Migrating Texts and Traditions

Afterword - Migration: Explanation, Analysis, and Directions

Afterword Migration: Explanation, Analysis, and Directions William Sweet & This volume has aimed at helping to understand the presence, and the migration, of philosophical texts and traditions from their cultures of origin to new cultural and philosophical environments. It has provided examples or cases of where such a migration has occurred, but also of where there have been significant challenges to it. It has also sought to examine the phenomenon—what it means for texts and traditions to migrate—more closely. The volume has attempted to provide a better understanding of what we mean by texts and traditions, how they relate and the implications of this (for example, for the notion of a cross-cultural or intercultural philosophy). But it also seeks to help readers to reflect on the presuppositions of ‘migration’—how migration can occur and has occurred. Throughout, we have seen a need to move beyond ‘the facts as they seem’, and to ‘go deeper and deeper into the heart of facts as they are’. It is only by doing so that readers can arrive at explanations—explanations about the migration, appropriation and integration of texts and traditions.1 1. Explanations In the preceding essays, the authors have focused principally on examples of where texts and traditions have been found in cultures and traditions far from their cultures of origin. Some of the explanations for this migration are, perhaps, rather straightforward and obvious. Sometimes the presence of traditions or texts from one culture in another admits of a simple historical or sociological explanation. Indirectly or semi 1 In this Afterword, I draw on my paper “Intercultural Philosophy and the Phenomenon of Migrating Texts and Traditions,” in Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy, ed. Hans Lenk (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2009), 39–58. 332 Migrating Texts and Traditions intentionally, through war and colonialization, through religion and evangelization , through general cultural contact (e.g., travel, media—and today, particularly—the internet, as well as higher education and art), through commercial relations and globalization and so on, one notes the transmission of (philosophical) texts and traditions from one culture into another. For example, as we have seen in the essays of Sweet, Duvenage and Leighton, colonialism by Britain from the 17th to 19th centuries, led to the establishment of educational institutions in Africa, Asia (especially India) and the Americas, modeled on those of Europe. Not only were the organization and curriculum ‘European’, but the texts for the courses were largely European as well. And thus, it is perhaps no surprise that British philosophy came to be read and studied at some distance from its ‘home’. Of course, the principal aim of colonialization, trade, missionary work and the like was not the transmission of philosophies, but it is not implausible that some authorities would have seen philosophy as providing an intellectual justification and support for colonial, economic or missionary activity. The essays in this volume reveal, however, that there are other explanations for the presence of philosophical texts and traditions in new environments—that is, cases where such an introduction was arguably more deliberate. There are occasions, for example, where those within a culture or tradition believe the philosophical work from another answers or addresses their own questions in some way. Here, we might recall the example of Dārā Shukoh, who sought answers and clarifications of Islam by turning to the Upanisadic texts, and who commissioned a translation of them into Persian. Or, again, we have the example of Saadya Gaon, who drew on Christian texts and an alien philosophical tradition in order to engage the religious debates of his time. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan ’s interest in exploring Western thought, particularly idealism, allowed him not only to contribute to the revitalization of Advaita Vedanta within Hindu philosophy, but also to provide an interpretation of Hinduism that was able to engage Western thought and serve as a defence for Hindu ethics—and it likely also contributed to Radhakrishnan’s articulation and development of comparative philosophy. Similarly, the presence of Buddhism in contemporary North America has led to new schools of Buddhist thought and has also provided some philosophers in the West with ways of complementing or addressing perceived inadequacies within Western thought. Conversely, an introduction or migration of a tradition or text may occur because a person believes it to answer or address someone else’s questions—that is,one brings one’s texts and traditions into another culture in order to tell others one’s ‘truth’. One such example that we have seen of one ‘seeking to...