'The noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers ... ethically he is supreme' Bertrand Russell Published shortly after his death in 1677, the Ethics is Spinoza's greatest work - a fully cohesive philosophical system that strives to provide a picture of reality and to comprehend the meaning of an ethical life. It defines in turn the nature of God, the mind, human bondage to the emotions and the power of understanding - moving from a consideration of the eternal, to speculate upon humanity's place in the natural order and the path to attainable happiness. A work of elegant simplicity, the Ethics is a brilliantly insightful consideration of the possibility of redemption through philosophical reflection. Translated by Edwin Curley with an Introduction by Stuart Hampshire

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.

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 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.

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.

Are American colleges and universities failing their students by refusing to teach the philosophical traditions of China, India, Africa, and other non-Western cultures? This biting and provocative critique of American higher education says yes. Even though we live in an increasingly multicultural world, most philosophy departments stubbornly insist that only Western philosophy is real philosophy and denigrate everything outside the European canon. In Taking Back Philosophy, Bryan W. Van Norden lambastes academic philosophy for its Eurocentrism, insularity, and complicity with nationalism and issues a ringing call to make our educational institutions live up to their cosmopolitan ideals. In a cheeky, agenda-setting, and controversial style, Van Norden, an expert in Chinese philosophy, proposes an inclusive, multicultural approach to philosophical inquiry. He showcases several accessible examples of how Western and Asian thinkers can be brought into productive dialogue, demonstrating that philosophy only becomes deeper as it becomes increasingly diverse and pluralistic. Taking Back Philosophy is at once a manifesto for multicultural education, an accessible introduction to Confucian and Buddhist philosophy, a critique of the ethnocentrism and anti-intellectualism characteristic of much contemporary American politics, a defense of the value of philosophy and a liberal arts education, and a call to return to the search for the good life that defined philosophy for Confucius, Socrates, and the Buddha. Building on a popular New York Times opinion piece that suggested any philosophy department that fails to teach non-Western philosophy should be renamed a "Department of European and American Philosophy," this book will challenge any student or scholar of philosophy to reconsider what constitutes the love of wisdom.

Drawn from a series of lectures that Wm. Theodore de Bary delivered in honor of the Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi, "Confucian Tradition and Global Education" is a unique synthesis of essay and debate concerning the future of Chinese education and the potential political uses of Confucianism in the contemporary world.

Rapid modernization and the rise of English as a global language increasingly threaten East Asia's cultural diversity and long-standing Confucian traditions. De Bary argues that keeping Confucianism alive in China is not only a matter of "Chinese identity," but also a critical part of achieving a multicultural global education. Scholars take different views on what is worth preserving in Confucian tradition, and whether it is possible for the classical teachings to remain relevant in today's high-tech educational environment. De Bary and his contributors assert that the Chinese classics are the key to this survival, and therefore their inclusion in a global humanities curriculum is essential.

De Bary also believes in the power of the classics to humanize the modernization process and to shape a more democratic East Asia. Kwan Tze-wan discusses the difficulty of teaching the Chinese humanities in English when certain ideas and values are best expressed in a native language, and Cheung Chan Fai demonstrates how it is still possible for Confucian humanism to contribute to a modern liberal education. Timely and passionately argued, "Confucian Tradition and Global Education" is a major work emphasizing the importance of Chinese philosophy in the post-World War II era.

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

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

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

At the heart of Spinoza's Heresy is a mystery: why was Baruch Spinoza so harshly excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community at the age of twenty-four? In this philosophical sequel to his acclaimed, award-winning biography of the seventeenth-century thinker, Steven Nadler argues that Spinoza's main offence was a denial of the immortality of the soul. But this only deepens the mystery. For there is no specific Jewish dogma regarding immortality: there is nothing that a Jew is required to believe about the soul and the afterlife. It was, however, for various religious, historical and political reasons, simply the wrong issue to pick on in Amsterdam in the 1650s. After considering the nature of the ban, or cherem, as a disciplinary tool in the Sephardic community, and a number of possible explanations for Spinoza's ban, Nadler turns to the variety of traditions in Jewish religious thought on the postmortem fate of a person's soul. This is followed by an examination of Spinoza's own views on the eternity of the mind and the role that that the denial of personal immortality plays in his overall philosophical project. Nadler argues that Spinoza's beliefs were not only an outgrowth of his own metaphysical principles, but also a culmination of an intellectualist trend in Jewish rationalism.

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.

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

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.

In this compelling and engaging work, Tsenay Serequeberhan discusses recent attempts to define African philosophy and the practice of hermeneutics for articulating a philosophy that is distinctively African. Pressing into service insights derived from Marx, Nietzsche, Levinas, Fanon, and others, Serequeberhan analyzes the question of how we relate to our past (i.e., our heritage) and the open possibilities of our future. He carefully examines the variety of approaches to African philosophy and argues for a historically engaged and existentially attuned paradigm shift. The result is an approach that explores the contemporary situation of African and African-American existence in view of emancipatory struggles that have established the confines of the present.

This ambitious study presents Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) as the most outstanding and influential thinker of modernity--and examines the question of whether he was the "first secular Jew." A number-one bestseller in Israel, "Spinoza and Other Heretics" is made up of two volumes--The Marrano of Reason and The Adventures of Immanence. Yirmiyahu Yovel shows how Spinoza grounded a philosophical revolution in a radically new principlethe philosophy of immanence, or the idea that this world is all there is--and how he thereby anticipated secularization, the Enlightenment, the disintegration of ghetto life, and the rise of natural science and the liberal-democratic state.

The Adventures of Immanence

Here Yovel discloses the presence of Spinoza's philosophical revolution in the work of later thinkers who helped shape the modern mind. He claims it is no accident that some of the most unorthodox and innovative figures in the past two centuries--including Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein--were profoundly influenced by Spinoza and shared his view that immanent reality is the only source of valid social and political norms and that recognizing this fact is necessary for human liberation.

But what is immanent reality, and how is liberation to be construed? In a work that constitutes a retelling of much of Western intellectual history, Yovel analyzes the rival answers given to these questions and, in so doing, provides a fresh view of a wide range of individual thinkers.

The Fourth Way is the most comprehensive statement thus far published of the ideas taught by the late P.D. Ouspensky. Consisting of verbatim records of his oral teaching from 1921 to 1946, it gives a lucid explanation of the practical side of G. I. Gurdjieff's teachings, which Gurdjieff presented in the form of raw materials, Ouspensky's specific task having been to put them together as a systematic whole. Just as Tertium Organum deals with a new mode of thinking, so The Fourth Way is concerned with a new way of living. It shows a way of inner development to be followed under the ordinary conditions of life -- as distinct from the three traditional ways that call for retirement from the world: those of the fakir, the monk, and the yogi.

The Fourth Way is a guide for those who seek a true way of inner growth under conditions open to the men and women of today.

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.

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.

Das Universalienproblem - die Frage nach der Erkenntnis der Natur des Allgemeinen -, das seit der griechischen Antike zu den zentralen Problemen philosophischen Denkens zahlt, besitzt fur die Gegenwart nicht nur philosophischen Wert, sondern liegt zugleich vielfach wichtigen Streitpunkten in verschiedenen Wissenschaften zugrunde. Woehler legt eine Auswahl der wichtigsten Primarquellen, ausgehend von der beruhmten Isagoge des Porphyrios und deren Kommentierung durch Boethius bis zu Anselm von Canterbury und Johannes von Salisbury vor, wobei er die arabische Tradition (Avicenna, Averroes) mit einbezieht. Erstmals werden in dieser Breite dem deutschen Leser Texte mit dem Ziel zur Verfugung gestellt, die wesentlichen Entwicklungslinien des Streits um die Universalien mitvollziehen zu koennen. In seinem umfangreichen Nachwort gibt Woehler uber die Texterlauterungen hinaus einen UEberblick uber die Geschichte des Universalienstreits und seinen Verlauf bis zur Fruhscholastik. Erganzt wird der Band durch ein deutsch-lateinisches Glossar.

First published in 1986, Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft remains the only analysis of indigenous discourse about an African belief system undertaken from within the framework of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Taking as its point of departure W. V. O. Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of translation, the book investigates questions of Yoruba epistemology and of how knowledge is conceived in an oral culture.

This book, appropriately titled Decolonisation, Africanisation and the Philosophy Curriculum, signposts and captures issues about philosophy, the philosophy curriculum, and its decolonisation and Africanisation. This topic is of critical importance at present for the discipline of philosophy, not the least because philosophy and the current philosophical canons are perceived to be improvised by virtue of their historical marginalisation and exclusion of other valuable and important philosophical traditions and perspectives. The continued marginalisation and exclusion of one such philosophical tradition and perspective, i.e. African philosophy connects to issues of space contestations and raise questions of justice. The chapters in this book engage with all of these issues, and they also attempt to make sense of what it will mean for philosophy and the philosophy curriculum to be decolonised and Africanised; how to go about achieving this task; and what the challenges and problems are that confront efforts to decolonise and Africanise the philosophy curriculum. Furthermore, the contributors initiate discussions on the value and importance of non-western philosophical traditions and perspectives, and by so doing challenge the dormant and triumphant narrative and hegemony of Western philosophy, as well as the centrality accorded to it in philosophical discourse. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in the South African Journal of Philosophy.

..". a great read. It is masterfully presented, and is an ideal textboth for advanced undergraduates and graduate students." -- InternationalJournal of African Historical Studies

..". a detailed, critical guide to fifty years of African philosophy... " -- TeachingPhilosophy

"Masolo offers an expansive and lucidly panoramicview of the origin and developments in African philosophy." -- AfricaToday

"The excellence of this book lies in the wealth ofperspectives that it brings to the discussion on what constitutes philosophy, rationality, and meaningful reflection. It is both thought provoking andilluminating." -- Ethics

A Kenyan philosopher surveys themesand debates in African philosophy over the last five decades. Masolo's purviewincludes Francophone and Anglophone philosophers in both the analytic andphenomenological traditions.

Dasheng qixin lun, or Treatise on Awakening Mahayana Faith has been one of the most important texts of East Asian Buddhism since it first appeared in sixth-century China. It outlines the initial steps a Mahayana Buddhist needs to take to reach enlightenment, beginning with the conviction that the Mahayana path is correct and worth pursuing. The Treatise addresses many of the doctrines central to various Buddhist teachings in China between the fifth and seventh centuries, attempting to reconcile seemingly contradictory ideas in Buddhist texts introduced from India. It provided a model for later schools to harmonize teachings and sustain the idea that, despite different approaches, there was only one doctrine, or Dharma. It profoundly shaped the doctrines and practices of the major schools of Chinese Buddhism: Chan, Tiantai, Huayan, and to a lesser extent Pure Land. It quickly became a shared resource for East Asian philosophers and students of Buddhist thought. Drawing on the historical and intellectual contexts of Treatise's composition and paying sustained attention to its interpretation in early commentaries, this new annotated translation of the classic, makes its ideas available to English readers like never before. The introduction orients readers to the main topics taken up in the Treatise and gives a comprehensive historical and intellectual grounding to the text. This volume marks a major advance in studies of the Treatise, bringing to light new interpretations and themes of the text.

An attempt to provide a critical account of Gandhi's moral and political philosophy. It places him in an historical context and examines his central philosophical assumptions, drawing on his original Gujarati works and discussions with his associates and followers.

A new and complete translation in English of this controversial and provocative modern text, with substantive notes -- educating readers to the sources and traditions of the words employed -- a glossary of terms, various indices, selected biography, and an interpretative essay.

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