But Not Philosophy: Seven Introductions to Non-Western Thought

This title provides a series of introductions to seven schools of non-Western thought - Mesopotamian, ancient African, Hindu, Confucain, Buddhist, Islamic and North American Indian. Each mode of thought is examined for its doctrines and practices, with detailed references to authoritative histories and commentators. These essays represent a distillation of a series of yearlong courses taught by the author at the University of Chicago. A major result of these inquiries is what they reveal to us about the philosophical tradition distinctive to the West, especially with respect to the status of nature, of causality and of moral judgement. In the background of these multicultural inquiries is an awareness of what proper political order consists of and requires.