THE PLOTT PROJECT

[1]  Interest and relevance of the Project

     Persons interested in the comparative and historical
study of philosophies, religions, civilizations and cultures
will be able to appreciate and benefit from the Plott project
in the global history of philosophy.  The project possesses
both a published and unpublished corpus, a completed and
ongoing task, and a written, oral, and now Internet set of
traditions.
     Hajime Nakamura is the author of highly authoritative
works which in some respects parallel the Plott project as
found in the five volumes of Global History of Philosophy.
In his preface for Plott's Volume III, Nakamura writes, "Now
we see a colossal, gigantic work by Professor Plott.  He has
traced the development of philosophy in a wider scope than my
work, referring to numerous countries."
     Wallace Gray, the present coordinator of the project
since the death of Plott in 1990, adds to Nakamura's
statement an assessment of today's intellectual and cultural
readiness for some kind of continuance of the project:  "The
hour for more integrative multidisciplinary approaches to
every topic of human significance has finally struck just on
the eve of the next century and the new millenium.  The
pieces were not quite in place during Plott's lifetime; now
we begin to see more of them intermeshing and interacting
in patterns that one does not have to be a genius to
recognize and respond to."

[2] John Plott: the person and the vision

     From the jacket of Global History of Philosophy, Volume
I, we read, "Contemplation, scholarship and adventure:  a
rare trinity of values in American life these days."  Yet
such has been the lifestyle of John C. Plott.  Educated as a
Phi Beta Kappa undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma
(B.A. 1938), he served a novitiate with the SSJE, an
Anglican Monastic society in Ontario.  He received his Ph.D.
from Banaras University where he went to learn more about
Gandhian Pacifism and Indian Philosophy.  He seems to have
travelled endlessly and to have attended all possible East-
West conferences.  Whenever he was briefly stationary, he
could be found teaching at Marshall University or doing
research at the University of Hawaii or other universities.
He prized his Planetary Citizen Passport and his membership
in the United World Federalist Association, and engaged in
lifelong activities on behalf of world peace through global
understanding and social justice.
     John Plott inspired many students, colleagues, and
world-class scholars such as Nakamura to continue or to
undertake more seriously and effectively the historical-
comparative aspect of the Project.  Many were also inspired
to support the planetary peace objectives which Plott saw as
intimately related to better mutual understanding across
lines of ignorance and hostility.
     In his preface to Volume I, Plott urges his readers to
adopt a global perspective which can counteract a merely
local or myopic perspective.  He tells us that he has written
for "students who are concerned with problems of peace and
international, intercultural, and interfaith relations, and
especially students who have begun to realize that there are
no short-cut solutions for the planetary crises that have
beset mankind in the twentieth century and are therefore
willing to work more thoroughly towards the One World goal
which [has] become not just an ideal but a necessity."
     The series Global History of Philosophy stands on its academic
merits even for readers who do not fully embrace John
Plott's vision or his objectives for the project.

[3] Orientation, content, methodology

     The series of five volumes in Global History of Philosophy
exemplifies a synchronologically integrated approach to creating a
historiography of the philosophies of all major types and many cultures
from the times of origin till the fourteenth century.  The series stopped
with the fifth volume due primarily to Plott's death in 1990. However,
there are two other significant volumes more or less directly related to
the series, both by Plott.  The first to be published (1969) was the
bibliography for the whole project, both published and unpublished: 
SARVA-DARSANA- SANGRAHA, A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO THE GLOBAL HISTORY
OF PHILOSOPHY.  The second volume (1974) is the long tome (657 pages)
A Philosophy of Devotion.  Plott characterizes it as a comparative
study of devotion and self-surrender in Ramanuja, St. Bonaventura, and
Gabriel Marcel.  It also represents a spelling out of Plott's own
philosophy of the spiritual and intellectual quest. 
     The general approach in these seven volumes, as well as in the Project
as a whole, entails the treatment of as many philosophers as possible in
relation to their global contemporaries on a century by century, period by
period, basis. In other words, each philosopher whether Indian, Chinese,
European, Anglo-American, Islamic, Japanese, Byzantine, Latin American, or
whatever, is seen in relation to roughly contemporary thinkers in other
civilizations.  For example, in Volume V, contemporaries such as Thomas
Aquinas, Dogen, Ibn Arabi, Madhva, and Chu Hsi are given careful
consideration from a global and strictly chronological perspective than a
more traditional comparative-cultural one. As this exploration of
integrated patterns of development on a global scale has progressed, many
myths and stereotypes have been exploded, and many new perspectives have
emerged. To give only one example, instead of the completely distorted
image of the "Orient as mystical and the 'West' as materialistic," the
facts of history reveal a rather even distribution of types of philosophy
in every civilization in almost every period.  In fact, there is no
specifically Eastern or Western philosophy, but only philosophy.  Of
course, there are geographical distinctions among philosophers, just as
there are necessary temporal distinctions such as "ancient" and "modern."
But the basic issues are perennial and transcultural. 
     Wallace Gray comments, "I am only mildly facetious when I suggest that
the Global History of Philosophy Project was a brainchild which got out of
hand from the very moment of its conception in the fertile brain of John C.
Plott.  The project has had a kind of life of its own, to some extent
transcending individual authors, financial limitations, human strength, and
other ordinary restraints on academic enterprises."
     Gray and others have observed that Plott never had a strong sense of
closure, else he would have "closed off" the more unmanageable aspects of
the project, for example, the endless and exasperating search in some of
the great libraries of India and the U.S. for relevant primary and
secondary primary materials, and the tedious attempt to construct reliable
synchronological charts with which to order his multitudinous finds. 
     The strength of the series, as of its author-director, turns out to be
its remarkable human and philosophical openness, paired with its so-far
untested hope that this might become a resource for building a saner,
kinder, juster, and more peaceful planet. 

[4] Volume I

     The first volume in the Global History of Philosophy
series is entitled The Axial Age (Delhi, 1977).  It covers
the period centering around 500 years B.C.E.  The dominant
theme of the Axial Age, as Plott and his colleagues describe
it, is the emergence of systematic philosophy out of
mythological consciousness and the establishment of the
different basic types of philosophical systems in India,
China, and Greece.  Part One discusses from a global
perspective such basic themes for philosophizing as
causation, mind, soul, spirit, self, the elements, matter,
logic and paradoxes, fate, pramanas (means of knowledge),
law, freedom/necessity, salvation, deity, and enlightenment.
Part Two is a comparison of thinking outside of Greece with
that of Plato and Aristotle, especially the latter.
Imaginative readers may in this volume feel that they are
gathered in a meeting under one roof (or cover) with ancient
Buddhists, Jainists, Confucianists, Taoists, as well as
adherents of less famous schools of thought.  Much
attention is given to the development of philosophical
traditions, especially in response to intercultural
influences.

[5] Volume II: main body of the book

     Volume Two is entitled The Han-Hellenistic-Bactrian
Period (1979) and covers the philosophical developments from
the third century B.C.E. to the end of the third century
C.E.  Writers dealing with traditional East-West or
comparative philosophy too often are limited to the fields
included in Volume One.  Therefore, in Volume Two the author
has moved into almost virgin territory for the general reader
and sometimes for the specialist as well.
     The major comparisons in this volume involve significant
pairings:  Rome and India, Rome and China, the philosophers
Philo and Nagarjuna, and Plotinus and Vasubandhu, as well as
Han Confucianists and Neo-Taoists.  In addition, distinctive
Buddhist, Christian, and Jainist religio-philosophical
developments are treated under "Paths and Principles."
     In the Foreword, T.R.V. Murti says of the Nagarjuna-
Philo and Plotinus-Vasubandhu comparisons, "These constitute
some of the brilliant spots of the whole book. . . .  The
comparative study of Vasubandhu with Plotinus is apt,
fruitful and sustained."  Wallace Gray adds, "That study,
more than any other thing in the book, refutes East-West and
other stereotypes and dichotomies for this period and
prefigures later significant trans-Eurasian developments."
As Plott himself writes, "Perhaps the greatest comparison
between Plotinus and Vasubandhu is not between any of the
doctrines we have presented but in the spirit of philosophy
as found in them.  To follow one rather than the other may
mean a difference in method, but their views of the nature,
destiny and dignity of man are virtually the same" (p. 164).
     Although Plott is all too aware of the contrasts,
contradictions, and downright hostilities among the
worldviews he characterizes, he chooses to remind us
forcefully from time to time of their very real comple-
mentariness.  In a nutshell, he is advising us that skeptics
keep us from being too attached to our beliefs and opinions;
founders of religions save us from failure of nerve; mystics
combine the surgery of skepticism with the inner vision of
wisdom to keep us from building too small a house for our
souls.  Plott pays due respect to all of these, writing in a
way which Murti characterizes as free from prejudice.

[6] Periodizations (appendix of Volume II)

     A bonus of Volume II is Plott's appendix on "The Problem
of Periodization," a fifty-page essay done in collaboration
with Michael Dolin and Paul Mays.  Mays has also provided a
superb annotated map and time-line of "The Han-Hellenistic-
Bactrian World" which rides in the back-cover jacket of the
volume.
     "The Problem of Periodization" is too modest a title,
since the essay offers a proposal by which the problem can be
tentatively resolved.  Plott and his team identify clusters
of more or less contemporaneous events around the world to
mark off significant transitions and boundaries for the
periods.  The specific continuity between turning points
is identified by the events and achievements that provide the
"body" for each period.  Because the Plott team has had to
discuss both the continuities and the turning points of
history in their essay, it becomes an outline of world
history, both general and intellectual, extending right into
our own times.  This is fortunate as it allows us to glimpse
how the project would have been organized and presented in
the volumes that never got published.  But the chief virtue
of the essay on periodization is that it provides us with a
means of delimiting and characterizing periods historically
and logically instead of by mere ethnocentric scholarly
tradition.
     Plott emphasized the imperfections and tentativeness of
his periodizations.  Wallace Gray is more sanguine about what
Plott, Mays, and Dolin accomplished in their essay.  "It is
one long critique of the many scholarly efforts (including
Plott's) to periodize area and world history.  As a result of
the careful critique, they succeed in avoiding many of the
pitfalls the essay names."
     These findings and proposals on the periodization of
world history are applicable to some recent histories such as 
the single-volume 1992 Histoire de l'Europe, produced by the
cooperative effort of twelve scholars from as many countries
(published by Hachette in Paris under the direction of
Frederic Delouche).  Plott would appreciate the wonderful
maps and other graphics in this volume.  He would be critical
of the usage, though perhaps necessary, of such cliched terms
as "medieval" and "Renaissance," but he would affirm the
long-time perspective with which the volume opens: "From the
tundra to the temple (Prehistory to 4th century B.C.)" and the 
wide, truly global space-perspective indicated by one map caption 
which roughly translates, "Europe, the peninsula of Asia." In such
contexts Plott prefers the term "Eurasia" which the authors of
Histoire de l'Europe use in the heading for the
section beginning at this same map, a map by the way which
suggests the earth as seen from the moon more than the old-
fashioned "flat" Mercator projections.  Since the
philosophy of historical periodization which Plott and team
have developed is especially severe in criticisms of the
arbitrariness of much traditional period-naming, the comment
from the Preface of Histoire de l'Europe is apropos.  A 19th-
century writer is quoted:  "God, although he is omnipotent,
cannot change the past.  So he created the historians."
Incidentally, the English version of this history is
available from Henry Holt (New York: 1993).

[7] Volume III

     The third volume of the Plott project is entitled The
Patristic-Sutra Period (1980).  It traces the parallel
developments of the different systems and traditions from 325
to 800 A.D.  During this period there emerges the rich
variety of Chinese Buddhist philosophies alongside the later
developments of the varieties of non-European Christianity,
as well as the early Byzantine heritage in contrast with the
Roman/Latin tradition.  In India attention is focused on such
controversies as that between Buddhist idealist systems and
the realist Nyaya-Vaisesika and Jaina systems and the
remarkably sophisticated logic that emerges.  This volume
dramatically demonstrates that outside of Latin Europe there
was at this time really no period deserving the epitaph "dark
ages."
     The Patristic-Sutra Period is so named because this is
the era in which the great Mahayana Sutras emerge and begin
to dominate Central Asia, China, Korea, and Japan, right
alongside the final formulation of the Sutra literature of
the Jaina, the Nyaya Sutras, the Vaisesika Sutras, the
Samkhya and Yoga Sutras, and even the Brahma Sutra of
Badarayana which later becomes the canonical basis for
philosophizing in India.  About the same time, amidst many
controversies between rival "heresies," there emerges the
Christian Patristic adjustment of Greek philosophy to the
Biblical heritage.
     In his gently good-humored way Plott gives a hard time
to all that is self-satisfiedly provincial, sectarian,
antihumanist, anti-intellectual, heresy-hunting or science-
hating.  Consequently he enjoys poking a little fun at the
narrowness of Augustine (C.E. 354-430) or the irrationalism
of Bodhidharma (460-534, if he lived at all).  Plott's

style in this respect is reminiscent of Bertrand Russell except
that Russell was often pretty provincially Western himself.
Even Plott's humor is global.
     In a serious debate with either Buddhaghosa (fl. 412-
434) or Dignaga (fl. circa 480), Augustine would not, Plott
conjectures, come off very well.  Buddhaghosa's calm
collectedness and active expression of goodwill among the
common people (in preference to any and all debating) would
show up Augustine's disputatiousness, while Dignaga's
logical structuring of the dispute would be superior to
Augustine's rhetoric.  Having found his "better" in such a
debate, Augustine would, according to Plott, "storm back to
his study to write a scathing denunciation of this new-found
heretic, calling him everything from a Pelagian imp to the
devil himself!" (p. 144)  In another place (p. 131), Plott
explains that Augustine is very complex and so cannot be
easily categorized or evaluated.  Nevertheless, Albert the
Great, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, spoke for Plott and
all more or less happy rationalists when he wrote, "In
matters of faith. . . I cannot dream to be equal to St.
Augustine; but in matters of science, I prefer to believe
Aristotle and the Arabs who were his commentators, for St.
Augustine simply did not know the nature of things" (p. 132).
     Plott argues that this can be illustrated either in
psychological or geological terms.  "Augustine's sense of
historical time is all wrong.  The strange idea that the
whole world was created at a definite date about four
thousand or so B.C. prevailed until very recently, and this
has worked perhaps irreparable harm.  By contrast the Hindu,
Jaina and Buddhist cosmology had long since been in terms of
vast expanses of time" (p. 145).  Psychologically,
"Augustine's bad conscience is "like an ominous ghost
haunting not only our homes but our churches
and whorehouses alike" (p. 131).
     In commenting on the realist Nyaya-Vaisesika view of
time in the thought of Vatsyayana, Plott writes (pp. 67-68):
     Needless to say, adequate commentary on this could
     involve comparisons even with Kant and Bergson in the
     usual sort of comparative studies, and we cannot deny
     that these studies have their place.  But in our
     historical perspective one could well re-examine
     Augustine's views on time as a fair comparison,
     remembering that according to present dating Vatsyayana
     was at his peak about 375 when Augustine was about
     eighteen years old. . . .  To what extent Augustine,
     therefore, was closer to the Mahayana idealist theory of
     time than to that of Vatsyayana's realist view we
     must leave to experts, along with the question of to
     what extent Vatsyayana granted some concessions to his
     Buddhist opponents. . . .
All of Plott's comments on Augustine tend to shrink
that thinker's importance when a truly global perspective is
used.  Shankara, a later figure, is for many the cultural
hero of Indian philosophy.  His importance may also shrink
somewhat in the broader, quite untraditional perspective
recommended by Plott.  To some extent, Plott concludes, the
Middle Ages transcended Augustine while being heavily
indebted to him.  Was Isidore of Seville (560-638) "really
trying to correct the subjectivist antiscientific influence
of Augustine?" (p. 499)  Related to this probing question is
Plott's observation in another place (p. 452) that while
almost all that was transmitted to Latin Europe came through
Augustine, Boethius, or Pope Gregory the Great, "still the
definitely medieval form that that heritage took was the work
of Isidore of Seville."

[8] Transition in authorship from Volume III to Volume IV

     During the production of the first three volumes
summarized above, Wallace Gray was, so to speak, in the
cheering section for the project.  Since he was not yet a
contributor, he was free to publish his largely favorable
reviews in various scholarly journals, including Philosophy
East and West.  With Volume IV his status changed because he
became a more active participant and contributor.  Although
only three of his chapters appeared among the total of fifty-
nine, the "Acknowledgments" stated that he really deserved a
place on the title page, and indeed Volume V did carry his
name in that position.  Nine of the thirty-three chapters of
that volume originated with Gray, though Plott and Dolin
thoroughly globalized and integrated his contributions.  Gray
states, "The role of contributor but not primary author has
given me a peculiar inside-outside view of the Plott Project.
Consequently, where "he" has occurred in this homepage
narrative heretofore, "I" will reflect Gray's change of
status relative to the Plott Project. . . .

[9] Coordinator Gray's insider's view of the Plott Project

     Before I proceed with the more objective side of my
task, which is the description of the project in all its
completeness and incompleteness, I will reveal briefly my
insider's bias toward the project and its major objectives.
I have become convinced that if we ever have a global
civilization in which the cities, races, city states, and
particular civilizations have at least and at last learned
to be civil to each other, the work of historians such as
John C. Plott will deserve some of the credit.  Mere
ideologies tend to reinforce prejudices and rationalize
violence; philosophies at their best, especially in the
global context which Plott and our other colleagues outline,
teach people to listen to each other and so far as possible
to reason out their differences.  Near the end of the linear
version of this homepage (section 14 in the Contents) I shall
return to a kind of insider/outsider evaluation of the project
and its future, if any.  In the next sections, I need to fill out
some details about the project as planned, what has been 
accomplished, and what if anything remains to be done.

[10] The plan for the project after Volume III

     The plan for the project, as it evolved with the
publication of the early materials in the series, encompassed
the first three volumes plus Volume IV, "The Period of
Scholasticism" (800-1300), Volume V, "The Period of
Encounters" (1300-1800), and Volume VI, "The Period of Total
Encounter" (1800 to the present).  What actually developed
was that Volume IV kept growing until it required about 1100
pages of print so that it split into two volumes, Volume IV,
The Period of Scholasticism, Part One (800-1150) and Volume
V, The Period of Scholasticism, Part Two (1150-1350).  With
the unexpected Volume V (the last section of IV in the
original plan), the rest of the proposed project has had to
be abandoned.  So only five of the seven volumes have been
completed.  Those seven by further splittings could easily
have become nine or ten.
     Even so, I can here merely sketch and illustrate what
has been published in this series to 1989, the date of
publication of the fifth volume.  Of course, no one can
really know what the remaining volumes would have looked like
if John Plott were alive today.  He died in the fall of 1990.
For Volumes IV and V, I shall explain the general outline and
illustrate for each volume some of what I attempted to
accomplish with my work and how it relates to what John Plott
contributed to the same volumes.

[11] Volume IV

     For the Period of Scholasticism Plott suggests these
divisions:  the period of early scholasticism or "Monism in
Many Moods" (800-900), the middle period of "Exfoliation and
Elaboration (900-1150), and the later period of the "Great
Summas" (1150-1350).
     I did the draft chapter on Saadia (b.882 or 892, d. 942)
for Volume IV without realizing that Michael Dolin, the
managing editor, was probably wondering what to do with a
very lengthy, detailed typescript on Saadia from Plott
himself.  Saadia happened to be a philosopher whom I had
never heard of.  After my crash course of discovery about
this founder of Medieval Jewish philosophy, my submission to
the project was bound to look rather thin.  Dolin and Plott
enriched it considerably.  An explanation of the nature of
that enrichment will dramatize the challenge Editor Dolin
faced in blending the gargantuan researches of Plott with the
more limited work of a contributor such as myself.
     I was intrigued by two questions.  How truly medieval
was the first medieval Jewish philosopher?  And how did he
interpret the most Greek or Hellenistic book in the Bible?
     To assist in answering the first question I used the six
characteristics of medieval ways of thinking developed by
Nakamura in his Parallel Developments (reissued by Kegan Paul
International in 1986 as A Comparative History of Ideas).  By
that standard I concluded that Saadia was only about one-
third medieval.  Nakamura speaks of "the absolute authority
of traditional religions" in medieval thought.  For Saadia,
religious authority was the complete basis for his work, but
that did not mean it could not be questioned.  In fact, it
had to be questioned in order to discover in what sense it
was fully rational and relevant.  Incidentally, readers of
the Saadia chapter can question either the medievalness of
Saadia as measured by each of Nakamura's criteria or they can
question the validity of the criteria themselves.  In my
judgment, the criteria are helpful but need to be applied
critically, perhaps using some of the tools being developed
in Fuzzy Logic.  For ready reference the criteria are (1986,
p. 477):
          1. The absolute authority of traditional religions
          2. Dominance of religious orders
          3. Absolute sacredness of scriptures
          4. Otherworldly tendencies in thought and life
          5. Hierarchical social structure
          6. "Cultural" life an upperclass activity from
             which common people are mostly shut out

     On Saadia and Ecclesiastes, I learned that Saadia sounds
almost more like Aristotle than the doleful Preacher of "All
is vanity."  Saadia's point is that vanity attaches more to
addictive or idolatrous behavior than it does to the well-
rounded, pious life.  Quoting our chapter in Volume IV,

     Though the most prominent side of the little book of
     Ecclesiastes is its shadow side, Saadia, in his
     dependence on the more optimistic confidence of Jewish
     traditionalism and Greek rationalism, chooses to
     highlight the more hopeful aspects of wisdom.  Some of
     the seeming inconsistencies of Ecclesiastes vanish if
     we concede with Saadia that the book does not claim
     that every single act or activity is completely vain.
     Saadia hears the Preacher saying, "If you seek any one
     thing exclusively for itself, you will forever chase the
     wind."

     Saadia's principal work The Book of Beliefs and Opinions
concludes with Treatise X, "Concerning how it is most proper
for a man to conduct himself in this world."  The major
negative thesis here is that whatever is one-sided is
wanting.  The flip side of the thesis is that each of a
person's likes and dislikes has its distinctive role which
must be honored in a proper balance, since "any act practised
exclusively constitutes a distortion."  This little treatise,
then, presents a surprisingly autonomous ethic, one that is
general (if not secular), rational, humanistic and somewhat
independent of any particular religion.  In contrast, this
same Saadia usually presents a more specifically religious
ethic which is theonomous and dependent on revelation.
     My comparisons tend to be binary or at most trinary,
whereas Plott's are multivalent and multidimensional.  For
example, his part of this same chapter relates Saadia not
only to earlier and later Jewish and Islamic philosophy but
also to very specific tendencies at about the same time in
Christian and Hindu thought.  Two long sentences are
illustrative of Plott's multivalent interests:
        Saadia's situation is closely analogous to that of
     Philo of Alexandria in a different cycle of civiliza-
     tion, coming to the rescue of his community in the face
     of Caligula, and writing in Greek rather than Hebrew as
     Saadia was writing in Arabic.  There is probably no
     Jewish thinker who had greater influence since the time
     of Philo, unless it be Moses Maimonides who himself was
     much influenced by Saadia as were virtually all other
     Jewish scholastics in the intervening period. (IV, 341)
My own approach tends to limit itself to the obvious Jewish-
Greek synthesis in Saadia, although I did reach out to
mention a Buddhist parallel to the discussions of vanity.
After Plott has done his etiologies and his synchronologies,
he sometimes rewards the reader by throwing out a bridging
rope or two toward times closer to us.  He suggests that
Saadia the Jew is more like Kant the rationalist Christian,
while Erigena the Christian, who is treated in this same
volume, is more like Spinoza the Jew.
     A reader of Plott can approach him as an activist from
whom one can learn principles and strategies for building
peace with justice; as a hard-headed natural or social
scientist with a healthy respect for empiricism and carefully
honed hypotheses; as an esthete in search of joy in the world
of nature and human expression both cognitive and
noncognitive; or, if it suits one's taste or worldview, as a
mystic.
     The latter category is the most encompassing and
significant for Plott who nevertheless does not restrict
himself by it or impose it on his readers by coercive logic
or high-pressured persuasion.  The Indian philosopher
Ramanuja represents the monistic tendency of the ninth
century.  His highly personalistic yet panentheistic vision
of deity and the world supplies the mystical motif in
Plott's own philosophy and is a large factor motivating the
academic aspect of the Plott project.
     However, Ramanuja does not receive disproportionate
space or emphasis in Volume IV.  The average chapter length
in that volume is twelve pages.  Ramanuja receives just
nineteen pages in spite of being (as I've just recently
realized) a key to the whole project.  Plott has dedicated
The Philosophy of Devotion, a thick volume, to Ramanuja,
Bonaventure, and Marcel.  Yet in this fourth volume of Global
History of Philosophy, Ramanuja receives, as I said, nineteen
pages.   That is the same number devoted to Saadia who is not
a mystic.  Philosophers around the world tend to treat
Shankara (also discussed in this volume) as more important
than Ramanuja.  Although Plott personally disagrees with some
aspects of the near-adulation of Shankara, he recognizes that
the case for the lesser long-run importance of Shankara
relative to Ramanuja need not be argued in a general history
of ideas.  Shankara receives twenty-six pages of text, seven
more than Ramanuja.  So much for fairness and objectivity in
the sense of detachment from selfish or one-sided
preferences.
     From the ethical point of view, Chang Tsai (1020-1077)
may be just as important as some of the people who are more
famous.  Quite justly, it seems to me, he receives twelve
pages, the average for the volume.  For one reason alone he
deserves our notice.  He is the author of the Western
Inscription.  It is both brief and basic, as exemplified in
its opening lines:
        Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even
     such a small creature as I find an intimate place in
     their midst.
        Therefore that which fills the universe I regard as
     my body and that which directs the universe I consider
     as my nature.
        All people are my brothers and sisters, and all
     things are my companions.  (IV, 543)

[12] Volume 5

     Volume V is devoted to thirty-three of the Great Summas
and treats their authors in strict chronological order.  This
system has the advantage of somewhat randomly making
"neighbors" of thinkers who are global contemporaries but not
usually associated with each other.  In the Foreword, George
Tanabe of the University of Hawaii says, "It is always
interesting to find out who one's neighbors are, especially
in a place of old-time residents. . . .  John Plott's Global
History  is an excellent introduction to our neighbors.
Actually it is more accurate to say that he creates a
neighborhood by bringing together in a single text the major
figures of the Western and Asian traditions. . . ."
     I would love to delve into a number of the close
juxtapositions of this volume, for example, Madhva the Hindu
dualist of South India and Nichiren the militant Buddhist of
Japan.  However, the more exciting and significant thing to
do, as it relates to my own work in Japanese language,
culture, history, and philosophy, is to meditate upon one
amazing parallel between the Western Inscription of China, a
Neo-Confucian product of the 11th century, and the almost
poetic introduction by the Japanese Buddhist Eisai (1141-
1215) to his major work.  Recall that the Western Inscription
states that the nature of humanity directs the universe.
Eisai in a remarkably similar vein claims that the human
mind-and-heart (kokoro) transcends the heights of the
heavens, plumbs the depths of the earth, and directs heaven
and earth.  Eisai represents an even more philosophically
idealist view than the Western Inscription but the parallels
are real and call for explanation.  Plott as a historian and
social scientist leans to the cultural diffusion theory for
many such parallels.  For example, military conquests,
exploratory journeys, and commerce allowed ideas to spread
and not just physical artifacts and litter.  "Silk and
spices, and occasionally a monk or a philosopher, as well as
diseases and ideas, all travelled the silk routes" (II, 98)
Plott, however, is not averse to considering a kind of
convergence of ancient and medieval ways of thinking into an
insight which some modern physicists and philosophers are
summarizing as Arthur Eddington did in 1920 or so, "The
universe is mind stuff."  Incidentally, since Eisai is
regarded as the founder of one of the two main versions of
Zen, the Rinzai School, I have been urging Japanologists to
translate into a Western language his classic Kozen Gokokuron
so that it may become more than a mere bookmark in
intellectual history.  So far scholars have agreed with the
justness of my call, but no one has stepped forward to
undertake the difficult task.

[13] Cyclical reform:  commmoners, snobs, and gurus

     Plott notes one sociological factor that implies that
the official summas of the various cultures should be taken
seriously but not too seriously.  When I interviewed Plott a
few years before his death he told me that he agreed with
Toynbee in the suspicion that certain types of isms arise and
fall according to more or less cyclical rhythms.  Now,
directly quoting him:
          Renewal, I have frequently noted comes from below.
     This happens in religion more than in philosophy because
     philosophers are literate; religion originated in
     preliterate times and even today does not necessarily
     depend on writing.  But now that the proletariat (blue
     collar worker or farmer) is becoming both more mobile
     and more literate, new philosophers, too, may emerge
     from below.
          "Below" is relative of course to someone or some
     class that looks down from above.  In the past certain
     languages were the natural languages of culture and
     privilege.  When vernacular tongues began to displace
     the king's Latin, or whatever, they were regarded as
     impertinent intruders.  One of the frustrations of our
     research has been that so little of this quite massive
     amount of material has been translated.  Isn't that
     because "scholars" reflect the prejudices of the upper
     classes in the various cultures and so "know" in advance
     that vernacular materials are unimportant?
          Consider also the tendency of secular bourgeois
     university profs to look down on religion and mysticism
     generally and all forms of monasticism specifically,
     although it was (is?) minds like Merton and Aurobindo
     who have helped (and may again help) keep civilization
     civil, if that is possible.
Later in the same interview Plott confesses to having become
Indianized or, as he says, "indigenized."
     But in one respect I was stubbornly myself:  I never
     could see why if one guru were a good thing, many gurus
     should not be a better thing.  Some of my mentors could
     never understand this quirk in my thinking.
While Plott is heavily critical of some of his Western gurus,
he does not turn his critical acumen off in reference to his
beloved India.  "Alas. . ., India has not yet produced a Kant
or even a Descartes who with authentic originality scrapped
the whole works and began from a fresh start!" (A Philosophy
of Devotion, 484)


[14] Assessing the Project: some strengths and limitations

     If we were now to summarize a few key contributions or
advantages of the Plott Project in the light of both its
printed and unprinted aspects, and the academic and personal
characteristics of Plott himself, the right words would
surely be open, multidisciplinary, multi-perspectival,
democratic, and peace-oriented.
     The chief limitation of the project can be summarized in
one sentence, No one knows what to do with it.  Its political
and economic agenda, though not obtrusive, seems to some to
be doomed, dead, or impractical.  And how in the world is
anyone to use a resource of this magnitude and erudition in
any classroom, public or private, undergraduate or graduate?
One small but irritating example of the problem concerns
Sanskrit.  Because of Plott's immersion in contemporary and
classical Indian culture, he used Sanskrit with ease whenever
he spoke or wrote.  The team tried by the creation of
glossaries and careful indexing to help Plott's readers
through the Sanskrit-sprinkled prose.  Sometimes we felt like
a mother going around picking up clothing after an exuberant
teenager.
     What I have called a limitation may more properly be
regarded as a challenge.  The Sanskrit, for example, prevents
readers, at whatever level, from assuming that everything
significant in other cultures can be gained either from
smoothly constructed translations or simplified populariza-
tions.  Plott produces culture shock for people who do not
have the will or the money to go abroad.  That is, he can
produce it if his readers do not simply give up and turn to
other, more manageable activities than contemplating the
global history of philosophy.
     A major suggestion of one way to meet this challenge is
now emerging.  Why not hypertext some of the synchronological
charts, period maps, and even technical or foreign
glossaries?  By hypertexting I mean both a conceptual and
technological reformulation of the Plott project, both what
has already been published and what might be published in the
future.  More recent textbooks in philosophy, - for example,
James Christian's Philosophy:  An Introduction to the Art of
Wondering (now in its 6th ed., New York: Harcourt Brace
Publishers, 1994) - use marginal quotations, boxed analyses,
biographies in multiple-page interludes, as well as
photographs, pictorial art, and comic strips and cartoons to
lead the reader or rather to encourage wandering while
wondering in an order somewhat of the reader's own choosing.
Histoire de l'Europe does the same thing for European
history.  (See Section 6 of the present homepage on the Plott
Project.)
     The various electronic encyclopedias add a new wrinkle,
highlighted terms and names which the reader can click on for
definitions or expositions beyond the more linear narrative
text.  Sanskrit would lend itself to this treatment as would
the synchronological charts which could be called up from the
narrative text or from which one could click for articles on
the events and philosophers displayed.  Some of us think that
the Plott Project may have been ahead of the technology, just
waiting for the computer developments which have made expert
systems and hypertexting a reality.
     It should be mentioned that the published scholarly work
of Plott and his associates is only the print media component
of the total project.  Plott had a file on related materials
for educational use and possible adaptation for later volumes
which even when boiled down was probably at least a yard
deep.  I still have almost two feet of this "monstrosity," as
we affectionately called it.
     Also, for a number of years I have engaged small classes
and seminars of undergraduates with the Plott materials,
first with the unpublished and then with the published
materials.  Generally students have had two reactions.  "This
material must be intended for someone else."  But also:  "It
is worthwhile and deserves as wide an audience as possible."
Some of my students have done quite substantial studies
related to the Plott materials and the objectives behind
their production.
     I am even more impressed by Professor Plott's own
ability to inspire undergraduates as well as established
scholars.  Through the years he shared with some of us audio
tapes from his seminars and classes at Marshall University.
The level of exposition, comment, and dialog among the
students and with the non-dominating help of Plott was highly
motivating not only to me but to these students several of
whom got caught up in Project travel with Plott and even in
Project editing.

[15] Unfinished business or unfinished symphony?

     Is the project one best left like Schubert's Unfinished
Symphony?  Is that the best way to honor it and show respect
for John Plott's vision?  On the other hand, if the project
were to be completed, in what form and by what means?  Should
we contemplate extending the volumes as they were already
evolving?  Or should completion take place in some completely
new way, by creating an electronic encyclopedia of world
thought with hardcopy supplements, for example?
     If the project were to be concluded in some form, John's
own files would help recover or create some appropriate
balance in coverage, for example, of South American
philosophers.
     Whether the project is an unfinished symphony or
compellingly unfinished business, it surely can counteract
what some are calling the dumbing of America.  The
intellectual, spiritual, and cultural shock produced by
contact with the Plott project can effectively offset much
human provincialism, educational dumbing, and other similar
genres of mediocrity or global dysfunctionalism.

[16] More on Plott the man

     At the 1995 meeting in Dayton, Ohio (at Wright State
University) of the International Society for the Comparative
Study of Civilizations, Professor Howard A. Slaatte was
scheduled to respond to the Plott Project in terms of his
personal acquaintance with the man for about twenty years as
a colleague at Marshall University.

     In the absence of Dr. Slaatte, Loyd Swenson read
Slatte's response to Professor Gray's paper, after commenting
that pycho-biography is important as long as Gray's caution
about it is taken into account.  Gray has written:

     "Dr. Slaatte's paper will disclose some of John C.
Plott's astounding eccentricities, some of which I either
never knew of or never wanted to remember.  I hope that my
paper will show that the real significance of the Plott
project is not to be confused with the also real
eccentricities of its principal author and initiator.
Whether the project exists in its unfinished but nevertheless
imposing form because of or in spite of those eccentricities
is a question which shall remain unanswered here.  My intent
is to let the text of the project speak as much as possible
for itself, but the Plott persona is so inextricably bound up
in the text that from time to time some comment on what is
both a very personal and a very philosophical text has been
necessary."
     [See Section 16 from main menu for what is omitted here.]