Publication Details

Abstract

Long before multiculturalism and globalization became the controversial buzzwords of our times, Michel Foucault, in a brief and little remarked interview, made the bold suggestion that the future of philosophy, now in grave crisis, may depend on its encounter with Asian thinking. „It is the end of the era of occidental philosophy," Foucault declared to his priestly interlocutors on this 1978 visit to a Zen Temple in Japan. „Thus, if there is to be a philosophy of the future, it must be born outside of Europe or it must be born as a consequence of encounters and impacts (percussions) between Europe and non-Europe." Whether or not the era of European philosophy is over, I am firmly convinced that philosophy's brightest future is through closer en- counters between Asian and Western thought.