Atman in Advaita Vedanta: Variations on a theme from the Principal Upanishads”
KIM, Youngmin (Seoul National University, Korea)
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- KOHL, Christian ( University of Education, Freiburg, Germany ) “Are Ideas Bound by Places”
- KRUMMEL, John W.M. (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) “Place and Horizon”
- KUČINSKAS, Justas and Naglis KARDELIS ( Vilnius University, Lithuania) “The Wisdom of Place: Lithuanian Philosophical Philotopy of Arvydas Šliogeris”
- KUPERUS, Gerald (University of San Francisco) “The Flow of the Land: Place in D ōgen and the Koyukon”
- LaFLEUR, Robert Andre ́ (Beloit College) “Contested Space, Conceded Place
- LAMBERT, Andrew (College of Staten Island CUNY) “The Place of the Personal in Classical Confucian Ethics”
- LAUER, Chris (University of Hawai’i—Hilo) “Place as Debt and Credit”
- LAUMAKIS, Stephen J. (University of St. Thomas) “Pope Francis’ Place”
- LEAL OLIVARES, David (University of Santiago, Chile)
- LEBEDEVA, Kristina ( DePaul University ) “Places of Trauma”
KIM, Youngmin (Seoul National University, Korea) “Space and Political Imaginaries: Philosophical Reflections on the eight steps in the Great Learning”
The primary goal of this paper is to demonstrate that there were sufficiently philosophical discourses going on in late imperial China to merit comparative studies of the Ming theories of the Chinese state. To round out the picture, I propose to take mid-Ming philosophy seriously and consider political philosophies of Qiu Jun (1421-1495), Wang Yangming (1472~1528) and Zhan Ruoshui (1466~1560) as examples. With any luck, we will be able to philosophically repudiate the existing views of Ming Chinese state as the despotic nature of rule, which can be traced back to as early as the 18th century European scholars who often contrasted Europe and China. KOHL, Christian (University of Education, Freiburg, Germany) “Are Ideas Bound by Places?” There is a central idea in Eastern and Western philosophies that is not properly Eastern and not properly Western. It is the idea of dependence or connection or mean or bondage. We have not a single word for this idea. In the first place dependence or pratityasamutpada is an indication of dependence. Dependent bodies are in an intermediate state, they are not properly separated and they are not one entity. Secondly, they rely on each other and are influenced or determined by something else. Thirdly, their behaviour is influenced by something in-between, for example a mover is attracted by gravitational force, a viewer is dependent on rays of light between his eyes and the object, a piano player’s action is determined by the fine motor skills of his fingers, an agent is dependent on his act. Pratityasamutpada is an indication of dependence and of something that happens between the objects. One object is bound to the other without being identical to it. The implicit interpretations of pratityasamutpada, are in terms of time, structure and space. The following citations and references illustrate the term pratityasamutpada. Pratityasamutpada is used: 1. as Dependence in Nagarjuna’s Hymn to the Buddha: “ Dialecticians maintain that suffering is created by itself, created by (someone) else, created by both (or) without a cause, but You have stated that it is dependently born”. 2. as an intermediate state by Nagarjuna: Objects are neither together nor separated. 3. as bondage in the Hevajra Tantra: “Men are bound by the bondage of existence and are liberated by understanding the nature of existence”. 4. as an intermediate state by Roger Penrose: “Quantum entanglement is a very strange type of thing. It is somewhere between objects being separate and being in communication with each other”. 5. as something between bodies by Albert Einstein: “A courageous scientific imagination was needed to realize fully that not the behaviour of bodies, but the behaviour of something between them, that is, the field, may be essential for ordering and understanding events”. 6. as the mean between things in modern history of mathematics: to quote Gioberti again: “The mean between two or more things, their juncture, union, transit, passage, crossing, interval, distance, bond and contact – all these are mysterious, for they are rooted in the continuum, in the infinite. The interval that runs between one idea and another, one thing and another, is infinite, and can only be surpassed by the creative act. This is why the dynamic moment and dialectic concept of the mean are no less mysterious than those of the beginning and the end. The mean is a union of two diverse and opposite things in a unity. It is an essentially dialectic concept, and involves an apparent contradiction, namely, the identity of the one and the many, of the same and the diverse. This unity is simple and composite; it is unity and synthesis and harmony. It shares in two extremes without being one or the other. It is the continuum, and therefore the infinite. Now, the infinite identically uniting contraries, clarifies the nature of the interval. In motion, in time, in space, in concepts, the discrete is easy to grasp, because it is finite. The continuum and the interval are mysterious, because they are infinite”. 7. as a central point in Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy. KRUMMEL, John W.M. (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) “Place and Horizon” The paper presents a phenomenological ontology of place that synthesizes the results of my investigations over the past ten or so years on related themes in Heidegger, Nishida, Ueda, Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, Bollnow, and others, involving the notions of world, horizon, and the abyssal nature of place that unfolds in myriad determinations. Wherever we are we are implaced, delimited in our being-in-the-world constituted by a horizon that implaces us, not only literally but semantically and ontologically. Whether we take place in its semantic sense or as ontological, I underscore its duplicity—taking off from Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of two-fold being-in-the-world—as on the one hand demarcating a realm of determinacy, our ontological finitude or our social imaginary world, and on the other hand through its horizonal nature as pointing to an indeterminacy or exteriority that demarcates or delimits that realm, finitizing us. That latter may be characterized as an excess irreducible to semantic or ontological determination or as a nothing or a-meaning. Hence place with its horizon implies the interface of meaning and a-meaning, nomos and anomy, principles and anarché, in Nishidian terms being and the nothing (mu), in Heideggerian terms unconcealment and concealment or world and earth. Thus the horizon that constitutes place entails both finitude and openness, allowing for alterity and alteration, whereby the determinations within place are never fixed, secure, or guaranteed. In demarcating a place, the horizon always points to a yonder beyond the place, its other. In its very contact with the unassmilable or irreducible, the line of demarcation is itself thus unpredictable in its fluctuations. The place determined within the nothing or the clearing of unconcealment amidst the concealed will thus always be provisional despite any appearance or claims to the contrary. Its determination is indeterminate. Towards the end of this presentation I would like to discuss the ethical implications of this understanding of place, both in terms of globalism and in terms of ecology. The presentation would be relevant to the East-West Conference, not only for dealing with the theme of place but also, in terms of “East-West,” for incorporating ideas and concepts found in thinkers of both East and West and also for discussing the current globalization of our world where previously demarcated regional cultural spheres are forced to confront and deal with one another and intermingle. The alterity and alterations belonging to place are made explicit in our contemporary situation with certain existential-ethical implications that must be addressed. KUČINSKAS, Justas and Naglis KARDELIS (Vilnius University, Lithuania) “The Wisdom of Place: Lithuanian Philosophical Philotopy of Arvydas Šliogeris” In this article is presented the phenomenon of Lithuanian philosophical philotopy. Philotopy, literally meaning a love of place, is a term first defined by Simone Weil, is also found in Arvydas Šliogeris philosophy, where philotopy acquires a specifically Lithuanian dimension. Philotopy in Arvydas Šliogeris thinking refers to a type of philosophy, which is deeply rooted in individual‘s unique and finite experience of particular things found in a specially defined and very particular place, usually one‘s closest environment, where one is born or permanently settled. Philotopy is also a meta-reflection of the way of thinking about and being in the world which is defined by that particular place. Philotopy as a way of noticing the importance which the nearness and particularity of place has to one‘s thinking and being is itself, as we might say, connected and rooted in a particular place – the landscape and history of Lithuania. Arvydas Šliogeris, the founder and leader of modern Lithuanian philosophy, points to philotopical inclinations of Lithuanian culture and forsees philotopy as the probable direction of Lithuanian philosophical thought. Therefore, the phillosophical philotopy in Arvydas Šliogeris‘s sense can be summarized as “the metaphysics of the homeland.” The authors of this article suggest that Lithuanian philotopy calls for reassesment of meaning and purpose of philosophy as such in the context of the 21st century realities. The question of the very essence and purpose of philosophy is itself asked from specifically defined place. In the authors opinion, the project of Lithuanian philosophical philotopy might be viewed as a contribution of Lithuanian experience to the global debate on what philosophy is and in what ways is it relevant to the pressing issues of the world today. A way of pursuing a global issue from a deeply rooted local perspective becomes crucially important in the context of globalized science, where the demandl for internationalization and diversity paradoxically dilutes the ground of diversity itself – the truly local perspective. Lithuanian philotopy invites philosophers to pursue the mission to draw people‘s attention to their specific experiences of particular things found in particular places. Philotopy is not determined to find The Truth, but only to reflect the singular truth of a very specific and defined experience of nearness of non human reality of things and place. The ability to attach to what is dear, the determination to care and nurture the particular place is also a basis of engaged and courageous thinking, which makes possible a trully authentic agency, authorship and a real meaningful dialogue. The truth of unique experience of particular things and its reflection paradoxically becomes the only way of true inter-human communication. Firstly, it is because every human existence, however different it may be, is always attached to an experience happening in particular places. Secondly, it is the experience of non human things (however different they may be), rather than the language, that gifts people with the experience of reality. The reality of things is the common ground that any further communication and being together can be built on. The authors of the article suggest that in this sense philotopy allows a possibility of authentic, locally rooted existence and thinking compatible with global awareness. In fact it is even argued that the rootedness in particular place is the necessary condition of true ecology, where the responsibility for a particular place is the only basis of consciousness of the bigger whole. The authors also note that philotopical approach is not new in the history of philosophy. The birth of philosophy is related to the very particular place and time, which is ancient Greece, and it is also related to a then more general approach that the wisdom of a finite human being in defined circumstances and places, although not equal to the wisdom of gods, has value and is worth pursuing. In terms of the evolution of philotopical thinking Arvydas Šliogeris takes a second step of philotopy by actually allowing us to see that the limits of a human being, especially the experience of the finitude and sacredness of a particular place, are actually the basis of our possibility to face the two biggest challenges of the world today: our inability to live together and the profound disconnectedness from our particular living place, manifesting itself, inter alia, in the global environmental crisis. KUPERUS, Gerald (University of San Francisco) “The Flow of the Land: Place in Dōgen and the Koyukon” In a world in which we have largely lost a sense of place and in which knowledge of the land is all but destroyed, our identities have become superficial reflections of what used to be systems deeply grounded in place. In order to understand the depth of this loss I will discuss the relationship between land and mind as we find it in the indigenous culture of the Koyukon and the place-based practice of Zen, in particular through Dōgen Zenji. The latter uses in his famous “Mountains and Waters Sutra” a human category, walking, to describe the activity of mountains. He however uses one of the most anthropomorphic categories precisely to question our anthropocentrism. By pulling our category away from ourselves and giving it to the mountain instead, he, in fact, seems to set anthropomorphism up against itself. Although it, thus, might seem that Dōgen ascribes human qualities to the mountains, the opposite is true. As he writes: “If you doubt mountains’ walking, you do not know your own walking.” In other words, we should not understand the mountain as walking in a human sense, but we should understand our walking in relationship to mountains, as walking along with the mountains, i.e. as rooted in the place in which we are. To understand this rootedness in place in a more concrete way I will discus Richard Nelson’s ethnographic study and personal reflection on the Koyukon in his book Make Prayers to the Raven. In the closing chapter Nelson describes the Koyukon experience of “a different reality in the natural world” (238). This reality is a reflection of the landscape that is constantly undergoing change: “The Koyukon people live in a land where change is the norm and where stability is almost unheard of” (212). They cannot afford to try to master the land, they are mastered by the land; they do not confront but yield to nature (240). Similar to Dōgen’s understanding of walking mountains the Koyukon, in Nelson’s words, live in a reality in which “the flow of the land becomes also the flow of the mind.” (243). I argue that these insights should not be taken lightly and that a retrieval of a sense of place would first of all have to recognize that we do not simply have “an environment” as a place that we simply find ourselves in. Rather, what and moreover how we think, has to be rooted in our place. We are our places, which means that we no longer see ourselves as a stranger, but find ourselves in the mountain and rivers and we find the rivers and mountains in ourselves. In a world in which everything constantly changes and stability is rare, we need to learn how to walk, and think again. LaFLEUR, Robert André (Beloit College) “Contested Space, Conceded Place: Negotiating Political and Historical Discord on China’s Southern Sacred Mountain” It has often been said that “the winners write the history.” This is only partly true. Winners, more often than many realize, concede part of the narrative to those they defeat. From the American Civil War to World War II and beyond, field sites commemorate times and places of struggle that expand—and even challenge—the rhetoric of the victors. On China’s southern sacred peak (南嶽衡山) in Hunan Province stands a square kilometer of landscaping and elaborate buildings that is celebrated by a wide variety of Chinese travelers— the focus of outsize attention in terms of historical memory and political commemoration in today’s People’s Republic of China. The Martyr’s Shrine (忠烈祠), about a third of the way up the slope, is the site of serious homage to the Nationalist forces who fought the Japanese in the late-1930s and 1940s, enduring withering bombing assaults even as they hid in mountain caverns and planned their own military strategy. The shrine has been maintained by the People’s Republic of China, and occupies by far the largest single “politico-religious-space” on the entire mountain—larger than either the base temple or peak temple, and dwarfing the size of all others. It focuses on the very Nationalist (Guomindang; Kuomintang) forces that the Communists defeated in 1949 to take possession of the “mainland.”
There has been recent interest in Confucian ethics as a form of role ethics. In this paper, I argue that while role ethics is correct in taking the personal bonds as a basis for normative demands, the personal attachment that is strongly emphasized in texts like the Analects and Mencius can be fruitfully understood in other ways. I consider how the Confucian ethical sensibility built around personal attachment implies novel ways to substantiate the basic categories of moral life – ethical obligation, motivation and justification. That is, the Confucian emphasis on personal attachment can be developed into an ethics that is richer than the concept of role can capture. Furthermore, this way of ordering the basic elements of ethical life offers a distinctive account of the highest ethical ideal, which these elements function to realise – the creation of joyful events in the course of everyday personal encounters. This paper explores the advantages and challenges of conceiving of ethics in these terms. LAUER, Chris (University of Hawai’i—Hilo) “Place as Debt and Credit” Places carry debts, and indeed places are often defined by the debts they carry and commemorate. The Temple Mount, the Tenochtitlan Templo Mayor, and the Shaolin Temples are sacred because they all, in one way or another, remind their visitors of their debts. Traditional Hawaiian mana`o regards Mauna Kea as perhaps its most sacred place, and here, too, a reckoning of debts is crucial to our understanding of it as a place. Yet unlike sites such as the Temple Mount, it was not sanctified by any particular event or set of events, but stands in for the way that places in general mark us as debtors. In her translation of the Kumulipo, Queen Lili`uokolani returns again and again to the refrain, “So the gods may enter, but not man.” Though the Kumulipo tells Hawaiians of their origin, the taboo expressed in this sentence is not a prohibition against returning to the site of one’s origin, but a reminder of the respect due to place as such. This paper will contrast this traditional sense of place as debt with the impulse that arises in Locke and Fichte to transmute our debts to places into credits. Enlightenment philosophy is often criticized for effacing all determinacy of place in favor of a generalized Newtonian spatiality, but in these two thinkers we see something quite different. The conception of place as unique and determinative of human identity is retained, but places now appear as assets rather than liabilities on the ledger of self-recognition. This paper will explore the logic of this transition and what is lost when our debts to places are expunged. LAUMAKIS, Stephen J. (University of St. Thomas) “Pope Francis’ Place” This paper has two purpose: first, to consider the place of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ in relation to the work of his immediate predecessors, Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II, as well as its place within the encyclical tradition of the Catholic Church more generally considered; second, to consider in some detail Pope Francis’ conception of place and our relation to the environment as he explains these in Laudato si’. With respect to the first task, I will be exploring the various ways he situates the document and its teachings within the social justice tradition of the Church. I will do this by focusing on the texts and authors cited within the encyclical, as well as by examining its footnotes. With respect to the second task, I will be investigating his notion of interdependence and how his conceptions of interconnectedness and relatedness help him make the case for an “integral ecology.” I will close with a philosophical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the Pope’s conception of place. LEAL OLIVARES, David (University of Santiago, Chile) “Building Democracy in Cyberspace: An Approach to the Limit of Cyberspace as Communicative/Symbolic Space Configuration from a Democratic Point of View to Philosophy of Information” The Philosophy of Information is a field of study to work, in especially link the work of Luciano Floridi, of revitalize of old questions, pose new problems and contributes to conceptualize our vision of world framework of the Information Society. In this process, this proposal seeks to analyze the new concept of democracy, unveiling his new nature and difference with the classical view through the new boundaries of participation, especially through the concept of transparency of information. Discover the limit of cyberspace as a place of political constitution and the values found in the virtual world. The classical concept of democracy appears to be in crisis, because the configuration of symbolic space and the limits of cyberspace create a new configuration of political space (territory) participation, national identity and participation of civil society. This proposal seek answer to questions about the nature of cyberspace from point of view of Philosophy of Information and reflexion of media after work of Marshall Mcluhan and Derrick de Kerckhove. LEBEDEVA, Kristina (DePaul University) “Places of Trauma” The aim of this project is to examine the conjunction of the ‘here’ and trauma in what I hope to be an innovative way. The predominant trauma theory is about the consequences of a traumatic event. Indeed, “despite substantial theoretical and empirical advances in the field of traumatic stress .... existing conceptualizations of traumatic stress retain the assumption that traumatic experiences have occurred in the past. This is to say, the event itself is over. More precisely, it is now transformed into a hauntingly persistent anguish. In Jean Amery’s words, “whoever was tortured, stays tortured.” The paradigm of this vision of trauma is a soldier returning from war. However, what I want to do here is to examine the conception of ongoing traumatization. This is the event that is still happening and whose nature cannot be understood with a reference to the past. The examples of such continuous traumatization would be life in warzones, domestic abuse, ongoing persecution, etc. in other words, they involve “threat to life and bodily integrity.” What is at stake here is then not a single-trauma event, but rather traumatic experience indissolubly tied to what might be called ‘hereness’ or specific situation. I will submit that the response to ongoing traumatization must be articulated on its own terms. Having elucidated the differences between two conceptualizations of trauma, I will conclude by suggesting that the therapeutic response demanded by continuous traumatization is the practice of interruption. It is forcefully fragmenting and fracturing temporality itself so as to interrupt someone’s suffering. Barring the complete removal of traumatic situation, the suffering is always there. Interrupting it as often as possible makes it a little closer to bearable. Thus, the new moral imperative, stemming from the conjunction of radical hereness and trauma, assumes the form of interruption. Directory: phil -> wp-content -> uploads phil -> Going global oddities of globalism phil -> Identification ethics and spirituality phil -> Special Topic: “The home-made bombing at the Marathon Races in Boston, Massachusetts” by Sally Ramage pages 2-50 phil -> The Role of Error in Computer Science phil -> 菲律賓私立大專校院（非屬Autonomy and Deregulated heis） phil -> Gualtiero Piccinini phil -> Buildings Leased/Sold phil -> Phillip M. Adams & Associates, L. L. C., V. Dell, Inc. 2009 wl 910801 uploads -> Atman in Advaita Vedanta: Variations on a theme from the Download 0.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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