比较哲学

Author & Citation Info | Friends PDF Preview | InPho Search | PhilPapers Bibliography Author & Citation Info | Friends PDF Preview | InPho Search | PhilPapers Bibliography Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western First published Tue Jul 31, 2001; substantive revision Thu Oct 1, 2009 Comparative philosophy brings together philosophical traditions that have developed in relative isolation from one another and that are defined quite broadly along cultural and regional lines — Chinese versus Western, for example. Several main issues about the commensurability of philosophical traditions make up the subject matter of comparative philosophy. One issue is methodological commensurability -- whether and how comparisons between different philosophical traditions, in this case the Chinese and Western, are to be conducted. Views run the gamut from those holding that meaningful comparisons cannot be conducted at all to those holding that the content of traditions must largely be the same. Other issues concerning commensurability concern specific subject matters of traditions. The issue of metaphysical and epistemological commensurability involves the comparison of traditions on their conceptions of the real and their modes of inquiry and justification. Ethical commensurability involves the comparison of these traditions on the matters of how people ought to live their lives, whether both traditions have moralities and if so how similar and dissimilar they are. The separation between these main issues is somewhat artificial, given that a discussion of methodological commensurability will inevitably involve the comparison of traditions on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical matters. There is some heuristic value, however, in beginning with a general discussion of views on methodological commensurability with a brief illustration of how these views might be applied to some Chinese/Western comparisons. Subsequent sections will address Chinese-Western comparisons in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics that have assumed special prominence in the literature. Doing comparative philosophy well can be very difficult because of the vast range of texts and their intellectual and historical contexts it requires its practioners to cover. Oversimplifications, excessively stark contrasts, and illicit assimilations count as the most frequent sins. One benefit of comparative philosophy lies in the way that it forces reflection on the most deeply entrenched and otherwise unquestioned agendas and assumptions of one's own tradition. Another benefit at which its practioners often aim is that the traditions actually interact and enrich one another. Demands for rigor and depth of scholarship obviously rank as some of the most important standards applying to philosophy inquiry. The task of meeting these standards becomes more manageable as the field of inquiry narrows. Such a result can be legitimate but sometimes myopic and impoverishing. ​ 1. Methodological Commensurability ​ 2. Metaphysical and Epistemological Commensurability ​ 3. Ethical Commensurability ​ 4. Why Do Comparative Philosophy If It's So Hard? ​ Bibliography ​ Other Internet Resources ​ Related Entries 1. Methodological Commensurability Those arguing for radical incommensurability — the view that the questions and answers in one tradition cannot sustain meaningful statement in the other tradition — rely on the recognition of radical difference in basic concepts and modes of inquiry. Given such radical differences, they argue, there can be no cross-traditional reference to a common subject matter and to a truth about that subject matter that is independent of the basic conceptual vocabulary and theories and justificatory practices of a particular tradition (see Rorty, 1989, and Shweder, 1989). Looking for a possible Chinese-Western instance of radical incommensurability, one might go to Daoist texts such as the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. When it is said in chapter one (as traditionally arranged and on one translation) of the Daodejing that “The Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way,” or in chapter two that the “sages abide in nonaction and practice the teaching that is without words,” one is finding something different from the usual in Western texts infused with ideals of discursive rationality and argumentation. Or consider the Lunyu or Analects 1:2, where the importance of rightly ordered family relations is emphasized for right order in the state (“He who has grown to be a filial son and respectful younger brother will be unlikely to defy his superiors and there has never been the case of someone inclined to defy his superiors and stir up a rebellion”). The prominent and enduring place of this theme of state as family writ large sets that tradition apart from Western contractual traditions that have come to emphasize right order in the state as that which can be ratified by an uncoerced agreement among equals concerned to protect their private interests. Opponents of radical incommensurability will level the charge that it presupposes a hyperdramatic contrast between traditions. For example, the Western tradition has not lacked for skeptics on the power of discusive rationality, and some of these skeptics have nevertheless believed in a mode of veridical access to something of supreme significance — to a powerful experience within themselves or to something much larger outside themselves. At the same time, it must be noted that the positive theme is more recessive in the Western tradition and appears mainly in theistic versions, as it does in Plotinus (Enneads), Meister Eckhart (Von unsagbaren Dingen) and Hildegaard of Bingen (Scivias). Similarly, the Western tradition has certainly housed strains of thought that do view the state as more of a natural outgrowth of small human groups such as family and community. Even a major modern figure such as David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, 3.2.2) explicitly rejects the idea of contract as central to understanding the origin or justification of social and political bonds. There might still be a difference between Chinese and Western traditions with respect to which strains of thought become dominant or at least prevalent, but that difference does not appear to come under the heading of radical incommensurability.. Samuel Fleischacker (1992) proposes a more moderate version of incommensurability — sometimes we can understand others just well enough to know that we don't understand them. His argument has roots in Wittgenstein's view that knowledge depends on a background of shared assumptions and standards of evidence. “World pictures” are embedded within cultures. Our world picture involves not only a distinctive set of beliefs about the world but also an ordering of interests that determines how we go about trying to have reliable beliefs. This ordering differs from those dominant in other cultures. We in the West have given precedence to our interests in “egalitarian knowledge” (wanting and believing that people have roughly equal access to the truth) and in prediction and control of this-worldly objects. The world pictures of other cultures embody other interests, and we may not be able to prove that they are wrong, or indeed, we may be unable to fully understand why it is that they value the interests they value so highly. Nevertheless, we understand that they do value these interests highly and think they are wrong to do so. We make such judgments despite our merely partial understanding because we tend to see a certain set of interests as the proper guide for a minimally decent or sensible human life. The idea that the distinctive character of a “world picture” lies partly in the interests they embody seems plausible. Daoism and Confucianism, at least after a certain stage in the development of these schools, exemplify the way that a set of interests intertwine with beliefs about the world. Both schools exemplify in different ways a conception of understanding the world that is inseparable from the interest in coming into “attunement” with it, to use a felicitous word from Charles Taylor (1982). To become attuned to the world is to see its goodness and to know one's place in the order of the world. To say that Daoists exemplify this theme about seeing the goodness of the world is in a way misleading, since there is in theDaodejing and Zhuangzi a profound mistrust of our conceptual separations between opposites such as good and bad. However, as has been noted many times, the notion of “nonaction” or wuweidoes not denote literal inaction but presupposes something like the possibility of an unforced acting with the grain of things, and that presupposes that it is possible to become attuned to that grain while in a state of awareness that is not cluttered by distorting conceptual oppositions. Both Daoist texts straightforwardly recommend wuwei and in this sense presuppose the goodness of the world and the way its “grain” goes. Confucian texts uphold the ideal of a different kind of attunement, under which the world and its order can be called good without the ambiguity that Daoist skepticism with conceptual opposition creates. For example, theMencius (the name is actually a latinization given by Christian priests for ‘Mengzi’) presents a theory that human nature contains the germs or sprouts of goodness, tendencies to certain feelings and judgments such as manifested by the feeling of compassion for a child about to fall into a well. These sprouts are in human nature because they were sent by tian(literally meaning ‘sky’ but most often translated as ‘Heaven’ and perhaps best conceived as an impersonal ordering force of the universe). Taylor thinks that modern science has severed the connection between understanding and attunement. In Fleischacker's terms, modern science is predicated on different interests, prediction and control foremost among these interests. Taylor believes that the severance of understanding and attunement resulted in superior understanding at least of physical nature. But as he is careful to point out, no single argument can prove global superiority. If we can take attunement as an ideal, we have failed miserably, even as our technological control of nature has increased immeasurably. Perhaps, then, the contrast between a Chinese world picture in which attunement figures prominently and a modern scientific view predicated on the interests of prediction and control serves as an example of the sort of moderate incommensurability Fleischacker has in mind. One question to be raised about this kind of incommensurability, however, is whether it truly involves lack of understanding between traditions. Taylor himself draws examples of the theme of attunement from Plato and the European cultural tradition. Do we really fail to understand the appeal behind world pictures of attunement? Taylor's complex assessment suggests no inability on our part to understand the force behind both kinds of world pictures. Even to take the stance that attunement pictures are comforting illusions (an assessment less complex than the one Taylor adopts) is to suppose that one does understand the appeal behind them. A different kind of incommensurability that may arise is not incomprehensibility between traditions but lack of common standards sufficient for settling significant conflicts between them. Alasdair MacIntyre (1988, 1989) has illustrated the difference between being able to understand a tradition and being able to translate all its claims into the language of another tradition by pointing to the possibility of “bilinguals” — people who, for example, might have been raised within one community and its tradition, and then through migration or conquest, become a member of another community and its different tradition. Such bilinguals might very well understand each tradition, and such understanding might include knowledge of those parts of each that cannot be translated into the language of the other. Such bilinguals would not encounter the sort of radical incommensurability constituted by incomprehensibility, but they may be unable to resolve conflicts of belief between the traditions, instead having to relativize the claims of each in some such form as “seems true to this particular community” or “seems justified to this particular community.” This kind of “evaluational” incommensurability, rather than meaning incommensurability, might fit better the case of world pictures based on attunement versus world pictures that sever the connection between understanding and attunement. MacIntyre himself presents a possibility for resolving such conflicts in case one tradition continually fails in its attempts to address certain key problems or issues. If another tradition has the conceptual resources to explain why it is that the first tradition continues to fail, then advocates of that first tradition may have to acknowledge its limitations and even transfer their allegiances. Whether that is the case for conflicts over attunement is not obvious (See Wong, 1989). Moving to the end opposite from various forms of incommensurability, we find views holding that there must be substantial agreeement between traditions. The argument stems from a conception of the way interpretation works. We proceed on the assumption that the others we are interpreting live in the same world as we do.We subvert this assumption, however, if we attribute to them beliefs that substantially differ from our own. As Donald Davidson (1980) has argued, a belief is identified by its location in a pattern of beliefs, and it is this pattern that determines the subject matter of the belief, what the belief is about. If we attribute to others a pattern of beliefs that are different from our own, i.e., false beliefs, this tends to undermine the identification of the subject matter; to undermine, therefore, the validity of the belief as being about that subject. David Cooper (1978) applies a Davidsonian principle of charity to the question of whether different cultures have more or less the same morality. We can only identify others' beliefs as moral beliefs about a given subject matter if there is a massive degree of agreement between their and our beliefs about that subject matter. For Cooper this implies that the moral beliefs we attribute to others must be about something connected with welfare, happiness, suffering, security, and the good life. Michele Moody-Adams (1997) gives a more recent version of the same argument, starting with the premise that understanding others requires that there be quite substantial agreement about many of the basic concepts that are relevant to moral reflection. She concludes that “ultimate” or “fundamental” moral disagreement is not possible. The way that an earlier example of putative radical difference can be questioned serves as some confirmation of this argument from charity for strong agreement between traditions. Confucian conceptions of the state as family writ large are not especially puzzling even when we do not subscribe to them. We find similar themes that have arisen within the Western tradition, and again, it is possible to conceive what the appeal would be. However, these points also raise certain doubts about the use of charity to argue for strong agreement. The fact that we can point to similar beliefs within our own tradition and that we can imagine what the appeal would lie behind such beliefs does not mean that we share those beliefs with others even as we attribute to them. Even if we were to share with them a belief in certain values, that would not necessarily mean that we place the same importance on those values relative to other values we (and perhaps they also) hold. It is often observed that a distinctive feature of the Chinese Confucian tradition is the very high value placed on filial piety. It is a common feature of many cultures that one should honor thy father and mother, of course, and it is not difficult to find analogies within American society to Confucian filial piety. At the same time, the Confucian tradition is unusual in the stringency of its duties to parents. The scope of filial duties includes taking care of what parents alone could have given one—one's body. Cengzi, one of Confucius' students, is portrayed in 8.3 of the Analects as gravely ill and near death. He bids his students to look at his hands and feet, and quotes lines from the Book of Poetry to convey the idea that all his life he has been keeping his body intact as part of his duty to his parents. It is only now near death, he says, that he can be sure of having been spared and thus fulfilling this duty to parents. This very idea, that one must keep one's body intact as a duty of gratitude to one's parents, has remained a central idea in Chinese culture. While American culture certainly contains similar themes of gratitude toward those from whom one has received great benefits, such themes do not necessite agreement on the centrality and stringency of filial duties in the Confucian tradition. Important kinds of moral difference, then, may consist in the differing emphases given to values that are shared across cultural traditions (Wong, 1996b). Thomas Kasulis (2002) puts a similar point in a visual metaphor: what is foreground in one culture may be background in another culture. To accommodate this more subtle kind of difference, proponents of the principle of charity might point out that charity does not require complete agreement, but only “substantial” agreement or agreement on “ultimate” or “fundamental” disagreement. A further question that will pressed against this position is how much agreement is sufficient for identification of others' beliefs as being about the same subject matter as ours. We do attribute to others error and simple difference (without judging that someone is in error) of belief about the same subject matter. We can attribute error to others if we believe them to be in circumstances that encourage error, and we identify such types of circumstance from past experience of discovering ourselves to be in error. Furthermore, we attribute simple difference of belief when we recognize that there is a range of reasonable interpretations or weightings to be given to evidence. In his later writings on charity (2001, p. 196), Davidson recognized its ambiguities, noting that he previously tended to construe it in terms of “maximizing” agreement in belief and that a more perspicuous statement of what he had in mind all along is that agreement in beliefs should be “optimized.” Rather than the “most” agreement, we need the “right sort” of agreement that enables understanding of others. We should try to reach agreement “as far as possible, subject to considerations of simplicity, hunches about the effects of social conditioning, and of course our common-sense, or scientific, knowledge of explicable error.” This very qualified formulation of charity amounts to the admission that the principle of charity itself needs interpretation and hence cannot be the ultimate standard for interpretation. Henry Richardson (1997) points out that interpreting a philosophical text requires taking account of the cognitive aims the authors had in writing what they did. Is it more charitable, Richardson asks, for a translator of Machiavelli's The Prince to resolve ambiguities and seek to maximize agreement between Machiavelli and ourselves? Or is it more charitable to set him out as intentionally provocative and deliberately cryptic? It should be unsurprising that charity cannot fulfill its promise as a firm and clear guide to interpretation. Charity bids us to render others like “us,” but “we” are already a diverse group who believe and want and value somewhat different things. That is, the range of the intelligibly human already embraces diversity (think of how impoverished our models of understanding would be if we coul