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This paper traces the history of comparative philosophy and points to a transition toward post-comparative philosophy. It is argued that, theoretically speaking, comparative philosophy was created by making a distinction between Western and non-Western philosophy and then re-entering this distinction into one of its sides, namely non-Western philosophy. Historically speaking, comparative philosophy was preceded by Orientalist academic disciplines such as Indology and Sinology founded in the 19th century, as well as by the establishment of disciplines like "Chinese Philosophy" in non-Western countries. With the emergence of the field of comparative philosophy in the 20th century, two camps developed: one focusing on difference and the other on sameness. Post-comparative philosophy, it is argued, moves beyond difference and sameness and engages in diverse philosophical endeavours by employing sources from various traditions without constituting a specific field based on culturalist distinctions.

This essay argues that comparative and transcultural philosophy are interdependent, and so opting for only one of the two is an impossibility. The comparative approach persists as long as we distinguish identities and make differences. As long as people do not speak only one language, the need to move between different languages and to translate, and thus the need to relate and compare different possibilities of philosophical articulation, will remain. Any attempt to free oneself from the problem of cultural identity is doomed to failure, as it leads to further entrapment in the very same problem. Comparative philosophy works with more or less fixed identities, transcultural philosophy transforms them and thereby creates new identities. Those two approaches combined constitute what I call intercultural philosophy.
In this essay I try to explain the relation between comparative and transcultural philosophy by connecting François Jullien's "comparative" and Martin Heidegger's "transcultural" understanding of "Being" (Sein) and "Between" (Zwischen). In part 1 I argue that by turning Between and Being into opposing paradigms of Chinese and Greek thinking, respectively, Jullien causes both to become more or less fixed representatives of different cultural identities within a comparative framework: Greek thinking ossifies into traditional metaphysics, and Chinese thinking ossifies into the non-metaphysical thinking of immanence. Part 2 argues that Heidegger takes a decisively different direction. He explores the Between in Being, and even makes an attempt to think of Being as Between. Heidegger's invocation of "Greekdom" is undoubtedly Eurocentric. But, ironically, Heidegger's "Greek thinking" is less Eurocentric than Jullien's "Chinese thinking", because he discovers the "Chinese" Between in the midst of "Greek" Being. Part 3 touches upon the task of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. While modern Chinese philosophers frequently speak about Chinese philosophy in European terms, Heidegger's work points to the possibility of speaking about European philosophy in Chinese terms. Because Jullien and Heidegger both connect Greek and Chinese thought, it seems to me that the discussion of their different approaches is helpful in clarifying perspectives for intercultural philosophy between China and Europe.

I will argue for three points. The first is on the need to make Chinese philosophy a world philosophy. The second point is that, in order to promote Chinese philosophy as a world philosophy we should not historicize philosophy. Philosophy and history are two different disciplines. As important as historical context is, overemphasizing it or even taking philosophy merely as a matter of intellectual history makes it difficult for non-specialists to study Chinese philosophy, and is therefore counter-productive to advancing it as a world philosophy. A good balance is thus needed in order to develop Chinese philosophy in response to contemporary needs and not to exclude a large number of non-specialists from studying and drawing on it. My third point is that comparative philosophy is the most effective way to study, examine and develop Chinese philosophy as a world philosophy. Comparative philosophy provides a much needed bridge across different cultures for philosophy to connect on the world stage.

Kitarō Nishida introduces the concept of "inverse correlation" (Jp. gyakutaiō 逆対応) in his final work, The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview, which he uses to illuminate the relation between finite and infinite, human and divine/buddha, such that the greater the realization of human limitation and finitude, the greater that of the limitless, infinite divine or buddhahood. This essay explores the applicability of the logic and rhetoric of inverse correlation in the cases of the early Daoist Zhuangzi, medieval Japanese Buddhist Shinran, and modern Protestant Christian Kierkegaard, as well as broader ramifications for contemporary philosophy of religion.

It is common knowledge that Martin Heidegger's attempts at engaging non-Western philosophy are very much a construct of his own making. This article in no way seeks to disagree with those observations, but argues two things: first, that Heidegger's "dialogue" with his two main other sources of inspiration, the ancient Greek thinkers and the German poets, is not different in kind or in principle from his engagement with East Asia. One can of course quite easily argue that Heidegger's main interest was the ancient Greek thinkers, and then the poets, and only lastly Asia. But this hierarchy in preference does not make Heidegger's approach different in kind or in principle. Second, I argue that there is an important place in comparative philosophy for the type of thinking displayed by Heidegger in this kind of Auseinandersetzung (confrontation) with—and "appropriation" of—Asian (or Greek, or Poetic) thought.

The article asks why, in Western universities, the success of the academic field of comparative philosophy has so far failed to significantly diversify the curricula of academic philosophy. It suggests that comparative philosophy has mainly relied on the same approaches that have made academic philosophy Eurocentric, namely, on the history of philosophy as the main mode of teaching and researching philosophy. Further, post-comparative philosophy and transcultural studies are presented as providing tools to address the foundations of the institutional parochialism of academic philosophy, while preserving one of the most fundamental tenets of philosophy—the quest for universal knowledge that transcends cultural particularities.

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The article continues the polemics on the problems of interaction of philosophical cultures in the era of globalization, which was started at the meetings of the Round Table "Geography of Rationality". The author gives answers to critical questions, explains the methodology and principles of her work with Indian philosophical texts. A short research of the meta-term "cognitive subject" is an example of her methods. The analysis of cognitive subject aimed to justify the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in Indian epistemic culture, the cornerstones of Western epistemic culture, since Modern times. The justification was carried out by comparing the generalized model of the cognitive subject, abstracted from the writings of empiricists and rationalists of the XVII–XVIII centuries, with the generalized models of the cognitive subject, reconstructed on the basis of authoritative writings of three variants of Indian epistemological teachings: Advaita Vedānta, Jainism and Buddhism. From the author's point of view, the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in India leads to the non-classical problem of pluralism of epistemic cultures, and the exploration of the meta-term "cognitive subject" allows us to find, on the one hand, intersections in the contents of epistemologies in Indian philosophy and Western metaphysics of Modern times, and on the other, their incompatible contents, which are specific manifestations of pluralism of epistemic cultures. For her reconstruction of the cognitive subject models the author takes the principle of "double perspective" in combination with the methods of hermeneutical and logical analysis of philosophical terms. The principle determinates the consideration of the theoretical object from two sides: European and Indian. Having appeared in the Western epistemic culture, these methods effectively work to objectify the results of socio-humanitarian research, thanks to which they are becoming increasingly widespread among non-Western cross-cultural philosophers. When the author applies the method of logical analysis to justify the absence of the concepts of reason and rationality in India, she is guided by the rules of logical semantics and the principles of semiotics. The compared terms, Western and Indian, are considered as signs with their own meanings and senses. The senses are understood as sets of predicates important for solving the author's task. The author of the article, taking into account the experience of famous philosophers, negatively assesses the possibility of solving the problem of unambiguously correct translation.