In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedAquinas on Being. By Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. x + 212. Price not given.Before and after Avicenna: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group. Edited by David C. Reisman, with the assistance of Ahmed H. al Rahim. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xix + 302. Price not given.Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha. Edited by Harold Kasimow, John (...) P. Keenan, and Linda Klepinger Keenan. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 284. Paper $14.95.The Buddhist Unconscious: The ālaya-vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought. By William S. Waldron. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Pp. xvi + 269. Price not given.Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree. Edited by Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2003. Pp. xxxviii + 260. Paper $26.95.The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xun Zi. By Masayuki Sato. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xviii + 500. Price not given.Gathering the Meanings: The Compendium of Categories: The Arthaviniścaya Sūtra and Its Commentary Nibandhana. Translated from the Sanskrit by N. H. Samtani. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 2002. Pp. xxxiv + 390. Price not given.I Have Arrived, I Am Home: Celebrating Twenty Years of Plum Village Life. By Thich Nhat Hanh. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2003. Pp. 253. Paper $25.00.Identity and the Moral Life. By Mrinal Miri. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 132. Hardcover Rs 645.00.Indian Philosophers and Postmodern Thinkers: Dialogues on the Margins of Culture. By Carl Olson. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 331. Hardcover Rs 950.00.Islamic Humanism. By Lenn E. Goodman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii + 273. Price not given.Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master Tōsui. Translated by Peter Haskel. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 167. Hardcover $45.00. Paper $16.95.A Life Journey to the East: Sinological Studies in Memory of Giuliano Bertuccioli (1923-2001). Edited by Antonino Forte and Federico Masini. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xxxv + 280. Price not given.The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility and Mystery. By David E. Cooper. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 372. Price not given. [End Page 277]Mencius, Hume and the Foundations of Ethics. By Xiusheng Liu. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. Pp. vii + 204. Price not given.Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship: Tanqian in Sui Buddhism and Politics. By Chen Jinhua. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xiii + 310. Price not given.Music in the Sky: The Life, Art, and Teachings of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. By Michele Martin. Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. 351. Paper $18.95, U.K. £12.95.New Confucianism: A Critical Examination. Edited by John Makeham. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp. 262. Hardcover $55.00.On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Hāmid Al-Ghāzalī's Faysal al-Tafriqa Bayna al-Islām wa al-Zandaqa. By Sherman A. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 156. Hardcover Rs 295.00.Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter: The Peoples of the United States (1889). By Pandita Ramabai and translated and edited by Meera Kosambi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 284. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $29.95.Parmenides of Elea: A Verse Translation with Interpretative Essays and Commentary to the Text. By Martin J. Henn. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 147. Hardcover $59.95.Philosophes taoïstes, tome II: Huainan Zi, texte traduit, présenté et annoté sous la direction de Charles le Blanc et de Rémi Mathieu. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2003. Pp. lxxxiii + 1182. Hardcover €56,90.The Philosophy and Ethics of the Vīraśaiva Community. By Dan A. Chekki. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. Pp. xxv + 287. Hardcover $119.95.Poems of Hanshan. Translated by Peter Hobson with introduction by T. H. Barrett. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 151. Hardcover $65.00. Paper $19.95.Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston... (shrink)

Most philosophers acknowledge ways of overcoming blame, even blame directed at a culpable offender, that are not forgiving. Sometimes continuing to blame a friend for their offensive comment just isn't worth it, so we let go instead. However, despite being a common and widely recognised experience, no one has offered a positive account of letting go. Instead, it tends to be characterised negatively and superficially, usually in order to delineate the boundaries of forgiveness. This paper gives a more complete (...) and systematic account of this important practice. We argue that the basic distinction between forgiving and letting go of blame follows from distinctions that many philosophers already accept. We then develop a positive account in terms of the reasons one has to let go rather than forgive and show that letting go is as valuable a part of our shared moral lives as forgiveness. (shrink)

This article uses the case study of ethnobiological classification to develop a positive and a negative thesis about the state of natural kind debates. On the one hand, I argue that current accounts of natural kinds can be integrated in a multidimensional framework that advances understanding of classificatory practices in ethnobiology. On the other hand, I argue that such a multidimensional framework does not leave any substantial work for the notion “natural kind” and that attempts to formulate a general account (...) of naturalness have become an obstacle to understanding classificatory practices. (shrink)

The capacity to self-generate mental content that is unrelated to the current environment is a fundamental characteristic of the mind, and the current experiment explored how this experience is related to the decisions that people make in daily life. We examined how task-unrelated thought varies with the length of time participants are willing to wait for an economic reward, as measured using an inter-temporal discounting task. When participants performed a task requiring minimal attention, the greater the amount of time spent (...) engaged in TUT the longer the individual was prepared to wait for an economic reward. These data indicate that self-generated thought engages processes associated with the successful management of long-term goals. Although immersion in the here and now is undeniably advantageous, under appropriate conditions the capacity to let go of the present and consider more pertinent personal goals may have its own rewards. (shrink)

Persons are widely believed to be rational, planning agents that are both author and main character of their life stories. A major goal is to keep these narratives coherent as they unfold, and part of a fulfilled life allegedly stems from this coherence. My aim is to challenge these convictions by considering two related claims about persons and their lives. Contrary to the widespread theoretical conviction in philosophy of mind and action, persons are fundamentally emotional and affective rather than rational (...) and deliberative beings. And so, on a practical level, persons need not constantly aspire to integrate their past, present, and future into a coherent whole in order to live fulfilled lives. Needless to say, I cannot hope to defend these claims and their relation in great detail with a few brief strokes. In addition to theoretical reflections, I discuss some practical implications and potential benefits that come with discarding the daunting task of continuously keeping track of one's life story. Drawing on insights from a contemplative Buddhist tale, I venture that the practice of letting go can break the spell, and give rise to an alleviating source of liberation from life's troubles.Export citation. (shrink)

Marilyn McCord Adams agrees with D. Z. Phillips that instrumental theodicy is a moral failure, and that sceptical theists and others are guilty of ignoring what we know now about the moral reality of horrendous evils to speculate about unknown ways these evils might be made sense of. In place of theodicy, Adams advocates ‘the logic of compensation’ for the victims of evil, a postmortem healing of divine intimacy with God. This goes so deep, she believes, that eventually victims will (...) see the horrors they suffered as points of contact with the incarnate, suffering God and cease wishing they had never suffered them. I argue Adams’s position falls foul of the very criticisms she and Phillips make against instrumental theodicy. (shrink)

This book explores the social practice of holding each other in our identities, beginning with pregnancy and on through the life span. Lindemann argues that our identities give us our sense of how to act and how to treat others, and that the ways in which we we hold each other in them is of crucial moral importance.

It is said you can trap a monkey by putting a nut through a small hole in a gourd. The monkey reaches in and grabs the nut, but then his fist won’t fit back through the hole. Greedy monkeys will literally let themselves be caught rather than let go of the nut. So far, no commenter on my essay seems willing to let go of the nut of effective medicine, held in the gourd of the second half of medical spending.

Higher education as a personal, intellectual and moral cultivation is a longstanding ideal that is constantly challenged by the view that education is merely the development of specific skills for vocational and personal success. Much research argues that the latter understanding makes education a technical affair that creates an egocentric emphasis on the individual students’ ambitions and desires. This article joins in the defence of the former ideal by enquiring into the moral dimensions of education. This is done by turning (...) to Iris Murdoch's idea of moral transformation, with a specific focus on the idea of unselfing. The main argument is that unselfing is a transformative process characterised by a growing attunement to the surrounding world, and the interconnectedness of goal and process is emphasised. Also, to gain a deeper understanding of what unselfing entails I turn to the idea of attention. It is understood as having a specific direction, outward from the egocentric, and as enabling unselfing. The article concludes by suggesting that unselfing can offer a challenge to education as it entails a moment of letting go of plans and narratives, and of surrendering to the influence of an existence that exceeds the individual. This moment is of relevance to education as it is crucial to the possibility of growing as a moral being as it cultivates a moral manner of relating to others. (shrink)

In Archaic Athenian vase-painting, silens are often sexually aroused, but only sporadically satisfy their desires in a manner acceptable to most Athenian men. François Lissarrague persuasively argued that the sexuality of silens in vase-painting was probably laughable rather than awe-inspiring. What sort of laughter did the vase-paintings elicit? Was it the scornful laughter of a person who felt nothing in common with silens, or the laughter of one made to see something of himself in their behavior? For three reasons, I (...) argue for the latter interpretation. First, some vase-paintings are constructed so as to invite the viewer to adopt imaginatively the persona of a silen. Second, parallels for the less-than-triumphant sexuality of silens occur in Archaic iambic poetry. Like the vase-paintings, the poetry was often constructed so that performers of the poems are incorporated into the narratives as all-too-human protagonists. Third, certain formal features of classical satyr-play encouraged the audience to identify with the point of view of the satyr-chorus, while others reminded it that there were better role models than silens. In all three media, a negative characterization of male characters or silens is combined with a manner of presentation that invites the viewer or performer to see himself among those characters despite their negative traits. That form of humor may have been common in Archaic symposia, but its presence in satyr-play suggests that it may also be a fundamental characteristic of silens. (shrink)

Volume five focuses on the central teaching of non-attachment to our desires. Its premise is the more we crave, the more we suffer. Venerable Master Hsing Yun points out it is not only our attachment to things, but also to our own views, that is the source of suffering.

Martha P. Nochimson _The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood_ Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998 ISBN 0 292 75565 1 272 pp.

As the hospice movement continues to grow, caregivers are increasingly required to interact with dying patients for longer periods and in more intimate and more meaningful ways. Practical models of competent and compassionate communication and understanding need to be developed to accommodate the changing environment of the patient and caregiver and their relationship. We therefore: examine current death education trends in hospice care and education; and describe the need for a more expansive and transpersonal view, and ways of fulfilling that (...) need. The aware patient and the aware caregiver can learn much during the dying trajectory. We hope that someday the potential for expansiveness during the dying trajectory will be more commonly recognized and accommodated as a doorway to the transpersonal. (shrink)

The ongoing trauma of COVID-19 will no doubt mark entire generations in ways inherent in an unmanaged global pandemic. The question that I ask is why this ongoing trauma seems so particularly profound and so uniquely shattering, and whether there is anything that we could do now, while still in the midst of disaster, to begin the process of social and moral repair? I will begin by considering the trauma of isolation with unknown time-horizons, and argue that it not only (...) damages our experiences as social selves, but its languages of overwhelming grief rob us of hope of self-restoration. Second, I will examine some reasons for the “why us”-type of trauma experienced by so many in the Global North, and suggest that such laments are predicated on the misalignment among our socio-historical awareness, disaster-imagination, and our sense of ourselves as uniquely unfortunate. Finally, relying in part on Viktor Frankl’s notion of “tragic optimism,” I conclude by considering how we may begin to reconsider our traumas as not just endings of what is, but beginnings of what still might be —as repair without a master plan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master TosuiDavid E. RiggsLetting Go: The Story of Zen Master Tosui. By Peter Haskel. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. Pp. xv + 167. Hardcover $45.00. Paper $17.00.In his latest book, Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master Tōsui, Peter Haskel has taken on the task of translating the traditional biography of an obscure and eccentric Japanese Zen monk of the (...) seventeenth century, the Tōsui oshō densan, which was compiled by the celebrated scholar-monk Menzan Zuihō (1683-1769). Haskel has added an impressively comprehensive critical introduction, extensive footnotes, and a concluding essay. The translation of this collection of anecdotes is accurate and very readable, and the supporting critical apparatus is a concise survey of recent critical scholarship concerning the turbulent world of Zen Buddhism in early Tokugawa Japan.The first half of Tōsui's life was unremarkable: he traveled and met various teachers and then was recognized as a master in his own right. He was eventually invited to preside over a Sōtō Zen training temple, where he settled down and led meditation retreats for five years. By the end of this time he was attracting many disciples, including some very well known monks, when suddenly he simply disappeared. At the end of a training season, instead of presiding over the usual elaborate ceremonies, he stuck a poem to the wall, and without a word to anyone walked out with just the clothes on his back. Even the earlier facts of his life are sketchy, but from this time on all we have are stories that Menzan himself acknowledges cannot be arranged in a clear chronology. According to one tale, after an extensive search, two of his closest disciples found Tōsui living among beggars. His hair and beard were wild, his Buddhist robe was tattered, and his begging bowl was broken. Tōsui berated the two for interfering with his desire to be left alone and stalked off. One disciple continued to pester him; Tōsui relented, and they set off together. At the side of the road Tōsui discovered the body of a dead beggar and set about to bury him with his own hands. He then insisted that the disciple accompany him in eating what food remained in the beggar's bowl, but the disciple was overcome with disgust. Tōsui sent him off with instructions to go study under the émigré Chinese master Kao-ch'uan, an important teacher of the newly imported Chinese Buddhism (called Ōbaku Zen in Japan). As is always the case with these stories, there is no explanation of his actions: no indication of why Tōsui chose this teacher or if there was any significance to sending his student to a teacher in another lineage.Various people continued to attempt to find Tōsui over a span of many years, but he refused to teach or even talk to most of them. Besides anecdotes like this, we have only a few short poems and ripostes that give a flavor of his irreverent style. In response to a merchant who wanted to know how to do Zen meditation, Tōsui would only say, "Soy sauce should be made in midsummer; miso should be made in winter." If people persisted in trying to see him, he simply disappeared rather than deal with them. He lived in tiny rented rooms in towns working as a maker of straw sandals, doing day labor or simply begging for his sustenance. He rejected all offers of support, and if someone attempted to get around his refusals by leaving money or [End Page 132] clothes nearby, he distributed everything to the beggars among whom he lived. As he got older he relented a bit and allowed a follower to provide a meager living for him making vinegar, using the ruse that it wasn't patronage since the rice used for making the vinegar would otherwise have been discarded. When Tōsui died, his funeral was presided over by Kao-ch'uan (the Ōbaku teacher to whom he had entrusted his former students), and his remains were interred at Kao-ch... (shrink)

This paper examines David Bakhurst's attempt to provide a picture of ‘the kinds of beings we are’ that is ‘more realistic’ than rationalism. I argue that there is much that is rich and compelling in Bakhurst's account. Yet I also question whether there are ways in which it could be taken further. I introduce the discussion by exploring Bakhurst's engagement with phenomenology and, more specifically, Hubert Dreyfus—who enters Bakhurst's horizon on account of his inheritance of the philosophy of John McDowell. (...) Whilst I recognise that Bakhurst's encounter with Dreyfus demonstrates his achievements—over rationalism and over Dreyfus—I also suggest that it opens up certain questions that remain to be asked of his position on account of its conceptualism. These questions originate, not from a Dreyfusian phenomenological perspective, but from the post-phenomenological perspective of Jacques Derrida. Through appealing to key Derridean tropes, I aim to show why the conceptual idiom Bakhurst retains may hold us back from understanding the open nature of human thought. I end by considering what therefore needs to come—and what needs to be let go—in order to best do justice to the ‘kinds of beings we are’. (shrink)

Hilde Lindemann’s Holding and Letting Go is a valuable addition to the literature on personhood and identity. Like most such texts, it recognizes the ambiguity of the concepts. However, while other texts then try to clarify and fix the ambiguity, Lindemann goes in another direction. She embraces it by presenting and examining the many ways in which practices of social connection, interaction, and disconnection shape, preserve, and even damage an individual’s personal and social identity.Lindemann breaks with classic texts on (...) identity, which tend to move from the particular to proposing and supporting a specific definition of an objective concept of identity, usually incorporating moral agency. Using well-crafted... (shrink)

Causal representations are distinguished from non-causal ones by their ability to predict the results of interventions. This widely-accepted view suggests the following adequacy condition for causal models: a causal model is adequate only if it does not contain variables regarding which it makes systematically false predictions about the results of interventions. Here I argue that this condition should be rejected. For a class of equilibrium systems, there will be two incompatible causal models depending on whether one intervenes upon a certain (...) variable to fix its value, or ‘lets go’ of the variable and allows it to vary. The latter model will fail to predict the result of interventions on the let-go-of variable. I argue that there is no basis for preferring one of these models to the other, and thus that models failing to predict interventions on particular variables can be just as adequate as those making no such false predictions. This undermines a key argument (Dash in Caveats for causal reasoning with equilibrium models. University of Pittsburgh. PhD thesis, 2003) against relying upon causal models inferred from equilibrium data. (shrink)

Causal representations are distinguished from non-causal ones by their ability to predict the results of interventions. This widely-accepted view suggests the following adequacy condition for causal models: a causal model is adequate only if it does not contain variables regarding which it makes systematically false predictions about the results of interventions. Here I argue that this condition should be rejected. For a class of equilibrium systems, there will be two incompatible causal models depending on whether one intervenes upon a certain (...) variable to fix its value, or ‘lets go’ of the variable and allows it to vary. The latter model will fail to predict the result of interventions on the let-go-of variable. I argue that there is no basis for preferring one of these models to the other, and thus that models failing to predict interventions on particular variables can be just as adequate as those making no such false predictions. This undermines a key argument against relying upon causal models inferred from equilibrium data. (shrink)

One of my favorite sentences in Hilde Lindemann’s lucid and remarkable book, Holding and Letting Go: The Social Practice of Personal Identities is this: “To have lived... as a person is to have taken my proper place in the social world that lets us make selves of each other”. With this phrase, as with the rest of her book, Lindemann manages to pull off that rarest of rare feats in academic philosophical writing: to say something that is at the (...) same time philosophically insightful and universally relevant for beings like ourselves—something that not just describes and categorizes the modes of being a person, but says why personhood matters morally, why it deserves closer philosophical attention, and in the.. (shrink)

The development of neonatology and the establishment of neonatal intensive care units has led to a vast array of new medical ethical problems and dilemmas centered around discontinuing treatment or nontreatment decisions. Neonatology has become one of the fields that has made clear that medical success is only rarely nonproblematic. The new technology can be a blessing for some, but it may also become a sad experience to others, with life-long repercussions.The ethical problems of neonatology transcend national boundaries. Nevertheless, there (...) are differences in approach among various countries. In The Netherlands, the ethical deliberations have been a matter of public debate, but most of the decision making is left to the medical profession; these decisions are considered too harsh for the general public. Recently, two developments have emerged. The Royal Dutch Medical Association and the Dutch Pediatrics Society have published reports with guidelines and ethical reflections. Over the same period of time, cases have been brought to court for legal analysis and the development of case precedence. (shrink)

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ On Death and Dying sparked widespread scholarly and popular interest in the emotional landscape of dying. Its publication in 1969 also coincided, roughly, with two important...

While Louis-Marie Chauvet’s (1942-) theology has been widely commented upon, relatively few commentators have critically engaged Chauvet as a fundamental theologian, particularly evaluating the ‘working-through’ of ontotheology he proposes. In approaching this, I will ask whether and how suffering has a role in this process, for, if ontotheological ways of thought are something nearly innate to human beings, then it seems likely that ‘working through’ them would be a painful process involving some existential suffering. In order to accomplish this, I (...) will be utilising insights of the relatively uncommented upon American philosopher Jerome A. Miller, who has written of how suffering through the loss of our false self-image is the way towards authentic humanity and transcendence. Moreover, I think Miller’s ‘pedagogy of suffering’ provides a means of connecting Chauvet’s project to a wider context of human experience rather than limiting the realm of ‘working-through’ to the liturgical realm. However, it is Chauvet’s notion of the ethical liturgy of the neighbour which also prevents Miller’s phenomenological analysis from remaining overly abstract. Ultimately, then, this article represents a unique engagement with Chauvet’s theology in dialogue with Miller’s philosophy, which has implications for sacramental and fundamental theology, as well as pastoral practice. (shrink)

While the concept of Menschenwürde (universal human dignity) has served as the foundation for human rights, it is absent in the Confucian tradition. However, this does not mean that Confucianism has no resources for a broadly construed notion of human dignity. Beginning with two underlying dilemmas in the notion of Menschenwürde and explaining how Confucianism is able to avoid them, this essay articulates numerous unique features of a Confucian account of human dignity, and shows that the Confucian account goes beyond (...) the limitations of Menschenwürde. It is arguably richer and more sophisticated in content, and more constructive for protecting and cultivating human dignity. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging conversation, Michael Hardt reflects on recent transformations within Empire. Several unique themes emerge concerning power and pedagogy as they intersect with subjectivity and global crisis. Drawing on the common in conjunction with the tradition of love in education uncovers a different path that attends to today’s real political, ecological, and social needs. Finally, a focus on collectivity points to a possible strategy—collective intellectuality—for educators to revise traditional notions of leadership to encourage more ethical, democratic, and sustainable futures. (...) Yet, what this looks like in practice remains for us to imagine. (shrink)

The problem of peer disagreement represents a growing challenge to justified religious belief. After surveying the state of the dialectic of the problem, I explore three ways for religious believers to remain steadfast in light of religious disagreement. The first two ways focus on the believer’s basing his religious beliefs on a direct awareness of the truth or evidence of his beliefs. The third way considers the virtue of faith as a means for resisting peer disagreement.

How_more open ways of thinking and operating are beginning to pervade even the largest and most complex institutions, from global corporations to government departments _ The future of business is loose-loose organizations, management styles, brands, thinking, and communications. For example,_Google breaks the traditional rules of branding by changing its logo everyday, Doritos handed over the premium advertising slot in the Superbowl to a couple of amateur filmmakers, and even Pope Benedict XVI has embraced the inclusive "Obama model" of communication with (...) YouTube broadcasts in 27 languages in an attempt to encourage debate. By building on cutting-edge case studies and conversations with the smartest business people from around the globe, this book challenges received wisdom and explains new ways of managing companies, building brands, engaging with customers, and marketing products and services._Shaking up the status quo and showing how prevailing business wisdom needs to change, this book will help_you change_their terms of business, before they are changed for you. (shrink)