This article studies the performance of mourning for the martyrs of Karbalāʾ as the commemorative and ritualized cultivation of grief as perpetual reminder of the possibility of commitment against injustice. It takes Ismat Chughtai’s (d. 1991) Urdu novel Ek Katrā Khūn or One Drop of Blood as exemplifying the narrative-commemorative possibilities Karbalāʾ opens. The two philosophical lenses deployed are Butler’s notions of ‘grievability’ and mourning as a radical political act, and Nussbaum’s notion of tragic spectatorship. Through these lenses, the article studies the importance of mourning both in the realm of devotional performance and fictional narrativization. Finally, it engages in a philosophical reading of the figure of Zaynab bint ʿAlī in comparison with Antigone, which allows for new uncharted avenues of comparative work on Islamic and Western philosophy, culture, and literature.
In this paper, I discuss the notion of freedom according to Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (KCB, 1875-1949). I argue that for him, freedom extends from the metaphysical to the political (namely freedom from colonialism, primarily colonialism of the mind). Political strands in KCB can be found not just in his essay “Swaraj in Ideas” (1929), a straightforward manifesto of decolonization, but throughout his oeuvre, as I show through a close reading of his essays “Śaṅkara’s Doctrine of Māyā” (1925), “The Advaita and Its Spiritual Significance” (1936), and “Pain as Evil”, chapter 1 of his Studies in Sāṃkhya Philosophy (1937). If freedom for KCB, in alignment with Sāṃkhya, is a matter of pure subjectivity emptied of any alien (objectual) content, my contention is that this is true not just at the metaphysical realm but even at the political arena. Here it is subjectivity reclaimed and cleansed of colonial objectification.
It is often claimed that rights are unsuitable in a Confucian society because of the putative incompatibility between Confucianism and rights. This paper challenges this so-called incompatibility thesis, offered as a political argument, by highlighting the need for rights in contemporary East Asian societies of Confucian heritage that are increasingly pluralistic. It argues that a dialectical fusion can be achieved between Confucian virtues and liberal rights—initially required for instrumental reason—thereby generating what can be called “Confucian rights.” Special attention is paid to the freedom of association. It argues that this quintessential democratic right is crucial not only for protecting the moral well-being of those who share similar values, interests, or beliefs, but also for effectively addressing contentious sociability under the circumstances of social pluralism. It concludes by showing how “Confucian rights” can benefit both Confucian and non-Confucian citizens from the standpoint of moderate Confucian perfectionism.
This article examines various aspects of Zhang Shenfu’s 張申府 (1893-1986) philosophy through the lens of his translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. By analyzing Zhang’s Chinese renditions of several key concepts in the Tractatus, it demonstrates how his broader philosophical commitments guided his translation work and influenced his interpretation of the Tractatus. The analysis shows that Zhang’s reading is shaped by his goal of combining dialectical materialism with traditional Chinese cosmological thinking and the Western analytical method, thereby producing a unique and original interpretation of the ontology presented in the Tractatus.
Kant once described reason as a wanderer that finds, in the end, no permanent resting place, only a vantage from which to survey its own limits. This essay begins from that unsettled image and follows it into a second tradition that reaches a strikingly similar impasse from the opposite direction. Reading Kant's account of transcendental illusion alongside Advaita Vedānta, and drawing on K. C. Bhattacharyya and A. C. Mukerji as careful Indian interlocutors of the first Critique, the essay argues that both traditions diagnose reason's demand for the unconditioned as self-defeating, whether directed at the self, the world, or the absolute. The two paths diverge, however, in what follows from this shared limit. Kant converts the impasse into a postulate of practical faith securing moral freedom, while Advaita Vedānta converts it into a soteriological opening toward mokṣa. In both cases, reason must finally stand on faith to climb beyond itself.
Although Irigaray’s approach to Eastern traditions has been strongly criticized, some scholars argue that her engagement with yoga philosophy should be read as a “narrative of transformation” rather than as a theoretical analysis of India or Hindu philosophy. This essay situates that narrative in relation to the yogic sources that inspired it, directly or indirectly, and argues that, despite some inaccuracies, Irigaray’s reflections on yoga philosophy constitute a valuable attempt at a cross-cultural philosophical encounter. I show that her critique of Patañjali’s samādhi , which she understood as implying non-dualism, echoes concerns found in Rāmānuja’s qualified non-dualist Vedānta, an important influence on Krishnamacharya’s yoga, whom Irigaray met in India. This paper suggests that engaging Irigaray’s dialogue with Eastern philosophies with the same rigor scholars apply to her Western influences offers a meaningful response to her call for a new culture of energy that goes beyond the categories of “East” and “West.”
In an era where digital culture blurs the lines between material reality and linguistic representation, the concept of materialism remains as contested as ever. Interrogating “materialism” as a cross-cultural philosophical concept, this study argues that the “Indian” (lokāyata/cārvāka), Arabic (dahriyyah/māddiyyah) and Turkish (dehriyye/maddiye/maddecilik/materyalizm/özdekçilik) may be cultural equivalents of the English term “materialism”, but they are not equivalent signifiers for the same signified. Shaped by unique linguistic, philosophical, religious and historical trajectories, each word carries distinct cultural memories. Employing conceptual history and etymological analysis, we reveal how these terms encode irreducible shadows of meaning shaped by the cultural memories they acquired throughout their histories. We argue that translating these terms without acknowledging their connotative nuances risks erasing lived histories and imposing anachronistic, ideological or political frameworks.
This paper re-examines the status of indeterminate perception in Nyāya epistemology. Recent interpretations have either questioned its coherence or sought to preserve it by reformulating its epistemic role, typically assuming that indeterminate and determinate perception are causally distinct cognitive events. Against this assumption, the paper proposes an alternative interpretation grounded in Gaṅgeśa’s causal theory of cognition. It argues that indeterminate and determinate perception are analytically distinguishable stages within a single, continuous perceptual episode. On this reading, perceptual content remains constant while epistemic articulation progressively unfolds. This analytic model preserves the textual distinction between the two stages while situating indeterminate perception within Nyāya’s realist framework.
This paper examines bodily tropes in the Xunzi’s discussions of effective governance and rulership, identifying five types: tropes that highlight the ruler’s bodily limitations; the interdependence of the ruler’s body and the polity; the notion that all constituents form one body; the merging of hearts; and the changing of hearts. Contextual analysis suggests that these tropes do not coalesce into a unified theory of governance but instead reflect diverse, sometimes conflicting, perspectives. Situating these findings within existing scholarship, the paper notes prior emphases on themes of unity and self-cultivation, and the assumption that the human body’s putatively necessary unity grounds these analogies. It then advances three new insights: in the Xunzi, unity appears in multiple forms; some tropes address practical questions of statecraft; and what the human body exemplifies is the effort required to achieve unity in its various forms—an effort that gives these analogies their force.
Included here are translations of four essays by Wang Guowei, each representing a different stage in his intellectual development. The first, “Clarifying Delusions about Philosophy” (1903), defends the imported discipline of philosophy from its detractors by framing the issue in terms the Ruist notion of “rectifying names.” The second, “Autobiographical Notes at Thirty” (1907), recounts Wang’s intellectual career, from his youth to his later disillusionment with philosophy. The third, “Preface to Collected Writings on National Studies” (1911), proposes a view of learning as radically undifferentiated, rejecting distinctions like “Chinese” versus “Western.” The fourth, “Draft of an Imperial Memorial on Politics and Learning” (1923–1924), offers a polemic against Western theories and values. Together, these four essays paint a vivid picture of Wang’s evolving views on philosophy and learning, recounting his initial passion for and gradual disenchantment with Western thinking and what it could offer his own tradition.
This paper explores the philosophical interplay among different conceptualizations of the heaven-human relationship (tian-ren guanxi 天人關係) in Zhuangzi. While existing scholarship often explains the apparent tensions among these conceptualizations in terms of different authors and historical dating, this paper sets aside questions of textual formation and brings to light conceptual patterns that emerge from Zhuangzi’s rich philosophical resources. Through a comprehensive analysis of the heaven-human relationship and its contextual usages across the corpus, this paper reveals that these seemingly incongruent conceptualizations constitute progressive transformations in philosophical perspective, with each conceptual layer building upon and refining the previous one. From one-sided views to the recognition of both sides, from rigid dichotomies to acknowledging ambiguities in epistemological categories and ultimately transcending these categories, this layered interpretative framework reveals an internally coherent and self-reflective vision underlying the Zhuangzi corpus as a whole.
While previous studies have noticed the unreality of the Four Great Elements held by the Indian Buddhist philosopher Harivarman in his * Tattvasiddhi , they have typically mentioned it only in analyzing Harivarman’s definition of the material aggregate, without systematically examining why and how Harivarman argues that the Four Great Elements are conceptual. Moreover, existing research remains largely philological, lacking philosophical analysis. To address these gaps, this paper reconceptualizes Harivarman’s argument through the framework of the bundle theory of substance. After clarifying Harivarman’s metaphysics of physical entities, I demonstrate that Harivarman treats the Four Great Elements as substances that are composed of four basic kinds of properties: visible form, odor, taste, and touch. I also argue that Harivarman’s definition of the material aggregate supports his argument that the Four Great Elements are conceptual.
This paper reframes a long-standing interpretive debate over Analects 14.31 as a normative question in the ethics of trust: under conditions of informational insufficiency, should trust be adopted as a default stance? I argue that the passage does not support such a presumption, but reveals a virtue-based conditionality: trust is neither a pre-given moral requirement nor a passive response to external cues, but is a cultivated stance resting on moral discernment formed through gongfu. To substantiate this claim, I analyze how interpretations of this passage have been mobilized across Confucian contexts to support competing normative accounts of trust. While rejecting trust as a universal default, this Confucian approach affirms its ethical weight as a morally significant stance under uncertainty and offers a critical and constructive alternative to contextual approaches by grounding trust in cultivated moral discernment rather than presumptive stance-taking.
As the Jesuits transmitted Aristotelian philosophy to China, they also transmitted Confucianism to the West. This double transmission is often studied separately, but this obscures the fact that the two transmissions are tightly connected. This paper compares the Xiushen xixue ( Western studies on the Cultivation of the Self , 1637) of the Italian Jesuit Alfonso Vagnone with the “Monastica ethica” ( Individual Ethics , 1711) of the Flemish Jesuit François Noël, showing how the two Jesuits built their comparative ethics based on Scholastic philosophy, enabling them to show significant similarities Chinese and Western ethics. Despite this overall compatibility, this study explains how the two Jesuits were aware of differences: while Vagnone emphasized the idea of acquired virtue as a specific contribution to supplement and correct Confucian ethics, Noël de-emphasized the Mencian ideas of innate virtues to draw closer to Aristotelian and Christian ethics.
In this article, I make a methodological intervention into first philosophy within Islamic philosophical and theological discourses. I propose that two metatheoretical norms, non-circularity and publicness, must be met for a first philosophy to achieve its proposed explanatory priority. I use this criterion to construct a dilemma, showing that prevailing approaches within Islamic traditions either put “being” first, presupposing a given set of metaphysical commitments (e.g., kalām and Avicennan camps), or prioritise “intelligibility”, drawing an abductive inference to a henological explanatory framework that ultimately relies on non-public mystical warrants (e.g., Ismāʿīlī, Suhrawardī and Akbarī strands of thought). As an extended test case, I examine the metaphysical status and discovery of essences by select representative authors, showing how their approaches to explanatory priority are challenged by my argument. My aim is not to deny the possibility of first philosophy within Islam but to clarify its preconditions in terms of public warrant.
Kantianism has long been the enemy of African Philosophy. In this paper, I aim to motivate the surprising – possibly even offensive – thesis that Kantianism needs the African aphorism for its completion, and vice versa. The African aphorism is the basic precept of African ethics, that is, “A person is a person through other persons”. I begin by describing my favoured, constructivist reading of this African aphorism, after which I outline the problem Kant faces in his famous derivation of the categorical imperative from the hypothetical imperative. I examine the solutions to this problem previously proposed by Korsgaard and Darwall, and, finding both wanting, go on to explain how I think the African aphorism can do what these others could not. We can, as Kant intended, derive the categorical imperative from the hypothetical imperative – but only with the additional, African premise that a person is a person through other persons.
Sungmoon Kim is a paradigm case of a Confucian pragmatic democrat whose commitment is to democracy. This paper argues that Kim’s overall Confucian political philosophy project faces the following three challenges. The first challenge is about Kim’s reading of early Confucian texts, such as his reading of Mengzi and Xunzi . The second challenge deals with Kim’s understanding of the relationship between Confucianism and democracy. The third challenge is about the distinctiveness of Kim’s Confucian democracy.
This paper defends an expertise-centric account of moral intuition and Confucian sagehood in the Mencius . I argue that we should conceive of sages as moral experts and moral intuitions as intellectual seemings, some of which are expert-like in content and therefore afford prima facie epistemic justification to the moral beliefs that are based on them. Such a proposal rejects an intuition-based moral epistemology in favour of a broadly process reliabilist one. I motivate the proposal by arguing that it allows us to avoid three problems, two of which arise for moral intuitionist readings of Mencius: the problem that such readings posit a mysterious faculty of intuition and that we have difficulty explaining why some but not all relevant moral intuitions epistemically justify beliefs. The third problem arises for both moral intuitionist and connoisseurship readings: the problem that the moral intuitions of Confucian sages are epistemically inaccessible to ordinary people.
