Orientalism in 19th-Century Swedish Historiography of Philosophy

Fredrik Bjarkö

Södertörns högskola

pp. 61-98

in: Anke Graness & Yoko Arisaka (eds), Histories of Philosophy in a Global Perspective, East Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1), 2022.

Abstract

During the 19th century, most Swedish philosophers considered the Orient, rather than ancient Greece, the birthplace of philosophical thought. This article examines the arguments in support of this viewpoint and reconstructs the meaning of the concept “oriental philosophy” used at the time. The aims of this article are therefore twofold. Firstly, it examines and maps out the way in which the history of philosophy was treated by 19th century Swedish philosophers. This question has not been studied in depth, and the article therefore contributes to a deeper understanding of Swedish academic philosophy during this period. Secondly, since the Swedish source material contains many examples of how historians of philosophy described oriental thought, the article also contributes to an understanding of modern European orientalism and oriental studies in general. The conclusion is that, as a concept, oriental philosophy played a key role in 19th- century debates on the origins of philosophical thought; ideas about oriental culture could be, and indeed were, used both to formulate Eurocentric narratives about the history of philosophy and to challenge such narratives. This article suggests that its conclusion could likely be extended to German historiography of philosophy, and that further studies on this issue are needed. whole. I argue that in order to reconceptualize its historiography, it is essential to reflect on the concept of philosophy itself and the related linguistic problems, and thus on the question of what can be included in a redefined historiography as “philosophy” in the first place. I attempt to take a middle position between Eurocentric mainstream arguments for an exclusively Western-oriented academic philosophy and approaches that seek to situate philosophy outside the West as well. In order to gain a sustainable understanding of the term “philosophy,” my paper proposes a twofold approach: first, a linguistic argumentation informed by ordinary language usage; and second, a historical argumentation based on intellectual history and the evolution of the term in the context of academic philosophy. I urge caution regarding the use of “philosophy” to refer to non-Western thought due to the potential anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism of this attribution and argue for other approaches to reconceptualize the historiography of philosophy in a sustainable way.