To the astute solutions suggested by Gillian Tett (Opinion, FT Weekend, January 25) for the western “epistemological crisis”, I would add another: meditation. Not in the sense of meditating “on” something — which it often means in the Christian tradition. But in the sense of not “thinking about” anything. This means emptying the mind — letting thoughts in, not rejecting them, and letting them out again, not hanging on to them; or it means focusing on one’s breathing or on some object in front of one (a tree, for example). This draws on the Buddhist and Taoist traditions, revived by Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now (which my teenage son recommended to me).
The advantage of this is that it calms the mind. You can do this all day, as a Taoist monk put it, when waiting for the bus for example. For the problem identified by Tett arises out of anger, and generally an inability to calm down, a prerequisite for rational thought in the “enlightenment” tradition. We could add the wisdom of the Buddha to that of Aristotle.
Antony Black
Emeritus professor in the History of Political Thought, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, UK