Fazang's Total Power Mereology: An Interpretive Analytic Reconstruction

Asian Philosophy 19 (3):199-211 (2009)
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Abstract

In his _Treatise on the Golden Lion_, Fazang says that wholes are _in_ each of their parts and that each part of a whole _is_ every other part of the whole. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of these remarks according to which they are not obviously false, and I use this interpretation in order to rigorously reconstruct Fazang's arguments for his claims. On the interpretation I favor, Fazang means that the presence of a whole's part suffices for the presence of the whole and that the presence of any such part is both necessary and sufficient for the presence of any other part. I also argue that this interpretation is more plausible than its extant competitors

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Nicholaos Jones
University of Alabama, Huntsville

References found in this work

A source book in Chinese philosophy.Wing-Tsit Chan - 1963 - Princeton, N.J.,: Princeton University Press. Edited by Wing-Tsit Chan.
A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy.A. C. Graham & Wing-Tsit Chan - 1964 - Journal of the American Oriental Society 84 (1):60.
Parts as Essential to Their Wholes.Roderick M. Chisholm - 1973 - Review of Metaphysics 26 (4):581 - 603.
Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra.Francis H. Cook - 1977 - Pennsylvania State University Press.

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