pt. 1. Basics of eastern and western views -- pt. 2. New analytical methods and workability -- pt. 3. Predictive power and future prospects.

Abdul Halim, of the National Translation Mission (NTM) India, interviews Ranganathan about his contributions to translation theory. Translation Today is a Double-blind, Peer- reviewed journal of the NTM.

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

This volume presents essays by pioneering thinkers including Tyler Burge, Gregory Chaitin, Daniel Dennett, Barry Mazur, Nicholas Humphrey, John Searle and Ian Stewart. Together they illuminate the Map/Territory Distinction that underlies at the foundation of the scientific method, thought and the very reality itself. It is imperative to distinguish Map from the Territory while analyzing any subject but we often mistake map for the territory. Meaning for the Reference. Computational tool for what it computes. Representations are handy and tempting that (...) we often end up committing the category error of over-marrying the representation with what is represented, so much so that the distinction between the former and the latter is lost. This error that has its roots in the pedagogy often generates a plethora of paradoxes/confusions which hinder the proper understanding of the subject. What are wave functions? Fields? Forces? Numbers? Sets? Classes? Operators? Functions? Alphabets and Sentences? Are they a part of our map? Or do they actually belong to the territory? Researcher, like a cartographer, clothes the reality by stitching multitudes of maps that simultaneously co-exist. A simple apple, for example, can be analyzed from several viewpoints beginning with evolution and biology, all the way down its microscopic quantum mechanical components. Is there a reality out there apart from these maps? How do these various maps interact/intermingle with each other to produce a coherent reality that we interact with? Or do they not? Does our brain uses its own internal maps to facilitate “physicist/mathematician” in us to construct the maps about the external territories in turn? If so, what is the nature of these internal maps? Are there meta-maps? Evolution definitely fences our perception and thereby our ability to construct maps, revealing to us only those aspects beneficial for our survival. But the question is, to what extent? Is there a way out of the metaphorical Platonic cave erected around us by the nature? While “Map is not the territory” as Alfred Korzybski remarked, join us in this journey to know more, while we inquire on the nature and the reality of the maps which try to map the reality out there. The book also includes a foreword by Sir Roger Penrose and an afterword by Dagfinn Follesdal. (shrink)

The authors study the impact of institutional corporate social responsibility —defined as CSR targeted at a borrowing firm’s secondary stakeholders—on bank loans. Findings suggest that higher levels of institutional CSR are associated with lower levels of interest rates and loan spreads. In addition, institutional CSR also tempers the positive impact of loan maturity and firm leverage on interest rates and loan spread. These effects were strongest among firms that demonstrated sustained performance, rather than among firms that showed mixed performance in (...) terms of their secondary stakeholder-related activities. This study indicates institutional CSR is valued by stakeholders for its risk mitigating and transaction cost reducing effects independent of technical CSR, defined as CSR targeted at primary stakeholders. (shrink)

Dogmatism is the view that perceptual experience provides immediate defeasible justification for certain beliefs. The bootstrapping problem for dogmatism is that it sanctions a certain defective form of reasoning that concludes in the belief that one's perceptual faculties are reliable. This paper argues that the only way for the dogmatist to avoid the bootstrapping problem is to claim that epistemic justification fails to have a structural property known as cut. This allows the dogmatist to admit that each step in the (...) defective reasoning considered on its own is acceptable, but when stitched together, these pieces of reasoning are unacceptable (§2). The fact that this is the only plausible solution to the bootstrapping problem is, in one way, bad news. This is because it adds another member to a family of recently uncovered results that show dogmatism is incompatible with certain connections between epistemic justification and probabilities (§3). But I try to make the best of it on the dogmatist’s behalf. I show that within a certain kind of foundationalist framework, we can make good on this idea that epistemic justification fails to satisfy cut in a way needed to solve the bootstrapping problem (§4–5). (shrink)

Although the mathematics of interest is very precise, the practice of charging computing and disclosing interest or cost of credit is full of variations and therefore often questionable on ethical grounds. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the prevalent practices which are incorrect, illogical, unfair or deceptive. Both utilitarian and formalist schools of ethical theory would find these practices to be inappropriate. The paper will specifically look at unfair practices in the areas of estimation of intrayear (...) rates, use of 360 days in a year, the "rule of 78th", interest rate ('APR') advertising, and computation of unpaid balance by credit card issuers to figure interest costs.The current practices are not in the best interest of the average consumer. There is, therefore, an urgent need for new legislation, change in regulatory code and disclosure requirement for eliminating these unethical practices. The author recommends that the Truth in Lending Code of the Federal Reserve should require the disclosure of the effective APR if the periodic rate is determined by dividing the 'APR' by the number of payment period in a year; the use of 360 days in a year methods and the "Rule of 78ths" should be immediately discontinued; Deceptive advertising, which tend to understate the true cost of credit or hides hidden costs and fees should be outlawed; interest should be payable with the same frequency as the frequency of compounding and credit card holders should be provided with a comparative example of various methods of balance computation. (shrink)

In this compendium of essays, some of the world's leading thinkers discuss their conceptions of space and time, as viewed through the lens of their own discipline. With an epilogue on the limits of human understanding, this volume hosts contributions from six or more diverse fields. It presumes only rudimentary background knowledge on the part of the reader. Time and again, through the prism of intellect, humans have tried to diffract reality into various distinct, yet seamless, atomic, yet holistic, independent, (...) yet interrelated disciplines and have attempted to study it contextually. Philosophers debate the paradoxes, or engage in meditations, dialogues and reflections on the content and nature of space and time. Physicists, too, have been trying to mold space and time to fit their notions concerning micro- and macro-worlds. Mathematicians focus on the abstract aspects of space, time and measurement. While cognitive scientists ponder over the perceptual and experiential facets of our consciousness of space and time, computer scientists theoretically and practically try to optimize the space-time complexities in storing and retrieving data/information. The list is never-ending. Linguists, logicians, artists, evolutionary biologists, geographers et cetera, all are trying to weave a web of understanding around the same duo. However, our endeavour into a world of such endless imagination is restrained by intellectual dilemmas such as: Can humans comprehend everything? Are there any limits? Can finite thought fathom infinity? We have sought far and wide among the best minds to furnish articles that provide an overview of the above topics. We hope that, through this journey, a symphony of patterns and tapestry of intuitions will emerge, providing the reader with insights into the questions: What is Space? What is Time? Chapter [15] of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. (shrink)

Since at least the 1960s, deontic logicians and ethicists have worried about whether there can be normative systems that allow conflicting obligations. Surprisingly, however, little direct attention has been paid to questions about how we may reason with conflicting obligations. In this paper, I present a problem for making sense of reasoning with conflicting obligations and argue that no deontic logic can solve this problem. I then develop an account of reasoning based on the popular idea in ethics that reasons (...) explain obligations and show that it solves this problem. (shrink)

How do multiple reasons combine to support a conclusion about what to do or believe? This question raises two challenges: How can we represent the strength of a reason? How do the strengths of multiple reasons combine? Analogous challenges about confirmation have been answered using probabilistic tools. Can reductive and nonreductive theories of reasons use these tools to answer their challenges? Yes, or more exactly: reductive theories can answer both challenges. Nonreductive theories, with the help of a result in confirmation (...) theory, can answer one, and there are grounds for optimism that they can answer the other. (shrink)

Reasons can interact in a variety of ways to determine what we ought to do or believe. And there can be cases where two reasons to do an act or have a belief are individually worse than a reason to not do that act or have that belief, but the reasons together are better than the reason to not do that act or have that belief. So the reasons together―which we can call the accrual of those reasons—can have a strength (...) that is an increasing function of the strengths of the individual reasons. In this paper, we will look at how reasons determine what we ought to do and believe in cases where the accrual of reasons is relevant. Our focus will not primarily be on questions about the nature of individual reasons and their weight. Instead, we will at the outset rely on our pretheoretical grip on what reasons there are and how weighty they are individually and ask the more formal or structural question of how to determine the strength of their accrual based on these facts. In looking at these issues, my goal will not be anything as ambitious as developing a full theory of the accrual of reasons. Rather, my goal will be more modest: I will introducing some of the challenges for providing an adequate model and argue that a promising approach to resolving these challenges involves making use of the familiar distinction in moral philosophy between derivative and non-derivative normative notions. (shrink)

Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches Description: Very little is known about the author of this book apart from the facts that he is a retired Government of India officer, now in his late nineties, apparently hoary, but healthy. When requested for more bio-data, he wrote back…The Real author of the Original Yoga is the Lord Siva. In the mundane world, Patanjali is the prime propagator of yoga. Any other claim to authorship, therefore, cannot but be spurious. …It (...) is Truth that matters, not the utterer of the Truth. No Truth ever becomes a bit truer even when repeated by the most distinguished person. …Hence all genuine aspirants of yoga should be content to remain unknown and unnoticed by others. His other published work is Hindu Concept of Life and Death. (shrink)

Differential equations of second order appear in physical applications such as fluid dynamics, electromagnetism, acoustic vibrations, and quantum mechanics. In this paper, necessary and sufficient conditions are established of the solutions to second-order half-linear delay differential equations of the form ς y u ′ y a ′ + ∑ j = 1 m p j y u c j ϑ j y = 0 for y ≥ y 0, under the assumption ∫ ∞ ς η − 1 / a d (...) η = ∞. We consider two cases when a c j, where a and c j are the quotient of two positive odd integers. Two examples are given to show effectiveness and applicability of the result. (shrink)

Background: Recently, a singular survey titled “Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals,” which addresses shortcomings of previous instruments, has been validated. Aim: To determine how moral distress affects nurses and physicians differently across the various wards of a community hospital. Participant and research context: We distributed a self-administered, validated survey titled “Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals” to all nurses and physicians in the medical/surgical ward, telemetry ward, intensive care units, and emergency rooms of a community hospital. Findings: A total of 101 (...) surveys were included in the study. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score for all respondents was 143.0. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score was 1.75 greater for nurses than for physicians, and nurses were 2.52 times more likely to consider leaving their position due to moral distress. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score for moral distress was least prevalent in the medical/surgical ward and highest in the telemetry ward. The intensive care unit ward had a mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score mildly greater than the emergency room. Ethical considerations: No participant identifying information or information connecting a survey response to an individual was collected. This study was approved by the Raritan Bay Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board. Discussion: This study provides insight into the level of moral distress in the community hospital setting. Telemetry nurses experience significantly more than nurses in other wards. Telemetry nurses typically manage patients sicker than medical/surgical wards, however do not have the resources of the critical care units. This scenario presents challenges for telemetry nurses and may explain their elevated moral distress. Conclusion: In community hospitals, telemetry nurses experience a considerably greater amount of moral distress compared to their colleagues in other wards. As measured by the Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals questionnaire, moral distress continues to be higher among nurses compared to physicians. (shrink)

One of the popular albeit controversial ideas in the last century of moral philosophy is that what we ought to do is explained by our reasons. And one of the central features of reasons that accounts for their popularity among normative theorists is that they can conflict. But I argue that the fact that reasons conflict actually also poses two closely related problems for this popular idea in moral philosophy. The first problem is a generalization of a problem in deontic (...) logic concerning the existence of conflicting obligations. The second problem arises from a tension between the fact that reasons can conflict and a model of how reasons explain ‘ought’s that has been widely accepted. Having presented each of these problems, I develop a unified solution to them that is informed by results in both ethics and deontic logic. An important implication of this solution is that we must distinguish between derivative and nonderivative reasons and revise our conception how it is that reasons explain ‘ought’s. (shrink)

A traditional picture is that cases of deontic constraints--- cases where an act is wrong (or one that there is most reason to not do) even though performing that act will prevent more acts of the same morally (or practically) relevant type from being performed---form a kind of fault line in ethical theory separating (agent-neutral) consequentialist theories from other ethical theories. But certain results in the recent literature, such as those due to Graham Oddie and Peter Milne in "Act and (...) Value", do not sit well this traditional wisdom. My aim in this paper is to argue that both the traditional wisdom and Oddie and Milne are mistaken. I begin by looking more closely at the traditional wisdom and why it fails (§1). Then I develop my account of this fault line in ethical theory and its importance (§2). Finally I show that a diagnosis of where Oddie and Milne go wrong follows as a corollary of this new account (§3). An important upshot will be that discussions of cases of deontic constraints would do best to focus on the account of the nature and importance of the cases identified in this paper rather than continuing to work with the mistaken traditional picture. (shrink)

The verdicts standard consequentialism gives about what we are obligated to do crucially depend on what theory of value the consequentialist accepts. This makes it hard to say what separates standard consequentialist theories from non-consequentialist theories. This article discusses how we can draw sharp lines separating standard consequentialist theories from other theories and what assumptions about goodness we must make in order to draw these lines. The discussion touches on cases of deontic constraints, cases of deontic options, and cases involved (...) in the so-called "actualism"/"possibilism" debate. What emerges is that there are various interesting patterns relating the different commitments of consequentialism, different principles about obligation and about goodness, and different rules concerning how facts about values determine facts about obligation. (shrink)

In this chapter, we begin by sketching in the broadest possible strokes the ideas behind two formal systems that have been introduced with to goal of explicating the ways in which reasons interact to support the actions and conclusions they do. The first of these is the theory of defeasible reasoning developed in the seminal work of Pollock; the second is a more recent theory due to Horty, which adapts and develops the default logic introduced by Reiter to provide an (...) account of reasons. However, the implementations are complex enough, in both cases, to prevent anything more than this sketch. And we would not want to give the impression that we think that work on the logic of reasons must follow the path mapped out in either of these theories—indeed, we feel that the field is wide open. In the remainder of the chapter, therefore, will concentrate on a number of issues bearing on the logic of reasons that are either not treated in the work of Pollock and Horty, or whose treatment there is, we feel, either inadequate or incomplete. These are: first, the question of whether it is necessary to understand logical interactions among reasons themselves, rather than simply between reasons and the actions or conclusions they support, and if so, what principles might govern these interactions; second, priority relations among reasons and the notion of reason accrual; and third, some problems posed by undercutting defeat. (shrink)

This article attempts to examine the portrayal of the character of Arthur Fleck in Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019). In the initial part of the film, Arthur exhibits signs that reveal he is headed towards committing a violent crime. Arthur displays signs of psychopathy and a lack of empathy. This article links criminal behaviour analysis to the Bible of the Arya Samaj, an Indian text, to find out how ancient Indian literature’s empirical theories, which are intertwined with philosophical and religious content, (...) shed light on criminal behaviour. The primary purpose of this article is to analyse the behavioural pattern in the character of Fleck and establish links to Dayanand Saraswati’s Satyarth Prakash, which discusses different types of Avidyas, a key concept in Indian philosophy that can be translated as ignorance or unwisdom, which is seen as a fundamental cause of suffering and bondage. It is certainly a significant factor in a person’s personality and behaviour. The major aim of this character analysis is not only to establish the link between Indian ancient texts and criminological behavioural patterns but also to reconceptualize evil through the lenses of Vedic hermeneutics. Vedic hermeneutics is the study of interpreting and understanding the ancient Vedic texts of Hinduism, where an important aspect is the recognition of different levels of meaning within the texts. (shrink)

Evil in the Vedas and the Upanishads undergoes a theoretical transformation as this literature itself moves away from its consequentialist and naturalistic roots to a radical procedural approach to moral questions. The goods of life on the early account were largely natural: evil was a moral primitive that motivated a teleological approach to morality geared towards avoiding natural evil. The gods of nature (such as fire, and rain, intimately involved in metabolism) were propitiated to gain beneficent results, and to avoid (...) hunger and illness. To please the gods of nature involves eating, which is merely the imposition of natural evil on sacrificial victims so that one avoids the evils of disease and hunger oneself. The entire system is one of resentment: the goods of life are defined by way of the bads that they displace. Authors of the latter part of the Vedas, such as the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, show themselves to be concerned about the irreducibility of evil on the naturalistic account, but also more broadly with the irreducible phenomenon of moral luck that comes in tow with a teleological approach to ethics. Whether one is able to ward off evil and enjoy the goods of life is not under one’s control and is within the purview of the forces of nature. This motivates the transition to a procedural account of ethics---yoga---where evil is not a primitive but a side effect of the non-yogic life, characterized by a lack of self-governance. As Death teaches us, evil is not a moral primitive and can be reduced out of the moral equation by taking responsibility for a lack of autonomy, which transforms this external threat of a lack of autonomy into a self lack of autonomy, or self-governance. With this transformation we are delivered into the realm of preservation (Vishnu). (shrink)

There is consensus among computer scientists, logicians, and philosophers that good reasoning with qualitative beliefs must have the structural property of cumulative transitivity or, for short, cut. This consensus is typically explicitly argued for partially on the basis of practical and mathematical considerations. But the consensus is also implicit in the approach philosophers take to almost every puzzle about reasoning that involves multiple steps: philosophers typically assume that if each step in reasoning is acceptable considered on its own, the whole (...) chain of reasoning must also acceptable. In this paper I focus on whether there are good philosophical reasons for thinking that the consensus that good reasoning must satisfy cut is true. My central claim is that we should not accept the consensus—good reasoning might not satisfy cut. In particular, I consider four arguments for the consensus and explain why they are unpersuasive. (§2-5). I then show that the issue of whether good reasoning is cut turns on a substantive yet until now unnoticed question in epistemology (§6). (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno argues that, in modernity, art and philosophy are reciprocally dependent upon each other for legitimation and critical force. This claim has puzzled scholars and provoked controversy. I argue that Adorno’s thesis may be comprehended in the following manner: art requires philosophy because, without the latter, art would lack the power to critique social and historical reality (in particular, the ideological elements that often remain invisible as second nature), and to rationally interpret the material particularity expressed by (...) such reality; and, conversely, philosophy requires art because the latter expresses historical experience to reason. Such material historical experience is necessary in order to prevent philosophy from falling into ideological convention; idle speculation; or abstract and reified instrumentality. Thus, the constellation of history, art, and philosophy is essential to Adorno’s aesthetics. (shrink)

Constellations, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 337-349, September 2021.

One family of maximizing act consequentialist theories are actualist direct theories. Indeed, historically there are at least three different forms of actualist direct consequentialism (due to Bentham, Moore, and contemporary consequentialists). This paper is about the logical differences between these three actualist direct theories and the differences between actualist direct theories and their competitors. Three main points emerge. First, the sharpest separation between actualist direct theories and their competitors concerns the so-called inheritance principle. Second, there are a myriad of other (...) logical differences among actualist direct theories. Third, one theory (Moore's theory) stands out among actualist direct theories because it entails a variety of logical principles. This fact may count in favor of that theory. (shrink)

This is the first of lessons on the Bhagavad Gītā. The Bhagavad Gītā is a small section of the Mahābhārata, which is a dialectical experiment in moral theory. Here the characters not only assume the role of prominent ethical theories, but must also work through the ethical challenge as a matter of practice. In this module I explicate the main arguments of the Gītā, which lead us from teleological accounts of ethics (Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism) to procedural accounts (Deontology and Bhakti). (...) Bhakti is the most radically procedural of the four theories, and provides an account of right action independent of the good. To access article: (a) choose "Ethics 1" from the first drop down menu, and (b) the title of the paper in the second drop down menu---after clicking on the link (the title of this article above, or the link below). (shrink)

Though there have been productive interactions between moral philosophers and deontic logicians, there has also been a tradition of neglecting the insights that the fields can offer one another. The most sustained interactions between moral philosophers and deontic logicians have notbeen systematic but instead have been scattered across a number of distinct and often unrelated topics. This chapter primarily focuses on three topics. First, we discuss the “actualism/possibilism” debate which, very roughly, concerns the relevance of what one will do at (...) some future time to what one ought to do at present (§2). This topic is also used to introduce various modal deontic logics. Second we discuss the particularism debate which, very roughly, concerns whether there can be any systematic general theory of what we ought to do (§3). This topic is also used to introduce various non-modal deontic logics. Third, we discuss collective action problems which concern the connection between the obligations of individuals and the behavior and obligations of groups of individuals (§4).This topic is also used to discuss formal systems that allow us to study the relationship between individuals and groups. The chapter also contains a general discussion of the relation between ethical theory and deontic logic (§1) and a brief consideration of other miscellaneous topics (§5). (shrink)

Syntax has to do with rules that constrain how words can combine to make acceptable sentences. Semantics (Frege and Russell) concerns the meaning of words and sentences, and pragmatics (Austin and Grice) has to do with the context bound use of meaning. We can hence distinguish between three competing principles of translation: S—translation preserves the syntax of an original text (ST) in the translation (TT); M—translation preserves the meaning of an ST in a TT; and P—translation preserves the pragmatics of (...) an ST in a TT. A prominent form of P is functionalism defended by linguists and translation theorists (J.R. Firth, Eugene Nida, Susan Bassnett and many others) and historically was defended by philosophers (Russell, Ogden and Richard) but abandoned by philosophers and criticized by Wittgenstein. If we adopt M, then a TT will always say exactly what the ST says, and hence all subsequent TTs, even alternative ones produced via M, will be consistent with each other. But if we adopt P, in contrast, we have no reason to believe that the TTs will say what the ST does, and moreover they can contradict each other. If such contradictory translations are produced on the basis of the totality of empirical evidence, it results in what Quine called the indeterminacy of translation. Yet, P is not easy to reject. In many cases, translation in accordance with M where the meaning to be preserved is linguistic results in TTs that are failures. In contrast to a language focused approach to semantics, I close by following a lead in the translation theory literature of identifying text-types (genres) as a tool for identifying translatable content in an ST. To individuate text-types I identify them with disciplines, as elucidated by the 2nd century Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra. This allows for the definition of textual meaning as the discipline relative pragmatics of an ST and further for translation to proceed by way of M, while taking the intuitions that motivate P seriously. Translations that preserve textual meaning will not only have the same meaning as each other but will be pragmatically felicitous. (shrink)

This chapter explores the role of evil in the development of the Vedas and Upaniṣads. The Vedas and the Upaniṣads, or the Vedas are the repository of veda of the early Indo-European peoples of South Asia. Written and collected over a thousand-year period, from 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, the Vedas says many things about evil. However, the corpus presents a philosophical shift from naturalism to non-naturalism that also mirrors a shift from Consequentialism to Deontology. The problem with naturalism on (...) the Vedic reckoning is that it renders evil an ineliminable primitive that motivates a devotion to naturalistic forces to maximise good results. Vedic non-naturalism, rooted in the idea of self-development, treats evil as an inessential malady of self-governance. On the latter account, evil plays no essential role in self-understanding, and can be eliminated by self-governance. (shrink)

This module is a review of the guiding ideas of Lao Tzu’s ethics of wu wei and the Tao, an account of Lao Tzu’s prioritisation of the feminine as a basic moral principle, the problem of masculinity for practical rationality, his criticism of language, doctrines and oppressive politics. Finally, we shall evaluate the moral import of Lao Tzu’s teachings, and close with some reflections on the synergy between Taoist and Madhyamaka Buddhist thought, which rendered the latter so easily received in (...) Asia. (shrink)