J. J. Clarke: Oriental Enlightenment

The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought

Routledge, 1997

Amazon.com

Back cover:

“The time is ripe for the big picture to be presented, and Clarke acquits himself admirably of this formidable task.”

Graham Parkes, Harvard University

“Finally a book at the level of maturity required in our globalizing age. It should be strongly recommended reading for citizens in the emerging global village.”

Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame

“A major new contribution to the field of Eastern Studies, the sooner I have this book in my hand the better.”

Ray Billington, University of the West of England

Voltaire claimed that the East is the civilization “to which the West owes everything”. Schopenhauer compared his own philosophy with that of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Heidegger wrote that “it has seemed urgent to me that a dialogue take place with the thinkers of the Eastern World”. Yet C.S. Pierce was contemptuous of the “monstrous mysticism” of the East and Arthur Koestler dismissed its religions as a “web of solemn absurdities”.

What is the place of Eastern thought – Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism – in the Western intellectual tradition? Oriental Enlightenment shows how, despite current talk of “globalization”, there is still a reluctance to accept that the West could have borrowed anything of significance from the East, and explores a critique of the “orientalist” view that we must regard any study of the East through the lens of Western colonialism and domination.

Oriental Enlightenment, provides a lucid and highly accessible introduction to the fascination Eastern thought has exerted on Western minds since the Renaissance. This panoramic new survey argues that any adequate history of Western thought must take into account how philosophical, religious, and psychological ideas from India, China, and Japan have been drawn into Western thought from the seventeenth century onwards. Tackling debates on orientalism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism, Oriental Enlightenment provides a new perspective on cross-cultural exchanges between East and West.

J. J. Clarke is Head of History of Ideas at Kingston University, London.

Empire of Idealism conference, Prato, Italy

Palazzo Datini

At the Empire of Idealism conference, organized by the R.G. Collingwood Society, in Prato, Italy, immediately after the ISKCON Studies conference outside Florence, I presented in broad outline my defence of ‘Idealism as Alternative Modernity’, or rather, of a few general aspects of it. With no parallel sessions, the presentations at this conference had to be very short; when I sent my abstract, I didn’t know I had only twenty minutes + ten minutes for questions and discussion; when I learnt this, I had to write another paper than the one I had originally planned. But it seems I managed to communicate some of my main points. Many of the scholars attending I knew well from other idealism conferences over the years. The organizers’ emphasis on Collingwood probably explains why some were missing this time, though (Phillip Ferreira, James Allard, and Leslie Armour, for instance). Although the Collingwoodians have broadened their meetings to include earlier idealism, or, I should say, idealism proper, and the theme of this conference was the spread, and variations, of idealism throughout the British empire, there were still many more specialized Collingwood papers here than at the more general idealism meetings. Prato was chosen because of the Australian Monash University Centre there, the organizers coming from Australia; but we only met at this centre for a drinks reception – the sessions were held in the beautiful Palazzo Datini. Everything, including hotels and restaurants, was conveniently within walking distance  inside the walls of Prato’s medieval historic centre.

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/euros/research/researchcentres/collingwood/newsevents/

conference-2010.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Palazzo_Datini.JPG