The contributions to Concepts of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic World reflect upon the problems implied in the received notions of philosophy in the respective scholarly literatures. They ask whether, and for what reasons, a text should be categorized as a philosophical text (or excluded from the canon of philosophy), and what this means for the concept of philosophy. The focus on texts and textual corpora is central because it makes authors expose their claims and arguments in direct relation (...) to specific sources, and discourages generalized reflections on the characteristics of, for example, Japanese culture or the Indian mind. The volume demonstrates that close and historically informed readings are the sine qua non in discussing what philosophy is in Asia and the Islamic world, just as much as with regard to Western literature Contributors are Yoko Arisaka, Wolfgang Behr, Thomas Fröhlich, Lisa Indraccolo, Paulus Kaufmann, Iso Kern, Ralf Müller, Gregor Paul, Lisa Raphals, Fabian Schäfer, Ori Sela, Rafael Suter, Christian Uhl, Viatcheslav Vetrov, Yvonne Schulz Zinda, and Nicholas Zufferey. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines East Asian as well as Western perspectives on the major metaphilosophical question: Is philosophy Western? Along with European philosophy, in the late nineteenth century the Japanese imported what can be called “philosophical Euromonopolism,” namely, the idea that philosophy is found exclusively in the Western tradition. However, some modern Japanese philosophers, and the majority of modern Chinese and Korean philosophers, have referred to some of their traditional Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist discourses as “philosophy.” This article discusses debates (...) in East Asia as well as in the United States and Europe over the discipline-defining question of whether the academic field of philosophy should include Asian and other non-Western traditions of profound and rigorous—even if methodologically as well as conceptually unfamiliar—thinking about fundamental matters. It argues that, henceforth, the field of philosophy should be conceived as dialogically cross-cultural rather than as exclusively Western. (shrink)

‘Self-Refutation’ in Early Chinese Argumentative Prose: Sidelights on the Linguistic Prehistory of Incipient Philosophy in: R.C. Steineck, R. Weber, R.H. Gassmann & E.L. Lange, eds., Concepts of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic world, Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2018.