Perspective Chapter: Liberal Arts Education Worldwide Unlimited Inc. – The Unspeakable Basis of Comparative Humanities

Abstract

This essay, originally a keynote speech for celebratory occasions in East Asian universities, works from the personal experience of the author as a professor teaching and researching in Macao and visiting other universities of the region. The essay espouses a philosophy that moves from what cannot be said, the ineffable, as the basis for thinking both in the East, with its mystical philosophies focused on what escapes formulation in language, and the West, beginning from the Socratic wisdom of knowing nothing. This negative moment of encountering the other and the unknown, which entails a moment of relinquishing of language, is shown to be crucial to knowledge in the humanities and to resist the pressures toward specialization at the university. These considerations articulate an alternative vision of what liberal arts education can be today that is informed by both Eastern and Western cultural traditions. Their insights can be applied to pragmatic fields and be plied to place even present and future business relations in the perspective of their historical background and universally human grounding.