Philosophical Convergence


 by BERNARDO H.P. BRASIL

      We live today in a time of philosophical convergence. The development of transports, communications and international organizations has brought the world together in an unprecedented way, a climax to the unifying movement that began five hundred years ago with the European overseas expansion.
       At the time of the expansion, there was a number of cultural worlds spread across the planet, each considering itself the center of the civilized world. A highly Aristotelian Europe was still under the effect of Thomas Aquinas' Scholasticism. The Muslim world did not greatly differ from this, as Al-Kindi, Ibn Gina and Ibn Rushd, among others, were among the chief keepers of the Greek tradition and the main influences of Western philosophy. Intertwined with these two hostile culltures were the Jews, who had by then produced thinkers of the cate gory of Isaac Israeli and Maimonides. Gredk influence was felt strongly from Spain to Persia (with Zoroastrian influences in the latter), and may well have been carried as far East as Moghul India and Indonesia.
       In India and South East Asia, Islam was to encounter two older cultures, namely Hinduism and Buddhism. The former was the oldest living religion in the world, and had generated more texts than any other, including the famous mahabharata, the longest epic known to mankind, and the most extense was by then the main religion of Ming China and Asuchi Momoyama Japan, and presented a wholly new philosophical 
methods: The doctrine of the non-mind, the rejection of all knowledge as the only way to real knowledge. This concept is taken to its utmost readles by the Zen (or Shan) school, founded by Bohidarma centuries earlier.
       In China, a revival of Confucianism was taking place after the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty. Taoism had also survived the powerful flow of Sidhartha Gotama's doc trine, though it had lost much of its original philosophical implications through sincretisms with ancient tribal rites. Lao Tse and Confucius were opposed in life, since thc former dealt with the greater universe, and had little interest in daily life; while the latter had the very opposite approach. Both share, however, certain philosophical principles in common. Of these, the most striking is the notion of the flux, the natural dynamic equilibrium of the universe. Confucius writes about the flux in his Morals as well as in his Treay on History and his Treay on Music. Lao Tse makes the flux one of the main points of his Tao Te Ring, which is further explored in the later works of Kwang-Tse.
       Separated from this chain of civilizations, there were at the time of the navigations, two worlds the Europeans would come into contact with The Mali and Soghai Empires of West Africa, which are likely to have been in conuct with Islam from earlier times; and the Aztec and Inca Empires in Pre Columbian America Of these, little is known in philosophical terms. The theocratic structure of all four empires, suggests a philosophy comparable to that of ancient Egypt: Complex symbolisms, necessity to placate the gods (a result of a higher dependence on agriculture), and a very strong attachment to life. Recent studies on these civilizations may shed new lights on their particular philosophical features.
       The Empires of Africa and America were not part of the ~Great Chain': Thus they were diminated. Their very isolation is usually pointed at as the main reason for their obliteration.  By contrast, the tendency of the civilizations in the chain was to become more and more alike in all respects. The term 'Global Village' defines nothing else than thc climax of this convergence.
       The immediate philosophical result of this is what made my presentation of different schools of thought necessary.  The modern student of philosophy should make universality one of his main goals. Not only The Greeks, the Monks, The Reniassance and the modern world, but also the Chinese, the Zoroastrians, the Egyptians, the Mayas. For thc first time, texts from all of these cultures are easily accessiblc The philosopher of today can attain an unprecedented freedom from cultural biases.
       The birth of philosophy marked the moment when Man became aware of himself. The birth of a generation of uni versal philosophers will mark a step almost as crucial: The moment when Man becomes aware of his own awareness.