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Daniel Gustav Anderson is presently a graduate student in Cultural Studies at George Mason University. His interests include critical theory, ecology, and European and South Asian traditions of dialectical thinking. He is the author of "Of Syntheses and Surprises: Toward a Critical Integral Theory", "Such a Body We Must Create: New Theses on Integral Micropolitics" and "Sweet Science:” A Proposal for Integral Macropolitics", which have been published in Integral Review.

The Purpose of
Comparative and Continental
Philosophy?

Daniel Gustav Anderson

It is possible to understand integral theory as an exercise in comparative philosophy. And it is not accidental that, among the leaders of the Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle, one can find two prominent members of the circle of integral studies: Ken Wilber, in an advisory role to the journal published by the Circle, and Michael Schwartz, of whom more below. I think the culture of the Circle as a congenial space in which to engage in thought that may border on the speculative is of interest in itself, and in its present trajectory is of further interest as it poses the question of whether it may be possible to do integral theory (or any other form of inquiry) on the sly, without spelling it out up front or specifying it explicitly. My comments here are intended to probe all this.

The Call for Papers for the 2012 Comparative and Continental Philosophy Conference is worth quoting in its entirety, as it specifies very little and, consequently, is wide open. The sum:

Annual Meeting
MARCH 8-10, 2012
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA USA
Co-sponsored by the University of San Diego Philosophy Department

We are an open, congenial, and discussion-driven philosophy Circle that meets internationally every spring. We invite papers/ presentations on any aspect of Comparative philosophy, Continental philosophy, and/or bridges between them. Papers will be considered for publication in our peer-reviewed journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy.

Send electronic abstracts, papers, or inquiries to this year's conference chairperson, Dr. Michael Schwartz, by December 15, 2011: mschwartz@knology.net and mschwart@aug.edu.

That is all. It sounds like a pleasant scene altogether. I regret that I will not attend, even though I very much enjoy open, congenial, and discussion-driven work. However, my reclusiveness will not prevent me from making some public comments.

Now, if the purpose of the conference is to better understand continental philosophy and comparative philosophy, and also to build bridges between the two, then the best-warranted approach would be to investigate (interrogate...) extant bridges between “east” and “west,” along with the history of the imperative to build such bridges. Here are five categories of how this has been done; there may be other useful categories and examples that slip between.

1. Consider the deployment of Buddhism as an “other” to Enlightenment reason (how about that for a pun?), starting with Schopenhauer and continuing through Nietzsche and Zizek. Here, Buddhism is a useful straw figure of passive, nihilistic, anti-social, and effeminate thought and practice against which active, masculine, and interventionary Reason can be posited. This takes an extraordinary form in Zizek's The Puppet and the Dwarf, in which a Leninist Christianity is presented as an alternative to a soft, flexible meditative stance, which recalls the “radical acceptance” version of “Western Buddhism.” Have you read Tim Morton's article on Hegel and Buddhism? Generally, this category finds European philosophers making sense of their own project, their own position in history, relative to an “other” they may or may not have the resources to understand well (Hegel, Nietzsche) or take the time to do so (looking at you, Slavoj). In cultural rather than philosophical terms, one would have to look at such synthetic projects as Theosophy under this head.
2. Now consider the business of bridges from the other side: the deployment of European-invented doctrines and methods in South and East Asia, in Africa. One example is the good old perennial philosophy advanced by Theosophy, the idealism cooked up in Germany (Schelling, Hegel) and advanced in England (think of A.C. Bradley), reconfigured, and represented as Eternal Wisdom in India and Japan. Here, locate Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore, and Yone Noguchi; here, in a curious way, Irishmen such as James Cousins and AE (George William Russell). And D.T. Suzuki.
3. The dialectic moves forward: Consider the instance where the same perennial philosophy and historicist teleology is consumed as ancient wisdom, and on this basis the European tradition is repackaged through this lens, as in the coming “integral age,” a historicism Ken Wilber has been putting forward as recently as 2010. This is a synthetic approach. A different expression of the same (this not as hobbled by idealist historicism) produces The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters and Time, Space, and Knowledge.
4. But from the same position, consider an antagonistic approach, where concepts are brought together not to emphasize their unity as expressions of a singular “spiritual reality,” totally non-sequitur streams of thought are brought together methodically in order to “throw sparks,” in Chogyam Trungpa's terms (the source on this is rather obscure; I cite it in the essay “Of Syntheses and Surprises,” on p. 77, an essay that is generally skeptical of the approach described in example three above). I think Brook Ziporyn's Being and Ambiguity is an exceptional work of this kind. G.I. Gurdjieff would be productively considered in this category as well, and perhaps Moshe Feldenkrais.
5. Finally, there is always and has always been Party Conversation. Here, have a beer, visit the bowl of bean dip and chips, and tell me: What would a conversation between Chuangzi and Althusser be like? How would it go of Virginia Woolf and Guru Padmasambhava joined the conversation? While on psilocybes? These are thought experiments that are comparative for the sake of comparison, an exercise analogous to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The sure diagnostic for this category is performed as follows. If you ask someone what she is researching and she replies, “I am comparing Spinoza's Ethics to Dogen's Shobogenzo,” or “I am comparing Shakespeare's sonnets to Derrida's The Post Card,” just ask: “What is the point of that? What does that get you? So what?” If her reply indicates she had not yet considered the question, then you can be sure she is contributing to Party Conversation. If she indicates a specific purpose, then perhaps not. Useful concepts may emerge from this sort of pastime, but it is hardly a productive end in itself, especially in contrast to example four above. It has been possible for some to advance a career in the humanities on Party Conversation alone, although that train may have left the station by now.

This array of categories is useful in a few ways. First, it suggests ways in which the exercise of comparative philosophy might be useful or problematic or both at once; with the problems identified, one can productively move forward on other lines. Second, it suggests a raison d'etre for the Circle beyond the dismissive accusations of outsiders of Party Conversation or the lightweight project of synthesis for the sake of synthesis (let it be noted that I am not making that accusation, merely identifying it as a problem that inheres in comparative work generally that must be addressed). I see this moving forward in a twofold way:

1. Addressing the historical and critical problem of how this metabolism of “east” and “west” outlined in the five examples above has manifested in further detail, and what the meat-world consequences have been. How do the dubious categories of “east” and “west” presuppose each other, recontextualize each other? Not to put too fine a point on it, but do you suppose that uneven relations of power might have a role to play here?
2. Tackling the positive problem of outlining a coherent program. What ought the inquiry of comparative philosophy to accomplish? Is this mere party conversation, advocacy for a particular religious tradition or product line even if it is not spelled out explicitly, or a pleasant way to put lines on one's Curriculum Vitae? Or, more constructively, has this some relevance to contemporary problems that can be defined in a critical way? These are open questions that, if pursued, may direct attention toward productive and provocative possibilities.