Daya Krishna

Comparative Philosophy: What it is and What It Ought to Be

As in the case of Larson’s article, Daya Krishna’s approach to the subject of comparative
philosophy can be regarded as highly polemical and deconstructive in nature.
The essential difference between Larson and Krishna resides in the fact that Krishna’s
argumentative structure leads to a contextualized deconstruction of the universalistic
claim of western philosophical tradition. What I mean by contextualized deconstruction is
a radical critique of western hegemony starting from a specific referential term, in this
case Indian tradition.
Krishna starts like Larson from the premise of the fundamental aporia of all non-
tautological philosophical reflections, in the context where all comparisons are “infected”
with a high degree of uncertainly.

The problem generated by the difficulty of a precise definition of similarity in the field of
comparative studies -where the researcher deals at the same time with” identity and
difference”- becomes in Krishna’s vision a critical one when the terms of comparisons
are societies, cultures and civilizations.

In the first part of the article, Krishna argues for the radical rejection of the given/
canonical definition of comparative philosophy as a western perspective upon otherness.
Starting from the basis of unquestionable epistemological monopoly of “privileged us”,
comparative philosophy appears an appendage of “political and economical domination
of western European countries” organized around the claim that all knowledge is a
product of the western thought and, therefore a universal standard for all other traditions.
In this context of domination, all comparative studies are not an attempt to open the
philosophical enterprise towards different Weltanschauung or alternative structures of
knowledge, but in effect a intellectual enterprise focused on classification and judging
other tradition by the alien standards provided by the western episteme.
If the philosophical investigation of the otherness is still constructed as a self-reassuring
intellectual hegemony of the west covered by rhetoric of universalism of human reason,
how is possible the apparition of the New?

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If what we have today is merely a power driven classificatory philosophy, one might
successfully claim that, in effect, the comparative philosophy does not exist at all, or at
least is an unfulfilled project of the late modernity.
Krishna’s epistemological tasks can be listed as follows:
1. The de-colonization of philosophical reflection about otherness by creation of a
non-normative, non-dogmatic and fallibility paradigm, fully aware of its own
aperies and structural limitations;
2. The real democratization of the cognitive field, by rejection of the claim of
universality of western models;
3. The reconsideration of the cultural and intellectual acculturalization which
transformed non-western intellectuals in dominated subjects bound to enforce
foreign methodologies and conceptual grids in order to gain the right to
subjectivity;
4. The development of a process of subjectivization of the otherness by questioning
the western monopoly over subjecthood in the cognitive field.
5. The elaboration of a field of comparative studies focused on flexibility of
conceptual structures and on a synthetic “a-centric" approach to taxonomies;

In the second part of his article Krishna uses as a referential term the Indian
Philosophy as a canonical example of an apriori excluded tradition of thought
from the mainstream of “authentic” Philosophy.
Despite the fact that Indian thought has a long tradition of dialogue between
different visions and a deeply systematic dimension, the western monopoly over
the use of the term “philosophy” made possible rejection of Indian tradition as not
metaphysical enough for the western canon. Indeed Indian tradition, concerned
about “mochas” (“liberation from very possibility of suffering”) may look from a
dogmatic perspective upon the nature of philosophy, as too pragmatically oriented.
Paradoxically, Indian – as well as Islamic thought- are rejected by western
observers as being at the same time to transcendental in terms of accepting the

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primacy of Revelation over Reason and Experience. In other words, Indian
thought is considered simultaneously too praxis oriented and too mystical at the
same time.
Krishna’s use of Indian example does not open the possibility of transferring the
monopoly from the West to the East in the cognitive field. It simply argues that
some of traditional conceptual structures developed in the Indian context (i.e.. its
intrinsic dialectical dimension, the valorization of the opponent’s position as an
essential epistemological ground for the discovery of the Truth or the strict
dichotomy between validity and fallacy) can be used as valid elements for a new,
ideologically free comparative philosophy.
After all, the philosophical enterprise remains an ars combinatoria, which is bound
to use structural differences in order to generate real knowledge.