Written 2500 years ago, The Art of War is the oldest military treatise in the world, a classic study of competition and rivalry that has been utilized by soldiers ever since. Napoleon studied its strategies and tactics. It is required reading for intelligence personnel in the United States Marine Corps. "Warriors" of Wall Street and in corporation cultures rely on it for guidance. It's even been rumored to help players win at the board game Risk. This 1910 translation by the British Museum's Lionel Giles is the most popular one available, a highly readable version of this still startlingly relevant text. Lionel Giles also translated The Book of Mencius and Sayings of Confucius. Sun Tzu lived in China in the 6th century B.C. and was a contemporary of Confucius.

1924. This little volume is an attempt at a brief exposition of the philosophical and religious doctrine found in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra as explained by its successive commentaries of Vyasa, Vacaspati, Vijnana Bhikshu and others. The scope of this work is limited to a brief exposition of the intellectual foundation, or the theoretical side, of the Yoga practices, consisting of the philosophical, psychological, cosmological, ethical, religious, and other doctrines which underlie these practices.

This pathbreaking work argues that the major intellectual trend in China from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth century was Confucian ritualism, as expressed in ethics, classical learning, and discourse on lineage.
Reviews
"Chow has produced a work of superb scholarship, fluently written and beautifully researched. . . . One of the landmarks of the current reconstruction of the social philosophy of the Qing dynasty. . . . Chow's book is indispensable. It has illuminating analyses of many mainstream writers, institutions, and social categories in eighteenth-century China which have never previously been examined."
--Canadian Journal of History
"Chow's monograph moves ritual to center stage in late imperial social and intellectual history, and the author makes a powerful case for doing so. . . . Because the author understands the intellectual history of late Ming and Qing as the history of a movement, or successive movements, of fundamental social reform, he has also made an important contribution to social and political history as these were related to intellectual history."
--Journal of Chinese Religion
"Chow's book is an excellent contribution to recent scholarship on the intellectual history of the Confucian tradition and provides a balance for other studies that have emphasized ideas to the exclusion of symbols."
--The Historian

Confucian Reflections: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times is about the early Chinese Confucian classic the "Analects" Lunyu, attributed to the founder of the Confucian tradition, Kongzi (551-479 bce) and who is more commonly referred to as "Confucius" in the West. Philip J. Ivanhoe argues that the Analects is as relevant and important today as it has proven to be over the course of its more than 2000 year history, not only for the people who live in East Asian societies but for all human beings. The fact that this text has inspired so many talented people for so long, across a range of complex, creative, rich, and fascinating cultures offers a strong prima facie reason for thinking that the insights the Analects contains are not bound by either the particular time or cultural context in which the text took shape.

Vaisesika is one of the six systems of Hindu philosophy. It represents a pluralistic realism and is usually held to be an atomistic, metaphysical theory. This book explores the basic tenets of the Vaisesika classical school of Indian philosophy from a new perspective. It argues that it reveals an epistemological formulation of its own, which was diminished due to later developments in the history of Indian philosophical tradition.

Focusing on the principles of knowable objects and the processes of knowing as propounded by the Vaisesika school of Indian Philosophy, the book offers a fuller appreciation of the theories. Providing a balanced approach by examining earliest available material in the original sources of Vaisesika and concentrating on the epistemological pattern adopted therein, it presents an authentic and comprehensive understanding of Vaisesika concepts. This is the first introductory sourcebook in English for the authentic study of Vaisesika, and is of use to students and scholars of World Religion and Philosophy.

The Paramarthasara, or 'Essence of Ultimate Reality', is a work of the Kashmirian polymath Abhinavagupta (tenth-eleventh centuries). It is a brief treatise in which the author outlines the doctrine of which he is a notable exponent, namely nondualistic Saivism, which he designates in his works as the Trika, or 'Triad' of three principles: Siva, Sakti and the embodied soul (nara). The main interest of the Paramarthasara is not only that it serves as an introduction to the established doctrine of a tradition, but also advances the notion of jiv anmukti, 'liberation in this life', as its core theme. Further, it does not confine itself to an exposition of the doctrine as such but at times hints at a second sense lying beneath the evident sense, namely esoteric techniques and practices that are at the heart of the philosophical discourse. Its commentator, Yogaraja (eleventh century), excels in detecting and clarifying those various levels of meaning. An Introduction to Tantric Philosophy presents, along with a critically revised Sanskrit text, the first annotated English translation of both Abhinavagupta's Paramarthasara and Yogaraja's commentary. This book will be of interest to Indologists, as well as to specialists and students of Religion, Tantric studies and Philosophy.

First published in 1889. This re-issues the second, revised edition of 1926. Chuang Tzu was to Lao Tzu, the author of Tao Te Ching, as Hui-neng, the sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, was to Bodhidharma, and in some respects St.Paul to Jesus; he expanded the original teaching into a system and was thus the founder of Tao-ism. Whereas Lao Tzu was a contemporary of Confucius in the sixth century B.C, Chuang Tzu lived over two hundred years later. He was one of the greatest minds produced by China; philosopher, metaphysician, moralist and poet. It is impossible to understand the spiritual depth of the Tao Te Ching without the aid of Chuang Tzu.

This book centers on rethinking foundational values in the era of frontier technologies by tapping into the wisdom of Chinese philosophical traditions. It tries to answer the following questions: How is the essence underpinning humans, nature, and machines changing in this age of frontier technologies? What is the appropriate ethical framework for regulating human-machine relationships? What human values should be embedded in or learnt by AI? Some interesting points emerged from the discussions. For example, the three dominant schools of Chinese thinking-Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism- invariably reflect non-anthropocentric perspectives and none of them places humanity in a supreme position in the universe. While many Chinese philosophers are not convinced by the prospect of machine intelligence exceeding that of humans, the strong influence of non-anthropocentrism in the Chinese thinking contributed to much less panic in China than in the West about the existential risks of AI. The thinking is that as human beings have always lived with other forms of existence, living with programs or other forms of "beings," which may become more capable than humans, will not inevitably lead to a dystopia. Second, all three schools emphasize self-restraint, constant introspection, and the pursuit of sage-hood or enlightenment. These views therefore see the potential risks posed by frontier technologies as an opportunity for the humanity to engage in introspection on the lessons learned from our social and political history. It is long overdue that humanity shall rethink its foundational values to take into account a multi-being planetary outlook. This book consists of nine leading Chinese philosophers' reflections on AI's impact on human nature and the human society. This is a groundbreaking work, which has pioneered the in-depth intellectual exploration involving traditional Chinese philosophy and frontier technologies and has inspired multidisciplinary and across area studies on AI, philosophy, and ethical implications.

This study offers a critique of international relations from the perspective of a pre-modern Chinese thinker, Gongsun Long. It explores both the potential and the danger of the post-Western quest for geo-cultural distinction.

This book provides a much-needed introduction to the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy. Robert E. Carter focuses on four influential Japanese philosophers: the three most important members of the Kyoto School (Nishida Kitar, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji), and a fourth (Watsuji Tetsur ), who was, at most, an associate member of the school. Each of these thinkers wrestled systematically with the Eastern idea of nothingness, albeit from very different perspectives.
Many Western scholars, students, and serious general readers are intrigued by this school of thought, which reflects Japan s engagement with the West. A number of works by various thinkers associated with the Kyoto School are now available in English, but these works are often difficult to grasp for those not already well-versed in the philosophical and historical context. Carter s book provides an accessible yet substantive introduction to the school and offers an East-West dialogue that enriches our understanding of Japanese thought while also shedding light on our own assumptions, habits of thought, and prejudices."

The debates between various Buddhist and Hindu philosophical systems about the existence, definition and nature of self, occupy a central place in the history of Indian philosophy and religion. These debates concern various issues: what 'self' means, whether the self can be said to exist at all, arguments that can substantiate any position on this question, how the ordinary reality of individual persons can be explained, and the consequences of each position. At a time when comparable issues are at the forefront of contemporary Western philosophy, in both analytic and continental traditions (as well as in their interaction), these classical and medieval Indian debates widen and globalise such discussions. This book brings to a wider audience the sophisticated range of positions held by various systems of thought in classical India.

Neo-Confucianism was the major philosophical tradition in China for most of the past millennium. This Companion is the first volume to provide a comprehensive introduction, in accessible English, to the Neo-Confucian philosophical thought of representative Chinese thinkers from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. It provides detailed insights into changing perspectives on key philosophical concepts and their relationship with one another.

This is a translation of the chapter on perception of Kumarilabhatta's magnum opus, the Slokavarttika, one of the central texts of the Hindu response to the criticism of the logical-epistemological school of Buddhist thought. In an extensive commentary, the author explains the course of the argument from verse to verse and alludes to other theories of classical Indian philosophy and other technical matters. Notes to the translation and commentary go further into the historical and philosophical background of Kumarila's ideas. The book provides an introduction to the history and the development of Indian epistemology, a synopsis of Kumarila's work and an analysis of its argument.

An accessible guide to controlling the mind. Written in a simple and easily understandable style, Concentration is a classic among books on the art of meditation. Without the ability to concentrate, our efforts at meditation will result only in going nowhere, in spinning our wheels in an unending rut. Through a series of practical steps, the author provides the frame work of achieving the state of Samadhi. It encourages readers to actively walk the path of spirituality and achieve a state of super consciousness, rather than just passively read about it.

In this study, Olberding proposes a new theoretical model for reading the Analects. Her thesis is that the moral sensibility of the text derives from an effort to conceptually capture and articulate the features seen in exemplars, exemplars that are identified and admired pre-theoretically and thus prior to any conceptual criteria for virtue. Put simply, Olberding proposes an "origins myth" in which Confucius, already and prior to his philosophizing knows whom he judges to be virtuous. The work we see him and the Analects' authors pursuing is their effort to explain in an organized, generalized, and abstract way why pre-theoretically identified exemplars are virtuous. Moral reasoning here begins with people and with inchoate experiences of admiration for them. The conceptual work of the text reflects the attempt to analyze such people and parse such experiences in order to distill abstract qualities that account for virtue and can guide emulation.

Philosophical concepts are influential in the theories and methods to study the world religions. Even though the disciplines of anthropology and religious studies now encompass communities and cultures across the world, the theories and methods used to study world religions and cultures continue to be rooted in Western philosophies. For instance, one of the most widely used textbooks used in introductory courses on religious studies, introduces major theoreticians such as Edward Burnett Tylor, James Frazer, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Mircea Eliade, William James, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Clifford Geertz. Their theories are based on Western philosophy. In contrast, in Indic philosophical systems, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, one of the common views on reality is that the world both within one self and outside is a flow with nothing permanent, both the observer and the observed undergoing constant transformation. This volume is based on such innovative ideas coming from different Indic philosophies and how they can enrich the theory and methods in religious studies.

The Sung Neo-Confucian synthesis is one of the two great formative periods in the history of Confucianism. Shao Yung (1011-77) was a key contributor to this synthesis, and this study attempts to make understandable the complex and highly theoretical thought of a philosopher who has been, for the most part, misunderstood for a thousand years. It is the first full-length study in any language of Shao Yung's philosophy.
Using an explicit metaphilosophical approach, the author examines the implicit and assumed aspects of Shao Yung's thought and shows how it makes sense to view his philosophy as an explanatory theory. Shao Yung explained all kinds of change and activity in the universe with six fundamental concepts that he applied to three realms of reality: subsensorial "matter," the phenomenal world of human experience, and the theoretical realm of symbols.
The author also analyzes the place of the sage in Shao's philosophy. Not only would the sage restore political and moral unity in society, but through his special kind of knowing he also would restore cosmological unity. Shao's recognition that the perceiver had a critical role in making and shaping reality led to his ideal of the sage as the perfect knower. Utilizing Shao's own device of a moving observational viewpoint, the study concludes with an examination of the divergent interpretations of Shao's philosophy from the eleventh to the twentieth century.
Because Shao took very seriously numerological aspects of Chinese thought that are often greatly misunderstood in the West (e.g., the I Ching), the study is also a very good introduction to the epistemological implications of an important strand of all traditional Chinese philosophical thought.

These are questions to which oriental thinkers have given a wide range of philosophical answers that are intellectually and imaginatively stimulating. Thirty-Five Oriental Philosophers is a succinctly informative introduction to the thought of thirty-five important figures in the Chinese, Indian, Arab, Japanese and Tibetan philosophical traditions. Thinkers covered include founders such as Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha and Muhammed, as well as influential modern figures such as Gandhi, Mao Tse-Tung, Suzuki and Nishida. The book is divided into sections, in which an introduction to the tradition it covers precedes the essays on its individual philosophers. Notes, further reading lists, and cross-references provide the student with a clear route to further study. There is a glossary of key terms at the end of the book.

In this book, Phillips gives an overview of the contribution of Nyaya--the classical Indian school that defends an externalist position about knowledge as well as an internalist position about justification. Nyaya literature extends almost two thousand years and comprises hundreds of texts, and in this book, Phillips presents a useful overview of the under-studied system of thought. For the philosopher rather than the scholar of Sanskrit, the book makes a whole range of Nyaya positions and arguments accessible to students of epistemology who are unfamiliar with classical Indian systems.

A beautiful look at the Ancient Chinese philosophy of Ren and how it can help us with our hectic modern lives. The Chinese character for Ren combines the word for 'person' and the number 'two' , representing human connection. And in the teachings of ancient philosopher Confucius, Ren is the study of our relationship with those around us. In this accessible and beautiful book, Yen Ooi explains the various facets of Ren and explores how this philosophy applies to everything from our relationship with ourselves and the people in our lives, to how we relate to society and the wider world. She shows us how, using the basic principles of Ren and through simple changes to our lives, we can connect better with friends, family and colleagues, become helpful members of society and find fulfilment in ideas of community, justice, morality and compassion.

First published in 1934.
Unlike previous translations, this translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching is based not on the medieval commentaries but on a close study of the whole of early Chinese literature.

First published in 1938. Previous translations of the Analects of Confucius are based upon a medieval interpretation which reflects the philosophy of the 12th century A.D rather than of the 5th century B.C., when Confucius lived. This book detaches the Analects from the Scholastic interpretation and lets these famous sayings speak for themselves.

This thought-provoking work presents Confucianism as a living ethical tradition with contemporary relevance. Developing Confucian ethical ideas within a contemporary context, this book discusses the nature of virtue, the distinction between public and private, the value of spontaneity, and more.

This book reinterprets classical Chinese philosophical tradition along the conceptual line of human dignity. Through extensive textual evidence, it illustrates that classical Confucianism, Mohism and Daoism contained rich notions of dignity, which laid the foundation for human rights and political liberty in China, even though, historically, liberal democracy failed to grow out of the authoritarian soil in China. The book critically examines the causes that might have prevented the classical schools from developing a liberal tradition, while affirming their positive contributions to the human dignity concept. Analysing the inadequacies of the western concept of human dignity, the text covers relevant teachings of Kongzi, Mengzi, Xunzi, Mozi, Laozi and Zhuangzi (in comparison with Rousseau). While the Confucian notions of humanity (Ren), righteousness (Yi), and gentleman (Junzi) bear most directly on the conception of dignity, Mohism and Daoism provide salutary corrections to the ossification of the orthodox Confucian practice (Li).