PRELIMINARY NOTES TO COMPARATIVE METHODOLOGY 

Comparing heterogeneous material, be it religious beliefs, cultural traditions, artistic creations, or philosophical theories comes spontaneously to the human mind. It is no wonder, inasmuch as the procedure permits to bridge the cognitive gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the known and the unknown. It also permits to land on safe ground, to domesticate in some sort the imprevisibility of the new, by inscribing it into an already familiar pattern. The other becomes different but not inexplicably/unreasonably alien. It shares some aspects or at least some reference points with the already known. It is not totally different, it is just divergent. Furthermore, I can pin point precise points of divergence, of aliency either directly or by stressing the commonalities with my own stock of references. Such procedures may seem natural and spontaneous; however they result from a complex cluster of mental preconceptions/operations. Such operations are not spontaneous/mechanical; but come about after a series of conscious choices and rearrangements operated by the comparativist.

Comparative Philosophy is not restricted by its content. It may take as subject-matter practically any theory or conceptual scheme the comparativist thinks worth studying. The difference with other branches of philosophy lies primarily in the method and the rigorous axioms or principles it enunciates and is constrained to follow thereafter. In fact, comparing has different levels of validity, credibility and ultimately interest. If it does not comport the restraints of self criticism, then it cannot properly be listed as philosophical endeavor. It may seem self evident, but I think that this is one of the most controversial points of the whole discipline. This is due to another comparative specificity which is often cited but rarely overtly faced. I speak of the mobilization of the cultural, personal, social, even political assumptions which surface time and again in the comparative process. By surfacing, I would like to underline that they are always there, more or less overtly conscious, at times serving as motivation, guidelines, even sanctioning or condemning the “other.”

Apart from the comparativist’s subjectivity –often disguised as “objective” criteria-, comparative philosophy has to elucidate its purpose. If the content covers practically all speculative fields, and the motivation needs to be clearly perceptible both to the comparativist and the reader, the purpose is also inscribed in the method. Is it to make the unfamiliar familiar by the mobilization of familiar intellectual tools? Is it an open questioning of both me and the other taking as a pretext the other’s otherness in order to explore conjointly our unknowability?  In sum, comparative philosophy is a formal discipline. It consists in a clearly enunciated method, which guides the project from the beginning to its ultimate conclusions.