East-West Comparative Philosophy II

Let us pick up where we left off comparative philosophy (pointing towards a synthetic world philosophy). I have made a table giving a quick comparative analysis (using specific parameters such as epistemology, metaphysics, Life's ideal, man's ultimate nature, civilization and cultures, evolution etc) of the three main philosophical traditions.

In simple words, if we were to take the three traditions together, we find three overall standpoints of their philosophies:

1. The inward (Indian) : The most important characteristic is the reflective inwardness and Intuition. Intuition being naturally coexistent and continuous with intellect yet a faculty of wider cognition and working without the distinction. Indian philosophy, particularly the dominant Vedanta and the highest forms of Buddhism, recognized the possibility of mind's witnessing itself (through higher grades or categories of self, the intuitive mind being one of them), through which it can realize the grand conscious unity underlying the universe and extending far beyond it. It termed the grand conscious unity witnessed coining words such as Divine, Absolute, Brahman, Vijiidna, Tathata, Nirvana, and so on.

2. The outward (Western) : In western philosophy also, the Neo-Platonists, the great Christian mystics, and some of the idealistic philosophers recognized some of those deeper truths of inwardness. But if one takes the dominant trends and contemporary achievements into consideration, one finds that its major accomplishment lies in liberating the object, or outwardness, from its involvement with the subject, or inwardness. Of the two directions, the outward has received deeper attention in western philosophy.

3. The middle (Chinese) : The overall impression Chinese philosophy (except Buddhism) gives is that it is neither deeply inward nor extremely outward. It has always tried keeping a balance between the two, and is more comfortable with "Man in society" than with ultimate problems of inwardness or outwardness. Overall no direction is pursued to the extreme; no argument is pressed to its logical conclusions.

Attached: Introductory comparative table of three major philosophical systems – Indian (The inward), Western (The Outward), and Chinese (The Middle), summarized from Book “Introduction to comparative philosophy” by P. T. Raju.

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