Recover - despite their fragmentary state and historical suppression and distortion - the true original teachings of the much-slandered Sophists, Cynics, Stoics, Pyrrhonists, later Academics, Epicurieans, Atomists, Pythagoreans, etc. And trace their profound and undeniable connection to parallel traditions in ancient India, not only original Buddhism but all of the so-called Śramaṇa (including specially the Jains) and Nāstika schools as well as the Nyâya and Vaisheshika.
The common grounds:
1) A highly sophisticated critical and formal theory of language, logic, argumentation and epistemology.
2) Find the original pure form of the core Upanishadic and Yogic teachings as well as the Secret of the Golden Flower and Platonic-Plotinean teachings present in high antiquity in both the East and the West. That there can be no science of consciousness, philosophy of mind that is not rooted in first-person experience (or rather first-transperson experience). Explain the significance of Schopenhauer for understanding super-individual states of being and consciousness.
3) An enlightened humanistic ethics and social-political philosophy: cosmopolitanism, encyclopedism, democracy, human rights, animal rights, anti-slavery, rejection of artificial social hierarchies with no basis in nature, character or merit, rejection of exploitation, war, xenophobia, capitalism, unverifiable claims and religious superstition. Develop and integrate Schopenhauer's fundamental ethical insights.
a) A theory of nature and the harmony and order of world reflected in the harmony and order of the soul.
b) A theory of gender, love, beauty, communion and friendship.
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