A Tacit Form of Comparative Philosophy: Reflection on a case in rational choice theory

摘要

The main objective of this paper is to offer some methodological reflectionrnon a certain form of doing philosophy in a comparative spirit that has nornexplicit aim for doing comparative philosophy in the familiar sense, i.e., thernsense of comparative work between different philosophical traditions, orrnbetween full-fledged theories well-acknowledged as philosophical or itsrnequivalent in different cultures. Nevertheless, the special form of comparativernphilosophy I shall consider will have obvious as well as potential implicationsrnfor comparative philosophy in that familiar sense. In other words, Irnam not twisting the notion of comparative philosophy into some farstretchedrnsense in which any cross-paradigmatic or even cross-theoreticalrnstudy could count as doing philosophy in a comparative spirit. Rather, myrnbroad or more inclusive sense of comparative philosophy will still keep arncentral feature intact it must draw on "genetic" or intellectual raw materialsrnof different cultures to make hypotheses and get inspirations for new ideas.rnThis may still sound very vague, and it is rightly so; this so-called "tacit"rnform of comparative philosophy can hardly be stated in dearer absiractrnterms without demonstration through some study of a concrete case in arnparticular area of philosophical research.