bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gadādhara (1604–1709)
Authors: Ganeri Jonardon
Published: September 2018

Gadādhara Bhaṭṭācārya was a seventeenth-century Indian philosopher belonging to a school of thinkers, Navya-Nyāya, noted for its extreme realism and its contributions to philosophical methodology. Though Gadādhara’s commentaries on the school’s key texts are recognized as among the latest, most detailed and innovative, his greater claim to fame is due to his composition of a number of independent tracts on topics in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, ethics and legal theory. He may be credited in particular with the discovery of a version of the pragmatic theory of pronominal anaphora. His work on case grammar and inferential fallacies is highly admired in India, while recent translations into English have begun to make him better known outside.
Gaṅgeśa (fl. c.1325)
Authors: Phillips Stephen H.
Published: September 2018

Gaṅgeśa launched and solidified advances in logic and epistemology within the classical Indian school of Logic, Nyāya. He is traditionally taken to have inaugurated the ‘New’ school, Navya-Nyāya. Nyāya, both Old and New, is a multidimensional system that belies the stereotype of Indian philosophy as idealist and mystical in orientation. Gaṅgeśa worked with a realist ontology of objects spoken about and experienced every day. He articulated what may be called a reliabilist theory of knowledge: under specified conditions, sense-mediated and inferential cognitions (along with two other types) are reliable sources of information about reality.

Gaṅgeśa was a pivotal figure in classical Indian philosophy; most later debate both within his school and outside it presupposed cognitive analyses that he standardized. These analyses focus on properties exhibited by things known, properties central to the processes whereby they are known. Properties relating the cognized to the cognizer are especially important. Though Gaṅgeśa had a lot to say about the ontological status of these properties, others in his school found them problematic. Such controversy appears to have contributed to New Logic’s success: proponents of rival views were able to utilize Gaṅgeśa’s formulas and definitions without abandoning their own positions on what is real.
Gautama, Akṣapāda
Authors: Franco Eli , Preisendanz Karin
Published: September 2018

‘Akṣapāda Gautama’ (or ‘Gotama’) stands for the legendary founder of the Nyāya (‘Logic’) school of Indian philosophy, who is reputed also to be the author of its basic text, the Nyāyasūtra. This compilation of roughly 500 mnemonic sentences reached its first defined form around ad 400. Its oldest core preserves a manual of philosophical debate supplemented by elements of an early philosophy of nature and a basic soteriology. The later parts of the text deal with the number and nature of the means of valid cognition; they further treat the objects of valid cognition and discuss basic questions of metaphysical content.
Mādhava (d. 1386)
Authors: Clear Edeltraud Harzer
Published: September 2018

Mādhava was a minister, scholar and philosopher in India in the fourteenth century. He gave support and advice at the founding of the Vijayanagara Empire in southern India, which lasted 300 years. He is best known for his Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha (Survey of the Major Philosophical Systems). In it, he presented sixteen systems of philosophy, starting with the materialists, discussing the Buddhists, Jainas, several Hindu schools and the school of Logic (Nyāya), and ending with Advaita Vedānta. To him and to many scholars at that time, Advaita Vedānta was the most complete and sophisticated philosophy. Mādhava is often identified with other people, especially Vidyāraṇya, the saint and abbot of a monastery in Śṛṅgeri. The general view now is that Mādhava may have become a monk, receiving as a religious name that of Vidyāraṇya. This Vidyāraṇya was also an accomplished philosopher. His Pañcadaśī (Fifteen Chapters), a digest of Advaita Vedānta, is still popular today.
Patañjali (c. 2nd century BC)
Authors: Bronkhorst Johannes
Published: September 2018

The grammarian Patañjali lived in the second century bc, before the appearance of the classical systems of Indian philosophy. The aspects of his thought that we would call philosophical are concerned primarily with questions of meaning and meaning-bearers in language.
Sa skya Paṇḍita (1182–1251)
Authors: Dreyfus Georges B.J.
Published: September 2018

The philosophical importance of Sa skya Paṇḍita (Sagya Paṇḍita) lies in his clarification of the tradition of logic and epistemology established by Dharmakīrti. He actively promoted the study of Dharmakīrti’s thought in Tibet as a propaedeutic to the study of other systems of Buddhist philosophy as well as to a Buddhist account of knowledge; knowledge is a crucial element in the Buddhist tradition, for ignorance is considered the main obstacle to liberation, the summum bonum of the tradition. Like Dharmakīrti, Sa skya Paṇḍita held that the only two types of knowledge are perception and inference. Perception presents us with real individual objects, while inference enables us to consider these individuals in a conceptual way, in terms of universals; however, it is a mistake to regard these universals as real.
Udayana (11th century)
Authors: Laine Joy
Published: September 2018

Perhaps the most important philosopher of the Nyāya school, Udayana authored several works in the eleventh century which brought to a close the long-standing debate between Nyāya and Buddhist philosophers. The realist Nyāya philosophers had argued for the existence of an enduring self (ātman), a thesis denied by their Buddhist opponents. Such was the importance of this disagreement that it pervaded all other areas of philosophical contention between them. In the Ātmatattvaviveka (On the Discrimination of the Reality of the Self), Udayana systematically clarified the connections between the ātman debate and many other areas of philosophical dispute, with the result that, in defending ātman, he also produced a masterly defence of Nyāya realism. Udayana is also credited with giving the definitive defence of theism in the Nyāyakusumāñjali (A Handful of Nyāya-Tree Flowers).
Definition, Indian concepts of
Authors: Bhattacharyya Sibajiban
Published: September 2018

Definitions in Indian philosophy are conceived very differently from definitions in Western philosophy. In Western philosophy and logic, it is usual to define a term or a linguistic expression. A definition here consists of a ‘definiens’, typically a longer expression, statement or proposal, and a ‘definiendum’, a shorter expression or term whose meaning is established by the definiens. Definitions permit the definiendum to be put in place of the definiens and are thus ‘abbreviations’ (for example, ‘father’ is an abbrevation of ‘male parent’). In India, definitions in the sense of abbreviations were regularly used in grammar from the earliest times, as in the work of Pāṇini (c.800 bc).

In Indian philosophy, however, definitions are not conceived of as abbreviations. We may have direct acquaintance with an object; this is one way of knowing it. We may also know an object or many objects through their properties or features; this is another way of knowing them. These properties or features are the modes under which objects are cognized. If we know objects through the properties that belong to all of them and only to them, then the objects are collected together through their properties to form a group. A group is nothing real; it is a way of collecting objects by knowing them under one mode. When we know a group of objects through properties common to all of them and only to them, we may also want to know another set of properties or features which also belongs to all the objects and only to them. The second set of properties is the defining mark (lakṣaṇa), or, simply, the definition, of the objects collected together into a group by being known under one mode. The objects themselves are the definienda of the definition. The first set of properties through which the definienda are collected together to form a group is called ‘the limiting properties of being the definienda of the definition’. The defining mark, that is, the definition, is not an essential property of the definienda, but is only a property (or set of properties) common to all of them and only them.
Interpretation, Indian theories of
Authors: Deshpande Madhav M.
Published: September 2018

Need for interpretation of texts was felt already during the ancient period of Vedic texts in India. Vedic texts were orally transmitted for over a thousand years. During this period, the change in locations of people reciting the texts and the mother tongues of the reciters led to a widening gap between the preserved sacred texts and their interpreters. Additionally, there was a notion that the sacred language was a mystery which was only partially understood by the common people. This led to the early development of exegetical tools to assist the interpretation of the sacred literature.

Later, grammarians and etymologists developed sophisticated exegetical tools and theories of interpretation. These generally led to a deeper understanding of the structure of language. The priestly tradition developed its own canons of interpretation, which are manifest in the system of Mīmāṃsā. Here we have the first fully developed theory of discourse and context.

The categories developed by Mīmāṃsā were used by other schools, especially by the school of Dharmaśāstra, or Hindu religious law. Both Mīmāṃsā and Dharmaśāstra created sets of hierarchical principles for authoritative guidance in interpretation. Other philosophical and religious traditions developed categories of their own to deal with problems of interpretation. A major problem was created when the literature accepted as authoritative by a tradition contained apparently contradictory passages. The traditions had to deal with this problem and find ways of explaining away those passages which did not quite fit with their own view of truth. For this purpose, a whole set of categories were employed. At a later period, several ingenious principles of interpretation were used for texts in general. Here, significant contributions were made by the traditions of Sanskrit grammar and poetics.
Knowledge, Indian views of
Authors: Phillips Stephen H.
Published: September 2018

Classical Indian epistemology centres on a complex of terms for knowledge, knower and the known or knowable, including pramāṇa, ‘means to knowledge’ or ‘source of knowledge’. Views about perception, inference, testimony and a few additional candidate sources are the topics of core proposals of competing epistemological theories. Certain types of scepticism are also addressed, but explaining how it is possible that we know anything has been less central than other issues. Debates about knowledge – and doubt as well – are often caught up in larger war plans concerning the nature of awareness.

The various classical schools typically bring views about awareness with them to the epistemological arena, but a neutral, common touchstone for and important constraint on all pramāṇa theorizing is what is called speech behaviour, vyavahāra, reflecting, it is presumed, bits of everyday knowledge. Verbalizations of perception, for example, ‘That is a pot’, of inference, for example, ‘There is fire on yonder mountain’ (made on the basis of the sight of smoke and an understanding of the general rule that wherever there is smoke, there is fire), of information acquired through testimony, and so on, are the givens for which a successful theory has to account.

Principal candidate sources proposed in addition to perception and inference are testimony, analogy, circumstantial implication and negative perception. Mystical experience as a pramāṇa for spiritual matters is viewed as a variety of perception by its advocates, and scripture as a variety of testimony. With stock examples of bits of knowledge agreed upon, disagreement typically centres on what the source is for a particular example and whether admission of any source in addition to perception and inference is ever required. Or, in some cases, a stock example is slightly modified, better to align with a stance taken on a putatively additional pramāṇa.

With regard to what the sources make known, some argue that each pramāṇa works within a range of possibilities unique to itself, with no overlap. Thus what is known by perception cannot be known by inference. Others dispute such contentions, although at least a few such restrictions on individual knowledge sources are usually recognized. Buddhists and some others appear to be motivated to deny pramāṇa status to testimony because appeal to testimony is used to justify what they see as objectionable religious theses. Similarly, the Cārvāka materialist denies inference, apparently out of fear of its power to prove the existence of spiritual entities such as God or the soul.

The Buddhist Nāgārjuna and others challenge the pramāṇa programmes proffered by epistemologists of all stripes, and provoke what may be called meta-epistemological responses that bring out connections between pramāṇa proposals and a logic of presumption. In particular, the Nyāya response to Nāgārjuna and company is by any light an admirable effort of philosophy.
Meaning, Indian theories of
Authors: Deshpande Madhav M.
Published: September 2018

The term artha in Sanskrit is used for the notion of meaning, in the widest sense of the word ‘meaning’; it can be the meaning of words, sentences and scriptures, as well as of nonlinguistic gestures and signs. Its meaning ranges from a real object in the external world referred to by a word to a mere concept of an object which may or may not correspond to anything in the external world. The differences regarding what ‘meaning’ is are argued out by the philosophical schools of Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, Buddhism, Sanskrit grammar and Sanskrit poetics. Among these, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika and Mīmāṃsā have realistic ontologies. Mīmāṃsā focuses mainly on interpreting the Vedic scriptures. Buddhist thinkers generally depict language as giving a false picture of reality. Sanskrit grammar is more interested in language than in ontology, while Sanskrit poetics focuses on the poetic dimensions of meaning.

Generally, the notion of meaning is stratified into three or four types. First there is the primary meaning. If this is inappropriate in a given context, then one moves to a secondary meaning, an extension of the primary meaning. Beyond this is the suggested meaning, which may or may not be the same as the meaning intended by the speaker. Specific conditions under which these different varieties are understood are discussed by the schools.

The various Indian theories of meaning are closely related to the overall stances taken by the different schools. Among the factors which influence the notion of meaning are the ontological and epistemological views of a school, its views regarding the role of God and scripture, its focus on a certain type of discourse, and its ultimate purpose in theorizing.
Brahman
Authors: Phillips Stephen H.
Published: September 2018

The Sanskrit word brahman (neuter) emerged in late Vedic literature and Upaniṣads (900–300 bc) as the name (never pluralized) of the divine reality pervading the universe, knowledge or experience of which is a person’s supreme good. The word’s earliest usage (often pluralized) is to refer to the verses of the oldest work in Sanskrit (and in any Indo-European language), the Ṛg Veda (c.1200 bc), which is a compilation of poems and hymns to Indo-European gods. The individual verses of the poems are mantras (brahmāṇi), whose proper enunciation in the course of ritual and sacrifice was thought to secure various aims. Thematically, the Ṛg Veda and other early Indian literature presents a sense of pervasive divinity. Apparently through an assimilation of the idea of the magic of mantras to the divine immanence theme the word brahman assumed its later meaning. In any case, Brahman – the Absolute, the supremely real – became the focus of Indian spirituality and the centre of much metaphysics for almost three thousand years, down to the present day. In the Upaniṣads, which are mystic treatises containing speculation about Brahman’s nature and relation to ourselves and the world, the central positions of Vedānta schools emerge, all of which are philosophies of Brahman. But not even in the narrow set of the earliest and most universally accepted Upaniṣads (numbering twelve or thirteen) is there expressed a consistent worldview. Important themes about Brahman may be identified, but there is no overall unity of conception, despite what later exegetes claim. The unity of the early Upaniṣads concerns the premier importance of mystical knowledge or awareness of Brahman (brahma-vidyā), not precisely what it is that is to be mystically known. The classical Indian philosophical schools of Vedānta systematized the thought of early Upaniṣads.
God, Indian conceptions of
Authors: Bhattacharyya Sibajiban
Published: September 2018

In the Ṛg Veda, the oldest text in India, many gods and goddesses are mentioned by name; most of them appear to be deifications of natural powers, such as fire, water, rivers, wind, the sun, dusk and dawn. The Mīmāṃsā school started by Jaimini (c.ad 50) adopts a nominalistic interpretation of the Vedas. There are words like ‘Indra’, ‘Varuṇa’, and so on, which are names of gods, but there is no god over and above the names. God is the sacred word (mantra) which has the potency to produce magical results. The Yoga system of Patañjali (c.ad 300) postulates God as a soul different from individual souls in that God does not have any blemishes and is eternally free. The ultimate aim of life is not to realize God, but to realize the nature of one’s own soul. God-realization may help some individuals to attain self-realization, but it is not compulsory to believe in God to attain the summum bonum of human life. Śaṅkara (c.ad 780), who propounded the Advaita Vedānta school of Indian philosophy, agrees that God-realization is not the ultimate aim of human life. Plurality, and therefore this world, are mere appearances, and God, as the creator of the world, is himself relative to the concept of the world. Rāmānuja (traditionally 1016–1137), the propounder of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school, holds God to be ultimate reality, and God-realization to be the ultimate goal of human life. The way to realize God is through total self-surrender to God. Nyāya theory also postulates one God who is an infinite soul, a Person with omniscience and omnipresence as his attributes. God is the creator of language, the author of the sacred Vedas, and the first teacher of all the arts and crafts.
Potentiality, Indian theories of
Authors: Hayes Richard P.
Published: September 2018

Indian philosophers wrote a great deal about potential (śakti) and capacity (sāmarthya); both of these words may also be translated as ‘power’ or ‘force’. The Sanskrit word śakti, like the English word ‘potential’, derives from a modal verb meaning ‘to be able’, so one might also see the study of potential as being the study of ability. The principal issue about which Indians debated was that of where exactly potential or ability is located. If, for example, it can be said that a person has a potential to compose a poetic masterpiece, then it can be asked where exactly that potential is located. Is it located entirely within the potential poet, or is it distributed somehow between the poet and the circumstances in which the person functions? If one says it is located entirely within the person, then it can be asked why they produce the masterpiece only at one specific time in their life instead of earlier or later. In other words, it seems that if circumstances were required to enable the person to realize their potential, then the potentiality would belong as much to external circumstances as to the person. This may not seem an interesting question in the abstract, but it became of interest to philosophers in particular contexts. It was generally agreed, for example, that nothing happens without a prior potential that becomes actualized. If this is so, then the question naturally arises, to what did the potential belong out of the actualization of which the universe ‘happened’? Other questions that Indian philosophers debated were: To whom does the potential to become wise belong? How is the potential of a supposedly eternal language actualized to convey meaning? Attempting to answer such questions was a preoccupation of philosophers of every Indian school.
Self, Indian theories of
Authors: Rukmani T.S.
Published: September 2018

Hindu thought traces its different conceptions of the self to the earliest extant Vedic sources composed in the Sanskrit language. The words commonly used in Hindu thought and religion for the self are jīva (life), ātman (breath), jīvātman (life-breath), puruṣa (the essence that lies in the body), and kṣetrajña (one who knows the body). Each of these words was the culmination of a process of inquiry with the purpose of discovering the ultimate nature of the self. By the end of the ancient period, the personal self was regarded as something eternal which becomes connected to a body in order to exhaust the good and bad karma it has accumulated in its many lives. This self was supposed to be able to regain its purity by following different spiritual paths by means of which it can escape from the circle of births and deaths forever.

There is one more important development in the ancient and classical period. The conception of Brahman as both immanent and transcendent led to Brahman being identified with the personal self. The habit of thought that tried to relate every aspect of the individual with its counterpart in the universe (Ṛg Veda X. 16) had already prepared the background for this identification process. When the ultimate principle in the subjective and objective spheres had arrived at their respective ends in the discovery of the ātman and Brahman, it was easy to equate the two as being the same spiritual ‘energy’ that informs both the outer world and the inner self. This equation had important implications for later philosophical growth.

The above conceptions of the self-identity question find expression in the six systems of Hindu thought. These are known as āstikadarśanas or ways of seeing the self without rejecting the authority of the Vedas. Often, one system or the other may not explicitly state their allegiance to the Vedas, but unlike Buddhism or Jainism, they did not openly repudiate Vedic authority. Thus they were āstikadarśanas as opposed to the others who were nāstikadarśanas. The word darśana for philosophy is also significant if one realizes that philosophy does not end with only an intellectual knowing of one’s self-identity but also culminates in realizing it and truly becoming it.
Duty and virtue, Indian conceptions of
Authors: Taber John A.
Published: September 2018

Two principal strains of ethical thought are evident in Indian religious and philosophical literature: one, central to Hinduism, emphasizes adherence to the established norms of ancient Indian culture, which are stated in the literature known as the Dharmaśāstras; another, found in texts of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism alike, stresses the renunciation of one’s familial and social obligations for the sake of attaining enlightenment or liberation from the cycle of rebirth. The Dharmaśāstras define in elaborate detail a way of life based on a division of society into four ‘orders’ (varṇas) – priests, warriors, tradesmen and servants or labourers – and, for the three highest orders, four ‘stages of life’ (āśramas). Renunciation is valid only in the final two stages of life, after one has fulfilled one’s responsibilities as a student of scripture and as a householder. The various traditions that stress liberation, on the other hand, advocate total, immediate commitment to the goal of liberation, for which the householder life presents insuperable distractions. Here, the duties of the householder are replaced by the practice of yoga and asceticism. Nevertheless, specific ethical observances are also recommended as prerequisites for the achievement of higher knowledge through yoga, in particular, nonviolence, truthfulness, not stealing, celibacy and poverty. The liberation traditions criticized the system of the Dharmaśāstras for being overly concerned with ritual and external forms of purity and condoning – indeed, prescribing – the killing of living beings in Vedic sacrifices; but it was only in the Dharmaśāstras that the notion of action solely for duty’s sake was appreciated. The Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gītā (Song of God) represents an effort to synthesize the two ideals of renunciation and the fulfilment of obligation. It teaches that one should integrate yoga and action in the world. Only when acting out of the state of inner peace and detachment that is the culmination of the practice of yoga can one execute one’s duty without regard for the consequences of one’s actions. On the other hand, without the cultivation of inner yoga, the external forms of renunciation – celibacy, mendicancy, asceticism – are without significance. It is inner yoga that is the essence of renunciation, yet yoga is quite compatible with carrying out one’s obligations in the world.
Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji (1891–1956)
Authors: Sponberg Alan
Published: September 2018

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was a statesman, scholar, human rights advocate, educator, barrister, first law minister of the Republic of India and architect of its constitution. Born into the untouchable Mahar subcaste, he became the widely revered leader of India’s more than 100 million hereditary outcastes, the social and psychological emancipation of whom remained his lifelong objective. Strongly influenced by Anglo-American liberalism and pragmatism, Ambedkar was a staunch constitutionalist and social democrat. Locating the source of untouchability within the caste system itself, he became a militant critic of Hinduism, eventually affirming Buddhism as the universal ethical teaching that he felt could lead all of India into modernity.
Brahmo Samaj
Authors: Kumar K.S.
Published: September 2018

The Brahmo (or Brahma) Samaj (‘Society of Brahma’) is the name of a theistic society founded by Raja Rammohun Roy in Calcutta in 1828. It advocated reform, and eventually abolition, of the traditional caste system, as well as legislation aimed at improving the social status of women and greater protection of children. Also dedicated to Hindu religious reform, the Brahmo Samaj stressed a monotheistic doctrine with a policy of tolerance and respect for all major religions of the world. The society split into two factions in 1866, largely over the issue of the speed of reform. Another split occurred in 1878 over whether the society’s constitution was to be fully democratic. The democratic wing, called the Sadhāraṇ Brahmo Samaj (‘Universal Brahma Society’), is still active in India.
Ramakrishna Movement
Authors: Bryson Thomas L.
Published: September 2018

Although the Ramakrishna Movement was born in Bengal and influenced by Christian missionary activity and Western Orientalism, its understanding of Hinduism has become the standard for modern educated Indians. Drawing on the spiritual inspiration of its guru, Sri Ramakrishna (1836–86), and the dynamic preaching of his main disciple, Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), the Ramakrishna Order has founded centres throughout India and the West. Calling his system ‘Practical Vedānta’, Vivekananda laid claim to the classical Advaita Vedānta associated with Śaṅkara. Unlike Śaṅkara, though, Vivekananda elevated selfless social work to a spiritual path equal in value to meditation, devotion and gnosis. The swamis of the order combine traditional Hindu religious practice with the administration of educational and medical institutions on the model of Christian missions. Vivekananda’s vision of Indian culture as united and renewed by his humanistic Hinduism has inspired other gurus as well as Hindu nationalists.
Tian
Authors: Hall David L. , Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

Tian, conventionally translated as ‘Heaven’, is both what our world is and how it is. The myriad things are not the creatures of tian or disciplined by a tian which stands independent of what is ordered; rather, they are constitutive of it. Tian is both creator and the field of creatures. There is no apparent distinction between the order itself and what orders it. This absence of superordination is a condition made familiar in related notions of the Daoist dao and the Buddhist dharma, which also refer to concrete phenomena and the order that obtains among them. On this basis, tian can be described as an inhering, emergent order negotiated out of the dispositioning of the particulars that are constitutive of it. In the human world, tian is the experience of meaningful context felt differently by each person in the fellowship of family and community.
Cheng Yi (1033–1107)
Authors: Tillman Hoyt Cleveland
Published: September 2018

One of the most creative Chinese intellectuals, Cheng Yi was the most systematic and influential of a group of thinkers which channelled Confucian thinking into a new philosophical direction that gradually became dominant in East Asia for several centuries. Buddhism was still the most pervasive and sophisticated religious philosophy of his day; yet he effectively borrowed some of its ideas and methods to formulate a philosophy that would enable Confucian teachers to draw intellectuals away from the Buddhist masters.
Dai Zhen (1724–77)
Authors: Ying-Shih Yü
Published: September 2018

Dai Zhen, a neo-Confucian philosopher, argues against the received neo-Confucian view of dao as a metaphysical entity. On the contrary, dao is immanent in the world and, in the case of the human world specifically, in the everyday lives of ordinary people irrespective of social status. His philosophical views had important political and social implications.
Han Yu (768–824)
Authors: Hartman Charles
Published: September 2018

Among the most important figures in the history of medieval Confucianism, Han Yu helped to redefine and adapt earlier Confucian teachings to the needs of his contemporary society. He strove to make Confucianism a more popular and comprehensive doctrine by devising a basic metaphysics and epistemology to complement the earlier Confucian emphasis on ethics.
Zongmi (780–841)
Authors: Gregory Peter N.
Published: September 2018

Zongmi was a Chinese Buddhist Chan (Zen) and Huayan scholar, traditionally reckoned as the fifth ‘patriarch’ both in the Heze line of Southern Chan and in the Huayan scholastic tradition. He is important for his revision of Huayan doctrine, his commentaries to the Yuanjuejing (Scripture of Perfect Enlightenment), his accounts of Chan teachings and his contribution to the theory of the essential unity of the three teachings of Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism.
Confucius (551–479 BC)
Authors: Lau D.C. , Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

Confucius is arguably the most influential philosopher in human history – ‘is’ because, taking Chinese philosophy on its own terms, he is still very much alive. Recognized as China’s first teacher both chronologically and in importance, his ideas have been the rich soil in which the Chinese cultural tradition has grown and flourished. In fact, whatever we might mean by ‘Chineseness’ today, some two and a half millennia after his death, is inseparable from the example of personal character that Confucius provided for posterity. Nor was his influence restricted to China; all of the Sinitic cultures – especially Korea, Japan and Vietnam – have evolved around ways of living and thinking derived from the wisdom of the Sage.

A couple of centuries before Plato founded his Academy to train statesmen for the political life of Athens, Confucius had established a school with the explicit purpose of educating the next generation for political leadership. As his curriculum, Confucius is credited with having over his lifetime edited what were to become the Chinese Classics, a collection of poetry, music, historical documents and annals that chronicled the events at the Lu court, along with an extensive commentary on the Yijing (Book of Changes). These classics provided a shared cultural vocabulary for his students, and became the standard curriculum for the Chinese literati in subsequent centuries.

Confucius began the practice of independent philosophers travelling from state to state in an effort to persuade political leaders that their particular teachings were a practicable formula for social and political success. In the decades that followed the death of Confucius, intellectuals of every stripe – Confucians, Legalists, Mohists, Yin–yang theorists, Militarists – would take to the road, attracted by court academies which sprung up to host them. Within these seats of learning, the viability of their various strategies for political and social unity would be hotly debated.
Mencius (4th century BC)
Authors: Van Norden Bryan W.
Published: September 2018

Mencius (Mengzi) was a Chinese Confucian philosopher, best known for his claim that human nature is good. He is probably the single most influential philosopher in the Chinese tradition, in that an interpretation of his thought became the basis of the civil service examinations in China in the fourteenth century and remained so for almost 600 years. The primary source for his thought is the collection of his sayings, debates and discussions known as the Mengzi.
Daodejing
Authors: Lafargue Michael
Published: September 2018

The Daodejing (or Tao Te Ching) is a brief work probably composed during the period 350–250 bc. It later became the most authoritative ‘scripture’ in the Daoist religious and philosophical tradition, and in modern times has become among the most often-translated and popular works in world religious literature. It recommends cultivating mental calm, an intuitive, non-conceptual understanding of the world, an integrated and balanced personality, a self-effacing manner and a low-key and non-intrusive leadership style. One who has this spirit has dao (tao), which is also conceived of as a cosmic reality, the origin of the world.
Mozi (5th century BC)
Authors: Yates Robin D.S.
Published: September 2018

Mozi was the first philosopher to question the ideas of Confucius. Scholarly debate centres around the issue of whether Mozi was a ‘weak’ or a ‘strong’ utilitarian, an ‘act’ or ‘rule utilitarian’, and whether he was a ‘language utilitarian’ or rather placed the religious authority of a personalized Heaven at the centre of his system. He is noteworthy for being the first thinker to develop a tripartite methodology for verifying claims to knowledge and for attacking the Confucian emphasis on ritual and the centrality of the family as the basis for social and political action.
Zhuangzi
Authors: Ames Roger T.
Published: September 2018

The Zhuangzi is a Daoist text usually associated with ‘Master Zhuang’ (fourth century bc), also known as Zhuang Zhou. Scholarly consensus regards the thirty-three chapters of this text to be composite, containing passages that offer different and sometimes even contradictory interpretations of basic Daoist tenets. The opening seven ‘inner chapters’ are traditionally thought to be from the hand of Master Zhuang himself, while the remaining ‘outer’ and ‘miscellaneous’ chapters are taken to be later elaborations and commentary by members of what retrospectively can be called a Master Zhuang school, or better, lineage. As a philosophical text, the Zhuangzi is for the most part addressed to the project of personal realization, and only derivatively concerned about social and political order. As one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus, the Zhuangzi is itself an object lesson in marshalling every trope and literary device available to provide rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most creative way to live one’s life in the world.
Daxue
Authors: Wei-Ming Tu
Published: September 2018

Originally a chapter in the Liji (Book of Rites), one of the Five Classics in the Confucian tradition, the Daxue (Great Learning) has for centuries attained the status of a canon, arguably the most influential foundational text in East Asian Confucian humanism. When the great neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi grouped the Daxue with the Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean), another chapter in the Liji, the Confucian Analects and the Mengzi as the Four Books, its prominence in the Confucian scriptural tradition was assured. Since the Four Books with Master Zhu’s commentaries became the required readings for the civil service examinations in 1313, and since Master Zhu insisted that the Daxue must be studied first among the Four, it has been widely acknowledged as the quintessential Confucian text.
Wang Chong (AD 27–c.90)
Authors: Chalier Agnes
Published: September 2018

The Han philosopher Wang Chong wrote a text called Lunheng (Disquisitions or Discourses Weighed in the Balance), one of the most exceptional and original documents in Chinese thought, compiled as it was during a crucial transitional period. Wang’s main approach can be defined as a rational scepticism, questioning accepted history, the contents of canonical texts and philosophical claims about reality. His writings on fate develop ideas such as necessity, cause and uncertainty.
Wang Fuzhi (1619–92)
Authors: Black Alison H.
Published: September 2018

A seventeenth-century neo-Confucian and Ming loyalist, Wang Fuzhi is best known for his nationalism and his theories of historical and metaphysical change. His classical commentaries and other writings, not published until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, present an exceptionally comprehensive and vigorously argued synthesis and critique of China’s intellectual tradition. His ideas on topics such as politics, cosmology and knowledge have fascinated readers of widely differing philosophic persuasions.
The Kyoto School
Authors: Davis Bret W.
Published: September 2018

The Kyoto School is a group of modern Japanese philosophers whose original thinking derives from bringing East Asian traditions – especially Zen and Pure Land Buddhism – into critical and creative dialogue with Western philosophy and religion. All the philosophers associated with the Kyoto School have been significantly influenced by its founder, Nishida Kitarō. Most of the core members of the School have taught at Kyoto University. They share – and sometimes debate – a set of core philosophical ideas, chief among them ‘absolute nothingness’. With the notable exception of Tanabe Hajime, many of the School’s philosophers, including Nishitani Keiji and Ueda Shizuteru, have also appropriated in their own manners Nishida’s philosophy of ‘the place of absolute nothingness’. Other shared endeavours include attempts to articulate the interpersonal and religious significance of self-negation, and attempts to develop a thoroughly dialectical logic that is capable of accounting for the contradictions as well as interrelations inherent in reality. Finally, Kyoto School philosophers have persistently criticised political and cultural as well as philosophical Eurocentrism. The content of their controversial wartime political writings continues to be discussed and debated, as do their lasting contributions to cross-cultural philosophy.
Kokoro
Authors: Viswanathan Meera
Published: September 2018

Kokoro is a comprehensive term in Japanese religion, philosophy and aesthetics often translated as ‘heart’, whose range of meanings includes mind, wisdom, aspiration, essence, attention, sincerity and sensibility. In Buddhist texts and in philosophy, kokoro (or shin in its Sino-Japanese reading) denotes mind, heart or inner nature, the site of human sentience or delusion. By extension, in pre-modern theories of art, kokoro signifies simultaneously the emotional capacity of the artist to respond to the natural world, which ideally catalyzes the act of creation; the parallel ability of an audience to respond to such a work of art and thus indirectly to the experience of the artist; and finally the evaluation of such a work as possessing the ‘right conception’, kokoro ari or alternatively ushin.
Mujō
Authors: Hull Monte S.
Published: September 2018

A Japanese word originating in Buddhism, mujō means impermanence, transience or mutability. It characterizes all phenomena of experience, but is especially significant for human endeavours to achieve happiness. In the Buddhist analysis of existence, all things arise and perish through dependent origination; they are impermanent, without substance and continually subject to change. This presents human beings with an imperative existential problem, for they ignore or fail to realize the pervasiveness of impermanence. Endeavouring to secure lasting satisfaction, they cling to what is transient and mutable. The result is suffering, the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary – unenlightened – human existence.

The problem of impermanence is fundamental to Buddhism from its inception, but interpretations of the concept varied with the evolution of other doctrines, most notably the Mahāyāna notion of emptiness. The indigenous Japanese sensitivity to the transience of life and nature interacted with Buddhism to articulate, often in aesthetic terms, not only the threats but also the contributions of impermanence to meaningful human existence. The most thorough examination of mujō is offered by the Zen Buddhist Dōgen, who in his exposition of the radical temporality of existence as being-time identifies the full realization of impermanence with Buddha-nature or enlightenment.
Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801)
Authors: Kasulis Thomas P.
Published: September 2018

Motoori Norinaga was a pivotal figure in Japan’s ‘Native Studies’ or ‘National Learning’ (kokugaku) movement. An accomplished philologist, he helped decipher the idiosyncratic eighth-century orthography of the Japanese chronicle of history and myth, the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters). This was part of his broader scholarly project of defining the nature of the ancient Japanese sensitivity or ‘heart-and-mind’ (kokoro). In so doing, he articulated an influential religious philosophy of Shintōand an axiology of traditional Japanese values, which he considered as primarily emotivist and aesthetic.
Zeami (1363–1443)
Authors: Yusa Michiko
Published: September 2018

Zeami was one of the leading innovators in the art of Nō, at a time when Zen Buddhism dominated the Japanese intellectual and cultural order. He practised Zen Buddhism (Sōtō branch), and found in Zen teachings the epistemology that gave Nō its aesthetic foundations. While his Nō treatises are buttressed by his observation of the nature and the workings of the mind, they also reveal Shintō sensibility in their view that the origin of entertainment is sacred.
Fujiwara Seika (1561–1619)
Authors: Tucker John Allen
Published: September 2018

In Tokugawa intellectual historiography, Fujiwara Seika has been traditionally deemed the founding father of the Zhu Xi school of neo-Confucianism in Japan. He emphasized seiza (quiet-sitting) in order to perceive the ethical essence of human nature, and asserted the priority of principle, moving away from dualism towards a more rationalistic monism.
Itō Jinsai (1627–1705)
Authors: Tucker John Allen
Published: September 2018

Itō Jinsai, along with his contemporary Yamaga Sokō, pioneered the kogaku, or ‘Ancient Learning’, philosophical movement of Tokugawa Japan. Kogaku reacted against the allegedly stifling and excessively metaphysical ideas of Zhu Xi’s neo-Confucianism. In making his call for a return to the ancient Confucian teachings, Jinsai produced one of the first and most systematic visions of Confucian philosophy.
Kumazawa Banzan (1610–91)
Authors: Heine Steven
Published: September 2018

Trained under Nakae Tōju, the founder of the Wang Yangming school (Yōmeigaku) of Confucian idealism during the Tokugawa era in Japan, Kumazawa Banzan is known for his eclectic and pragmatic philosophy emphasizing political and economic reforms. For example, he recommended that the shogunate take greater responsibility for promoting economic equity and prosperity by supporting rice production and storage as well as the use of rice as the medium of exchange. He advocated a form of government dedicated to the Confucian ideal of benevolence.
Miki Kiyoshi (1897–1945)
Authors: Heisig J.W.
Published: September 2018

A brilliant young philosopher and critic of his times, Miki Kiyoshi embodied in his life and thought Japan’s tortured transition from Westernized modernity to world power. Associated with his teacher, Nishida Kitarō, he is generally regarded as representative of a Marxist turn on the Kyoto School.
Nishi Amane (1829–97)
Authors: Kiyoshi Himi
Published: September 2018

Among the campaigners for Japanese enlightenment in the early Meiji era, Nishi Amane was prominent for his philosophical achievements. He introduced European philosophy into Japan, especially the positivism of Auguste Comte and the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill. The academic philosophy of modern Japan owes its origins to him.
Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945)
Authors: Maraldo John C.
Published: September 2018

Considered Japan’s first original modern philosopher, Nishida not only transmitted Western philosophical problems to his contemporaries but also used Buddhist philosophy and his own methods to subvert the basis of traditional dichotomies and propose novel integrations. His developmental philosophy began with the notion of unitary or pure experience before the split between subject and object. It developed to challenge other traditional opposites such as intuition and reflection, fact and value, art and morality, individual and universal, and relative and absolute. In its organic development, Nishida’s philosophy reacted to critiques that it neglected the social dimension with political essays that sometimes aligned it with Japanese imperialism. It culminated in the ‘logic of place’, a form of thinking that would do justice to the contradictory world of human actions.
Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728)
Authors: Tucker John Allen
Published: September 2018

Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) was one of the greatest, most erudite and most Sinocentric kogaku, or ‘Ancient Learning’, philosophers of Tokugawa Japan. Sorai’s call for a return to the most ancient philosophical classics of the Chinese tradition, the Six Classics, voiced the logical conclusion of kogaku tendencies. However, Sorai’s ideas also inspired kokugaku, or ‘National Learning’, a literary movement advocating a return to the ancient writings of Japan which most purely expressed the Japanese soul prior to its distortion by Chinese philosophy.
Shinran (1173–1263)
Authors: Unno Taitetsu
Published: September 2018

Shinran lived in thirteenth-century Japan, an age of socio-political turmoil, when the old order represented by imperial rule, aristocratic culture and monastic Buddhism was in the process of internal disintegration, and a vibrant age of military clans, popular culture and new schools of Buddhism, appealing to the disenfranchised, was beginning to emerge. Although Shinran’s name is not found in the historical records of the period, he left many writings, including original works, commentaries, poetry and letters that contain religious and philosophical insights which had a great impact on subsequent Japanese life. His place in history was secured when in 1921 a collection of his wife’s letters, attesting to their relationship over the years, was discovered in the archives of Nishi Hongwanji in Kyoto.
Nichiren (1222–82)
Authors: Heisig J.W.
Published: September 2018

Fiery prophet, religious reformer, founder of a major religious movement, brilliant preacher and erudite writer, Nichiren is one of Japan’s most controversial religious figures. His thought derived from the Tendai tradition, from which he inherited both his veneration of the Lotus Sutra and the idea of an eternal Buddha woven into the stuff of all reality.