Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

CWSA 27

Fragment ID: 7128

Western Notions of the History of Philosophy

It is very strange that in books on philosophy by European writers, even in standard textbooks like Alfred Weber’s History of Philosophy,¹ there is no mention of any of the Indian philosophies. To the Western writer philosophy means only European philosophy – they begin with the Greek Thales and Anaximander, as if human thinking began with them.

That is the old style European mind. It used to be the same in Art and other matters. Now Chinese and Japanese art is recognised and to a less degree the art of India, Persia and the former Indian colonies in the Far-East, but in philosophy the old ideas still reign. “From Thales to Bergson” is their idea of the History of Philosophy.

2 May 1936

¹ Alfred Weber, History of Philosophy (London: Longmans, Green, 1904).

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