Advaita and Neoplatonism

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy

7. Comparative philosophy and the Orient

A few remarks may be added which apply in particular to the comparison of Western and Eastern philosophies by Westerners.⁴³ If a previous remark, i.e., that Oriental philosophies can only be studied as possibilities of Western philosophy, is true, the question arises what is ‘the Orient’ as a constituent of the Occident.

For this extensive historical investigations would be required. It may be shortly indicated in which direction such specifications should be sought, disregarding many details.

It can be said that Western culture is built upon a double foundation: Greek culture and Christian religion. Christianity follows upon Judaism and is, like Judaism, generally regarded as an Oriental religion. At the same time it has become the religion of the West. Having shaped the whole of Western civilisation (not exclusively in the religious realm), it is tightly interwoven with Greek elements and is traceable and visible almost everywhere (also in secularisation, itself a phenomenon of Christian

43 Philosophically, it remains justified to speak of East and West, though the terms are generalisations and though we know that ‘East’ and ‘West’ in the most general sense, applying to all fields of life, are abstractions. See esp. P.J. Zoetmulder, Cultuur Oost en West, Amsterdam 1951, reviewed by C.Tj. Bertling in: Bijdragen Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 108, 2.

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origin). The continuous struggle and tension between Greek and Christian elements is one of the main reasons for the Western search for self-knowledge. Because of this the West does not only contain, but is in its inner essence constituted by an Oriental element. The discrimination ‘East and West’ did arise in the West because the West itself covers East and West. Therefore the West is vitally interested in the East. It has a greater understanding (not only enumerative and ‘external’ knowledge, as it is sometimes said) of the East, than the East has of the West - for the simple historical reasons that some of its knowledge of the East results from self-knowledge. The East is more than a mirror into which the West looks, as has been said.⁴⁴ The West sees in the East at a ‘safe’ distance something which internally moves itself and which therefore fascinates it. There is no doubt that the fascination for the Orient among Westerners (which has a different character from the enthusiasm of some modern Orientals for the West) has to be partly explained on account of this.

However, the advantage of a first understanding implies a disadvantage: the Orient is the scene on which the West projects; it is a receptacle of Western projections. Though the sources of these projections are often Oriental, there is no guarantee that the reality upon which these projections are imposed corresponds to the image. So, paradoxically as it may seem, the misunderstanding of the East by the West is also greater than that of the West by the East. All this could originate, because there is an urge in the West towards the East ‘which is outside’, because of the East ‘which is inside’. The primary step to be taken by Westerners who want to have a real understanding of any aspect of the East, is to try to remove the projections.

As Christianity may be considered the ‘Oriental element’ in Western civilisation, it might be assumed that always Christianity is projected upon Oriental systems of thought. This has very often been the case at least unconsciously, for conciously the Christian claim of unicity tended to differentiate, which was favourable for later scholarly discrimination. But Christianity is by no means the only source of projections. The actual situation is less

44 H.S. Nyberg, Das Studium des Orients und die europäische Kultur, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft 103 (1953) 9-21: 20.

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simple and consists of an increasing number of structures and superstructures, of which little is known.

The Christian element is emotionally connected with the Orient (though a deeper analysis shows that certain Oriental modes of thought are more Greek in character than Christian - as will be repeatedly seen in this study). This is connected with the history of Western Orientalism. This discipline originated when Bible study was revived on account of Protestantism. Hebrew language and thought were studied, and subsequently other Semitic languages, especially Arabic (and hence Islam). Once the study of Oriental languages and cultures had begun, India became the great rediscovery of the Romantic movements⁴⁵ and China of the Enlightenment.

Apart from this religious relation to the Orient, fore-shadowed in Christianity and symbolized in the words: ‘Ex Oriente Lux’ - ‘The light comes from the East’ - the relation between West and East has also been conceived as a relation of tension and opposition, as for instance in the wars of Greece against the Persians or in the crusades against the Muslims. Also in this connection Western consciousness arose but as a reaction and protest against the great Oriental powers - with the consciousness of the child, who revolts against his parents, and sets himself free. Nietzsche's somewhat exaggerated words about the relations of the Greeks to other countries apply in particular to the Orient: ‘Nothing is more foolish than to swear by the fact that the Greeks had an aboriginal culture; no, they rather absorbed all the culture flourishing amongst other nations, and they advanced so far, just because they understood how to hurl the spear further from the very spot where another nation had let it rest’.⁴⁶

Both attitudes resulted in what may be called historical consciousness, itself a development of the Christian concepts of time and history. Nyberg says about what could be called the oriento-

45 Cf. above, p. 7.

46 Transl. M.A. Mugge, London 1924 - ‘Nichts ist törichter, als den Griechen eine autochtone Bildung nachzusagen, sie haben vielmehr alle bei anderen Volkern lebende Bildung in sich eingesogen, sie kamen gerade deshalb so weit, weil sie es verstanden, den Speer von dort weiter zu schleudern, wo ihn ein anderes Volk liegen liess’ (o.c., 1).

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version of Western historical consciousness: ‘Only contact with the Orient and our capacity to assimilate this meeting internally caused the origin and development of historical consciousness.’⁴⁷

47 ‘Erst die Berührung mit dem Orient und unsere Fähigkeit, diese Begegnung innerlich zu erleben haben bei uns das geschichtliche Bewusstsein erweckt und erweitert’ (Ibid).