An understanding of developments in Arabic mathematics between the IXth and XVth century is vital to a full appreciation of the history of classical mathematics. This book draws together more than ten studies to highlight one of the major developments in Arabic mathematical thinking, provoked by the double fecondation between arithmetic and the algebra of al-Khwarizmi, which led to the foundation of diverse chapters of mathematics: polynomial algebra, combinatorial analysis, algebraic geometry, algebraic theory of numbers, diophantine analysis and numerical calculus. Thanks to epistemological analysis, and the discovery of hitherto unknown material, the author has brought these chapters into the light, proposes another periodization for classical mathematics, and questions current ideology in writing its history. Since the publication of the French version of these studies and of this book, its main results have been admitted by historians of Arabic mathematics, and integrated into their recent publications. This book is already a vital reference for anyone seeking to understand history of Arabic mathematics, and its contribution to Latin as well as to later mathematics. The English translation will be of particular value to historians and philosophers of mathematics and of science.

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, I am necessarily concerned about the future role of Communist China in world affairs. A true understanding of Peking's foreign policy motives and objectives is possible only if one has a grasp of the ideological foundations and conflicts of the contemporary leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. Therein lies the value of Professor Yung Ping Chen's revised edition Chinese Political Thought: Mao Tse-tung and Liu Shao-chi. Within a compact number of pages, Professor Chen's book provides the rt ader with a clear and ready grasp of the fundamentals of Com munist Chinese ideology. Although its scholarship is evident, the work's interpretation do not overwhelm the reader with lengthy quotations or confuse him with excessive speculations-difficulties sometimes associa ted with books about China. Instead, Professor Chen appears to have the ability to reduce complicated ideas to manageable proportions. In his revised edition, the author makes use of source material which recently has become available outside China to clarify issues involved in the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." That phenomenon, which has caused so much wonder and speculation in the West, is analyzed by Professor Chen. He describes for the reader the underlying ideological factors which have emerged from the great turmoil in China, placing them within a framework of verified historical events while avoiding the pitfall of endless theorizing about situations and events inside China about which too little is yet known."

In this book the editors brought together outstanding articles concerning intercultural aesthetics. The concept 'Intercultural aesthetics' creates a home space for an artistic cross-fertilization between cultures, and for heterogeneity, but it is also firmly linked with the intercultural turn within Western and non-Western philosophy.

The book is divided into two parts, yet one can sense a clear unity throughout the whole book. This unity is related to the underlying subject that the different authors, each in their own way and from their own background, try to reveal. They use related, and overlapping terms such as 'the suchness of things', 'dancing and shaping lives', 'presenting a meaning beyond words, presenting the unpresentable, experiencing', in order to bring to our awareness the genuine importance of the non-conceptual, next to the conceptual. Several authors moreover take on a reflective, and at times even a self-reflective stance, pointing to the intrinsic relation between cultural aesthetics and ethics, making this book unique in its kind.

A number of Jewish philosophers active in Spain and Italy in the second half of the 15th century (Abraham Bibago, Baruch Ibn Ya'ish, Abraham Shalom, Eli Habillo, Judah Messer Leon) wrote Hebrew commentaries and questions on Aristotle. In these works, they reproduced the techniques and terminology of Late-Medieval Latin Scholasticism, and quoted and discussed Latin texts (by Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, John Duns Scotus, and other authors) about logic, physics, metaphysics, and ethics. All of these works are still unpublished, and they have not yet been either studied, or translated in modern languages.

The aim of this book is to give an idea of the extent and character of this hitherto neglected "Hebrew Scholasticism." After a general historical introduction to this phenomenon, and bio-bibliographical surveys of these philosophers, the book gives complete or partial annotated English translations of the most significant Hebrew Scholastical works. It includes also critical editions of some parts of these texts, and a Latin-Hebrew glossary of Scholastical technical terms.

This book deals with the internal senses, the mind/body problem and other problems associated with the concept of mind as it developed from Avicenna to the medical Enlightenment. The book collects essays from scholars in this promising field of research. It brings together scholars working on the same issues in the Arabic, Jewish and Western philosophical traditions. This collection opens up new and interesting perspectives.

Globalization brings people and cultures together, producing, in addition to deep and rich encounters, exclusion, racism, xenophobia and asymmetries. The present book takes these issues implicitly as its starting point by thoroughly reflecting on them from a perspective of worldviews, as one of many approaches.

More specifically, it focuses on people s implicit and explicit interpretations and assumptions of the world, of themselves and of others. Often deeply rooted and hard to change, they have an important function, for without them we would continually need to question what we do and what we think. In their absolutist form, these assumptions may become a barrier for open-mindedness, and hence for deep intercultural understanding and exchange. We need to find a balance between both stances.

Intercultural philosophy tries to fulfil this role, on the one hand by comparing different cultures on a deep philosophical level, and as a way to better understand each other s core assumptions, and on the other hand by arguing for an intercultural philosophy grounded in specific cases. The contributions of this book conceive of "another possible world" which does not condemn cultural and religious diversity as a detonator for "Clashes of Civilizations," but rather welcomes it as a source of inspiration for all and of respect for the "different.""

This volume is relevant to Islamicists, phenomenologists, comparatists, metaphysicians, philosophers of religion, and historians of ideas. This book is the first volume in a new and unique book series: Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue. The main aim of this series is to engage in a philosophical exploration, bringing back to the philosophical arena key philosophical issues presently forgotten.

Never before, in any anthology, have contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of language come together to address the single most neglected important issue at the confluence of these two branches of philosophy, namely: Can we know facts from reliable reports? Besides Hume's subversive discussion of miracles and the literature thereon, testimony has been bypassed by most Western philosophers; whereas in classical Indian (Pramana) theories of evidence and knowledge philosophical debates have raged for centuries about the status of word-generated knowledge. Is the response "I was told by an expert on the subject" as respectable as "I saw" or "I inferred" in answer to "How do you know?"' is a question answered in diverse and subtle ways by Buddhists, Vaisesikas and Naiyayikas. For the first time this book makes available the riches of those debates, translating from Sanskrit some contemporary Indian Pandits' reactions to Western analytic accounts of meaning and knowledge. For advanced undergraduates in philosophy, for researchers - in Australia, Asia, Europe or America - on epistemology, theory of meaning, Indian or comparative philosophy, as well as for specialists interested in this relatively fresh topic of knowledge transmission and epistemic dependence this book will be a feast. After its publication analytic philosophy and Indian philosophy will have no excuse for shunning each other.

Bioethics: Asian Perspectives: A Quest for Moral Diversity

- is the first volume on bioethics all contributors of which are exclusively non-western scholars;

- unfolds a rich and colourful picture;

- addresses thorny bioethical issues from comprehensive Asian perspectives and different from the western paradigm of bioethics;

- covers many topics including the intellectual foundation of Asian bioethics, bioethics and Asian culture, life and death, euthanasia and end-of-life care in Asia;

- shows in its discussions moral diversity in Asia;

- sheds light on the debate about universal ethics, global ethics and moral diversity. The book is intended for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in bioethics as well as for bioethicists, philosophers, physicians, scholars of Asian and culture studies, geneticists, sinologists, medical anthropologists, health administrators, health officials for relations with Asia, foundation officers for health programs in Asia, western journalists in Asia and officers of international organizations for Asia.

The 11 essays collected here have been composed by members of the North American Spinoza Society. They exhibit the fruits of the research, investigation and erudition of an array of established scholars and newer students whose interpretations of Spinoza's philosophical doctrines are receiving critical acclaim. This is the first collection in the English language dedicated exclusively to topics, problems or questions raised by the teachings found in Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus. Divided into the themes of piety, peace, and the freedom to philosophize, the essays treat Spinoza's views on faith and philosophy, miracles, the light of Scripture, political power, religion, the state, the body politic, the idea of tolerance, and philosophic communication, as well as his connections to Walter Benjamin, Blaise Pascal, David Hume, and his Jewish heritage. Readership: An excellent collection for students and scholars studying Spinoza, the history of early modern philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and those concerned with theologico-political questions.

Thanks to the Inlaks Foundation in India, I was able to do my doctoral research on Our Talk About Nonexistents at Oxford in the early eighties. The two greatest philosophers of that heaven of analytical philosophy - Peter Strawson and Michael Dummett - supervised my work, reading and criticising all the fledgling philosophy that I wrote during those three years. At Sir Peter's request, Gareth Evans, shortly before his death, lent me an unpublished transcript of Kripke's John Locke Lectures. Work on the Appendix about Indian Philosophy was supervised by the late Professor Bimal Krishna Matilal with whom informal but intense philosophical conversations used to spill over into dinner at his place almost every other day. It was Professor Matilal who sent me, over a summer, to study a tough Navya-Nyaya text under his own Nyaya teacher Pandit Visvabandhu Tarkatirtha at Calcutta. All four of these teachers were as kind to me as my life-long mentor in philosophy Professor Pranab Kumar Sen, whose clarity and depth remain the unreachable regu lative ideal of my intellect. When I came back to India, my life became blissfully free of the agonising anxiety to publish, until, after a conference at Jadavpur University where I gave an impromptu paper, ironically enough, on Non-doings, I met Derek Parfit. He had a six-hour conversation with me, explicitly planning my life. Five years had already elapsed since I had finished my D. Phil, but Derek read my thesis and liked it."

Regenerative medicine is rich with promethean promises. The use of human embryonic stem cells in research is justified by its advocates in terms of promises to cure a wide range of diseases and disabilities, from Alzheimer s and Parkinsonism to the results of heart attacks and spinal cord injuries. More broadly, there is the promethean allure of being able to redesign human biological nature in terms of the goals and concerns of humans. Needless to say, these allures and promises have provoked a wide range of not just moral but metaphysical reflections that reveal and reflect deep fault-lines in our cultures. The essays in this volume, directly and indirectly, present the points of controversy as they tease out the character of the moral issues that confront any attempt to develop the human regenerative technologies that might move us from a human to a post-human nature. Although one can appreciate the disputes as independently philosophical, they are surely also a function of the conflict between a Christian and a post-Christian culture, in that Christianity has from its beginning recognized a fundamental prohibition against the taking of early human life. Even the philosophical disputes that frame secular bioethics are often motivated and shaped by these background cultural conflicts. These essays display this circumstance in rich ways."

This book is unusual in many respects. It was written by a prolific author whose tragic untimely death did not allow to finish this and many other of his undertakings. It was assembled from numerous excerpts, notes, and fragments according to his initial plans. Zilberman s legacy still awaits its true discovery and this book is a second installment to it after The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought (Kluwer, 1988). Zilberman s treatment of analogy is unique in its approach, scope, and universality for Western philosophical thought. Constantly compared to eastern and especially classical Indian interpretations, analogy is presented by Zilberman as an important and in many ways primary method of philosophizing or philosophy-building. Due to its universality, this method can be also applied in linguistics, logic, social analysis, as well as historical and anthropological research. These applications are integral part of Zilberman s book. A prophetic leap to largely uncharted territories, this book could be of considerable interest for experts and novices in the field of analogy alike.

This is the first investigation of the history of Russian Freemasonry, based on the premise that the facts of the Russian Enlightenment preclude application of the interpretative framework commonly used for the history of western thought. Coverage includes the development of early Russian masonry, the formation of the Novikov circle in Moscow, the programme of Rosicrucianism and its Russian variant and, finally, the clash between the Rosicrucians and the State.

This book recounts the history of Marxist philosophy in China between 1923 and 1945 through the writings and activities of four philosophers: Qu Qiubai, Ai Siqi, Li Da and Mao Zedong. Two of these philosophers - Qu and Mao - were also political activists and leaders, but their contribution to this history is as important, if not more so, than the contribution of Ai and Li who were predominantly philosophers and scholars. The inclusion of Qu and Mao underlines the intimate connection between philosophy and politics in the revolutionary movement in China. It is not possible to speak credibly of Marxist philosophy in China without considering the political context within which its introduction, elaboration and dissemination proceeded. Indeed, each of the philosophers considered in this book repudiated the notion that the study of philosophy was a scholastic intellectual exercise devoid of political significance. Each of these philosophers regarded himself as a revolutionary, and considered philosophy to be useful precisely because it could facilitate a comprehension of the world and so accelerate efforts to change it. By the same token, each of these philosophers took philosophy seriously; each bent his mind to the daunting task of mastering the arcane and labyrinthian philosophical system of dialectical materialism. Philosophy might well be political, they believed, but this was no excuse for philosophical dilettantism.

The advent of Hindu Studies coincides with the emergence of modern hermeneutics. Despite this co-emergence and rich possibilities inherent in dialectical encounters between theories of modern and post-modern hermeneutics, and those of Hindu hermeneutical traditions, such an enterprise has not been widely endeavored. The aim of this volume is to initiate such an interface. Essays in this volume reflect one or more of the following categories: (1) Examination of challenges and possibilities inherent in applying Western hermeneutics to Hindu traditions. (2) Critiques of certain heuristics used, historically, to understand Hindu traditions. (3) Elicitation of new hermeneutical paradigms from Hindu thought, to develop cross-cultural or dialogical hermeneutics.

Applications of interpretive methodologies conditioned by Western culture to classify Indian thought have had important impacts. Essays by Sharma, Bilimoria, Sugirtharajah, and Tilak examine these impacts, offering alternate interpretive models for understanding Hindu concepts in particular and the Indian religious context in general.

Several essays offer original insights regarding potential applications of traditional Hindu philosophical principles to cross-cultural hermeneutics (Long, Bilimoria, Klostermaier, Adarkar, and Taneja). Others engage Hindu texts philosophically to elicit deeper interpretations (Phillips, and Rukmani). In presenting essays that are both critical and constructive, we seek to uncover intellectual space for creative dialectical engagement that, we hope, will catalyze a reciprocal hermeneutics."

One aim of this series is to dispel the intimidation readers feel when faced with the work of difficult and challenging thinkers. Moses ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides (1138-1204), represents the high point of Jewish rationalism in the middle ages. He played a pivotal role in the transition of philosophy from the Islamic East to the Christian West. His greatest philosophical work, The Guide of the Perplexed, had a decisive impact on all subsequent Jewish thought and is still the subject of intense scholarly debate. An enigmatic figure, Maimonides continues to defy simple attempts at classification. The twelve essays in this volume offer a lucid and comprehensive treatment of his life and thought. They cover the sources on which Maimonides drew, his contributions to philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and Bible commentary, as well as his esoteric writing style and influence on later thinkers.

Readers of Spinoza's philosophy have often been discouraged, as well as fascinated, by the geometrical method which he employs in his masterpiece Ethics. Aaron Garrett examines this method and suggests that Spinoza intended not only to make claims and propositions but also to transform readers by enabling them to view themselves and the world in a different way. This original and controversial book will be of interest to historians of philosophy.

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.

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: Perception from Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences.

Classical Indian schools of philosophy undertake major debates on a variety of issues with the formal aim of attaining a supreme end to existence - liberation from the cycle of lives. This book looks at four conceptions of liberation and the way analytic inquiry and philosophical knowledge are held to lead in its attainment. The central motivation of Indian philosophy - the quest for the Highest Good - is recognised but also situated in the rigorous and analytic philosophical activity of these thinkers.

Kant on Intuition: Western and Asian Perspectives on Transcendental Idealism consists of 20 chapters, many of which feature engagements between Kant and various Asian philosophers. Key themes include the nature of human intuition (not only as theoretical-pure, sensible, and possibly intellectual-but also as relevant to Kant's practical philosophy, aesthetics, the sublime, and even mysticism), the status of Kant's idealism/realism, and Kant's notion of an object. Roughly half of the chapters take a stance on the recent conceptualism/non-conceptualism debate. The chapters are organized into four parts, each with five chapters. Part I explores themes relating primarily to the early sections of Kant's first Critique: three chapters focus mainly on Kant's theory of the "forms of intuition" and/or "formal intuition", especially as illustrated by geometry, while two examine the broader role of intuition in transcendental idealism. Part II continues to examine themes from the Aesthetic but shifts the main focus to the Transcendental Analytic, where the key question challenging interpreters is to determine whether intuition (via sensibility) is ever capable of operating independently from conception (via understanding); each contributor offers a defense of either the conceptualist or the non-conceptualist readings of Kant's text. Part III includes three chapters that explore the relevance of intuition to Kant's theory of the sublime, followed by two that examine challenges that Asian philosophers have raised against Kant's theory of intuition, particularly as it relates to our experience of the supersensible. Finally, Part IV concludes the book with five chapters that explore a range of resonances between Kant and various Asian philosophers and philosophical ideas.

Even though many of France's former colonies became independent over fifty years ago, the concept of "colony" and who was affected by colonialism remain problematic in French culture today. Seloua Luste Boulbina, an Algerian-French philosopher and political theorist, shows how the colony's structures persist in the subjectivity, sexuality, and bodily experience of human beings who were once brought together through force. This text, which combines two works by Luste Boulbina, shows how France and its former colonies are haunted by power relations that are supposedly old history, but whose effects on knowledge, imagination, emotional habits, and public controversies have persisted vividly into the present. Luste Boulbina draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, and Édouard Glissant to build a challenging, original, and intercultural philosophy that responds to blind spots of inherited political and social culture. Kafka's Monkey and Other Phantoms of Africa offers unique insights into how issues of migration, religious and ethnic identity, and postcolonial history affect contemporary France and beyond.

Even though many of France's former colonies became independent over fifty years ago, the concept of "colony" and who was affected by colonialism remain problematic in French culture today. Seloua Luste Boulbina, an Algerian-French philosopher and political theorist, shows how the colony's structures persist in the subjectivity, sexuality, and bodily experience of human beings who were once brought together through force. This text, which combines two works by Luste Boulbina, shows how France and its former colonies are haunted by power relations that are supposedly old history, but whose effects on knowledge, imagination, emotional habits, and public controversies have persisted vividly into the present. Luste Boulbina draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, and Edouard Glissant to build a challenging, original, and intercultural philosophy that responds to blind spots of inherited political and social culture. Kafka's Monkey and Other Phantoms of Africa offers unique insights into how issues of migration, religious and ethnic identity, and postcolonial history affect contemporary France and beyond.

Ubuntu and Buddhism in Higher Education theorizes the equal privileging of ontology and epistemology towards a balanced focus on 'being-becoming' and knowledge acquisition within the field of higher education. In response to the shift in higher education's aims and purposes beginning in the latter half of the 20th century, this book reconsiders higher education and Western subjectivity through southern African (Ubuntu) and Eastern (Buddhist) onto-epistemologies. By mapping these other-than-West ontological viewpoints onto the discourse surrounding higher education, this volume presents a vision of colleges and universities as transformational institutions promoting our shared connection to the human and non-human world, and deepens our understanding of what it means to be a human being.