East ↔ West Atlas — comparative concepts, thinkers, and disputes

Search

Show

Tradition

Concept-edge type

Chinese (classical / Neo / modern)

Greek / Modern European

Kyoto School

Comparative-method

Thinker (rounded rect)

écart

pair / kinship / lineage

thinker → concept

thinker ↔ thinker

An atlas of comparative philosophy across the Asia–West écart. Concepts (circles) come from the traditions; thinkers (rounded rectangles) work them — sometimes coining, sometimes critiquing, sometimes carrying them across the gap. Click any node to read a summary.

Ten disputes structure the field: the Needham question, the Asian Values debate, Mou Zongsan against Kant on intellectual intuition, Billeter against Jullien on method, role ethics versus rights, tianxia and the international order, the wuwei dispute, the immanence/transcendence question itself, and the classical tradition's own two founding quarrels — Mencius against Mozi on graded versus impartial care, and Mencius against Xunzi on human nature. Each dispute is a structured position-map.

The starting hypothesis: U.S.–China becomes legible through neither convergence (we'll all become liberal) nor clash (we are simply opposed) but through the productive gap between configurations of thought that each become legible by the other.