Monday, October 22, 2007
western philosphy
I am sorry that I did not write in my blog for the past couple of weeks, I have been busy with work and schoolwork. I have a lot to do in little time, but I managed to finished all of my work. On the 11th, after finishing the quiz, we sort of went over the western philosophy. I did not get all of the notes on the board and I was hoping if you can go over this again, sometime soon. I am interested what is western philosophy is about. I want to know what is the difference between western and eastern philosophy. Are they the same, if so how? Is western philosophy the same as philosophy? I hope I can learn more about this in class, sometime soon.
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There are some substantial distinctions between western and eastern philosophy, especially as they exist today. In general, eastern philosophy tends to be far more accepting of tradition than western philosophy; western philosophy places great emphasis on skepticism and criticism, which often combines to work against traditional formulation. At times it may seem like a fundamental goal of western philosophy is to topple other philosophies simply for the sake of doing so.
Whereas western philosophy for the past four centuries or so has been clearly distinguished from religion, although a good part of the subject matter of philosophy is the same as that of religion, with eastern systems such as Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Jaina, and the orthodox Indian systems such as Yoga, Purva Mimamsa, Vedanta, Nyaya, and Vaisesika, one is left wondering whether one is examining a religion or a philosophy. The main distinction that I draw when examining eastern systems is between practices and ideas, but even here the distinctions are often not clear.
In the west, philosophy has generally been about ideas, and ideas alone.
In the classical period of Greece and Rome, and even in the Middle Ages, when philosophy was a kind of servant of religion, still a distinction was made between belief and practice, between faith and reason. This became strongly marked in the Renaissance, and increasingly so.
Another major difference between eastern and western philosophies overall is the willingness of the eastern philosophies to think of time and space as existing absolutely eternally, even if change (to the degree of the formation and destruction and then reformation of worlds) is characteristic of the phenomenal realm. In the west it is far more usual to assume that the world has a beginning, which was before us, a middle, during which we are existing, and an end yet to come. This creates certain problems for western philosophy such as we discussed in class on the 27th of November.
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