The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology offers clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The chapters in this volume approach the question of how to do philosophy from a wide range of perspectives, including conceptual analysis, critical theory, deconstruction, experimental philosophy, hermeneutics, Kantianism, methodological naturalism, phenomenology, and pragmatism. They explore general conceptions of philosophy, centred on the question of what the point of philosophising might be; the method of conceptual analysis and its recent naturalistic critics and competitors; perspectives from continental philosophy; and also a variety of methodological views that belong neither to the mainstream of analytic philosophy, nor to continental philosophy as commonly conceived. Together they will enable readers to grasp an unusually wide range of approaches to methodological debates in philosophy.

The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology offers clear and comprehensive coverage of the main methodological debates and approaches within philosophy. The chapters in this volume approach the question of how to do philosophy from a wide range of perspectives, including conceptual analysis, critical theory, deconstruction, experimental philosophy, hermeneutics, Kantianism, methodological naturalism, phenomenology, and pragmatism. They explore general conceptions of philosophy, centred on the question of what the point of philosophising might be; the method of conceptual analysis and its recent naturalistic critics and competitors; perspectives from continental philosophy; and also a variety of methodological views that belong neither to the mainstream of analytic philosophy, nor to continental philosophy as commonly conceived. Together they will enable readers to grasp an unusually wide range of approaches to methodological debates in philosophy.

This book presents detailed discussions from leading intercultural philosophers, arguing for and against the priority of immanence in Chinese thought and the validity of Western interpretations that attempt to import conceptions of transcendence. The authors pay close attention to contemporary debates generated from critical analysis of transcendence and immanence, including discussions of apophasis, critical theory, post-secular conceptions of society, phenomenological approaches to transcendence, possible-world models, and questions of practice and application. This book aims to explore alternative conceptions of transcendence that either call the tradition in the West into question, or discover from within Western metaphysics a thoroughly dialectical way of thinking about immanence and transcendence.

This book approaches the topic of intercultural understanding in philosophy from a phenomenological perspective. It provides a bridge between Western and Eastern philosophy through in-depth discussion of concepts and doctrines of phenomenology and ancient and contemporary Chinese philosophy. Phenomenological readings of Daoist and Buddhist philosophies are provided: the reader will find a study of theoretical and methodological issues and innovative readings of traditional Chinese and Indian philosophies from the phenomenological perspective. The author uses a descriptive rigor to avoid cultural prejudices and provides a non-Eurocentric conception and practice of philosophy. Through this East-West comparative study, a compelling criticism of a Eurocentric conception of philosophy emerges. New concepts and methods in intercultural philosophy are proposed through these chapters. Researchers, teachers, post-graduates and students of philosophy will all find this work intriguing, and those with an interest in non-Western philosophy or phenomenology will find it particularly engaging.

Originally published in 1933, this book was developed from a dissertation written at Cambridge University in 1929. The text provides a concise discussion regarding the nature of value and value theories, taking the view that an understanding of value is 'a no less necessary part of the equipment of every competent philosopher, than is epistemology'. This book will be of importance to anyone with an interest in theories of value and the history of philosophy.

This book is an introduction to Islamic Philosophy, beginning with its Medieval inception, right through to its more contemporary incarnations. Using the language and conceptual apparatus of contemporary Anglo-American 'Analytic' philosophy, this book represents a novel and creative attempt to rejuvenate Islamic Philosophy for a modern audience. It adopts a 'rational reconstructive' approach to the history of philosophy by affording maximum hermeneutical priority to the strongest possible interpretation of a philosopher's arguments while also paying attention to the historical context in which they worked. The central canonical figures of Medieval Islamic Philosophy - al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Avicenna, al-Ghazali, Averroes - are presented chronologically along with an introduction to the central themes of Islamic theology and the Greek philosophical tradition they inherited. The book then briefly introduces what the author collectively refers to as the 'Pre-Modern' figures including Suhrawardi, Mulla Sadra, and Ibn Taymiyyah, and presents all of these thinkers, along with their Medieval predecessors, as forerunners to the more modern incarnation of Islamic Philosophy: Political Islam.

In "The Angel of History," Moses looks at three Jewish philosophers--Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, and Gershom Scholem--who formulated a new vision of history in 1920s Germany by moving away from the spirit of assimilation and the Enlightenment belief in humanity's inevitable progress. Instead, they imagined history as discontinuous, made of moments that form no totality but whose ruptures are both more significant--and more promising--than any apparent homogeneity.
Their direct experience of the twentieth century's great upheavals led these three thinkers to abandon the old models of causality that had previously accounted for human experience, and their cultural and religious background allowed them to turn to the Jewish experience of history. Jewish messianism always had to confront the experience of catastrophe, deception, and failure. Moses shows how this tradition informed a genuine Jewish conception of history in which redemption may--or may not--occur at any moment, giving a new chance for hope by locating utopia in the heart of the present.

Western philosophy and science are responsible for constructing some powerful tools of investigation, aiming at discovering the truth, delivering robust explanations, verifying conjectures, showing that inferences are sound and demonstrating results conclusively. By contrast reasoning that depends on analogies has often been viewed with suspicion. Professor Lloyd first explores the origins of those Western ideals, criticises some of their excesses and redresses the balance in favour of looser, admittedly non-demonstrative analogical reasoning. For this he takes examples both from ancient Greek and Chinese thought and from the materials of recent ethnography to show how different ancient and modern cultures have developed different styles of reasoning. He also develops two original but controversial ideas, that of semantic stretch (to cast doubt on the literal/metaphorical dichotomy) and the multidimensionality of reality (to bypass the realism versus relativism and nature versus nurture controversies).

A new edition of the groundbreaking spiritual treasure, with a foreword by bestselling author Marianne Williamson .
Since its original publication in 1949, In Search of the Miraculous has been hailed as the most valuable and reliable documentation of G. I. Gurdjieff's thoughts and universal view. This historic and influential work is considered by many to be a primer of mystical thought as expressed through the Work, a combination of Eastern philosophies that had for centuries been passed on orally from teacher to student. Gurdjieff's goal, to introduce the Work to the West, attracted many students, among them Ouspensky, an established mathematician, journalist, and, with the publication of In Search of the Miraculous, an eloquent and persuasive proselyte.
Ouspensky describes Gurdjieff's teachings in fascinating and accessible detail, providing what has proven to be a stellar introduction to the universal view of both student and teacher. It goes without saying that In Search of the Miraculous has inspired great thinkers and writers of ensuing spiritual movements, including Marianne Williamson, the highly acclaimed author of A Return to Love and Illuminata. In a new and never-before-published foreword, Williamson shares the influence of Ouspensky's book and Gurdjieff's teachings on the New Thought movement and her own life, providing a contemporary look at an already timeless classic.

Exploring the subject of Jewish philosophy as a controversial construction site of the project of modernity, this book examines the implications of the different and often conflicting notions that drive the debate on the question of what Jewish philosophy is or could be. The idea of Jewish philosophy begs the question of philosophy as such. But "Jewish philosophy" does not just reflect what "philosophy" lacks. Rather, it challenges the project of philosophy itself. Examining the thought of Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Hermann Cohen Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Margarete Susman, Hermann Levin Goldschmidt, and others, the book highlights how the most philosophic moments of their works are those in which specific concerns of their "Jewish questions" inform the rethinking of philosophy's disciplinarity in principal terms. The long overdue recognition of the modernity that informs the critical trajectories of Jewish philosophers from Spinoza and Mendelssohn to the present emancipates not just "Jewish philosophy" from an infelicitous pigeonhole these philosophers so pointedly sought to reject but, more important, emancipates philosophy from its false claims to universalism.

The dominant issues in African political thought from the 1960s onward have been development and socialism. In the present decade new issues have arisen such as democracy, civil society, the nation-state, and the relevance of traditional political institutions. Typically, however, these new issues have been discussed in models of thought which already served in the 1960s or even before. Boele van Hensbroek aims to provide the necessary insight into the history of African political thought as well as an analytical framework to clarify contemporary African discourses on democracy.

He proceeds in three steps. First, the most important discussions in the last 150 years are presented. A fascinating history emerges, from the great 19th century theorists such as Edward Blyden and Africanus Horton to prominent nationalists such as Kwame Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral, and to contemporary African intellectuals. Second, the African history of ideas shows that particular models of thought recur which can be reconstructed as three consistent models of thought. Finally, the relevance of the history of ideas and philosophical analysis of models of thought can be shown by providing a new perspective on contemporary debates on democracy in Africa.

With an inside view from an expert in the field, solid scholarship, and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies invites students and professors to think along with the great thinkers of the Asian traditions. John M. Koller is a scholar and teacher who has devoted his life to understanding Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students and professors access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia.

In this remarkable new book, Paramahansa Yogananda provides a revelatory introduction to the hidden yoga of the Gospels. A selection of material from his highly acclaimed two-volume work, The Second Coming of Christ (Self-Realization Fellowship, 2004), this concise book is designed as both a stand-alone work, and as an introduction to that larger, comprehensive commentary on the Gospels. Yogananda, who is widely known as the father of yoga in the West, explores the role of Jesus as yogi and avatar (divine incarnation). He removes the centuries of dogma and misunderstanding that obscure Christ's original teachings, and shows that Jesus' message is not about sectarian divisiveness, but is a unifying path by which seekers of all faiths and traditions can enter the kingdom of God. Topics include: The "lost years" of Jesus in India / The true meaning of baptism / The correlation between "to be born again" and karma and reincarnation.

This book explores the integral vision of human development contained in the original works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. It delves into multiple layers of the human personality as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and explores a new developmental science of consciousness based on the practice of Integral Yoga. The book examines the major metatheoretical conceptions that shape the contemporary discipline of developmental psychology and discusses the ways in which Sri Aurobindo’s philosophical and psychological perspective can help break fresh ground for developmental theorisation and research by extending the current understanding of the human evolutionary potential. The author proposes a new agenda for human development which brings together the key ideas of integral individual and collective development and informs practices in the areas of counselling, education, parenting and self-development. This book will be of special interest for researchers of developmental psychology, human development, counselling psychology, philosophy, social work and education.

This volume situates Indians in the contemporary world and profiles the major facets of their thought and behaviour; then goes back to trace their roots to ancient thought to see how the past predisposes and the present guides Indians in their everyday life. The volume begins with a conceptual framework showing how the Indian worldview has encompassed and enveloped a variety of ideas and influences from divergent sources. As a result, Indians are both collectivists and individualists, hierarchically oriented while respecting merit and quality, religious as well as secular and sexually indulgent, spiritual as well as materialists, excessively dependent but remarkably entrepreneurial, non-violent in principle but violent in practice and comfortable in shifting between analytical, synthetic as well as intuitive approaches to reality. Such a coexistence of opposites often causes inaction, hesitation and perfunctory action, but also equips Indians to be innovative by continuously aligning their thought and behaviour to the demands of a milieu. The milieu has an inner layer consisting of desh (place), kaal (time) and paatra (person), which are embedded in the larger societal contexts of castes and classes, poverty, corruption, fragmenting politics, conflicts and violence and unfolding global opportunities and challenges. Cultural heritage permeates in all these. Indians function in this tiered, multifactorial, dynamic space. This volume draws evidence from ancient texts and the latest national and international research, many of which were conducted by the author and his associates. It does not, however, hesitate to indulge in anecdotal evidence, cases and speculative ideas in order to complete the picture. The author takes an in-depth view of the Indian mindset without getting the reader lost in either the intricacies of ancient philosophical abyss or the trivialities of present-day non-events.

This volume focuses on contemporary Confucianism, and collects essays by famous sinologists such as Guy Alitto, John Makeham, Tse-ki Hon and others. The content is divided into three sections - addressing the "theory" and "practice" of contemporary Confucianism, as well as how the two relate to each other - to provide readers a more meaningful understanding of contemporary Confucianism and Chinese culture. In 1921, at the height of the New Culture Movement's iconoclastic attack on Confucius, Liang Shuming ( ) fatefully predicted that in fact the future world culture would be Confucian. Over the nine decades that followed, Liang's reputation and the fortunes of Confucianism in China rose and fell together. So, readers may be interested in the question whether it is possible that a reconstituted "Confucianism" might yet become China's spiritual mainstream and a major constituent of world culture.

This authoritative volume, written by two well-known psychologist-philosophers, presents a model of the person and its implications for psychological theory and practice. Professors Ramakrishna Rao and Anand Paranjpe draw the contours of Indian psychology, describe the methods of study, explain crucial concepts, and discuss the central ideas and their application, illustrating them with insightful case studies and judicious reviews of available research data and existing scholarly literature. The main theme is organized around the thesis that psychology is the study of the person and that the person is a unique composite of body, mind and consciousness. The goal of the person is self-realization. Self-realization consists in the realization of one's true self as distinct from the manifest ego and it is facilitated by cultivating consciousness. Cultivating consciousness leads to a kind of psycho-spiritual symbiosis resulting in personal transformation, altruistic value orientation and flowering of the hidden human potential.

The Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy will be part of the handbook series Dao Companion to Chinese Philosophy, published by Springer. This series is being edited by Professor Huang Yong, Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown University and Editor of Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. This volume includes original essays by scholars from the U.S., Europe, Japan, and China, discussing important philosophical writings by Japanese Confucian philosophers. The main focus, historically, will be the early-modern period (1600-1868), when much original Confucian philosophizing occurred, and Confucianism in modern Japan. The Dao Companion to Japanese Confucian Philosophy makes a significant contribution to the Dao handbook series, and equally to the field of Japanese philosophy. This new volume including original philosophical studies will be a major contribution to the study of Confucianism generally and Japanese philosophy in particular.

This book reprints an ancient Chinese work from the late Warring States period (3rd century BC) that contains stories and anecdotes exemplifying the carefree nature of the ideal Taoist sage. Chuang Tzu's philosophy represents the main current of Taoist teachings, and his text is widely regarded as both deeply insightful and a great achievement in the Chinese poetical essay form. The version presented was translated by Feng Yu-lan, the famous Chinese philosopher, who puts more emphasis on Chuang Tzu's philosophy than do previous attempts. William James once said that every great philosopher has a personal vision. When one has grasped that vision, the whole system can be easily understood. And Croce once said that the greater a philosophical system is, the simpler the central idea. Although the present translation is limited to the first seven chapters of Chuang Tzu's writings, it accurately conveys his main vision and ideas.

This book offers a new way to justify privacy based on a theory derived from Buddhist insights. It uses insights obtained from the Buddhist teachings on Non-Self to create an alternative theory of privacy. In doing so, the author first spells out the inherent differences between the Buddhist insights and the beliefs underlying conventional theories of privacy. While Buddhism views the self as existing conventionally through interactions with others, as well as through interrelations with other basic components, non-Buddhist ideas of self are understood as being grounded upon autonomous subjects, commonly understood to be entitled to rights and dignity. In light of this, the book offers ways in which these seemingly disparate concepts can be reconciled, while keeping in mind the need for protecting citizens' privacy in a modern information society. It also argues that the new way of conceptualizing privacy, as presented in this book, would go a long way in helping unravel the difficult concept of group privacy.

In this ground-breaking book, Stephen C. Ferguson addresses a seminal question that is too-often ignored: What should be the philosophical basis for African American studies? The volume explores philosophical issues and problems in their relationship to Black studies. Ferguson shows that philosophy is not a sterile intellectual pursuit, but a critical tool to gathering knowledge about the Black experience. Cultural idealism in various forms has become enormously influential as a framework for Black studies. Ferguson takes on the task of demonstrating how a Marxist philosophical perspective offers a productive and fruitful way of overcoming the limitations of idealism. Focusing on the hugely popular Afrocentric school of thought, this book's engaging discussion shows that the foundational arguments of cultural idealism are based on a series of analytical and historical misapprehensions. In turn, Ferguson argues for the centrality of the Black working class-both men and women-to Black Studies.

Originally published in 1934, and undertaken at the suggestion of Sayajirao Gaekwad III, then Maharajah of Baroda, this book examines the similarities and differences of ethical traditions in the East and the West. Saunders uses Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew and Christian texts to compare and contrast each system with the others, noting that 'East and West must cease from provincialism in a world now made one'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in comparative religion and in the history of Western reception of Eastern ideas.

This book assesses the rapid transformation of the political agency of religious groups within transnational civil society under the conditions of globalization that have weakened the sovereign nation-state. It offers a comprehensive synthesis of the parallel resurgences of Jasper's axial thesis from the distinct lines of research initiated by Eisenstadt, Habermas, Taylor, Bellah, and others. It explores the concept of cosmoipolitanism from the combined perspectives of sociology of religion, critical theory, secularization theory, and evolutionary cultural anthropology. At the theoretical level, cosmoipolitanism prescribes how local, national, transnational, global, and virtual spaces ought publically to engage in transcivilizational discourse without presuming secular assumptions tied to cosmopolitanism. As a transnational extension of the moral-ethical universality of the great Axial Age traditions, cosmoipolitanism provides an ideal description of empirical data. Employing the insights of critical theory, this book offers a micro-level analysis of the pragmatics of discourse of each of the major axial traditions producing a genealogy in iterated stages of the dialectics of secularization as a multi-faceted narrative of the role of religion in alternative modernities. While circumscribing the particular historical limits of each tradition, the book extends their internal claims to species universality in light of the potential for boundless communication Jaspers saw as initiated with the Axial Age. In Jon Bowman's novel and important work, he rethinks the challenges of global justice. Bowman is not just concerned with global justice in the modern world, but with a genealogy that begins with a better understanding of the Axial age, one that is also the unique signature of cosmoi-political institutions. Arguing with depth and precision, Bowman challenges Kantian and Rawlsian universalism. His argument provides a new interpretation of cosmopolitan justice as he explores the deeper roots of cosmopolitan justice. James Bohman Saint Louis University Jon Bowman's Cosmoipolitan Justice is an important, innovative and timely work. Construing globality in terms of pervasive conditions of worldwide interdependence, Bowman advances a decidedly pluralistic account of cosmopolitanism, one uniquely shaped by recent theories of multiple modernities. His analysis is sustained by a highly informed appropriation of such diverse thinkers as Theodor Adorno, Abudullah An-Naim, Talad Asad, Schmuel Eisenstadt, Jurgen Habermas, Karl Jaspers, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Charles Taylor. One special feature is the book's synthesis of research on global governance with that on post-secularity and the place of religion in the public sphere. On this basis Bowman presents a distinctive account of the world's axial religions, one underwriting a multi-polar, intercultural global public realm able to address social, political, and economic issues confronting the global community today. This book should be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, political theory, international relations, sociology, and religious studies. Professor Andrew Buchwalter Department of Philosophy University of North Florida

In this innovative volume contemporary philosophers respond to classic works of Jewish philosophy. For each of twelve central topics in Jewish philosophy, Jewish philosophical readings, drawn from the medieval period through the twentieth century, appear alongside an invited contribution that engages both the readings and the contemporary philosophical literature in a constructive dialogue. The twelve topics are organized into four sections, and each section commences with an overview of the ensuing dialogue and concludes with a list of further readings. The introduction to the volume assesses the current state of Jewish philosophy and argues for a deeper engagement with analytic philosophy, exemplified by the new contributions. Jewish Philosophy Past and Present: Contemporary Responses to Classical Sources is a cutting edge work of Jewish philosophy, and, at the same time, an engaging introduction to the issues that animated Jewish philosophers for centuries and to the texts that they have produced. It is designed to set the agenda in Jewish philosophy for years to come.

Having set global warming in irreversible motion, we are facing the possibility of ecological catastrophe. But the environmental emergency is also a crisis for our philosophical habits of thought, confronting us with a problem that seems to defy not only our control but also our understanding. Global warming is perhaps the most dramatic example of what Timothy Morton calls "hyperobjects"--entities of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that they defeat traditional ideas about what a thing is in the first place. In this book, Morton explains what hyperobjects are and their impact on how we think, how we coexist with one another and with nonhumans, and how we experience our politics, ethics, and art.

Moving fluidly between philosophy, science, literature, visual and conceptual art, and popular culture, the book argues that hyperobjects show that the end of the world has already occurred in the sense that concepts such as world, nature, and even environment are no longer a meaningful horizon against which human events take place. Instead of inhabiting a world, we find ourselves inside a number of hyperobjects, such as climate, nuclear weapons, evolution, or relativity. Such objects put unbearable strains on our normal ways of reasoning.

Insisting that we have to reinvent how we think to even begin to comprehend the world we now live in, "Hyperobjects" takes the first steps, outlining a genuinely postmodern ecological approach to thought and action.