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A comment on Ikigai: What We Got Wrong and How to Find Meaning in Life. Parent comment

Re:Ikigai: What We Got Wrong and How to Find Meaning in Life by geye1234 on Thursday March 21, 2024 @04:32PM (#39784008)
Is the history of the Enlightenment's link with eastern concepts documented anywhere?

Clearly Hume uses eastern concepts ("I" am just a bundle of thoughts; causality is just a projection; etc). And the anti-Aristotelianism of the Enlightenment (hostility to concepts such as substantial form) could be seen as eastern too. I'm not sure if this history has ever been documented though.

The Enlightenment is seen as paradigmatically western, and in a way it is, and yet it tried to reject pretty much the entirety of western philosophy that came before it -- perhaps even under eastern influence.

Stuff is never simple, is it?

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Re:Ikigai: What We Got Wrong and How to Find Meaning in Life by mihaic on Friday March 22, 2024 @02:55AM (#39788023)
Yeah, the story is always more complicated than what you generally hear.

I've never read about the eastern connection to the Enlightenment in any place, but lots of references pop up. A translation of the play Shakuntala by Kalidasa seems to have created a bit of stir for instance, even inspiring some of the structure in Faust by Goethe.

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