bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
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.
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.
Islamic fundamentalism
Authors: Choueiri Youssef 
Published: September 2018

The philosophical roots of Islamic fundamentalism are largely the result of a conscious attempt to revive and restate the theoretical relevance of Islam in the modern world. The writings of three twentieth-century Muslim thinkers and activists – Sayyid Qutb, Ayatollah Ruhollah al-Khumayni and Abu al-‘Ala al-Mawdudi – provide authoritative guidelines delineating the philosophical discourse of Islamic fundamentalism. However, whereas al-Khumayni and al-Mawdudi made original contributions towards formulating a new Islamic political theory, it was Qutb who offered a coherent exposition of Islam as a philosophical system.
Qutb’s philosophical system postulated a qualitative contradiction between Western culture and the religion of Islam. Its emphasis on Islam as a sui generis and transcendental set of beliefs excluded the validity of all other values and concepts. It also marked the differences between the doctrinal foundations of Islam and modern philosophical currents. Consequently Islamic fundamentalism is opposed to the Enlightenment, secularism, democracy, nationalism, Marxism and relativism. Its most original contribution resides in the formulation of the concept of God’s sovereignty or lordship. This concept is the keystone of its philosophical structure.
The premises of Islamic fundamentalism are rooted in an essentialist world view whereby innate qualities and attributes apply to individuals and human societies, irrespective of time, historical change or political circumstances. Hence, an immutable substance governs human existence and determines its outward movement.
Islamic philosophy, modern
Authors: Morewedge Parviz , Leaman Oliver 
Published: September 2018

There are a number of major trends in modern Islamic philosophy. First, there is the challenge of the West to traditional Islamic philosophical and cultural principles and the desire to establish a form of thought which is distinctive. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Islamic philosophers have attempted to redefine Islamic philosophy; some, such as Hasan Hanafi and Ali Mazrui, have sought to give modern Islamic philosophy a global significance and provide an agenda for world unity.
Second, there is a continuing tradition of interest in illuminationist and mystical thought, especially in Iran where the influence of Mulla Sadra and al-Suhrawardi has remained strong. The influence of the latter can be seen in the works of Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr; Mulla Sadra has exercised an influence over figures such as Mahdi Ha’iri Yazdi and the members of Qom School, notably Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The philosopher Abdul Soroush has introduced a number of concepts from Western philosophy into Iran.
Finally, there have been many thinkers who have adapted and employed philosophical ideas which are originally non-Islamic as part of the normal philosophical process of seeking to understand conceptual problems. This is a particularly active area, with a number of philosophers from many parts of the Islamic world investigating the relevance to Islam of concepts such as Hegelianism and existentialism. At the same time, mystical philosophy continues to exercise an important influence. Modern Islamic philosophy is thus quite diverse, employing a wide variety of techniques and approaches to its subject.
Science in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Sardar Ziauddin 
Published: September 2018

Islam attempts to synthesize reason and revelation, knowledge and values, in its approach to the study of nature. Knowledge acquired through rational human efforts and through the Qur’an are seen as complementary: both are ‘signs of God’ that enable humanity to study and understand nature. Between the second and eighth centuries AH (eighth and fifteenth centuries ad), when Muslim civilization was at its zenith, metaphysics, epistemology and empirical studies of nature fused to produce an explosion of ‘scientific spirit’. Scientists and scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham, al-Razi, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Sina and al-Biruni superimposed Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas of reason and objectivity on their own Muslim faith, thus producing a unique synthesis of religion and philosophy. They also placed great emphasis on scientific methodology, giving importance to systematic observation, experimentation and theory building.
Initially, scientific inquiry was directed by everyday practices of Islam. For example, developments in astronomy were influenced by the fact that the times of Muslim prayer were defined astronomically and its direction was defined geographically. In the later stage, the quest for truth for its own sake became the norm, leading to numerous new discoveries and innovations. Muslim scientists did not recognize disciplinary boundaries between the ‘two cultures’ of science and humanities, and individual scholars tended as a general rule to be polymaths. Recently, Muslim scholars have started to develop a contemporary Islamic philosophy of science by combining such basic Islamic concepts as ‘ilm (knowledge), khilafa (trusteeship of nature) and istisla (public interest) in an integrated science policy framework.
Logic in Islamic philosophy
Authors: Black Deborah L. 
Published: September 2018

Islamic logic was inspired primarily by Aristotle’s logical corpus, the Organon (which according to a late Greek taxonomy also included the Rhetoric and Poetics). Islamic authors were also familiar with some elements in Stoic logic and linguistic theory, and their logical sources included not only Aristotle’s own works but also the works of the late Greek Aristotelian commentators, the Isagōgēof Porphyry and the logical writings of Galen. However, most of the logical work of the Islamic philosophers remained squarely within the tradition of Aristotelian logic, and most of their writings in this area were in the form of commentaries on Aristotle.
For the Islamic philosophers, logic included not only the study of formal patterns of inference and their validity but also elements of the philosophy of language and even of epistemology and metaphysics. Because of territorial disputes with the Arabic grammarians, Islamic philosophers were very interested in working out the relationship between logic and language, and they devoted much discussion to the question of the subject matter and aims of logic in relation to reasoning and speech. In the area of formal logical analysis, they elaborated upon the theory of terms, propositions and syllogisms as formulated in Aristotle’s Categories, De interpretatione and Prior Analytics. In the spirit of Aristotle, they considered the syllogism to be the form to which all rational argumentation could be reduced, and they regarded syllogistic theory as the focal point of logic. Even poetics was considered as a syllogistic art in some fashion by most of the major Islamic Aristotelians.
Since logic was viewed as an organon or instrument by which to acquire knowledge, logic in the Islamic world also incorporated a general theory of argumentation focused upon epistemological aims. This element of Islamic logic centred upon the theory of demonstration found in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, since demonstration was considered the ultimate goal sought by logic. Other elements of the theory of argumentation, such as dialectics and rhetoric, were viewed as secondary to demonstration, since it was held that these argument forms produced cognitive states inferior in certitude and stability to demonstration. The philosopher’s aim was ultimately to demonstrate necessary and certain truth; the use of dialectical and rhetorical arguments was accounted for as preparatory to demonstration, as defensive of its conclusions, or as aimed at communicating its results to a broader audience.
al-Farabi, Abu Nasr (c.870–950)
Authors: Netton Ian Richard 
Published: September 2018

Al-Farabi was known to the Arabs as the ‘Second Master’ (after Aristotle), and with good reason. It is unfortunate that his name has been overshadowed by those of later philosophers such as Ibn Sina, for al-Farabi was one of the world’s great philosophers and much more original than many of his Islamic successors. A philosopher, logician and musician, he was also a major political scientist.
Al-Farabi has left us no autobiography and consequently, relatively little is known for certain about his life. His philosophical legacy, however, is large. In the arena of metaphysics he has been designated the ‘Father of Islamic Neoplatonism’, and while he was also saturated with Aristotelianism and certainly deploys the vocabulary of Aristotle, it is this Neoplatonic dimension which dominates much of his corpus. This is apparent in his most famous work, al-Madina al-fadila (The Virtuous City) which, far from being a copy or a clone of Plato’s Republic, is imbued with the Neoplatonic concept of God. Of course, al-Madina al-fadila has undeniable Platonic elements but its theology, as opposed to its politics, places it outside the mainstream of pure Platonism.
In his admittedly complex theories of epistemology, al-Farabi has both an Aristotelian and Neoplatonic dimension, neither of which is totally integrated with the other. His influence was wide and extended not only to major Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Sina who came after him, and to lesser mortals such as Yahya ibn ‘Adi, al-Sijistani, al-‘Amiri and al-Tawhidi, but also to major thinkers of Christian medieval Europe including Thomas Aquinas.
Ibn al-‘Arabi, Muhyi al-Din (1164–1240)
Authors: Robinson Neal 
Published: September 2018

Ibn al-‘Arabi was a mystic who drew on the writings of Sufis, Islamic theologians and philosophers in order to elaborate a complex theosophical system akin to that of Plotinus. He was born in Murcia (in southeast Spain) in AH 560/ad 1164, and died in Damascus in AH 638/ad 1240. Of several hundred works attributed to him the most famous are al-Futuhat al-makkiyya (The Meccan Illuminations) and Fusus al-hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom). The Futuhat is an encyclopedic discussion of Islamic lore viewed from the perspective of the stages of the mystic path. It exists in two editions, both completed in Damascus – one in AH 629/ad 1231 and the other in AH 636/ad 1238 – but the work was conceived in Mecca many years earlier, in the course of a vision which Ibn al-‘Arabi experienced near the Kaaba, the cube-shaped House of God which Muslims visit on pilgrimage. Because of its length, this work has been relatively neglected. The Fusus, which is much shorter, comprises twenty-seven chapters named after prophets who epitomize different spiritual types. Ibn al-‘Arabi claimed that he received it directly from Muhammad, who appeared to him in Damascus in AH 627/ad 1229. It has been the subject of over forty commentaries.
Although Ibn al-‘Arabi was primarily a mystic who believed that he possessed superior divinely-bestowed knowledge, his work is of interest to the philosopher because of the way in which he used philosophical terminology in an attempt to explain his inner experience. He held that whereas the divine Essence is absolutely unknowable, the cosmos as a whole is the locus of manifestation of all God’s attributes. Moreover, since these attributes require the creation for their expression, the One is continually driven to transform itself into Many. The goal of spiritual realization is therefore to penetrate beyond the exterior multiplicity of phenomena to a consciousness of what subsequent writers have termed the ‘unity of existence’. This entails the abolition of the ego or ‘passing away from self’ (fana’) in which one becomes aware of absolute unity, followed by ‘perpetuation’ (baqa’) in which one sees the world as at once One and Many, and one is able to see God in the creature and the creature in God.
Ibn Khaldun, ‘Abd al-Rahman (1332–1406)
Authors: Issawi Charles , Leaman Oliver 
Published: September 2018

Ibn Khaldun’s work on the philosophy of history is a landmark of social thought. Many historians – Greek, Roman, Muslim and other – had written valuable historiography, but here we have brilliant reflections on the meaning, pattern and laws of history and society, as well as profound insights into the nature of social processes and the interconnections between phenomena in such diverse fields as politics, economics, sociology and education. By any reckoning, Ibn Khaldun was the outstanding figure in the social sciences between Aristotle and Machiavelli, and one of the greatest philosophers of history of all time.
His most important philosophical work is the Muqaddima, the introduction to a much longer history of the Arabs and Berbers. In this work, Ibn Khaldun clearly defines a science of culture and expounds on the nature of human society and on political and social cycles. Different social groups, nomads, townspeople and traders, interact with and affect one another in a continuous pattern. Religion played an important part in Ibn Khaldun’s conception of the state, and he followed al-Ghazali rather than Ibn Rushd as a surer guide to the truth.
Ibn Sina, Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn (980–1037)
Authors: Kemal Salim 
Published: September 2018

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is one of the foremost philosophers in the Medieval Hellenistic Islamic tradition that also includes al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. His philosophical theory is a comprehensive, detailed and rationalistic account of the nature of God and Being, in which he finds a systematic place for the corporeal world, spirit, insight, and the varieties of logical thought including dialectic, rhetoric and poetry.
Central to Ibn Sina’s philosophy is his concept of reality and reasoning. Reason, in his scheme, can allow progress through various levels of understanding and can finally lead to God, the ultimate truth. He stresses the importance of gaining knowledge, and develops a theory of knowledge based on four faculties: sense perception, retention, imagination and estimation. Imagination has the principal role in intellection, as it can compare and construct images which give it access to universals. Again the ultimate object of knowledge is God, the pure intellect.
In metaphysics, Ibn Sina makes a distinction between essence and existence; essence considers only the nature of things, and should be considered apart from their mental and physical realization. This distinction applies to all things except God, whom Ibn Sina identifies as the first cause and therefore both essence and existence. He also argued that the soul is incorporeal and cannot be destroyed. The soul, in his view, is an agent with choice in this world between good and evil, which in turn leads to reward or punishment.
Reference has sometimes been made to Ibn Sina’s supposed mysticism, but this would appear to be based on a misreading by Western philosophers of parts of his work. As one of the most important practitioners of philosophy, Ibn Sina exercised a strong influence over both other Islamic philosophers and medieval Europe. His work was one of the main targets of al-Ghazali’s attack on Hellenistic influences in Islam. In Latin translations, his works influenced many Christian philosophers, most notably Thomas Aquinas.
Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din Muhammad al-Shirazi) (1571/2–1640)
Authors: Cooper John 
Published: September 2018

Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi (Mulla Sadra) is perhaps the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world in the last four hundred years. The author of over forty works, he was the culminating figure of the major revival of philosophy in Iran in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Devoting himself almost exclusively to metaphysics, he constructed a critical philosophy which brought together Peripatetic, Illuminationist and gnostic philosophy along with Shi‘ite theology within the compass of what he termed a ‘metaphilosophy’, the source of which lay in the Islamic revelation and the mystical experience of reality as existence.
Mulla Sadra’s metaphilosophy was based on existence as the sole constituent of reality, and rejected any role for quiddities or essences in the external world. Existence was for him at once a single unity and an internally articulated dynamic process, the unique source of both unity and diversity. From this fundamental starting point, Mulla Sadra was able to find original solutions to many of the logical, metaphysical and theological difficulties which he had inherited from his predecessors. His major philosophical work is the Asfar (The Four Journeys), which runs to nine volumes in the present printed edition and is a complete presentation of his philosophical ideas.