China's traditional religious music is deeply rooted in the folk life and labor. Studying the influence of Confucian music aesthetics on ancient religious music and the establishment of modern music aesthetics has an important influence and the significance of learning from it. Studying the music aesthetics of Confucianism in the pre-Qin period can scientifically inherit and carry forward the traditional ritual and music civilization, combine the essence of China's traditional religious music aesthetics with reality, and explore the music theory (...) that meets the needs of today and can promote the healthy development of society. As the most popular and in-depth art form, music plays an inestimable role in the growth of contemporary college students. Firstly, this paper expounds the relationship between Confucian music aesthetics and China's ancient traditional religious music art and puts forward that we should draw nutrition from China's ancient and profound culture to improve the artistic quality of contemporary college students. Then, from the angle of ethics, it explains the deep connotation of Pre-Qin Confucian musical aesthetics, and tries to sort out its ideological system logically, hoping to expand the research of Pre-Qin Confucian musical aesthetics. (shrink)

In contemporary Indian Country, the majority of people who identify as “Indian” fall into the “urban” category: away from traditional lands and communities, in cities and towns wherein the opportunities to live one’s identity as Native can be restricted, and even more so for American Indian religious practice and activity. This article will explore a possible theoretical model for discussing the religious nature of urban Indians, using aspects of the contemporary powwow as exemplary, and suggest ways in which the discourse (...) on Native American religious practices can inform the larger discussion of religion in general by implying a comparative direction between urban Indians and other religious actors in American secular society. (shrink)

Contributed seminar papers presented at National Seminar on Yoga the Ancient Tradition in the New Millennium sponsored by Indian Council of Philosophical Research New Delhi, organized by Department of Philosophy S.V. University Tirupati from 22-24 Feb. 2007.

This radical, profoundly scholarly book explores the purposes and nature of proof in a range of historical settings. It overturns the view that the first mathematical proofs were in Greek geometry and rested on the logical insights of Aristotle by showing how much of that view is an artefact of nineteenth-century historical scholarship. It documents the existence of proofs in ancient mathematical writings about numbers and shows that practitioners of mathematics in Mesopotamian, Chinese and Indian cultures knew how to (...) prove the correctness of algorithms, which are much more prominent outside the limited range of surviving classical Greek texts that historians have taken as the paradigm of ancient mathematics. It opens the way to providing the first comprehensive, textually based history of proof. (shrink)

Our research on the texts of the Byzantine historians and chroniclers revealed an apparently curious phenomenon, namely, the abandonment of terminally ill emperors by their physicians when the latter realised that they could not offer any further treatment. This attitude tallies with the mentality of the ancient Greek physicians, who even in Hippocratic times thought the treatment and care of the terminally ill to be a challenge to nature and hubris to the gods. Nevertheless, it is a very curious (...) attitude in the light of the concepts of the Christian Byzantine physicians who, according to the doctrines of the Christian religion, should have been imbued with the spirit of philanthropy and love for their fellowmen. The meticulous analysis of three examples of abandonment of Byzantine emperors, and especially that of Alexius I Comnenus, by their physicians reveals that this custom, following ancient pagan ethics, in those times took on a ritualised form without any significant or real content. (shrink)

This essay examines the reception of the ancient virtue of greatness of soul (or magnanimity) in the Arabic tradition, touching on a range of figures but focusing especially on Miskawayh and even more concertedly on al‐Ghazālī. Influenced by a number of Greek ethical texts available in Arabic translation, both of these thinkers incorporate greatness of soul into their classifications of the virtues and the vices. Yet a closer scrutiny raises questions about this amicable inclusion, and suggests that this (...) virtue stands in an uneasy relationship to the larger ethical schemes of both thinkers. This is substantiated by a careful probing of these thinkers’ considered views on the value of honor and the ethics of self‐evaluation. Yet if the values embedded in the virtue of greatness of soul conflict with these thinkers’ ethical standpoints, there is then an interesting question to ask as to why this conflict should be obscured from view. (shrink)

The paradigmatic bases, which sustain traditional western psychological interpretative efforts, need not be just a footnote to Plato. In this paper we introduce the Talmudic interpretative perspective, which we use to point at some weaknesses we identify in contemporary research imaginings. While the empiricist approach may be traced to Plato and the interpretative and the critical approaches may be traced to Heraclitus, we argue that the Talmudic approach is a differentiated and unique perspective that, because of its non-epistemic nature, its (...) dialogical character, and its recognition of two intermingled levels of interpretation, can make an important contribution to new ways of thinking about understanding and meaning in research. (shrink)

The inspiration for this paper came rather unexpectedly. In February 2006, I made the long trip from my home in Sioux City, Iowa, to Torino, Italy in order to witness the Olympic Winter Games. Barely a month later, I found myself in California at the newly-renovated Getty Villa, home to one of the world's great collections of Greco-Roman antiquities. At the Villa I attended a talk about a Roman mosaic depicting a boxing scene from Virgil'sAeneid.The tiny tiles showed not only (...) two boxers, but a wobbly looking ox. ‘What is wrong with this ox?’ asked the docent. ‘Why is he there at the match?’ The answer, of course, is that he is the prize. And the reason he is wobbly is because the victor has just sacrificed this prize to the gods in thanksgiving, by punching him between the eyes. A light went on in my head; I turned to my husband and whispered, ‘Just like Joey Cheek in Torino.’ My husband smiled indulgently, but my mind was already racing. I realized that by donating his victory bonus to charity, Cheek had tapped into one of the oldest and most venerable traditions in sport: individual sacrifice for the benefit of the larger community. It is a tradition that derives from the religious function of the ancient Olympic Games and it deserves to be revived the modern world. (shrink)

Ancient philosophers from an otherwise diverse range of traditions were connected by their shared use of aporia - translated as puzzlement rooted in conflicts of reasons - as a core tool in philosophical enquiry. The essays in this volume provide the first comprehensive study of aporetic methodology among numerous major figures and influential schools, including the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Academic sceptics, Pyrrhonian sceptics, Plotinus and Damascius. They explore the differences and similarities in these philosophers' approaches (...) to the source, structure, and aim of aporia, their views on its function and value, and ideas about the proper means of generating such a state among thinkers who were often otherwise opposed in their overall philosophical orientation. Discussing issues of method, dialectic, and knowledge, the volume will appeal to those interested in ancient philosophy and in philosophical enquiry more generally. (shrink)

The creativity of Rozanov is realized as the flow of experiences and associations. This experiences are putting together by means of the topic-conception “becoming”, that belongs to ancient categories. This categories are used to collect the dividual intuitions of Rozanov. Doctrine of Rozanov is interpreted as the coordination between the outside and the inside ranges of becoming. The inside rang of becoming includes by Rozanov the movement of people and things from birth to death. The inside ranges are corresponded (...) with concrete things and represents the complex analogues to the outside range. The specific by Rozanov lies in the impossibility of things to stop eternal formation. By Rozanov this formation eventually determines itself. It is by Rozanov the folded type of entropy. Rozanov explicates forms of entropy, when he describes his life und the being of world. His descriptions are the is the evidence. We explain the cosmos by Rozanov with help of ancient ontological categories and determine his creativity as an interaction between cosmos and chaos. To find balance between cosmos and chaos is the main eksistential problem of his doctrine and life. The decision of this problem is by Rozanov imposable, but this impossibility gives the opportunity to understand the world of Rozanov in context of different directions of philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Biography Bibliography.

The Bugis community in South Sulawesi, Indonesia has a pre-Islamic tradition called Bissu which still exists today and is acculturated to Islam. This culture is still deeply rooted in several regions and has even become a symbol of distinctive traditions. This study attempted to examine the relationship between local culture in Bissu cultural practices and Islam, to identify the impact of the acculturation of the Bissu traditions with the Islamic teachings. Using a phenomenological analysis approach, this research studied the (...) Bissu cultural and traditional beliefs and practices, at the research location of the Segeri area, Pangkejene Regency, South Sulawesi Islands. The data was collected through primary and secondary data. the primary sources included interviews with the government officials and local residents, aiming at finding out how Bissu traditions have been integrated with Islam. The secondary data was retrieved from documents and research studies. The findings reveal that Bissu community had completely adhered to Islam and adapted the Islamic values and teachings in their ritual ceremonies. The local community also felt that the Bissu used Islam as their main pattern of life. The implication of this study lies in the fact that the Bissu traditional rituals are now part of local ancestral traditions that need to be cared for as cultural treasures in the Bugis society. (shrink)

This is the first book to analyze systematically crucial aspects of ancient Greek philosophy in their original context of mystery, religion, and magic. The author brings to light recently uncovered evidence about ancient Pythagoreanism and its influence on Plato, and reconstructs the fascinating esoteric transmission of Pythagorean ideas from the Greek West down to the alchemists and magicians of Egypt, and from there into the world of Islam.

The study of recent ‘traditional’ Mediterranean rural economy has long been a predilection of ancient historians and archaeologists working in that area. Traditional practices and production norms have been used by ancient historians in the interpretation of the often enigmatic testimony of the ancient agronomic writers, while archaeologists have used the same information to fill in the many gaps in the material record supplied by the spade. Much of the relevant data on traditional rural economy are gleaned (...) from the accounts of early travellers or of modern geographers, ethnographers and agronomists. Butcomparandaacquired at first-hand enhance the credibility of archaeologists and ancient historians as fieldworkers, and chance summer encounters with Cretan shepherds or Cycladic fishermen are valuable currency in competitive displays at academic conferences. (shrink)

The question on the essence of man and his relationship to nature is certainly one of the most important themes in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. One of the ways by which Jonas approaches the issue consists in a comparison between the contemporary interpretation of man and forms of wisdom such as those conveyed by ancient Greek philosophy and the Jewish tradition. The reconstruction and discussion of these frameworks play a fundamental role in Jonas’s critique of the modern (...) mind. In the first section I introduce the anthropological problem in Hans Jonas’s oeuvre. Moreover, I clarify why it becomes essential for Jonas to resort to different forms of traditional wisdom. In the second and third sections I try to give an account (as complete as possible) of the two generalisations which Jonas shapes in order to criticise the modern concepts of man and nature. In the last section I show how Jonas links these generalisations to his own philosophical assessment of modernity. Finally, I focus on his methodology, which exemplifies how critical thinking may arise from a reconsideration of traditional contents. (shrink)

The formation and development of any architectural form and system has its own historical and cultural background. The ancient Chinese architectural system has a long history and characteristics inseparable from the historical development of Chinese traditional philosophy. Chinese philosophy, as a theory of human self-consciousness, does not give knowledge, but mainly gives ideas and ways of thinking for the needs of human self-development; At the same time, ancient Chinese architecture became a physical object reflecting the idea of traditional (...) Chinese philosophy. Therefore, in order to explore ancient Chinese architecture, it is necessary to analyze and study it from the point of view of traditional Chinese philosophy. Like Confucius' thoughts on etiquette, the idea of the "doctrine of the middle" and the concept of hierarchical division; These ideas had a profound influence on ancient Chinese architecture, including urban planning, traditional dwellings, the environment, Lao Tzu's desire for harmony and unity between man and nature, worship of the gods, etc., as well as the theory that emerged later "Feng Shui", etc. temple space and garden architecture in the south of the Yangtze River. This article is devoted to the analysis of the influence of Confucianism and Taoism on the general principle of designing spaces of ancient Chinese architecture. The article selects some typical examples of ancient Chinese architecture for analysis. The following principles are manifested in the design of spaces of Chinese architecture under the influence of Confucianism and Taoism: moderation of living space; the principle of symmetry, balance and coordination; architectural hierarchy formed on the basis of the needs of "rituals"; integration of architecture and the environment; design of spaces according to "Feng Shui". (shrink)

This essay considers the tradition of criticism against Athenian democracy, in both ancient and modern times. Often this critical tradition has been seen to adduce greater interest than the very democratic experience from which it arose; in this it has been aided, in part, by the asserted absence of an ancient theory of democracy. Yet there are significant traces of a democratic theory in the ancient sources, which ought to serve both as a theoretical and (...) ideological riposte to the critics. Some of the modern objections to classical Athenian democracy take up the argument of the ancient critics and display an anti-democratic orientation. Others, however, are motivated by a certain sensibility, grown out of liberalism and the legal state, as well as the emancipation of women and the abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, these objections are sometimes lacking in historical perspective. If we reassess Athenian democracy, it may yet be seen to constitute a useful point of reference, at a time when the current model of democracy finds its legitimacy questioned.2. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Hippocrates With and Against Philosophy Alexandrian Medicine and the Hellenistic Philosophical Schools The Theoretical Audacity of the Medical Schools Medicine and Skepticism Ethics and Medicine Bibliography.

Traditional Chinese philosophy, if engaged at all, is often regarded as an object of antiquated curiosity and dismissed as unimportant in the current age of globalization. Written by a team of internationally renowned scholars, this book, however, challenges this judgement and offers an in-depth study of pre-modern Chinese philosophy from an interdisciplinary perspective. Exploring the relevance of traditional Chinese philosophy for the global age, it takes a comparative approach, analysing ancient Chinese philosophy in its relation to Western ideas and (...) contemporary postmodernist theories. The conversation extends over a broad spectrum of philosophical areas and themes, ranging from metaphysics, hermeneutics, political theory, religion and aesthetics to specific philosophical schools including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. By engaging many time-honoured philosophical issues from a comparative perspective, this book bridges the gap between Eastern and Western thought and emphasises the need for a newly fortified global humanism and a deeper appreciation of different philosophical and religious values in an age gripped by large-scale crises. Arguing that traditional Chinese philosophy has immediate relevance to the many challenges of modern life, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Asian Philosophy and Asian Studies in general. (shrink)

Ancient philosophers from an otherwise diverse range of traditions were connected by their shared use of aporia - translated as puzzlement rooted in conflicts of reasons - as a core tool in philosophical enquiry. The essays in this volume provide the first comprehensive study of aporetic methodology among numerous major figures and influential schools, including the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Academic sceptics, Pyrrhonian sceptics, Plotinus and Damascius. They explore the differences and similarities in these philosophers' approaches (...) to the source, structure, and aim of aporia, their views on its function and value, and ideas about the proper means of generating such a state among thinkers who were often otherwise opposed in their overall philosophical orientation. Discussing issues of method, dialectic, and knowledge, the volume will appeal to those interested in ancient philosophy and in philosophical enquiry more generally. (shrink)

This is an excellent compilation of essays honoring the seventieth birthday of Joseph Needham. Sivin’s preface plausibly argues for the thesis that, "since the theoretical and practical approaches seem in traditional societies everywhere to have formed a unity with the social, political, and spiritual aspects of life, the reader can enrich his understanding of the latter to the extent that he is aware of the former". The essays belong to two complementary parts. The first four essays by Derek J. de (...) Solla Price, S. Nakayama, A. C. Graham, and Mitukuni Yosida furnish valuable critical aids and perspectives on Needham’s monumental work, Science and Civilization in China. The first three essays contain matters of philosophical interest. The remaining five essays display a variety of representative approaches to Chinese science in the areas of astronomy, Mohist optics, elixir plants, medicine and anesthesia in China and Japan. (shrink)

Clashes between bits of non-homogeneous theories inherited from antiquity were an important factor in the formation of medieval theories in logic and grammar, but the traditional categories of Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Neoplatonism are not quite adequate to describe the situation. Neoplatonism is almost irrelevant in logic and grammar, while there might be reasons to introduce a new category, LAS = Late Ancient Standard, with two branches: logical LAS = Aristotle + Boethius, and grammatical LAS = Stoics &c. → Apollonius (...) → Priscian. (shrink)

In this study, Levin explores Plato's engagement with the Greek literary tradition in his treatment of key linguistic issues. This investigation, conjoined with a new interpretation of the Republic's familiar critique of poets, supports the view that Plato's work represents a valuable precedent for contemporary reflections on ways in which philosophy might benefit from appeals to literature.

Romantic, po st- Revolutionary French historiography can be described as "ancient verses on new ideas." The "new history" of this period, with its antiquarian nature, shared more with its predecessors than its practitioners acknowledged. Historical and legal scholars of the Restoration belonged to a long intellectual tradition of a shared hermeneutical "community of interpretation," based on common origins, though not necessarily goals. A belief in the historical grounding of knowledge and judgment united Restoration historians and legal scholars to (...) their predecessors. Debate over the origin of private property, the central human right advanced in the Napoleonic Code, united the two sorts of scholars, who examined the origins of the right of private property in the context of the history of laws, both Germanic and Roman. The establishment of private property proves to rest on the logic of feudalism, ironically overthrown in the Revolution while providing continuity in historiography before and after. (shrink)

Introduction : reading Nietzsche skeptically -- Nietzsche and the Pyrrhonian tradition -- Skepticism in Nietzsche's early work : the case of "on truth and lie" -- The question of Nietzsche's "naturalism" -- Perspectivism and Ephexis in interpretation -- Skepticism and health -- Skepticism as immoralism.

In this eloquent book, Kathy Eden challenges commonly accepted conceptions about the history of hermeneutics. Contending that the hermeneutical tradition is not a purely modern German specialty, she argues instead that the historical grounding of modern hermeneutics is in the ancient tradition of rhetoric. Eden demonstrates how the early rhetorical model of reading, called interpretatio scripti by Cicero and his followers, not only has informed a continuous tradition of interpretation from Republican Rome to Reformation Europe but (...) also has forged such enduring hermeneutical principles as meaning, context, and literary economy. (shrink)

In this essay, the gradual transition from ancient "history of the philosophers" to modern "history of philosophy" is presented according to its essential steps and in the light of the dialectic between tradition and innovation that characterizes any philosophical dialogue considered in a diachronic sense. At the same time, however, the essay raises the question of the sense according to which it is nowadays still possible to think of a "history of philosophy" as a research activity distinct both (...) from philosophical hermeneutics and from strictly historical research, such as the one carried out by intellectual historyIl graduale passaggio dall'antica "storia dei filosofi" alla moderna "storia della filosofia" viene qui ricostruito nelle sue fasi essenziali, alla luce della dialettica fra tradizione e innovazione, che caratterizza il dialogo filosofico inteso in senso diacronico. Ma in che senso è ancora possibile, oggi, parlare di una "storia della filosofia" distinta sia dall'attività filosofico-ermeneutica sia dalla ricerca strettamente storica, qual è quella condotta dalla Intellectual history? (shrink)

Our oldest archival records originate from the Near East. Systems of archival record-keeping developed over several millennia in Mesopotamia before spreading to Egypt, the Mycenean world, and the Persian empire, and continuing through the Hellenistic and Seleucid periods. Yet we know little about the way archival practices were established, transmitted, modified, and adapted by other civilizations. This interdisciplinary volume offers a systematic approach to archival documents and to the societies which created them, addressing questions of formal aspects of creating, writing, (...) and storing ancient documents, and showing how archival systems were copied and adapted across a wide geographical area and an extensive period of time. (shrink)