PHI 335 World Philosophies - East & West

This course introduces the major philosophical traditions of the world in a comparative perspective. Until recently non-European philosophy has been largely ignored by Western philosophers and the philosophical ideas developed within the context of the Asian and other non-Western cultures have been dismissed as belonging to the sphere of religion rather than philosophy. In the last few decades this trend rooted in prejudice began to change and a new philosophical discipline called World Philosophy (or World Philosophies) has emerged which unearths the riches of non-Western philosophies and by identifying convergent philosophical intuitions underlying the worldviews and moralities of various cultures of the world enhances one?s ability to engage in a truly global philosophical dialogue. In this course students will have an opportunity to appreciate both profound differences and striking similarities between the Western, Eastern (Asian) and other philosophies, in the three main areas of philosophy: metaphysics (i.e. the conceptions of reality), ethics (i.e. the conceptions of good life) and epistemology (i.e. philosophy of human knowledge).