From East to West: Emergent Global Philosophies – the Beginning of the end of the Western Dominance?
Inspired by the new book of Roy Bhaskar, From East to West, I set out to (i) scrutinise the plausibility of the Eastern and transcendental turn of critical realism and (ii) study the ethico-political significance of this turn. Claims to continuity notwithstanding, Bhaskar's new book in fact gives an entirely new meaning to critical realism and attempts to make it a basis of a new synthesis between the East and the West, as well as the New Age and the New Left. The earlier Western Englightenment project of emancipation by means of scientific research has now become just a special case of the Eastern search for illumination and harmony. I argue, first of all, that many of Bhaskar's wilder ontological claims fail to satisfy the criteria of critical realism, such as the causal criterion of existence and the epistemological consequences of openness and relativism. Secondly, I argue that his aim at a synthesis is nonetheless significant in ethico-political terms. What is siginificant is the attempt to criticise Western metaphysics and come to terms with the East. Bhaskar's project has to be assessed in relation to earlier attempts by such Western radicals as Jacques Derrida, Johan Galtung and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, among others. Furthermore, notions derived from post-structuralism and dialectics, as well as from Unger's realism, can contribute towards a critical analysis of the master-signifier of Bhaskar's text, “realism”, and thereby open up a space for less totalistic ventures. The emergent dialogue, and the viable elements of a synthesis achieved thus far, pose nonetheless a challenge to global ethics and politics. Perhaps we are now seeing the beginnings of the end of the Western dominance?