This paper addresses the Buddhist terms and concepts in early medieval Daoist texts in the light of hermeneutic and onto-hermeneutic theory with an example from the Benji Jing. It argues that onto-hermeneutic strategies of interpretation allow us to understand Daoist texts with Buddhist terms and concepts as an expression of complex and creative philosophical thoughts without losing track of the essence of Daoism and thus as Daoist philosophy in its own right.

In this collection of original essays, international scholars put Asian traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, into conversation with one or more contemporary feminist philosophies, founding a new mode of inquiry that attends to diverse voices and the complex global relationships that define our world. -/- These cross-cultural meditations focus on the liberation of persons from suffering, oppression, illusion, harmful conventions and desires, and other impediments to full personhood by deploying a methodology that traverses multiple philosophical (...) styles, historical texts, and frames of reference. Hailing from the discipline of philosophy in addition to Asian, gender, and religious studies, the contributors offer a fresh take on the classic concerns of free will, consciousness, knowledge, objectivity, sexual difference, embodiment, selfhood, the state, morality, and hermeneutics. One of the first anthologies to embody the practice of feminist comparative philosophy, this collection creatively and effectively engages with global, cultural, and gender differences within the realms of scholarly inquiry and theory construction. -/- http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-16624-9/asian-and-feminist-philosophies-in-dialogue. (shrink)

Hermeneutics is a major theoretical and practical form of intellectual enquiry, central not only to philosophy but many other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. With phenomenology and existentialism, it is also one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophical movements and includes major thinkers such as Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur. The Routledge Companion to Hermeneutics is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key philosophers, topics and themes in this exciting subject and is the first (...) volume of its kind. Comprising over fifty chapters by a team of international contributors the Companion is divided into five parts: main figures in the hermeneutical tradition movement, including Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur main topics in hermeneutics such as language, truth, relativism and history the engagement of hermeneutics with central disciplines such as literature, religion, race and gender, and art hermeneutics and world philosophies including Asian, Islamic and Judaic thought hermeneutic challenges and debates, such as critical theory, structuralism and phenomenology. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding (...) and topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

Presenting a comprehensive portrayal of the reading of Chinese and Buddhist philosophy in early 20th-century German thought, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in early Twentieth-Century German Thought examines the implications of these readings for contemporary issues in comparative and intercultural philosophy. Through a series of case studies from the late 19th-century and early 20th-century, Eric Nelson focuses on the reception and uses of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism in German philosophy, covering figures as diverse as Buber, Heidegger, and Misch. He argues that (...) the growing intertextuality between traditions cannot be appropriately interpreted through notions of exclusive identities, closed horizons, or unitary traditions. Providing an account of the context, motivations, and hermeneutical strategies of early twentieth-century European thinkers' interpretation of Asian philosophy, Nelson also throws new light on the question of the relation between Heidegger and Asian philosophy. Reflecting the growing interest in the possibility of intercultural and global philosophy, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in early Twentieth-Century German Thought opens up the possibility of a more inclusive intercultural conception of philosophy. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/chinese-and-buddhist-philosophy-in-early-twentieth-century-german-thoug ht-9781350002562/#sthash.1lY6OTYj.dpuf. (shrink)

Hermeneutics can loosely be defined as the theory or philosophy of the interpretation of menaing. It is a central topic in the philosophy of the social sciences, the philosophy of art and language and in literary criticism. This book, first published in 1980, gives a detailed overview and analysis of the main strands of contemporary hermeneutical thought. It includes a number of readings in order to give the reader a first-hand acquaintance with the subjects and the debates within it.

The paper endeavors to provide a perspective on aesthetics that proceeds from the original Greek meaning of “aesthetics” as “what is perceived by the senses.” It then introduces a potential dialogue between Confucian and Gadamerian hermeneutic philosophical insights on the importance of “making more sense,” i.e., developing a particular human ethico-aesthetic “sense” for the continuous generation of harmonious communities by partly fusing the two schools of thought. Since the focus of the paper is on early Confucian philosophy, the paper also (...) discusses the relational ontology of classical Chinese philosophy, Confucian considerations of learning, cultivation, emotions and humanization, but also touches upon broader East Asian philosophical notions of “everyday aesthetics,” i.e. how aesthetics is integrated into everyday life, for instance in ritual, dance, calligraphy and other fields that are too often set aside as belonging to a separate category of “art”. (shrink)

The pattern of universality and redemption capsizes in the realm of politics. This chapter discusses the relationship of hermeneutics and politics in light of several moments in Western culture and philosophy. It bases this inquiry on Hans‐Georg Gadamer's ideas of hermeneutics, and begins with a discussion of his ontological commitments in order to assess their bearing on the question of politics. Gadamer sees agreement as the ontological outcome of conversations because it is antecedent to the conversation as well (...) as its only goal. Tradition is the source of questions, the tribunal that stipulates the criteria that will validate claims. If we accept that power and the concepts it uses possess both the weight of a dominant reasoning and its criteria to validate claims, then the characterization of politics carries with it the question of tradition and all its potentialities and concomitant problems. (shrink)

<I>Conducting Hermeneutic Research: From Philosophy to Practice is the only textbook that teaches the reader ways to conduct research from a philosophical hermeneutic perspective. It is an invaluable resource for graduate students about to embark in hermeneutic research and for academics or other researchers who are novice to this research method or who wish to extend their knowledge. In 2009, the lead author of this proposed text was one of three co-founders of the Canadian Hermeneutic Institute. The institute was created (...) as a means of bringing together scholars of hermeneutics and hermeneutic research across disciplines in creative dialogue and conversations of philosophy, research, and practice. An outcome of this was the launch of the <I>Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, with Nancy J. Moules serving as Editor. The work of the institute and the journal make clear that people (both students and professors) seek practical guidance on how to conduct hermeneutic research. This book is a must read for this audience. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to re-examine the hermeneutic in the ongoing discourse on methodology in African philosophy. The diverse understanding of hermeneutics is not only limited to Western philosophy; in the few decades of its history in African philosophy, hermeneutics has also assumed different meanings. This paper discusses not only the historical evolution and development of hermeneutists in the West, but also the African hermeneutists: Tsenay Serequeberhan, Okonda Okolo, Sophie Oluwole, Raphael Madu, and Bruce Janz. Through (...) a comparative critical inquisition on the strengths and the problems involved in the conceptions of hermeneutics by these African philosophers, this paper argues that basic to hermeneutics is dialogue and its proclivity towards intercultural understanding. Keywords : Hermeneutics, African philosophy, intercultural understanding, Oral tradition. (shrink)

Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy is a collection of interpretive and critical essays on philosophical hermeneutics, focusing on the seminal work of Heidegger and Gadamer.

This chapter covers all the main topics of feminist philosophy, from knowledge and being to good life, justice, and power. The relation between hermeneutical and feminist investigations is constructive and deconstructive: on the one hand, feminist scholars have developed hermeneutical methods further and, on the other hand, they have questioned the very foundations of these methods. The first feminist hermeneuticians and historians of philosophy aimed primarily at reconsidering the works of canonical philosophers and at bringing to light the forgotten and (...) neglected works of individual female thinkers. Feminists have started to search for female or feminine traditions, that is, for topics, problems, and/or ways of thinking that are shared by several generations of women philosophers. The primary self‐constitution and self‐identification of philosophers as subjects of language is governed by the hierarchical opposition. (shrink)

In this book, Canadian scholar David Geoffrey Smith reflects on over thirty years of research and teaching in the human sciences, including education. Written between 1986 and 2018, the essays are organized around three themes: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences; The Poststructuralist Turn; Globalization and Its Discontents; East/West Encounters and the Search for Wisdom. As a historical guide through the defining discourses in the human sciences, this volume could well serve as an introductory text for graduate students in education (...) and other cognate disciplines like nursing, recreation and cultural studies. The writing can be described as a form of meditative praxis, while the emphasis on interculturality addresses issues in literacy, pedagogy, politics, critical thinking, teacher education, and cultural healing from a geopolitical perspective, drawing on insights from both Western and Eastern traditions and the author's personal experience of being born in China and raised in Central Africa (Northern Rhodesia/Zambia). (shrink)

This paper follows the implications of Gadamer’s hermeneutics after Truth and Method in which the forming of social life, and with it the idea of worldly understanding, receives greater attention. I argue that the emphasis in his later writings on worldly understanding draws less on the idea of the hermeneutic circle and problematic of the Geisteswissenschaften in which the concept of tradition is prominent than on the movement in language and the encounter with the other. As in the example (...) of translation, I argue that this movement has the character of passage from one place to another that holds within it an element of opacity. The development of this issue draws on a comparative analysis with the work of the Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant. From this analysis I show how Gadamer’s hermeneutics addresses the issue of understanding across cultures and in mixed cultures. (shrink)

While people have a remarkable facility for understanding often hugely complex forms of communication and interaction in everyday cultural and social contexts, from the structures of symphonic works to what their partner means when they say “I don't understand Brahms”, philosophical analysis seeks to isolate one form of understanding as if it were the key to all others. In order to become language, noises and marks have to be in a manner in which non‐linguistic things are not. The essential divide (...) in contemporary approaches to these concerning language and understanding lies between those, who think that a theory of meaning must also give us an account of the notion of truth without presupposing an understanding of truth, and those, like Heidegger, who think truth must in some way be presupposed. It is here that the hermeneutic tradition allows to consider one of the least adequately addressed issues in modern philosophy. (shrink)

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New (...) to this seventh edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Asian PhilosophiesJames McRaeAsian Philosophies. By John M. Koller. Fourth edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2001. Pp. xxi+ 361.John M. Koller's Asian Philosophiesprovides an excellent overview of many of the major traditions of Eastern thought. It is divided into three parts, each representing a broad field of Asian philosophy: Indian Philosophy, Buddhism, and Chinese Philosophy (Japanese thought is briefly examined in a chapter on (...) Zen Buddhism in the second section). Each part begins with a historical overview that provides important contextual information for the philosophical systems it examines (a feature added since the third edition).Part 1, concerning India, gives detailed summaries of the Vedas and Upanishads, Jainism, the Bhagavad Gita, Samkhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta (a section expanded since the last edition), and Theism. This section also includes chapters on Islamic thought and modern Indian philosophy. Koller does not simply give a bare-bones overview of these traditions; rather, he takes great care to quote from and analyze the primary sources of the traditions examined.Part 2, on India, contains chapters that focus on Siddhartha Gautama's life and thought, the doctrine of pratitya samutpada, Sarvastivada (with new material added since the third edition), Mahayana (a new chapter), Madhyamaka and Nagarjuna (also with new material), and Yogacara. A final chapter on Zen Buddhism is included in this section, although no other schools of Japanese Buddhism are discussed.Part 3, on Chinese thought, contains chapters on Confucianism, Taoism, and Neo-Confucianism, with a final chapter that examines modern Chinese philosophy (Koller uses Wade-Giles romanization for Chinese terms throughout the text).Asian Philosophiesalso contains many helpful appendixes: maps; pronunciation guides for Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese terms; a brief glossary; a detailed bibliography and suggestions for further reading; and timelines for each tradition (added since the third edition).Koller's book offers a clearly written and well-organized summary of the thought of most of the major Asian traditions. It is accessible to undergraduates, but rich enough to serve as a reference for graduate students studying Asian or comparative philosophy. It would provide a clear, concise introduction to Eastern thought for upper-level undergraduate philosophy courses. However, professors interested in teaching Japanese philosophy would need to supplement the text with information on non-Zen philosophy (such as Shin and Kegon Buddhism) and on modern Japanese philosophy (such as the Kyoto School).Copyright © 2005 University of Hawai'i Press. (shrink)

This is a second, revised edition of Kupperman's introduction to Asian philosophy via its canonical texts. Kupperman ranges from the Upanishads to the Bhagavad Gita through Confucius to Zen Buddhism, walking students through the texts, conveying the vitality and appeal of the works, and explaining their philosophical roots. Kupperman has made revisions throughout the text, clarifying where necessary, and added a new chapter on al-Arabi's The Bezels of Wisdom, a classic of Islamic Sufism.

Understanding Asian Philosophy introduces the four major Asian traditions through their key texts and thinkers: the Analects of Confucius, the Daoist text Zhuangzi, the early Buddhist Suttas, and the Bhagavad Gita. Approached through the central issue of ethical development, this engaging introduction reveals the importance of moral self-cultivation and provides a firm grounding in the origins of Asian thought. -/- Leading students confidently through complex texts, Understanding Asian Philosophy includes a range of valuable features: • brief (...) biographies of main thinkers such as Confucius and Zhuangzi • primary source material and translations • maps and timelines • comprehensive lists of recommended reading and links to further study resources • relevant philosophical questions at the end of each chapter -/- As well as sections on other texts and thinkers in the tradition, there are frequent references to contemporary examples and issues. Each chapter also discusses other thinkers in different traditions in the West, presenting various comparative approaches. With its clear focus on thinkers and texts, Understanding Asian Philosophy is an ideal undergraduate introduction to Chinese, Indian, Buddhist and Daoist though - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/understanding-asian-philosophy-9781780935737/#sthash.ShMPcDYh.dpuf. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to studying the emergence and flourishing of new humanistically informed developments in philosophical hermeneutics within contemporary Chinese philosophy. By means of some articles published previously in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy in the 1970s and 1980s, questions about the nature of philosophical understanding and the diversity of hermeneutic options in Chinese indigenous teachings – including Ruist (“Confucian”), Daoist, and Chinese Buddhist realms of exploration – are reintroduced. Following these seminal essays, a number of new pieces (...) written by philosophers and sinologists active in evaluating basic orientations toward philosophical understanding in China are presented. Some offer new insights into the confluence of Gadamerian and Ruist approaches to philosophy, while others employ more critical methods to indicate why serious hermeneutic inquiries into these indigenous traditions and their most representative texts reveal significant challenges for the informed reader. The focus of this volume centers on issues arising in early Ruist and Daoist texts – the Analects and the Zhuangzi – and then moves to examine hermeneutic claims asserted in the synthetic philosophical efforts of Zhu Xi (1130-1200). A sequel dealing with modern and contemporary themes in Chinese hermeneutics will appear in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, Asian philosophies have captured increasing attention in the West, setting off a profusion of new translations of classic Asian philosophical texts like the Analects and the Tao te Ching. Yet these texts are often inaccessible to Western readers because of subtleties of the concepts and other difficulties inherent in reading across cultures. Classic Asian Philosophy is designed to give someone new to Asian philosophy a clear sense of its most foundational and widely (...) available texts, ranging from the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita through Confucius to Zen. It presents philosophies that are at the roots of the cultures of India, China, Korea, and Japan, as well as other countries of south and east Asia. Each chapter brings a classic text to life, conveying the vitality and appeal of the work, while at the same time explaining its philosophical roots and the reasons for the positions it takes. The only book of its kind, Classic Asian Philosophy is an highly accessible guide to philosophy and culture, as well as a guide to further reading. (shrink)

In this essay the author argues for rethinking the canons of translation of East Asian philosophical texts in order to draw Western philosophers more deeply into conversation with them.

Essential philosophical question according to Paul Ricœur: the ontological and epistemological possibility of the understanding of the self. Philosophy as reflection, ethics and herrneneutics; reflection taken as a task of position, interpretation and appropriation of the self; ethics as the effort of emancipation is required; hermeneutics as ontic-existential investigation which deals with the situation of sharing belonging (pre-understanding) and the critical distanciation which come with or judge rival or opposing interpretations; understanding of the self as a consequence an a (...) unfinished interpretation of the envolving significant signs (symbols and texts); interpretation as dialectic relation between understanding (synthesis, truthful guess and appropriation as far as reference is concemed) and explanation (analysis, clarification and methodological validation as far as sense is concemed) in the dynamic process of reading. Ricœur’s perspective – framed in reflexive philosophy and as a hermeneutic variation of Husserl’s phenomenology starting from the epistemology to the ontology of the understanding. (shrink)

This paper focuses on some issues where the process of convergence between analytical and hermeneutic perspectives, with respect to their general philosophical grounds, mainly turns out to be clear. On the analytical side, the overcoming of logical Neopositivism and radical formalism and the rejection of the atomistic theory of reference by holistic theories of meaning have been the core shifts. On the side of the continental philosophical tradition, the main theoretical change lies in replacing the centrality of the subject with (...) the centrality of language, with its links to the dimension of intersubjectivity. Furthermore, the importance given to concepts such as action and intention, mainly due to the Wittgensteinian connection between language and forms of life, has led to recognising the active role of the subject in the world and the ability of language to be a means for doing things and not just a system of signs representing the world. Such a convergence, though it has not yet been reached, seems to be particularly fertile in the legal domain. Here, for example, some outcomes of speech acts theory fit the hermeneutic view of law. (shrink)

In an attempt to bridge the vast divide between classical Asian thought and contemporary Western philosophy, Joel J. Kupperman finds that the two traditions do not, by and large, supply different answers to the same questions. Rather, each tradition is searching for answers to their own set of questions--mapping out distinct philosophical investigations. In this groundbreaking book, Kupperman argues that the foundational Indian and Chinese texts include lines of thought that can enrich current philosophical practice, and in some cases (...) provide uniquely sophisticated insights. Special attention is given to the ethical issues of formation and fluidity of self, the nature and possibilities of choice, the compartmentalization of life implicit in some ethical systems, the variations of ethical demands from person to person, and the nature of philosophy itself as a communicative activity. This study will provide a wealth of information for philosophers seeking a closer knowledge of Asian philosophy and general readers with an interest in Eastern thought. (shrink)

A variety of crucial and still most relevant ideas about nothingness or emptiness have gained profound philosophical prominence in the history and development of a number of South and East Asian traditions—including in Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, Hinduism, Korean philosophy, and the Japanese Kyoto School. These traditions share the insight that in order to explain both the great mysteries and mundane facts about our experience, ideas of "nothingness" must play a primary role. This collection of essays brings together the work (...) of twenty of the world’s prominent scholars of Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Neo-Confucian, Japanese and Korean thought to illuminate fascinating philosophical conceptualizations of "nothingness" in both classical and modern Asian traditions. The unique collection offers new work from accomplished scholars and provides a coherent, panoramic view of the most significant ways that "nothingness" plays crucial roles in Asian philosophy. It includes both traditional and contemporary formulations, sometimes putting Asian traditions into dialogue with one another and sometimes with classical and modern Western thought. The result is a book of immense value for students and researchers in Asian and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

In an attempt to bridge the vast divide between classical Asian thought and contemporary Western philosophy, Joel J. Kupperman finds that the two traditions do not, by and large, supply different answers to the same questions. Rather, each tradition is searching for answers to their own set of questions--mapping out distinct philosophical investigations. In this groundbreaking book, Kupperman argues that the foundational Indian and Chinese texts include lines of thought that can enrich current philosophical practice, and in some cases (...) provide uniquely sophisticated insights. Special attention is given to the ethical issues of formation and fluidity of self, the nature and possibilities of choice, the compartmentalization of life implicit in some ethical systems, the variations of ethical demands from person to person, and the nature of philosophy itself as a communicative activity. This study will provide a wealth of information for philosophers seeking a closer knowledge of Asian philosophy and general readers with an interest in Eastern thought. (shrink)

Authors from all over the world unite in an effort to cultivate dialogue between Asian and Western philosophy. The papers forge a new, East-West comparative path on the whole range of issues in Kant studies. The concept of personhood, crucial for both traditions, serves as a springboard to address issues such as knowledge acquisition and education, ethics and self-identity, religious/political community building, and cross-cultural understanding. Edited by Stephen Palmquist, founder of the Hong Kong Philosophy Café and well known for (...) both his Kant expertise and his devotion to fostering philosophical dialogue, the book presents selected and reworked papers from the Kant in Asia conference, held in Hong Kong in May 2009. In addition to keynote essays by Patricia Kitcher (Columbia), Günter Wohlfart (Wuppertal), and Cheng Chung-ying (Hawaii), the book contains 64 contributed essays. The latter include contributions from Andrew Brook, David Cummiskey, Rainer Enskat, Wolfgang Ertl, Hans Feger, Klaus-Gerd Giesen, Ronald Green, Martin Moors, Ulrich Seeberg, Susan Shell, Rein Vos, Günter Zoeller, and numerous Asian philosophers. (shrink)

Hermeneutics between History and Philosophy collects together Gadamer's remaining important untranslated writings on the problem of history and the major philosophical traditions of the 20th century from the standpoint of hermeneutics. In these writings, Gadamer examines important thinkers as Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Bourdieu and Habermas and their ongoing legacies. This volume also includes a preface by the editors, who are also the translators, presenting the structure of the volume, a substantial introductionsituating Gadamer's particular project and examining the place (...) of hermeneutics vis-a-vis the disciplines of history and philosophy in the 20th century. The translation is followed by a glossary of German terms and Greek and Latin expressions, as well as a bibliography of all the works cited and alluded to by Gadamer. (shrink)

By drawing on the insights of a number of continental as well as Asian thinkers, this article reflects on the "significance" of comparative philosophy—both in the sense of discussing the "meaning" and in the sense of arguing for the "importance" of this endeavor. Encountering another culture allows one to deepen one's self-understanding by learning to "see oneself from the outside"; this deeper self-understanding in turn allows one to listen to what the other culture has to say. These two moments, (...) or movements, are interdependent and mutually supportive. Without the step back to self-understanding, we unknowingly reduce the other to the unrecognized categories of our own thinking; but without encountering another culture, our understanding of our own culture remains shallow. This article argues that an engagement with non-Western philosophy, particularly with a set of traditions as rich and radically different as those of Asian thought, can and should take place as a hermeneutic circling between self-understanding and openness to encounter: the dialogical step back and step forward are mutually supportive endeavors. For only by way of such dialogue do we attain the concrete freedom and possibility for transformation and change, that is, the ability to critically and creatively develop old customs or modes of thought and to critically and creatively adopt new ones. Moreover, only through such dialogue can we learn to not only let others be, but to share insights with them, and to build together a global community which neither reifies nor abolishes cultural differences. (shrink)

This book guides readers through ten classic works of Asian philosophy. Several major schools of Eastern thought are discussed, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism/Taoism, and Chan/Zen. The author connects the ideas of these schools to those of Western philosophy, thereby making the material accessible to people who are unfamiliar with the cultures and intellectual traditions of Asia. A wide range of important topics are addressed: reality, time, self, knowledge, ethics, human nature, enlightenment, and death.

Taken in general terms, “hermeneutics” refers to the study of understanding and interpretation, and, traditionally, this study focuses on considerations of the art, method, and foundations of research in the arts and humanities. The study of hermeneutics has been developed and applied in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry, such as biblical exegesis, literary studies, legal studies, and the medical humanities. In the context of post-war Continental European thought, however, hermeneutics is brought into a novel philosophical (...) context and, with this, comes to designate a philosophical movement – or, at least, a number of related philosophers and themes – concerned with the scope and limits of phenomenology, the character of human existence, the relation of the natural sciences and humanities, as well as a range of interrelated matters in the philosophy of history, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of art and aesthetics, practical philosophy, as well as in epistemology and the theory of meaning. (shrink)

Hermeneutic philosophy, and Paul Ricoeur’s formulation of hermeneutics in particular, faces a serious challenge, not from external sources, but from internal proponents of the program. In what might be called the Collapse Challenge, Ricoeur’s understanding of the hermeneutic circle is criticized for making use of structuralist methods that are no longer considered viable. Rather than look to replace Ricoeur’s work with an external model, the present essay draws on his late model of translation to suggest two viable paths forward (...) beyond the Collapse Challenge. To develop these paths, the essay gives two concrete cases, one using Confucian philosophy, which is comparative, another using Aztec philosophy, which is syncretic. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to characterize hermeneutic philosophy in a manner that differs from the usual attempts at defining this philosophical direction, especially in German philosophy, that is by referencing traditional hermeneutics. I would like to propose expounding its characteristics not in a historical, but theoretical manner. This task involves analysing the place of hermeneutic philosophy among other tendencies in contemporary philosophy as well as showcasing the advantages of its way of philosophizing. The article does not discuss (...) issues related to this philosophy such as its limitations and unilaterality. (shrink)

This collection arises from the First Conference of the recently formed European Society for Asian Philosophy.

The proposed book presents an overview of select theories in the classical Vaiśeṣika system of Indian philosophy, such as the concept of categories, creation and existence, atomic theory, consciousness and cognition. It also expounds in detail the concept of dharma, the idea of the highest good and expert testimony as a valid means of knowing in Vaiśeṣika thought. Some of the major themes discussed are the religious inclination of Vaiśeṣika thought towards Pasupata Saivism, the affiliation of the Vaiśeṣika System to (...) the basic foundations of Indian philosophical thought, namely Veda and Yoga, and their insights into science, hermeneutics and metaphysics. In addition, this book includes recent Sanskrit commentaries on key Vaiśeṣika texts and provides a glimpse of Vaiśeṣika studies across the world. Overall, this book enunciates the Vaiśeṣika view from original sources and is an important work for Vaiśeṣika studies in current times for serious students as well as researchers.. (shrink)

This book provides a rigorous analysis of Owen Flanagan's comparative philosophy. The contributors discuss his philosophy of human flourishing and naturalized approach to Asian Philosophy. The essays critically analyse Flanagan's naturalized eudaimonics, naturalized Buddhism, and theory of Confucian human flourishing and moral modularity.

Making meaning out of life requires effort, sustained thought and action. It can be difficult to reassert our responsibility for solving real life problems from within social science research or current trends, such as extremely deconstructivist text, and postmodernism in its cheerfully nihilistic guise. Hermeneutical philosophy, of the Ricoeurian reconstructive mode, rehabilitates text as a powerful device for influencing others and offers us courage to proceed with the human project by developing a way of writing, thinking and behaving that is (...) provisional, affirmative and conciliatory, yet constantly questioning. Ricoeur invites the person, both reflective subject and empiricist object of research, to combine these elements and use written text and action as text for an active mode of living. Within philosophy he attempts to achieve a rapprochement between hermeneutical and rational thought. Understanding oneself, through better understanding of the other, derives benefit from crossing disciplinary boundaries between, in this study, philosophy and the social sciences (education and psychology), in order to attempt to move from the particular, individual issues to the general, holistic view and return to one’s own situation to act for oneself and others. Ricoeur offers us the opportunity to repossess language, to be ethical and practical, and to challenge the hegemony of Explaining, going beyond method and methodology into epistemology and beyond fact into Understanding: an ontology of hope that makes sense of plurality, without the damage of relativism. This text attempts a narrative ethics, illustrating how Ricoeur’s work transformed my thinking from that of a method-bound psychologist to that of, perhaps, a philosopher in the making. Key Words: critical realism • hermeneutics • holism • Hollis • individualism • Norris • rational analytic • Ricoeur • self • text. (shrink)

From Greco-Roman antiquity through to European enlightenment, philosophy and religious thought were inseparably interwoven. This book explores intellectual worlds of Abrahamic religious traditions, their approaches to scriptural hermeneutics, and their interaction over many centuries on common ground of inheritance of classical Greek philosophy.