How May We Approach the Spiritual Traditions of the East?

Extract

Philosophy—East and West, the book of the East-West Philosophers’ Conference held at Hawaii in 1939, adds to the growing evidence of a desire for rapprochement in academic circles between America and the Far East. The scope of the book is philosophical and rational, prescinding, that is, from religious questions as such, and seeking to formulate and to organise the common ground of Eastern and Western thought and thus to make more readily accessible to each what one possesses and the other lacks. The project arises from so manifest and natural a tendency—the desire of men to understand one another and so extend their understanding of the world—that any elaborate justification seems uncalled for, and in effect the majority of the Eastern contributors dispense with any such preamble. In the nature of the case the position of the Western philosophers is a more self-conscious one, and the justifications they put forward raise questions more important than the conference itself. It must be added that such a statement intends no disparagement of the book in which the proceedings of the conference are recorded, and is one in which the American contributors themselves would probably agree.

The first question, to which we may defer the answer while using it as a key to unlock others, is this: In what sense can we accept the statement that the traditions neither of the East nor of the West are wholly true or adequate to a full understanding of man? It is a proposition in which the Western and, at least, one of the Eastern contributors explicitly concur, and is in line with the objective of a “planetary philosophy“, in which the same amount of agreement is evident.