Questioning Certitudes: Thoughts Across Cultures
Amiya P. Sen
EASTERN PHILOSOPHY by Chakravarthy Ram-Prasad Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007, 242 pp., £16.99
October 2007, volume 31, No 10

Of late, there has indeed been a discernible intellectual ques- tioning of certitudes and the present work, it is only fair to say, contributes quite splendidly to that project. Its first intention is to cast doubt upon commonly accepted constructs like ‘Eastern Philosophy’ for, arguably, there is no one such thing that would qualify as such. Some of us, I reckon, will find close parallelism between this and the raging debate on whether in fact, there is no one ‘Hinduism’, but several. By comparison, the category ‘West’/ ‘Western’ appears more defensible. In part, this may be attributed to the fact that by and large, philosophers in the West have shown greater awareness and sensitivity towards their pre-existing philosophical tradition. In other words, there has been within western philosophy, a more enlivening sense of the historical continuum—a better integrated understanding across space and time if not an absolute commonness of objectives.

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