bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Language, Indian theories of
Authors: Bronkhorst Johannes 
Published: September 2018

Language is a much debated topic in Indian philosophy. There is a clear concern with it in the Vedic texts, where efforts are made to describe links between earthly and divine reality in terms of etymological links between words. The earliest surviving Sanskrit grammar, Pāṇini’s intricate Aṣṭādhyāyī(Eight Chapters), dates from about 350 bc, although arguably the first explicitly philosophical reflections on language that have survived are found in Patañjali’s ‘Great Commentary’ on Pāṇini’s work, the Mahābhāṣya (c.150 bc). Both these thinkers predate the classical systems of Indian philosophy. This is not true of the great fifth-century grammarian Bhartṛhari, however, who in his Vākyapadīya (Treatise on Sentences and Words) draws on these systems in developing his theory of the sphoṭa, a linguistic entity distinct from a word’s sounds that Bhartṛhari takes to convey its meaning.
Among the issues debated by these philosophers (although not exclusively by them, and not exclusively with reference to Sanskrit) were what can be described as (i) the search for minimal meaningful units, and (ii) the ontological status of composite linguistic units. With some approximation, the first of these two issues attracted more attention during the early period of linguistic reflection, whereas the subsequent period emphasized the second one.
Cosmology and cosmogony, Indian theories of
Authors: Clear Edeltraud Harzer 
Published: September 2018

Theories of the origin of the universe have been told as stories, riddles and instruction in India since early times. The three prominent religious movements, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism each had their own myths and speculations.
In the Hindu tradition there was never one single theory. Among the divergent ideas we can distinguish: an early stage, which included themes such as there being nothing at the beginning, or the universe being created by mutual birth, or creation as the dismemberment of a sacrificial victim, or the gods arriving after the first moment of creation; and a later stage, in which Viṣṇu or Brahmā was regarded as the creator of the universe. Simultaneously, the old Sāṅkhya idea of the self-creating universe, in which the original material stuff transforms itself into the different parts of the universe, coexisted with the idea of a god creating the universe.
The early Buddhist tradition neglected questions such as ‘Does the universe exist?’ The first mention of such topics occurred in the Pāli Canon, where they were condemned. A few centuries later, these cosmological ideas were taken up by Vasubandhu, who collected them and formulated them in a comprehensive way. Without a creator god, the universe is primarily a reflection of meditational experiences of the world, a Single Circular System. There are several other systems, such as the Thousand Universe System, the Immeasurable Universe System and the Pure Land.
The Jaina tradition had a very detailed theory of the spatial arrangement of the universe. This was essential for understanding where all the individual selves travel to after death, given their spiritual accomplishments (or lack of them). From earth they go to heavens or hells, the aim being eventually to reach the place of bliss and thus to gain final freedom.
Matter, Indian conceptions of
Authors: Schweizer Paul 
Published: September 2018

During the long and complex history of Indian philosophy, a number of divergent conceptions of matter have been developed and explored. These conceptions diverge both with respect to the ontological analysis of matter, and with respect to its specific structural characteristics. In terms of ontological conceptions of matter, the rival positions of materialism, idealism and substance-pluralism are all advanced by competing schools of thought. For example, pure materialism is espoused by the Cārvāka school, while absolute idealism is defended by Advaita Vedānta, and varying forms of pluralism are advocated by the Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika schools.
Regarding the structural characteristics of matter, the most interesting conceptions are advanced by the pluralistic philosophies. In particular, the Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya schools recognize five physical substances, four of which are held to possess atomic structure. According to this conception, matter is composed of imperceptibly small units or paramāṇus, which constitute the basic substrate in which perceptible qualities inhere. All macroscopic objects are transient composites of atoms, while the paramāṇus themselves are indivisible and indestructible. The atoms are held to be naturally at rest, and an external force is required to initiate motion.
In contrast, the Sāṅkhya and Yoga traditions espouse a metaphysical dualism of the two basic categories of matter and consciousness, where the continuity and dynamic transformations of matter are emphasized. All of the diverse phenomena of the physical world result from modifications of a single underlying source known as pradhāna or primal matter, which is said to be continuous, all pervading, indestructible and imperceptible. Pradhāna exists in a balanced and unmanifest state of pralaya until it is disturbed by the presence of consciousness. This disturbance leads to an imbalance between the internal constituents of pradhāna, and the resulting disequilibrium accounts for the evolutionary transformations of the physical world.
Momentariness, Buddhist doctrine of
Authors: Von Rospatt Alexander 
Published: September 2018

The object of the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness is not the nature of time, but existence within time. Rather than atomizing time into moments, it atomizes phenomena temporally by dissecting them into a succession of discrete momentary entities. Its fundamental proposition is that everything passes out of existence as soon as it has originated and in this sense is momentary. As an entity vanishes, it gives rise to a new entity of almost the same nature which originates immediately afterwards. Thus, there is an uninterrupted flow of causally connected momentary entities of nearly the same nature, the so-called continuum (santāna). These entities succeed each other so fast that the process cannot be discerned by ordinary perception. Because earlier and later entities within one continuum are almost exactly alike, we come to conceive of something as a temporally extended entity even though the fact that it is in truth nothing but a series of causally connected momentary entities. According to this doctrine, the world (including the sentient beings inhabiting it) is at every moment distinct from the world in the previous or next moment. It is, however, linked to the past and future by the law of causality in so far as a phenomenon usually engenders a phenomenon of its kind when it perishes, so that the world originating in the next moment reflects the world in the preceding moment.
At the root of Buddhism lies the (never questioned) conviction that everything that has originated is bound to perish and is therefore, with the exception of factors conducive to enlightenment, ultimately a source of frustration. There is no surviving textual material that documents how this law of impermanence came to be radicalized in terms of momentariness. It seems that by the fourth century the doctrine of momentariness had already assumed its final form. Characteristically, the debate became more and more dominated by epistemological questions, while the metaphysical aspect faded into the background.
Tagore, Rabindranath (1886–1941)
Authors: Minor Robert N. 
Published: September 2018

In the flurry of intellectual activity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore became one of the best-known playwrights, poets, novelists, educators and philosophers, winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913. His thought drew on the English Romantics as well as Sanskrit and Bengali writers and movements.
Tagore was not a systematic philosopher. He termed his position ‘a poet’s religion’ which valued imagination above reason. He moved between the personal warmth of human relationships to a theistic Divine and belief in an Absolute as a unifying principle. He advocated a thoughtful but active life, criticizing asceticism and ritualism.
Testimony in Indian philosophy
Authors: Bilimoria Purushottama 
Published: September 2018

A prominent topic in Indian epistemology is śābdapramāṇa, knowledge derived from linguistic utterance or testimony. The classical material is extensive and varied, initially concerned with providing grounds for accepting the wisdom of śruti or ‘the heard word’, that is, the canonical scriptures. The Buddhists, however, saw no need for śābdajñāna (information gained through words) as an independent source of knowledge, because any utterance (including the Buddha’s) that has not been tested in one’s own experience cannot be relied upon; and in any case, the operation of such knowledge can be accounted for in terms of inference and perception.
The Nyāya, following the Mīmāṃsā, developed sophisticated analyses and a spirited defence of the viability and autonomy of testimony. The problem is recast thus: is śābdapramāṇa linguistic knowledge eo ipso, or does verbal understanding amount to knowledge only when certain specifiable conditions, in addition to the generating conditions, are satisfied? The more usual answer is that where the speaker is reliable and sincere, and there is no evidence to the contrary, the generating semantic and phenomenological conditions suffice to deliver valid knowledge. If doubt arises, then other resources can be utilized for checking the truth or falsity of the understanding, or the reliability of the author (or nonpersonal source), and for overcoming the defects.
History, Chinese theories of
Authors: Ivanhoe Philip J. 
Published: September 2018

The beginnings of Chinese historical writing can be seen in the works of several early thinkers of the sixth through third centuries bc. The various features which we see in their nascent form in early classical sources were developed, synthesized and found their first mature expression in the composition of what came to be known as the Standard or Official Histories, notably the Spring and Autumn Annals, the Shiji (Records of the Historian) and the Hanshu (History of the Former Han Dynasty).
Much has been made of the purported ‘cyclical’ nature of Chinese views of time and the implications this has had on everything from Chinese views of history to the development of science. It is alleged that there was no notion of historical progress among the Chinese, who purportedly held a fatalistic view of infinitely repeating cycles of alternating political order and chaos, beyond human control. However, Chinese thinkers have held a wide range of different views about the pattern and flow of history.
While the amount of historical writing in China is truly staggering, Chinese thinkers have paid relatively little attention to the systematic study of the methodology and nature of history. However, there have been notable exceptions in both critical and speculative history. Critical historians at different times modified and made further suggestions regarding the form and content of the Official Histories. They also criticized the methods by which material for the Official Histories was gathered and controlled, and offered a variety of opinions regarding other forms of historical writing. Chinese philosophers of history developed elegant and sophisticated theories of history which purport to reveal the significance and structure of historical processes.
The nineteenth century marks the beginning of modern Chinese views of history, when Chinese intellectuals were first deeply influenced by Western views on the nature of history and historical method. This was also a time when Chinese society was shaken to its foundations by Western colonialism. Chinese historians of this period responded with impressive syntheses of traditional and western views. Traditional notions – for example the idea that history must fulfil a moral purpose – were recast in terms of the emerging phenomenon of Chinese nationalism. At the same time, new ideas about how objective factors, such as economic forces, shape historical events and the global scale on which these events take shape were incorporated into novel Chinese conceptions of history. This process continued into the early twentieth century when Marxist views became most influential. Early Chinese Marxist theories of history reveal a remarkable mixture of the strange and the familiar. However, Stalinist ideology quickly came to dominate more subtle forms of Marxism. As a result, Chinese Marxist views of history soon became ossified and uninspired. Little new or interesting can be found after the early 1950s.
Shintō
Authors: Varley Paul 
Published: September 2018

Shintō means the ‘way of the kami (gods)’ and is a term that was evolved about the late sixth or early seventh centuries – as Japan entered an extended period of cultural borrowing from China and Korea – to distinguish the amalgam of native religious beliefs from Buddhism, a continental import. Shintō embraces the most ancient and basic social and religious values of Japan. It is exclusively Japanese, showing no impulse to spread beyond Japan. The exportation of Shintō would in any case be exceedingly difficult since its mythology is so closely bound to the creation of Japan and the Japanese people, and since many of its deities are believed to make their homes in the mountains, rivers, trees, rocks and other natural features of the Japanese islands.
Shintō comprises both great and little traditions. The great tradition, established in the mythology that was incorporated into Japan’s two oldest extant writings, Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihon Shoki (Chronicle of Japan), both dating from the early eighth century, is centred on the imperial institution. According to the mythology the emperorship was ordained by the sun goddess, Amaterasu, who sent her grandson from heaven to earth (Japan) to found a dynasty ‘to rule eternally’. The present emperor is the 125th in a line of sovereigns officially regarded, until Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, as descended directly from Amaterasu.
Shintō’s little tradition is a mixture of polytheistic beliefs about kami, manifested in nature worship (animism), ancestor worship, agricultural cults, fertility rites, shamanism and more. Lacking a true scriptural basis, Shintō derives from the faith of the people, and from earliest times has had its roots firmly planted in particularistic, localistic practices. Thus it has always been strongest in its association with such entities as families, villages and locales (for example, mountains thought to be the homes of certain kami or, indeed, to be the kami themselves).
Bushi philosophy
Authors: Varley Paul 
Published: September 2018

Bushi is one of several terms for the warrior of premodern Japan; samurai is another. The ‘way of the warrior’ – that is, the beliefs, attitudes and patterns of behaviour of the premodern Japanese warrior – is commonly called bushidō (literally, the ‘way of the bushi’). However, bushidō is actually a phrase of rather late derivation, and in premodern times was never exclusively used to describe the warrior way.
Two of the earliest and most enduring phrases for the way of the warriors who rose in the provinces of Japan in the late ninth and tenth centuries were the ‘way of the bow and arrow’ and the ‘way of the bow and horse’. These phrases, however, referred to little more than prowess in the military arts, the most important of which, as the second phrase clearly specifies, were horse riding and archery. For many centuries no one in Japan undertook to define systematically what the way of the warrior in a larger sense was or should be. Warrior beliefs, ideals and aspirations – including loyalty, courage, the yearning for battlefield fame, fear of shame and an acute sense of honour and ‘face’ – were widely recognized, but neither warriors nor others apparently felt the need to codify them in writing.
Not until the establishment of the Tokugawa military government (shogunate) in 1600, which brought two and a half centuries of nearly uninterrupted peace to Japan, did philosophers begin to study and write about the warrior way (bushidō). Concerned about the meaning and proper role of a ruling warrior class during an age of peace, philosophers posited that warriors should not only maintain military preparedness to deal with fighting that might occur, but should also develop themselves, through education based primarily on Confucianism, to serve as models and moral exemplars for all classes of Japanese society.
Aristotelianism in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Kennedy-Day Kiki 
Published: September 2018

In Arabic, Aristotle was referred to by name as Aristutalis or, more frequently, Aristu, although when quoted he was often referred to by a sobriquet such as ‘the wise man’. Aristotle was also generally known as the First Teacher. Following the initial reception of Hellenistic texts into Islamic thought in al-Kindi’s time, al-Farabi rediscovered a ‘purer’ version in the tenth century. In an allusion to his dependence on Aristotle, al-Farabi was called the Second Teacher. Ibn Rushd, known in the West as Averroes, was the last great Arabophone commentator on Aristotle, writing numerous treatises on his works. A careful examination of the Aristotelian works received by the Arabs indicates they were generally aware of the true Aristotle. Later, transmission of these works to Christian Europe allowed Aristotelianism to flourish in the scholastic period.
We should not take at face value the Islamic philosophers’ claims that they were simply following Aristotle. The convention in Islamic philosophy is to state that one is repeating the wisdom of the past, thus covering over such originality as may exist. There was a tendency among Islamic philosophers to cite Aristotle as an authority in order to validate their own claims and ideas.
Neoplatonism in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Netton Ian Richard 
Published: September 2018

Islamic Neoplatonism developed in a milieu already saturated with the thought of Plotinus and Aristotle. The former studied in Alexandria, and the Alexandrine philosophical syllabus included such figures as Porphyry of Tyre and Proclus. Associated with these scholars were two major channels of Islamic Neoplatonism, the so-called Theology of Aristotle and the Liber de Causis (Book of Causes). Other cities beloved of the philosophers at the time of the rise of Islam in the first century AH (seventh century ad) included Gondeshapur and Harran.
Islamic Neoplatonism stressed one aspect of the Qur’anic God, the transcendent, and ignored another, the creative. For the Neoplatonists, all things emanated from the deity. Islamic philosophers were imbued to a greater or lesser degree with either Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism or, as was often the case, with both. Al-Kindi, the father of Islamic philosophy, has a Neoplatonic aspect, but the doctrine reaches its intellectual fruition in the complex emanationist hierarchies developed by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. Their views are later developed (or metamorphosed) by later thinkers into an emanative hierarchy of lights, as with Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, or the doctrine of the Unity of Being espoused by Ibn al-‘Arabi. While al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd both vigorously opposed Neoplatonic views, the latter attacked the former for his general opposition to the philosophers.
Neoplatonism itself had a major impact on that sectarian grouping of Muslims known as the Isma‘ilis, and became the substratum for its theology. Historically, Neoplatonism in Islam achieved its climax with the Fatimid Isma‘ili conquest of Egypt towards the end of the fourth century AH (tenth century ad). While Neoplatonism later declined in philosophical importance in the face of rampant Aristotelianism and Hanbalism, it may be said to have bequeathed an important religious, historical and cultural legacy to the Islamic world, which in the Isma‘ili movement endures to this day.
Law, Islamic philosophy of
Authors: Calder Norman 
Published: September 2018

One of the principles of Islam which precedes juristic discussion proper is that God, the creator and lord of the world, has commissioned humanity to believe, confess and act in particular ways. The details of this commission (taklif) were handed down through a sequence of prophets, culminating in Muhammad, and were then embedded in two literary structures which together constitute revelation (wahy): the Qur’an, which is the word of God, and the hadith, short narratives of the prophet’s life and sayings which give expression to his (and his community’s) ideal practice or sunna. The totality of beliefs and rules that can be derived from these sources constitutes God’s law or shari‘a.
Juristic literature has generated two major literary genres. One, known as usul al-fiqh (roots of jurisprudence), deals with hermeneutical principles that can be used for deriving rules from revelation; it represents, in part, something like a philosophy of law. The other, dominant genre, furu’ al-fiqh (branches of jurisprudence), is an elaboration of rules which govern ritual and social activities. An overall philosophy of law in Islam, not fully articulated in the pre-modern tradition, can only be discovered through consideration of both genres.
Ethics in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Fakhry Majid 
Published: September 2018

The study of Islamic ethics, whether philosophical or theological, grew out of early discussions of the questions of predetermination (qadar), obligation (taklif) and the injustices of temporal rulers, particularly the caliphs. Early writers on ethics from the Mu‘tazila school were probably influenced by Greek philosophy. By the third century AH (ninth century ad) a clearly discernible current of philosophical ethics began to take shape, with strong influences from Greek ethics including Stoicism, Platonism and Aristotelianism.
Al-Kindi, the first genuine philosopher of Islam, appears from his extant ethical writings to have been particularly influenced by Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic. Other classical influences can be seen in the work of Platonists such as Abu Bakr al-Razi, who followed Plato’s division of the parts of the souls, and Neoplatonists such as al-Farabi, while Aristotelian influences can be seen in al-Farabi, who also discussed the problem of evil, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. Ibn Sina developed a theory of the conjunction of the soul with the active intellect; with this conjunction is bound up the ultimate perfection of the soul which has attained the highest degree of wisdom and virtue.
Neoplatonism again surfaces in the work of Ibn Miskawayh and his followers, to whom we owe the groundwork of a whole ethical tradition which flourished in Persia well into the twelfth century AH (eighteenth century ad) and beyond. Onto Plato’s threefold division of the soul, Ibn Miskawayh grafts a threefold division of virtue into wisdom, courage and temperance. His views were elaborated upon by al-Tusi and al-Dawwani, among others. A blend of philosophical and religious ethics is characteristic of the work of some later writers such as al-Ghazali and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, in which the road to moral and spiritual perfection has mystical overtones.