Eastern Philosophy: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Vedānta
To speak of “Eastern philosophy” in the singular is, strictly, a Western simplification: the label gathers ancient and mutually independent traditions from China, India, and Japan, separated by languages, problems, and deeply different presuppositions. What unites them is not a shared doctrine but the fact that — in parallel with the Greek origins of philosophy, during what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age (c. 8th–3rd century BCE) — they developed rigorous, systematic answers to the great questions about reality, knowledge, the self, and right conduct. ...