Studies in European Philosophy

ISBN: 9781330254295 出版年：2016 页码：387 James Lindsay Forgotten Books

Dental mind. Oriental dreaming and inactive Quietism did not keep the speculative ideas of the Oriental peoples from having much that was fruitful for the History of Philosophy. These must be garnered into the treasuries of philosophic wisdom. Already in the philosophy of India we meet many notions that recur in later historical developments. And, in truth, India has a vast history of philosophy all its own. Besides which, if philosophy be said to be only where thought is free of the dominant religion, is it always sufficiently realised how free and independent much of the Indian philosophical thought was? Lacking the clearness and massiveness of Greek thought, of Indian philosophy one may yet very well maintain that it, with its speculative freedom and variety, transcended that of Greece in height — no small achieve ment. We are Occidentals, and have seen but in part. Besides, we must do justice to Oriental Philosophy at the outset of any history of intellectual development, in order that the greece-oriental Philosophy of the Alex andria of the Ptolemies may take its proper place in, and relation to, the historical development. No difficulty in translating Oriental mysticism and dreaming into terms of Occidental thought must keep these things from being done. Philosophy, taking thus its rise in the East, will remark the comparative absence of genuine speculative philosophy among the Chinese, whose Spiritism remained vague, indefinite, and uninspiring. I say comparative.