Perhaps you might consider the possibility that recent philosophy has not become anti-philosophical, but only anti- your particular preconception of philosophy. It reminds me of beginning students who think that David Hume rejected causality, when, in fact, he only rejected a particular conception of causality. Kant was accused of the same crime that you accuse recent philosophers of, when he wrote how he was awakened from his "dogmatic slumbers" by "that astute man, David Hume". Kant, too, rejected the metaphysics he had learned, and was accused of rejecting metaphysics tout court. It is often the case that those who are steeped in a certain view of some subject react to a rejection of that particular view of the subject as a rejection of the subject itself. This notoriously occurred when Galileo changed the nature of the study of the physical world. Thomas Kuhn's book, on scientific revolutions is very enlightening on this whole issue.

Even Buddha seems to have placed the responsibility of salvation upon the individual. I'm not sure if it is the centrality of the ego that is the central to the problem. Can not much of Buddhism be rendered in terms of "enlightened self-interest"?

This seems to relate to changes in our understanding of science but does any of this relate to changes in our understanding of virtue?

Yet it is also true that the Buddha says we are responsible for our own destiny. So that fact that you can apply the Buddha's remedy means there is a life - I won't say a self - beyond ego, or perhaps you could say, a life beyond one's sense of self-identity. Of course the Buddhist aspirant retains a sense of personal identity but this is no longer the axis around which everything revolves. There arises a sense of fluid and dynamic openness and compassion and a sense of non-seperateness from life and from all other beings. This is 'the realization of emptiness' that comes about from Buddhist meditation. It is a marvelous thing.

Hear hear. Well said and I concur. This is why I am turning to traditional philosophies of various kinds, because I honestly believe that much modern, or should I say 20th century, philosophy, is actually anti-philosophy because it is based on the centrality of the ego. Your statement 'those who are capable of living virtuous lives' would be agreed to by philosophers of all creeds and cultures, yet it remain a hard task. But if it were not difficult, there would be no need for philosophy.

I like the conception of philosophy as the love of wisdom.

Just what has liking to do with it?

I believe that Buddhism, Eastern Philosophy, Shamanic traditions etc. in general still has much to teach Western Philosophy but it can also be said that Western Philosophy still has much to teach these traditions.

As to the rise of the worship of ego in modern philosophy, it goes right back to the creation of the humanism of Petrarch, Erasmus and the Italian Renaissance.

I wish you meant this question sincerely. Liking has everything to do with any epistemology that isn't a child's toy. Thinking is not divorced from feeling, however much it sometimes pretends to be for various reasons. We are not cold calculators of truth, but animals with needs. As Hume says: reason is the slave of the passions. This implies the possibility that all reason is rhetoric, which takes us into first-science, a bottomless pit of questions. If reason is the slave of the passions, then Hume's reasonable statement is the slave of his passions. He said once that his dominant passion was the desire for literary fame. Hume's skepticism puts itself into doubt.

The West realizes that reality and the self are interdependent. This would explain why Rorty and Wittgenstein (extensions of this self-consciousness of subject) link up to Buddhism, etc. Did Buddha, on the way to Enlightenment, go through a dialectic something like that of Western philosophy's? Did he wrestle with epistemology and psychology? I would think so, but I'm hardly an expert.

Schopenhauer was the first modern Western philosopher to acquaint himself with the Sanskrit literature, and from his time on, some Buddhist elements were incorporated in Western philosophy (e.g.in the Kojeve text on Hegel there are quite a few references to 'the Eastern sages' who are regarded as among the normative examples of wisdom). Nietzsche thought that Buddhism was far superior to Christianity, although I suspect he really didn't understand it at all. But in any case, since Schopenhaur's time, and also since Max Muller established the Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford, Buddhist and Hindu philosophical ideas have had at least some influence on Western philosophy, and indeed I am sure there are many possible integration points between the two outlooks. Heidegger believed that Zen Buddhism was very similar in outlook to what he was teaching, and many have noted resemblances between the later Wittgenstein and certain elements in Zen (i.e. the idea of 'throwing away the ladder' is directly comparable to the Buddhist idea of 'discarding the raft'.)

I think worthy of a whole new post. My knowledge of both of them amounts to snippets, although from what I know of both I prefer Schopenhauer's brevity (a quality which Hegel could never be accused of.) But it is an area I really need to read more of.

I don't want to idealize the 'Mystic East' either but I could not live without the scope that Indian philosophy provides. There is something in it I find indispensable.

So, what would follow from my liking a particular definition of a term it it were not a correct definition? And could you please stick to the question?

Is there an Eastern/Western synthesis page yet?

Here's a question if Eastern Philosophy was stripped of all its "mystical" qualities whether they be real or imagined would it start looking a lot more like Western Philosophy?

if Eastern Philosophy was stripped of all its "mystical" qualities whether they be real or imagined would it start looking a lot more like Western Philosophy?

That would depend on what 'mystical qualities' it could be said to comprise. There are schools of thought that early (or 'original') Buddhism is not mystical at all, but very much closer to certain pre-socratic philosophies including stoicism and skepticism. A current, well-known writer by the name of Stephen Bachelor presents this kind of view in Buddhism without Beliefs and another forthcoming title of his (although personally, I don't buy it.)

A book I have mentioned previosly, The Shape of Ancient Thought, by Thomas McEvilly, also provides highly detailed comparisions of ancient Greek and Indian philoosphies, particularly in relation to Platonism, Neo-platonism, skepticism, Buddhism and Vedanta. It argues pretty convincingly for a great deal more commonality between the two traditions, at least in ancient times, than is previously been acknowledged which he says traded many ideas and contacts along the ancient silk routes. He says it is possible there were Jain and Buddhist missionaries in ancient Alexandria, and that the Upanisads were known to the Church Fathers.

Finally, understanding what exactly 'mysticism' signifies is important, in my view. It is almost a derogatory term for many realists or materialists, kind of a shorthand for 'vague, ill-defined, woolly thinking or emotionalism'. In fact mysticism is a large and heterogenous spectrum of experience and knowledge, and a fertile source of much that is lasting in philosophy. It is often overlooked that Giordano Bruno, Isaac Newton, and other founders of Western sciences had what we would regard as 'mystical tendencies'. There is also an important dialog emerging between science and Eastern philosopy, not least the bi-annual Science and Mind conferences chaired by the Dalai Lama, neuro-scientists and philosophers.

I personally believe that in a future Western philosophy will have absorbed many fundamental ideas from Eastern sources, and in fact that this is already happening. Post-relativity physics is much more compatible with Mahayana Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta than anything in Aristotle.



---------- Post added 02-15-2010 at 01:52 PM ----------

incidentally, I know I am spouting a lot of info here but I have been studying all this since 1978 and on the Forum I am getting the first chance to talk about any of it.....

Is there an Eastern/Western synthesis page yet? Still I think this discussion is very much part of the answer to the OP.

Here's a question if Eastern Philosophy was stripped of all its "mystical" qualities whether they be real or imagined would it start looking a lot more like Western Philosophy?