J. J. Clarke: Oriental Enlightenment

The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought

Routledge, 1997

Amazon.com

Back cover:

“The time is ripe for the big picture to be presented, and Clarke acquits himself admirably of this formidable task.”

Graham Parkes, Harvard University

“Finally a book at the level of maturity required in our globalizing age. It should be strongly recommended reading for citizens in the emerging global village.”

Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame

“A major new contribution to the field of Eastern Studies, the sooner I have this book in my hand the better.”

Ray Billington, University of the West of England

Voltaire claimed that the East is the civilization “to which the West owes everything”. Schopenhauer compared his own philosophy with that of Hinduism and Buddhism, and Heidegger wrote that “it has seemed urgent to me that a dialogue take place with the thinkers of the Eastern World”. Yet C.S. Pierce was contemptuous of the “monstrous mysticism” of the East and Arthur Koestler dismissed its religions as a “web of solemn absurdities”.

What is the place of Eastern thought – Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism – in the Western intellectual tradition? Oriental Enlightenment shows how, despite current talk of “globalization”, there is still a reluctance to accept that the West could have borrowed anything of significance from the East, and explores a critique of the “orientalist” view that we must regard any study of the East through the lens of Western colonialism and domination.

Oriental Enlightenment, provides a lucid and highly accessible introduction to the fascination Eastern thought has exerted on Western minds since the Renaissance. This panoramic new survey argues that any adequate history of Western thought must take into account how philosophical, religious, and psychological ideas from India, China, and Japan have been drawn into Western thought from the seventeenth century onwards. Tackling debates on orientalism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism, Oriental Enlightenment provides a new perspective on cross-cultural exchanges between East and West.

J. J. Clarke is Head of History of Ideas at Kingston University, London.