Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series IVA, Eastern and Central Europe, Volume 39 General Editor George F. McLean Knowledge and Belief in the Dialogue of Cultures Edited by Marietta Stepanyants Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Copyright © 2011 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Box 261 Cardinal Station Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Knowledge and belief in the dialogue of cultures / edited by Marietta Stepanyants. p. cm. – (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series IVA, Eastern and Central Europe ; v. 39) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Belief and doubt. 3. Faith. 4. Religions. I. Stepaniants, M. T. (Marietta Tigranovna) BD161.K565 2009 2009011488 210–dc22 CIP ISBN 978-1-56518-262-2 (paper) TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication v George F. McLean Introduction 1 Marietta Stepanyants Part I. Chinese Thought Chapter I. On Knowing (Zhi): Praxis-Guiding Discourse in 17 the Confucian Analects Henry Rosemont, Jr.. Chapter II. Knowledge/Rationale and Belief/Trustiness in 25 Chinese Philosophy Artiom I. Kobzev Chapter III. Two Kinds of Warrant: A Confucian Response to 55 Plantinga’s Theory of the Knowledge of the Ultimate Peimin Ni Chapter IV. Knowledge as Addiction: A Comparative Analysis 59 Hans-Georg Moeller Part II. Indian Thought Chapter V. Alethic Knowledge: The Basic Features of Classical 71 Indian Epistemology, with Some Comparative Remarks on the Chinese Tradition Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad Chapter VI. The Status of the Veda in the Two Mimansas 89 Michel Hulin Chapter VII. What Is Meant by Faith in Brahmanism? 97 V. Schokhin Chapter VIII. Vedantic Perspectives on the Concept of Ignorance 107 S. S. Rama Rao Pappu Chapter IX. Knowledge and Faith in Early Buddhism: 113 A Soteriological Perspective Victoria Lysenko Part III. Islamic Thought Chapter X. Cultural Diversity as Logic-And-Meaning Otherness: 129 The Case of Knowledge and Faith Andrey Smirnov Chapter XI. Some Rationalistic Precepts of the Koran 135 Taufik Ibrahim iv Table of Contents Chapter XII. Faith and Reason in the Thought of Al-Ghazali 143 N.S. Kirabaev and М. Al-Janabi Chapter XIII. The Unity of Philosophy and Religion 151 According to Ibn-Rushd N.V. Efremova Chapter XIV. The Problem of Faith and Knowledge in Kut al-qulub 159 (The Food of Hearts), A Sufic Treatise by Abu Talib al-Makki I. R. Nasyrov Chapter XV. The Concept of Faith and Reason in 167 Contemporary Arab Philosophy YE. A. Frolova Chapter XVI. The Problem of Faith and Reason in the Tatar 175 Metaphysical Thought of the 19th – Early 20th Centuries A.N. Yuzeev Part IV. Western Thought Chapter XVII. Belief and Knowledge in Modern Culture 183 V. A. Lektorsky Chapter XVIII. “Science and Other Forms of Thinking”: 191 An Emerging Interdisciplinary Paradigm I.T. Kasavin Chapter XIX. The Authority of Natural Science: Knowledge and 197 Belief about ‘Man’s Place in Nature’ Roger Smith Chapter XX. Transmission of Knowledge (Pramaa) by Testimony 207 In Classical Indian and Contemporary Western Epistemology Arindam Chakrabarti Chapter XXI. Reflections on Metaphilosophy and the 225 Underlying Causes of Methodological Transformations in Modern Comparative Philosophy Antanas Andrijauskas Chapter XXII. Nicolas of Cusa: On Belief, Knowledge, 231 and Wise Ignorance Fred Dallmayr Chapter XXII. The Reasonable Faith of Lev Tolstoy 239 A.A. Gusseinov Index 253 DEDICATION It is a special honor for the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP), and for me personally as its President and General Editor, to dedicate this volume, Knowledge and Belief in the Dialogue of Cultures, to Professor Marietta Stepanyants on the occasion of her 75th birthday and her 30th anniversary as head of the Academy's Center for Oriental Studies. I first met Professor Stepanyants in India on the burning plains of the Punjab and some years later at the University of Andra Pradesh. Though coming from opposite sides of a very Cold War her combination of personal warmth and high professionalism have made these first meetings stand out in my mind to this day. It was typical of her to reach out at the cost of personal inconvenience, not to mention danger, in order to immerse herself personally in the culture of India and to be wherever its philosophers gathered for their annual All-Indian Congresses. As a result she not only read about this totally different culture and civilization, but formed the kind of deep personal friendships which enable profound and sympathetic understanding. But whereas most scholars would focus on but one cultural area, Professor Stepanyants shared a broad concern for all Eastern philosophies. This can be seen as well from her intensive work on Islam as seen from her books: Pakistan Philosophy and Sufi Wisdom, and the editing of a number of major reference works on Islamic thought. Indeed, these collections reflect the amazing breadth of her professional philosophical range from Philosophy of Religion and God- Man-Society in Traditional Cultures to the Rationalist Tradition, to Feminism, and to a forthcoming Encyclopedia of Buddhism. What is especially remarkable is that she managed all this gigantic accomplishment in the midst of the most diverse and dramatic socio- political transformations of her native Russia. Throughout Professor Stepanyants managed to hold together her team of eminent scholars and to train new and newly professional specialists in the classical Eastern languages and philosophical traditions. It was her personal achievement that the rich Russian heritage of work in this field, while in transformation, continues to shed bright light that illumine the path for the emerging engagements with the East in this global 21st century. All this she did as head of Oriental Philosophies and Director of Oriental Philosophical Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow since 1980 and Professor and head of the Chair of Philosophy and Political Thought of the East at the Russian State University of Humanities. Thus when the University of Hawaii wished to expand globally its prestigious 7th and 8th East-West conferences it appointed Professor Stepanyants as their director just as the International vi Dedication Federation of Philosophical Societies appointed her as its present Vice President. It is then with the warmest regards that The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) dedicates this volume in honor of her many professional accomplishments and esteemed abilities: personal and professional, as professor and editor; and administrative in leading philosophers of the world across boundaries, East and West, so that all can bring their gifts to our global future. George F. McLean INTRODUCTION MARIETTA STEPANYANTS Knowledge, the means of its production, and the ways of ascertaining its validity – as juxtaposed to faith as a matter of religion and/or of philosophy treating faith/belief as an epistemological issue: these themes are so important that a vast body of literature has been created around them. Nevertheless, it is not an overstatement to claim that the present volume has no precedents. The complex and multifaceted problems of knowledge and faith are usually analysed in the context of one particular culture. In this book an attempt is undertaken to present and investigate specific approaches and attitudes to these problems in several civilisations: Chinese, Indian, Muslim and Western, historically based on Christianity. Moreover, attitudes of different cultures are treated comparatively; most often they are compared with the Western tradition as most familiar to us. It is this comparative analysis that brings to light the specific features of the various cultures. The list of authors in this book is also unique. Each culture is represented by its “natives”, who look at it, as it were, from the inside, as well as by those who look at it from the outside. But these latter studies because done by philosophers and scholars who have devoted her/his life work to the study of other cultures are free from any enmity or arrogance. One may not always agree with these authors, but it is hard to deny that their opinions are solidly based on primary sources as well as on profound understanding of the subjects in question. Comparative studies in the past, especially at the first half of the 20th century, were oriented more towards finding the common, rather than the specific, in various traditions. The aim was to work out a synthesis or, in other words, a kind of mutual convertibility of the categories and concepts of various traditions. When in the 1930s there was put forward the idea to convene, in Hawaii, a conference of philosophers from the East and from the West, the task of the conference was formulated to investigate the possibility for the development of world philosophy through a synthesis of ideas from the East and the West1. The first East West Philosophers’ conferences aimed at such a synthesis of cultures which implied the “assimilation” to Western values of whatever could be taken as more or less “similar” to them in the cultures of the East. All the rest, all other non-Western traditions were to be rejected as dated and passé. The project as put forward by the founder (and first editor) of the journal “Philosophy East and West”, Charles A. Moore called for the 1 See: Philosophy East and West. Vol. XXXVIII, № 3, Honolulu, July 1988, p. 225. 2 Marietta Stepanyants “substantial synthesis” of the cultures of East and West. However, it is only fair to note that as early as 1951, in connection with the appearance of the first issue of the journal, John Dewy, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and George Santayana voiced dissenting views. All three philosophers expressed negative opinions about the project.