This book provides exciting and significant inquiries into the cultivation of self in East Asian philosophy of education. The contributors to this volume are from different countries or areas in the world, but all share the same interest in exploring what it means to be human and how to cultivate the self. In this book, self-cultivation in classical Chinese philosophies-including Confucianism, neo-Confucianism, and Daoism-is scrutinised and elaborated upon, in order to reveal the significance of ancient wisdom for today's educational issues, and to show the meaningful connections between Eastern and Western educational thoughts. By addressing many issues of contemporary importance including environmental education, equity and justice, critical rationalism, groundlessness of language, and power and governance, this book offers fresh views of self-cultivation illuminated not merely by East Asian philosophy of education but also by Western insights. For those who are interested in comparative philosophies, intercultural education, and cultural study, this book is both thought-provoking and inspirational. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Educational Philosophy and Theory journal.

This book uncovers the Jesuits' mystic theological interpretation in the translation of the Book of Changes (the Yijing) in their mission in China. The book analyzes how Jesuit Figurists incorporated their intralingual translation of the Yijing, the Classical and vernacular use of Chinese language and the imitation of Chinese literati's format, and the divinization of Yijing numbers into their typological exegesis. By presenting the different ways in which Jesuit Figurists Christianized the Yijing and crafted a Chinese version of Jesus and Christian stories onto the Chinese classics, this book reveals the value of Jesuit missionary-translators. The Chinese manuscripts the Figurists left behind became treasures which have been excavated and displayed in this book. These treasures reveal the other side of the story, the side not much shown in past scholarship on the Figurists. These handwritten manuscripts on the Christianized Yijing are a legacy which continues to impact European understanding of Chinese history and civilization in later centuries. A first analysis of these manuscripts in Chinese, the book will be of interest to scholars working on the history of Christianity in China, Translation Studies, and East Asian Religion and Philosophy.

Xiang explains the nature and depth of the legitimacy crisis facing the government of China, and why it is so frequently misunderstood in the West. Arguing that it is more helpful to understand the quest for legitimacy in China as an eternally dynamic process, rather than to seek resolutions in constitutionalism, Xiang examines the understanding of legitimacy in Chinese political philosophy. He posits that the current crisis is a consequence of the incompatibility of Confucian Republicanism and Soviet-inspired Bolshevism. The discourse on Chinese political reform tends to polarize, between total westernization on the one hand, or the rejection of western influence in all forms on the other. Xiang points to a third solution - meeting western democratic theories halfway, avoiding another round of violent revolution. This book provides valuable insights for scholars and students of China's politics and political history.

Whilst accounting for the present-day popularity and relevance of Alan Watts' contributions to psychology, religion, arts, and humanities, this interdisciplinary collection grapples with the ongoing criticisms which surround Watts' life and work. Offering rich examination of as yet underexplored aspects of Watts' influence in 1960s counterculture, this volume offers unique application of Watts' thinking to contemporary issues and critically engages with controversies surrounding the commodification of Watts' ideas, his alleged misreading of Biblical texts, and his apparent distortion of Asian religions and spirituality. Featuring a broad range of international contributors and bringing Watts' ideas squarely into the contemporary context, the text provides a comprehensive, yet nuanced exploration of Watts' thinking on psychotherapy, Buddhism, language, music, and sexuality. This text will benefit researchers, doctoral students, and academics in the fields of psychotherapy, phenomenology, and the philosophy of psychology more broadly. Those interested in Jungian psychotherapy, spirituality, and the self and social identity will also enjoy this volume.

Historians of late premodern Korea have tended to regard it as a hermit kingdom, isolated from its neighbours and the wider world. In fact, as Ro argues in this book, Korean intellectuals were heavily influenced by both Chinese Neo-Confucianism and the European Enlightenment in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In the late Choson period the regime felt threatened by the new, more empirical, approaches to knowledge emerging from both the East and the West. For this reason many Korean intellectuals felt it necessary to work in the shadows and formed secret societies for the study of nature. Because of the secrecy of these societies, much of their work has remained unknown even in Korea until recent years. Ho looks at the work of these intellectuals and analyses the impact their thinking and experimentation had on knowledge production in Korea. A fascinating insight into the largely overlooked story of how globalization affected intellectual life in Korea before the 20th century. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Korean history and of Asian intellectual history more broadly.

Gershom Scholem, the great humanist thinker and founder of modern Kabbalah, is all but forgotten today. But here, in a biography as daring and inquisitive as its subject, George Prochnik goes in search of Scholem, restoring the reputation of a vital intellectual and finding in his work a vision with the power to reinvigorate contemporary religious and political thought. Tracing Scholem's life from his upbringing in Berlin, where he experienced a close and transformative friendship with Walter Benjamin, Prochnik reveals how Scholem's frustration with the bourgeois ideology of Germany during WWI led him to discover mystic Judaism, Kabbalah, and, finally, Zionism. But having emigrated to what was to become Israel, Scholem again found himself a 'stranger in a strange land', ill at ease with a prevailing conservative form of Zionism. Prochnik follows Scholem to the modern Holy Land - only to find that he too is disillusioned by the state politics he encounters. But through his profound study of Scholem and his own experience of Jerusalem, Prochnik not only questions the ideological and religious constructs of Jerusalem, but finds an ethical way forward, showing how a new form of pluralism might energize Jewish thought.

Originally published in 1978. These essays are written by distinguished philosophers from many countries and were published as a homage to Spinoza in the year which marked the three-hundredth anniversary of his death. A special feature of the book is that it includes a recently discovered letter by Spinoza, reproduced for the first time in English and in facsimile, with a commentary. The controversial influence of Spinoza on Freud is discussed, and illustrated by facsimile reproductions of original letters, hitherto unknown to Freudians and Spinozists alike. These letters direct revealing light on some of Freud's attitudes. Important parallels between East and West will also attract the student of Spinoza.

Originally published in 1952. This book collects numerous works on the revival of Spinoza scholarship in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 30's, including the emergence of conflicting Marxist schools of Spinoza interpretation. This work includes translations by Kline of seven major articles on Spinoza published from 1923-1932, with a lengthy introduction providing contextual references. These developments were generally unknown outside of Russia due to lack of prior translations into a Western European language. The Marxist view of Spinoza represents a break not only with the dominant traditions of Western scholarship, but also with those critical and negative views of pre-Revolutionary Russia. This book provides both the study of Spinoza in Soviet philosophy, and of Soviet philosophy through Spinoza.

In Eliminativism, Objects, and Persons, Jiri Benovsky defends the view that he doesn't exist. In this book, he also defends the view that this book itself doesn't exist. But this did not prevent him to write the book, and although in Benovsky's view you don't exist either, this does not prevent you to read it. Benovsky defends a brand of non-exceptionalist eliminativism. Some eliminativists, typically focusing on ordinary material objects such as chairs and hammers, make exceptions, for instance for blue whales (that is, living beings) or for persons (that is, conscious organisms). Benovsky takes one by one all types of allegedly existing objects like chairs, whales, and persons and shows that from the metaphysical point of view they are more trouble than they are worth-we are much better off without them. He thus defends an eliminativist view about ordinary objects as well as the 'no-Self' view, where he explores connections between metaphysics, phenomenology, and Buddhist thought. He then also considers the case of aesthetic objects, focusing on musical works and photographs, and shows that the claim of their non-existence solves the many problems that arise when one tries to find an appropriate ontological category for them, and that such an eliminativist view is more natural than what we might have thought. The arguments provided here are always topic-specific: each type of entity is given its own type of treatment, thus proving a varied and solid foundation for a generalized, non-exceptionalist, full-blown eliminativist worldview.

The eminent scholar Lewis R. Gordon offers a probing meditation on freedom, justice, and decolonization. What is there to be understood and done when it is evident that the search for justice, which dominates social and political philosophy of the North, is an insufficient approach for the achievements of dignity, freedom, liberation, and revolution? Gordon takes the reader on a journey as he interrogates a trail from colonized philosophy to re-imagining liberation and revolution to critical challenges raised by Afropessimism, theodicy, and looming catastrophe. He offers not forecast and foreclosure but instead an urgent call for dignifying and urgent acts of political commitment. Such movements take the form of examining what philosophy means in Africana philosophy, liberation in decolonial thought, and the decolonization of justice and normative life. Gordon issues a critique of the obstacles to cultivating emancipatory politics, challenging reductionist forms of thought that proffer harm and suffering as conditions of political appearance and the valorization of nonhuman being. He asserts instead emancipatory considerations for occluded forms of life and the irreplaceability of existence in the face of catastrophe and ruin, and he concludes, through a discussion with the Circassian philosopher and decolonial theorist, Madina Tlostanova, with the project of shifting the geography of reason.

This book proposes a new way of understanding the concept of currere, first described by William Pinar, as an approach to curriculum studies. Derived from her subject position as a Chinese woman who has studied in Beijing and Hong Kong and now researches in Vancouver, the author sets out to contribute to the distinctiveness of a Chinese cosmopolitan theory of curriculum as experienced: the initial formulation of a Chinese currere. Juxtaposing currere with elements of ancient Chinese philosophical thought to inform a cosmopolitan concept of spirituality, chapters articulate the author's own journey through subjective reconstruction, shedding light on how her subjectivity has been reconstructed through autobiography and academic study toward a coherent self capable of sustained, critical, and creative engagement with the world.

Indian art, increasingly popular in the west, cannot be fully appreciated without some knowledge of the religious and philosophical background. This book, first published in 1985, covers all aspects of Hindu iconography, and explains that its roots lie far back in the style of prehistoric art. The dictionary demonstrates the rich profusion of cults, divinities, symbols, sects and philosophical views encompassed by the Hindu religious tradition.

This book, first published in 1962, is an analysis of the history of the philosophy of a country that has never distinguished philosophy from religion. Indian philosophy is not merely metaphysical speculation, but has its foundation in immediate perception. This insistence upon immediate perception rather than abstract reasoning is what distinguishes the Indian philosophy of religion from philosophy as Western nations know it.

This book, first published in 1968, is a collection of twenty-five lectures by Swami Prabhavananda, the outstanding scholar and translator of Hindu scriptures. They present a direct and pragmatic approach to spiritual life, and a clear guide to Hinduism.

This book, first published in 1968, comprises five articles on the immortality of the soul. According to Hindu tradition this immortality cannot be proved by the scientific method of reasoning - it is based upon scriptural evidence and on the direct experience of enlightened souls. These articles examine the Hindu tradition and provide reasoned support to the scriptures and experiences.

This book, first published in 1957, was the first in English to provide a full and clear introduction to one of the most significant of Indian gods, and stresses his supreme role in Indian religion and art. The book relates the full Krishna story, explaining his role in Indian religion, and traces the history of Krishna in Indian painting. There are 39 plates of Indian pictures, each accompanied by a commentary by the author, revealing a wealth of subtle and poetic detail.

Drawing on evidence from a wide range of classical Chinese texts, this book argues that xingershangxue, the study of "beyond form", constitutes the core argument and intellectual foundation of Daoist philosophy. The author presents Daoist xingershangxue as a typical concept of metaphysics distinct from that of the natural philosophy and metaphysics of ancient Greece since it focusses on understanding the world beyond perceivable objects and phenomena as well as names that are definable in their social, political, or moral structures. In comparison with other philosophical traditions in the East and West, the book discusses the ideas of dao, de, and "spontaneously self-so", which shows Daoist xingershangxue's theoretical tendency to transcendence. The author explains the differences between Daoist philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy and proposes that Daoist philosophy is the study of xingershangxue in nature, providing a valuable resource for scholars interested in Chinese philosophy, Daoism, and comparative philosophy.

This book is one of the first wide-ranging academic surveys of the major types and categories of Hindu contemplative praxis. It explores diverse spiritual and religious practices within the Hindu traditions and Indic hermeneutical perspectives to understand the intricate culture of meditative communion and contemplation, devotion, spiritual formation, prayer, ritual, and worship. The volume extends and expands the conceptual reach of the fields of Contemplative Studies and Hindu Studies. The chapters in the volume cover themes in Hindu contemplative experience from various texts and traditions including classical Samkhya and Patanjali Yoga, the Bhagavata Purana, the role of Sadhana in Advaita Vedanta, Srividya and the Sricakra, the body in Tantra, the semiotics and illocution of Gaudiya Vaisnava sadhana, mantra in Mimamsa, Vaisnava liturgy, as well as cross-cultural reflections and interreligious comparative contemplative praxis. The volume presents indigenous vocabulary and frameworks to examine categories and concerns particular to the Hindu contemplative traditions. It traces patterns that cut across Hindu traditions and systems and discusses contrasting methods of different theological/philosophical schools evincing a strong plurality in Hindu religious thought and practice. The volume provides intra-religious comparisons that reveal internal complexity, nuances, and a variety of contemplative states and transformative practices that exist under the rubric of Hindu practices of interiority and reflection. With key insights on forms and functions of the contemplative experience along with their theologies and philosophies, the volume suggests new hermeneutical directions that will advance the field of contemplative studies. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of religious and theological studies, contemplative studies, Hindu studies, consciousness studies, yoga studies, Indian philosophy and religion, sociology of religion, philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and South Asian studies, as well as general readers interested in the topic.

This volume presents a panorama of Syriac engagement with Aristotelian philosophy primarily situated in the 6th to the 9th centuries, but also ranging to the 13th. It offers a wide range of articles, opening with surveys on the most important philosophical writers of the period before providing detailed studies of two Syriac prolegomena to Aristotle's Categories and examining the works of Hunayn, the most famous Arabic translator of the 9th century. Watt also examines the relationships between philosophy, rhetoric and political thought in the period, and explores the connection between earlier Syriac tradition and later Arabic philosophy in the thought of the 13th century Syriac polymath Bar Hebraeus. Collected together for the first time, these articles present an engaging and thorough history of Aristotelian philosophy during this period in the Near East, in Syriac and Arabic.

While indeterminacy is a recurrent theme in philosophy, less progress has been made in clarifying its significance for various philosophical and interdisciplinary contexts. This collection brings together early-career and well-known philosophers-including Graham Priest, Trish Glazebrook, Steven Crowell, Robert Neville, Todd May, and William Desmond-to explore indeterminacy in greater detail. The volume is unique in that its essays demonstrate the positive significance of indeterminacy, insofar as indeterminacy opens up new fields of discourse and illuminates neglected aspects of various concepts and phenomena. The essays are organized thematically around indeterminacy's impact on various areas of philosophy, including post-Kantian idealism, phenomenology, ethics, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and East Asian philosophy. They also take an interdisciplinary approach by elaborating the conceptual connections between indeterminacy and literature, music, religion, and science.

This book breaks the stereotype that links Chinese philosophy solely to Confucianism, instead providing a kaleidoscopic view of Chinese philosophy of education. The contributors explore a variety of issues, including the journey of modernisation (or Westernisation) of China's education between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries; Chinese identity and the concept of race in education and history; contemporary interpretations of Confucian pedagogy in relation to twenty-first-century skills; the life story of a teacher in modern China as embodying the spirit of a Confucian pedagogue; the ecological self in education; an original interpretation of postmodern-Daoist symbolism; and the role of translation in producing and transmitting knowledge across cultural and linguistic boundaries. This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Archives are considered to be collections of administrative, legal, commercial and other records or the actual place where they are located. They have become ubiquitous in the modern world, but emerged not much later than the invention of writing. Following Foucault, who first used the word archive in a metaphorical sense as "the general system of the formation and transformation of statements" in his "Archaeology of Knowledge" (1969), postmodern theorists have tried to exploit the potential of this concept and initiated the "archival turn". In recent years, however, archives have attracted the attention of anthropologists and historians of different denominations regarding them as historical objects and "grounding" them again in real institutions. The papers in this volume explore the complex topic of the archive in a historical, systematic and comparative context and view it in the broader context of manuscript cultures by addressing questions like how, by whom and for which purpose were archival records produced, and if they differ from literary manuscripts regarding materials, formats, and producers (scribes).

Mou Zongsan (1909-1995), one of the representatives of Modern Confucianism, belongs to the most important Chinese philosophers of the twentieth century. From a more traditional Confucian perspective, this book makes a critical analysis on Mou's "moral metaphysics," mainly his thoughts about Confucian ethos. The author observes that Mou simplifies Confucian ethos rooted in various and specific environments, making them equal to modern ethics, which is a subversion of the ethical order of life advocated by traditional Confucianism. The author believes, also, that Mou has twisted Confucian ethos systematically by introducing Kant's concept of autonomy into the interpretation of Confucian thoughts. Scholars and students in Chinese philosophy, especially those in Confucian studies, will be attracted by this book. Also, it will appeal to readers interested in comparative philosophy.

In this volume, Howard Kreisel revisits some of his most important essays, many of them appearing here in English for the first time. They are updated and revised to reflect new thought and developments in the field of medieval Jewish philosophy.