Abstract

Comparative philosophy remains an outsider even in our time. The most common such work, comparing the philosophies of “East” and “West,” tends to reinscribe stereotypes we have learned to suspect as Orientalist. Critics of the enterprise have noted that the very concept of philosophy is culturally specific; the search for non-Western philosophies would be a subtle imperalism even if it did not so often turn up empty-handed. Instead of abandoning ourselves to Eurocentrism we might do better to regard comparative study as an opportunity to learn to see beyond the limits of Western philosophy as now practiced. For the questions raised by comparative work are not so very different from those raised by new work in the history of Western thought.