Globalization is a far-ranging topic. It has as many perspectives as commentators. Western views of globalization often focus on economics and politics, while Eastern views often focus on philosophy and culture. Two Canadian scholars, Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis, seem to bridge both East and West in their studies.
In the early 1960s the Canadian communications pioneer Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) was one of the first scholars to seriously consider globalization. His perspective was shaped by a multicultural Canadian environment. From the inception, globalization was a concept intertwining both Eastern and Western civilizations. Impressed by another Canadian, the historian Harold Innis (1894–19…
McLuhan went one step further than Innis. While the mechanical world extended bodies in space, the electric and electronic technologies "extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned" (1964, p. 19). Hence we have the expression "the global village." But this village was not as harmonious …
Globalization is itself an equivocal term. There are as many definitions of globalization as there are interpreters. Globalization is not as value laden as "cultural imperialism" or "orientalism." The latter two terms are more prone to views of domination, especially by the West over the East. The following definitions are neutral. David Jary and Julia Jary define globa…
The Ming voyages were curtailed in 1433 and their records destroyed in 1479. Nevertheless, China was far out front of any other nation in the age of exploration. It was a half century ahead of the Portuguese traveling to the Gold Coast of Africa or of Columbus arriving in the West Indies. Although highly speculative, Gavin Menzies even proposes that Zheng He made a voyage to North America in 1421 …
According to Liu Kang, China in the early twenty-first century has a multifaceted view of globalization that stands in between two significant historical events: the disintegration of Soviet-led communism and a rapidly expanding transnational capitalism. For China, the challenge of globalization is to withstand the wholesale commodification of Western-style capitalism while still entering the worl…
Since this mandate, China's attitude to globalization relies on the primacy of cultural exchanges with the rest of the world alongside a reemergence and reappraisal of both classical Eastern and Western philosophy. Mutual topics of exchange include the self and society, rights and rites in Confucian ritual, and Chinese law and human rights in global perspective. The Twelfth International Co…
In April 2001 Habermas toured China, speaking on various topics, including globalization and communicative rationality. China is intrigued with his Weberian-inspired views on value rationality and instrumental (purposive) rationality, that is, in the relationship between the ends themselves and the means to ends in both economic and social actions. What distinguishes Habermas from Max Weber is a f…
In June 2002 the Gadamer translator Richard Palmer explained hermeneutics to China in his lecture tour. As a close associate and student of Gadamer, Palmer offered the first comprehensive outline on hermeneutics for a North American audience and did the same for China three decades later. In recovering its ancient world, China wishes to employ exegetical strategies for regenerating universal claim…
While Gadamer's rhythmic style of thinking parallels Confucius in many ways, Heidegger's reclusive mountain life parallels the Daoist and Buddhist perspectives that he revered. In lectures at Beidaihe, Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhu in Anhui Province in the summers of 2001 and 2002, Jay Goulding, accompanying Cheng Chung-Ying and Palmer, explained the interactions between Heidegger�…
After the deaths of Oda and Toyotomi, Tokugawa ended another century of conflict at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600 that marked the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Lasting until 1868, the Tokugawa peace undertook a policy of sakoku (closed country) or national seclusion that officially saw the banning of Christianity, the revival of Shinto, and the suspicion of foreign philosophies, includin…
Following World War II, Japan's inventive role in communication technologies enhanced global perspectives on Japan itself. The exportation of cultural artifacts from Tokugawa's era sees a parallel in the technological products of computers, VCRs, and videocassette tapes in the early twenty-first century. Not only these technologies but their contents are part of Japan's changi…
Concerning the reception of Western philosophers of global issues, Japan's reaction is somewhat more guarded than China's. Heidegger is an exception. His work is still read with excitement because of the early contact with renowned Japanese scholars such as Kuki Shuzo and Nishitani Keiji. Heidegger's compassion for mutual understanding of Eastern and Western life in a global c…
Benedetti, Paul, and Nancy DeHart, eds. Forward through the Rearview Mirror: Reflections on and by Marshall McLuhan. Toronto: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1996. Chang Chung-yuan. "Commentary on J. Glenn Gray's 'Splendor of the Simple.'" Philosophy East and West 20, no. 3 (July 1970): 241–246. Cheng Chun-Ying. "An Onto-Hermeneutic Interpretation of Twentiet…
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