Are there any philosophers/thinkers outside the Western tradition you find helpful?

Question

Personally, one thinker I'm drawn to Zhuangzi/Chuang-tsu. What about you? I'm speaking more of literate/civilized/symbolic cultures.

Comments

you ever read anything by loa tzu? it's very poetic, very much along the lines of anarchism of a passive nature

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yes, laozi was a huge influence on me as late-teen/young adult. zhuangzi expounded upon laozi in a very different way, and sung to me on a bit deeper level.

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My brother has recommended Zhuangzi to me several times but I'm not a huge reader, is there any kind of short or easy to digest material on him (or of his)?

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Zhuangzi's _Inner Chapters_ can be found easily, as there are several translations, and may also be read in a more or less random way.

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Although, the introduction to the copy of A.C. Graham's translation of The Inner Chapters I have puts forward that the Zhuangzi and Tao Te Ching, while both texts of the later Taoists (as in within their philosophical canon), are not actually exponents of a single shared philosophy whereby one can intuit a truth which lays between them, but rather belong to different streams entirely without really being in dialogue with each other.

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i think the best way to look at loa tzus writings is poetry with multiple interpretations, this stuff is a s old as ancient china and i feel trying to categorize it would be pretty pointless, some of the stuff he says only makes sense in a very a vague spiritual way....i mean, what exactly is "the universal way"?

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rs666: what exactly is "the universal way"?

maybe i am taking it out of context, but it sure seems to hint at a "one right way" perspective, no? 

and even that is not to necessarily dismiss it. like so many things, take what makes sense (from any codified set of ideas), and leave the rest.

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You're taking it out of context. The universal way is the way particular to the movement of the universe and so, among other things, beyond human notions like right and wrong.

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Personally, I'm wholly opposed to syncretism, whatever it's form. In myself I see that whenever I'm inclined to such behavior it leads me towards affectation, which I suppose we might understand here as hipsterism. I'd rather understand the individual position in its entirety and on its own terms, then, while taking with me the lessons from that experience, reject the position entirely.

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what does this mean, strawdog? your post is full of abstractions!

aren't we all combinations of things we've put together, that other people have put together in similar and dissimilar ways? so what more specifically do you mean by syncretism? and i guess by "position" you could mean what some call ideology?

my best guesses at your points seem to be contradictory (if we're not taking something as a position/ideology, then we're using what we like out of it to the best of our ability, which means -- among other things, i guess -- that we're combining parts of a series of connected ideas and mixing them with other ideas...)

anyway, i'm confused.

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The thing about nonsense is that it looks the same whether it's a product of confusion in the observed or in the observer. The practice of simply discarding things that don't make sense to oneself improves the ease with which one can masquerade as the other.

There's no explanation of syncretism I could give which is more compact than you looking to the meaning. That said, to discuss what it does rather than what it is: syncretism is the term for the behavior which produces things like "Maoist anarchist liberals." It starts from the premise that there is a shared truth, whatever the discipline, and then it attempts to resolve the discrepancies between them. Famouse examples are things like theosophy (the origin of Aryanism) and New Age spirituality, however it functions the same if the assumed underlying Truth is We're All In This Together or  My Truth.

Syncretism between individuals (to reduce 'perspective' to its bare meaning) might look something like prioritizing the question "What in your Truth is True for me?" whereas a many truths position prioritizes the question, "What is True for you?" I couldn't say that one is better than the other, but these reason I spurn the former in favor of the latter is that the former encourages me to reduce the complexity of my world and to ignore my contradictions, while the latter encourages me to learn from them.

There's more that ought to be here to respond properly, but I have to go for now.

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@StrawDog: sounds like a bunch of nonsense to me!

@funkyanarchy: to me the "universal way" is the way that daoists want to fallow the way of things, since they are opposed to heavily controlling things. However, it would be interesting to know how lao tzu meant it, what part of his conciousness was speaking

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thanks SD, your explanation works for me, and i look forward to reading more.

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sd: i am not sure i follow your line of thinking. 

"It starts from the premise that there is a shared truth, whatever the discipline, and then it attempts to resolve the discrepancies between them."

if there is "a shared truth", then what discrepancies are you referring to - between what and what?

in relating to others, "What is True for you?" and "What in your Truth is True for me?" both seem like reasonable questions, i see no reason to see one as preferable to the other - aside from the fact that knowing what your truth is must come before i can determine what in your truth is true for me.

somehow it sounds to me like you are making systematic choices (as opposed to contextualized ones) between some of these things, and i don't follow why. 

i would always choose to: reduce the complexity of my world (and my communication), examine (not ignore) my contradictions, and learn from it all as best i can. i don't see it as either/or.

 

"I'd rather understand the individual position in its entirety and on its own terms, then, while taking with me the lessons from that experience, reject the position entirely."

i understand that perspective, though i don't necessarily feel the same way. i can take lessons from almost anything without necessarily understanding some underlying position in its entirety (and on its own terms). [not saying that a full understanding is a bad thing, just that it is not usually necessary for me, if i can still get something from a less comprehensive understanding.] i don't need to understand the full complexity of marx's socio-philosophic-economic theories in order to get a great deal from his (even basic) critique of capitalism.

the impression i get is that you desire to see perspectives/positions/ideologies as atomic (indivisible) units, to be accepted or rejected holistically (even though you may take some lessons from those you reject). am i making any sense?

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rs666: "... the way that daoists want to fallow the way of things, since they are opposed to heavily controlling things."

does that essentially mean: to accept whatever is "the way of things"? what way? what things? 

that starts to sound pretty esoteric and intangible. i personally want to have a somewhat more proactive role in living my life. but i could be completely misunderstanding.

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 "i personally want to have a somewhat more proactive role in living my life." 

me too!

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@strawdog: I would like to apologize the the last comment i made about your post, i think it was a little mean-spirited....but i would like to say that it seems you oppose general esoteric thinking and blending of ideological ideas, and i don't like the way of thinking that stems from that...i know there's a lot of nonsense in new age spirituality, but there's also lots of really deep and interesting stuff in spirituality in general....

and what do you mean by affectation, when you say syncretism leads to affectation?

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@rs666 - Esotericism <> Syncretism. As to affectation, it should be repeated that I can only speak to my experience, I've no knowledge that would lead me to believe it must be so. Nonetheless, what I mean by affectation here is the wrapping of myself in the trappings of a way of being such as to convince myself, and maybe also others, that I walk that path.

In a larger sense, the reason I find syncretism, and especially a syncretism built on picking and choosing, worth avoiding goes something like this:

There is a cake. I know this is what it is called because I have been told so, but I do not know how it works, let alone how it came to be made. I taste it, mmm chocolate, I like chocolate. I didn't know you could make it creamy like that. Oh, it's made with whipped butter, I don't normally eat dairy, but I'm sure I could make that work in something else, especially considering how much I like chocolate. Huh, they tell me there are eggs in this. Why the fuck would you put eggs in sweets? Well, that doesn't make any sense, but no loss, I don't like eggs anyway.

From this experience I add to my way of cooking more chocolate, something I already liked, but not only do I fail to understand cakes, as I failed to see in my confusion the possibility of my own ignorance, I fail to learn what it is that an egg does when part of a cakes way of being which also forecloses the possibility of me seeing in my own practices room for something like an egg. I leave the experience having reinforced my existing ways while learning nothing of this other way beyond that they too agree that chocolate is delicious.

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I hate the walk the path shit too, always have, I understand...however, i've found that the willingness to go beyond bare, direct logic in order to arrive at certain kinds of emotional truths to be interesting...even though as you point out can be misleading too..

however, im not sure if i understand your story...are you say you don't need to learn about eggs cuz your love of chocolate is good enough?

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The story is a syncretic approach to learning about cakes.

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ohhh ok i get it now....its true that knowing context in reading helps a lot, knowing what the writer is thinking, lol

Answer 1

jiddu krishnamurti said a few things that i find fairly useful, and his rejection of his privileged "destiny" didn't hurt him in my book. my favorite is his classic (i will probably mangle the actual words, but...): "it is no measure of good health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." the first time i read those words i was floored.

i guess sun tzu (the art of war) also had some interesting stuff to say, in terms of strategy.