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Comparative Philosophy: What it Is and What it Ought to Be

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Daya Krishna*
Affiliation:
University of Rajasthan

Extract

Ali comparative studies imply simultaneously an identity and a difference, a situation that is replete with intellectual difficulties which give rise to interminable disputes regarding whether we are talking about the same thing or different things. One may cut the gordian knot by deciding either way, but the situation would reappear again as it is bound up with the comparative perspective itself and not with any particular example of it. How long shall we go on “naming”, for the process is unending and ultimately “everything is what it is. and not another thing”. Or, if we do not like “names” as they hardly give us any knowledge and if we opt for “description” which gives us “facts”, then they too are as unending as the “names”, for, as the Jains taught us long ago, they are a function of the dṛṣti that we have or the point of view that we adopt.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 M. Chakravarti, "History of Navya-Nyāya in Bengal and Mithila" in Debi Prasad Chattopadhyaya Ed. Studies in the History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. II, Calcutta; K.P. Bagchi & Co., 1978, pp. 146-82.

2 Nakamura, Hajime: Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, Honolulu, East-West Center Press, 1964.