Elise Coquereau-Saouma

In The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, Franco-Lebanese historian Amin Maalouf recounts the story of the ‘Frankish invasions’ as they are remembered by ‘the other side’, the Arabs, rather than the standard story of the ‘Crusades’ from the Christian Occident. Using the novel as an exercise in imaginative identification with ‘another’, this chapter raises the question: can we see through other’s eyes? Beginning with Arindam Chakrabarti’s articulation of the problems of epistemic access to a second person’s feelings and of knowing another subject, I situate the aim of seeing through other’s eyes as a related but distinct issue. On my account, ‘seeing through other’s eyes’ does not concern the problem of treating the other subject as an object of knowledge, but rather the ability to detach ourselves from our own perspective in order to ‘see’ differently – in sym-pathy with the other. I argue that this crucially involves imagination, or the capacity to invent the reality of the other. Although distinct from the other’s reality, this imaginative capacity brings us closer to the other subject. It addresses the empathic quality of our vision, and the ability to imaginatively reconstruct the other’s ecology. Reading The Crusades Through Arab Eyes as an illustration of a strategy for seeing through other’s eyes, I argue with Maalouf that imaginative identification contributes to ‘building bridges between the two shores of the Mediterranean’, fostering co-existence.

In a world where philosophy has become "global" and yet is mainly written by scholars educated and/or writing in "top" universities, where syllabi must become more "inclusive" yet conform to the same academic style, Daya Krishna's philosophy is distinctively refreshing and thought-provoking.1 Professor at the University of Rajasthan, prolific author, unremitting correspondent in journals, letters, and dialogues, anti-conformist regarding the norms of Western academia and irreverent toward the "inalterability" of the philosophical Indian traditions, Daya Krishna's creative and daring philosophical spirit is paid homage to by Daniel Raveh in his book, Daya Krishna and...

'Comparative Philosophy without Borders' consists of nine essays and puts forth an extensive methodology for a redefined comparative philosophy, as presented in the Introduction and Afterword/Afterwards written by Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber. The nine essays by Tom J. F. Tillemans, Barry Hallen, Chien-hsing Ho, Laurie L. Patton, Arindam Chakrabarti, Masato Ishida, Ralph Weber, Sari Nusseibeh and Sor-hoon Tan draw on various philosophical traditions, academic fields and topics, in order to effectuate what ‘Comparative Philosophy Without Borders’ could be. The clear aim of these essays is to demonstrate and put into practice the methodology presented by the two editors and authors, according to whom performing comparative philosophy transcends establishing it through norms. This definitely constitutes a successfully treated challenge, not only by the authors, but even more by the editors.

Recent developments in comparative philosophy increased the recognition of a plurality of philosophical traditions. If we generally acknowledge today that philosophy ought to be plural, when we encounter arguments and positions that are incompatible with our own, it remains difficult to acknowledge that they might be valid from their standpoint. This problem of radical disagreements, when philosophical positions appear contradictory to each other and yet valid from their standpoint, is explored by philosophers of post-Independence India, such as Kalidas Bhattacharyya, N. K. Devaraja and Daya Krishna. In this paper, I first investigate the epistemological responses that they offer through an analysis of standpoints, beliefs and presuppositions. I turn to the critical inquiry at a meta-level of analysis, developed by Kalidas Bhattacharyya, to become aware of ‘alternative standpoints’, and the critique addressed to him by Daya Krishna on the limitation of the scope of alternatives. Following this discussion is a reflection to overcome the limits of systematic theorization of plurality and the resources that classical dialectic and dialogue could offer to epistemic pluralism.

Ganz zu Beginn seines Buches Vom Sein zum Leben. Euro-chinesisches Lexikon des Denkens (2015) skizziert François Jullien sein Projekt: Er möchte seine eigenen philosophischen Erkenntnisse bewerten, indem er das konzeptionelle Vorhaben, das ihn im Laufe der Jahre am Aufeinanderbezogensein der klassischen chinesischen und europäischen intellektuellen Ressourcen interessiert hat, systematisiert und damit als Ganzes definiert. Während die Einführung und das Nachwort sein Projekt und seine Absichten beschreiben, besteht der Rest des Buches aus einer Gegenüberstellung (‚vis-à-vis‘), einer lateralen Konstruktion von nebeneinander angeordneten Konzepten, die ihm für eine solche konzeptionelle Erkundung notwendig erscheinen.

The demand for the recognition of non-Western philosophy has often brought about the opposition of substantialized entities such as ‘India’ and the ‘West,’ which has nourished the drifts of nationalistic rhetoric. As a decolonizing process but also as a deconstruction of nationalistic revivals, it is necessary to investigate the presuppositions involved when defining ‘Indian philosophy’ in these post-colonial demands for recognition. Considering that the understanding of what is ‘Indian philosophy’ and its claim for recognition is a prerequisite for its reception, I focus in this paper on analyzing the problems of reception of post-colonial Anglophone Indian philosophy. What is it today that prevents the reception of Anglophone Indian philosophy in Indian academics and in the global world? Leaving aside the insufficient integration in Western structures of non-Western philosophies, I focus here on the internal difficulties of Anglophone Indian philosophy in India today. I suggest that the following interrelated obstacles prevent a global reception: the language, in terms of disparity of linguistic communities; the conditions of distribution and diffusion of the philosophical material; the historical rupture in the forms of transmission of knowledge; regionalism or fragmentation into micro-groups; and finally, the complexity of the situation of utterance or enunciative context, namely, the difficulty for Indian philosophers to answer the question: to whom are we speaking?