What is the subaltern of the comparative philosophy of religion?

It is claimed that Comparative Philosophy of Religion (CPR) mistakenly builds on the dogmas of comparative religion (or history of religions) and philosophy of religion. Thus, the belief that there are things common and therefore comparable between two or more traditions and that these objects of comparison are of philosophical or theological significance are questions that continue to trouble the field. Just what does one compare, how does one choose what to compare or why, through what methodological and epistemic tools, and who is it that carries out the tasks? But what has remained unasked and unanalyzed are the larger meta-questions concerning the motivation, civilizational presuppositions, cultural parochialism, or legacies of orientalism, modernity, and (post-)colonialism that together affect the boundedness of certain key categories and thematic issues in the comparative enterprise such as God or the Transcendent, Creation, the Problem of Evil, the Afterlife, Sin, Redemption, Purpose, and the End. Is difference with respect to alterity and altarity permissible? If so, what a postcolonial, differently gendered, cross-cultural critique would look like and what is left of CPR are two such questions explored here.

Nietzsche as 'Europe's Buddha' and 'Asia's superman'

Nietzsche represents in an interesting way the well-worn Western approach to Asian philosophical and religious thinking: initial excitement, then neglect by appropriation, and swift rejection when found to be incompatible with one’s own tradition, whose roots are inexorably traced back to the ‘ancient’ Greeks. Yet, Nietzsche’s philosophical critique and methods - such as ‘perspectivism’ - offer an instructive route through which to better understand another tradition even if the sole purpose of this exercise is to perceive one’s own limitations through the eyes of the other: a self-destruktion of sorts. To help correct this shortcoming and begin the long overdue task of even-handed dialogue - or contemporary comparative philosophy - we will be served well by looking at Nietzsche’s mistakes, which in turn informed the tragic critic of the West of the last century, Martin Heidegger. We may learn here not to cast others in one’s own troubled image; and not to reverse cultural icons: Europe’s Superman, and Asia’s Buddha.

Ties to the past in organization research : a comparative analysis of retrospective methods

This paper addresses a traditionally neglected area of management and organizational studies—retrospective research. It identifies, describes and analyses four positions on retrospective research: Controlling the Past, in which attempts are made to maximize accurate recall or to reveal potential sources of error or bias; Interpreting the Past, in which understanding of the present is informed by the construction of past reality; Co-opting the Past, in which causal explanations link the past and the present; and Representing the Past, which involves the problematization of time and research on time. These positions are compared in terms of, for example, method, philosophy, examplars and potential contribution. Finally, implications are drawn for the practice of retrospective research in management and organization studies.

Contemporary philosophy and J.L. Shaw

Commemorative volume on Jaysankar Lal Shaw, b. 1939, Indian philosopher.

Narrating heritage's living stories : a comparative study of China's Suojia ecomuseum and Australia's Melbourne living museum of the West

The Ecomusée, as emerged in France in the 1970s, is a form of open-air museum that aims to maintain collections in their original environments with local communities serving as curators and managing their own heritage. This approach and philosophy implies and is dependent upon democratic principles in the conservation and interpretation processes. Since the 1990s, China has adopted the ecomusée concept for the conservation of selected ethnic villages to relieve tensions between poverty and heritage conservation. However, does this concept really work in China? To answer this question, the Suojia Ecomuseum, the first such initiative - has been selected as a case study and assessed using the mixed methodologies of on-site observation, documentation and semistructured interviews. This process has identified several issues and problems associated with this ecomuseum. It demonstrates that Suojia Ecomuseum has not achieved international benchmarks, neither philosophical nor practical expectations have been met. This conclusion challenges the internationally acknowledged notion that all ecomuseums develop and are operated using a bottom-up approach, that they were all community-based and democratic. These discrepancies lead to other questions about the differences between ecomuseums in China and elsewhere. In order to map and compare the differences between ecomuseums in China and in Western democracies, a detailed survey was undertaken using Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West, Australia. Applying the same methodologies as in China, a comparable examination was undertaken as to its background, objectives, management structures, programs and activities, and project outcomes as well as problems. The differences between Suojia Ecomuseum and Melbourne’s Living Museum are then explained and shown. They demonstrate quite diverse organisations with different objectives and management structures relating to different cultural and natural resources. However, the unexpected finding was that the futures of both ecomuseums relied on the financial support and passion of younger generations and hence were vulnerable.