On the Origin of 'Western Philosophy

Nay, if I mistake not, 'tis of a worse consequence, even (the Doctrines of Religion, to assert an infinite Privation, or want of Existence, to be co-eternal with the substantial GOD, who is omnipotent, living, and strong; than to affirm Matter itself to be co-eternal with him, since this is an actual Substance, and may with reason be suppos'd, as a necessary Emanation of his Power and Goodness; whereas the other is a mere naked Potentiality, a Non-Entity, as the Western Philosophers call it; and therefore cannot be conceived to flow from the Divine Nature, which is Essential Lift and Being. Yet in these nice and remote speculations I am timorous, and dare not be positive; left I should prosane the honour of the Sovereignly Good, who is the Breath of our Nostrils. To speak the truth, I am wavering in all things but this : That there Is an Eternal Mind, everywhere present, the Root and Basis of all Things visible and invisible, whom we call Alla, the Support of in finite Ages, the Rock and Stay of the Universe. Letters written by a Turkish spy, who lived five and forty years undiscovered at Paris: giving an impartial account to the Divan at Constantinople, of the most remarkable transactions of Europe: and discovering several intrigues and secrets of the Christian courts (especially of that of France). Continued from the year 1637, to the year 1682, volume 4, pp. 286-7.

In one of my posts on Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy, I pointed out that the phrase 'western philosophy' was barely used before 1880, trailing the increasingly popular use of 'western civilization' with a lag of a few decades. I argued that Russell probably played a non-trivial role contributing to the popularity of the very idea of western philosophy. In context Russell clearly signaled some familiarity with existing literature (especially through his interest in Albert Schweitzer's writings) in comparative philosophy, in which 'western philosophy' was compared with the philosophies to be found in other great 'civilizations,' especially China and India. This use of 'western philosophy' is also (recall) presupposed by the critics of the 'eurocentric' professional practices or the 'western' canon. 

Naturally, this made me curious about the pre-history of the concept of 'western philosophy' in the comparative sense assumed by (say) Russell. Obviously, this rules out all the kinds of uses of 'western philosophy' where 'western' picks out something different than the comparative, civilizational sense presupposed by Russell. As I noted before, Ibn Tufayl, for example, writing in medieval Islamic Spain, understands himself as a western philosopher to be contrasted with philosophers (e.g. Al-Farabi, Ibn Sinna, etc.) of the Islamic orient some of whose texts are not circulating in the west. One can easily imagine that when the Roman empire was divided between western and eastern parts, a Roman philosopher working in, say, Rome, could refer to the members of Alexandrian school as those eastern philosophers.

There is a further issue lurking here in that when Russell is writing 'philosophy' is many respects a considerably narrower project than in the ancient world, where in the remit of philosophy there is both what we would call 'science' and what we would call 'wisdom literature' or 'self-help literature.' Philosophy in Russell's sense is only increasingly clearly visible from, say, the late Renaissance onward. So, this made me narrow the search space a bit. 

The first use of ‘western philosophy’ that I am familiar with -- but this is an invitation to my learned readers to do better -- to mark an implied contrast between the speculative thought of Europe and that of a distinct contrasting civilization occurs in volume 4 of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (L'Espion Turc), published in the early 1690s. The exact author of this volume is unclear. The book is surrounded by mystery and mystification. The work is clearly a model for Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, one of the foundational texts of the Enlightenment.

The context of that use of ‘western philosophy’ is a bit complicated to convey succinctly in part because the letter itself pretends to be an "endless meditation," (mocking Descartes) but within this meditative structure it occurs in the midst of a ridiculing digression by the ‘turkish spy’ on the misguided faith in the divine origin of holy texts by various peoples.* That's an explosive topic then much debated in the wake of Spinoza’s suggestion that the Hebrew Bible as we have it was pretty much the society shaping work of Ezra at the re-founding of Israel as a political entity. He (the ‘spy’) goes on to offer a heterodox argument to the effect that whatever else is true, something, be it God or a Vacuum, must exist eternally. And at that point the ‘spy’ introduces a scholastic distinction immanently, in part for comic effect, with terminology used by ‘western philosophers.’

Part of the comedy is that such terminology must have felt already partially dated to the learned audiences of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy because a new, modernizing anti-scholastic philosophy (familiar to us through names like Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes) had swept away the Scholastic kind. Of course, part of the art and pretense of the Letters is that they are written just during the ascent of this modernizing anti-scholastic philosophy, but that its ultimate victory cannot be taken for granted. 

Part of the larger agenda of the Letters is to defamiliarize and thereby problematize moral and political assumptions common in 'the West.' So, in a rhetorical sense the framework of the Letters is resolutely comparative, presupposing familiarity with and taking on the natural perspective of the philosophy and mores of Turkey and Islamic civilization more generally. But, of course, in practice that is primarily a ruse. So, the home civilization presupposed between the letter writer (the spy) and his audience is itself a construct as imagined from a perspective that at least rhetorically and perhaps conceptually understands itself as western.

  

*Earlier in the text, the 'spy' uses 'western philosophy' in the sense of what we would call 'western natural philosophy' or 'western natural science.'  There the implied contrast is between the misguided theories of 'western philosophy' and the experiential knowledge of the elements as understood by pirates:

This Pirate tells me, that a Spout is a kind of Aqueduct between the clouds and the sea, by which those pendulous cisterns above are replenish'd with water from the Ocean, drawing it up as through a pipe; which seems to be let down tor that end, at certain seasons, and in some particular places, where the water boils up first above the surface of the briny plain, as a signal to those thirsty bladders, to make a descent there, and luce their fill. If this be true, who knows but that all the rein, to which the earth is indebted for its fertility, comes thus originally from the sea? For, it may be made fresh, either in its first ascent through the roscid air, or after its reception in to the clouds, by some hidden Energy of that Element, or the natural Force of the Middle Region: Or at least by some unknown virtue, perhaps not inferior to that by which the waters of a hitter Lake in the Dessert became sweet at the intercession of our Holy Prophet, when the whole army of the primitive Mussulmans was like, to have perished of thirst.
And then how will the Western Philosophers dispose of all the vapours which they say are exhaled from this globe, and afterwards condensed into clouds ? I tell thee that's but a loose notion of such retentive bodies, as the clouds seem t0 be. And 'twould tempt one to ask, What the vessels are made of which hold these condens'd exhalations, so that they do not sall at once upon our heads and overwhelm us, but only distil in small successive showers drop by drop, to refresh the barren parts of the earth, and serve the necessities of men ? And why the rains sall in the Indies, and other Regions of the East, whole Moons together without intermission, the rest of the year being dry: Whereas in other countries the periods of the weather's alterations are uncertain, and in some parts it seldom or never rains at all. Doubtless, the Works of the Omnipotent are inscrutable. pp. 221-222

 

Comments

[David Duffy]

It would be natural for Mr Turkish Spy to speak of the West, ISTM, just as other easterners like Russians would. My just-so story would be that Western philosophy up to a cutoff is that which was written in or translated into Latin (eg Plato via Ficino).

Roeth histoire de notre philosophie occidentale Manheim 1846

gets a mention in A Franck (1875) Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques (Google Books). Roeth's subtitle seems to be
"les Doctrines Egyptiens et de Zoroastre consideree comme les sources de nos idee speculatives".

[David Duffy]

Claude Joseph Tissot's (1840) Histoire abrégée de la philosophie starts with Ancient Philosophy: "philosophie orientale" (pp 23-90), followed by "philosophie occidentale, ou greco-romaine et greco-orientale" (pp 91-176). He has over 200 pages on contemporary German philosophy.