The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies by Thomas McEvilley (PDF)

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Spanning thirty years of intensive research, this book proves what many scholars could not explain: that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought—Western and Eastern philosophies.Thomas McEvilley explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East. This groundbreaking reference will stir relentless debate among philosophers, art historians, and students.

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Editorial Reviews: From the Publisher Two Worlds, One Philosophical Cradle: Scholar Explores Hidden Kinship Between Eastern and Western Culture in Revolutionary Study; In the Early Days, Ideas Traveled Freely Between India and Greece A revolutionary study by the classical philologist and art historian Thomas McEvilley is about to challenge much of academia. In THE SHAPE OF ANCIENT THOUGHT, an empirical study of the roots of Western culture, the author argues that Eastern and Western civilizations have not always had separate, autonomous metaphysical schemes, but have mutually influenced each other over a long period of time. Examining ancient trade routes, imperialist movements, and migration currents, he shows how some of today’s key philosophical ideas circulated and intermingled freely in the triangle between Greece, India, and Persia, leading to an intense metaphysical interchange between Greek and Indian cultures. As the author explains it, “The records of caravan routes are like the philosophical stemmata of history, the trails of oral discourses moving through communities, of texts copied from texts. . . .What they reveal is not a structure of parallel straight lines—one labeled ‘Greece,’ another ‘Persia,’ another ‘India’—but a tangled web in which an element in one culture often leads to elements in others.” While scholars have sensed a philosophical kinship between Eastern and Western cultures for many decades, THE SHAPE OF ANCIENT THOUGHT is the first study to provide the empirical evidence. Covering a period ranging from 600 B.C. until the era of Neoplatonism and a geographical expanse reaching across the ancient world, McEvilley explores the key philosophical paradigms of these cultures, such as Monism, the doctrine of reincarnation in India and Egypt, and early Pluralism in Greece and India, to reveal striking similarities between the two metaphysical systems. Based on 30 years of intense intellectual inquiry and research and on hundreds of early historical, philosophical, spiritual, and Buddhist texts, the study offers a scope and an interdisciplinary perspective that has no equal in the scholarly world. With a study like THE SHAPE OF ANCIENT THOUGHT, students and scholars of history, philosophy, cultural studies, and classics will find that their field has been put on entirely new footing. Yet as editor Bill Beckley points out, the merits of this work reach into a broader social context: “More recently, events have leant an unexpected urgency to the [book] by focusing the world’s attention on Afghanistan (ancient Bactria), where much of the story unfolds in this volume, and where the difficult karma of cross-cultural contacts is still alive.” From the Inside Flap “. . . one of the great works of scholarship of our time. McEvilley has brought together complex and diverse data to weave a tightly organized, panoramic account. (. . . ) I should think that [the book] will become indispensable for any and all specialists on antiquity.” — Professor Katherine Harper, Indologist and art historian, author of The Roots of Tantra “This is a wonderful book. The author has assembled material from the ancient Greek world and the world of ancient India and systematically demonstrated the interchange of ideas and mutual influence. . .”— Professor Christopher Chapple, Indologist, author of Karma and Creativity “Reading it is like reading a novel. Thomas McEvilley has given us the novelistic anthropology of our time.” —David Shapiro, Poet About the Author Thomas Mcevilley is Distinguished Lecturer in Art History at Rice University, where he has been on the faculty since 1969. The author holds a Ph.D. in classical philology. In addition to Greek and Latin, he has studied Sanskrit and has taught numerous courses in Greek and Indian culture, history of religion and philosophy, and art. He has published countless scholarly monographs and articles in various journals on early Greek poetry, philosophy, and religion as well as on contemporary art and culture. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He was the recipient of a Fulbright Grant in 1993 and has been awarded an NEA critic’s grant and the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism by the College Art Association. His other books include Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (Allworth Press). He lives in New York City. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A brilliant survey of the connections between East and West – Greece, Egypt, and India – and the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Buddhism – by the historian Thomas McEvilly.This subject is a hot potato. Few western historians are equipped to discuss it. Most are happy in their comfort zones that clearly segregate East and West whilst ignoring the enormous evidence of philosophical exchange between these cultures.To be sure, historians are okay with accepting the exchange of merchandise between these cultures in ancient times.For instance, around 3500 BC there was maritime trade between Indians who sailed between the Persian Gulf and northwestern coast of India. Mesopotamian sites of 3000 BC have unearthed white Indian conch shells. Around 2500 BC-2000 BC cylinder seals of a Persian type have been found in Mohenjo Daro and Lothal, India that indicate trade between India and Sumer and Babylonia. 2200 BC, Sargon boasted he had Indian ships at his harbor.McEvilly suggests it is inconceivable that two distant peoples could be meeting with each other frequently for commercial reasons but never discussing their traditions, festivals, customs, religions – all of which would have been fascinating subject matter for any two peoples wishing to develop good will and thus better trade relations and profits. Written proof of such philosophical exchange, though it would be ideal, is not a pre-requisite to drawing such a conclusion. You only need a basic understanding of the relationship between business and friendship.Remember, when Indians disembarked from their ships while material was loaded or unloaded, they would possibly be in the foreign land for days or weeks before returning. During this time they would be guests of the host land and introduced to its customs, practices, and beliefs. Reciprocating, the Indians would tell them about things in India. This is not difficult to envisage.Additionally, Sargon was multi-ethnic. He would have pro-actively sought to understand India.McEvilly’s conclusions suggest information flowed from India to Greece in the pre-socratic and then back in the hellenistic era.Published in 2002, this book does not take into account new dating of the very important Rig Veda of India. Throughout his book, McEvilly’s uses the traditional AIT dating of 1500 BC. However, the discovery of the dried up Sarasvati River and its dating of at least 1900 BC [according to geological and palaeoenvironmental studies (Rao 1991: 77-9; Allchins 1997: 117)] has wide implications concerning the origin of philosophical ideas found in the Rig Veda and Upanishads. Did some of their ideas arrive from Greece, as McEvilly’s suggests, or were they actually exported from India at an earlier date?Also, McEvilly, is unable to supply any concrete dates concerning the origin of ideas in India and explicitly states his regret that India is, as Hegel put it, “ahistorical.” This is not McEvilly’s fault. Philosophy in India was an oral tradition and highly secretive. That is why you do not find written evidence on parchment or stone. That was the tantalizing method and mystery of the ancient yogis. However, geological dating of rivers such as the Sarasvati help us compare with known dates in other cultures.This is a book of the highest academic caliber. A masterpiece and classic. Probably not another book like it in its genre. Highly recommended.Full disclosure: I am an author and researcher on connections between ancient yoga and the Bible as well as between ancient yoga and modern science. ~ Sanjay C Patel, SanjayCPatel.com

⭐According to a familiar Japanese maxim, “The frog in a well does not know of the great ocean (i no naka no kawazu taikai wo shirazu). Many Western academics have long been quite comfortable in their Eurocentric well with Greece and Rome to the east, Europe in the middle and the Americas to the east — all more or less joined together by the Three Great Monotheistic Faiths. Beyond the well lie exotic unexplored lands whose ways of thinking and behaving differ from those of us in the “real” Western world. Few of our universities have departments of philosophy that bother to offer even a survey course in Eastern philosophies; and even fewer really take the issue seriously.With _The Shape of Ancient Thought_ Professor McEvilley has lowered a sturdy bucket into our Western well and invites us on a philosophical journey into one of these unexplored lands: Ancient India — discussing the relationships and possible cross-cultural influences between early Western (i.e., Greek and Roman) philosophies and those of India. I completely agree with the unqualified enthusiasm of the six earlier Reviewers who have already taken the trip. I have little to add — except a postscript.Those who recognize the strong impact of Buddhism on Japanese literature will surely spot several chapters in the following list worth exploring. For example, Murasaki’s appeal to the Mahayana principle of Skillful Means (hoben) in the “Hotaru” chapter of the _Genji monogatari_ as justification for composing “fabrications” leads us back eventually to Nagarjuna, the Madhyamika, and the _Lotus Sutra_. We are just at the beginning of the search for such influences.Here is a list of the chapters following 36 pages of front matter:Ch. 1. Diffusion Channels in the Pre-Alexandrian PeriodCh. 2. The Problem of the One and the ManyCh. 3. The Cosmic CycleCh. 4. The Doctrine of ReincarnationCh. 5. Platonic Monism and Indian ThoughtCh. 6. Platonic Ethics and Indian YogaCh. 7. Plato, Orphics, and Jains [Jainism = Jyainaa kyo, Jinakyo]Ch. 8. Plato and KundaliniCh. 9. Cynics and PasupatasCh. 10. Five Questions Concerning the Ancient Near EastCh. 11. The ElementsCh. 12. Early Pluralisms in Greece and IndiaCh. 13. Skepticism, Empiricism, and NaturalismCh. 14. Diffusion Channels in the Hellenistic and Roman PeriodsCh. 15. Dialectic before AlexanderCh. 16. Early Greek Philosophy and Madhyamika [Madhyamika = Chuganha]Ch. 17. Pyrrhonism and Madhyamika [Pyrrhonism >> Scepticism]Ch. 18. The Path of the Dialectic [Nagarjuna = Ryuju]Ch. 19. The SyllogismCh. 20. Peripatetics and Vaisesikas [Vaisesika = Vuaishieeshika gakuha]Ch. 21. The Stoics and Indian ThoughtCh. 22. Neoplatonism and the Upanisadic-Vedantic TraditionCh. 23. Plotinus and Vijnanavada Buddhism [Vijnanavada. See Yuishiki, Hosso]Ch. 24. Neoplatonism and Tantra [Tantra. See Mikkyo.]Ch. 25. The Ethics of ImperturbabilityConcluding Remarks. Then 5 appendices on the Aryans, the Aryan invasion,Black Athena and Western Xenophobia, the Golden Thigh, Philosophy and Grammar, followed by a List of Works Cited, and a 29-page Index.This is clearly a masterpiece! However, it may take time for it to be so recognized: many of us are still in wells of one kind or another with lots of other frogs.

⭐An outstanding piece of work. Completely de-centres one’s understanding of Greek philosophy.It also functions as the best introduction to ancient Indian philosophy for a western reader with some knowledge of Greece, precisely because the book discusses Indian schools in the context of the more familiar Greek ones.Highly recommended.

⭐A rare work of highest scholarship. it must initiate a serious rethinking on all the philosophical assumptions West has taken regarding the origins and contents of it ideologies. At the same time it should also compel India to pause in its present mad rush to claim achievements in science and technology which is nothing but reverse oriental ism. The real gain lies in understanding the degrees of diffusion, differences and similarities in the thought worlds that has brought the mankind here.

⭐Dieses Buch ist hochinteressant. Leider fehlen die Abbildungen, Fotos etc. auf die in dem Buch Bezug genommen wird.This book covers a wide range of Greek and Indian philosophy. Some of the Indian material is not widely known in the West. Mc Evilley details the parallels and the interactions between the two groups. Despite the large distances there must have been travellers who brought ideas and knowledge from India to Greece and the other way round. A fascinating book.

⭐Item was not NEW as advertised, it was maybe not used but obviously stored in a dirty damp environment. The print is of low quality would not have passed QC in Europe or USA. Dust and dirt on the outside, pages curled from moist.

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