Weekly Summary Five

Many people this week have been posting about Freud and Nietzsche. I found especially interesting Leigh's claim that Nietzsche's "theories about repeated lives and divine death echoed Hindu and Buddhist doctrine; thus, western philosophy began to take on a distinctly eastern feel." This could be a result of the first stages of globalization that Zak writes about. Globalization wasn't and isn't simply economic but very often cultural too. For instance, as we learned in Western Civ. the composition of Japanese woodcuts had a significant impact on Impressionism. And, as Leigh mentioned, there was a similar impact on philosophy. Perhaps this exposure to other philosophy's from around the world didn't just start finding their way into the thinking of Western philosophers, but actually made these philosophers question much of the tradition of Western philosophy.