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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Category Archives: Islam

Against “Euro-American”

30 Sunday Jan 2022

Posted by Amod Lele in Islam, Metaphilosophy, Place, Western Thought

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Australia, Bartolomé de las Casas, Canada, ibn Rushd, New Zealand, race

I noted before how there are two objections to the concept of “the West” or “Western”. I dealt previously with the objection that “the West” is meaningless, and the subpoint that it’s tied to whiteness. Now I turn to people who accept that something like “the West” exists, but don’t want to use the term.

This latter approach seems fairly specific to philosophy. Garfield and Van Norden and others understandably do not want to use “Western” – but, for reasons I can’t fathom, they replace it with the far worse term “Euro-American”, a term with absolutely nothing to recommend it. As a way of replacing “Western”, the dreadful neologism “Euro-American”, appears to be in use pretty much exclusively among 21st-century philosophers. If you Google “Euro-American”, you’ll mostly find references on Americans of European descent, including the Wikipedia page on European-Americans – also known as “white Americans”. When normal people hear “Euro-American”, they do not hear it to include Europeans who remained in Europe – or philosophy made by non-white Americans. That’s one strike against “Euro-American” right there, though I think it’s far from the worst.

Continue reading →

Why the West is a real thing

02 Sunday Jan 2022

Posted by Amod Lele in Asian Thought, Greek and Roman Tradition, Indigenous American Thought, Islam, Metaphilosophy, Place, Western Thought

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Natalie Wynn, race

When one studies Indian philosophy, or Asian philosophy in general, one is always faced with its other: a philosophical tradition with origins to the west of India, which, after the history of colonialism and modernity, is in the background of everyone now. What should we call this tradition?

The term in by far the most widespread use is Western. It’s not a very good term, but it is the one we have, and I think there is good reason to keep it. I’ll be arguing that point in a series of three posts. I’ve seen two camps of people who discourage the use of “Western”. One (found within philosophy) merely discourages the term, in favour of the term “Euro-American”, which I find far worse; I will deal with that in the final post. The other thinks that “the West” doesn’t even name a meaningful referent at all, such that there should not even be a term to replace it. As I think that that’s a deeper criticism, I will start with it, in both this post and the next.

Continue reading →

The reasons for nondualism

21 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Epistemology, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Psychology, Reading and Recitation, Sufism, Vedānta

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, Alasdair MacIntyre, Aristotle, conventional/ultimate, drugs, G.W.F. Hegel, Gārgī Vācaknavī, Muhyiddin ibn 'Arabī, mystical experience, Nathan (commenter), nondualism, pramāṇa, Roland Griffiths, Śaṅkara, Thales, Upaniṣads, Zhiyi

I said previously of nondualism, “I’m not sure I can think of any other major philosophical idea that flowered so much in so many different places, more or less independently. I think that gives us prima facie reason to think the nondualists were on to something important.” Nathan reasonably took me to task for this claim in a comment: “Amod seems to overlook that ideas can be successful without being true.”

I don’t think it’s fair to say I overlooked that point: I said the pervasiveness gave us reason prima facie – at first glance – to say think the nondualists were on to something. That doesn’t mean nondualism is true, and I didn’t say that it was. Second glances might reveal something different. And where I think Nathan is right is in asking us to take those second glances. Is nondualism widespread for a reason other than its being true?

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A very brief survey of African philosophy

03 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in African Thought, Asian Thought, Christianity, Early Factions, Greek and Roman Tradition, Islam, Judaism, Metaphilosophy, Place, Supernatural

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anton Wilhelm Amo, Arius Didymus, Augustine, Hebrew Bible, ibn Khaldun, ibn Rushd, ibn Ṭufayl, John McDowell, Juli McGruder, Kwasi Wiredu, Maimonides, Philo of Alexandria, Placide Tempels, Plotinus, René Descartes, Tertullian, Zera Yacob

For the most part, the study of non-Western philosophy has tended to focus on the continent of Asia. There are many good reasons for this. More than half of humanity lives in Asia. And Asia has long, rich traditions of philosophical reflection that have survived and left their works to us – unlike the thought of Mesoamerican traditions, where so much was pillaged and destroyed by the barbarian Spanish invaders. Asia is not even one single context; I would argue that South Asian philosophy is in many respects more like Western philosophy than it is like East Asian. In particular I see no problem in maintaining an Asian focus in my own work, since it is the philosophies of Asia – especially Buddhism – that have left by far the biggest influence on me. One can love all wisdom, but one cannot inhabit all of it.

Still, when we do aspire to love all wisdom, it’s worth taking a look beyond both Asia and the West – at least what we usually think of as the West. There is considerably more to the world. The continent of Africa, in particular, may well overtake Asia in population by the end of this century. So perhaps it is particularly worth thinking about African philosophy.

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How a fundamentalist gave us fallibilism

29 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Certainty and Doubt, Epistemology, Islam, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Roman Catholicism

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

al-Ghazālī, David Hume, fundamentalism, ibn Rushd, Immanuel Kant, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham

Fallibilism is one of the most important modern ideas. By fallibilism I mean the idea that no idea is in principle immune to revision. It is among the most important methodological principles for natural science. As Ann Druyan said, science “is forever whispering in our ears, ‘Remember, you’re very new at this. You might be mistaken. You’ve been wrong before.’” Many of the claims a Newtonian physicist would once have confidently made, have been shown to be false by Einsteinian and quantum physicists.

As it turns out, this crucial idea has important roots in Muslim thinkers who might reasonably be called fundamentalist.

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God’s natural law?

22 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Biology, Foundations of Ethics, God, Islam, Metaphysics, Mu'tazila, Philosophy of Science, Roman Catholicism, Sex

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, Aristotle, Charles Darwin, fundamentalism, George Hourani, ibn Hazm, ibn Ṭufayl, intelligent design, Lady Gaga, law, Thomas Aquinas

A few years ago I discussed why the debate between intellectualist and voluntarist conceptions of God (is God an intellect or a will?) was so important in the medieval Western world. (The West here includes medieval Muslims, who not only started the debate, but were often further west than the Christians – in what is now Spain and Morocco rather than France and Italy.) I followed up by speaking of the modern practical implications of this debate: how it shows up in modern conceptions of law, and democracy. I think there are also some interesting things to say about the ethical implications of the debate in its own context.

Above all, if God is taken as a supremely good being, then our conception of him is inextricable from our conceptions of goodness and morality as such – and for that matter, of how we can tell what is good. This was the context for the debates that raged in early Muslim ethics, perhaps best chronicled by George Hourani. Muslims of the time agreed that the good life should be thought of in terms of law (shari’a): the prohibitions and obligations set out by God. But how do we know what God’s law is, exactly? It depends on what God is.

Continue reading →

Perennial nondualism

30 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in East Asia, God, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Neoplatonism, Self, Sufism, Vedānta

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, Dara Shukoh, Muhyiddin ibn 'Arabī, mystical experience, Nishida Kitarō, nondualism, perennialism, Plotinus, Rāmānuja, Ron Purser, Śaṅkara, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī, Upaniṣads, Wilhelm Halbfass, Yogācāra

I have spent a good deal of time criticizing the idea of a “perennial philosophy”, the idea (expressed by Ken Wilber and others before him) that the great sages of the world have always basically agreed on the really important things. In the past I had said there were perennial questions but with different answers; now I’m not even sure whether that is the case.

And yet I am struck by a particular phenomenon from which the perennialists draw a great deal of inspiration – and that is the pervasive influence of nondualism. “Nondual” is a literal English translation of the Sanskrit a-dvaita, the name of Śaṅkara’s school of Vedānta philosophy. But the core idea of nondualism has been asserted by a very wide range of philosophers around the world – from people who could never have heard of Śaṅkara, to Śaṅkara’s enemies.

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Are there non-omnipotent gods?

30 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Faith, God, Islam, Metaphysics, Natural Science, Prayer, Supernatural

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Anselm, Elisa Freschi, ibn Sīnā, Mañjuśrī, Superman, Ted (commenter), theodicy

Several commenters had concerns about my post on not believing in God. This is understandable, since there I take a concept that a large chunk of the world’s population has oriented their lives around for over a thousand years, dismiss it in a couple short paragraphs and spend more than half the post instead discussing why I avoid calling myself an atheist.

That is to say that the topic of disbelief in God deserves more attention than I gave it there. And as most commenters pointed out, it does depend heavily on how you define God. Continue reading →

Incompleteness in knowledge and existence

28 Sunday May 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, God, Islam, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Self

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, existentialism, ibn Sīnā, Madhyamaka, Śāntideva

Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.

A friend read the previous post on ibn Sīnā and Śāntideva and asked (on Google+) what exactly I meant by “incompleteness”. It was a great question and made me realize there was a bit of confusion in my own thinking.

The point of connection I saw between the two different thinkers was above all at the level of understanding the world. Continue reading →

ibn Sīnā and Śāntideva on the incompleteness of the world

14 Sunday May 2017

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Foundations of Ethics, God, Islam, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, Self

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, Aśvaghoṣa, ibn Sīnā, Madhyamaka, Nāgārjuna, Śāntideva

Cross-posted at the Indian Philosophy Blog.

I’ve been thinking lately about MacIntyre’s explanation of the Muslim philosopher ibn Sīnā and the ways in which ibn Sīnā’s concept of God requires us to rethink the entire world around us if we accept it:

From [atheists’] standpoint a theist is someone who believes in just one more being than they do and who therefore has the responsibility for justifying her or his belief in this extra entity. But from the standpoint of the theist this is already to have misconceived both God and theistic belief in God. To believe in God is not to believe that in addition to nature, about which atheists and theists can agree, there is something else, about which they disagree. It is rather that theists and atheists disagree about nature as well as about God. For theists believe that nature presents itself as radically incomplete, as requiring a ground beyond itself, if it is to be intelligible, and so their disagreement with atheists involves everything. (God, Philosophy, Universities p. 47)

What’s drawing my attention is that you could write a very similar passage to characterize Buddhism. Continue reading →

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