[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bibliography for the whole project, both published and unpublished: 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 rather 
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 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. 


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