Undergraduate Philosophy Conference Keynote

	April 6-8, 2006

Dr. Hope K. Fitz is a Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Connecticut State University. She is a comparative philosopher by education, teaching, research/publications, and her professional activities. Her Ph.D. is in Asian and Comparative Philosophy. However, her teaching and publications are broader in that they involve western and non-western philosophy or as she would prefer to say, “the philosophical traditions of the north, east, south and west.”

Dr. Fitz’s book, Intuition: Its Nature and Uses in Human Experience, is in its second printing. She is presently writing the first four volumes having to do with Ahimsa: a Way of Life (basically, as Gandhi used the term, ahimsa means non-harm and compassion.) She also has numerous articles published in scholarly journals. Three of the articles appear in anthologies. These articles include both western and non-western topics such as: Kant; Nietzsche; Heidegger; “Conditions for Individual Freedom as Applied to the European Union” (co-authored with a colleague in political science); Islam; several articles on Gandhi, ahimsa, and intuition; “Self-Discipline in the Process of Self-Realization,” (co-authored with a reader, i.e., professor, from Panjabi University, India); and they mystical experience.

Dr. Fitz has just received a scholarship from the Academic Council of the Academic Study of Jainism in North America for the International Summer School for Jain Studies, 2006. She will be in various places in India for two months studying Jain philosophy and Jain history.

In addition to her teaching and scholarly work, Dr. Fitz is the Director of the Peace and Human Rights Committee at her university. A minor in Peace and Human Rights was approved earlier this semester and the committee is presently working on a proposal for a Peace and Human Rights Center.

It seems clear to me that philosophy can no longer remain the domain of western traditions or schools of thought. Also, although what I have to say is directed to western traditions, it also applies to the European schools, which are sometimes called “Continental.” Actually, at the present time, there is a great deal of overlap between what is studied in the European and western schools.

The various western schools and/or methods of doing philosophy have generally ignored or not taken seriously non-western schools of philosophy. These western traditions include schools that are: 1. analytic, 2. focused on existentialism and/or phenomenology, and 3. grounded in linguistics. I include in the linguistic schools: ordinary language and post modern thinkers.

What needs to change in departments of philosophy is that these schools do not dominate and that comparative philosophy is taught at the undergraduate as well as the graduate levels. Only is this way will philosophy regain the vibrant interchange of ideas that she once had. It is this interchange of ideas that gives rise to change and development within the world. Of course, this is so because we live in an international and multi-cultural “global community.” Philosophy must reflect the interrelated, interconnected, and interdependent world in which we live by the study of comparative philosophy.

Broadly, I take “comparative philosophy” to mean a “family” of activities which are directed towards the comparative study of philosophical traditions, sub-groups or aspects of those traditions, or non-philosophical traditions that are studied from a philosophical perspective.

In the paper, I will explain in more detail what is involved in comparative philosophy, the philosophical perspective as applied to comparative philosophy, what should be included in the discipline, and arguments to strengthen the claim I have given as to why comparative philosophy is necessary for an understanding of the age in which we live and to infuse the discipline with a life-force that Rorty and the like almost killed.