Philosophy Of Action Research Articles

The Silence of the Buddha

THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. marks the beginning of an intellectual renaissance in India. Radhakrishnan has said of this period, There many indications to show that it was an age keenly alive to intellectual interest, a period of immense philosophic activity and many-sided development.... It was an age full of strange anomalies and contrasts. With the intellectual fervour and moral seriousness were also found united a lack of mental balance and restraint of passion. .... When the surging energies of life assert their rights, it is not unnatural that many yield to unbridled imagination.' Another authority on Indian philosophy has written, Speculation was almost rampant in the period just preceding the time of the Buddha and an excessive discussion of theoretical questions was leading to anarchy of thought.2 One restraining influence in this period of speculation was Siddhdrtha Gautama, the Buddha, who by counsel and example discouraged abstract theorizing. When asked to express his view on a number of metaphysical problems, he remained silent. Thus, there came to be in Buddhism a group of problems which known as the avyikrtavast2ni--the undetermined, or unelucidated, or unprofitable questions. The most comprehensive list of forbidden speculations is found in the Brahma Jlda Sutta of the Digha Nikiya. Here listed sixty-two ways in which recluses and Brahmans ... reconstruct the past, and arrange the future. The Buddha says they are entrapped in the net of these sixty-two modes; this way and that they plunge about, but they in it; this way and that they flounder, but they included in it, caught in it.3 Buddhists warned to avoid the net altogether. Only ten of the questions raised in the Brahma IJla Sutta appear in the Lesser Milufikydputta Sermon which is Sutta 63 of the Maijhima Nikiya, yet these especially important, for with some alterations they constitute the avyikrtavast;ani. The Sutta opens as follows:

Marlowe and Machiavelli

N THE last fifty years of Renaissance scholarship, few names have been coupled more often and with less agreement than those of Christopher Marlowe and Niccolo Machiavelli. Almost the entire range of critical possibility has been covered. Edward Meyer, who began the serious study of Machiavelli's influence in Elizabethan drama and whose errors continue to persist after more than half a century, held that Machiavelli's writings were an important shaping force upon Marlowe's plays. This has been the predominant notion, and has been echoed with variations by Courthope, Rebora, H. S. Bennett, T. M. Pearce, Una M. Ellis-Fermor, and most recently by Harry Levin; some say that Marlowe knew only Gentillet's corrupt version of Machiavelli, whose actual philosophy he tried to perpetuate in his writings.1 At the other extreme we find Roy W. Battenhouse,2 who tells us that Marlowe, although he knew Machiavelli's works well, violently disagreed with him and attempted to refute his heretical doctrines. And, finally, writers like Leslie Spence and Paul H. Kocher3 tell us that there is no connection whatever between the two figures, that Marlowe probably never even read Machiavelli, and that if he did the Florentine left no distinguishing mark upon his plays. In this welter of contradiction, what shall one believe? Much of the difficulty, it seems to me, springs from certain popular errors and false assumptions which appear, with varying degrees of intensity, in almost everything that is written on the subject of Machiavelli in Elizabethan England. The Marlowe confusion is only part of a greater confusion. There has been, to begin with, a tendency to limit consideration of Machiavelli to The Prince and to treat that book out of its context in the entire body of Machiavelli's political thought. This has led to a lamentable distortion of Machiavelli. For, as Lord Acton

THE NATURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS AND THEIR ROOTS IN SCIENCE

IT was after some hesitation that I decided to take as my point of departure the present position of English philosophy. For I believe that the function of a scientist or of a philosopher is to solve scientific or philosophical problems, rather than to talk about what he or other philosophers are doing or might do. Even an unsuccessful attempt to solve a scientific or philosophical problem, if it is an honest and devoted attempt, appears to me more significant than any discussion of a question such as ' What is science ?' or 'What is philosophy ? '. And even if we put this latter question, as we should, in the somewhat improved form 'What is the character of philosophical problems ?', I for one should not bother much about it; I should feel that it has little weight if compared with even such a minor problem of philosophy, as, say, the question whether every discussion must always proceed from 'assumptions' or 'suppositions' which themselves are beyond argument.' When describing' What is the character of philosophical problems ?' as a somewhat improved form of ' What is philosophy ? ', I wished to hint at one of the reasons for the futility of the current controversy concerning the nature of philosophy-the naive belief that there is an entity such as 'philosophy', or perhaps 'philosophical activity', and that it has a certain character or 'nature '. The belief that there is such a thing as physics, or biology, or archaeology, and that these 'studies' or 'disciplines' are distinguishable by the subject matter which they investigate, appears to me to be a residue from the time when one believed that a theory had to proceed from a definition of its own subject matter.2 But subject matter, or kinds of things, or classes * The Chairman's address, delivered at the meeting of 28 April 1952, to the Philosophy of Science Group of the British Society for the History of Science. 1 call this a minor problem because I believe that it can easily be solved, by refuting the (' relativistic ') doctrine indicated in the text. 2 This view is part of what I have called 'essentialism'. Cf. for example my

Nishida and Royce

Nishida's philosophy is an exemplary case of the struggle for a synthesis of Western content and Oriental form. Nishida's view is particularly significant in this respect in that he was perhaps the first Japanese philosopher to import Western philosophy and to reinterpret it with freshness and force in the framework of Oriental thinking. Through his voluminous writings and personal influence, Nishida founded the so-called Kyoto school of philosophy at Kyoto University. This school has virtually dominated the philosophical climate of Japan for the past fifty years. Unlike many modern Japanese scholars, Nishida never studied abroad. Nevertheless, he was thoroughly familiar with the philosophical works of important Western thinkers. He is generally regarded in Japan as the most original philosopher Japan has produced in recent years--original in that he, absorbing all the complexities of Western philosophy, attempted to give it an Oriental flavor, thus curiously combining Buddhism with Christian mysticism and Confucian ethics with German idealism. His originality is also seen in his ability to handle philosophical problems in his own terms. He was through and through a post-Kantian in spirit, however, and he is generally classified as a neo-Hegelian. His thinking is highly speculative and dialectical, and his style is as abstruse as that of Fichte or Hegel. Although his writings are difficult and complex, the frequent repetition of his main thesis helps the reader follow the structure of his thought; and his poetic insights and literary forcefulness are refreshing. Kitaro Nishida was born in 1870 in a village in Ishikawa Prefecture. After studying at Kanazawa Higher School, from which he did not graduate, and Tokyo University, from which he graduated as a special student, he taught for ten years at the Fourth Higher School at Kanazawa. He was appointed professor of philosophy at Kyoto Imperial University in 1910, and remained there until his retirement in 1930. After his retirement, his philosophical activity was so vigorous that about two-thirds of his works were written between that time and his death in 1945. Nishida was, from his youth, deeply interested in Zen Buddhism and frequently visited Buddhist temples for instruction and meditation. In the following excerpts from the diary of his youth, it is evident that he was

The State of Philosophical Studies in India

Contemporary philosophical activity in India is influenced not only by India's traditional philosophy but also by Western Philosophy. One of the results of the introduction, by Macaulay, of the Western system of education into India is the popularization of the study of Western Philosophy, and Indians took to it quite enthusiastically. Sanscrit philosophical texts were at first regarded as sacred, and Europeans could have no access to them. But in time, the prejudice abated, and Sanscrit texts began to be translated into English. At the beginning, the motives behind Western interest in Indian Philosophy were mainly of two kinds: the rulers wanted to understand the culture and religions of the ruled in order to govern them without hurting their religious sentiments, and thus with the least friction; and secondly. Christian missionaries wanted converts and studied the religions and philosophies of the latter in order to find out defects in them and uphold the superiority of Christianity. But whatever be the motives and however biased the scholarship in the beginning, genuine academical interest in the philosophical literature of India came to be evinced, thanks to the work of men like Max Müller, Deussen, Rhys Davids, etc., and vast stores of Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina philosophical literature were unearthed not only in India but also outside. It should, however, be said that academical philosophers of the West did not take serious interest in Indian Philosophy as such; and not a single Indian philosophical concept has entered till now the discussions of Western technical philosophy, Schopenhauer was an exception: he made serious use of the concept of Maya.

Philosophy in Italy

Platonic studies continue to be cultivated, even in Italy, with undiminished fervour. And in Italy, as in England and Germany, interpretation tends to pass from one extreme to the opposite. At one time the chief concern of the exponents of Plato was to reconstruct his ”system“; and since his thought did not easily lend itself to unification, every effort was made to force it within the limits of a preconceived scheme. The present tendency, however, is to start from the opposite standpoint–that there is no philosophy of Plato, only a variable philosophical activity which is, as it were, consumed in each dialogue in turn, to be rekindled inexplicably in the next. Hence the work of interpretation reduces itself to a summary of the contents of various writings, arranged as far as possible in chronological order, and each examined independently as a complete and self-sufficing entity. The systematic interpreters used to make all the dialogues burn with a single flame, for which is now substituted a series ofignes fatuiin which the connection is lost, or only visible at intervals.

Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem

Previous articleNext article No AccessPlan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in AristotelemHarry A. WolfsonHarry A. Wolfson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 6, Number 3Jul., 1931 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2848510 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1931 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Charles H. Manekin, Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt Part One. Philosophy. Chapter One. Greeks. Logic, (Oct 2022): 75–207.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76962-8_2Deborah L. Black The nature of intellect, (Dec 2009): 320–333.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521762168.025Robert Pasnau The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, 10 (May 2011).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521762182Charles E. Butterworth In What Sense is Averroes an Encyclopedist?, (Jan 2000): 99–119.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9389-2_5Charles E. Butterworth The Study of Arabic Philosophy Today, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 17, no.22 (Mar 2016): 161–178.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026318400013195Deborah L. Black, Robert Pasnau, Christina van Dyke The nature of intellect, (): 320–333.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781107446953.029 Irving L. Horowitz Averroism and the Politics of Philosophy, The Journal of Politics 22, no.44 (Sep 2015): 698–727.https://doi.org/10.2307/2126929

Pragmatism and Idealism.

Foundations of in American Thought series offers two sets of volumes containing the most significant defenses and critiques of pragmatism written before World War I: the Early Defenders of Pragmatism and Early Critics of Pragmatism. This, the first collection, Early Defenders, provides key texts for understanding the context of pragmatism's years of greatest vitality. Each author was either a pragmatist of stature in their own right, or a formidable philosophical critic from a rival school of thought. They all participated in the heated controversies over pragmatism during its first decade, and drew onthis experience to sum up their views in their books reprinted in these sets. The early critics represent the broad spectrum of philosophical activity at the start of the 20th century. James B. Pratt was educated at Harvard; initially attracted to James's pragmatism, he soon became a member of the Realist movement. Paul Carus, the editor of Monist, and Albert Schinz, a scholar of language and literature, deplored pragmatism's relativism. William Caldwell was a product of the Cornell school of idealism. John T. Driscoll appealled to Thomistic scholasticism for his critique of pragmatism. The central texts of the movement can be found in this set, along with a representative selection of the secondary texts, reviews and responses they elicited. Each volume features a newly-commissioned introduction by a scholar of American pragmatism.

Paul lulius Möbius. Ueber das pathologische bei Nietzsche. Wiesbaden. 1902

Nietzsche was so unhappy in his personal life that one can approach his philosophical works with an unusual criterion of psychiatry. We also remember Auguste Comte, who in the second period of his philosophical activity also attracted the attention of psychiatrists.