Buddhist philosophy in India in the early sixth century C. E. took an important tum away from the traditional methods of explaining and systematizing the teachings in Siitra literature that were attributed to the Buddha. The new direction in which several Indian Buddhist philosophers began to move was that of following reasoning to its natural conclusions, regardless whether the conclusions conflicted with traditional teachings. The central figure in this new movement was DiIinaga, a native of South India who found his way to the centre of Buddhist education at Nalanda, studied the treatises that were learned by the Buddhist intellectuals of his day, and eventually wrote works of his own that formed the core of a distinctly new school of Buddhist thought. Inasmuch as virtually every Indian philosopher after the sixth century had either to reject Dirinaga's methods or build upon the foundations provided by his investigations into logic, epistemology and language, his influence on the evolution of Indian philosophy was considerable, and indeed some familiarity with Dirinaga's arguments and conclusions is indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand the historical development of Indian thought. Moreover, since the approach to Buddhism that grew out of Dirinaga's meditations on language and the limits of knowledge dominated the minds of many of the scholars who took Buddhism to Tibet, some familiarity with Dirinaga is also essential to those who wish to understand the intellectual infrastructure of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and practice.

The "interest contiguity theory," which is the book's centerpiece, holds that rather than a smooth, one-way cruise through history, humankind's journey from the inception to the present has brought him/her face to face with broadly three types of interests. The first is the individual interest, which, strange as it may sound, tends to be internally contradictory. The second is society's (or "national") interest which, due to the clash of wills, is even more difficult than personal interest to harmonize. The third is the interest espoused to justify the establishment and maintenance of supranational institutions. Though conflicting, some interests are, due to their relative closeness (or contiguity), more easily reconcilable than others.

In tracing the links between and among the three broad types of interests, the book begins with a brief philosophical discussion and then proceeds to examine the implications of human knowledge for individual liberty. Against the backdrop of the epistemological and ontological questions raised in the first chapter, the book examines the contending perspectives on the theory of the state, and in particular, the circumstances under which it is justified to place the interest of society over that of the individual. The focus of the fourth chapter is on the insertion of the supranational governance constant in the sovereignty equation, and on the conflict between idealist and realist, and between both and theKantian explanations for the new order. The adequacy or otherwise of the conflicting explanations of the change from anarchy to a 'new world order' is the subject taken up in the succeeding chapters. Besides suggesting a new analytical tool for the study of politics and international relations, the contiguity theoryoffers statespersonsnew lenses with which to capturethe seismic, perplexing andsometimes disconcertingchangesunfolding before their eyes.

The Viikyapadiya of Bhartrhari and the Pramii1Jasamuccaya of Dignaga * are seminal texts in the history of ancient Indian philosophy. One text deals with grammar, the other with logic, both are the work of committed metaphysicians. Written within a span of less than a hundred years, between the fifth and the sixth centuries A.D., these texts have generally been treated separately, as representing independent schools of thought. This essay attempts to interpret these texts jointly, as a dialogue between a grammarian and a logician. This way of approaching these texts highlights unexpected facets of Bhartrhari's and Dignaga's theories of language and is intended to identify the individual achievements of each. Above all, this treatment is an exercise in writing the intellectual history of a period in time, rather than a history of a school of philosophy. The prevailing view of Bhartrhari holds that his linguistic techniques are not intrinsic to his metaphysics. The conclusions reached in the present essay are that Bhartrhari's metaphysics underlie his linguistic techniques and articulate their presuppositions. The prevailing view of Dignaga maintains that for him language deals with illusory entities and must falsify what is real. The conclusions reached in the present essay are that Dignaga's logical rules are designed to ensure that in using language one is not committed to a belief in fictional entities. My debt to modern scholarship in the field is considerable.

A world ever more extensively interlinked is calling out for serving human interests broader and more compelling than those inspiring our technological welfare. The interface between cultures - at the moment especially between the Occident and Islam - presents challenges to mutual understandings and calls for restoring the resources of our human beings forgotten in the struggle of competition and rivalry at the vital spheres of existence. In the evolutionary progress of the living beings the strictly vital concerns, emotions, attributes become sublimed and elevated to the spiritual sphere at which human beings encounter each other and share. Studies presented here bring forth sublimity, generosity, forgiveness, beauty, and are exalting the quest after ciphers and symbols which lead to our sharing the common deepest stream of fraternal reality.

Srihar a is recognised as one of the greatest exponents of what is generally known as the Sarpkara school of Advaita Vedanta. The Advaita Vedanta of Sarpkara has been commented upon, explained, expounded and developed in its various ramifications by several generations of scholars, commentators and original thinkers for over a thousand years. Even today it is claimed to be one of the two traditional schools of Indian Philosophy which have survived and have modern adherents while most other schools have died of old age on Indian soil. The only other school that has survived is the Nyaya-Vaise ika or what is now called the Navya-nyaya. Both Advaita Vedanta and Navya-nyaya have attracted the attention of modern scholars and philosophers (of both India and abroad), who are acquainted with Western philosophy and whose interest in the study of Indian philosophy has not simply been limited to the history of Indian thought or Indology. Modern exponents of Advaita Vedanta are numerous. With a few notable exceptions, however, most modern authors of Vedanta try to expound and modernise the Advaita system from either a speculative and personal point of view or from a superficial viewpoint of Kantian philosophy or Hegelian Absolutism. Such a method has seldom achieved the sophistication and respectability that is normally expected in the context of modern (chiefly western) philosophic activity.

One is always struck by the brilliant work of George Sefa Dei but nothing so far has demonstrated his pedagogical leadership as much as the current project. With a sense of purpose so pure and so thoroughly intellectual, Dei shows why he must be credited with continuing the motivation and action for justice in education. He has produced in this powerful volume, Teaching Africa, the same type of close reasoning that has given him credibility in the anti-racist struggle in education. Sustaining the case for the democratization of education and the revising of the pedagogical method to include Indigenous knowledge are the twin pillars of his style. A key component of this new science of pedagogy is the crusade against any form of hegemonic education where one group of people assumes that they are the masters of everyone else. Whether this happens in South Africa, Canada, United States, India, Iraq, Brazil, or China, Dei's insights suggest that this hegemony of education in pluralistic and multi-ethnic societies is a false construction. We live pre-eminently in a world of co-cultures, not cultures and sub-cultures, and once we understand this difference, we will have a better approach to education and equity in the human condition.

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.

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.

"It isn't easy to find an informed and critical look at the impact of digital media practices on human lives and minds. Ivo Quartiroli offers an informed critique based in both an understanding of technology and of human consciousness." -Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs. "Aware of the profound and rapid psychological and social metamorphosis we are going through as we 'go digital' without paying attention, Ivo Quartiroli is telling us very precisely what we are gaining and what we are losing of the qualities and privileges that, glued as we are to one screen or another, we take for granted in our emotional, cognitive and spiritual life. This book is a wake-up call. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates should read it." -Derrick de Kerckhove, Professor, Facolta di sociologia, Universita Federico II, Naples, former Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology. "People today, especially young people, live more on the Internet than in the real world. This has subtle and not-so-subtle effects on their thinking and personality. It is high time to review these effects, to see whether they are a smooth highway to a bright interconnected future, or possibly a deviation that could endanger health and wellbeing for the individual as well as for society. Ivo Quartiroli undertakes to produce this review and does so with deep understanding and dedicated humanism. His book should be read by everyone, whether he or she is addicted to the Internet or has second thoughts about it." -Ervin Laszlo, President, the Club of Budapest, and Chancellor, the Giordano Bruno Globalshift University. "Ivo Quartiroli here addresses one of the most pressing questions forced upon us by our latest technologies. In disturbing the deepest relations between the user's faculties and the surrounding world, our electric media, all of them without exception, create profound disorientation and subsequent discord, personal and cultural. Few subjects today demand greater scrutiny." - Dr. Eric McLuhan, Author and Lecturer "Ivo Quartiroli is mining the rich liminal territory between humans and their networks. With the integrity of a scientist and the passion of artist, he forces us to reconsider where we end and technology begins. Or when." -Douglas Rushkoff, Media Theorist and author of Cyberia, Media Virus, Life, Inc. and Program or Be Programmed. "You might find what he writes to be challenging, irritating, even blasphemous and sacrilegious. If so, he has proven his point. The Internet, Ivo suggests, might just be the new opium of the masses. Agree with him or not, no other book to date brings together the multitude of issues related to how the seductions of technology impinge upon and affect the development of the self and soul." -Michael Wesch, Associate Professor of Digital Ethnography, Kansas State University It is nearly half a century since Marshall McLuhan pointed out that the medium is the message. In the interim, digital technologies have found an irresistible hook on our minds. With the soul's quest for the infinite usurped by the ego's desire for unlimited power, the Internet and social media have stepped in to fill our deepest needs for communication, knowledge and creativity - even intimacy and sexuality. Without being grounded in those human qualities which are established through experience and inner exploration, we are vulnerable to being seduced into outsourcing our minds and our fragile identities. Intersecting media studies, psychology and spirituality, The Digitally Divided Self exposes the nature of the malleable mind and explores the religious and philosophical influences which leave it obsessed with the incessant flow of information.

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."

For nearly a decade, writers' collectives such as Kwani Trust in Kenya and Femrite , the Ugandan women writers' association, have dramatically reshaped the East African literary scene. This text extends the purview of postcolonial literary studies by providing the long overdue critical inquiry that these writers so urgently deserve.

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.

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.

The world was first introduced to the expertise and originality of Japanese scholars in phenomenology in Analecta Husserliana Vol. IX (1979). The third generation of Japanese scholars, belonging to the newly-founded Merleau-Ponty Japanese Circle, are now presented. Following Merleau-Ponty's tendency, the studies collected here seem to make a fresh phenomenological start in relation to classical Husserlian phenomenology, turning deliberately towards the `concrete', `the wild world', `flesh', `embodiment', `natural signs', `primal nature'. The rule of intentionality, natural language is thereby devalued. The wealth of insights, the freshness of intuition and the seminal power of these fascinating enquiries well merit a close reading.

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."

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.

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.

Salomon Maimon (1753-1800), one of the most fascinating characters of eighteenth-century intellectual history, came from a traditional orthodox Jewish community in Eastern Europe to Berlin to seek Enlightenment. Maimon remained an outsider: an 'Ostjude' among the enlightened Jews in Berlin, a freethinker among observant Jews and a Jew among the non-Jews. His autobiography became a classic of autobiographical literature of the Enlightenment. His 'inter-cultural' experience is reflected in his philosophy. Indebted to the Maimonidean as well as to the modern European (notably Kantian) philosophical tradition, he attempted a synthesis of normally exclusive orientations: 'Rational Dogmatism' and 'Empirical Skepticism'. Maimon's importance in the development from Kant to German Idealism has been acknowledged, but the interpretation of his own philosophical position suffered much from this narrow perspective.
The essays of leading scholars collected in this volume focus on his synthesis of 'Rational Dogmatism' and 'Empirical Skepticism'.

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 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.

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."

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."

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.