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I. Introduction Several philosophers, in both Buddhist philosophy (see, e.g., Zahavi, Thompson, and Siderits 2011) and Western philosophy (Unger 1979a, 1979b, 1979c; Stone 2005) have claimed that the self does [...]

This article will argue that Tao Yuanming [phrase omitted] (ca. 360-425) recognized a tension between being himself (ziran [phrase omitted]) and the natural transformations of the world (hua). While he [...]

Introduction This essay investigates the Zhuangzian theory of the self, which has long been the subject of a heated and controversial debate in Chinese intellectual history. According to an interpretation [...]

One of the most important and least well-understood notions in Watsuji Tetsuro's philosophical oeuvre is the concept of fudo [phrase omitted], which has been variously translated into English as climate [...]

But if the self were equal to the aggregates It must, since there are many, be a multiplicity And it would be substantial, visible like every other thing And not [...]

Buddhist reductionism (BR) is the view that there is no self and that, strictly speaking, our talk of persons should be better understood as talk of fictional entities. (1) The [...]

This essay offers a new interpretation of the butterfly dream in the Zhuangzi, which has been the focus of vigorous inquiries and heated debates in recent years. The novelty of this attempt lies in identifying a line of reasoning in the 'Qiwulun' chapter that embodies a deep puzzle about the nature of self and in unpacking how the butterfly dream passage at the end of that chapter addresses the puzzle in question. Such a reading is cast within a larger context of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, where death is a major theme. The idea of interpreting the butterfly dream in connection with the issue of death is not new. However, this idea has never been made sufficiently clear. An attempt will be made to provide a sensible and plausible reading of the butterfly dream that it is hoped will be relevant and beneficial to contemporary philosophy of self and death., Identifying the theme of self and death as central to the 'Qiwulun'--or Discussion on Making All Things Equal (3)--is at odds with a majority of interpreters: they tend to see [...]

This article reviews recent evidence from the fields of cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, behavioral neuroscience, and social psychology that call into question the model of the self that underlies current dominant approaches to ethics in Western philosophy, pointing to the crucial role of affect, embodiment, and metaphorical extension in moral judgments and decision making. It then examines the implications of these results for moral philosophy, concluding that the virtue-ethical model of self-cultivation more accurately represents how real human beings engage in moral reasoning, and is also better adapted as an educational technique to the evolved cognitive architecture of human beings than deontological or utilitarian approaches. Finally, turning to early Confucianism, it will suggest some of the ways in which Mencius' views about morality and ethical education strikingly anticipate findings coming out of the modern Western cognitive sciences, and therefore how thinkers such as Mencius can serve as an important conceptual resource in envisioning what an empirically responsible modern virtue ethic might look like., In his well-known 1994 work Descartes' Error, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio describes his work with patients suffering from damage to the prefrontal cortex, a center of emotion processing in the [...]

Introduction The utilization of Western canonical thinkers to inform and understand thinkers from India and China is nothing new. More specifically, it is very tempting for a Western-trained philosopher to [...]

There has been much recent discussion concerning the relation between Parfit's Reductionism and the view of persons to be found in early Buddhism and Abhidharma. Some have claimed that Parfit […]

Granted the premise that things and the world comprising them exist in some nonarbitrary and not purely subjective sense, persons are almost unavoidably taken to be relatively autonomous individuals who […]