The Center for Comparative Philosophy (CCP) at Duke was inaugurated in 2014 and is dedicated to teaching and research into the philosophies that animate different traditions.  We live in multicultural, multiethnic, cosmopolitan worlds. Different traditions rest on different philosophies — different metaphysics, epistemologies, and ethics, sometimes different views of the nature of persons and the human good.  Understanding alternative philosophies that are lived by different people is a necessary condition for tolerant living.  But more importantly it is a wonderful tool for philosophical imagination, for exploring the resources in other traditions for better thinking about the nature of things, human knowledge, the good life, and politics.

The Center works to bring distinguished scholars who work in comparative philosophy to Duke, to hold seminars and roundtables and to teach classes on cross-cultural philosophy, and to produce scholarship that advances cross-cultural philosophy.  Our current interests and talents are primarily in Chinese and Indian philosophy. But we are branching out at every opportunity and recently completed and new projects involve work in African, Amerindian, and Islamic philosophies.