How the World Thinks

A survey of philosophy across the world's major traditions, organised by theme rather than by place or period, subtitled A Global History of Philosophy. Baggini, trained in Western analytic philosophy, sets out to understand how Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Islamic thought, along with oral traditions and Western philosophy, approach the same questions, and how each tradition's assumptions shape its culture. The book has four main parts. The first, on what the world knows, compares insight and reason, the role of logic, and the authority of scripture and tradition. The second, on how the world is, looks at time, nature and the place of the transcendent. The third, on who we are, contrasts the Buddhist doctrine of no-self, the relational self of East Asian thought and the individual self of the modern West. The fourth, on how the world lives, considers harmony, virtue, moderation, justice and liberty. Throughout, Baggini stresses differences of emphasis rather than neat oppositions, and he closes by asking what a global philosophy would require.

It widens a Western reader's sense of what philosophy is, and shows how deep assumptions about knowledge, self and society differ across cultures.