Reviews the book, Learning from Asian philosophy by Joel J. Kupperman . In this excellent and tremendously informative book, Kupperman adopts a significantly different tack by showing that many important Eastern texts ought not be considered merely examples of “wisdom literature,” but rather are genuinely significant philosophical texts, structured with carefully thought-out and insightful arguments. Throughout his well-written and accessible treatment, the author takes great pains to demonstrate the many substantive ways in which contemporary philosophers might employ Asian thinking (...) as they grapple with some of the most pressing intellectual questions of our day. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Merleau-Ponty, interiority and exteriority, psychic life and the world by Dorothea Olkowski and James Morley . This book is a brief but informative and thoughtful anthology brings together the work of a number of contemporary scholars in philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and comparative literature to demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty's understanding of the psyche and the material world has not only tremendous implications for philosophy, but also for the natural and social sciences. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

This article deals with quotatives–overt marks that indicate quotations–consisting in iti/ti or containing vuttaṃ which are used in Pāli commentarial literature to signal the occurrence of a quotation. We distinguish two types, namely, “general quotatives” and “individual quotatives”. The former are universally valid. They are widely acknowledged and used in various text corpora over several centuries. The latter are defined by an author solely for usage in his commentary. In the first part of our contribution we describe the implications (...) connected with the usage of quotatives, and depict the specific problems which may arise when a text including “individual quotatives” is tacitly borrowed. In the second part we present some of the most common “general quotatives” formed with the words iti/ti and vuttaṃ. We aim at pointing out in which text layers a quotative is applied, for which text layers it is used, when it was in and when out of fashion. (shrink)

Festschrift in honor of 60th birtha anniversary of Ganesh Umakant Thite, Sanskritist; comprises contributed articles on various aspects of Vedic literature, Hinduism and Indic philosophy.

The Review was founded in 1961 to bring an existential and phenomenological approach to the understanding of human experience. With a primary focus on the psychotherapeutic endeavor, the Review publishes original essays and first translations from the fields of literature and philosophy, as well as from psychology and psychiatry proper. The Review has published essays by nearly every major figure in the world, including Viktor Frankl, Eugene Gendlin, Jacques Lacan, R.D. Laing, RolloMay, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacob Needleman, Carl Rogers, and (...) Jean-Paul Sartre. In addition to continuing to publish original essays on a wide variety of general topics, in recent years the Review has published a series of special issues devoted to major figures in the field of existential psychology. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Reviews the book, Martin Buber: The hidden dialogue by Dan Avnon . In this exciting and instructive volume, the author carefully examines the main themes and thrusts of Martin Buber's radical philosophy of dialogue. In recent years it has become increasingly clear that Buber's vision of the basic nature of human existence is not only profound in its intellectual scope and sophistication, but also deeply disturbing in its moral and ethical implications. This fine book, however, seeks to redress this unfortunate (...) shortcoming in the literature—and, all things considered, does a more than adequate job of it. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The concepts of philosophy and imaginative literature have unclear boundaries and blurred edges; they can hardly be defined essentially in any fruitful manner. But we can talk of indicators of a text being philosophical or literary. The concepts of philosophy and literature are contestable. Further, there are no clear‐cut signs of cognitive progress in philosophy and literature. It is also far from certain that there are any philosophical or literary truths. Actually, works of philosophy and literature (...) deal more in possibilities than in actualities. In addition, fictional narratives play an important role in both philosophical and literary texts. Moreover, philosophy and literature share a tendency to thematize themselves, reflect on themselves. If, however, argumentation were to disappear entirely from all philosophical texts, while every literary text is dominated by argumentative discourse, then the concepts of literature and philosophy would become almost devoid of content. Despite this, there is no gap between philosophy and imaginative literature. (shrink)

The book is the first work of its kind where the scholar has collected the references to Jain doctrines from the vast literature of three systems of Indian Philosophy, namely Nyaya-vaisesika Vedanta and Buddhists for the first time. Organised in five chapters the observations of the scholar in the last chapter of conclusion is interestingly revealing.

Analyses The Problems Of Understanding Exegesis And Translation. Scrutinises Peculiariaties Of Grammar, Syntax, Diction, Style And Metaphor In Various Languages And Their Forms-Prose, Poetry, Drama Etc In India And Western Tradition-In English, German, French, Greek, Sanskrit And Pali Texts. Emphazises The Importance Of Classical Languages In Which Religion And Philosophical Works Have Been Written.

The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain expounds the scene of reading as one that produces an overwhelmed body exposed to uncontainable forms of violence. The book argues that the act of reading induces a representational instability that causes the referential function of language to collapse. This breakdown releases a type of “linguistic pain” (Scarry; Butler; Hamacher) that indicates a constitutive wounding of the reading body. The wound of language marks a rupture between linguistic (...) reality and the phenomenal world. Exploring this rupture in various ways, the book brings together texts and genres from diverse traditions and offers close examinations of the rhetoric of masochism (Sacher-Masoch; Deleuze), the relation between reading and abuse (Nietzsche; Proust; Jelinek), the sublime experience of reading (Kant; Kafka; de Man), the “novel of the institution” (Musil; Campe), and literary suicide (Bachmann; Berryman; Okkervil River). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Negative Capability Reclaimed: Literature and Philosophy Contra PoliticsIhab HassanI began a few years ago to try to make space in my reckoning and imagining for the marvellous as well as the murderous.Seamus HeaneyTwo concerns cross in this essay: the first, explicit, regards the current condition of the academic humanities, their idioms and axioms, especially in America; the second, implicit, regards my own need to confront criticism, its abstractions (...) that now enable, now disable, the profession and even more the experience of literature. Such concerns must mix speculation and autobiography, mix the pride with the pathos of mind.But I should admit it from the start: my title cries paradox. Negative capability reclaimed? Can reclamation dwell in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” as Keats thought, and can a critic aspire to the condition of a poet, in whom the “sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates consideration”? 1Mine, I repeat, is a hybrid critical discourse, touched by exasperation more than mystery. Yet negative capability can still serve us as emblem of certain qualities, attitudes, dispositions that we bring to literature, without turning that happy phrase into yet another slogan. Beyond the arrogance of transient ideologies, beyond the mawkishness of self-regard, negative capability may offer us a kind of patience, perhaps ascesis, the intellectual and, yes, spiritual equivalent of discipline in our moment. [End Page 305]IStated baldly, my proposition, which I will need continually to texture and qualify, is this: the prevalence of politics, the obsession with power, the unrelieved pressure of both in the university, skew our language, thought, values. Thus the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, between Homer and Plato, now cedes the field to a nastier agon between both and politics as GRIM (my acronym for the Great Rumbling Ideological Machine) grinds on. These are no abstractions; the clamorous evidence is all about, indicative even in its triviality, banality.Take a book blurb. Kathy Acker endorses a new, and quite intelligent work, entitled Male Matters, thus: “Calvin Thomas is able to hint at a way out of the prisonhouse of straight male identity.” Granted, this is but an ad in a university press catalogue. But what does the language reveal about the assumptions of academic discourse? “Prisonhouse,” really, for all unfortunate, straight males? Is a generalization of this kind permissible when blander generalizations about other groups raise such a hue and cry? Will straight African-American or Native American males feel “offended” by the statement? Or is it all a matter of restitution, categorical loyalty, political commitment? And when will that supreme fiction, the white, straight, bourgeois, rational male “subject” cease to prop up every ideological complaint?Thought blends into hype; words writhe; stereotypes become as transparent as the stereotypes they once repugned. But let us consider an example worthier of criticism. In his Inaugural Lecture as Robert Wallace Professor at the University of Melbourne, entitled “The Departure of English?” (the question mark risks disingenuousness), Professor Simon During inelegantly states: “The academic appropriation of the avant-garde transfiguration of values is happening as what I am calling the departure of English—in the relative decline of literary studies and cultural studies’ emergence.” 2 Professor During thus assumes, on behalf of cultural studies, the mantles of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, Hugo Ball—where is Antonin Artaud?—and Walter Benjamin, though none really had a mantle to bequeath. For a moment, the mind reels: Nietzscheans and poètes maudits, Pataphysicians and Dadaists, as apostles of cultural studies, of political correctness, group think, and GRIM? Involuntarily, the lines of William Butler Yeats, in “The Scholars,” sing out: “Lord, what would they say / Did their Catullus walk that way?” [End Page 306]We are all free, of course, to reinvent our ancestors and to derive later authority from what an earlier generation derided—free, this side of ludicrousness. But Professor During’s argument, a sort of academic conceit, discourages mere ridicule; it has pedagogical consequences. Thus he continues: “I am certainly not claiming a causal relation between modernism circa 1900 and academic cultural studies today. Rather I want to argue that cultural studies... (shrink)

Although the Kaula literature of the Newars did not give rise to a systematic philosophical school like that of their Kashmiri counterparts, I will argue in this article that philosophical thinking can be detected in Newar ritual texts. I do this by translating and analysing the unpublished _Kālīsūtra_, an important hymn found in Newar Uttarāmnāya liturgies whose transmission and composition will also be touched upon. This hymn indicates that the cult of Kālī in Nepal had a distinct ontological stance (...) tending towards a non-dualism which was world-affirming while also seeing consciousness as the ultimate reality. Several key conceptual strands of the _Sūtra_ such as the relationship between transcendence and immanence, reality and cognition and the divine and the body will be elaborated upon. In the process, I will show that the _Kālīsūtra_’s philosophy brings into sharper focus doctrines already present in the canonical Krama and thus displays many affinities with the Pratyabhijñā, a school which shares its cultic backdrop. (shrink)

On alienation in 20th century Indic poetry in English.

Contentless experience involves an absence of mental content such as thought, perception, and mental imagery. In academic work it has been classically treated as including states like those aimed for in Shamatha, Transcendental, and Stillness Meditation. We have used evidence synthesis to select and review 135 expert texts from within the three traditions. In this paper we identify the features of contentless experience referred to in the expert texts and determine whether the experiences are the same or different across the (...) practices with respect to each feature. We identify 65 features reported or implied in one or more practices, with most being reported or implied in all three. While there are broad similarities in the experiences across the traditions, we find that there are differences with respect to four features and possibly many others. The main difference identified is that Shamatha involves substantially greater attentional stability and vividness. Another key finding is that numerous forms of content are present in the experiences, including wakefulness, naturalness, calm, bliss/joy, and freedom. The findings indicate that meditation experiences described as contentless in the academic literature can in fact involve considerable variation, and that in many and perhaps most cases these experiences are not truly contentless. This challenges classical understandings in academic research that in these so-called contentless experiences all content is absent, and that the experiences are therefore an identical state of _pure consciousness_ or consciousness itself. Our assessment is that it remains an open question whether the experiences aimed for in the three practices should be classed as pure consciousness. Implications of our analysis for neuroscientific and clinical studies and for basic understandings of the practices are discussed. (shrink)

Although the works of the authors of the Golden Age of Latin Literature play an important formative role for Early Modern philosophers, their influence in Early Modern thought is, nowadays, rarely studied. Trying to bring this topic to light once again and following the seminal works of Kajanto (1979), Proietti (1985) and Akkerman (1985), I will target Spinoza’s Latin sources in order to analyze their place in his philosophy. On those grounds, I will offer an overview of the problems (...) of the reception of classical literature in Early Modernity and then dwell on the particular case of Ovid and Spinoza. The present paper will argue that although Spinoza’s references to Ovid fill a rhetorical purpose as suggested by the existing literature, these mentions have a prior philosophical motivation. That is, the references in the Ethics are not merely illustrative; instead, they indicate that Spinoza acknowledges Ovid’s beliefs about human experiences and deliberately elaborates on Ovid’s view to construct and defend his own theses. To this end, the paper will analyze some citations mapped by Proietti (1985) and add a new one in an attempt to enlarge the list of places and topics that merit further investigation. To conclude, I will point out how the references to Ovid are part of Spinoza’s own defense of the powers of imagination. (shrink)

BackgroundVulnerability is a key concept in traditional and contemporary bioethics. In the philosophical literature, vulnerability is understood not only to be an ontological condition of humanity, but also to be a consequence of contingent factors. Within bioethics debates, vulnerable populations are defined in relation to compromised capacity to consent, increased susceptibility to harm, and/or exploitation. Although vulnerability has historically been associated with older adults, to date, no comprehensive or systematic work exists on the meaning of their vulnerability. To fill (...) this gap, we analysed the literature on aged care for the meaning, foundations, and uses of vulnerability as an ethical concept.MethodsUsing PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of argument-based ethics literature in four major databases: PubMed, Embase®, Web of Science™, and Philosopher’s Index. These covered biomedical, philosophy, bioethical, and anthropological literature. Titles, abstracts, and full texts of identified papers were screened for relevance. The snowball technique and citation tracking were used to identify relevant publications. Data analysis and synthesis followed the preparatory steps of the coding process detailed in the QUAGOL methodology.ResultsThirty-eight publications met our criteria and were included. Publication dates ranged from 1984 to 2020, with 17 publications appearing between 2015 and 2020. Publications originated from all five major continents, as indicated by the affiliation of the first author. Our analyses revealed that the concept of vulnerability could be distinguished in terms of basic human and situational vulnerability. Six dimensions of older adults’ vulnerability were identified: physical; psychological; relational/interpersonal; moral; sociocultural, political, and economic; and existential/spiritual. This analysis suggested three ways to relate to older adults’ vulnerability: understanding older adults’ vulnerability, taking care of vulnerable older adults, and intervening through socio-political-economic measures.ConclusionsThe way in which vulnerability was conceptualised in the included publications overlaps with distinctions used within contemporary bioethics literature. Dimensions of aged care vulnerability map onto defining features of humans, giving weight to the claim that vulnerability represents an inherent characteristic of humans. Vulnerability is mostly a value-laden concept, endowed with positive and negative connotations. Most publications focused on and promoted aged care, strengthening the idea that care is a defining practice of being human. (shrink)

Although recent empirical research suggests that there is a gender gap in Anglophone philosophy, no research has been done on the representation of women in non‐Anglophone philosophy. The present study constitutes a first step toward filling this void in the literature by providing empirical evidence on the representation of female students and female faculty members in Greek universities' departments of philosophy. Our findings indicate that the underrepresentation of female students in philosophy is not a universal phenomenon, since female students (...) constitute the majority of philosophy students in Greece at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels. However, our findings also suggest that the low number of women in philosophy at the faculty level is not a problem unique to Anglophone philosophy, since female faculty members comprise, on average, only 29% of philosophy faculty members in Greece. In order to explain these findings, we argue, first, that the teaching of philosophy at the secondary level may motivate female students in Greece to enter and persist in philosophy, and, second, that since the gender gap at the faculty level in Greece cannot be attributed to the low number of female students in the philosophy pipeline, the causes of women's poor participation in philosophy at the faculty level should be looked for elsewhere. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to reflect on the origins and meanings of names describing investment practices that integrate a consideration of environmental, social and corporate governance issues in the academic literature. A review of 190 academic papers spanning the period from 1975 to mid-2009 was conducted. This exploratory study evaluated the associations and disassociations of the primary name assigned to this genre of investment with variables grouped into five domains, namely Primary Ethical Position, Investment Strategy, Publication Date, (...) Regions Covered and Periodical Type. The study indicated that papers coded as expressing a deontological ethical position were more frequently associated with the name Ethical Investment , whereas those with an ambiguous ethical position were less frequently associated with Ethical Investment . Three investment strategies (positive screening, best-in-class and cause-based investing) were unusually associated with the primary name Responsible Investment . A strong preference for the name Ethical Investment was noted in the United Kingdom, and contrasted starkly with an apparent aversion for this name in the United States. The name Ethical Investment is significantly more frequently used in journals dealing with ethics, business ethics and philosophy than in finance, economic and investment journals. Finally, the study yielded some weak hints that the name Responsible Investment might perhaps be linked to an egoist ethical position. On the basis of this, and because these have already been substantively linked through the Principles for Responsible Investment in the popular discourse, we follow the heuristic tradition set by Sparkes (Business Ethics Eur Rev 10:194–201, 2001 ), and propose that Responsible Investment be defined as ‘Investment practices that integrate a consideration of ESG issues with the primary purpose of delivering higher-risk-adjusted financial returns’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy, Dissent, and Nonconformity, 1689–1920Bruce KuklickAlan P. F. Sell. Philosophy, Dissent, and Nonconformity, 1689–1920. Cambridge: James Clark & Co., 2004. Pp. 296. Cloth, £50.00This is a competent, clearly written, and authoritative exploration of its topic, in some respects a labor of love, for the author is both a pastor and a student of theology. Sell comprehensively examines the proliferation of dissenting academies and nonconformist colleges of England and (...) Wales, with some excursions into the Scottish scene, from the Toleration Act of 1689 through the early twentieth century. For the 230 years of this study, a great variety of schools, many of which had only a brief moment of existence, and most of which were barely funded, offered training for the ministers of over a dozen protestant denominations in Britain. Often one man provided instruction in subjects as diverse as mathematics, science, and literature—as well as religious fields.Sell does not focus on ministerial training or even theology, but the way in which the nonconforming religious élite expounded on and was taught philosophy. Thus, one sees how a diverse group that surely had sectarian needs in mind was also interested in grasping how thinkers outside its belief system approached basic problems of human existence. Over time Descartes and other continental rationalists, Locke and the Cambridge Platonists, Kant and Hegel, and the nineteenth-century British idealists were taught by the dissenting professoriate. In summarizing its interpretation, Sell presents a history of modern Anglo-European philosophy as it was refracted in the minds of (some) English-speaking Protestants. Their emphases are not unexpected: empiricism is somewhat devalued, and rationalistic and a priori modes of thinking perhaps inflated. The ethical implications of epistemology and metaphysics are most carefully explicated, and what is taken to be most strategic for [End Page 211] Reformed theology is underscored. Overall, if one is tempted to generalize (as Sell himself does not), the positions reached are credible and not out of line with the philosophical cutting edge of each era.For the most part the dissenters were not themselves creative philosophers of the first rank, but Sell rightly puts forward (206) a short list of thinkers at these schools who have genuine claims to merit, and my own very short list would include Richard Price, James Martineau, and Robert Mackintosh.The author uses diverse strategies to give readers a sense of the effort of these mostly forgotten men. To some extent the book is a biographical compendium, with brief sections on individual or paired thinkers. But Sell also offers coverage by denomination, and he adds a series of discussions by topics—on an assortment of recurring dilemmas in moral philosophy and on apologetics. A final and most useful feature of the book is a trio of indices, in addition to the very full notes and a complete bibliography, mainly of the writings of the many authors cited. Two of the indices are standard, but helpful, lists of persons and topics; the third one is a compendium of all the academies Sell treats, as well as their denominational affiliation, and the duration of their existences.Philosophy, Dissent, and Nonconformity has the defects of its virtues. It is encyclopedic in nature, available for reference but unlikely to be read as a synthetic book, except by devotees of a certain kind of historical philosophical theology. The author also presumes his readers are unlikely to tackle the volume unless they have a prior attraction. That is, the book is written without much contextual explication, and attention to the needs of the non-specialist certainly would have made the volume of wider interest. The work is still relatively brief, under 300 pages, and because of its character, I would have liked to have seen a series of maps that pinpointed the whereabouts of the dissenting schools, giving the reader a visual sense of when and where they arose and declined among particular denominations, and that informed us of what the relations were among the successive professors who defined the learning.Bruce KuklickUniversity of PennsylvaniaCopyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

"Alterity and Criticism: Retracing Time in Modern Literature" argues that the role of time in canonical literature underlies the experience of alterity and requires a new hermeneutic to clarify how the self emerges in literary texts. Romantic poetry from Goethe to Shelley and the modern prose tradition from Flaubert to Butor constitute different traditions but also indicate, on a textual basis, how alterity is crucial to reading, thus encouraging us to interpret literary texts in terms of the related (...) concerns of self, other and time. This volume engages in discussions of cultural semiotics and late phenomenology, and provides insights into how modern literature provides one way of assessing the possibility of World Literature for our own time. It will be of interest to students and scholars of both literature and philosophy. (shrink)

Contributed articles on the representation of death in different religion, with reference to Indic and European philosophy; includes articles on the representation of death in literature.

This article focuses on the three natures (_trisvabhāva_) or three characters (_trilakṣaṇa_) doctrine as described in Indian Yogācāra treatises. This concept is fundamental to Yogācāra epistemology and soteriology, but terminology employed by contemporary buddhologists misconstrues and misrepresents some of its most important features, particularly with regard to the ‘ultimately real nature’ (_pariniṣpanna-svabhāva_), which is equated with terms that connote ultimate reality like ultimate truth (_paramārtha_), emptiness (_śūnyatā_), and reality limit (_bhūta-koṭi_), and which is described as a ‘purifying object of observation’ (...) (_viśuddhālambana_) that facilitates insight when properly understood by meditators. The article discusses how it is described in a range of Yogācāra treatises and compares this with how it has been conceived in academic studies of Indic Yogācāra literature. (shrink)

At the center of the literature on conditionals lies the division between indicative and subjunctive conditionals, and Ernest Adams’ famous minimal pair: If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, someone else did. If Oswald hadn’t shot Kennedy, someone else would have. While a lot of attention is paid to figuring out what these different kinds of conditionals mean, significantly less attention has been paid to the question of why their grammatical differences give rise to their semantic differences. In this paper, I (...) articulate and defend an answer to this question that illuminates and unifies the meanings of both kinds of conditionals. The basic idea is that epistemic and metaphysical possibilities differ with respect to their interaction with time, such that there can be present epistemic possibilities with different pasts, while present metaphysical possibilities share the same past. The interpretation of conditionals is subject to a pragmatic constraint that rules out interpretations in which their consequents are directly settled by information used to build their domains. The past + future morphology on subjunctives, but not indicatives, is what allows them to receive a metaphysical interpretation in light of this pragmatic constraint. The resulting theory predicts several surprising features of indicatives and subjunctives, which I argue are correct. (shrink)

The literature on the subject contains a number of indications that G.D. Gurvitch pro­vided a justification for sobornost as a legal concept reflecting the level of social deve­lopment. However, there are still no special studies devoted to this issue. The author ex­plores Gurvitch’s doctrine of auto-theurgy as a justification of a sociocultural reality and shows how Gurvitch characterizes the concept of volezrenie as a way of socialization and enculturation of an individual. The analysis of volezrenie is then used to (...) explain why the interaction of individuals and collective social actors is a legal matter in Gurvitch’s doctrine. In his doctrine of social law, Gurvitch identifies any social fact as a legal fact. For this reason, all social interactions acquire the status of normative facts, i.e. situations of law and order formation. According to Gurvitch, coexistence of a multitude of norma­tive facts, i.e. legal pluralism, ensures the flexibility of a legal system and becomes the basis for a harmonization of personal values of individuals and transpersonal values of social phenomena. Based on these provisions, Gurvitch argues that social law contrib­utes to the achievement of social unity, namely, sobornost in the most effective way. Gurvitch defines sobornost as a self-organizing wholeness within which the freedom of an individual finds its expression through participation in the development of culture it­self. In conclusion, it is shown that sobornost, understood as a legal concept, is used in Gurvitch’s philosophy to justify an ideal of social development that overcomes the limitations of the meta-ideologies of individualism and collectivism. (shrink)

This is an endeavour by an international team of scholars to present the contents of Indian Philosophical texts to a wider public than has hitherto been possible. It will provide a definitive summary of current knowledge about each of the systems of classical Indian Philosophy. Each volume will consist of an extended analytical essay together with summaries of every extant work of the system.Volume I. Bibliography (2Pts.) (3rd rev. Ed.): This volume indicates the scope of the project and provides a (...) list of sources which will be surveyed in the subsequent volumes, as well as provides a guide to secondary literature for further study of Indian Philosophy. Volume II. Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyaya Vaisesika up to Gangesa (Part One). The volume provides a detailed resume of current knowledge about the classical Indian Philosophical System of Nyaya-Vaisesika in its earlier stages.Volume III. Advaita Vedanta (Part One): This volume summarizes all that we know of early Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara`s pupils. Volume IV. Samkhya: A Dualist Tradition in Indian Philosophy traces the history of the system from its beginnings in the third or fourth century B.C. up through the twentieth century. Volume V. The Philosophy of Grammarians: This Volume of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies is devoted to the Philosophy of the Grammarians.Volume VI. Indian Philosophical Analysis Nyaya-Vaisesika from Gangesa to Raghunatha Siromani: The present volume of the Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies takes up the history of Nyaya-Vaisesika where Volume Two left off, in the 14th century. Volume VII. Abhidharma Buddhism to 150 A.D.: The present volume undertakes to summarize the gist of these philosophical teachings, termed Abhidharma, from the first texts that developed after the Buddha up to and including the mammoth text called Mahavibhasa, generated from a convention held in the first or second century A.D.Other Volumes in Preparation: Yoga Philosophy, Samkhya Philosophy, Grammarian Philosophy, Jaina Philosophy, Kashmir Saiva Philosophy, Dvaita Vedanta, Abhidharma Philosophy, Madhyamika Philosophy, Yogacara Philosophy, Buddhist Logicians. (shrink)

Recently, scholars in a variety of disciplines—including philosophy, film and media studies, and literary studies—have become interested in the aesthetics, definition, and ontology of the screenplay. To this end, this volume addresses the fundamental philosophical questions about the nature of the screenplay: What is a screenplay? Is the screenplay art—more specifically, literature? What kind of a thing is a screenplay? Nannicelli argues that the screenplay is a kind of artefact; as such, its boundaries are determined collectively by screenwriters, and (...) its ontological nature is determined collectively by both writers and readers of screenplays. Any plausible philosophical account of the screenplay must be strictly constrained by our collective creative and appreciative practices, and must recognize that those practices indicate that at least some screenplays are artworks. (shrink)

This paper presents Niketas Stethatos’ use of the definition of philosophy as “knowledge of human and divine things”. The definition, of Stoic origin, was elaborated by the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria together with five other definitions, and was adopted by the Church Fathers. The first part discusses aspects of the definition’s history in ancient, Patristic, and Byzantine literature until the eleventh century, which indicates Stethatos’ uniqueness. The second part presents the definition in his works, with emphasis on its relation (...) to the φυσικὴ θεωρία. Also the extraordinary often and multifaceted appearance of this definition in Stethatos’ works in his controversy with Michael Psellos is investigated. Stethatos, through his elaborated and systematic reference to the definition, propagates the mystical experience as authentic philosophy against the rise of secular philosophy and its tendency to become autonomous. (shrink)

Respect for personal autonomy in decision making is one of the four ethical principles in medical circumstances. This paper aims to present evidence that can be considered good exemplars in the clarification of the ethical viewpoints of the western and Shi’i Islamic perspectives on this issue. The method followed was originally a search in international indexing services in April 2016. Our findings point towards various controversies on individuals’ autonomy lead to different decision making outcomes by health workers in both different (...) traditions. We concluded that although Shi’i Islamic jurisprudence does not seem to allow for personal autonomy in the sense it is understood in a western context, evidence indicates that Shi’i Islamic jurisprudence respects personal autonomy. (shrink)

Articles on philosophy of Tamil society based on Tamil literature, by a Marxist author and critic.

Dialogue is a recurring and significant component of Indian religious and philosophical literature. Whether it be as a narrative account of a conversation between characters within a text, as an implied response or provocation towards an interlocutor outside the text, or as a hermeneutical lens through which commentators and modern audiences can engage with an ancient text, dialogue features prominently in many of the most foundational sources from classical India. Despite its ubiquity, there are very few studies that explore (...) this important facet of Indian texts. This book redresses this imbalance by undertaking a close textual analysis of a range of religious and philosophical literature to highlight the many uses and functions of dialogue in the sources themselves and in subsequent interpretations. Using the themes of encounter, transformation and interpretation - all of which emerged from face-to-face discussions between the contributors of this volume - each chapter explores dialogue in its own context, thereby demonstrating the variety and pervasiveness of dialogue in different genres of the textual tradition. This is a rich and detailed study that offers a fresh and timely perspective on many of the most well-known and influential sources from classical India. As such, it will be of great use to scholars of religious studies, Asian studies, comparative literature and literary theory. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of some recent issues in criticism of early modern English literature. For some scholars the early modern period can only be understood if we accept its irreducible difference; for others, people have always been more or less the same and so reading the past involves knowledge but not a vast leap of faith. Often these differences result in scholars using exactly the same material to reach diametrically opposed conclusions, as examples drawn from the study (...) of early sixteenth-century literature demonstrate. Debates about love and allegory also reveal significant differences between scholars who want to see erotic language in allegorical terms and those who point out that there is a danger is missing the literal reading. Debates about the nature of print and publishing, how writers perceived their careers, how texts should be edited and what methods are appropriate for the study of early modern literature are also discussed. The article does not attempt to resolve all these important debates but shows that differences often stem from diverse conceptions of what literature actually is and what it does, indicating that the importance of such arguments ranges beyond the immediate object of study. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Latin American Existentialist Ethos: Modern Mexican Literature and Philosophy by Stephanie MerrimTadd RuetenikA Latin American Existentialist Ethos: Modern Mexican Literature and Philosophy Stephanie Merrim. SUNY Series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture. State U of New York P, 2023.If it seems like there is more turmoil in the world than usual, then existentialism seems more relevant than usual. Wars and rumors of wars (...) threaten to shift political boundaries and unsettle moral attitudes. Perhaps this is an opportunity for new philosophical investment in places not previously considered to be philosophically relevant. In the Western Hemisphere, this would mean directing attention south of the US border. [End Page 86]Stephanie Merrim's A Latin American Existentialist Ethos: Modern Mexican Literature and Philosophy encourages us to make this kind of redirection. I think the most valuable part of the book is Merrim's explanation of how Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus influenced Mexican philosophy, creating along with Catholicism a new philosophical situation. This signals an opportunity for those of us becoming productively bored with a traditional American philosophy centered on US philosophers. Merrim's work describes the birth, ascendance, and recession of the Grupo Hiperión, a creative friendship that led to the development of Mexico's philosophical and literary signature. "Hiperión's capacious existentialism sees no disjunction between freedom and advocating particular values" (58), Merrim concludes, adding later that its Latin American context produces a "theologically informed communitarianism" (59). This involves considering Sartre rather than, say, Peirce, James, and Dewey. It involves filling in "the gaps in ethics that eventuate from the French philosopher's commitment to ontology as well as from the aporias in his ethical thinking." In short, she says, "Hiperión supplements Sartre" (58).This is inspiring. The more standard view of American philosophy is that it has origins in European empiricism. Jonathan Edwards, for example, can be interpreted as one who adapts John Locke to a Puritan theological context. After this, there is a gradual dropping of the theological context. The focus remains on the United States, its development as a world power, and its leadership in advanced technology. The correlative philosophical development is thought to culminate in pragmatism, and then there seems to be an attempt to preserve it for a while by adding a "neo-" prefix.It's not that pragmatism and neo-pragmatism are bad. But their development correlates with the US domination of Latin America. As Merrim implies early in the work, existentialism is used to "shake us out of a mechanical existence, to destabilize us, awaken and prime us for happiness" (3). It is not that existentialism is used to destabilize; it's just that it appears on the scene whenever instability is present. Essence is always in creation, and all that can be said at this point is that the United States should not prescribe itself as the model for the creation of a Latin American ethos.It is on this point that I begin a small criticism of a book that is otherwise valuable in pointing many of us toward new scholarship and new interests. The problem is first evident in the translation notes, which indicate that "in order to engage a host of constituencies, this book translates into English all non-English material." This attempt by the author "to reach a broad readership" (ix) is an unnecessary accommodation. People in the United States [End Page 87] should have no less of an obligation to learn Spanish as the rest of the Hemisphere has had to learn English.When we move from language to philosophy, we see a similar over-accommodation. The author tries, but seems to have difficulty incorporating pragmatism into this new philosophical and literary movement. One example of this is the author's use of pragmatism in reference to a part of Rosario Castellanos's novel Rito de iniciación (Aguilar, 1997). One of the characters proposes a marriage of convenience that Merrim says would provide "a net pragmatism but not pragmatic authenticity" (175). If one has to contrast an authentic from a non-authentic version of a philosophy, it seems better to say that authenticity itself is... (shrink)

Russian neo-Kantianismʼs status in the history of the development of Russian philosophy is an important, but poorly presented in scientific publications, issue is revealed in the article. With some exceptions, which are represented by a number of few, but informative and informative articles and a monograph, the problem remains without proper reception in the scientific discourse of our time. Russian neo-Kantianism, however, leaving aside the question of what is the phenomenon of Russian neo-Kantianism, it is impossible to productively and consistently (...) actualize the content of Russian neo-Kantians and, moreover, to show their significance in the history of Russian philosophical and socio-humanitarian thought in general. Three key difficulties stand out: 1) the question of originality and the related theme of the independence of the philosophical direction (originality, independence and originality – differ from each other, but are united in their immanent orientation); 2) Russian neo-Kantianism, which in many ways seems to be the most difficult task for researchers engaged in historical and philosophical reconstruction; 3) the question remains ambiguous as to whether Russian neo-Kantianism is a continuation of the German tradition or whether it is a direction of Russian philosophy of thought. Russian neo-Kantianism, the three difficulties identified in the reception of the phenomenon of Russian neo-Kantianism taken as a whole, are consistently revealed in the content of the proposed article, supplemented by a brief overview of the most systemic positions of Russian philosophers, ranked among Russian neo-Kantianism. Overcoming the indicated difficulties, which undoubtedly affect the objective disclosure of the creativity of each representative of Russian neo-Kantianism or thinkers related to them, seems appropriate not only from the standpoint of the history of philosophy, but also for actualizing the heritage of philosophers in the conditions of modern socio-humanitarian pragmatics. Russian neo-Kantianism The author of the article suggests that one of the ways to overcome the ambiguity of the definition of Russian neo-Kantianism in the history of Russian thought may be, firstly, a more detailed consecration of the activities of Russian neo-Kantians in the historical and philosophical literature, and secondly, a comprehensive representation of this direction, including studies of individual personalities and their works. Despite the controversial and polemical nature of the task, its formulation is necessary for the objectivity of the meaning of Russian thought in the global context. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the forgotten friendship between Georges Bataille and the Russian émigré poet and philosopher Boris Poplavsky. Comparing their solar metaphysics, I focus on conceptions of friendship, sacrifice and depersonalisation. First, I retrace Bataille’s relationship to early Surrealis and Russian circles in interwar Paris, with a focus on his friendship with Irina Odoevtseva. I then offer a novel reading of Poplavsky’s poetry through the lens of Bataille’s philosophy, analysing a recurring motif that I call ‘dark solarity’. Uncovering a hidden (...) intertextual dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I argue for Poplavsky’s lasting impact on Bataille’s anti-Icarian sun cult. Finally, my paper demonstrates how Poplavsky’s writings on solar sacrifice, excess and friendship left marks on Bataille’s vision of a solar community, embodied in the secret society Acéphale. The dialogue between Poplavsky and Bataille, I finally suggest, is a missing piece in the entangled history of Russian and French philosophy, as well as an original contribution to discourses on friendship in twentieth-century continental thought. (shrink)

The epistemology of disagreement examines the question of how an agent ought to respond to awareness of epistemic peer disagreement about one of her beliefs. The literature on this topic, ironically enough, represents widespread disagreement about how we should respond to disagreement. I argue for the sceptical conclusion that the existence of widespread disagreement throughout the history of philosophy, and right up until the present day indicates that philosophers are highly unreliable at arriving at the truth. If truth convergence (...) indicates progress in a field, then there is little progress in philosophy. This sceptical conclusion, however, need not make us give up philosophizing: That we should currently be sceptical of our philosophical beliefs is a contingent fact. We are an intellectually immature species and given the existence of the deep future we have some reason to think that there will be truth-convergence in philosophy in the future. (shrink)

The author claims that recent publications on the theory of music and literature show some new trends in constructivist philosophy of culture. One of them is the idea of subconscious roots of cultural artifacts that has been applied in music studies. It was at this point it becomes clear that in order to identify variants of constructivism as indicators you can use some very simple assumptions, for example, the assumption of the possibility of the ontological significance of the “artistry" (...) of the text. Such an assumption implicitly contains epistemological realism. So it becomes clear that realism is not something completely dead, including those for constructivism. Where constructivism allows the existence of good (“classic") texts, that is, of “high culture", he is tolerant to realism. On the other side, rejection of the classics is a sign of the radical versions of constructivism. There is possibility of fixing the difference between ontologies, which differ among themselves as a state of loss and forgetting the reality. (shrink)