Why Everything You Know About Eastern Philosophy Might Be Wrong

When we hear the phrase “Eastern philosophy,” a familiar collage of images often springs to mind: serene meditation, the physical discipline of yoga, spiritual practices shrouded in esoteric wisdom. It evokes a lifestyle and a mode of thought that we instinctively place in opposition to the familiar European framework. But a simple glance at a world map reveals the first complication: the borders of the “East” are frustratingly blurred. What, then, is this Eastern philosophy? How does it truly differ from its Western counterpart, and is it even right to call it “philosophy” in the first place?

A World Divided by a Compass and a Canon

The very notion of an “East” and a “West” is a relatively modern construct, born from the great geographical discoveries of the 15th century. As explorers like Vasco da Gama charted routes to India and Columbus landed in the Americas, the world was conceptually split in two. This division was not merely geographical; it was ideological. The European colonizers encountered a vast diversity of peoples and cultures, but in their eyes, these differences blurred into a single, monolithic entity: the non-European.

This divide was cemented by the philosophical currents back home. René Descartes, the father of modern rationalism, famously declared, “I think, therefore I am.” This elevation of the human mind as the ultimate source of knowledge became a defining feature of European identity. Europeans prized what they defined as science, and the peoples they encountered did not possess it in the same form. This, combined with technological advantages like firearms and advanced sailing fleets, created a narrative of superiority. The often brutal reality of colonial policy was justified by a self-proclaimed mission to bring rationalism to the "unenlightened."

For centuries, this dynamic only strengthened the European conviction that the world was composed of two poles: the advanced West and the backward East. Even today, the term “Eastern world” can be used as a shorthand for poverty, human rights abuses, and authoritarianism. Yet, this view is a profound oversimplification, a fact proven dramatically by the economic miracles of countries like Japan, Singapore, and China in the 20th century.

The West's Exotic Dream of the East

It was during the Romantic era of the late 18th century that Europe began to show a deeper interest in Eastern art and thought. However, this was not an interest between equals. Instead, the East was treated as an object of exotic fascination. Edward Said, a pivotal cultural theorist, termed this phenomenon “Orientalism.” He argued that the European view of the East was not based on reality but on a set of curated stereotypes. The East was imagined as inherently religious, introverted, and reliant on intuition—a perfect foil to the West’s self-image as rational, ordered, and worldly. This contrast served only to reinforce the perceived superiority of European culture.

The division was cultural, not geographical. Thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche explored this idea through his concepts of the Apollonian (order) and Dionysian (chaos) principles, arguing that European culture suffered from its suppression of the Dionysian. Later, in The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler described distinct “souls” for each great culture. He saw ancient Greek and Roman cultures as having an “Apollonian soul,” defined by order and harmony. In contrast, he assigned a “Magical soul” to Arab culture, characterizing it as focused on an inner world, symbolized by a cave from which one escapes only into the mystical. For Spengler, every culture was a living organism that is born, flourishes, and eventually dies. He believed Eastern cultures began their decline the moment they started to imitate the West, thereby losing their unique identity.

Philosophies of the East, Not “Eastern Philosophy”

The concept of a single "Eastern philosophy" collapses under scrutiny. When we speak of it, are we referring to the Middle East, South Asia, or East Asia? While Europe can largely trace its philosophical lineage back to ancient Greece, the East has several distinct wellsprings of thought. Buddhism created a cultural and philosophical bridge between South and Southeast Asia from the 1st century AD. Islam later played a similar unifying role in the Middle East, though much later.

These regions share the presence of profound religio-philosophical systems that grew into world religions. However, even within a single culture like China’s, one finds a dazzling array of schools: Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and the School of Names, to name just a few. It is for this reason that modern scholars increasingly reject the singular term, preferring to speak in the plural—of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Arabic philosophies—to escape the Eurocentric paradigm and honor their diversity.

A Matter of Definition: Wisdom or Philosophy?

This brings us to the most contentious question: can these systems of thought truly be considered philosophy? There are three main positions.

The first, more traditionalist view, holds that what we call Eastern philosophy is primarily religion or wisdom literature. It may occasionally touch upon philosophical generalizations, but it lacks the rigorous methodology, logic, and theory of argumentation central to the Western tradition as established by the Greeks. The philosopher Martin Heidegger was a proponent of this view, asserting that philosophy, in its truest sense, is a uniquely Greek achievement. From this perspective, Eastern thought is a different "way of thinking," but not philosophy proper.

The second position concedes a little more ground. Thinkers like Gottfried Leibniz admired the practical and political ethics of the Chinese, Immanuel Kant studied Taoism, and Arthur Schopenhauer famously kept busts of both Kant and Buddha on his desk. These philosophers saw value in Eastern thought, particularly in its integrated approach to religion, art, and ethics. However, they concluded that because epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and ontology (the study of being) were secondary to ethics and values, these systems were not philosophy in the fullest sense.

The third and increasingly accepted approach insists that we cannot judge Eastern thought by Western standards. If we temporarily set aside our familiar European concepts, we discover that ontology and gnoseology are indeed present; they simply use a different vocabulary and conceptual framework. For instance, the central concept of "Tao" in the Tao Te Ching is described as the primordial source of all things—a concept remarkably similar to what the ancient Greeks called archē, or the first principle. Each Eastern tradition has its own language, and only by engaging with it on its own terms can we begin to understand its depths. Even the primary division of the world into East and West is a Western preoccupation; for many Eastern philosophies, the main axis runs North-South.

Globalization has forced us to confront the limits of our own perspectives. The 20th-century American concept of the "melting pot," which predicted the erasure of cultural differences into a single universal identity, has proven to be a fantasy. We live in a multicultural world, and acknowledging our differences is paramount. In times of crisis, European thought has often turned to the East for new perspectives. Today, as we face global problems that demand global solutions, the recognition of non-European philosophical systems as equals is not just an academic exercise. It is one of the most vital tasks for building a dialogue that can help us understand not only others, but ourselves.

References

• Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Pantheon Books, 1978.

  This foundational text argues that the Western concept of "the Orient" is a cultural and political construct. Said demonstrates how European and American scholarship, art, and literature created a stereotyped and often demeaning image of the Middle East and Asia to assert Western identity and justify colonial ambitions. It directly supports the article's core thesis about the West inventing the "East" as its cultural opposite.

• Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. (Original German publication 1918-1922, multiple English translations available).

  In this monumental work, Spengler presents his theory that cultures are like living organisms with finite lifespans. He rejects a linear model of history and instead analyzes eight distinct "high cultures," including the "Magical" (Arabian) and "Faustian" (Western). The book provides the specific philosophical framework mentioned in the article for viewing cultures as having unique "souls" and life cycles (e.g., see Volume 1, Chapter IV, "The Problem of World-History. (2) The Idea of a Morphology of History").

• Van Norden, Bryan W. Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto. Columbia University Press, 2017.

  This book directly challenges the Eurocentrism of academic philosophy departments in the West. Van Norden argues for the inclusion of non-Western traditions (like Chinese, Indian, and African philosophies) into the standard curriculum, refuting claims (like Heidegger's) that philosophy is an exclusively Western enterprise. This reference strongly supports the article's third and final position: that Eastern systems are indeed philosophies that must be studied on their own terms.