Julian Baggini says: “Comparative philosophy – study in two or more philosophical traditions – is left almost entirely to people working in anthropology or cultural studies” (The long read, 25 September). It is unclear how far the “almost entirely” part of the claim is meant to lead us, but it reads more like a disclaimer than an accurate understanding of the real picture.

In medieval Spain, Jewish, Muslim and Christian philosophers happily swapped ideas. Leibniz was interested in the philosophy of China, and Schopenhauer in that of India. If the context of the remark is focused on the present or recent past, I would point to such works as my own Wisdom, Intuition and Ethics, published nearly 20 years ago, which drew on Chinese and Indian as well as western philosophical traditions. It may be a relatively lonely furrow that some of us have been ploughing, but comparative philosophy is not such startlingly new ground.

Trevor Curnow

Former professor of philosophy at the University of Cumbria

• As well as the philosophy that looks directly at the “big questions that concern us all”, as referred to by Julian Baggini, there is also a valid type of philosophy that focuses on the detailed analysis of arguments. Analytic philosophy considers small, technical questions. This can frustrate those looking for the big answers, but can be an important antidote to the ways big-answer philosophy can go, as Baggini admits, badly and dangerously astray.

And yes, analytic philosophy does claim for itself a universality. The fact that analytic philosophy happened to arise first in early modern Europe, along with modern science, engineering and mathematics, is perhaps the least interesting thing about it, and about the other universal disciplines. These constitute a universal heritage for all humanity.

Ian Dunbar

Warrington

• It is remarkable how completely Julian Baggini writes out of history the Christian (and Jewish) contribution to our understanding of time. The 300 years starting at the eighth century BC was also the time of Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the other prophets. Augustine in the fourth century AD anticipated big bang physics when he insisted time was created together with matter. But the extract ends with the idea of “progress” as “a relic of the Christian view of history as universal narrative”. This idea is false, and Baggini should know better than to suggest it. “Progress” is an Enlightenment idea that is semi-Christian (at best). Christians insist on a “story” (with beginning and end), but certainly not on “progress”.

Chris Jeynes

Tredegar, Gwent

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