Eastern Philosophy

Eastern philosophy or Asian philosophy includes the various philosophies of South and East Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, Buddhist philosophy (dominant in Tibet and Southeast Asia), Korean philosophy, and Japanese philosophy.

According to Victoria S. Harrison, the category of "Eastern philosophy", and similarly "Asian philosophy" and "Oriental philosophy" is a product of 19th century Western scholarship and did not exist in East Asia or India. This is because in Asia there is no single unified philosophical tradition with a single root.

Some Western thinkers claim that philosophy as such is only characteristic of Western cultures. Martin Heidegger is even reported to have said that only Greek and German languages are suitable for philosophizing. It is still commonplace in Western universities to teach only Western philosophy and to ignore Asian philosophy altogether, or consider only newer Western-influenced Asian thought proper "philosophy". Carine Defoort, herself a specialist in Chinese thought, has offered support for such a "family" view of philosophy, while Rein Raud has presented an argument against it and offered a more flexible definition of philosophy that would include both Western and Asian thought on equal terms. In response, OuYang Min argues that philosophy proper is a Western cultural practice and essentially different from zhexue, which is what the Chinese have, even though zhexue (originally tetsugaku) is actually a neologism coined in 1873 by Nishi Amane for describing Western philosophy as opposed to traditional Asian thought.

Hinduism is the dominant religion, or way of life, in South Asia. It includes Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism among numerous other traditions, and a wide spectrum of laws and prescriptions of "daily morality" based on karma, dharma, and societal norms. Hinduism is a categorisation of distinct intellectual or philosophical points of view, rather than a rigid, common set of beliefs. Hinduism, with about one billion followers is the world's third largest religion, after Christianity and Islam.

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