Mysticism and Morality: Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy

by Arthur C. Danto

xx 127p slim paperback, grey and black cover, firm binding, clean and neat, pages, hardly any wear, a very good copy, this copy published in the year 1987

Genres: Philosophy, Religion

127 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Arthur C. Danto was Johnsonian Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and art critic for The Nation. He was the author of numerous books, including Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap Between Art and Life, After the End of Art, and Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective.

Reviews

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Danto's introduction promises the worse as I had no idea what he was saying or what he intended to do with this book on oriental thought and moral philosophy.

From here, Danto moves to his first chapter where he seems to argue that moral values rest on factual beliefs. That argument is interesting in itself, but its application to the rest of the book was not so evident. In the next few chapters, Danto offers a few interesting thoughts about Indian philosophy (karma, moksha), although this discussion bogs down here and there before it picks up when he moves to Buddhism and Taoism.

By the end of the book, it was not clear what Danto's main point was. Thinking about it some, and re-reading the introduction, the theme of the book might be that oriental philosophy is about escape from this world and salvation from the repeated birth-rebirth cycle ("cosmic boredom") and, therefore, it is not about ethics (governing relationships between individuals) per se. How this argument connects to his fact v. value discussion in Chaper One is not clear. Alternatively, and also going back to the first chapter, perhaps Danto is saying that oriental thought rests on mistaken facts and, therefore, its belief systems are wrong. But then, the connection of this theme to oriental philosophy being void of ethics, properly defined, is also not clear.

[T. Sayama · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here Danto is trying to show how all of these religions are grounded in factual beliefs about the world, and how that defines our relationship to the foundational beliefs of each of the religions described.

I believe this was written as a curative warning against easy use (or abuse, or more likely misunderstanding and misappropriation) of other religions, and that we cannot just mix and match and/or blend other religions into our belief systems because our basic "factual" beliefs about the world are fundamentally different from the world/contexts of these religions.

It is not about whether any of these religions are good or bad, but more about how we, as westerners, must understand the context of religious beliefs before we adopt them, or even parts of them.

[Meraj Dhir · Rating 3 out of 5]

applies an analytical framework to eastern spiritual and contemplative traditions. Danto parses out the differences between different spiritual models to clarify their philosophical positions.