Filosofinių įžvalgų paralelės senovės graikų ir kinų mąstymo tradicijose (herakleitas, platonas, yijing (,,permainų knyga“), laozi)
The parallels of philosophical insights in the ancient greek and chinese thinking traditions (Heraclitus, Plato, Yijing, Daodejing)

Summary/Abstract: First of all it is argued that at the present phase of its development the comparative cultural research should focus not on differences but rather on similarities between different civilizations. The search for similarities and for a common ground for human values that transcend the cultural differences is unavoidable and especially urgent in the face of global challenges. A dialogue between different civilizations should be based on universal human values which can be viewed as a common denominator of various culturally differentiated modes and traditions of human thought. This common denominator of human thought could show that in the face of fundamental metaphysical and existential experience which is common for all human beings cultural differences become insignificant and existentially irrelevant. In the first part of the article three types of similarities are spelled out: 1) the similarities that are nothing more than pure coincidences which may be interesting but are philosophically irrelevant; 2) the similarities that are the result of direct or indirect cultural influences, and 3) the similarities that are neither pure coincidences nor cultural influences but reveal themselves as typological universals. Among all of the typologically universal cultural similarities the universal philosophical insights into the very ground and nature of reality are the most important and philosophically interesting. The second part of the article discusses the parallels of philosophical insights in the ancient Greek and Chinese thinking traditions. The insights of Heraclitus and Plato are compared with the philosophical revelations of the Chinese Taoist texts, the Yijing and the Daodejing. A case is made for a typological similarity between the Taoist notion of hexagram and the Platonic notion of eidos, idea. Almost all of the 64 hexagrams of the Yijing as well as the Forms (eidç) in Plato’s philosophy are logically constituted of the “same” and the “other ” or, to put it another way, of the “identical” and the “different”. Afterwards are presented the typological similarities between the insights of the Daodejing, on the one hand, and those of Heraclitus and Plato, on the other. The most interesting among these parallels is the Taoist notion of Dao as the “form without a form” which is reminiscent of Plato’s understanding of eidos as the eidos aeides, i.e., the “formless form”. The conclusion is made that the more metaphysically deep are the insights of Greek and Chinese thinkers into the nature of reality, the more similar they are despite their cultural (genetical) unrelatedness. And vice versa, the more these speculations are concerned with social and anthropological problems, the more dissimilar and culturally specific they are. The metaphysically deep insights into the nature of reality, though culturally (genetically) unrelated, reveal themselves as typologically universal even on the level of their linguistic expression.

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