The Misty Land of Ideas and the Light of Dialogue: An Anthology of Comparative Philosophy: Western & Islamic ed. by Ali Paya (review)

At a time when the ‘end’ of comparative philosophy has been announced¹ or comparative philosophy has been taken to be a pragmatic enterprise, implying the ‘end’ of a realist interpretation of comparative philosophy,² the book under review here, The Misty Land of Ideas and the Light of Dialogue: An Anthology of Comparative Philosophy: Western & Islamic, edited by Ali Paya, appears to be aiming at bucking the trend. It sets out, according to its editor, to contribute to a realist conception of comparative philosophy. The book chapters cover topics related to both comparative philosophy (the comparison of philosophies in Muslim and Western contexts) and meta-comparative philosophy (the philosophy of comparison). This book is both an exercise about comparative philosophy and an exercise in comparative philosophy.

Here I only deal with the former part, that is, the philosophy of comparison, which constitutes the main content of the book. The editor, in his illuminating introduction to this anthology, explicates what he takes to be the main features of a realist comparative philosophy. It is a dialogue between two or more (contemporaneous or otherwise) philosophers that is made possible through a comparativist philosopher who facilitates their dialogue (hence the title of the book) in order to come up with a solution to a problem (or a set of problems) or to further clarify it. The problem-orientedness of comparative philosophy is therefore rightly emphasized. A crucially important feature of a realist comparative philosophy is that the dialogue between philosophers is possible and desirable even if the philosophers being compared and contrasted neither shared a common outlook nor directly addressed the same problem(s). Such a broad characterization of comparative philosophy is clearly at odds with the thesis of ‘incommensurability’ and ‘untranslatability’ of paradigms and with any kind of relativism—theses which have been severely criticized by realist philosophers, and especially by critical rationalists whose views the editor subscribes to.

This characterization of comparative philosophy, however, owes us an explanation of whether, how, and to what extent it is possible to avoid the pitfall of anachronism. Although I admit that the very existence of such an anthology may testify to the possibility of a comparative philosophy that is free from the above-mentioned pitfall, still an explanation appears to be needed to further defend this possibility against objections. Another significant feature of the realist comparative philosophy is that although a realist comparativist is sensitive to the bewitchments of language, she does not lose track of real problems because of the overemphasis on language. It is because language, according to realist philosophers, despite all its intricacies, bewitchments, and lasting effect on the way we think of and formulate our problems, should not be conflated or substituted with the very problem it is supposed to represent. The main concern of a realist comparativist is the problem itself, however it is represented, and not the way the problem is represented in language. This means that a comparative philosopher has to be engaged with language only to the extent that this engagement would further clarify the problem with which she grapples through comparative study.

In the ‘comparison of philosophies’ part of the book, David Burrell argues, in “Aquinas and Mulla Sadra on the Primacy of Existing,” that despite the assumption in the philosophical literature that Aquinas and Mulla Sadra had nothing in common, they share the idea of the “centrality of existing,” which in both cases can be traced back to Aristotle.

Lenn E. Goodman, in “Ghazzali and the Philosophers: The Defence of Causality,” argues that Ghazzali is not a wholesale refuter of causal relation; he only rejects a specific theory of causality (logical necessity) that makes no way for God’s intervention (most notably in the form of miracles). In his own positive theory, Ghazzali defends another version of causality...