“To study the possibility of a world philosophy through a synthesis of the ideas and ideals of the East and the West”
June 20 – July 29, 1949
Excerpt from the JSTOR Collection
The Journal of Philosophy © 1949 Journal of Philosophy, Inc. by Cornelius Kruse
The East-West Philosophers’ Conference held this past summer for six weeks in Honolulu at the University of Hawaii from June 20-July 29 turned out in this reporter’s judgement to have been one of the most important attempts made in our time on the part of philosophers to discover whether indeed East and West can meet for significant philosophical discussion and with some promise of continuing philosophical collaboration and interchange. Ten philosophers from Asia, among whom five came from India, one from Ceylon, two from China, and two from Japan, representing various branches of Hindu, Chinese, and Buddhist philosophy, lived and systematically worked together on common philosophical problems with ten philosophers from this country, with the addition of Professor E. R. Hughes, professor emeritus of Chinese Culture at Oxford. The North American participants were Professors Burtt, Conger, Dennes, Kruse, McCarthy, Moore, Morris, Northrop, Sheldon, and Wild. These twenty-one members were joined by twenty-five associate members, for the most part younger than the group just mentioned, but all of them also teachers of philosophy in as many colleges and universities of this country, and full participants in the Conference.
List of Participants & Essays
- Edwin A. Burtt “Basic Problems of Method in Harmonizing Eastern and Western Philosophy”
- Wing-tsit Chan “Synthesis in Chinese Metaphysics”
- George P. Conger “Integration”
- D. M. Datta “Epistemological Methods in Indian Philosophy”
- William R. Dennes “Empirico-Naturalism and World Understanding”
- Shinsho Hanayama “Buddhism of the One Great Vehicle (Mahāyāna)
- E. R. Hughes “Epistemological Methods in Chinese Philosophy”
- Cornelius Krusé “Western Theories of Value”
- T. M. P. Mahadevan “The Basis of Social, Ethical, and Spiritual Values in Indian Philosophy”
- G. P. Malalasekera “Some Aspects of Reality as Taught by Theravāda (Hinayana) Buddhism”
- Y. P. Mei “The Basis of Social, Ethical, and Spiritual Values in Chinese Philosophy”
- Charles A. Moore “Metaphysics and Ethics in East and West”
- Swami Nikhilananda “Concentration and Meditation as Methods in Indian Philosophy”
- Swami Nikhilananda “The Nature of Brahman in the Upanisads–The Advaita View”
- F. S. C. Northrop “Methodology and Epistemology, Oriental and Occidental”
- F. S. C. Northrop “The Theory of Types and the Verification of Ethical Theories”
- P. T. Raju “Metaphysical Ehtories in Indian Philosophy”
- C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar “The Philosophical Basis of Indian Legal and Social Systems”
- William H. Sheldon “Main Contrasts Between Eastern and Western Philosophy”
- D. T. Suzuki “Reason and Intuition in Buddhist Philosophy”
- John Wild “Certain Basic Concepts of Western Realism and Their Relation to Oriental Thought.”
Non-Program Members
