Steven Nadler explores an intriguing episode in early modern intellectual history: the expulsion of the great philosopher Spinoza from his Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam. Why was Spinoza excommunicated? Nadler's investigation of this simple question gives fascinating new perspectives on Spinoza's thought and the Jewish religious and philosophical tradition from which it arose.

Jonardon Ganeri gives an account of language as essentially a means for the reception of knowledge. The semantic power of a word, its ability to stand for a thing, derives from the capacity of understanders to acquire knowledge simply by understanding what is said. Ganeri finds this account in the work of certain Indian philosophers of language, and shows how their analysis can inform and be informed by contemporary philosophical theory.

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

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

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

The ABC-CLIO World History Companion to Utopian Movements is a unique reference work devoted to actual and theoretical utopian movements. Detailed entries examine major utopian movements, significant utopian thinkers and literary works, and various sects, settlements, and communes. The more than 100 A to Z entries include: Diggers; Ecotopia; Fairhope Colony; Feminist Utopias; Futurism; Huguenot Utopias; Kibbutzim; Lunar Utopias; Millennialism; Native American Utopias; New Age Cults; Oneida Community; Ranters; Transcendentalism; and Welfare State.

Organized topically rather than historically, this book provides an excellent introduction to the subject of African Philosophy. Samuel Oluoch Imbo synthesizes the ideas of key African philosophers into an accessible narrative. The author focuses on five central questions: What are the definitions of African philosophy? Is ethno-philosophy really philosophy? What are the dangers of an African philosophy that claims to be 'unique'? Can African philosophy be done in foreign languages such as English and French? Are there useful ways to make connections between African philosophy, African American philosophy, and women's studies? By making cross-disciplinary and transnational connections, Imbo stakes out an important place for African philosophy. Imbo's book is an invaluable introduction to this dynamic and growing area of study.

This book offers a powerful new reading of Spinoza's philosophy of mind, the aspect of Spinoza's thought often regarded as the most profound and perplexing. Michael Della Rocca argues that interpreters of Spinoza's philosophy of mind have not paid sufficient attention to his causal barrier between the mental and the physical. The first half of the book shows how this barrier generates Spinoza's strong requirements for having an idea about an object. The second half of the book explains how this causal separation underlies Spinoza's intriguing argument for mind-body identity. Della Rocca concludes his analysis by solving the famous problem of whether for Spinoza the distinction between attributes is real or somehow merely subjective.

In Let the Cow Wander, the author argues that metaphors inform our conceptual spheres and are in turn informed by them. The book begins with a discussion of metaphor, model, and conceptual sphere, followed by an investigation into Vedic and Advaitic sacred texts and by generalizations on religious explanation and practice.

Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence is a comprehensive introduction to Erasmus's life, works, and thoughts. It integrates the best scholarship of the past twenty years and will appeal to undergraduates in all areas of cultural history as well as Erasmus specialists.

Dathorne's approach is basically literary and historical, but he has also developed his argument around politics, popular culture, language, and even landscape architecture. He looks at Europe as a mental construct of philosophies and politics that both the English and European Americans identified with Greece and Rome. Dathorne shows how much of what we think of as European heritage is actually of African and/or Islamic background. He shows the founders of the U.S. to be idealistic Athenian-type elites, unlikely to allow humanity to govern as a citizenship. The book discusses the literary history of the ex-colony of America with its own special lens, showing how again and again the makers of the American myth failed to come to terms with the multicultural realities.

This collection of writings is from authors who are either Indians who have tried to make themselves heard, or whites who have tried to hear Indians. The first part of the book emphasizes the practical and includes Isaac Tens's "Career of the Medicine Man." The second section concentrates on the theoretical and contains Benjamin Lee Whorf's "American Indian Model of the Universe" and chapters on Indian metaphysics, among other things. In addition to an introductory essay on the Indian's stance towards reality, the editors have contributed chapters entitled "The Clown's Way" and "An American Indian View of Death."

In this original work of systematic philosophy, David Dilworth places the major texts of Western and Oriental philosophy and religion, both ancient and modern, into one comparative framework. His study reveals affinities between thinkers who lived centuries and continents apart and produces numerous insights by bringing great philosophical texts together into a single purview. "This is a provocative and challenging book: far-reaching in scope and implication, worldwide in its vision, yet inescapably Aristotelian in its grounding. It is to be hoped that it will acquaint more Western readers with Chinese philosophy, while spurring Asian thinkers to offer counterproposals about the crucial issues of philosophy in their respective traditions and the best methods to compare them."-Carl Becker, Journal of Asian Studies "The work opens new interpretive possibilities for intra- and inter-textual reflection on a grand scale."-Edith Wyschogrod, Queens College "Philosophers East or West should buy and read this book."-Robert Magnolia, Tamkang University and National Taiwan University, Taiwan

The Ch'ing scholar-thinker Tai Chen (1724-1777) was a passionate explorer. He loved words, and his most important philosophical treatise, the Meng Tzu tzu-I shu-cheng (An evidential study of the meaning of terms in the Mencius), is an exhaustive search for the meaning of the words first uttered by Mencius in the fourth century B.C. This book by Ann-ping Chin and Mansfield Freeman is the first complete and annotated English translation of that treatise. Drawing on scholarship from the eighteenth century to the present, it also includes two essays that reconstruct Tai Chen's life and time and reinterpret his thought. Unlike most of the evidential scholars of his day, Tai Chen was not satisfied merely with providing reason and proof for his reading. He was interested in the life of words as their meaning changes with the vicissitudes of time. Tai Chen felt that the terms in the Mencius, garbled by the Sung and Ming thinkers who had come under the influence of Buddhism and Taoism, would no longer have made sense to Mencius himself. Key Confucian concepts, such as "principle" and "nature," had become "blood-less" moral constructs. Tai Chen preferred their primeval meaning. Intellectual historians of this century have hailed him as a progressive thinker and a social critic, but he saw himself in a simpler role: as a reader striving to understand every word in his text.

This incisive, illuminating translation of the Tao Te Ching treats these sacred writings as religious philosophy having as their central message the value of peace. Refreshing and challenging, this is a landmark work for all those investigating Eastern religion and philosophy.

Back Cover:

A NEW TRANSLATION WITH COMMENTARY
ELLEN M. CHEN
The Too Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary is a thoroughly contemporary study of a classical book, one which is perhaps humanity's earliest extant religious text. Professor Ellen Chen's new translation and commentary on the Tao Te Ching is the first to treat this sacred and influential collection of writings as religious philosophy, having as its central message the value of peace.

This new translation of the Tao Te Ching is valuable and unique in that it interprets the writings from internal textual evidence and portrays the text as a coherent, self-consistent, organic whole; it situates the Tao Te Ching in the context of ancient Chinese thought and religions, as well as places it in dialogue with traditional Western philosophies. It also critically incorporates the best insights of important past commentaries on the text. In addition, Chen's well-documented translation is a sensitive and accurate one, which attempts to supply consistent English equivalents for often-used key phrases in the Chinese.

The Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary probes the intricate history of the Tao Te Ching, as well as of Lao Tzu-who is traditionally believed to be its author. In her introduction, Professor Chen considers fascinating evidence for the authorship and dating of the text, and places the work in a social and historical context. Professor Chen makes it clear that this book, whose profound comprehension of mankind's place in the natural universe is of supreme value in this day of nuclear peril, is essential in establishing a consciousness of reconciliation among all creatures of our planet. The Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary is a refreshing and challenging discussion of the classic Tao Te Ching, a work whose vision of peace is the tantamount expression of our times and, in Ellen Chen's superbly rendered translation, a vision that must surely emerge and endure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ellen M. Chen lectures and teaches on the subject of Taoism and oriental philosophy. She has written numerous articles for various journals, including Philosophy East and West and History of Religions. She is currently a Professor of Philosophy at St. John's University in Jamaica, New York.

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

This is the standard general account in English of Islamic philosophy and theology. It takes the reader from the religio-political sects of the Kharijites and the Shiites through to the assimilation of Greek thought in the medieval period, and onto the early modern period. Watt concludes with an analysis of Western influences on modern Islamic theology.

Although George Lukacs's work has been widely read and reviewed, and has exerted a significant influence on recent international discussions of literature, philosophy, and Marxism, no comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography of the wide range of critical response to his writings has appeared in book form to date. This bibliography contains in Part I books devoted to Lukacs, including all available reviews, and the books are classified by language. Part II lists dissertations and theses, and reproduces the text in Dissertation Abstracts International when available. Part III includes essays and articles devoted to Lukacs, and these also are classified by language. Part IV lists items by proper names. It includes material in which Lukacs is being compared, or contrasted with other major figures in philosophy, literary theory and criticism, aesthetics and Marxism. Late entries are included in the addendum, and author and editor indexes also are included.

Medieval Philosophy: A Multicultural Reader comprises a comparative, multicultural reading of the four main traditions of the medieval period with extensive sections on Greek-Byzantine, Latin, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. The book also includes an initial 'Predecessors' section, presenting readings (with introductions) from figures of antiquity upon whom all four traditions have drawn. Representative readings from each of the four great traditions are presented chronologically in four different tracks, along with engaging and accessible introductions to the traditions themselves, as well as each individual thinker-all selected and presented by noted scholars within each respective tradition. This groundbreaking collection: -Offers readings from early thinkers that contextualize the medieval traditions. -Presents, for the first time, extensive readings from the Byzantine Christian tradition that has wielded an important cultural influence from Russia and the Balkans to the Middle East and Northern Africa. -Chooses and interprets texts that are integrally important within each of these four traditions-living traditions that continue to shape values and beliefs today-rather than seen from an external point of view, such as that of a later school of philosophy. -Juxtaposes extensive readings from poetic and mystical elements within these traditions alongside the usual, often more analytical readings. -Features a timeline of the entire period, a map indicating the locations associated with philosophers included in this volume, an annotated guide to further reading on each of these traditions, and an index of names and of subjects that appear in the volume. Given its relevance for approaching the medieval world on its own terms, as well as for understanding the foundations of our own world, the volume is intended not only as an academic textbook and reference work, but as a readable and informative guide for the general reader who wishes to understand these great philosophical and religious traditions that continue to influence our world today-or perhaps to simply glean the wisdom from these enduring texts. This is a culturally inclusive title, which seeks to provide the reader with a rich, varied and comprehensive insight into the entirety of the medieval philosophical world.

The philosophy of Lao-Tze is consciously paradoxical and poetic: therapeutic and deconstructional rather than analytic. It offers a guide to practical action which verges on mysticism: how to exercise strength without needing to be strong, how to win by yielding. Lao-Tze's exhortation to act while not-acting or 'doing nothing' has astonished and fascinated Chinese and Westerners alike.

The study of Chinese culture was a dominant concern in Ezra Pound's life and work. His great Canto XIII is about Kung (Confucius), Cantos LII-LXI deal with Chinese history, and in the later Cantos key motifs are often given in Chinese quotations with the characters set into the English text. His introduction to Oriental literature was chiefly through Ernest Fenollosa whose translations and notes were given him by the scholars widow in London about 1913. From these notebooks came, in time, the superb poems entitled Cathay and Pound's edition of Fenollosa's Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. But it was Confucius' ethical and political teachings--that most influenced Pound. And now, for the first time, his versions, with commentary, of three basic texts that he translated have been assembled in one volume: The Great Digest (Ta Hsio), first published in 1928; The Unwobbling Pivot (Chung Yung), 1947; and The Analects (Lun-yu), 1950. For the first two, the Chinese characters from the ancient "Stone Classics" are printed en face in our edition, with a note by Achilles Fang. Pound never wanted to be a literal translator. What he could do, as no other could, is to identify the essence, pick out "what matters now," and phrase it so pungently, so beautifully, that it will stick in the head and start new thinking.

East Asian imagery resonates throughout Martin Heidegger’s writings. In this exploration of the connections between Daoism and his thought, an international team of scholars consider why the Daodejing and Zhuangzi were texts he returned to repeatedly and the extent Heidegger adhered to Daoism’s core doctrines. They discuss how Daoist thought provided him with a new perspective, equipping him with images, concepts, and meanings that enabled him to continue his questioning of the nature of being. Exploring the environment, language, death, temporality, aesthetics, and race from the groundlessness of non-being, oneness, and the Way, they illustrate how these themes reverberate with ontological, spiritual, and epistemological potential. A lesson in the art of Daoist and cross-cultural ways of thinking, this collection marks the first sustained analysis of the influence of classical Daoism on a major 20th-century German philosopher.

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

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

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