P427

I

Philosophy has been a continuing concern of civilized man in all ages and. climes, It is characteristic of great classics in philosophy, like those in literature and unlike those in the physical sciences, that they never become wholly uninteresting to future generations. Since the great classics are representatives of the traditions that produced them, their relevance for future generations is derivative of the importance and value of the traditions themselves. There are several reasons why important cultural traditions of antiquity and the Middle Ages should continue to be of interest to us. First, while the geographical and -the technological environment of man has considerably changed in our time, human nature with its manifold psychological, moral, and spiritual needs and demands has, by and large, remained unaltered. Second, the creative nature of man which prompts him to project new patterns of impulses, cognitive and affective, in scientific and literary works also enables him to enter into the patterns of life and thought enshrined in older traditions. Occasionally, indeed, man deliberately seeks to explore the bygone ages with a view to enriching his present consciousness. This accounts for much of our interest in history; this also explains why such creative periods in human history as the Renaissance and the Age of Romanticism in Europe should have been characterized, among other things, by a passionate interest in the past. Here it may be noted that European scholars started exploring Oriental cultures during the period of the so-called Romantic Revival. Third, some of man's problems bearing on his manifold spiritual life have a perennial ring about them. Far from being finally solved or resolved, they seem to grow in complexity and depth with the passage of time; furthermore, these problems can be properly understood only with reference to their long historical context.

   Another reason the classical traditions, Eastern and Western, continue to interest and even intrigue us is the following. Some impulses and forms of life, it seems, are more thoroughly realized in certain periods and in some places in history than in others; these forms of life can be enjoyed by us today only vicariously. It also appears that in some fields the older civilizations produced geniuses of a higher order than those produced by the later ages. Thus it seems that our age can not possibly produce poets comparable to Homer and Vālmīki. Antiquity produced Lao-tse, Confucius, and the Buddha within a single century, no subsequent century can claim to have been so productive in religious genius. Likewise, some of the scriptures produced by older civilizations have remained unequalled, even as literary compositions.

   On the other hand it is no less true that parts of the heritage bequeathed to 

P428

us by older societies and civilizations have become more or less meaningless to us today. Confining ourselves to philosophy, we notice that some of the problems and their proffered solutions, presented during ancient and medieval times, have lost all interest for us. It also happens that when new questions and problems, emerging in a new environment of concepts and ideas thrown up by diverse disciplines, begin to grip the minds of the students of philosophy, they tend to withdraw their attention from debates conducted by previous generations of philosophers.

　　 The opinion has been advanced that philosophical questions and issues are perennial in character, that no philosophical question ever loses interest for genuine thinkers, and that no philosophical position is ever conclusively refuted. "Is it not the case," asks K. K. Banerjee, "that a philosophical question thought dead by many may not be deemed to be so by some who may breathe . such life into it as may make it living and active?" [1] While the possibility of the revival of interest in a question or issue ignored in the recent past is not ruled out. it may be pointed out that questions and issues associated with beliefs that are now seen to be either unacceptable or hypothetical or irrelevant cannot possibly be made alive for modern thinkers. Thus even theologically minded philosophers of our time would find it difficult to revive the medieval controversy whether and how man's free will may be shown to be consistent with divine omniscience. The reason is that, for the modern man, belief in the existence of God has itself become hypothetical, if not downright unacceptable.

Ⅱ

Can we lay down any criteria by which the living elements in an older philo­sophical tradition, for example, the Greek, or the Chinese, or the Indian, may be separated from those that are dead for the modern man? The answer to this question would obviously depend on what we understand by the modern man. Whatever our conception of the modern man or modernity, one thing seems to be clear: modernity is not a synonym for contemporaneity. Ideally speaking, the modern man is one with a developed awareness of the forces that affect and mold modern man's life, including the ideas, beliefs, and presuppositions that nourish and shape the modern mind. There is a sense in which it may be truly asserted that the modern age. like any other age in history, contains more by way of awareness and knowledge than any individual living in it. That awareness already includes all the information about past ages and cultures painstakingly collected by the scholars of our time; and any individual can grow into a cultured citizen of this age by only undergoing a long course of disciplined education and training for participating in the knowledge and the attitudes characteristic of this age. On the other hand, it may also be truly maintained that genuine modernity does not imply any rigidity either in respect of beliefs or in respect of attitudes relating to the more important problems and concerns of civilized humanity.