Mainstream philosophy in the so-called West is narrow-minded, unimaginative, and even xenophobic. I know I am levelling a serious charge. But how else can we explain the fact that the rich philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas are completely ignored by almost all philosophy departments in both Europe and the English-speaking world?
Western philosophy used to be more open-minded and cosmopolitan. The first major translation into a European language of the Analects, the saying of Confucius (551-479 BCE), was done by Jesuits, who had extensive exposure to the Aristotelian tradition as part of their rigorous training. They titled their translation Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, or Confucius, the Chinese Philosopher (1687).

One of the major Western philosophers who read with fascination Jesuit accounts of Chinese philosophy was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). He was stunned by the apparent correspondence between binary arithmetic (which he invented, and which became the mathematical basis for all computers) and the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the Chinese classic that symbolically represents the structure of the Universe via sets of broken and unbroken lines, essentially 0s and 1s. (In the 20th century, the psychoanalyst Carl Jung was so impressed with the I Ching that he wrote a philosophical foreword to a translation of it.) Leibniz also said that, while the West has the advantage of having received Christian revelation, and is superior to China in the natural sciences, ‘certainly they surpass us (though it is almost shameful to confess this) in practical philosophy, that is, in the precepts of ethics and politics adapted to the present life and the use of mortals’.

The German philosopher Christian Wolff echoed Leibniz in the title of his public lecture Oratio de Sinarum Philosophia Practica, or Discourse on the Practical Philosophy of the Chinese (1721). Wolff argued that Confucius showed that it was possible to have a system of morality without basing it on either divine revelation or natural religion. Because it proposed that ethics can be completely separated from belief in God, the lecture caused a scandal among conservative Christians, who had Wolff relieved of his duties and exiled from Prussia. However, his lecture made him a hero of the German Enlightenment, and he immediately obtained a prestigious position elsewhere. In 1730, he delivered a second public lecture, De Rege Philosophante et Philosopho Regnante, or On the Philosopher King and the Ruling Philosopher, which praised the Chinese for consulting ‘philosophers’ such as Confucius and his later follower Mengzi (fourth century BCE) about important matters of state.

Chinese philosophy was also taken very seriously in France. One of the leading reformers at the court of Louis XV was François Quesnay (1694-1774). He praised Chinese governmental institutions and philosophy so lavishly in his work Despotisme de la China (1767) that he became known as ‘the Confucius of Europe’. Quesnay was one of the originators of the concept of laissez-faire economics, and he saw a model for this in the sage-king Shun, who was known for governing by wúwéi (non-interference in natural processes). The connection between the ideology of laissez-faire economics and wúwéi continues to the present day. In his State of the Union address in 1988, the US president Ronald Reagan quoted a line describing wúwéi from the Daodejing, which he interpreted as a warning against government regulation of business. (Well, I didn’t say that every Chinese philosophical idea was a good idea.)

https://eduhelp101.wordpress.com/2017/11/01/western-philosophy-is-racist/

Please explain how, as you claim, the "I Ching symbolically represents the structure of the Universe "

A STORY OF 'TWO MEN'.....


The 1st man aquires skills,
he works, and gathers materials,
he works, and builds a house,
and after his house is built....

A 2nd man then see's the 1st man's house, and he is envious of the 1st man and of what he possesses.

The 1st man then asserts, that he believes that he should have the primary right, to decide who enters and resides in the house that he built.

His house.

QUESTION;
If the 2nd man says that the 1st man has selfish attitude, is he correct ?




QUESTION      To all of those persons who call the 1st man selfish;
Why didn't the 2nd man and his friends choose to ALSO, aquires skills, to ALSO work and gather materials, to ALSO work and build their own houses ?

Oh, but they did, you say !


IMAGE.....


But the 2nd man, after seeing the 1st man's house, has decided that he doesn't really like the house that he built!

The 2nd man would rather sleep in a 'proper' house, one which has two doors, and windows, and a roof that does not let the rain fall through!


The 2nd man who built his own 'house', looks at the house that the 1st man built,
and he/she says, that the 1st man must let him [and his family], live in the 1st man's house, otherwise the 1st man is a 'racist'.

Time passes by, and in a few years time, the 2nd man tells the 1st man that his family has grown, and that there isn't any room for the 1st man any longer.

And the 2nd man tells the 1st man, that the 1st man's house, is now HIS house!

And the 2nd man tells everyone, that he now has the primary right, to decide who enters and resides in the 'proper' house.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Jan 24^th, 2018 at 11:09pm:


That's what I thought also. Many western thinkers have gone beyond traditional boarders to explore thoughts of others. The Classical Revival occurred because of western thinkers returning western texts found in the east.

Joseph Campbell and Karl Jung explored, in their time, a multitude of cultures; beyond the East/ West divide. Even David Attenbourough, another westerner, has added his part to cultural exploration with the BBC production of. The Tribal Eye.

Suffice to say, I posted this piece because the premise was wrong and I wanted to see if others would have reasoned argument, beyond...they're picking on us mentality, which is wearisome.

Nom de Plume wrote on Nov 29^th, 2017 at 10:50am:



So now Leibnitz, Wolff and other Western philosophers (Schopenhauer, the Philosophes) taking easter philosophy seriously is evidence of Western racism.

Stupidity goes all the way up to endorsed chairs of university professorships.

Hume is most famous for his rejection of the idea of an inherent self. He also had gone through a psychological crisis. To help calm his nerves, he moved to a small town in France and finished what would become one of the most substantial works of Western philosophy — A Treatise of Human Nature. Relying on the hunch that Hume would have had to have known something about Buddhist philosophy in order to write Treatise, Gopnik digs through archives and travels to Europe to discover that the Jesuit priests in that provincial French town had indeed heard of Buddhism and possibly even had copies of certain Tibetan texts. Although she admits that she can’t be certain, she determines that “Hume could indeed have known about Buddhist philosophy” at the time he wrote Treatise.
...

We are always more connected than we’d like to believe. There’s even evidence that the early Church’s missions in China attempted to blend Buddhism philosophy with Christian doctrine.

As Christian historian Diarmaid MacCulloch notes in his masterwork Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years, seventh century missionary Bishop Alopen wrote a Christian sutra that seems to be “a real attempt to suggest that the teachings of Buddhism are in a literal sense inspired by the Holy Spirit.” What if some of that thought trickled back into the European continent? Drawing parallels between Buddhism and Western philosophy does not diminish any one writer’s contributions to our culture; rather it opens us up to understanding who we think we are beyond the arbitrary distinctions of East and West.


http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/western-philosophy-and-the-buddha

Nom de Plume wrote on Jan 25^th, 2018 at 10:54am:


Admirable that you know (have read?) of him.
Most on this forum don't have a clue and are thus somewhat missing that crucial page in the book.

The Yin/Yang philosophy is a very Racist aspect.
It just sees either Black or White.
Ever meet people like that? Fruit loops!
It also supported in 'base' form the eventual belief (nearly officialised via the Korean War) that the Northern Hemisphere should be 'All White', Southern 'all black' (All white Australians should leave now! ).
It's a 'stupid' belief because seeing things either black or white is for the 'simple-minded'.

There are 8 races, x8 regions ...and I can honestly say there is definitely x8 'right' answers to a problem