Confucian Ethics in Western Discourse brings Chinese philosophers into dialogue with contemporary moral philosophers, identifying how ancient Chinese philosophy can contribute to Western discussions of moral philosophy. Covering the characteristics and significance of the Confucian ethical tradition, this study introduces the main concepts, discusses differing perspectives of moral dilemmas and closely examines whether Confucian ethics should be considered as virtue ethics in the Western tradition. Through analysis of the meaning of virtues in Confucian ethics it draws comparison with virtues in Aristotlelian moral philosophy, and offers an in-depth review of the thought of Cheng Brothers in the Song Dynasty, shedding light on current ethical issues. With careful textual studies and philosophical perceptiveness, Confucian Ethics in Western Discourse connects ancient Chinese thought and contemporary problems in Western philosophy.

Imagination: Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses is a rare intercultural inquiry into the conceptions and functions of the imagination in contemporary philosophy. Divided into East Asian, comparative, and post-comparative approaches, it brings together a leading team of philosophers to explore the concepts of the illusory and illusions, the development of fantastic narratives and metaphors, and the use of images and allegories across a broad range of traditions. Chapters discuss how imagination has been interpreted by thinkers such as Zhuangzi, Plato, Confucius, Heidegger, and Nietzsche. By drawing on sources including Buddhist aesthetics, Daoism, and analytic philosophy of mind, this cross-cultural collection shows how the imagination can be an indispensable tool for the comparative philosopher, opening up new possibilities for intercultural dialogue and critical engagement.

This volume presents the first English translation of the Confucian classics, Four Books for Women, with extensive commentary by the compiler, Wang Xiang, and introductions and annotations by translator Ann A. Pang-White. Written by women for women's education, the Confucian Four Books for Women spanned the 1st to the 16th centuries, and encompass Ban Zhao's Lessons for Women, Song Ruoxin's and Song Ruozhao's Analects for Women, Empress Renxiaowen's Teachings for the Inner Court, and Madame Liu's (Chaste Widow Wang's) Short Records of Models for Women. A female counterpart to the famous Sishu (Four Books) compiled by Zhu Xi, Wang Xiang's Nu sishu provides an invaluable look at the long-standing history and evolution of Chinese women's writing, education, identity, and philosophical discourse, along with their struggles and triumphs, across the millennia and numerous Chinese dynasties. Pang-Whites new translation brings the authors of the Four Books for Women to life as real, living people, and illustrates why they wrote and how their work empowered women.

This volume offers a comprehensive philosophical study of Confucian ethics-its basic insights and its relevance to contemporary Western moral philosophy. Distinguished writer and philosopher A. S. Cua presents fourteen essays which deal with various problems arising in the philosophical explication of the nature of Chinese ethical thought. Offering a unique analytical approach, Cua focuses on the conceptual and dialectical aspects of Confucian ethics. Among the topics discussed are: the nature and significance of the Chinese Confucian moral vision of tao; the complementary insights of Classical Taoism, namely of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu; and the logical and rhetorical aspects of Confucian ethics. Perhaps more relevant to contemporary East-West ethical discourse, several essays present an introduction to a systematic Confucian moral philosophy. Cua explains the idea of a living, Confucian, ethical tradition and highlights the problem of interpreting the cardinal concepts of Confucian ethics as an ethics of virtue. Much of the effort is spent in shaping concepts such as jen (humanity), I (rightness), and li (ritual propriety) in the light of the Confucian ideal or vision of tao. Cua concludes with a discussion of the possibility of reasoned discourse, aiming at a resolution of intercultural, ethical conflict. This book will appeal to a broad spectrum of scholars interested in ethics, Chinese philosophy, comparative Chinese and Western ethical thought, and Confucianism.

The book addresses provocative questions such as: did the majority of Jews before Maimonides believe that God has a body? Why did Maimonides and many rabbis disparage women? Why did Maimonides extol intelligent non-Jews? Why don't Jews say a prayer before such activities as having sexual relations or giving charity? Why does not the Torah condemn the five suicides committed in its pages? Why were Jacob and David passive when their daughters were raped? should rational Jews observe mystical Jewish practices and say mystical prayers? This volume contains surprising facts, such as: not all Jews believe that people have souls. Rabbis know that we do not possess the original Torah text. Rabbis suggest that Moses staff had unusual magical powers. Jewish judges do not adjudicate cases according to Torah law. Many rabbis recognise that the ten plagues were not miracles. The Torah records how innocent people are killed for the misdeeds of their ancestors. dipping bread in salt is based on a superstitious fear of demons.

This engaging and informative book reveals unknown but true facts about the prophetical books of the Bible. Rabbis have avoided many questions raised by the seemingly improbable events in these volumes. This book addresses these questions and takes an open and rational look at the episodes. The book addresses provocative questions such as: What is the proper way to interpret the Torah? How does Maimonides understand the episodes of the Prophets? Did miracles such as the splitting of the Red Sea, the falling of the walls at Jericho, and the sun standing still for Joshua really occur? What assumptions cause us to misunderstand the Bible? Is there a biblical mandate prohibiting suicide? Does the Bible forbid ceding parts of the land of Israel for peace? Can children be punished for their parents misdeeds, and, if not, why does the Torah say that they are punished? Why does Shabbat begin at different times for men and women? Why did significant biblical leaders violate rabbinical laws? What really caused the adding of a day to holidays shortly after the time of Moses? Why does the Bible not always mean what it appears to say? Is it true that Judaism does not know what happens after death?

Apocalypse-cinema is not only the end of time that has so often been staged as spectacle in films like 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Terminator. By looking at blockbusters that play with general annihilation while also paying close attention to films like Melancholia, Cloverfield, Blade Runner, and Twelve Monkeys, this book suggests that in the apocalyptic genre, film gnaws at its own limit. Apocalypse-cinema is, at the same time and with the same double blow, the end of the world and the end of the film. It is the consummation and the (self-)consumption of cinema, in the form of an acinema that Lyotard evoked as the nihilistic horizon of filmic economy. The innumerable countdowns, dazzling radiations, freeze-overs, and seismic cracks and crevices are but other names and pretexts for staging film itself, with its economy of time and its rewinds, its overexposed images and fades to white, its freeze-frames and digital touch-ups. The apocalyptic genre is not just one genre among others: It plays with the very conditions of possibility of cinema. And it bears witness to the fact that, every time, in each and every film, what Jean-Luc Nancy called the cine-world is exposed on the verge of disappearing. In a Postface specially written for the English edition, Szendy extends his argument into a debate with speculative materialism. Apocalypse-cinema, he argues, announces itself as cinders that question the “ultratestimonial” structure of the filmic gaze. The cine-eye, he argues, eludes the correlationism and anthropomorphic structure that speculative materialists have placed under critique, allowing only the ashes it bears to be heard.

Commonly translated as the "Jewish Enlightenment," the Haskalah propelled Jews into modern life. Olga Litvak argues that the idea of a Jewish modernity, championed by adherents of this movement, did not originate in Western Europe's age of reason. Litvak contends that the Haskalah spearheaded a Jewish cultural revival, better understood against the background of Eastern European Romanticism. Based on imaginative and historically grounded readings of primary sources, Litvak presents a compelling case for rethinking the most important concepts that currently inform the positioning of the Haskalah within the context of Jewish emancipation, nationalism, and secularization. Most importantly, she challenges the prevailing view that the Haskalah was the political and philosophical mainspring of Jewish liberalism. In Litvak's ambitious rereading, nineteenth-century Eastern European intellectuals emerge as the authors of a Jewish Romantic revolution. Fueled by unfulfilled longings for community, spiritual perfection, and historical authenticity, the poets and scholars associated with the Haskalah were ambivalent about the contemporary struggle for Jewish equality and the quest for material improvement. Their skepticism about the universal promise of Enlightenment continues to shape Jewish political and religious values.

This volume explores the different ways that ethnic and religious diversity is conceptualized and debated in South and East Asia. In the first few decades following decolonization, talk of multiculturalism and pluralism was discouraged, as states attempted to consolidate themselves as unitary and homogenizing nation-states. Today, however, it is widely recognized that states in the region must come to terms with the enduring reality of ethnic and religious cleavages, and find new ways of accommodating and respecting diversity. As a result, many countries are now debating policies to accommodate minorities, including recognition of indigenous rights, minority language rights, consociational power-sharing, regional autonomy, and multination federalism. This is often described as a key ingredient in any process of democratization in the region. One manifestation of this new ethos is the growing rhetoric of 'multiculturalism', often imported from the West. And indeed Western models of minority rights have had an influence in many Asian countries, often promoted by international organizations. However, Asian societies also have their own traditions of peaceful coexistence amongst linguistic and religious groups. All of the major ethical and religious traditions in the region - from Confucian and Buddhist to Islamic and Hindu - have their own conceptions of tolerance, and their own recipes for sustaining unity amidst diversity. These traditions continue to shape people's beliefs and practices in the region. Even the distinctive conception of Marxism developed in the region provides an influential perspective on these issues not found in the West. The rhetoric of 'multiculturalism' may be ubiquitous around the world, but it is being used to express quite different ideas and norms. Using both case studies and thematic essays, this volume examines the pre-colonial traditions, colonial legacies, and post-colonial ideologies that influence contemporary debates on multiculturalism in the region. It explores the areas of convergence and divergence between these different perspectives, and the extent to which they provide viable frameworks for managing ethnic and religious diversity in the region.

African Philosophy is a collection of previously unpublished essays that address epistemological and metaphysical concerns that have emerged from the sub-Saharan regions of Africa. The primary focus of the book is on traditional African conceptions of mind, person, personal identity, truth, knowledge, understanding, objectivity, and reality. The collection also discusses traditional African conceptions of causation, destiny, and free will.

The influence of East on West - of Eastern ideas on Western thought - has become an increasingly vexed issue in recent times. Opinion is divided between two main schools: those who believe that Oriental ideas have exercised a considerable influence on Western thought, and those who, for a variety of reasons, believe that such influence has remained negligible. In this Reader A. L. Macfie suggests that the reality lies somewhere between these two extremes, and that the interest taken by Western thinkers in Eastern thought in the modern period has moved from one of passing interest, through serious attention, to some level of assimilation and acceptance. Eastern Influences on Western Philosophy explores the extent of Oriental influence on European thought, primarily in the period of the Enlightenment and the nineteenth-century period of doubt and scepticism that followed it. As such it is the first Reader to bring together in one place a series of specific historical and textual studies of Oriental influence upon European thinkers. Starting with Malebranche and ending with Heidegger, other Western thinkers considered include Leibniz, Voltaire, Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Thoreau, Nietzsche, Jung and Buber. To accompany the readings the editor's introduction explores the idea of influence in the context of the chosen readings, and at the same time raises the question of how far Edwards Said's thesis regarding Orientalism actually applies to Western thought. Key Features: * Reflects increasing interest in relationship between Eastern and Western Philosophy * Covers major European figures from the 18th and 19th centuries and the way Eastern thought influenced them * Substantial editorial introduction places readings in context and explores the influence of the East on the West * Previous work by editor praised for its accessibility

Dzong-ka-ba's (1357-1419) "The Essence of Eloquence" is the one book on wisdom that the Dalai Lama carries with him wherever he goes. Composed by Tibet's great yogi-scholar and founder of the Ge-luk-ba school, it stands as a landmark in Buddhist philosophy. In this first of a three-volume series, Jeffrey Hopkins focuses on how the conflict between appearance and reality is presented in the Mind-Only, or Yogic Practice, School.;"The Essence of Eloquence" is so rich that for the last six centuries, numerous Tibetan and Mongolian scholars have been drawn into a dynamic process of both finding and creating consistency in Dzong-ka-ba's often terse and cryptic tract. Hopkins makes extensive use of these commentaries to annotate the translation. Included are historical and doctrinal introductions and a critical edition of the text, as well as a lengthy synopsis to aid the general reader.

Farzin Vahdat has written a trenchant analysis of the intellectual discourse of modernity in Iran. Although there have been several recent studies about Iranian intellectuals, this volume is unique in that it focuses almost entirely on intellectual discourse among the clergy.

Vahdat first provides us with a solid foundation for understanding the key Critical Theory concept of subjectivity -- especially as expounded in the writings of Jurgen Habermas. Then, he successfully shows how one Western philosophical approach does have universal applicability by demonstrating the concern of Iranian theorists such as Shariati, Motahhari, Khomeini, and Sorush with human subjectivity.

By engaging the major theoretical discourses of modernity, the author attempts for the first time in a non-Western context to address some of the central theoretical issues involved in modernity and Iran's experience of these issues. As such, this study can contribute to a profound understanding of modernity and its development in a Middle Eastern context. This book is an important addition to the growing body of work in Global Studies and Critical Theory as well as on contemporary Iran.

This is a new presentation of the philosophy of the Talmud. The Talmud is not a work of formal philosophy, but much of what it says is relevant to philosophical enquiry, including issues explored in contemporary debates. In particular, the Talmud has original ideas about the relation between universal ethics and the ethics of a particular community. This leads into a discussion on the relation between morality and ritual, and also about the epistemological role of tradition.
The book explains the paradoxes of Talmudic Judaism as arising from a philosophy of revolution, stemming from Jewish origins as a band of escaped slaves, determined not to reproduce the slave-society of Egypt. From this arises a daring humanism, and an emphasis on justice in this world rather than on other-worldly spirituality. A strong emphasis on education and the cultivation of rationality also stems from this. Governing the discussion is a theory of logic that differs significantly from Greek logic. Talmudic logic is one of analogy, not classification and is peculiarly suited to discussions of moral and legal human situations.
This book will be of interest to those in the fields of philosophy, religion and the history of ideas, whether students, teachers and academics, or the interested general reader.

With this book we see a philosopher well steeped in the Western tradition thinking through ancient Eastern disciplines, meditating on what it means to learn to breathe, and urging us all at the dawn of a new century to rediscover indigenous Asian cultures. Yogic tradition, according to Irigaray, can provide an invaluable means for restoring the vital link between the present and eternity -- and for re-envisioning the patriarchal traditions of the West.

Western, logocentric rationality tends to abstract the teachings of yoga from its everyday practice -- most importantly, from the cultivation of breath. Lacking actual, personal experience with yoga or other Eastern spiritual practices, the Western philosophers who have tried to address Hindu and Buddhist teachings -- particularly Schopenhauer -- have frequently gone astray. Not so, Luce Irigaray. Incorporating her personal experience with yoga into her provocative philosophical thinking on sexual difference, Irigaray proposes a new way of understanding individuation and community in the contemporary world. She looks toward the indigenous, pre-Aryan cultures of India -- which, she argues, have maintained an essentially creative ethic of sexual difference predicated on a respect for life, nature, and the feminine.

Irigaray's focus on breath in this book is a natural outgrowth of the attention that she has given in previous books to the elements -- air, water, and fire. By returning to fundamental human experiences -- breathing and the fact of sexual difference -- she finds a way out of the endless sociologizing abstractions of much contemporary thought to rethink questions of race, ethnicity, and globalization.

"An original and highly stimulating approach. Honen, the founder of the Pure Land sect, has been greatly underestimated and neglected in modern studies of Japanese Buddhism. Notable for making connections with Christian liberation theology and for establishing the social significance of the Pure Land movement, this book will make excellent reading in courses on world religion, Japanese religion, and religion and society."--Alfred Bloom, author of "Shinran's Gospel of Pure Grace

"Soho Machida's original, provocative study of Honen secures his place in Japanese intellectual history; and his bold advocacy of Pure Land practice forms a watershed in Japanese Buddhism, dividing the old and new, hierarchical and egalitarian, elitist and popular faith."--Taitetsu Unno

"Machida has thrusted Honen to his deserved place at the center stage of Pure Land Buddhist development. We are drawn closer to Honen as a person and a spiritual genius who not only established Pure Land as an independent tradition but also impacted the overall Japanese Buddhist ethos of his time. The Wests perception of Pure Land Buddhism has been forever transformed by this superb work."--Kenneth K. Tanaka, Musashino Womens University, Tokyo

Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677)-often recognized as the first modern Jewish thinker-was also a founder of modern liberal political philosophy. This book is the first to connect systematically these two aspects of Spinoza's legacy. Steven B. Smith shows that Spinoza was a politically engaged theorist who both advocated and embodied a new conception of the emancipated individual, a thinker who decisively influenced such diverse movements as the Enlightenment, liberalism, and political Zionism. Focusing on Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, Smith argues that Spinoza was the first thinker of note to make the civil status of Jews and Judaism (what later became known as the Jewish Question) an essential ingredient of modern political thought. Before Marx or Freud, Smith notes, Spinoza recast Judaism to include the liberal values of autonomy and emancipation from tradition. Smith examines the circumstances of Spinoza's excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, his skeptical assault on the authority of Scripture, his transformation of Mosaic prophecy into a progressive philosophy of history, his use of the language of natural right and the social contract to defend democratic political institutions, and his comprehensive comparison of the ancient Hebrew commonwealth and the modern commercial republic. According to Smith, Spinoza's Treatise represents a classic defense of religious toleration and intellectual freedom, showing them to be necessary foundations for political stability and liberal regimes. In this study Smith examines Spinoza's solution to the Jewish Question and asks whether a Judaism, so conceived, can long survive.

Kwame Gyekye offers a philosophical interpretation and critical analysis of the African cultural experience in modern times. Critically employing Western political and philosophical concepts to clear, comparative advantage, Gyekye addresses a wide range of concrete problems afflicting postcolonial African states, such as ethnicity and nation-building, the relationship of tradition to modernity, the nature of political authority and political legitimation, political corruption, and the threat to traditional moral and social values, practices, and institutions in the wake of rapid social change.

Since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the validity of Marxism and Marxist theory has undergone intense scrutiny both within and outside the academy. In Lukacs After Communism, Eva L. Corredor conducts ten lively and engaging interviews with a diverse group of international scholars to address the continued relevance of Gyoergy Lukacs's theories to the post-communist era. Corredor challenges these theoreticians, who each have been influenced by the man once considered the foremost theoretician of Marxist aesthetics, to reconsider the Lukacsean legacy and to speculate on Marxist theory's prospects in the coming decades. The scholars featured in this collection-Etienne Balibar, Peter Burger, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Jacques Leenhardt, Michael Loewy, Roberto Schwarz, George Steiner, Susan Suleiman, and Cornel West-discuss a broad array of literary and political topics and present provocative views on gender, race, and economic relations. Corredor's introduction provides a biographical synopsis of Lukacs and discusses a number of his most important theoretical concepts. Maintaining the ongoing vitality of Lukacs's work, these interviews yield insights into Lukacs as a philosopher and theorist, while offering anecdotes that capture him in his role as a teacher-mentor.

This anthology of medieval philosophy collects 54 readings - many of them not widely available - by the most important and influential Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers of the middle ages. The readings are organized into nine thematic sections; the six readings comprising each section are arranged chronologically within it. Each reading is preceded by a biographical note on the author and by a brief explanatory epitome.

A deluxe paperback edition: Thomas Cleary's brilliant translation of the sayings of Confucius presented in the order of the 64 classic I Ching hexagrams.

According to the mandala principle, a prominent feature of tantric Buddhism, all phenomena are part of one reality. Whether good or bad, happy or sad, clear or obscure, everything is interrelated and reflects a single totality. As Ch?gyam Trungpa explains in this book, from the perspective of the mandala principle, existence is orderly chaos. There is chaos and confusion because everything happens by itself, without any external ordering principle. At the same time, whatever happens expresses order and intelligence, wakeful energy and precision. Through meditative practices associated with the mandala princliple, the opposites of experience - confusion and enlightenment, chaos and order, pain and pleasure - are revealed as inseperatble parts of a total vision of reality.

Students and teachers of Chinese history and philosophy will not want to miss Daniel Gardner's accessible translation of the teachings of Chu Hsi (1130-1200)--a luminary of the Confucian tradition who dominated Chinese intellectual life for centuries. Homing in on a primary concern of our own time, Gardner focuses on Chu Hsi's passionate interest in education and its importance to individual development. For hundreds of years, every literate person in China was familiar with Chu Hsi's teachings. They informed the curricula of private academies and public schools and became the basis of the state's prestigious civil service examinations. Nor was Chu's influence limited to China. In Korea and Japan as well, his teachings defined the terms of scholarly debate and served as the foundation for state ideology. Chu Hsi was convinced that through education anyone could learn to be fully moral and thus travel the road to sagehood. Throughout his life, he struggled with the philosophical questions underlying education: What should people learn? How should they go about learning? What enables them to learn? What are the aims and the effects of learning? Part One of Learning to Be a Sage examines Chu Hsi's views on learning and how he arrived at them. Part Two presents a translation of the chapters devoted to learning in the Conversations of Master Chu.