Academic literature on the topic 'Philosophy, Asian – History'

How did Chinese virtues inspire the emergence of Asian American philosophy within the American Philosophical Association (APA)? This question might seem a non-starter given the antagonistic disciplinary histories of Asian Studies and Asian American Studies. However, like the families we grew up in, virtues can subtly shape our destinies even if, or perhaps especially if, those virtues are not didactically imposed. In this article, I give a narrative account of how Chinese virtues, exemplified in encounters with Asian American filmmakers, scholars and activists, were inspirational in the struggle to recognize Asian American philosophy within the APA. I also argue that the virtues themselves provide new intellectual perspectives for articulating philosophies of personal identity and public history, scholarship and teaching. These philosophical alternatives to mainstream philosophical views on these topics express core values of Asian American philosophy.

Is it true that in the history of East Asian cultures there was less “philosophy”, less “logic” and “rationality” before the process of modernization began in the nineteenth century? A number of scholars of East Asian Studies believe this is a form of prejudice. For example, Nishida Kitarō stated that in East Asian cultures there is another form of logic, which can be called the “logicus spiritus” (心の論理). This article examines the essential parts of this logic with regard to Huayan and Zen Buddhist philosophy, and is thus an effort at comparative philosophy.

This study examined how Taiwanese philosophy has been received and researched in South Korea since its start to the present day. It takes the form of a survey, classifying the articles about Taiwanese philosophy which were published in South Korea over the years from 1994 to 2018 by the theme. It selected nine philosophers whose influence was profound in Taiwanese philosophy and observed the currents in the scholarship on each philosopher. The names of the selected philosophers are: Fang Thomé H., Hu Shi, Huang Chun-chieh, Lin Yutang, Liu Shuxian (Liu Shu-hsien), Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi (Tang Chun-I), Xu Fuguan, Yu Yingshi (Yu Ying-shih). Sixty-one related papers were summarized and reviewed, and each of them was classified by the publication date, author, language, publisher and keywords. The survey revealed the limitations in Asian philosophy scholarship with regard to Taiwanese philosophy in South Korea, in terms of both quantity and quality. The survey also suggested a possible solution to these limitations and directions for scholars in the future. The study thus serves as a foundation that can boost discussion and the balanced development of South Korean philosophy studies, as well as of Asian philosophy in general.

The topic of this special issue deals with the development of a certain stream of the Chinese philosophical tradition. Yet this philosophy did not originate in mainland China, and thus in some supposedly logical “centre” of Chinese culture, but on its alleged “periphery”, namely on the beautiful island of Taiwan. One of the incentives for our decision to compile an issue of Asian Studies which is devoted entirely to the philosophical developments in Taiwan was an international conference, entitled Taiwanese Philosophy and the Preservation of the Confucian Tradition. This interesting academic meeting was organized in October 2019 in Ljubljana by the Center for Chinese Studies at the National Central Library in Taiwan in cooperation with the East Asian Research Library (EARL) and the Department of Asian Studies at University of Ljubljana.

This thesis is a reflection upon objects of power and their roles in the lives of people through the lens of a single case example: power objects as they appear throughout the narrative, philosophical, and ritual writings of the Tibetan Buddhist ritual specialist Sog bzlog pa Blo gros rgyal mtshan (1552-1624) and his milieu. This study explores their discourse on power objects specifically for what it reveals about how human interactions with certain kinds of objects encourage the flow of power and charisma between them, and what the implications of these person-object transitions were for issues of identity, agency, and authority on the personal, institutional, and state registers in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Tibet.

My investigation of Sog bzlog pa's discourse on power objects shows how the genres of narrative, philosophy, and liturgy are related around such objects, each presenting them from a slightly different perspective. I illustrate how narratives depict power objects as central to the identity of Sog bzlog pa and his circle, mediating relations that are in turn social, political, religious, aesthetic, and economic in tone, and contributing to the authority of the persons involved. This flow of power between persons and objects, I demonstrate further, is connected to tensions over the sources of transformational power as rooted in either objects, or in the people instrumental in their ritual treatment or use. I show how this tension between objective and subjective power plays out in Sog bzlog pa's philosophical speculations about power objects and in his rituals featuring them. I also trace the persistence of this discourse after Sog bzlog pa's death in the seventeenth-century state-building activities of Tibet and Sikkim, and in the present day identity of Sikkim's Buddhist population. Power objects emerge as hybrid subject-object mediators, which variously embody, channel, and direct the flow of power and authority between persons, objects, communities, institutions, and the state, as they flow across boundaries and bind these in their tracks. Finally, I illustrate how this discourse of power objects both complicates and extends contemporary theoretical reflections on the relationships between objects, actions, persons, and meanings.

This dissertation examines three contemporaneous religious philosophers active in early modern South Asia: Muhibb Allah Ilahabadi (d. 1648), Madhusudana Sarasvati (d. 1620-1647), and the Safavid philosopher, Mir Findiriski (d. 1640/1). These figures, two Muslim and one Hindu, were each prominent representatives of religious thought as it occurred in one of the three pan-imperial languages of the Mughal Empire: Arabic, Sanskrit, and Persian. In this study, I re-trace the trans-regional scholarly networks in which each of the figures participated, and then examine the various ways in which their respective networks overlapped. The Chishti Sufi Muhibb Allah, drawing from the Islamic intellectual tradition of wahdat al-wujud, engaged in "international" networks of Arabic debate on questions of ontology and metaphysics. Madhusudana Sarasvati, meanwhile, writing in the Hindu Advaita-Vedanta tradition, was busy adjudicating competing interpretations of the well-known Sanskrit text, the Yoga-Vasistha. Mir Findiriski also took considerable interest in a shorter version of this same Yoga-Vasistha, composing his own commentary upon a Persian translation of the treatise that had been undertaken at the Mughal imperial court. In this Persian translation of the Yoga-Vasistha alongside Findiriski's commentary, I argue, we encounter a creative synthesis of the intellectual contributions occurring within Muhibb Allah's Arabic milieu, on the one hand, and the competing exegeses of the Yoga-Vasistha circulating in Madhusudana's Sanskrit intellectual circles, on the other. The result is a novel Persian treatise that represents an emerging "sub-discipline" of Persian Indian religious thought, still in the process of formulating its basic disciplinary vocabulary as drawn from these broader Muslim and Hindu traditions.

This research investigates anusmr&dotbelow;ti (Sanskrit), rjes su dran pa (Tibetan), anussati (Pāli), and considers how this term might serve as a link for finding a commonality in practices in Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions. The research was inspired by the work of Buddhist scholars Janet Gyatso, Paul Harrison, and Matthew Kapstein. Each of them has noted the importance of the term anusmr&dotbelow;ti in Buddhist texts and Buddhist practice. Harrison sees a connection between Hīnayāna practices of buddhānusmr&dotbelow;ti and a host of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna practices. He notes that buddhānusmr&dotbelow;ti can be seen as a source of later, more elaborate Vajrayāna visualization practices ("Commemoration" 215). Gyatso investigates contextual meanings of the term anusmr&dotbelow;ti and cites meanings that include an element of commemoration and devotion. She notes that varieties of anusmr&dotbelow;ti are considered beneficial for soteriological development and are deliberately cultivated for that purpose (Mirror of Memory 2-3). Matthew Kapstein refers to a type of anusmr&dotbelow;ti that is the palpable recovery of a state of being or affect. This, he says, is not simply the memory of the experience but the recovery of the sense of being in that state ("Amnesic Monarch" 234). Essential to the research were the teachings of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche and Anam Thubten Rinpoche on Buddha-nature and Pure Vision.

In this study I have coined the terms "Buddha-nature anusmr&dotbelow;ti" and "Pure vision anusmr&dotbelow;ti." Though these terms do not appear in the literature, they may be seen as useful in investigating core remembrances (anusmr&dotbelow;ti) in the Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna traditions respectively. "Buddha-nature anusmr&dotbelow;ti " refers to a key remembrance or commemoration in Mahāyāna Tibetan literature and practice. "Pure Vision anusmr&dotbelow;ti " refers to a key remembrance or commemoration in Vajrayāna Tibetan literature and practice. This dissertation cites passages from key texts and commentaries to make the point that these coined terms meaningfully reflect a major aspect of their respective traditions. They describe that which is worthy and important, that which should be remembered and commemorated.

Faith and culture enjoy a harmonious relationship. In the past centuries of Catholicism, evangelization did not take into cognizance the culture of a people. The translation and adaptation approaches were the dominant models missionaries often used in the context of evangelization. Sadly, these approaches failed to create adequate contact with the local cultures where the faith was transplanted. The distance between faith and culture has caused the Catholic faith to be foreign in many cultures across the globe including, North African countries and Japan. In Tiv society of central Nigeria too, Catholicism is yet to take concrete root.

Building on the worship experiences of educated emerging adult Catholics in institutions of higher education in Tivland, this dissertation uses the circle method and other related contextual approaches to contextualize Catholicism in Tiv culture. The data gathered from participant observation, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups discussions was narrowed to what most connects emerging adults with Catholic worship, and what the Catholic Church needs to know about them. The data revealed a constantly recurring notion of unappealing worship and inadequate catechesis on core doctrines. One way to connect their experiences of worship is by synthesizing cultural symbols with Catholic worship symbols.

Community formations, intensive catechesis, and service to the church are the three practical strategies that can synthesize faith and culture and ground the Catholic Church in Tiv culture. Pious organizations that bring emerging adults together as community will serve as forum to adequately catechize them by synthesizing Catholic symbols with cultural texts that are already familiar to them. This leads to a mutual enrichment of both Tiv cultural practices and Catholic worship symbols ultimately making emerging adults community theologians who can effectively articulating the faith to others including, those in rural communities.

Religion
M.A.
Within recent Japanese Buddhist scholarship there is a debate over the interpretation of Karmic causality evidenced in the 75 and 12 fascicle editions of Dogen's Shobogenzo, one salient example being that found in the daishugyo and shinjin inga fascicles on the fox koan from the mumonkon. At issue is whether a Buddhist of great cultivation transcends karmic causality, with the earlier daishugyo promoting a balanced perspective of both "not falling into" and "not obscuring" causality, while shinjin inga instead strongly favors the latter over the former. Traditionalists interpret the apparent reversal in shinjin inga as an introductory simplification to aid novices, while some Critical Buddhists see Dogen as instead returning to the orthodox truth of universal causality. I argue that Dogen philosophically favored the view found in daishugyo, but moved away from it in his later teachings due to misinterpretations made by both senior and novice monks alike.
Temple University--Theses

This dissertation looks at an attempt in Buddhist history to theorize the role and status of the body as the prime focus of soteriological discourse. It studies a text titled Explanation of the Hidden Vajra Body (Rdo rje lus kyi sbas bshad), composed by Yang dgon pa Rgyal mtshan dpal (1213-1258). This work, drawing on a wide range of canonical tantric Buddhist scriptures and Indic and Tibetan commentaries, lays out in detail a Buddhist theory of embodiment that brings together the worldly realities of the body with their enlightened transformation. This dissertation analyzes the ways Yang dgon pa theorizes the body as the essential ground of the salvific path, and endeavors to provide a thematic guide to his rich and complex discussion of what the body is and does, from a tantric perspective. The thesis parses a key term, dngos po'i gnas lugs, that Yang dgon pa uses as an organizing principle in Explanation of the Hidden. If taken literally, the term means something like "the nature of things" or "the nature of material substance," but Yang dgon pa deployed the term specifically to refer to the nature of the human psychophysical organism, in its ordinary state. By way of this term, Yang dgon pa argues that the body itself makes enlightenment possible. In the course of this thesis, I consider the prior history of this category as it was gradually developed by a series of Bka' brgyud writers until it reached Yang dgon pa. Then, in light of this category, I explore Yang dgon pa's own vision of embodiment. This vision, I argue, reflects an attempt to refocus soteriological attention on the power of the body, over and above the mind, as the salient basis for non-dual knowing. Finally, I reflect upon the lasting contributions of Yang dgon pa's conception of the body to the ongoing exploration of such topics in the history of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist soteriology, as well as upon why some of the more radical elements of his thinking seem to have been eliminated in subsequent generations of his lineage.

Orientador: Alcides Hector Rodriguez Benoit
Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-09T04:12:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Antunes_Jair_D.pdf: 1691468 bytes, checksum: 2cdcda700f4f8c98a1ba9853dd308a4a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007
Resumo: A história para Marx aparece como a história da separação entre homem e natureza. Esta história teria como princípio fundante as formas de apropriação privada das condições objetivas de existência surgidas de forma imanente na sociedade ocidental. Ela se manifestaria como um processo de desenvolvimento da contradição da luta de classes. No Oriente esta história somente teria se assentado quando da conquista européia, quando os europeus teriam destruído o milenar modo de produção asiático e assentado ali as formas da apropriação burguesa. Na América, este princípio ocidental teria se manifestado quando da formação das colônias. Marx diz que teriam sido três as formas principais de colônias estabelecidas na América: as colônias do tipo do México, as colônias de Plantação e as colônias de Povoamento. Estas colônias, segundo Marx, cada uma a seu modo, estariam conformes às necessidades burguesas de acumulação originária de capital. As colônias de Plantação (Pflanzungskolonien), para Marx, seriam colônias produtoras de formas excepcionais de mais-valia. Nestas colônias, as formas de trabalho compulsório, aparentemente pré-capitalistas, encobririam, no fundo, segundo Marx, o caráter essencialmente burguês das relações de produção coloniais. Marx faz também a aproximação entre colônias de Plantação e colônias de Povoamento, afirmando que, quanto ao conteúdo, elas seriam essencialmente idênticas. Esta afirmação de Marx, porém, coloca em xeque a tradicional classificação da história colonial americana dividida entre 'colônias de povoamento¿ versus 'colônias de exploração¿, pois, a 'tradição¿ historiográfica latino-americana tenderia a aproximar as colônias de Plantação às colônias do tipo do México. Marx, enfim, deixa claro que na América as forças produtivas estariam fadadas a atingir seus mais elevados níveis de desenvolvimento, e as relações de produção atingiriam graus de pureza muito além daquelas postas na própria Europa. Seria na América, segundo Marx, que o capitalismo se ajustaria plenamente ao seu próprio conceito. É esta teoria do caráter capitalista da colonização americana de Marx e as desventuras de tal tese ao longo do último século que estão no centro de nosso trabalho
Abstract: History to Marx arises as the history of the separation between man and nature. This history has as its main principle the private appropriation of the objective conditions of existence that appeared in an immanent form in the Western society. It manifests itself as a development process of the contradiction in the class struggle. In the East, this history would have been settled down by the time the European conquest took place,when the Europeans destroyed the ancient Asian production system and implanted there the bourgeois ideology. In America, this Western principle manifested itself when the colonies were formed. To Marx, three main kinds of colonies were established in America: the Mexico-type, the Plantation and the Colonizer. These colonies were suitable to the bourgeois necessity of primitive capital accumulation. Still according to him, the Plantation colonies (Pflanzungskolonien) produced the more-value products. In these colonies the compulsory labor form, which was apparently pre-capitalist, covered the essential bourgeois character of the colonial production relations. Marx also draws a parallel between the Colonizer and Plantation colonies, affirming that they were essentially identical. This statement, however, questions the traditional classification of the American Colonial History, usually divided into ¿Colonizer¿ versus ¿Exploration¿, because the traditional Latin-American written history tends to compare the Plantation colonies to the Mexico-type ones. Finally Marx points out that the productive forces were meant to reach their higher levels of development, and that the production relations would reach much purer degrees than those used in Europe. This is Marx¿s American Colonization Capitalism Character theory, and the problems of such thesis along the last century are the focus of the present research
Doutorado
Filosofia
Doutor em Filosofia

This dissertation examines the intersection between the culture of knowledge and socio-economic conditions of late Ming and Qing China (1550-1800) through the lens of materia medica. I argue that medicine in China during this time developed new characteristics that emphasized the centrality of drugs as objects of pharmacological knowledge, commodities valued by authenticity and efficacy, and embodiment of medical skills and expertise. My inquiry contributes to a deeper understanding of the materiality of healing as a basic condition in early modern societies: on the one hand, textual knowledge about drugs and the substances themselves became increasingly available via the commoditization of texts and goods; on the other hand, anxiety arose out of the unruly nature of potent substances, whose promise to cure remained difficult to grasp in social practice of medicine.
History of Science

This study explores how the corporal punishment experienced by learners in Nepalese schools can impact upon multiple aspects of their lives. I examine how these short and long-term effects can extend into adulthood using an auto/biographical methodology; from a perspective influenced by my own encounters as a corporal punishment survivor from Nepal. Corporal punishment continues to be used in Nepalese schools, with the support of many teachers, parents and school management committees, despite several government policy initiatives and court rulings against it. In contrast to worldwide developments (notably in Scandinavia and America), research into corporal punishment in Nepal tends to be rare, quantitative and focused upon the prevalence and short-term effects as described by group participants and newspaper articles. This study addresses the urgent need to increase public awareness, using personal accounts describing the long-term outcomes of corporal punishment, with a depth of detail facilitated by an auto/biographical research methodology. Participants in the study expressed feelings of relief and increased self-understanding, although for myself at least, these were accompanied by feelings of grief and confusion. The lives of five corporal punishment survivors are explored through a series of interviews carried out in the Devchuli municipality of Nawalparasi, Nepal, between November 2015 and January 2016. The first is my own story, the second is a pilot interview and the other three are discussed under the themes of immediate compliance, severing dichotomies, disempowered bodies and the spiritual threat of spatio-temporal appropriation. The participants, whose identities are protected, look back, as adults, upon their experiences of corporal punishment at school and consider possible links between these and their current social, political, economic and spiritual challenges. Simultaneously, the study questions whether ‘effects’ can ever be conceptually or temporally contained within ‘multi-faceted’ and ‘becoming’ identities, using examples from the participants’ self-appraisals. I examine literature from the global debate on the effects of corporal punishment upon children, including the contrasting methodologies of Murray Straus, Alice Miller and Elizabeth Gershoff. The impact of corporal punishment upon notions of personhood is explored using Theodor Adorno’s interpretation of reification and comparable notions of objectification challenged by Andrea Dworkin, Martha Nussbaum and Paolo Freire. Corporal punishment is discussed in relation to power, conflict and the Holocaust, using Adorno and Bauman’s descriptions of authoritarian behaviours and immediate compliance, and Nietzsche and Foucault’s notions of punishment as a spectacle. Conditions for the possibility of corporal punishment are located to traditions deifying teachers, judgement-based belief systems and neo-liberal ideologies of competition and performativity. These are contrasted with alternative, non-punitive pedagogical and theological resources. Participants explore the ways in which healing and holistic self-development can be blocked by everyday vocabularies of violence and conditionality, triggering destructive individual and collective over-determined reactions. My study ‘concludes’ with reflections upon how corporal punishment has affected my participants’ lives: with their social roles hampered by defensive masks and evasive dances; their political lives blocked by fears of punishment; their economic lives stilted by caution and low self-esteem and their spiritual lives distorted by disenchantment and disappointment. Methodology and theory converge as my study rejects inherently disciplinarian, Enlightenment-led demands fo**r rational or scientific ‘proof’ of psychological effects, by presenting auto/biography itself, especially ‘child-standpoint’ narratives, as valid revolutionary praxis, effervescent with resistance to punitive ideologies and practices and dedicated to the liberation of our present from a painful past.

This chapter discusses Muhamad Iqbal's place in South Asian thought through his interaction with contemporary Muslim and European ideas and thinkers. Iqbal transcends all attempts to limit his philosophy to a particular school or influence. Thus, Iqbal becomes one of the few South Asian intellectuals who reassessed their heritage and sought for it a space within European thought. The chapter then divides Iqbal's intellectual history into three phases: early Indian, middle European, and late Indian. In each phase, it contrasts Iqbal with particular individuals and schools to show that Iqbal neither returned to religious tradition nor completely embraced modernity, but may be described best as a Muslim existentialist in light of his doctrines of khudi, free creative power, and open possibility.

Mining in colonial Latin America and the early modern Iberian empire has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeology and archaeometallurgy; philosophy; art history, visual studies, and material cultural analysis; literary studies; social, labor, legal, and economic histories; and the history of science. This book adopts a language-centered approach that incorporates methods of all of these fields, especially discursive, visual, and historical analysis. The introduction reviews current scholarship in the study of mining and argues for the importance of a new approach to the history of metals – one that centers the knowledges of Indigenous, African, and South Asian miners, refiners, and mineralogists.

This chapter presents an overview of how Confucianism has been classified as a world religion in both popular and academic texts over the past century, suggesting that this classification has had a lasting impact on both the popular imagination and academic institutions. It argues that the notion of world religions has become the universally recognized “achievement” that provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. In this case, this community consists of scholars in religious studies, as well as scholars who study Chinese religions in other fields, such as sociology, history, philosophy, and Asian studies. The chapter focuses on the acceptance and implementation of this paradigm in American academia, instead of comparing it to that of another country, such as Great Britain.