John Dewey and East-West Philosophy

The first two East-West Philosophers’ Conferences at the University of Hawai‘i constitute an important chapter in the history of comparative philosophy. Wing-tsit Chan recalls the first meeting in 1939 as a “very small beginning,” one that served primarily as the impetus for F.S.C. Northrop’s thesis that East and West represented two contrasting styles of thought. As Chan remembers, “we saw the world as two halves, East and West,” and in his subsequent 1946 work, The Meeting of East and West, Northrop “sharply contrasted the entire East, as using doctrines out of concepts by intuition, to the West, as constructing its doctrines out of concepts by postulation.”¹ The purpose of the second meeting in 1949 was to study the possibility of achieving a “world philosophical synthesis” between East and West. This broader perspective would be cognizant of similarities as well as differences. Areas of agreement on issues in metaphysics, ethics, and social theory were duly noted at the meeting.² But since there could be no “orchestrated unity” composed of identical principles alone, differences were refined and preserved, these being important as the “basis of the synthesis.”³ In 1951, pursuant to the goal of achieving world philosophical synthesis, Charles A. Moore founded the journal Philosophy East and West.

It is unlikely that John Dewey ever read The Meeting of East and West. Friends would advise him against it. “Full of sweeping statements, more stimulating than reliable,” is what Albert Barnes had learned.⁴ “That Northrop book I mentioned the other day is not worth looking at,” Arthur Bentley told Dewey.⁵ Dewey saw reviews of the book, and suggested to a Chinese friend that a “critical account of [Northrop’s book] might be a good jumping off place for publication.”⁶ But it was Dewey who would contribute to East-West philosophy at this juncture. In 1950, he wrote a letter to Moore in which he had some “complimentary things” to say about the forthcoming journal.⁷ Moore wrote back, asking permission to include parts of Dewey’s letter in the “News and Notes” section of the first issue. Moore stated his preference, however, that Dewey write a fresh statement “expressing [his] conviction about the specific philosophical relationship between Oriental and Occidental philosophy or, perhaps, stating [his] ideas as to the best philosophical approach to a substantial synthesis of East and West.”⁸ In response, Dewey composed what would become the first article ever published in Philosophy East and West—a short piece titled “On Philosophical Synthesis.”⁹ Fittingly, the article was written in Hawai‘i. Hoping to improve his health, Dewey sailed with his family for Honolulu just weeks after receiving Moore’s invitation. When the SS President Wilson docked at Pier 8 on January 17, 1951, a delegation from the University of Hawai‘i was there to receive them.¹⁰ Dewey’s “valuable article” would be written under a canopy of palms in the breeze-swept cottages of the Halekulani on Waikīkī.¹¹ Though modest in length, the vision it relates is remarkable for its clarity, its cultural sophistication, and its foresight, and it is noteworthy as a bold rejection of Northrop’s East/West thesis.

This is what Dewey wrote:

I think that the most important function your journal can perform in bringing about the ultimate objective of a “substantial synthesis of East and West” is to help break down the notion that there is such a thing as a “West” and “East” that have to be synthesized. There are great and fundamental differences in the East just as there are in the West. The cultural matrix of China, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Asiatic Russia is not a single “block” affair. Nor is the cultural matrix of the West. The differences between Latin and French and Germanic cultures on the continent of Europe, and the differences between these and the culture of England on the one hand and the culture of the United States on the other (not to mention Canadian and Latin American difference), are extremely important for an understanding of the West. Some of the...