Diogenes articles from December 2003

Diogenes archives from December 2003

Introduction.
December 22, 2003... East-West: the ideological split of the Cold War, a rhetorical emblem, of recent memory and brief duration, of the conflict between communism and capitalism, could not by itself explain a more controlled label, the one that belongs to the world...

Rising sun and setting sun.
December 22, 2003... It is more than a century since what we call the 'history of religions' (1) was discovered and has been studied. But only recently have we realized that the 'geography of religions' is just as important. East and West are essential geopolitical...

'China as philosophical tool'.
December 22, 2003... Since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason the phrase 'Copernican revolution' has been used in many fields to illustrate an event equivalent to the one Kant brought to philosophy, a revolutionary change in perspective. And Thierry Marchaisse, who...

Between Christianity and Buddhism: towards a phenomenology of the body-mind.
December 22, 2003... This paper is situated in the broader context of an examination of the relationship between East and West from the particular perspective of our experience of the body. It is therefore based on two specific traditions, one belonging to the...

Quiescence and vigilance in Tai Chi Chuan.
December 22, 2003... Preamble Delicately and with a voluptuous spiral movement the leaf from the tall beech tree detached itself from its branch and landed on the flaming bed made by its companions. That autumn, that morning, while I was observing this...

Indigenous beyond exoticism.
December 22, 2003... It is the nature of the earth to lie 'wholly spread out under the sky' hapase he hupo to kosmo keimene (Isocrates); (1) and the sky determines the World. Indeed it is the same as the World, as Plato states in the final words of Timaeus: 'the...

View from Islam, view from the West.
December 22, 2003... 'Go in search of knowledge even if it is in China" (saying attributed to Mohammed) The East has been upsetting and sometimes even revolutionizing Europeans' modes of thought, feeling and enjoyment since the most ancient times, well before...

The role of Iranians in the spread of Buddhism, Manichaeism and Mazdaism in China.
December 22, 2003... Gandhara, an area that welcomed Buddhism and where the earliest monasteries are found from the late third century BC, was also a 'land of immigration'. (1) With the aim of converting the Greco-Iranian peoples to Buddhism, the dignitaries...

Cultural encounters and the orient: a study in the politics of knowledge.
December 22, 2003... I Johann Galtung in one of his lectures talks of a painting that hung in the ante-room of the late Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah. It was a giant picture of Nkrumah himself struggling loose from his chains. There is thunder and lightning in...

East-West cultural relationship: some Indian aspects.
December 22, 2003... Preamble Cultural space knows no official boundary. Civilizational interaction, recorded and unrecorded, is an ongoing process. Diffusionism and parallelism get interfused in civilizational studies. To think of one-sided borrowing or...

'East versus West': beyond dichotomy and towards an acknowledgement of differences.
December 22, 2003... The theme 'East versus west' is an old topic for discussion, but one that is constantly being rehashed. Though it has many aspects, a number of elements remain vague. Do East and West each form a monolithic bloc? Where does the East begin in...

At the dawn of the call: from human to animal before the division of the world.
December 22, 2003... 'In the beginning was the word And the word was aardvark' Oulipo, Aux origines du langage, Bibliotheque oulipienne no. 121 First I think I should explain that call. It echoed in my ears for the first time a very long time ago and far,...

Eurasia and East-West boundaries.
December 22, 2003... The notion that there was a profound cultural boundary between Europe (defined as Christian) and Asia (defined as other, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism...) was dear to the hearts of the Europeans at least from the beginning of the...

My personal experience of East-West cultural exchange.
December 22, 2003... On 6 August 1945, I was exposed to radiation in Hiroshima during the atomic bombing. At that time I was 15 years old, a third-year junior high school student, and working at a factory in Hiroshima under the wartime student mobilization plan. A...

How to counter Islamic extremism.
December 22, 2003... Two great challenges for reform of education have to be addressed if Muslim society is to respond meaningfully to the threat of terrorism. Most Muslims are strongly opposed to acts of violence, in any form, undertaken in the name of...

Jalaluddin Rumi's religious understanding: a prelude to dialogue in the realm of religious thought.
December 22, 2003... In the course of human civilization, religion has underpinned the development of values of human respect, tolerance, peace, and the culture of peace. Unfortunately, at the same time, religion has also played the opposite role during some...