http://www.amazon.com/Orientation-World-Philosophy-Companion-Examined/dp/1500523283/ref=la_B0093EHJ4Y_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408813022&sr=1-4
An excerpt:Philosophy begins from sensation and ascends to intelligible ideals. Thus it reaches an interplanetary standpoint, taking in everything at a sweep, a height from which one cannot make out the difference between Santa Fe and Dar es Salaam. Yet by its own principles philosophy cannot remain in this disengaged standpoint. It returns to everyday life. It confronts the varieties of belief and tries to bring thoughtfulness and intelligence to ordinary problems – it inspires but restrains – it makes us propose but also makes us conscious of the precariousness of proposing. It brings a measure of quiet into noise, to help sort things out and ready us to act.
World philosophy is humble and arrogant,
ancient and contemporary – rooted in contingency, aspiring to the universal –
merely theoretical and quite practical – proving the truth of difference. World
philosophy therefore is radically democratic.
Śūdra teaches Brahmin
about mokṣa, ordinary person speaks up to
mighty ruler, infidel to holy one, novice to expert – imagining a global
conversation that in principle excludes no one – pursuing truth as listening,
as crossing boundaries, as fostering otherness.
