Eastern vs Western philosophy

In the XX century, an oriental trend became very strong in the arts, in philosophy, and even in science. European artists explored the traditional and professional art of the East, oriental elements became popular in fashions, foods and architecture, there has been a real boom in martial arts, and various oriental philosophies captured the minds and imagination of Europeans as if they brought them a completely new ideas and view of the world.

But are those oriental elements so unusual for Europe? Well, they have developed to a greater degree in the East, but the analogous trends were known in the European tradition too, and no revelations can be expected from the Eastern arts and philosophies - just a shift of attention. The Universe is an integrity, and the human spirituality reflects this integrity as a part of it.

Many Western thinkers spoke of the integrity of the world in the XX century, often mentioning the Eastern philosophers' words about that. However, there is nothing in the philosophic tradition of the East that could not be found in the early European philosophers, and the centuries-old ideas of India, China and Japan have been also expressed by European thinkers of the past, though in a different form and in a specific context. Ancient myths presented the world as a syncretic whole; of the later times, I could mention such great figures as Pierre Gassendi, or Dom Deschamps. Also, I might refer to the classical universalism of Goethe, and to the romantic philosophy of Hegel. Most interesting ideas can be found in Marxism, though they are too scattered in the works of its founders, and I do not know any concise description that would agree with the spirit of the originals.

Recent discoveries in the theory of scale formation indicate that all the arts follow the same sequence of stages in their development, which can be described in a universal way comprising both the European and non-European lines.