Paul Masson-Oursel was a pioneering figure in early comparative philosophy whose interdisciplinary education in philosophy, Oriental studies, psychology, sociology and anthropology allowed him to formulate a novel approach to philosophical inquiry. He insisted that no single philosophical tradition “can put itself forward as co-extensive with the human mind,” and that every tradition – however different – must be studied comparatively as historical material. Oursel’s comparative method treats philosophical ideas as “materials as real as any other data” found in beliefs and written traditions, and emphasizes the positive insights gained by relating ideas to their cultural contexts rather than isolating them.

philosophical anthropology, comparative philosophy, East-West traditions, humanism, intercultural dialogue.

Paul Masson-Oursel, Comparative Philosophy. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1926.

Paul Masson-Oursel, La Philosophie comparée, 2nd ed. Paris: Alcan, 1931.

Paul Masson-Oursel, Esquisse d’une histoire de la philosophie indienne. Paris: Geuthner, 1923.

Paul Masson-Oursel, La Pensée en Orient. Paris: Armand Colin, 1949.

Paul Masson-Oursel, “L’homme des civilisations orientales,” in Pour un nouvel humanisme, Neuchâtel: Baconnière, 1949, p. 75.

Paul Masson-Oursel, “True philosophy is comparative philosophy,” Philosophy East and West 1, no.1 (1951): 6–9.

Léo Bernard, “Paul Masson-Oursel (1882–1956): Inside and Outside the Academy,” in Occult Roots of Religious Studies, ed. Egil Asprem (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), pp. 187–215.

Bimal Matilal, “Pluralism, Relativism, and Interaction between Cultures,” in Eliot Deutsch (ed.), Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), pp. 141–161.

F.G.Crookshank (trans.), Comparative Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000), Introduction.

Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Bryan W. Van Norden, “Comparative Philosophy? Let’s Fire the Canon,” APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Public Interest 12 (2013).

Max Scheler, The Human Place in the Cosmos (Washington, DC: Corpus, 1924).

Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.

Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, tr. Joseph Ward Swain (New York: Free Press, 1915).

Emily Apter, Comparative Criticism: Anomalies of Knowledge in Comparative Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.