From early on, comparative philosophy has had on offer a high variety of goals, approaches and methodologies. Such high variety is still today a trademark of the discipline, and it is not uncommon of representatives of one camp in comparative philosophy to think of those in other camps as not really being about ‘comparative philosophy’. Much of the disagreement arguably has to do with methodological problems related to the concept of comparison and with the widely prevailing but unwarranted assumption that (...) comparative philosophy should be about comparing ‘culturally different philosophies’. This paper seeks to problematize this assumption by clarifying conceptually the notions of ‘comparative philosophy’ and of ‘comparison’, by showing the prevalence of the assumption in recent second-order discussions of methodology in comparative philosophy and its restraining implications in a randomly selected contribution of ‘Chinese philosophy’. At the end, a rallying call for a (self-)critical comparative philosophy is issued. (shrink)

We are pleased to provide two explorations on the topic of dialogue in Chinese philosophy. In this paper, we consider the educational and theoretical dialogues in China resulting from the encounter...

“Constructive-Engagement” is a meta-philosophical and meta-methodological “strategy” suggested by Chinese and comparative philosophy scholar Bo Mou for analyzing and enriching philosophical exchange. In this paper, I will use this strategy towards an end, on a scale, and with a topic not attempted before. I will use it as a “template” for redesigning a poorly developing area of cross-cultural comparison I call Sino-African reflective studies. My goal in this work-in-progress is to design a plan for reconstituting SARS as Sino-African philosophy, an (...) inclusive yet coherent field of research and innovation unified through organizing principles. I will design the overhaul of SARS in three stages. First, by surveying SARS for its basic features including its structural flaws. Second, by remapping SARS in line with “renovation” principles drawn from its literature. Third, by blueprinting SARS in line with “construction” principles theorized from the constructive-engagement strategy. (shrink)