Buddhist philosophy, Chinese

By Lusthaus, Dan

When Buddhism first entered China from India and Central Asia two thousand years ago, Chinese favourably disposed towards it tended to view it as a part or companion ...

Buddhist philosophy, Indian

By Hayes, Richard P.

Buddhism was an important ingredient in the philosophical melange of the Indian subcontinent for over a millennium. From an inconspicuous beginning a few centuries before Christ, Buddhist scholasticism ...

Buddhist philosophy, Japanese

By Maraldo, John C.

Buddhism transformed Japanese culture and in turn was transformed in Japan. Mahāyāna Buddhist thought entered Japan from the East Asian continent as part of a cultural complex that ...

Buddhist philosophy, Korean

By Cho, Sungtaek

Buddhism was transmitted to the Korean peninsula from China in the middle of the fourth century ad. Korea at this time was divided into three kingdoms: Kokuryô, ...

Hindu philosophy

By Clear, Edeltraud Harzer

Hindu philosophy is the longest surviving philosophical tradition in India. We can recognize several historical stages. The earliest, from around 700 bc, was the proto-philosophical period, when ...

Islamic philosophy

By Leaman, Oliver

Islamic philosophy may be defined in a number of different ways, but the perspective taken here is that it represents the style of philosophy produced within the framework ...

Jaina philosophy

By Soni, Jayandra

The issues in Jaina philosophy developed concurrently with those that emerged in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. The period from the second century bc to about the tenth ...

Jewish philosophy

By Goodman, L.E.

Jewish philosophy is philosophical inquiry informed by the texts, traditions and experiences of the Jewish people. Its concerns range from the farthest reaches of cosmological speculation to the ...

Religion, philosophy of

By Stump, Eleonore

Philosophy of religion is philosophical reflection on religion. It is as old as philosophy itself and has been a standard part of Western philosophy in every period (see ...

Tibetan philosophy

By Tillemans, Tom J.F.

Tibetan philosophy – if we can make a rough separation between what is predominantly argument-oriented and analytical and what is more a question of ritual, devotion or vision ...

Anti-Semitism

By Leaman, Oliver; Nyman, Clive

Anti-Semitism is a form of racism which sees Jews as a dangerous and despicable group in society. It has solid philosophical sources in the work of German Idealism ...

Apoha

Apoha, a Sanskrit term meaning exclusion, was used by the late fifth- to early sixth-century Buddhist philosopher Dignāga as a keystone in his theory of denotation. According to ...

Aristotelianism in Islamic philosophy

By Kennedy-Day, Kiki

In Arabic, Aristotle was referred to by name as Aristutalis or, more frequently, Aristu, although when quoted he was often referred to by a sobriquet such as ‘the ...

Aristotelianism, medieval

By Jordan, Mark D.

Although there are many possible definitions, ‘medieval Aristotelianism’ is here taken to mean explicit receptions of Aristotle’s texts or teachings by Latin-speaking writers from about ad 500 ...

Arya Samaj

By Kumar, K.S.

The Arya Samaj (ārya-samāj, ‘The Association of Nobles’) is a Hindu reform movement founded in 1875 by Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824–83). Based on the supposition that the true ...

Asceticism

By Quinn, Philip L.

The term ‘asceticism’ is derived from the Greek word, askēsis, which referred originally to the sort of exercise, practice or training in which athletes engage. Asceticism may ...

Aseity

By Matthews Grant, Walter

‘Aseity’ (short for ‘God’s aseity’) is the traditional divine attribute whereby God is said to exist of or from himself. Although the Latin phrase ‘a se’ (from which ...

Ash‘ariyya and Mu‘tazila

By Robinson, Neal

The Mu‘tazila – literally ‘those who withdraw themselves’ – movement was founded by Wasil bin ‘Ata’ in the second century AH (eighth century ad). Its members ...

Atonement

By Gunton, Colin

As a theological concept, atonement articulates the acts by which relations between God and creatures, disrupted by human offence, can be restored. Although other cultures show an awareness ...

Augustinianism

By Jordan, Mark D.

The influence of Augustine on Western philosophy is exceeded in duration, extent and variety only by that of Plato and Aristotle. Augustine was an authority not just for ...

Averroism

By Ebbesen, Sten

‘Averroism’, ‘radical Aristotelianism’ and ‘heterodox Aristotelianism’ are nineteenth- and twentieth-century labels for a late thirteenth-century movement among Parisian philosophers whose views were not easily reconcilable with Christian doctrine. ...

Averroism, Jewish

By Leaman, Oliver

Averroism was enthusiastically taken up by many Jewish philosophers and adapted in a number of ways that extended its scope beyond mere repetition of Averroes’ own arguments. Jewish ...

Awakening of faith in Mahāyāna

By Gregory, Peter N.

The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna (Dasheng qixinlun) is one of the most influential philosophical texts in East Asian Buddhism. It is most important for developing the Indian ...

Awareness in Indian thought

By Phillips, Stephen H.

Classical Indian schools all stake out positions on awareness, its intrinsic nature, its place in the causal processes crucial to human accomplishment, its relations to objects in the ...

Bible, Hebrew

By Cohn-Sherbok, Dan

Although the Bible is not a work of systematic philosophy, it none the less contains a wide variety of philosophical and theological ideas which have served as the ...