Horn on the Difference Between Western and Eastern Philosophy
"Their eyes are open and they see the whorl before them...it is perceived but means nothing to the owner of the eyes. Silk said once that we are like a man who can see only shadows, and thinks the shadow of an ox the ox and a man's shadow the man. These people reverse that. They see the man, but see him as a shadow cast by the leaves of a bough stirred by the wind. Or at least they see him like that unless he shouts at them or strikes them."
On Blue's Waters, Chapter 2
Horns description of the Hindu citizens the Blue settlement, Gaon, offers a picture of the differences between the Western worldview founded on Plato and St. Augustus, and that of Eastern Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Zoroastrianism.
At first it seems that the "reverse" views to which Horn refers are only different in the definition of the observer, for both see only shadows, but the Easterner recognizes that the shadow is merely a shadow. But actually the difference between the Platonism and Hinduism presented here is that the Westerner misunderstands that the material is the actual, the real, when it is only a shadow of something like itself, but more significant. On the other hand, the Easterner sees the material world as merely an incidental eventuality of something less significant (to him) than the original object appeared to be.
The failing of the Westerner is that he mistakes the apparent good as "The Good" itself rather than a "shadow" of the Good, and the mistake is corrected by Plato. The failing of the Eastern philosopher is that he identifies both good and evil as only waves from a stone cast in the water -- a stone that is a metaphor for something in a sense less personal than a piece of unbroken gravel near the perimeter of a parking lot.
That this is intended as an indictment on the Eastern view cannot be denied for Horn illustrates that this model can never be accepted other than intellectually. When a man shouts at you or strikes you, his evil has ceased to be philosophically gray and become stark. No one can truly live as though good and evil are merely shadows of the same thing. That even the Easterner calls one "good" and the other "evil" is evidence enough of that.
This is the gist of Horn's point of view. It could be argued that Horn's view is not Wolfe's, because Horn is not in his right mind. However, it is not unreasonable that Wolfe would own this view as well. Anyway, Wolfe has equated divine revelation with weak sanity. Consider his answer to a question on the Urth.net mailing list:
Question: "Why did Auk/Tartaros kidnap Hyacinth, and why, subsequently, did he let her go?"
Gene Wolfe: "Because Tartaros had told him to bring a woman. He released her as he recovered from his brain injury, was able to think more clearly, and realized that Hyacinth was not the woman he should bring. Putting it another way, he released her because Tartaros told him to. These answers are not as disparate as they may appear."