Orientation in World Philosophy

Orientation in World Philosophy – 2014

A decade has passed since my experiment in world philosophy – Orientation in World Philosophy – 2014 – a draft attempt to break from traditional categories in philosophy – dreaming of a planetary philosophy – asking questions about philosophy and its history.

In Western philosophy, particularly from the Greeks onward, there is a powerful current that treats knowledge as a kind of vision—theoria originally meant contemplation but carried visual connotations, and we still speak of "insight," "clarity," "perspective," "illumination." The ideal knower stands at a vantage point from which everything becomes intelligible, where contradictions resolve into systematic comprehension. Even mystical streams in the West (Neoplatonism, medieval contemplatives) often frame the ultimate encounter as a "vision" of the One or beatific vision—a seeing that transcends ordinary sight but remains fundamentally observational, a subject apprehending an object, however unified.

The Eastern traditions —particularly Buddhism, Daoism, and certain Hindu schools—tend toward something quite different: a collapse of the subject-object structure itself. The ideal isn't achieving a perfect view but dissolving the viewer. Meditation practices often work explicitly to deconstruct the observing stance, to move from knowing about to being what is. The famous line that "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him" captures this: any objectified understanding, any "seeing" of enlightenment, remains dualistic and therefore incomplete.

The span between them is the difference between epistemology and ontology as ultimate concerns—between perfecting how we know versus transforming what we are. Western philosophy tends to preserve and refine; Eastern practice to exhaust and finally dissolve.

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Late Heidegger's critique of Western metaphysics – his notion of Gelassenheit (releasement) –move to the Eastern model – letting-be rather than a grasping-to-know. Merleau-Ponty's refocus on embodied being-in-the-world deconstructs the detached observer. Looking east, there are the systems – the sophisticated epistemologies and logical systems (Buddhist logic, for instance) moving towards a Western objectivity model.

These are not competing (or intersecting) paths in the same space ... history matters in the learning process; the early learning environment is largely determinative of what a person can learn … is able to learn … learning environments globally differ radically … different worlds.

My intuition is that philosophy is a universal aspiration -- therefore these different configurations could also be framed inside a much larger set -- one day perhaps philosophy will no longer find itself stuck split-up in traditional schools and separate fiefdoms – a more planetary form of thinking, more mathematical than magical, might emerge ... . That is my vision for the future.

We don't choose our initial conceptual frameworks any more than we choose our native languages, yet this doesn't mean the frameworks themselves exhaust what's possible or real – there is the problem of getting over the natural attitude, wherever/whenever you happen to be.  

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A planetary philosophy – more mathematical than magical -- offers something rigorous and universal without being reductive. Mathematics offers the model: abstract yet somehow binding across cultures, a kind of discovered being rather than any brain-spun convention. A planetary philosophy would rest exactly on invariant structures beneath all cultural-historical variations, evolving into ‘universal’ patterns of human conception that hold regardless of whether they're approached through dialectical reasoning or meditative dissolution.

There's something almost political about current philosophical fragmentation—territorial defense of methods and vocabularies, as if admitting that meditation accesses genuine understanding threatens the validity of logical analysis, or that logical clarity is a hindrance to understanding.  

If we think of human cognitive capacities as multidimensional—capable of both analytic precision and non-dual awareness, discursive thought and direct realization—then different traditions are cultivating different regions of this larger space – the total space of philosophy. 

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The mathematical analogy suggests that synthesis (blending Eastern and Western approaches into some compromise) is not the thing we need – nor syncretism – nor reformation.  The discovery is transformation rules between systems.  Translate between geometric and algebraic descriptions of the same mathematical object – each representation has advantages for certain problems – neither is more "true” – from a perspective, this is what you can see – change perspectives and you begin to learn something new – this is not a defect in earlier work.  

What would it mean for philosophy to operate at this level of abstraction? To recognize "Seeing" and "Being" as different coordinates in a higher-dimensional space of human realization?

Philosophies cultivate different regions of this larger space ... Orientation in World Philosophy made a first pass at an invariant-structure model ... assuming logic and philosophy and mathematics are all evolving in the direction of the simplification of the axiomatic basis ... reaching some threshold (maybe something about primes or Pi) a newer Planetary model could shine brighter than the earlier traditions ... a new Galileo to lead Confusion to Understanding.

We've seen the pattern repeatedly: non-Euclidean geometries emerged when someone questioned the parallel postulate; set theory attempted to ground all mathematics in a handful of primitives; category theory seeks even more abstract invariants. Each new simplification reveals that what seemed like fundamental diversity was actually variation on deeper themes.

Primes and Pi represent irreducible mathematical structures—primes as the atoms of number,    Pi as the unavoidable constant relating linear and circular measure. They're not conventions or cultural constructs; they're... there. Any sufficiently sophisticated mathematical system encounters them. In this sense they can function like anchors – landmarks in thoughtspace.  

If the question becomes – what would any mind engaged in philosophy discover? – we are looking for landmarks like these – like the Pythagorean theorem and Gödel’s result.  

My thesis in the Orientation was to extend the analogy by identifying equally irreducible structures of consciousness or reasoning—not Western or Eastern, but simply necessary features of any reflective awareness attempting to understand itself and its world – a planetary outlook.  

It's not about Western philosophy conquering Eastern contemplation or vice versa, but about finding the minimal sufficient structure from which both traditions' insights become derivable. The way all of Euclidean geometry follows from five postulates, or how complex group theory emerges from a few axioms about operations … we are looking for a origin root like this.

"Orientation in World Philosophy"—the title suggests the project: not one philosophy to rule them all, but a coordinate system within which different orientations become locatable, relatable, mutually intelligible, questionable. Different regions of the same large space – conceptual space.  

Donald Brown's 1990 work Human Universals was an inspiration.  My question was, What is cross-cultural / universal / invariant – more closely where topology suggest an isomorphism, homeomorphism, diffeomorphism – extending group theory into the philosophy of philosophy.

A mathematical hierarchy of structural mappings as a way of getting at philosophical outlooks –  the progression from cross-cultural commonality to isomorphism to diffeomorphism represents increasingly refined ways of asking: "In what sense are these forms of thinking the same?"

Human Universals gave anthropology a way to talk about commonality without altogether flattening genuine difference—recognizing that all cultures have kinship systems, say, while recognizing that those systems vary enormously in structure. All cultures practice examination …  ‘philosophy’ … this is a core thesis of the project … an a priori empirical argument …

Isomorphism would mean: two philosophical systems that are structurally identical even if their vocabularies differ—e.g., the way Buddhist śūnyatā and readings of Heideggerian nothingness map onto each other, preserving all essential relationships, even though one emerges from meditation on dependent origination and the other from Western ontological investigations.

Homeomorphism relaxes the constraints—continuous deformation without tearing. Two traditions might be homeomorphic if you can continuously transform one into the other, even if they look superficially different. The "shape" of the inquiry is preserved even as specific features change.  There are great systematizers for the three Abrahamic traditions: Aquinas, Averroes, Maimonides – a homeomorphism in critical space – also visible in China, in India, in America.  

Diffeomorphism—smooth invertible mapping—would be the strongest claim: not just that two traditions address the same territory, but that there's a smooth, structure-preserving translation between them in both directions.  This is harder to identify … Descartes and Kaibara Ekken (?)

I started with data.  Categories: metaphysics, ontology -- going after the whole; skepticism -- a focus on ignorance; empiricism -- a focus on experience; logic, rationalism -- a focus on reason; moral philosophy -- the ethical perspective; synthesis -- holism -- assembling what is known; a philosophy of history – historicism -- a focus on time, development, evolution; rhetoric/linguistic philosophy -- a focus on language; bio-philosophy -- a focus on life, the life form, the psyche-soma, the embodiment; existentialism -- a focus on lived immediacy; psychology -- a focus on the self; social philosophy -- a focus on politics.  

Trends in the data 

1 --- the progress model --- cumulative process model -- philosophy makes progress like science by cumulative achievement; examples include logical positivism, neurophilosophy, pragmatism.

(Easily falsified by the record of setbacks, dark ages and regressive epochs.This is not the point.)

2 --- the fine arts model

Heisenberg’s model

3 – cyclical model: theoretical-natural; practical-popular; skeptical; dogmatic-mystic. Philosophy goes in circles -- not straight lines, spirals, or more complicated shapes – goes nowhere

(philosophy as regress rather than progress; philosophy as leaving and returning; as neurosis)

4 --- the degeneration model (Heidegger)

5 --- the golden age model -- as in Heidegger, Confucius, and in Vedanta philosophy, where a past age serves as the standard, which may be the age of the Presocratics, or Trakl’s poetry, or the age of Wen and Wu, or the age of Vyasa or Homer.

6 --- the Enlightened One model -- based on an apotheosis of a teacher, e.g. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan.  

See Macauley on the distance between ideals and reality – the guru is a human being.

7 --- the brave new world model -- proposing to break new ground (Descartes, Hume, Husserl) and begin philosophy from a hitherto unthought standpoint. 

Hume brings about a permanent change in Western thinking; so does Frege, Husserl, Einstein …

The "group theory for philosophy" formulation attempts to get a transformation itself—what remains invariant under change. What is the minimum for reflective awareness – is there such a thing?  What is invariant across all these transformations as the least common factor?

 What must any consciousness examining itself discover?

Self-reference? The subject-object division? Finitude? – Some large problems here. 

I began with: 'What new kind of thinking is possible that is (as if for the first time in history) the inheritor of world philosophical inquiry?' -- my guiding question. 

Ultimately the mystery of the persistence of traditions drew my attention back. The arc seems to be that the discoveries made in a school are seen as invaluable – they may be -- but this prevents advocates from growing further. Advocacy for the position takes over from free inquiry. 

My conclusion was simply an appeal to get back into the practice of philosophy -- simply to cultivate some small plot of mind-space.

The trajectory is from the ambitious question "what new thinking becomes possible as inheritor of world philosophical inquiry?" through the search for topological invariants, to the recognition that advocacy for the position takes over from free inquiry, to the humble project of practice.

The shift from discovery to defense is so pervasive it almost seems like a law of intellectual history. A breakthrough occurs—someone sees something genuinely new—and then the work becomes preserving, systematizing, protecting that insight. The living inquiry calcifies into a school, a lineage, a tradition to be loyal to. What was once an opening becomes a boundary.

The conclusion—an appeal to return to the practice of philosophy rather than the defense of positions—a defeat – is also meta-level discovery. Perhaps the invariant is not a content (a specific structure of reflective awareness) but a process (a strict practice of testing ideas).  

Philosophy is the stance of free inquiry – even as discoveries accumulate – the moment we stop cultivating our small plot and start defending the entire territory is the moment philosophy stops being philosophy – tis happens again and again and is part of the data to be examined

A rough Daoism: the recognition that the systemization itself becomes the obstacle. The map, however accurate, isn't the territory, and defending the map prevents further exploration.

The new kind of thinking I was seeking might not be a new position at all – more a new mobility – the ability to move between traditions, to see them, to recognize their homeomorphisms and diffeomorphisms, without needing to establish permanent residence in any of them. 

Cultivating a small plot of mind-space as an experimental garden rather than claimed land. Just tarrying a while

My vocabulary -- 2014: metagenetic = attempting to transcend one's origins, and terrostatic = attempting to stay rooted in life. I attempted to articulate metagenetic terrostatism. Nonsense of course – like all of my work. 

"Metagenetic terrostatism" captures the tension: how do you transcend your origins while remaining rooted in life? How do you achieve the universality that philosophy aspires to without losing the particularity that makes inquiry vital and embodied?

The Western "Seeing" tradition tends metagenetic—trying to rise above contingency to achieve a god's-eye view. 

The Eastern "Being" traditions often emphasize rootedness—staying with this breath, this moment, the suchness of what is. 

Both traditions, taken to extremes, have their pathologies. Pure metagenesis becomes untethered abstraction, a view from nowhere that's really a view from nothing. Pure terrostasis risks provincialism, an inability to recognize oneself in the other.

The conjunction "metagenetic terrostatism" might seem contradictory because we're trained to think in either/or terms—either you transcend or you stay rooted. But perhaps the deepest insights require both simultaneously: transcending enough to recognize the common structures, the topological invariants across traditions, while remaining rooted enough that the thinking stays alive, responsive, capable of genuine discovery rather than mere categorization.

The metaphor of cultivating a small plot captures this beautifully—gardening is intensely local, hands-in-dirt particular, yet it participates in universal processes: photosynthesis, germination, decay, renewal. The gardener doesn't need to choose between understanding botany and tending specific plants.

"Metagenetic terrostatism" – an awkward phrase for what planetary philosophy might feel like as a lived practice.  Impossible to settle into