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Is it because western tradition ignores them? Or because they think it's not philosophy, but mysticism? Or because they are afraid of losing ground to a superior thinking?

Ignorance, prejudice or proselytism? Or something else? Or all of them?

Rodrigo
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    I believe it has to do with euro-centrism and ancient ways to teach philosophy, where Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are the most important ancient philosophers. – Vitaly Olegovitch Jan 25 '14 at 00:04
  • Yes, I agree with you. But the question remains, as to why this behaviour seems so "universal" in "western world". After all, we could have at least some disagreement to these rules. Why don't we? – Rodrigo Jan 25 '14 at 01:35
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    What do they teach in China? – Mitch Jan 25 '14 at 13:17
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    Please DO NOT care about "ACADEMICS" and their "THINKING", real western philosophers did not ignore anything. Shopenhauer and Nitsche and Leibniz were all fascinated by EAST and USED their ideas heavily. – Asphir Dom Jan 25 '14 at 15:45
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    I know this, @AsphirDom, but I DO CARE about what goes on in Academy. After all, they are teaching our people how to think. And they can do it better. – Rodrigo Jan 25 '14 at 21:59
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    I'd be interested in the source of your broad sweeping assertion. I majored in philosophy 12 years ago and did not find eastern teachings to be lacking.(This is in fact what I did most of my work on). But for a partial answer, I could say: How come I have not a single undergraduate memory of learning about any culture of than "American Injuns", the "US", and European Countries directly related to "US" interests? Your question is standing on top of a 99 story building built on sand wondering why the tower on the roof keeps swaying. – dgo Jan 25 '14 at 22:18
  • As I said in another comment: "In Brazil most 'philosophers' (graduated in philosophy) I talk to ignore chinese thinking completely." And I didn't understand your "partial answer", looks like you mistyped something? – Rodrigo Jan 26 '14 at 13:15
  • I didn't mistype - but perhaps didn't type enough. My point is that in education - particularly any sort of education that has any cultural significance (mostly liberal arts) - what tends to get taught is what the teachers and the administrators who decide what gets taught are influenced to teach. In other words - we stick with what we know whether intentionally or not. – dgo Jan 26 '14 at 18:03
  • Also - my first comment came off snarkier than I intended - so sorry about that. – dgo Jan 26 '14 at 18:04
  • Would the problem be dissolved if the course were simply re-titled "Introduction to the Tradition of Western Philosophy"? I think the point of this course is to introduce on, who is studying in the West, to the Western tradition--it is not intended to be exclusionary or evaluative of Eastern Philosophy per se, any more than it is exclusionary or evaluative that History departments focus their introductory material on Western histories. Those are histories and philosophies typically most of interest to students and professors in the West. – Addem Mar 17 '14 at 20:07
  • That's a way of seeing it. But I think the West loses MUCH from ignoring what other cultures think, specially one as rich as the East. Beyond that, really common sentences such as "philosophy was born in Greece" points to a little different story, to me at least. And the question was about the whole philosophy courses, not just the introduction. – Rodrigo Mar 17 '14 at 21:14
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    This then boils down to opinion, but it's my opinion that Western (particularly, Analytic) Philosophy has a lot to offer, and that you could spend years studying it and always derive great value from it--so there's nothing wrong with having classes that focus on it. Perhaps the same can be said for Eastern Philosophy, but regardless, I think this makes it at least legitimate--if not commendable--to have classes that focus on Western Philosophy. – Addem Mar 18 '14 at 02:23
  • And I have to admit that I'm not even certain how to resolve where "Philosophy" began. The Eastern tradition is so divergent from the Western tradition that it might not be correct to group them under the same term of "Philosophy". When it is said that Philosophy began in Greece, we clearly have a kind of enterprise in mind which is not found in the East. What Eastern thinkers practice, if we are to use an English word to describe it, is sometimes better captured by words like "religion", "culture", and "attitude". – Addem Mar 18 '14 at 02:26
  • @Addem, my point is that philosophy is, by definition, an universal project. So, of course we can have "western focus" in some classes, but why have so little "eastern focus"? I'm inclined to think about this vicious cicle, where teachers most of the time can't teach what they haven't learned. Really the eastern thought isn't that fascinated with knowledge /per se/. But they have a worldview, a cosmogony. And that's part of our philosophy, so I don't see why not merge both. I think all of us only have to benefit. – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 03:23
  • @Rodrigo I guess I just don't share the assumption that Philosophy is "a universal project" in the sense that the thing practiced in the East that goes under that title is sufficiently similar to what is practiced in the West. Putting them in the same class can be appropriate for some purposes, but I think that mostly serves the purpose of a survey or contrast--It serves the purpose of collecting information, but not the purpose of actually gaining insight and improving thinking skills. – Addem Mar 18 '14 at 05:35
  • It doesn't have to be "similar". And exactly because it is different enough, it serves as a survey, as a new gathering of information, as a "widening of the horizons". May I ask you what do you know about eastern thought to say it doesn't "give insight" or "improve thinking skills"? Because I think it's just the opposite. And what do you think when I say the West is heading to collapse? – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 13:20
  • @Rodrigo, I didn't say Eastern Philosophy doesn't give insight or improve thinking skills. I said putting it together in a class with Western Philosophy doesn't serve that purpose. It's like putting Algebra and Chemistry in the same class--by doing so, you're not giving a good explanation of either. You would first need to study one and then the other to understand them well, and then perhaps later, you may gain something from studying them in combination. Although even if you do that, there may be other, better ways of developing that material. – Addem Mar 18 '14 at 15:26
  • @Rodrigo, I don't see a point in conjecturing what you mean by predicting the collapse of the West. – Addem Mar 18 '14 at 15:27
  • @Addem, what do you call a "class"? A four-month period of study with usually a single teacher? In this case I'll have to agree with you. But I'm talking about a graduation course, with 4-5 years and dozens of different such classes. What I mean is that 4-5 years is time enough at least to a decent introduction to eastern thinking. Let's explain this point first, then we move to the collapse. – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 15:54
  • To some of you: Even an Encyclopaedia regarded for knowing much about the East (86 entries relevant to confucianism!) calls Eastern philosophers, philosophers: "The major thinkers of China’s first philosophic flourishing—traditionally referred to as the Hundred Schools, c. 500s-200s B.C.E." http://www.iep.utm.edu/gender-c/ – Rodrigo Feb 25 '16 at 20:54
  • if we believe the line 人之所教我亦教之 of Dao De Jing 42, the philosophy therein is way older than 500s B.C.E. When we -- the "civilized" -- get to know some real primitive people, we may only glimpse the extent of their great wisdom - concluding that this book is indeed close to the truth. That's something most "moderns" don't understand. – Rodrigo Feb 25 '16 at 21:04
  • to some extent i imagine it is because other departments are responsible for that –  Jul 11 '17 at 12:28

5 Answers5

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Great question. This will be an incomplete and potentially unsatisfying answer, and I will be interested to see other answers, but here are five answers to start with:

  1. There is a historical-sociological sense in which Philosophy, narrowly construed, is a phenomenon of Greek culture and the cultures it influenced. It's a Greek word describing a distinctly Greek cultural activity which influenced and was adopted by many later cultures. But not, I believe, Chinese culture. Just as the word "religion" doesn't apply terribly well to Chinese religion, "Philosophy" at least in this narrow, historical sense, might not be the best way to describe the Chinese intellectual traditions. In other words, one could say that Chinese philosophy has not historically been taught in anglophone philosophy courses because it is not—in this narrow sense—actually philosophy.
  2. That said, many American philosophy departments do teach Chinese philosophy courses. Others do not, but Chinese philosophy is not ignored by American philosophy departments, and I believe it's taught in some Australian ones. I don't have a good perspective on European and Latin American and other departments.
  3. But I recognize that your question was about it being taught in courses not in department curricula. I think a big reason for this is inertia—not ignorance per se, in so far as professors are necessarily ignorant of most knowledge, but simply our tendency to keep on teaching a single, already enormous and expanding tradition. That results from professors not having learned, or not having learned much, about Chinese philosophy, and so not adding it to courses. The narrowness persists through generations of philosophers because we already have so much to keep us busy.
  4. But that raises a question about how well Chinese philosophy even could fit into the existing philosophy courses. Does it conceptualize things in such a different way that it is actually quite hard to place Chinese ideas in debate or discussion with Anglophone philosophy, even if one spends time becoming knowledgeable about the tradition? If so, it would be challenging to add Chinese ideas to an anglophone philosophy course without spending much of the course preparing students on foundational Chinese ideas. The philosophies might be very difficult to put in conversation on some topics. At least some of what I've read suggests that this might be so, but here I plead ignorance!
  5. Finally, I believe there are questions central to anglophone philosophy which Chinese philosophy neither asks nor answers. (I would be delighted to be shown wrong about this.) And so, anglophone philosophy courses on these topics cannot incorporate Chinese philosophy even if more anglophone professors were expert at Chinese philosophy and eager to teach it. For instance, I'm interested in what the best definition of causation is that gives us some guidance about how to reliably distinguish it from correlations. It's a core question in anglophone philosophy. Philosophers teach whole courses on it. I'm not aware of Chinese philosophy asking or answering it.

With all that said, I have long thought that anglophone philosophy could benefit from further engagements not only with Chinese philosophy but also with Indian and other traditions. And there are certainly philosophers currently, actively working on establishing those conversations. So perhaps our ignorance will be diminished somewhat!

ChristopherE
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    Main point in your answer is - YES WE ARE IGNORANT :) On the other hand many great philosophers USED eastern ideas and methods. Which again proves that the ACADEMIA and new greatness (new great minds) have nothing in common :) – Asphir Dom Jan 25 '14 at 15:49
  • In Brazil most "philosophers" (graduated in philosophy) I talk to ignore chinese thinking completely. My question was about university curricula, sorry for not stating it clearly. As for your last question, causation is when one thing causes the other. The seed causes the tree, which causes new seeds. I know sometimes this may get tricky, but don't think we have to spend a whole year discussing it. In this point, I think western philosophy get stuck in endless and sometimes empty discussions, when could have more profit in exploring different views of the world, such as chinese and indian. – Rodrigo Jan 25 '14 at 22:14
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    @AsphirDom, Of course we're ignorant about most things! But that doesn't mean we don't do good work on the few things we do know something about. – ChristopherE Jan 26 '14 at 03:37
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    @Rodrigo, No, as Socrates would say, that's an example of causation, not what causation is. And what causation is is not an empty question; it has deep practical implications. It matters, and we've figured out a lot of interesting things about it. – ChristopherE Jan 26 '14 at 03:38
  • Can you give some examples of such interesting things? – Rodrigo Jan 26 '14 at 13:12
  • @Rodgrigo - sounds like you have a different question than this one about Chinese philosophy! But sure, to keep it simple: causation (contra Hume) does not require constant conjunction. – ChristopherE Jan 26 '14 at 20:29
  • @ChristopherE I agree with all these wholeheartedly. (4) especially seems salient to my approach to preparing my classes. Philosophical traditions are cumulative and the questions we face today are motivated by centuries of debate and development. The chinese philosophical tradition is the same way, and so any attempt to bring the chinese tradition into the conversation in an undergrad class is going to look like tokenism to me, and maybe really deceptive, misleading tokenism at that! There's a good pedagogical reason for teaching chinese philosophy as a separate course. –  Mar 17 '14 at 19:54
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    Thinking about it all again, I think the West as a whole is collapsing (read Jared Diamond's book), and one of the reasons is in its philosophy. Since China and India have both survived as civilizations for about 5,000 years, I think we MUST understand them, at least in a basic to intermediate level. And I think it applies even beyond the philosophy graduations. We could, as a society, even do less wars, if we get used to think in trans-civilizational terms. – Rodrigo Mar 17 '14 at 21:21
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    @Rodgrigo, Even if all of that were right, and it may or may not be, it is not clear that the West's philosophy is the same as what is done in western philosophy courses, which you asked about. Second, it doesn't follow from your observations that philosophy courses are the best or only place to develop this cross-cultural understanding. – ChristopherE Nov 05 '14 at 16:54
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    +1 for (4). As I try to discuss Chinese philosophy with others, I find it so remarkably hard to do so that it makes me wonder if I've even learned the philosophy correctly in the first place. Little things like the interplay between yin and yang prove frustratingly hard to explain to someone with a traditional Western upbringing, and if you don't understand that, it is very difficult to understand anything else in the philosophy because that relationship is so essential. – Cort Ammon May 06 '15 at 15:29
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I think there are several contributing reasons (as someone who has both published and taught both canonical Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy).

  1. The style of classical Chinese texts does not lend themselves to the same sort of classroom experience. It's a pain in the butt having to explain some of the most important passages in Chinese philosophy and it's hard to see how to do so in a way that can enable students who cannot read Chinese and have not studied the tradition to do the same. Conversely, it's not that hard to get someone able to argue with something Plato says. (Modern philosophy is even easier for us to digest in the West).

  2. The primary corpus of analytic philosophy centers on issues that are only tangentially present in Chinese philosophical discourse (unless we mean the part of contemporary Chinese philosophical discourse focused on these analytic questions). Daoism vs. hermits doesn't have much to do with contemporary philosophy of mind. Classical approaches to philosophy of language questions wind up being pretty difficult to make approachable.

  3. Most Western philosophers do not know enough Chinese philosophy to competently teach it and their training has not set them up for that. They would need to learn background concepts not present in the primary texts and teach through those -- but philosophers tend to prefer going straight to the meat of an argument, so they will probably not put the effort into learning this material.

I don't quite agree with ChristopherE's final claim. In fact, causation matters greatly to the following parts of Chinese philosophy: The I Ching is a book entirely about change, The Daoist texts are about whether there is order in the universe and how change happens, the Neoconfucian Zu Xhi in his consideration of 理 (li "order" -- but not 禮 li "ritual") is considering whether there is order and how it works. Now are any of the things they say meaningful as contributions in contemporary discussions of causation? If not, I lack the competency to say where the fault lies.

I think his first assertion is also quite dubious regarding "philosophy." Chinese philosophy only does not qualify if we insist on the historical connection to Greek culture. A properly edited volume of neoconfucianism or Buddhist logic would be sufficiently similar in argumentation and style with medieval texts on logic or religion.

All of that being said, I did upvote his answer because I think it is a moderately good explanation sans those two points.

virmaior
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  • Hi virmaior, Given that I *did* frame the first assertion as *narrowly* concerned with philosophy's origins, is it still dubious? The point parallels the near-consensus among religion scholars that "Chinese religion" is a partial misnomer. There is no religion (narrowly construed) in China, they say, because the concept of religion itself is Western. Also, I've never run into anything Confucian or Daoist about how to distinguish causation from mere correlations. If they discuss that, point me where! More generally, there's not much traditional Chinese phil of science. Cheers. – ChristopherE Mar 18 '14 at 02:50
  • Thanks for your answer. About 1. I think that four to five years in an university is enough time to read at least the (small) book of Buddha, the (also small) Analects and the (smaller yet) Dao De Jing. That's the minimum of China. And as a Huge civilization, I think they deserve it. The same about India (though I'm not there yet). What I think it's really disappointing is people teaching younger students about "universal" philosophy and have no clue about the East at all. What we need are good translations. Or must your students master ancient Greek to argue with Plato? – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 03:00
  • 2. The same way the teachings of Laozi are only tangentially present in western philosophy. Have you read Collapse, from Jared Diamond? It seems to me that we are heading to collapse exactly because of an excess of Western philosophy (Platonic-Christian mostly). But also, most of Laozi translations, done by western/christian thinkers, are more mystic than Laozi probably was (I think he was no mystic at all). – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 03:02
  • 3. If "philo-sophy" means "love for knowledge", then I have two points here: 1) they should WANT to "put the effort into learning this material" if they want to become philosophers (at least in a "universal" - an ancient claim of the West - or "globalized" way), and 2) this is putting us in a vicious circle, isn't it? – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 03:03
  • @ChristopherE, I define religion as a "mythology that don't admit it's a mythology", thus it equals monotheism (at least abrahamic monotheism). So eastern thinking may not be called religious, but may be called mythological (in the same sense that science is a mythology - only a "faster" one). – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 03:12
  • @ChristopherE, in terms of the "narrowly construed" I think it still remains dubious. The point you claim it parallels is simply not true among Sinologists. There's plenty of discussion about Chinese religion difficulties with applying the word and utilizing the concept notwithstanding. I'm not really sure where you are getting the claim you make from, but it's wrong. Regarding your question, there's direct discussion of that in the Mohist school if I'm not mistaken, also Zhu Xi, and plenty of other Buddhist thinkers around that time. – virmaior Mar 18 '14 at 12:27
  • @ChristopherE the Daoist critique of the concept of causality is presented in an obtuse fashion that would make it nearly impossible to gather form a primary source. In this respect, it's probably how I feel when reading Nietzsche. – virmaior Mar 18 '14 at 12:28
  • @Rodrigo You might be confused at to what is going on in the *Laozi* translation arena. The most popular translations today are written by decidedly anti-Christian authors in the West. And the classic ones by the Jesuits didn't make him a mystic... so I'm kind of lost as to why you would assert that. – virmaior Mar 18 '14 at 12:30
  • @Rodrigo regarding your earlier point about what should be read in the university, the importance of China might argue that it deserves a place in "the curriculum" but that does not actually mean it is well-suited to philosophy. Philosophy is not per se a great books program. – virmaior Mar 18 '14 at 12:31
  • Previous philosophers used to KNOW about everything that was going on in the world: science, religion, philosophy, mythology, of Europe AND other cultures. This made them GREAT philosophers. If today's philosophers are only worried about western thought, and many don't even know the basic sciences, I think this makes them very limited. – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 13:34
  • About the translations, I read many different ones when preparing my own, and most of them talked about immortality (when Laozi said longevity), about an "unchangeable", "fixed", "immutable" (for chang = usual, common) Dao, and sometimes even "eternal" and other superlatives, such as putting "God" somewhere in the text or in the cover. Not to say the false profundity by choosing pedantic words. It all creates a sense of mysticism. That's my point. You don't have to be christian to follow some of the christian prejudices. – Rodrigo Mar 18 '14 at 13:35
  • @Rodrigo The most common　contemporary translations are by Ames and Hall... there's a zero percent chance they import God into their translations. They are adamantly anti-theist. I don't know what your native language is but even the Legge translation of 100 years ago only has God in it once (http://ctext.org/dao-de-jing) and that as a translation for Shang-di – virmaior Mar 19 '14 at 01:37
  • There are lots of translations here http://wayist.org/ttc%20compared/index.htm and here http://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html. I saw "God" some times, but there were other expressions of "mysticism". In many bookstores, for instance, they put it in "mysticism" shelf, or "religion"... rarely in "philosophy". – Rodrigo Mar 19 '14 at 02:05
  • Nearly all of those translations are ones I've never heard of. There are "religious" translations of the *DDJ* thus it should be no surprise those versions wind up there... Again, what is your native language? – virmaior Mar 19 '14 at 02:08
  • Sorry, it's brazilian portuguese. I've read about 7 translations in my mother tongue, and most of them have this kind of flaws (some, probably most, are translations of other translations). – Rodrigo Mar 19 '14 at 14:29
  • That's not a problem in *contemporary* English translation. It may have been a problem in the earlier Jesuit translations (I have not read those -- I generally read a contemporary English one with interlinear Chinese). – virmaior Mar 19 '14 at 23:39
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Chinese philosophy per se might be a bit of a limiter in this question since the question is equally valid applying it to any 'eastern' philosophy, early Indian being another sizeable exclusion.

Rondo
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    Sure, you're right. I asked about chinese culture and philosophy because that's what I've been studying... – Rodrigo Mar 17 '14 at 21:22
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Am studying Ethics at a Chinese University right now we do have courses in contemporary Chinese as well as western philosophies. My professors on western philosophy are all Chinese and its really amazing to discover how much knowledge they have on western philosophy. One thing that caught my attention is the fact that despite their vast and deep knowledge of western philosophies most of them can not read an English text. During my first visit to the library I realised that they have almost every western philosophy textbook translated into Chinese. Not many Chinese textbooks on Chinese philosophy have been translated into western languages. However I respect the fact that Chinese scholars are currently working hard to overcome this imbalance . With the growing number of Chinese students studying in western universities and western students studying here in China I think this question will soon be irrelevant. So the main reason I think was and is still the language barrier.

Paddy Banderas
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  • I hope you're right. But I think that ideology (mostly monotheism) is the one to be blamed here. As you can see, Chinese have no problem in learning about other cultures. Monotheists, on the other hand, simply don't want to learn about the others (that's true for the vast majority of them). – Rodrigo Jul 11 '17 at 17:19
  • @Rodrigo - From an historical perspective I suspect you're right. But with theism on the wane one would expect things to change. For me it's not learning about other cultures that's important but learning about philosophy. There is a tremendous ignorance of philosophy in our university faculties, which are stuck in a rut adding footnotes to Plato, and a study of Chinese or Indian philosophy might change this. . . –  Jul 13 '17 at 12:09
  • @PeterJ Theism was on the wane for some time, mostly due to Enlightenment. Now, thanks to postmodernity's praise to obscurantism, to muslim growth in Europe, to USA "war on terror" (read: war on Islamist scapegoats), theism is returning fast. And the "West" is defined by its Judeo-Christian base. – Rodrigo Jul 13 '17 at 12:20
  • @Rodrigo- Hmm. Maybe you're right. Also, the theists have been busy recruiting in China for a long time now. Indeed. I suspect theism is being encouraged since in its Christian form it has a work-ethic missing from Lao Tsu's;easy-going universe. I wonder sometimes if western states depend on the Christian work-ethic for economic growth. The Biblical 'lilies of the field' passage tends to be forgotten. –  Aug 01 '17 at 12:05
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Chinese philosophy is poorly understood in the Faculty and this would be both a cause and effect of the lack of study. It is not because it is mysticism because mysticism is philosophy, or can be studied as such. I feel the explanation is partly 'not invented here' syndrome, coupled with the difficulty that if the nondualism that runs through Chinese philosophy is found to be the correct explanation for the world then there will be eggs on many faces in the Academy.

You speculate that it might be 'because they are afraid of losing ground to a superior thinking'. This could be it, but I'm not sure many professional teachers know it well enough to know whether it is superior or not. You also wonder whether it is 'ignorance, prejudice or proselytism? I'd say it is exactly these things.

The failure of scholarship that leads to this situation is a scandal. We have one tradition of philosophy for those who cannot solve philosophical problems and one for those who can, where members of the the former will not study the latter for reasons lost in the mists of time.

It is not just Chinese philosophy that is ignored. It is the entire 'Perennial' philosophy, to which Chinese philosophy makes a significant contribution but which is global and has an even vaster literature. Apparently only people who cannot solve philosophical problems are allowed to teach or be taught in our universities. We praise Wittgenstein for his ignorance and confusion and miss the knowledge and clarity of Lao Tsu. It's a crazy world.

I feel considerable sympathy for students, who may never spot that they have been deprived of any chance of understanding philosophy by censorship and propaganda. It's too big a topic to delve into fully here but your question is a good one and very topical.

Heidegger puts the blame on the loss of the idea of Unity from philosophy that occurred with the Greeks after Socrates. This seems plausible to me. Once we abandon the idea of Unity the best of Chinese philosophy becomes incomprehensible, and history shows that so does philosophy as a whole and the world with it.

  • I do some Chinese philosophy and `[Chinese philosophy] is mysticism` only applies to a subset of things. I think what's safe to say is that many Western philosophy departments do look down on the *methodology* of ancient Chinese philosophy but not necessarily the insights or arguments. – virmaior Jul 11 '17 at 13:25
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    @virmajor - As far as I can tell they rarely know or want to know the insights or arguments. Some individuals do, of course, but these are exceptions. To study Chinese philosophy is to study the whole of philosophy and this includes the Perennial philosophy whether it appears in India, China, Tibet or downtown New York. –  Jul 11 '17 at 16:47
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    I have to agree with you. If philosophers were already at a scandal before (as Nietzsche pointed out in the Epilogue of The Antichrist -- suppressed from most translations, btw), now after the sea of lies and obscurantism that is the postmodern movement, they are even worse. All because they felt it was necessary to fight against the Reason that allowed the development of Communism. – Rodrigo Jul 11 '17 at 17:16
  • I don’t understand the remark that unity is lost from philosophy. Monism has enjoyed widespread popularity over the last century. – ChristopherE Feb 05 '19 at 18:22
  • @ChristopherE - The problem is that monism is not a doctrine of Unity. Monism is the idea that one substance or entity exists. Non-dualism denies that anything really exists. 'Unity' should not imply a numerical one.but the transcendence of form and number. This is why the word 'one' is not used but rather 'advaita' or 'not-two'. This avoids the danger of implying it is monism. ,. –  Feb 06 '19 at 10:59
  • Well, that’s one kind of monism (ontological). But anyway, you’re right, “transcendence of form and number” does not sound like things I know of in anglophone philosophy. – ChristopherE Feb 06 '19 at 22:25
  • @ChristopherE - You're spot on. If we do not transcend form and number then the foundations of maths and metaphysics must remain non-reductive. Thus anglophone philosophy remains non-reductive.and does not offer us a fundamental theory. A good dose of Chinese philosophy ought to be a satisfactory cure. –  Feb 07 '19 at 09:45