A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism.Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the "turn to religion") or less religion (the New Atheism). In this book, Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroug...

The Routledge Companion to Chinese Philosophy features more than 40 chapter-length introductions to the concepts, claims, and arguments that animate the Chinese philosophical tradition. Taking a topic-by-topic rather than text-by-text approach, this Companion aims at helping contemporary Anglophone readers access the philosophical riches of the Chinese tradition by balancing close analysis with broad contextualization.The book is divided into four “Acts” that refl...

The Westphalian model of international relations has given us a zero-sum game of winners and losers that has proven to be ineffective in addressing the pressing issues of our times. Philosopher Zhao Tingyang has argued that by conceptualizing international relations from the planetary perspective of tianxia, we can develop a sense of “worldness” that at once acknowledges the plurality of moral ideals defining of the world’s cultures and seeks practical ways to formulate a shared m...

This book starts with the radical premise that the most coherent way to read the Zhuangzi is through Guo Xiang (d. 312 CE), the classic Daoist text's first and most important commentator, and that the best way to read Guo Xiang is politically. Offering an investigation of the notions of causality, self, freedom, and its political implications, the book provides a comprehensive account of freedom that is both ontological and political, using Guo's notion of self-realization (自得

A transformative new edition of Taoism’s central text that overturns its reputation for calming, gnomic wisdom, revealing instead a work of “philosophical dynamite.”Grounded in a lifetime of research and interpretive work and informed by careful study of recent archeological discoveries of alternate versions of the text, Brook Ziporyn, one of the preeminent explicators of Eastern religions in English, brings us a revelatory new translation—and a radical reinterpret...

Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism explores a new mode of philosophizing through a comparative study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and philosophies of major Buddhist thinkers such as Nagarjuna, Chinul, Dogen, Shinran, and Nishida Kitaro. Challenging the dualistic paradigm of existing philosophical traditions, Merleau-Ponty proposes a philosophy in which the traditional opposites are encountered through mutual penetration. Likewise, a Buddhist worldview is articulated in the the...

Continues the author's inquiry into the development of the Chinese philosophical concept Li, concluding in Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism.Beyond Oneness and Difference considers the development of one of the key concepts of Chinese intellectual history, Li. A grasp of the strange history of this term and its seemingly conflicting implications-as oneness and differentiation, as the knowable and as what transcends knowledge, as the good and ...

Explores the development of Chinese thought, highlighting its concern with questions of coherence.Providing a bracing expansion of horizons, this book displays the unsuspected range of human thinking on the most basic categories of experience. The way in which early Chinese thinkers approached concepts such as one and many, sameness and difference, self and other, and internal and external stan...

Being and Ambiguity is a brilliant work of philosophy, filled with insights, jokes, and topical examples. Professor Ziporyn draws on the works of such Western thinkers as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, and Hegel, but develops his main argument from Tiantai school of Chinese Buddhism. This important work introduces Tiantai Buddhism to the reader and demonstrates its relevance to profound philosophical issues.Ziporyn argues that we can make both of the claims below simultane...

Are we free, whether we know it or not? Or is our sense of freedom merely an illusion? Rudolf Steiner tackles this age-old problem in a new way. He shows that by taking account of our own activity of thinking, we can know the reasons for our actions. And if these reasons are taken from our world of ideals, then our actions are free, because we alone determine them. But this freedom cannot be settled for us by philosophical argument. It is not simply granted to us. If we want to become free...

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion-God-frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths.Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism,...

More than a mere overview, the book offers readers a strong grounding in the basic principles of Jung's analytical psychology in addition to illuminating insights.