: Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to (...) the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Übergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution. (shrink)

Does cross-cultural philosophy stand in need of a hermeneutical expansion? In engaging with this question, the symposium focuses upon methodological issues salient to cross-cultural inquiry. Douglas L. Berger lays out the ground for the debate by arguing for a methodological approach, which is able to rectify the discipline’s colonial legacies and bridge the hermeneutical distance with its objects of study. From their own perspectives, Hans-Georg Moeller, Paul Roth and A. Raghuramaraju analyze whether such a processual and hermeneutically-sensitive approach can indeed (...) open up new hermeneutic horizons. Their responses shed light upon cross-cultural philosophy’s continued embedment in Euroamerican professional philosophy and how the locality of its knowledge-seeking endeavors may indeed have repercussions on attempts to bridge temporal and spatial distances. (shrink)

A pivotal focus of exegesis of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārïkā (MMK) for the past half century has been the attempt to decipher the text's philosophy of language, and determine how this best aids us in characterizing Madhyamaka thought as a whole. In this vein, MMK 24:18 has been judged of particular weight insofar as it purportedly insists that the concepts pratītyasamutpāda (conditioned co-arising) and śūnyatā (emptiness), both indispensable to Buddhist praxis, are themselves only "nominal" or "conventional," that is, they are merely labels (...) that do not referentially signify anything that can be taken to be an ontologically ultimate reality. In various guises, as a result of this explication, Nāgārjuna's thought has been seen to embrace an overarching linguistic nominalism or conventionalism in which words, whether they are used for the purposes of theory or practice, though they serve as commonly accepted currency in the transactions of worldly business (vyavahāra), are in the end only ideas (prajñapti) or metaphysical fabrications (prapanca). This interpretation is largely due to tenaciously inaccurate translations and expositions of MMK 24:18 and their dependence on Candrakīrti's peculiar analysis of this verse in his Prasannapadā. This essay will attempt to correct both the diction of the major translations of MMK 24:18 and the fictions of nominalism and conventionalism that the consequent interpretations of this stanza have perpetuated. The argument that will be developed in the course of this essay is that Candrakīrti's reading of this verse proffers a strong form of linguistic nominalism that Nāgārjuna himself does not embrace. It will be shown, based on everything else found in the MMK, that Nāgārjuna, rather than advocating the mere nominal or conventional status of terms such as pratītyasamutpāda and sunyata, demands they be accepted as both pedagogically useful and even referentially accurate descriptions of the world as it is. (shrink)

I am most grateful to Professors Garfield and Westerhoff for their comments on my article "Acquiring Emptiness: Interpreting Nāgārjuna's MMK 24 : 18" in the January 2010 issue of Philosophy East and West. Their responses to my essay and the critiques they offer, grounded in their considerable expertise in Buddhist philosophical schools, are well argued and rooted in thorough commentarial analysis. In what follows, I attempt to respond to their critiques and concerns.There can be no doubt that the occurrence of (...) the phrase sā prajñāptir upādāya in MMK 24 : 18 has been understood by the bulk of the commentarial literature on the treatise as a compound technical term meaning something like "dependent designation." The .. (shrink)

The scholarly career of Professor Chad Hansen has been devoted in large measure to an elucidation of the relationship between the classical Chinese language and the structure and aims of pre-Qin philosophical thought. His “mass-noun” hypothesis of classical Chinese thought, his notion of dao 道 as “guiding discourse,” and his clarifications of the significance of Mohism are marked achievements from which all of us have benefited immensely. In the opening chapters of A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, Hansen prefaces his (...) interpretation of how the Chinese language lends uniqueness to its philosophical tradition with a sharp contrast to Indo-European language and thought. Hansen attempts to show how the Indo-European .. (shrink)

In Categorisation in Indian Philosophy: Thinking Inside the Box, Jessica Frazier has brought together an impressive array of scholars who have contributed nine essays, plus an introductory and concluding chapter, both written by her, which collectively provide a most fruitful perspective for examining classical South Asian traditions of thought. Creating categorial frameworks was certainly a prolific activity among the ancient and medieval authors of the darśanas, and indeed these authors drew heavily from pre-scholastic texts and language to build their systems. (...) Frazier in her concluding chapter gives a helpful synopsis of the various roles played by categories in Indian philosophies, classifying them as.. (shrink)

Explores the interpretive problems, complexities, and legacies of Schopenhauer’s encounter with ancient India.