IS THERE AN EASTERN CIVILIZATION?

ŞENGÜL ÇELİK

ABSTRACT

Contemporary Western philosophy has entered a new phase in which contrasting
opinions of currents such as pragmatism, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism
and post-structuralism are sometimes blended. Beside the philosophers influenced
by Eastern philosophy to a certain extent like Friedrich Nietzsche, Rene Guenon, and
Martin Heidegger, some thinkers have dealt with Chinese-Indian-Japanese philosophies
for a long time comparing those philosophies with western philosophy. Alparslan
Açıkgenç an academician from Turkey assumes that the civilizations emerged through
the peoples’ “worldviews”. For him the difference of the civilizations come from
different “worldviews”. Only the transparent worldviews that are universalized can
build civilizations. There are only three universalized worldviews therefore there are
three civilizations. In this paper we shall try to show that there are more than three
civilizations even on the basis of Açıkgenç’s own theory. It will be stated that “yoga” is a
“science” even by Açıkgenç’s criteria and east has its own civilization.