Where and Why do Eastern and Western Schools of Thought Diverge?

Roughly speaking, in the West, the tradition, really from Socrates on (with some problems in the Middle Ages) has been to question pretty much everything. Socrates sacrificed his life to start that tradition, and it has more-or-less stuck. That is, the Western traditions of philosophy, leading to the scientific revolution, have fairly explicitly included the idea that one must not take any explanation, nor its assumptions, for granted. Overthrowing schools of thought, replacing them with syntheses, with deeper analyses, or with simply radically different schools is, overtly at least, encouraged.

This, in the main, is not true in traditional Eastern thought. That latter is for the most part religiously motivated, in the following sense. While various schools of "philosophy" may elaborate greatly on some tradition, questioning the bases of that tradition is almost always forbidden. Thus one may work within a particular school of Buddhism, try to understand and elaborate on it, but to attempt to go to its roots with the idea of altering, improving, destroying, or in any way radically changing them is just not (traditionally) done. There is almost always a "dogma", a set of underlying assumptions, which practitioners of a particular school must follow. Since I follow the Western tradition, and indeed believe it is better, in that sense at least, I do not consider traditions which discourage that type of ultimate questioning as philosophy, but as dogmas, usually religious. Inasmuch as that is changing, and allowing that kind of questioning, as it is in many places, it is indeed philosophy. Now if you want the difference there between Eastern and Western thinking, I would be much harder put to characterize it, except to say that much of Eastern philosophy is heavily influenced by the religious roots it now questions. Thus, in Japan, for example, phenomenology is extremely popular, because of its natural fit with Zen practices and the Japanese meditative traditions. Inasmuch as it may question those traditions, it is philosophy. Inasmuch as it is adapted only to further those traditions, it is not, in my opinion, philosophy.

What’s Wrong With Basing Your Life on a Lie?

As in the science fiction film ‘The Matrix,’ let’s say I discover that my familiar world, the whole of my life, has been a dream produced by an evil scientist. My body which has been asleep since birth awakes to a world reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. A mysterious stranger offers me two pills. The blue pill will let me return to my comfortable world of illusion, eliminating all knowledge of the choice I have made. The red pill will allow me to remain awake to face the awful truth.

I would take the red pill, without hesitation. As a (armchair) philosopher, I feel obliged to say that. But what's so wrong with taking the blue pill? Taking the blue pill means choosing a life 'based on a lie'. But at least I will have the complete confidence that the deception will never be uncovered. I will never live to regret my decision.

Were Socrates, Plato and Aristotle Gay?

We are asking, from the point of view of modern culture and ideas about sexuality, about a culture 3000 years in the past and their ideas about sexuality, and we want their ideas translated into modern ideas. "Gay" is a word we use now to describe certain types of male homosexuality, right? Well, what is male homosexuality? Is it the case that if a male person has one sexual experience, sometime in his life, with another male, he is homosexual? What if he has two... three... what would you take as a dividing line? What if a male desires other males, but not usually as much as he desires females, and never has a sexual encounter with another male; is he homosexual? What if he desires other males more than females, but never has a sexual encounter with another male? What if he desires other males less than females, but lives in a culture in which male-male sex is preferred, and has that kind of sex; is he homosexual? You can create a few more combinations here and puzzle over them if you want.

The latter case was, as far as we know, more-or-less the case in ancient Athens. Male/male sex was considered preferable to male/female sex as being an encounter between equals, and sex between an older man and a younger man was the most preferred, for a variety of reasons. Were the ancient Greeks homosexuals? From what we see in the Dialogues, Socrates actually seems, relatively, pretty "hetero", in that in at least one or two cases he refused offers of sex with other men. But there's no indication that he always refused it. He was married and had children, but that was the obligation they all had, otherwise the state would disappear.

As far as Aristotle goes, he and Plato probably had a lot of sex with men... were they "gay"? "Homosexual"? By their standards, our terms would have made no sense. Their culture preferred the opposite of what our culture prefers; how do you compare them, then? If you're evaluating it in terms of personal preferences, we have no idea at all of those; but we do know that one's preferences are due to some degree on one's culture and upbringing... but not entirely... so we're back to ground zero in terms of saying what, sexually, Plato and Aristotle, for example, "were" by modern standards. They were almost certainly men who had sex primarily with other men and probably preferred it that way, for some reasons quite dissimilar to, and probably other reasons quite similar to, the reasons men today have sex with other men.

Are Human Rights Universal?

If human rights are universal, then there has to be a universal justification for them — they have to be equally valid no matter which society you come from. What is this justification? John Locke, who is largely responsible for human rights talk, thought that they came from God. The writers of the American Constitution agreed with him. [It has been argued that we still accept universal human rights even though we have done away with the theological underpinning for them and have not found a replacement for it.]

Immanuel Kant thought that they come from reason, via the Categorical Imperative. It is common nowadays to claim that they come from the nature of a human being, though the details of how they so arise differ between many authors. Is it merely the concept of a human (or more commonly, a person) — and if so, which features of that concept? Is it our rationality (Kant), our special status granted by God (Locke), our immersion in community, our ability to empathize, our ability to have moral views, or something else?

If you believe that morality is relative — that what's right for me (or for us) may not be right for you, then it is difficult to see how you can support universal human rights at all. One account of rights is that they are granted by governments or rulers. If this is the case, then they differ from one society to another, and cannot then be universal.

Should We Obey Immoral Laws?

Gandhi came to grips with this question. Martin Luther King grapples with it in his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’ My view, like King's, is that there are certain laws which are inherently immoral, and that therefore (provided the immorality is serious enough) I am morally bound to disobey them.

The difficult philosophical question is what grounds I have for claiming that a law is inherently immoral. King had an answer to that one — an immoral law is one that is at odds with God's Law. However, there are serious problems with basing morality on God's Law, as Plato pointed out in the Euthyphro. Does God promulgate His law because it is right (in which case what makes it right is something other than God's word), or is anything that God endorses therefore right — even the murder of innocent children (Abraham and Isaac)?

Of course, many answers have been advanced as to how we can tell what is inherently moral or immoral, while others have argued that there are no inherently moral truths — that morality is relative. The latter view makes civil disobedience very problematical, but I don't hold it.

Why Do We Exist?

Each of us, at some time in our lives, is brought face to face with the contingency of our own unique existence. If your parents had not met, you would not have existed. Neither of them would have existed if their parents had not met, and so on. You are a fluke, and so am I. Your existence is a gigantic improbability and so is mine.

Of course, if neither of us existed, neither of us would be asking the question. But that is not an adequate answer.

If you believe in God, then here's a way to make sense of the fact that someone named ‘Kim’ exists. God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. In creating the universe, God knew the precise date that Kim would be born, and, being all-good, his decision to create a universe in which Kim would exist was motivated by the thought that, taking everything into account, a universe containing Kim was better than a universe without Kim.

The trouble is, that doesn't answer the question. The question that still grips me, and the question that ought to grip you is, ‘Why did I have to be in the universe?” One can say the same thing about Kevin as I have said about Kim. God saw the possibilities that each of these two individuals represented and approved. Yet still I am gripped by the question, ‘Why did I have to be Kevin?’ And similarly, you ought to be gripped by the question, ‘Why did I have to be [insert your name]?’ I cannot ask your question and you cannot ask mine. It is a question that each human being can only ask about themselves and no-one else.

It is not as if it would make any sense to imagine that I might have been someone else other than Kevin. As the eighteenth century philosopher Leibniz famously commented, “To imagine myself being Descartes is to imagine myself not existing and Descartes being in my place.” If all your thoughts, feelings and experiences are replaced by Descartes’ thoughts, feelings and experiences then there is nothing left of 'you' to think the thought: 'Now I know what it is like to be Descartes!'

So what we are left with is a mystery, the mystery of I. There is no answer from science. There is no answer from theology. The only contribution that philosophy has to make is to point out that the real problem is prior to the question 'Why...?'. For no philosophical theory, that I know of, has succeeded in explaining how there can be such a thing as the sheer fact that I exist.

How Can Good Exist Without Evil?

What are we implying? Is it that good cannot be seen to exist without the contrast of evil? Or that good only exists to destroy evil? Whichever is implied we are still left with a teasing dilemma. If God is the creator of the universe, why allow evil into the creation in the first place? Or could it be that God did not have all his own way, working as the creator of good alongside the creator of evil? Some religious people believe in the existence of a very strong Devil.

There is no doubt that the battle between good and evil seems to have been going on since the world began, but in a “natural” world a caring God seems to take second place. However, as the question implies, it would appear that the evil we see round about us stimulates the concept that there must be some power for good to which an appeal can be made. There is also the notion at the root of religion that the world is the creation of a 'good' power, but, somehow, evil has managed to gain access. Some claim that a mistake was made initially by God when he allowed humans to have a certain amount of freewill.

Then there is the question of evil itself, with all its variable concepts. Many regard the perceived cruelty of nature itself to be evil: what is regarded by many as a natural and necessary food chain to maintain the balance of nature, is seen by others to be an unnecessary form of cruelty which extrapolates to evil. Here is another dilemma: take the simple case of a domestic cat coming in from the garden with a dead bird in its mouth; the owner of the cat gives the animal a good beating. Which action can be interpreted as evil, the action of the cat in killing the bird, or the action of the owner in beating the cat, or both? Some will say that a natural action, though cruel, cannot be evil, but an action punishing natural activity is both cruel and evil. So, we are presented yet again with a complicated problem regarding God. If God is the creator of nature, surely He could have presented us with a kinder regime of nature. How could a loving God confront us with such cruelty?

Separate from nature are the choices regarded as evil, or which lead to evil, made by humans themselves. A choice to murder, rob, deceive, inflict pain, betray, hate, etc. Pertinent to our question, it might appear that God is somehow responsible for the evil which the question suggests He cannot live without. However, the existence of God depends on factors other than evil, the general claim is that the universe must have a creator, and most are content to believe that this must be God. Regarding God as the creator means that he exists whether or not evil is present. Perhaps the “Grand Design” must include evil to make it work properly. Supporters of God would not argue with this seeing that their apology rests on the premise that God knows best. As Kant implied, our minds are not constructed to go beyond a certain level of knowledge, i.e. there are things which will remain outside the powers of human understanding.

How many times have we looked back at something evil and destructive in our lives, only to find that if it had not happened the subsequent good arising from it would have been denied us? There are so many things in our lives where good has had to be preceded by bad.