Comparative philosophy has always been a contentious enterprise, particularly when designating a distinct subfield of philosophy. The publication of this recent edited volume raises once again meta-comparative philosophical questions as to how philosophic comparative philosophy is, and what exactly comparativity means in the particular context of comparative philosophy. The lack of a clear notion of or expectation from comparative philosophy is commonplace in this field of scholarly inquiry; and unsurprisingly, this volume is no exception. It is not a book on and about, but in, comparative philosophy. Nonetheless, it contains diametrically contending attempts to illustrate what comparative philosophy means, and practice it respectively. Paya, the editor of the volume, maintains in his brief introductory note that comparative philosophy is a philosophical type (13). On the contrary, Khatami in his paper (the only contribution exclusively about the notion of comparative philosophy) argues that comparative philosophy is not a type of philosophy, but rather a type of cultural studies (147–77). Swaying between these two poles, other contributions to the book implicitly represent a variety of different notions, modes and methods of understanding and practicing comparative philosophy.
Drawing on Popper's notions of dialogue and philosophy, Paya defines the whole philosophical enterprise, including what is called comparative philosophy, as a ‘dialogue among philosophers’ (13); and rightly so, certainly from a critical-rational point of view that Paya upholds. Comparison, he concedes, has always been an integral component of the dialogical process of philosophical thinking for a better understanding of a problem, or solving it for that matter. However, in comparative philosophy it is the comparative philosopher who is the initiator and ‘true practitioner’ of the dialogue (14).
The editor's own paper entitled ‘Scepticism and the Problem of Acquiring Genuine Knowledge: Ghazzali and Popper’ (279–333) presents a good example to show that a comparative philosopher does not merely facilitate a dialogue from a second-order standpoint between other philosophers, but is also simultaneously one of the active sides of the dialogue at the same first-order level of discussion as theirs. Paya specifically compares Popper's epistemological approach with Ghazzali's. However, the author's critical-rational approach is almost identical with Popper's approach in philosophy, which is best known as critical rationalism. Paya first deconstructs and reconstructs the views of both sides of his comparison separately from a critical-rational point of view. Then, he criticizes ‘comparatively’ the outcomes of the first stage. His critical evaluation eventually goes in full agreement with the Popper's critical-rational view of knowledge suggesting Ghazzali would have most possibly embraced Popper's critical rationalism had the former ‘had the chance’ to get acquainted with the latter's ideas (327).
Comparative philosophy, thus understood, is a combination of two stages, the first being interpretative, but non-comparative, and the second as comparative as has always been dominant in philosophical studies. That is, the first stage of comparative philosophy is chiefly a philosophical meta-study of other philosophies, and the second stage is a comparative and first-order philosophical inquiry. But does this not render ‘comparative philosophy,’ which was supposed to be a distinct type of philosophical study, pointless or immaterial? And, again, does the adjective ‘comparative’ not seem redundant here?
Ali Paya answers these questions tacitly in the negative (13–17). However, his answer is only cautiously negative. He warns that ‘comparison of ideas’ is more likely to be generating ‘confusion rather than enlightenment’ with the only one exclusive exception of comparing ideas solely for understanding and explaining ‘the problems with which the interlocutors are wrestling’ (18). Nevertheless, they, according to Paya, do not need to address even the same ‘problems’ in order to become party to a comparative dialogue, let alone share a common philosophical framework, tradition, or language (14). Obviously, this raises again the question as to what it is, then, that can make comparative philosophy, in Paya's own words, ‘a distinct intellectual discipline’ vis-à-vis ‘other types of philosophy’ (13, italics added). His brief answer to this question in his ‘general introduction to comparative philosophy’ can be summarized as follows.
Firstly, ordinary philosophical dialogue, according to Paya, takes shape in the form of a ‘duologue’ among philosophers who need to be contemporaneous. But for a tripartite dialogue of the kind that is ordinary in comparative philosophy there is no need for contemporaneity. Secondly, the facilitator of a dialogue between the two other philosophers is ‘the true practitioner of “comparative philosophy”.’ Thirdly, although comparative philosophy should aim at better ‘understanding and explanation of the problems’, philosophers involved in a comparative discourse need not have even a problem in common. It is so, Paya argues, due to the comparative philosopher being the one who ‘facilitates’ their dialogue in the context of some ‘thought experiment’ (14–18).
Read together, this tripartite characterization of comparative philosophy does seem not to have served the set purpose, which was to demarcate ‘a distinct intellectual discipline’ called comparative philosophy, because what they indicate is hardly any different from what philosophers ordinarily do in all known branches of philosophy.
Firstly, differentiating between an ordinary philosophical ‘duologue’ and comparative philosophical ‘dialogue,’ Paya assumes that it is only in comparative philosophy that a physical contemporaneity – i.e., temporal synchronicity – is unnecessary. This differentiation does not seem accurate enough to identify comparative philosophy, particularly if we agree with Paya that the whole philosophical enterprise is essentially a form of dialogue. In all forms of dialogue, ideas are discussed in comparison to one another. Synchronicity or lack thereof is a defining element of neither a dialogue nor a duologue. In all types of philosophical discourse, philosophers, in fact, initiate a (critical) dialogue among two or more philosophers exploring a certain problem or hypothetical conjecture, regardless of those philosophers being physically and temporarily contemporaneous or not.
Secondly, philosophers can enter a dialogue only with their own understanding of other philosophical ideas (i.e., their own interpretations or readings of those ideas). An immediate or direct dialogue (i.e., a dialogue without a mediating interpretation) with other philosophies per se or with other philosophers as such is basically impossible. This applies equally to face-to-face dialogues with contemporaneous philosophers, and to reconstructed dialogues with the philosophers of the past. This understanding, when methodically reflexive and conscious, is only acquired through the interpretative stage of any philosophical inquiries.Footnote 1 These interpretations or readings (unlike their respective, ‘original’ expressions) are all inevitably contemporaneous with the intellectual sphere of the same interpreter or reader who wants to compare them with one another. Therefore, physical and temporal contemporaneity, or lack thereof for that matter, cannot serve as a defining feature of comparative philosophy.Footnote 2
Thirdly, ‘thought experiments’ as a method of facilitating dialogue among philosophers who have no problems in common cannot characterize comparative philosophy in particular either. The starting point for a ‘thought experiment’ of that ilk would be the counterfactual conditional question: ‘What would a certain philosophy have to say had it encountered this specific problem?’ And this can be any problem that the philosophy in question has not addressed in actuality. Exploring this kind of question requires philosophers to re-articulate their understanding of that certain philosophy in the first interpretative stage followed by a second stage of critical and comparative appraisal. As such, thought experiments cannot set off comparative philosophy from other types of philosophy.
Paya's own paper on Ghazzali and Popper (279–333) is again a clarifying example hereof. The Ghazzali and the Popper whom the author compares with each other are, in fact, the reconstructed readings of Ghazzali and Popper, i.e., readings that the author has already developed in critical-rational terms earlier in the same paper. Therefore, the author (who is himself a critical-rational philosopher) convenes a dialogue with his own critical-rational reading of Popper and his own critical-rational reading of Ghazzali. This presents a telling example of how all sides of comparison in the second (critical) stage of a philosophical dialogue have already become intellectually contemporaneous passing through the first (interpretative) stage.
On the contrary, the lack of a reflexive and methodic, interpretative stage can detrimentally affect the second, critical and comparative, stage. For example, in four interesting chapters of the book – first of which authored by David B. Burrell, next two by Muhammad Kamal, and the last one by Latimah-Parvin Peerwani – different aspects of Mulla Sadra's thought are meant to get philosophically compared with a wide range of ideas as disparate as those developed by Thomas Aquinas (31–47), Martin Heidegger (105–26), Parmenides of Elea (127–45) and Meister Eckhart (335–57). However, they fall almost similarly short of a (comparative) philosophical inquiry more or less for the same reason, i.e., omitting to take not only a methodically conscious and reflexive stage of reconstructive interpretation, but also to discover and philosophically criticize the premises and presumptions underlying the ideas under investigation. This has rendered the first one theological, the next two mostly anachronistic, and the last one mystical analyses; thus, all more or less equally non-philosophic. Interesting as each one of them is in its own right, they can be leading to ‘confusion rather than enlightenment’ (18), when read as comparative philosophical studies. In addition to missing both interpretative and critical stages of a philosophical inquiry, these four papers, like almost all the other contributions to the book, contrary to what the editor himself would have a comparative philosophical study do, go far beyond giving exclusively a better ‘understanding and explanation of the problems’ in question (ibid).
Furthermore, critical rationalism requires a critical openness to all possible sources of intellectual inspiration that may help philosophers not only better articulate and understand the problems under investigation, but also conjecture better hypothetical solutions. To this purpose, practicing comparative philosophy does not require philosophers to suspend their own notions of philosophy, according to which ‘other’ philosophy-like ideas may be only quasi-philosophies. That is because even if ‘other’ philosophy-like ideas are merely quasi-philosophies, a comparative discourse takes form only among their ‘philosophical’ interpretations that the comparative philosopher reconstructs through the interpretative stage of a critical-rational philosophical inquiry.
This, however, has not always been an easy task. Neither has it been uncontroversial. In The Misty Land of Ideas Ali Paya has, in fact, succeeded in compiling a set of research papers that taken together exhibit how controversial the notions, modes, and methods of comparative philosophy still are. Mahmoud Khatami in his contribution to this anthology (147–77), which I would have placed after the editor's Introduction,Footnote 3 contends that comparative philosophy, however critical it may go, cannot (and, in his view, should not) be viewed as detached from its originally cultural seedbed, thus remaining a form of cultural studies categorically different from philosophy proper (152; 172–75). Other contributors, each with a different way of practicing comparative philosophical studies, implicitly demonstrate a wide range of various notions of comparative philosophy and its methods. To be sure, the main, if not the only, point they have in common is that they do not endorse the editor's critical-rational notion of (comparative) philosophy. What is chiefly missing to different degrees in almost all of the contributions is a critical examination of the underlying philosophical premises and presuppositions of the ideas under investigation, be they metaphysical, ethical, epistemological, theological, scientific, or mystical. One chapter is dedicated to Avicenna's ideas. In this chapter Hajj Muhammad Legenhausen examines the notions of ‘necessity, causation, and determinism’ along with some mentions to the ideas of some of his critics (199–237). In another chapter Sari Nusseibeh discusses the two notions of possibility and necessity comparing Avicenna and Leibniz (239–279). These two papers along with Paya's own paper on Ghazzali and Popper are arguably the only contributions to the book that go methodically through both (interpretative and critical) stages of a (comparative) philosophical inquiry. Ghazzali's notion of causality (49–80) and Averroes's notion of the soul (81–103) are discussed by Lenn E. Goodman and Roy Jackson respectively in two interesting papers, both of which though lack comparativity and criticality alike as their main analytical approach. Oliver Leaman's contribution presents a rigorous discussion on Ibn al-Haytham's scientific ideas about vision and optics, as well as their significance for the Renaissance (179–197). Although a good read in the field of analytical history of science, it can hardly claim to be an either comparative or philosophical study. In the final chapter of the book W. Craig Streetman explores the concept of the ‘useless philosopher’ in the political philosophical ideas of Plato, Farabi, and Ibn Bajja (359–387). Nevertheless, the scope of this interesting exploration does not cover a critical analysis of the presumptions underlying the notion of ‘useless philosopher’ at a comparative level.
However, this unconformity, if not an advantage, cannot be reckoned as a downside for an anthology of papers compiled within such a highly contentious field of study, still too far from a full-fledged consolidation; and particularly so, taken into account that anthologies can function to reflect as many varieties of ideas as possible concerning a certain question. Eventually, what remains beyond the sway of the contributions to this volume (and, of course, that of the present book review) is the question as to what it is, if anything, that can set off comparative philosophy as a ‘distinct’ philosophical type vis-à-vis other types of philosophy. Nonetheless, this is among the main questions that all of the contributions, each in its own way, tacitly trigger and recurrently urge the reader to think about afresh.
