How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy

"That’s right. How the World Thinks sets out to provide a map of human thought in different regions of the world by looking at the composition and the impact of certain founding philosophies: Greek, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and Islamic. He also touches on certain oral traditions, especially in Africa. He wants to look at the impact of these founding philosophies on the development of ways of thought. What he reveals are the commonalities but also the differences in thought and belief. He shows why worldviews that can appear strange or anomalous to others are as they are because they’re rooted in particular philosophical precepts. Part of his project in How the World Thinks is to say, ‘Look, philosophy really matters. Philosophy is not part of a dry world of abstract erudition. Philosophical ideas make their way through into religion, into systems of beliefs, into cultural habits and so on.’ Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I think this book is an achievement in several ways: as a bringing together of a number of world philosophies, as an illustration of why philosophy matters for global understanding, and as a bridge between Western and Asian thought. He shows us that there are very strong commonalities, but that where differences exist—between, say, warring Muslims and Hindus or warring Christians and Muslims—there are reasons rooted in a clash of worldviews. So How the World Thinks is a book in which the erudition is deep, that’s very clear and immensely relevant. One very general example is that the Western philosophical tradition—from the Greeks to the Enlightenment—is centred around the rational individual, while most Asian philosophies place the individual at the heart of a much wider cosmos where the individual is, to a degree, decentred. Even more importantly, there is as much weight given to reason as there is to faith or belief. He invites us in the West to say, ‘Let’s try and understand other parts of the world and get to the bottom of why people think the way that they do.’ And of course, as a philosopher, he’s rightly saying that we should look at their philosophical precepts."