Basic Intuitions of East and West

Abstract

IN HIS The Meeting of East and West,1 Professor F. S. C. Northrop has set himself a gigantic task. He has endeavored to work out the philosophical assumptions underlying various civilizations and to discover thereby in what ways some civilizations are incompatible with one another and in what way others are complementary to one another. There can be no doubt that this is a very worth-while project-perhaps one of the very few worth-while projects a scholar can undertake today. To complete it would require, of course, more learning and more wisdom than any one man is capable of-and I am quite sure that Northrop does not claim to have reached finality. But, at the same time, he does put forward a number of interesting theories. If they are true, there is greater hope for integration of the West with the East than there appears to be at present.2 These theories are most suggestive and deserve sensitive and thoughtful criticism. Like the work of Professor Arnold J. Toynbee, The Meeting of East and West can make no claim to scientific accuracy. It is based on generalizations, impressions, and insights, the truth of which cannot be tested. But, like Toynbee's A Study of History, it opens large horizons for speculation and reflection. The empiricist and the modern logical positivists would find it hard to understand what Northrop is talking about, and Northrop himself might be hard put if he were asked to define the exact logical status of every one of his propositions. But all this does not matter. The book says something that is important. It is the same with Toynbee: many of his most suggestive arguments are statements which could not be brought into any clear connection with empirical data by any amount of reasoning. There are, however, some features in Northrop's version of the philosophical differences between East and West which must provoke discussion. These features are revealed when he discusses how the East and West could