This book provides a series of introductions to seven "schools" of non-western thought—Mesopotamian, ancient African, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, Islamic, and North American Indian. Each mode of thought is examined for its doctrines and practices, with detailed references to authoritative histories and commentators. These essays represent a distillation of a series of yearlong courses taught by the author at the University of Chicago. A major result of these inquiries is what they reveal to us about the philosophical tradition distinctive to the West, especially with respect to the status of nature, of causality, and of moral judgment. In the background of these "multicultural" inquiries is an awareness of what proper political order consists of and requires.

Author Biography: George Anastaplo, author of numerous books, teaches at the University of Chicago, Loyola University. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.