Who are the worthwhile non-European pre-Industrial thinkers?
post by Lorec · 2024-12-03T01:45:31.445Z · LW · GW · 1 commentThis is a question post.
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Answers 4 Dmitry Vaintrob None 1 comment
At some point I became decently widely read in "Western philosophy", of the tradition that goes from Athens through Italy and Germany and Britain to the U.S. [ forking off into Philosophy and Science only after the Industrial Revolution ]. But somehow, I never acquired any operational sense of any of the corresponding "shadow" networks of writings that were only discovered by 'Western' philosophers to be published in Greek, German, Latin, or English after industrialization. Centrally, I'm thinking of East Asian, Indian, and Islamic authors, although there could be more philosophically productive pre-industrial cultures of which I'm ignorant.
I know there are compendia out there, but starting as I am from a position of almost total helpless ignorance on the object level, I trust random sources almost not at all to be discriminating on the actual value of people's ideas.
My anemic existing context: I wouldn't be a LessWronger if I hadn't read Musashi, but as far as I know he just didn't write much and wasn't very much in dialog with the rest of "his" culture [like a Socrates who was never succeeded]. Years ago I tried to read Confucius and bounced, due to disagreeing with all of his opinions. I also tried Sun Tzu, but only bounced off him because I found tactics boring at the time, and might try him again. I've heard that both pre-Industrial India and 11C-13C Islam were expert at medicine and [more in Islam's case] calculation, but I haven't retained any specific names [other than al-Khwarizmi, who didn't sound any more interestingly-idealist to read than, say, Blaise Pascal, though I could have misapprehended].
I've asked around and so far been recommended Mozi, who looks promising, and Xunzi. If you care to humor a cultural [& linguistic] monoglot's embarrassingly Knightian uncertainties: wrt wherever your locality of expertise is, where should I start? What should I know first?
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The "History of Philosophy Without any Gaps" podcast (https://historyofphilosophy.net/) has for a while been alternating between weeks of Western and non-Western philosophy (which it does in a bit less detail, but still pretty in-depth). It's so far finished a series each on Indian and Africana philosophy and is currently starting on Ancient Chinese philosophy.
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comment by AnthonyC · 2024-12-03T14:16:14.821Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
One thing I have struggled with is not having the cultural context to interpret or appreciate thinkers further in time and space from my own perspective. Who were they, what did they care about, why were they writing about these topics in particular, who were they writing for, what else was going on at the time, what concepts and metaphors and examples were or weren't readily accessible as starting points. Things like that. So when I started branching out more in reading philosophy, I also had to start reading more deep history. Which I enjoyed anyway, so I'm probably overlooking other good paths in favor of one I like, but it worked for me.
E.g. I first read Plato, Sun Tzu, and Musashi in middle and high school. I got a lot more out of Plato when I revisited after taking a single classics course in college. I got a lot more out of Sun Tzu after working for a few years with clients who needed to manage groups of people and large companies and coordinate diverse interests in pursuit of their goals. I got more out of Musashi after I started reading the Sequences and thought about what it meant to have a single goal that subsumes or outweighs all others.