The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reflections

Abstract

The influence of Eastern religions upon the West is often portrayed as a phenomenon of growing significance marking a watershed in contemporary religious and spiritual culture. In the most radical version of the Easternisation thesis, articulated most systematically by Colin Campbell, indigenous developments within Western culture point to the demise of the traditional dualistic religious conception of divinity as personal, transcendental and beyond worldly reality and its replacement with a monistic conception characterised by impersonality and immanence. This article subjects this thesis to critical examination and finds it deficient is four major respects. Firstly, it tends to stereotype Eastern religions in a somewhat misleading way. Secondly, it is insensitive to the marked differences between various Eastern religious traditions. Thirdly, it characterises those trends in Western culture which it sees as constituting Easternisation too readily and unequivocally as specifically religious developments. Fourthly, it ignores or glosses over the very this-worldly and therefore quintessentially Western character of these trends. The article concludes with an attempt to rescue some the insights of the Easternisation thesis by incorporating them into a broader framework and by offering some alternative suggestions for understanding the developments with which the thesis is concerned.