bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mi bskyod rdo rje (1507–54)
Authors: Williams Paul
Published: September 2018

Mi bskyod rdo rje (Mikyö Dorje) was a Tibetan Buddhist of the Karma bKa’-brgyud (Gagyü) school. Particularly in his earlier thought, he defended the existence of a positive nondual Ultimate Reality (an Absolute) beyond all conceptuality but known in meditation, and apparently understood the purpose of Mādhyamika philosophy as solely the shattering of conceptualization and all philosophical positions as a preparation for this nonconceptual meditation. He was highly critical of Tsong kha pa (Dzongkaba, a notable philosopher of the rival dGe-lugs-pa (Gelukba) school), for being overly concerned with logical analysis of the foundations of everyday experience.
Nāgārjuna (c. AD 150–200)
Authors: Siderits Mark
Published: September 2018

Nāgārjuna was the first Buddhist philosopher to articulate and seek to defend the claim that all things are empty, that is, devoid of their own essential nature. A native of South India, as the founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism he exerted a profound influence on the further development of Buddhist thought in South and East Asia. When he claimed that all things are empty, he denied that anything exists solely in virtue of its own inherent nature. If, as all Buddhists hold, existents only arise in dependence on other existents, then nothing may be said to have a determinate nature apart from its relations to other things. Yet prior developments in Buddhist philosophy had presumably shown that anything lacking an independent nature is a conceptual fiction and not ultimately real. Thus if all things are empty, nothing is ultimately real. Still Nāgārjuna claimed not to be a nihilist. Emptiness is rather the defeat of all metaphysical theories, all attempts at grasping the ultimate nature of reality – including nihilism. Insight into emptiness is said to free us from our tendency conceptually to construct an ultimate truth, a tendency that bolsters our sense of self. Thus realization of emptiness is, Nāgārjuna held, required in order to attain full liberation from the suffering caused by clinging.
Rāmānuja (d. circa 1137)
Authors: Brzezinski Jan K.
Published: September 2018

A south Indian Brahman, Rāmānuja was the theistic exegete of the Vedānta who propounded a doctrine which came to be known as viśiṣṭādvaita or ‘qualified monism’. As such, he is often said to be the founder of the most prominent of the four schools of the Vaishnava religion, the Śrīsampradāya, although in fact he considered himself to be a participant in an already ancient tradition. Rāmānuja’s version of Vedānta challenges the uncompromising nondualism of Śaṇkara.
Vallabhācārya (1479–1531)
Authors: Cohen Richard J.
Published: September 2018

A pivotal figure in the history of Indian philosophy and religion, Vallabhācārya was the last of the classical Vedānta philosophers, as well as the originator of a religious community which called for the worship of Kṛṣṇa through acts of devotion, in return for grace and deliverance from rebirth. He proposed a modification to Śaṅkara’s philosophy of nondualism, claiming his ‘pure nondualism’ better explained the relationship between the Supreme Being and the soul. For the laity, he offered a practical religious regimen called the ‘path of fulfilment’, through which the devotee is initiated into an individual relationship with Kṛṣṇa before proceeding to fulfil the relationship through specific personal acts of devotional worship.
Vasubandhu (4th or 5th century AD)
Authors: Hayes Richard P. , Mejor Marek
Published: September 2018

An Indian Buddhist philosopher of the fourth or fifth century, Vasubandhu was a prolific author of treatises and commentaries. Best known for his synthesis of the Sarvāstivāda school of Abhidharma, he was sympathetic with the Sautrāntika school and frequently criticized Sarvāstivāda theory from that perspective. Vasubandhu eventually became an eminent exponent of the Yogācāra school. He also wrote short treatises on logic that influenced Dignāga, traditionally said to have been his disciple.

Probably the most original of Vasubandhu’s philosophical works are his two short works in verse, known as the Viṃśatikākārikāvṛtti (Twenty-Verse Treatise) and the Triṃśikākārikāvṛtti (Thirty-Verse Treatise). In these two works, he argues that one can never have direct awareness of external objects, but can be aware only of images within consciousness. Given that some of these images, such as those in dreams and hallucinations, are known to occur without being representations of external objects, one can never be certain whether a given image in awareness corresponds to an external object. Because one can never be sure of what is externally real but can be sure of internal experiences, he concludes, a person seeking nirvāṇa should focus attention on the workings of the mind rather than on the external world.
Buddhist concept of emptiness
Authors: Williams Paul
Published: September 2018

‘Emptiness’ or ‘voidness’ is an expression used in Buddhist thought primarily to mark a distinction between the way things appear to be and the way they actually are, together with attendant attitudes which are held to be spiritually beneficial. It indicates a distinction between appearance and reality, where the paradigm for that distinction is ‘x is empty (śūnya) of y’, and emptiness (śūnyatā) is either the fact of x’s being empty of y or the actual absence itself as a quality of x. It thus becomes an expression for the ultimate truth, the final way of things. Śūnya is also a term which can be used in the nontechnical contexts of, for example, ‘The pot is empty of water’. These terms, however, are not univocal in Buddhist thought. If x is empty of y, what this means will depend upon what is substituted for ‘x’ and ‘y’. In particular, any simplistic understanding of ‘emptiness’ as the Buddhist term for the Absolute, approached through a sort of via negativa, would be quite misleading. We should distinguish here perhaps four main uses of ‘empty’ and ‘emptiness’: (1) all sentient beings are empty of a Self or anything pertaining to a Self; (2) all things, no matter what, are empty of their own inherent or intrinsic existence because they are all relative to causes and conditions, a view particularly associated with Nāgārjuna and the Mādhyamika school of Buddhism; (3) the flow of nondual consciousness is empty of hypostasized subject–object duality, the Yogācāra view; (4) the Buddha-nature which is within all sentient beings is intrinsically and primevally empty of all defilements, a notion much debated in Tibetan Buddhism.
Monism, Indian
Authors: Phillips Stephen H.
Published: September 2018

The prominent classical and modern Indian philosophy known as Advaita Vedānta, which insists on the single reality of Brahman (the Absolute), is often identified as Indian monism. But the monism of Advaita is only a portion, albeit central, of the Advaita view. Furthermore, a monism in theology (Brahman as God) is important to almost all expressions, classical and modern, of Indian theism.

The monism of Advaita is principally psychological. Nondual awareness is considered the true self; that is to say, in the self’s native state, the object of awareness and awareness itself are identical. This kind of awareness is claimed to be presupposed by all dualistic consciousness. Moreover, it is said that only self-aware self-awareness itself cannot be revealed by experience to be illusory. And according to Advaita, a supreme mystical experience, popularly called liberation, does in fact, when it occurs, reveal self-awareness to be the sole reality. A dialectical Advaita adds the further contention that it is impossible to define and explain coherently diverse appearances. This contention is cashed out by long and intricate attacks on the pluralistic ontologies of rival schools, particularly Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika.

The monism of Indian theism centres on the reality of God, who is constrained by metaphysical law to create out of the single spiritual substance that God is. The world is commonly said to be God’s body. Various ramifications of God’s being in some way everything can be discerned in Indian theology.
Ontology in Indian philosophy
Authors: Ambuel David
Published: September 2018

All Indian philosophical traditions are deeply engaged with ontology, the study of being, since clarity about the nature of reality is at the heart of three intimately connected goals: knowledge, proper conduct and liberation from the continued suffering that is part of all human existence. The formulation of a list of ontological categories, a classification of reality by division into several fundamental objective kinds, however, is less widespread. There is little room for a doctrine of distinct, if related, ontological categories in a philosophical school that takes reality as one, even less if that one lies beyond description. If the phenomenal world is but illusory appearance, as, for example, in the Vedānta of Śaṅkara, then a determination of kinds of entities does not recommend itself as a means to adequate analysis of the world. Even the Sāṅkhya tradition’s realism reduces the world to an evolution from two fundamental entities, spirit and matter. Categories make sense within the context of a pluralistic realism, an analysis of the world that finds it to be composed of a multiplicity of real entities. Such a view is found to some extent in Jaina philosophy, but is primarily defended and developed in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika school.

The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika categories are seven: substance, quality, motion, universal, particular, inherence and not-being. While all are understood as real entities and objects of knowledge, substance is most fundamental as each of the others in some way depends on substance. Substances are nine: earth, water, fire, air, ether, time, space, self and mind. The first four are atomic: they may combine to form macroscopic substance, such as a clay pot, but in incomposite form they are indestructible atoms, as are the last two. Ether, time and space, likewise indestructible, are unitary and pervade all. In its irreducible parts, all substance is eternal; every composite whole is a destructible substance.

A relation of containment, called inherence, structures the categories. The qualities, actions and universals by which we might characterize a pot inhere in it. They are distinct entities from the pot, yet cannot exist apart from their underlying substrate. Composite substances like a pot are also contained in their parts by inherence, but the smallest parts, eternal substances, exist independently as receptacles that contain nothing. A whole, greater than the sum of its parts, is said to inhere in the parts while the parts are the inherence cause of the whole.

Eternal substance, the ultimate substrate of all, is a bare particular. An entity that is nothing but a receptacle for other entities, it furnishes criteria for separability and individuality, but cannot be defined in itself apart from others. This aspect of the concept of substance leads later Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika into extensive analysis of relations and negation.
Fatalism, Indian
Authors: Woods Julian F.
Published: September 2018

Indian speculation about the vicissitudes of human life has a long and complex history. Life in the early Vedic period was considered to be largely hostage to the ‘fate’ of natural and psychic forces controlled by various gods (devas). Fate was what proceeded ‘from the gods’ (daiva), who were considered to be the guardians of the cosmic order and the ultimate source of prosperity. Sacrifice and prayer were the principal means to win their favour.

Later the idea arose that one’s present lot is due, not to the whim of some god, but to karma, the effect of one’s own actions performed in this or previous lives. On this view, humans do have some scope or ‘freedom’ to change themselves and the environment in which they live. This more individual potential is called puruṣakāra, which, to varying degrees, may modify daiva. The literal meaning of this term is ‘human action’ (from the Sanskrit for ‘man’ and a verbal root meaning ‘to act’). With the increasing popularity of the karma theory, daiva tended to become equated with the effects of past behaviour.

Finally, in the context of the spiritual ascent towards a unifying vision of existence, the status of human agency itself became an issue. As long as the seeker remains blinded by false notions of ‘I’, the ego must experience a sense of agency and a modicum of freedom to chart its course of life. However, from the perspective of enlightenment, or mokṣa, all is ‘fate’ in the hands of a personal God or a Supreme Self.
Suffering, Buddhist views of origination of
Authors: Mejor Marek
Published: September 2018

The Sanskrit term pratītyasamutpāda (Pāli, paṭiccasamuppāda) literally translates as ‘arising [of a thing] after encountering [its causes and conditions]’. This term, conventionally translated as ‘dependent origination’, ‘conditioned co-arising’ or ‘interdependent arising’, signifies the Buddhist doctrine of causality. This doctrine is usually applied to explain the origin of suffering (duḥkha) as well as the means of liberation from it. According to the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha discovered the law of dependent origination during his meditation on the night he attained his awakening. According to traditional accounts, he saw all his former lives and the lives of all other beings, understood the principle governing transmigration, and found the way of liberation. He then formulated the so-called Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Noble Path and the Law of Dependent Origination. The twelve elements of the chain of dependent origination were designed to explain the mechanism of entanglement of a sentient being in a wheel of consecutive lives, and, at the same time, to explain how this entanglement is possible without admitting the concept of a permanent principle, like ‘self’, ‘ego’, and the like. These twelve members are: (1) ignorance, (2) formations (volitional dispositions), (3) consciousness, (4) name and form, (5) six bases of cognition, (6) contact, (7) feeling, (8) desire, (9) attachment, (10) existence, (11) rebirth, (12) ageing and death. In addition to the twelvefold formula, there is also the so-called ‘general formula’ of dependent origination, which goes ‘when this is, that arises; when this is not, that does not arise.’
Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950)
Authors: Phillips Stephen H.
Published: September 2018

Aurobindo Ghose was a leading Indian nationalist at the beginning of the twentieth century who became a yogin and spiritual leader as well as a prolific writer (in English) on mysticism, crafting a mystic philosophy of Brahman (the Absolute or God). Aurobindo fashioned an entire worldview, a system intended to reflect both science and religion and to integrate several concerns of philosophy – epistemology, ontology, psychology, ethics – into a single vision. Of particular importance to his cosmological thinking was evolutionary biology. But Aurobindo also understood the fundamental nature of matter to include – for metaphysical reasons – an ‘evolutionary nisus’ that ensures the emergence of individuals capable of mystical experience in which the supreme reality, Brahman, is revealed.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli (1888–1975)
Authors: Minor Robert N.
Published: September 2018

As a modern interpreter of Indian thought to Western scholars and a major influence on later Indian thinkers, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s teaching, writing and worldwide lecturing introduced the West to Indian religion and philosophy as essentially an all-inclusive monism. He was actively committed to participation in Indian and international society as an educator, statesman and leader of the Indian republic and defended Hinduism against Western critics as essentially tolerant, world-affirming, progressive and socially and politically conscious. Radhakrishnan’s neo-Advaita was based on one major strand of Indian monism with modifications based on assumptions from his education in Christian institutions. While maintaining that the Absolute is identical with one’s true self, he emphasized the reality of the universe. The truly religious person, he argued, does not flee the world but withdraws to attain personal realization and returns to apply the insight thereby gained to better society.
Political philosophy, Indian
Authors: Inayatullah Sohail
Published: September 2018

While Western political theory has been framed as the struggle between the state and the individual, Indian political philosophy has been more concerned with issues of self-liberation, morality and leadership. Until recently, with the advent of institutionalized or syndicated Hinduism, Indian society made a softer distinction between state and religion. Classical Indian political theory, as with Kauṭilya, centred on axioms on how to maintain and expand power. Kauṭilya argued that reason, the edicts of the king, and his own rules of governance, the Arthaśāstra, were as important for decision-making as the ancient religious treatises, which defined social structure and one’s duty to family, caste and God. With the exception of the Arthaśāstra, politics was expressed through the ability not so much to govern as to define social and moral responsibility, what one could or could not do and who could oversee these rules.

Like all civilizations, India had periods of rule by accumulators of capital and traders, warriors and kings, and Brahmans and monks; there were also revolts by peasants. Still, philosophy was in the hands of the Brahmans, the priestly class. This philosophy was primarily not about artha (economic gain) or kāma (pleasure), but about dharma (virtue) and mokṣa (liberation from the material world). The attainment of salvation, of release from the bonds of karma, was far more important than the relationship between the individual and the sovereign, as was the case in Western political philosophy.
Buddhist philosophy, Chinese
Authors: Lusthaus Dan
Published: September 2018

When Buddhism first entered China from India and Central Asia two thousand years ago, Chinese favourably disposed towards it tended to view it as a part or companion school of the native Chinese Huang–Lao Daoist tradition, a form of Daoism rooted in texts and practices attributed to Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) and Laozi. Others, less accepting of this ‘foreign’ incursion from the ‘barbarous’ Western Countries, viewed Buddhism as an exotic and dangerous challenge to the social and ethical Chinese civil order. For several centuries, these two attitudes formed the crucible within which the Chinese understanding of Buddhism was fashioned, even as more and more missionaries arrived (predominantly from Central Asia) bringing additional texts, concepts, rituals, meditative disciplines and other practices. Buddhists and Daoists borrowed ideas, terminology, disciplines, cosmologies, institutional structures, literary genres and soteric models from each other, sometimes so profusely that today it can be difficult if not impossible at times to determine who was first to introduce a certain idea. Simultaneously, polemical and political attacks from hostile Chinese quarters forced Buddhists to respond with apologia and ultimately reshape Buddhism into something the Chinese would find not only inoffensive, but attractive.

In the fifth century ad, Buddhism began to extricate itself from its quasi-Daoist pigeonhole by clarifying definitive differences between Buddhist and Daoist thought, shedding Daoist vocabulary and literary styles while developing new distinctively Buddhist terminology and genres. Curiously, despite the fact that Mahāyāna Buddhism had few adherents in Central Asia and was outnumbered by other Buddhist schools in India as well, in China Mahāyāna became the dominant form of Buddhism, so much so that few pejoratives were as stinging to a fellow Buddhist as labelling him ‘Hīnayāna’ (literally ‘Little Vehicle,’ a polemical term for non-Mahāyānic forms of Buddhism). By the sixth century, the Chinese had been introduced to a vast array of Buddhist theories and practices representing a wide range of Indian Buddhist schools. As the Chinese struggled to master these doctrines it became evident that, despite the fact that these schools were all supposed to express the One Dharma (Buddha’s Teaching), their teachings were not homogenous, and were frequently incommensurate.

By the end of the sixth century, the most pressing issue facing Chinese Buddhists was how to harmonize the disparities between the various teachings. Responses to this issue produced the Sinitic Mahāyāna schools, that is, Buddhist schools that originated in China rather than India. The four Sinitic schools are Tiantai, Huayan, Chan and Pure Land (Jingtu). Issues these schools share in common include Buddha-nature, mind, emptiness, tathāgatagarbha, expedient means (upāya), overcoming birth and death (saṃsāra), and enlightenment.
Dao
Authors: Hall David L. , Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

Dao, conventionally translated ‘the Way’, is probably the most pervasive and widely recognized idea in Chinese philosophy. The specific character of Chinese philosophy arises because a dominant cultural factor in the tradition, now and then, has been the priority of process and change over form and stasis, a privileging of cosmology over metaphysics. That the Yijing (Book of Changes) is first among the Chinese Classics in every sense bears witness to the priority of cosmological questions – how, or in what way (dao) should the world hang together? – over metaphysical and ontological questions – what is the reality behind appearance, the Being behind the beings, the One behind the many, the true behind the false? The contrast lies in finding a way rather than seeking the truth.
Zhi
Authors: Hall David L. , Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

In classical Chinese philosophy, zhi, conventionally translated as ‘knowing’, is not so much a knowing ‘what’, which provides some understanding of the natural world, as it is a knowing ‘how’ to be adept in relationships, and ‘how’, in optimizing the possibilities that these relations provide, to develop trust in their viability. The cluster of terms that define knowing are thus programmatic and exhortative, encouraging the quality of the roles and associations that define us. Propositions may be true, but it is more important that husbands and friends be so.
Cheng
Authors: Ivanhoe Philip J.
Published: September 2018

In early Confucian writings, cheng describes the quality of authentically realizing or ‘completing’ a given thing’s true nature. It appears together with xin (trustworthiness), a character to which it is related in sense. Cheng refers primarily to the fulfilment of a thing’s true nature, while xin refers to the quality resulting from this. With regard to human beings, cheng is the authentic realization of ones nature. In texts such as the Xunzi and Zhongyong, the idea is related to the role human beings are believed to play in realizing or ‘completing’ a greater universal pattern. This development becomes centrally important for later neo-Confucian thinkers, who see these as different aspects of a single project.
Li
Authors: Ivanhoe Philip J.
Published: September 2018

Li means ‘pattern’ or ‘principle’, and as a verb can also refer to the creation of orderly pattern. Mencius believed that the human heart–mind had an inherent taste for and attraction to such ‘good order’. His contemporary, Zhuangzi, was the first to use li to refer to an underlying normative ‘pattern’ structuring and giving order to the entire world. This sense in turn influenced the Confucian thinker Xunzi, who employed and developed the concept to express his understanding of Confucianism. Certain Buddhist thinkers used the notion of li to describe first ‘emptiness’ and later ‘Buddha-nature’, the common underlying characteristic of all phenomena. A version of this idea was adopted by neo-Confucian thinkers, who believed that while each thing manifested its own particular li, it also contained within it the li of all other things. Thus there is a profound metaphysical identity between self and world.
Qi
Authors: Hall David L. , Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

A difficult term to contextualize within Western conceptual frameworks, qi is variously rendered as ‘hylozoistic vapours’, ‘psychophysical stuff’, ‘the activating fluids in the atmosphere and body’, and, perhaps most appropriately, ‘vital energizing field’. In the earlier texts, before the notion came to be adapted to the speculative constructions of the Han cosmologists, it had a significance not unlike the Greek pneuma (‘breath’ or ‘animating fluid’). In the ‘cosmological’ speculations of the Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220), qi came to be understood as the vital stuff constitutive of all things and was characterized in terms of the active and passive dynamics of yang and yin.
Xin (trustworthiness)
Authors: Ivanhoe Philip J.
Published: September 2018

The earliest and basic sense of xin is ‘being true to one’s word’. While one’s words can be xin (that is, worthy of trust), in most cases xin indicates an excellence of character; it is thought to be the central virtue governing the relationship between friends. Since xin is primarily a virtue, its exercise involves practical reasoning and not a mechanical adherence to one’s promises. Xin later was added to an original list of four cardinal Confucian virtues, though its status as a distinct disposition remained controversial. Buddhist thinkers broadened the sense of the term to include religious faith. This innovation in turn influenced certain neo-Confucian thinkers who then talked about the need to xin (have faith in) one’s innate moral faculty.
Xing
Authors: Hall David L. , Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

Xing is conventionally translated as ‘nature’ or ‘human nature’. Some read xing as meaning a heavenly endowed tendency, directionality, or potentiality of growth in the individual. On this essentialistic reading, xing is an innate and unchanging ‘given’, a defining condition of all human beings. Others have given a historicist interpretation of xing, reading it as an achievement concept rather than as a given. In this view, xing is derived from, and is a refinement on, sheng, denoting the entire process of birth, growth and ultimate demise that constitutes the life of a living creature.
You–wu
Authors: Hall David L. , Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

In the Western metaphysical tradition, ‘being’ has most generally been thought to denote either a common property of things or a container which relates things by placing them within its own structure. Metaphysical notions of being are generally associated with the concept of ground. By contrast, the Chinese existential verb you (being) overlaps with the sense of ‘having’ rather than the copula, and therefore you (to be) means ‘to be present’ or ‘to be around’ while wu (not to be) means ‘not to be present’ or ‘not to be around’. This means that wu does not indicate strict opposition or contradiction, but absence. Thus, the you–wu distinction suggests mere contrast in the sense of either the presence or absence of x, rather than an assertion of the existence or nonexistence of x.
Cheng Hao (1032–85)
Authors: Tillman Hoyt Cleveland
Published: September 2018

Cheng Hao was a pivotal figure in the creation of a Confucian tradition that was to become the basis for intellectual and state orthodoxy in China from the thirteenth century to the twentieth century. His decision to seek the Confucian Way (dao) through a direct and personalized reading of the classics was later projected as the beginning of this movement. From a new perspective, he redirected Confucian discourse on such cardinal concepts as humaneness and human nature.
Jia Yi (201–169 BC)
Authors: Nylan Michael
Published: September 2018

Jia Yi, in forging a brilliant synthesis of classical Legalist, Daoist and Confucian doctrines, fashioned a coherent political and educational philosophy in support of strong central government. Jia’s impact on Chinese history can hardly be overestimated; his philosophy significantly shaped the imperial institutions of the Han dynasty (202 bc–ad 220), which became the models for successive dynasties of imperial China.
Linji (810/15–67)
Authors: Nagatomo Shigenori
Published: September 2018

Linji was one of the most reputed, and influential Chinese Chan masters in the history of East Asian Buddhism. He belonged to a school which advocates sudden enlightenment without dependence on words: there is an extralinguistic reality that can be intuitively apprehended through the rigorous meditative training. A person with this intuition escapes dualistic thinking and has grasped the freedom to act decisively, utilizing creatively whatever is presented before him/her. Linji’s method of teaching is often characterized as ‘thundering shouts and showering sticks’, actions which are used to effect an awakening in his disciples. His reputation rests primarily on his ability to seize on this opportunity.
Fazang (643–712)
Authors: Cook Francis H.
Published: September 2018

The monk-scholar Fazang is one of China’s great Buddhist thinkers. Drawing on Buddhist scriptural literature and exegetical and systematic works of his predecessors, he fashioned a highly elaborate philosophy that served to provide a rational explanation of his vision of the way things really are. Huayan philosophy is an attempt to show rationally and systematically how the many phenomena that make up existence abide harmoniously in a double relationship of identity and interpenetration. Fazang was credited by his successors with being the third patriarch of the Huayan school.
Zhi Dun (AD 314–66)
Authors: McRae John R.
Published: September 2018

Buddhist monk and specialist on the Zhuangzi, Zhi Dun was active in the xuanxue or ‘learning of the mysterious’ salons of the Eastern Jin regime in southeastern China. For him, the sage described by the Zhuangzi and Buddhist texts alike was a great man who knows the ways of heaven triumphantly and responds to beings in perfect freedom. Zhi Dun was also known for his interpretation of emptiness and his expansion of the concept of li (‘order’ or ‘pattern’) into an underlying metaphysical principle.
Sengzhao (AD 384?–414)
Authors: Kasulis Thomas P.
Published: September 2018

Sengzhao was one of the first native Chinese thinkers to develop a distinctive version of Buddhist philosophy. He blended the dialectical logic of Indian Mādhyamika Buddhism with ideas and terms often borrowed from Chinese Daoism. His collected treatises, the Zhaolun, argued that language is inadequate for capturing reality. There is a need for an intuitive insight to penetrate reality in its nonlinguistic form as a means to understanding the process and limitations of subsequent conceptualization.
Awakening of faith in Mahāyāna
Authors: Gregory Peter N.
Published: September 2018

The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna (Dasheng qixinlun) is one of the most influential philosophical texts in East Asian Buddhism. It is most important for developing the Indian Buddhist doctrine of an inherent potentiality for Buddhahood (tathāgatagarbha) into a monistic ontology based on the mind as the ultimate ground of all experience. Its most significant contribution to East Asian Buddhist thought is its formulation of the idea of original enlightenment (benjue, or in Japanese, hongaku).
Xunzi (fl. 298–238 BC)
Authors: Cua A.S.
Published: September 2018

Xunzi is one of the most brilliant Confucian thinkers of ancient China. His works display wide-ranging interest in such topics as the relation between morality and human nature, the ideal of the good human life, the nature of ethical discourse and argumentation, the ethical uses of history, moral education and personal cultivation. Because of the comprehensive and systematic character of his philosophical concerns, Xunzi is sometimes compared to Aristotle. Noteworthy is his emphasis on li, or rules of proper conduct, and the holistic character of dao, the Confucian ideal of the good human life. He criticized other philosophers not because of their mistakes, but because of their preoccupation with one aspect of dao to the exclusion of others.
Zhongyong
Authors: Wei-Ming Tu
Published: September 2018

The Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean) has traditionally been ascribed to Zisi, the grandson of Confucius and the indirect teacher of Mencius. Although this ascription has been challenged by modern critical scholarship since the turn of the twentieth century, recent archaeological finds indicate that the traditional view is not without textual base. If the Zhongyong actually predated the Mengzi, it seems that a significant portion of the Liji (Book of Rites), of which the Daxue (Great Learning) and Zhongyong are chapters, contains documents of the fifth century bc. This fact alone merits a fundamental restructuring of classical Confucian chronology and reinterpretation of the Mencian line of the Confucian tradition.
Guanzi
Authors: Robinet Isabelle
Published: September 2018

The Guanzi, or ‘Book of Master Guan’, is an eclectic work including textual materials dating from the fourth century bc to the first century ad, drawing on themes from Daoism, the science of government, yin–yang and the Five Phases, Legalism, Confucianism, the art of war, economics and the Huang–Lao movement. Its pragmatic outlook is founded on a kind of objective realism that is the signature of the famous fourth-century bc Jixia academy in the principality of Qi. It was this academy that consolidated several different schools of thought.
Lushi chunqiu
Authors: Sellmann James D.
Published: September 2018

The Lushi chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Lu Buwei), composed 241–238 bc, marks a firm beginning for the eclectic movement in Qin and Han philosophy. It embraces various pre-Qin philosophies such as Lao–Zhuang and Huang–Lao Daoism, Confucianism, Mozi, Legalism, the logicians, the military arts, Agriculturalists, Yang Zhu, Zou Yen and Story Tellers. As a compendium of classical knowledge, the Lushi chunqiu contains cultural and philosophical material on the art of rulership.
Yang Xiong (53 BC–AD 18)
Authors: Nylan Michael
Published: September 2018

Master Yang Xiong, the first Confucian classicist and the greatest of the pre-Song metaphysicians, is best known for two major philosophical works, the Taixuanjing (Canon of Supreme Mystery) and the Fayan (Model Sayings). Both works explore the interaction between significant cosmic and social patterns by explicit reference to earlier canonical traditions.
Zhang Zai (1020–77)
Authors: Thompson Kirill Ole
Published: September 2018

Zhang Zai was a seminal neo-Confucian cosmologist and ethical thinker. Like Zhou Dunyi and Shao Yong, he was inspired by the Yijing (Book of Changes) and its commentaries; unlike them, he worked out a conception based solely on the concept of qi (cosmic vapour). He espoused an ethical vision, global in spirit, that greatly enhanced the moral significance of Confucianism.
Zhou Dunyi (1017–73)
Authors: Thompson Kirill Ole
Published: September 2018

Zhou Dunyi was the father of Chinese neo-Confucianism. His oracular presentation of the notions of supreme polarity (taiji), yin and yang, and the five phases to explain the formation of the cosmos and sagehood became enshrined by Zhu Xi as the authoritative neo-Confucian view.
Yangzhu (5th–4th century BC)
Authors: Roth H.D.
Published: September 2018

Yangzhu, detested by the Confucians, is important in the Chinese tradition for initiating the explicit discussion of human nature. He focuses on the thesis that human nature has no inherent ethical or mystical qualities; instead, there is simply an innate tendency to live a long life, a tendency that must be carefully nurtured by a rational regulation of sense stimulation and by the avoidance of any of the entanglements incumbent in a life of working for the good of human society.
Confucian philosophy, Japanese
Authors: Nosco Peter
Published: September 2018

Confucian philosophy is said to have arrived in Japan as early as the third century ad, but it did not become a subject of meaningful scholarly inquiry until the seventh century. The ‘Confucianism’ to which Japanese elites and scholars were first attracted represented fields of knowledge concerned more with ontology and divination than with social ethics and politics. Because of the priority given to birth over talent in official appointments, Confucianism in Japan remained more a gentlemanly accomplishment and never approached the status it had in China, where mastery of its teachings represented a gateway to officialdom. Intellectually, Confucian philosophy was overshadowed both in Japan and on the continent at this time by the teachings of Buddhism, which provided answers both to spiritual and metaphysical concerns.

Confucianism in China was refashioned in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by a number of scholars, of whom Zhu Xi was the most prominent. He revised the curriculum, restored social and ethical concerns to positions of centrality within the tradition and formulated a new rationalistic ontology. His teachings won a broad following among intellectuals in China and eventually earned the government’s endorsement as the official interpretation for China’s examination system.

From the seventeenth century onwards, Zhu Xi’s teachings reached a comparably distinguished position within scholarly circles in Japan, though the government’s endorsement of the Hayashi family as official interpreters of Zhu Xi’s teachings was the limit of the official authorization of that philosophy in Japan. Though the idealistic Wang Yangming school challenged Zhu Xi’s teachings in Japan as it had in China, the more effective challenge was mounted by the classicist teachings known as Ancient Studies. These scholars, of whom the best known was Ogyū Sorai, sought the ‘true message of the sages’ by emphasizing direct study of the ancient core texts of Confucianism rather than the exegesis on those classics by Zhu Xi and others.

Confucian philosophy contributed to the rationalism, humanism, ethnocentrism and ‘historical mindedness’ of Tokugawa Japan. The teachings were also responsible for changing fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions, while also opening intellectual circles to unprecedented pluralism and diversity. Towards the end of the Tokugawa period in the mid-nineteenth century, Confucian philosophy (particularly in the variety fashioned by Wang Yangming) also provided inspiration and justification for those activist reformers who succeeded in overthrowing the old order.

During the modern period, Confucian philosophy has been identified with the Tokugawa tradition which has been at times idealized and and at other times vilified. Nonetheless, a number of the assumptions central to Confucian philosophy continue to characterize much popular and intellectual thought in contemporary Japan, as well as those ethics that tend to be most admired, even though actual knowledge of Confucian philosophy does not appear to be widespread any longer in Japan.
Logic in Japan
Authors: Kasulis Thomas P.
Published: September 2018

‘Logic’ became an explicit topic in Japanese philosophy only in the twentieth century. Most effort has been directed to developing a dialectical logic in a Hegelian mode rather than a symbolic system. The Japanese term coined for logic in this sense is ronri (the ‘principles of discourse or argument’). The term ronrigaku (ronri + -ology) is the more common term for formal, symbolic logic. In the twentieth century two Japanese philosophers, Nishida Kitarō(1870–1945) and Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), developed distinctive dialectical logics that drew on key assumptions from traditional Japanese thought, but followed a Western style of analysis and articulation.

Nishida’s logic of basho (place, topos, field) located the contextual premises of empirical and idealist judgments within a trans-judgmental domain called the ‘acting-intuiting’. He related this to his logic of the predicate, which rejected the Aristotelian priority of the grammatical subject as signifier of substance, instead making the subject the qualifier of the predicate, the signifier of the event. Tanabe criticized Nishida’s system as ahistorical and transcultural. His logic of species gave priority to the specificity of cultural and historical embededness, the middle ground between the universal ought and individual freedom.
Dōgen (1200–53)
Authors: Kasulis Thomas P.
Published: September 2018

Dōgen Kigen, the founder of Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhism, is most noted for his argument that meditation is the expression or enactment of enlightenment, not the means to attaining it. Dōgen believed that even a novice might achieve insight, however fleeting. The difficulty, however, is in expressing that insight in one’s daily acts, both linguistic and non-linguistic. In developing his position, Dōgen articulated a phenomenology of incarnate consciousness and a sophisticated analysis of meaning. His theories of mind–body unity, contextualized meaning, temporality and theory–praxis influenced many prominent modern Japanese philosophers such as Watsuji Tetsurō, Tanabe Hajime and Nishitani Keiji.
Kaibara Ekken (1630–1714)
Authors: Tucker Mary Evelyn
Published: September 2018

Kaibara Ekken was a leading Japanese scholar in the school of neo-Confucianism established by the renowned twelfth century Chinese synthesizer, Zhu Xi. As a thinker and a scholar Ekken, embraced a wide variety of topics from highly specialized neo-Confucian philosophy to the need to popularize Confucian ethics and to assist the society through practical learning (jitsugaku).
Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962)
Authors: Kiyoshi Himi
Published: September 2018

Tanabe Hajime was a central figure of the so-called Kyoto School, and is generally acknowledged to be one of the most important philosophers of modern Japan. He held Kant in high esteem, and used a Neo-Kantian critical methodology in his early studies in epistemology. In the 1920s he was chiefly influenced by Nishida Kitarō’s original cosmological system. He adapted Nishida’s idea of ‘absolute nothingness’ to political situations and, in so doing, contributed much to establishing the foundations of what became the most influential philosophical school in Japan up until the end of the Second World War.
Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–46)
Authors: Tucker John Allen
Published: September 2018

Tominaga Nakamoto was a leading representative of what some scholars have called the eighteenth-century ‘enlightenment’ movement in Tokugawa thought. Nakamoto’s philological critiques of the historical development of Buddhist, Confucian and Shintōdoctrines are noteworthy for their modern, empiricist tendencies. His advocacy of makoto no michi, or ‘the True Way’, a quotidian ethics advocating practical morality, gained no real following during Nakamoto’s brief life.
Nishitani Keiji (1900–90)
Authors: Parkes Graham
Published: September 2018

Nishitani Keiji is generally regarded as the leading light of the ‘second generation’ Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy. Influenced by Zen thinkers from Chinese and Japanese Buddhism as well as by figures from the Western mystical and existential traditions, he is a pre-eminent voice in East–West comparative philosophy and late twentieth-century Buddhist–Christian dialogue. Primarily a philosopher of religion, Nishitani strove throughout his career to formulate existential responses to the problem of nihilism.
Kūkai (774–835)
Authors: Kasulis Thomas P.
Published: September 2018

Kūkai, also known by his posthumous honorific title Kōbō Daishi, was the founder of Japanese Shingon (‘truth word’ or ‘mantra’) Buddhism and is often considered the first comprehensive philosophical thinker in Japanese history. Building on the Buddhist esoteric tradition first developed in India and then in China, where Kūkai encountered it, he maintained that reality is a cosmic person, the Buddha Dainichi. Dainichi’s cosmic thoughts, words and deeds form microcosmic configurations, resonances and patterns of change. By performing Shingon rituals, one can supposedly accord with the microcosmic constituents and know the foundational structures of reality that compose the sensory world in which we ordinarily live.
Sirhak
Authors: Ch’oe Yông-Ho
Published: September 2018

Sirhak refers to the reformist scholarship and thought in Korea during the latter half of the Chosôn (Yi) Dynasty (1392–1910). The term was coined in the twentieth century to refer to the writings of individual scholars from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries who were critical of the existing political, social and economic conditions.
Tonghak
Authors: Ch’oe Yông-Ho
Published: September 2018

Tonghak is an indigenous religion in Korea. Founded by Ch’oe Cheu (1824–64), it presently flourishes under the new name of Ch’ôndogyo. An eclectic religion, Tonghak borrowed from Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, shamanism and other folk beliefs. Its central tenet is founded on the concept of In nae ch’ôn (Man is God). God is not a supernatural God who exists outside or beyond man, but is an immanent God who is present within every man.
Yi Yulgok (1536–84)
Authors: Ro Young-Chan
Published: September 2018

Yulgok was one of the foremost neo-Confucian scholars in Korea during the Yi (Chosôn) dynasty. He is considered one of two pillars, along with Yi T’oegye, of the Korean neo-Confucian tradition. Yulgok, an active statesman and educator as well as scholar, not only compiled the theories of previous Confucian scholars of China and Korea but, more importantly, developed his own interpretations of them.
Sôsan Hyujông (1520–1604)
Authors: Sung Bae Park
Published: September 2018

Sôsan was a Korean Sôn Buddhist monk who sought to establish the equality of various ideas and systems. His philosophical perspective conferred equality on Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism alike, and within Buddhism he denied there was any inherent conflict between the Kyo and Sôn schools. However, he viewed Sôn (meditation) as being the most advanced form of practice.
Wônch’ūk (613–96)
Authors: Iida Shotaro
Published: September 2018

Wônch’ūk, a Korean monk-scholar, was head of the Ximing Monastery in Tang China. Neglected by history, research has now recovered this prolific writer, whose commentaries on Yogācāra texts influenced later Buddhist scholars in China and also in Tibet, notably Tsong kha pa.
Han Wônjin (1682–1751)
Authors: Kalton Michael C.
Published: September 2018

Han Wônjin was a major thinker of the Korean neo-Confucian tradition. One of the leading scholars of his time, he is especially remembered as a protagonist in the Horak controversy, which he ignited with the observation that ki (in Chinese, qi) or ‘material force’ is present even when the mind is in a meditative, quiescent state.
Chông Yagyong (Tasan) (1762–1836)
Authors: Ch’oe Yông-Ho
Published: September 2018

Chông Yagyong was a government official and a scholar of the Sirhak (Practical Learning) school in the late Chosôn dynasty of Korea. He is also known by his literary name Tasan. A man of independent mind, Chông was not satisfied with the conventional interpretation of the Confucian classics. He immersed himself in research on the Six Classics and the Four Books, investigating a whole range of writings by scholars from the Han through the Qing dynasties and searching for the true and original intents of the ancient sages uncorrupted by later interpretations. In the course of clarifying ancient terms and concepts, he frequently challenged the orthodox views of the Song neo-Confucianism that had largely dominated the intellectual climate of Chosôn Korea. Although he frequently praised Zhu Xi, he did not hesitate to point out the shortcomings of the neo-Confucian masters.