZen is a fusion of Mahayana Buddhism with Taoist principles. Bodhidharma was a semilegendary Indian monk who traveled to China in the fifth century CE. There, at the Shaolin temple, he began the Ch'an school of Buddhism, known in Japan and in the West as Zen Buddhism. Zen philosophy places emphasis on existing in the moment, right now. Zen teaches that the entire universe is one's mind, and if one cannot realize enlightenment in one's own mind now, one cannot ever achieve enlightenment. Zen practitioners engage in zazen (just sitting) meditation. Several schools of Zen have developed various other techniques for provoking satori, or enlightenment, ranging from whacking acolytes with a stick to shock them into the present moment to koans, Zen riddles designed to force the student to abandon futile attempts to understand the nature of the universe through logic. \nHinduism\nHinduism is a belief system prevalent in India. (c.f.) \nMaoism\nMaoism is a Communist philosophy based on the teachings of 20th century Communist Party of China revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. It is based partially on earlier theories by Marx and Lenin, but rejects the urban proletariat and Leninist emphasis on heavy industrialization in favor of a revolution supported by the peasantry, and a decentralized agrarian economy based on many collectively worked farms. Many people believe that the implementation of Maoism in Mainland China led to widespread famine, with millions of people starving to death. Chinese Communist leader Deng Xiaoping reinterpreted Maoism to allow for the introduction of market economics, which eventually enabled the country to recover. As a philosophy, Deng's chief contribution was to reject the supremacy of theory in interpreting Marxism and to argue for a policy of seeking truth from facts. Despite this, Maoism has remained a popular ideology for various Communist revolutionary groups around the world, notably the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, and an ongoing (as of early 2003) Maoist insurrection in Nepal.Shinto\nShinto is the indigenous religion of Japan, a sophisticated form of animism that holds that spirits called kami inhabit all things. Worship is at public shrines, or in small shrines constructed in one's home.\nDifferences from Western Philosophy\nArguments Against the "Eastern Philosophy" Designation\nSome have argued that the distinction between Eastern and Western philosophies is arbitrary and purely geographic, that this artificial distinction does not take into account the tremendous amount of interaction between Eastern and Western thought, and that the distinction is more misleading than enlightening. Furthermore, it has been argued that the term Eastern philosophy implies similarities between philosophical schools which may not exist and obscures the differences between Eastern philosophies. One such argument is historical. Our first "historical glimpse" of Western philosophy actually takes us to Asia Minor. Whether its root lie in India (or the roots of Indian philosophy stem from an Indo-Aryan invasion) we may never know. But it is surely plausible that the Middle East was a crossroads of ancient religious cum philosophical systems. A related argument is linguistic, based on the classification of Sanskrit as one of the earliest Indo-European languages. Shared concepts include the supernatural, the immortal soul (ancestor of mind-body dualism). (Nietzsche famously argued that Christianity and Buddhism were "kindred" religions.) The central conceptual structure shared with Classical Western philosophy (and lacking in East Asian thought prior to the Buddhist "invasion") includes counterparts of the dichotomies between reason v emotion, appearance v reality, one v many, and permanence v change. Indian and Western thought, with their robust mind-body conceptual dualism, share consequent tendencies to subjective idealism or dualism. Formally, they share the rudiments of Western "folk psychology" --a sentential psychology and semantics (e.g. belief and (propositional) knowledge, subject-predicate grammar (and subject-object metaphysics) truth and falsity, and inference. These concepts underwrote the emergence (or perhaps spread) of logic in Greece and India (In contrast to pre-Buddhist China). Other noticeable similarities include structural features of related concepts of time, space, objecthood and causation -- all concepts hard to isolate within ancient Chinese conceptual space. One fundamental reason for the separation is that both traditions of Eastern philosophy tend to be marginalized or ignored in Western studies of the "history of philosophy." So both tend to be relegated to the World Religions departments of Western universities, or to New Age nonacademic works, though there are several notable exceptions.The Perception of God and the gods\nBecause of the influence of monotheism and especially the Abrahamic religions, Western philosophies have been faced with the question of the nature of God and His relationship to the universe. This has created a dichotomy among Western philosophies between secular philosophies and religious philosophies which develop within the context of a particular monotheistic religion's dogma regarding the nature of God and the universe. Eastern philosophies have not been as concerned by questions relating to the nature of a single God as the universe's sole creator and ruler. The distinction between the religious and the secular tends to be much less sharp in Eastern philosophy, and the same philosophical school often contains both religious and philosophical elements. Thus, some people accept the metaphysical tenets of Buddhism without going to a temple and worshipping. Some have worshipped the Taoist deities religiously without bothering to delve into the philosophic underpinnings, while others embrace Taoist philosophy while ignoring the religious aspects. This arrangement stands in marked contrast to most philosophy of the West, which has traditionally enforced either a completely unified philosophic/religious belief system (e.g. the various sects and associated philosophies of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), or a sharp and total repudiation of religion by philosophy (e.g. Nietzsche, Marx, Voltaire, etc.) The distinction between religion and philosophy is not so important in the East.Gods' relationship with the Universe\nAnother common thread that often differentiates Eastern philosophy from Western is the belief regarding the relationship between God or the gods and the universe. Western philosophies typically either disavow the existence of God, or else hold that God or the gods are something separate and distinct from the universe. This comes from the influence of the Abrahamic religions, which teach that this universe was created by a single all-powerful God who existed before and separately from this universe. The true nature of this God is incomprehensible to us, His creations. Eastern philosophic traditions generally tend to be less concerned with the existence or non-existence of gods. Although some Eastern traditions have supernatural spiritual beings and even powerful gods, these are generally not seen as separate from the universe, but rather as a part of the universe. Conversely, most Eastern religions teach that ordinary actions can affect the supernatural realm.The Role and Nature of the Individual\nIt has been argued that in most Western philosophies, the same can be said of the individual: Western philosophies generally assume as a given that the individual is something different from the universe, and Western philosophies attempt to describe and categorize the universe from a detached, objective viewpoint. Eastern philosophies, on the other hand, typically hold that people are an intrinsic and inseparable part of the universe, and that attempts to discuss the universe from an objective viewpoint as though the individual speaking was something separate and detached from the whole are inherently absurd.Syntheses of Eastern and Western philosophy\nThere have been many modern attempts to integrate Western and Eastern philosophical traditions. German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was very interested in Taoism. His system of dialectics is sometimes interpreted as a formalization of Taoist principles. Hegel's arch-enemy Arthur Schopenhauer developed a philosophy that was essentially a synthesis of Buddhism with Western thought. He anticipated that the Upanishads would have a much greater influence in the West than they have had. However, Schopenhauer was working with heavily flawed early translations (and sometimes second-degree translations), and so does not necessarily accurately grasp the Eastern philosophies which interested him. Recent attempts to incorporate Western philosophy into Eastern thought include the Kyoto School of philosophers, who combined the phenomenology of Husserl with the insights of Zen Buddhism.Related topics\n*Chinese philosophy\n*Buddhist philosophy\n*Hindu philosophy\n*Indian philosophy\n*Western philosophy Category:Philosophy |
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"Criticism is prejudice made plausible." - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) |
