Abstract:This article is concerned with the role of Buddhist philosophy, and more broadly of non-Western philosophies, within the discipline of philosophy as this is professed and practiced today. I begin by deliberately engaging in a game of definitions to demonstrate that, whichever of the definitions standardly employed to deny non-Western philosophy the prestigious moniker, Buddhism nevertheless wins: it does count as philosophy. Having made that point, however, I go on to effectively undermine it by pointing out that anyone can win (...) the game if they get to make up the rules. Given that the score is arbitrary, then, I show up the game itself as absurd. On this basis, I ultimately cry foul at the perpetuation of a game still so plainly played on fields far from level, and therefore argue against excusing philosophers engaged in it of the charge of racism. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed light on the putative functions of placing images in judicial opinions from the judges’ perspective. Thus far, commentators have overlooked the functions that images play for judges when used in judicial opinions and consequently have failed to provide a thorough understanding of the process. To help fill this gap, Jerome Frank’s ideas on judging will be presented. The argument goes that using images in judicial opinions can be interpreted as a way to enable the decision-making (...) process to be, as far as possible, devoid of hypocrisy, closer to judicial candor and more open to scrutiny. This notion can be excavated from Frank’s works in light of the existential features of both passing judgments and articulating decision-making processes by and for judges themselves. As will be shown, Frank’s views on judicial decision-making are more original and enlightening than critics might suggest and they are particularly relevant when examining the use of images in judicial opinions from a judge’s perspective. (shrink)

Nagarjuna (c. 150-250), founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers aside from the Buddha himself, concludes his masterpiece, Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, with these baffling verses: -/- For the abandonment of all views He taught the true teaching By means of compassion I salute him, Gautama -/- But how could anyone possibly abandon all views? In Buddhism between Religion and Philosophy, Rafal K. Stepien shows not only (...) how Nagarjuna's radical teaching of no-view or “abelief” makes sense within his Buddhist philosophy, but also how it stands at the summit of his religious mission to care for all living beings. Rather than treating any one aspect of Nagarjuna's ideas in isolation, here his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics emerge as a single coherent and convincing philosophical-religious system of thought and practice. -/- Grounded in meticulous study of original texts from classical India and China but innovating on the theories and methods underpinning contemporary scholarship East and West, this study shows how profoundly important voices from the diverse religious and philosophical traditions of the world have until now been diminished, distorted, and silenced. In opening up truly global horizons of existing and co-existing in the world, this work challenges the very ways in which we think about religion and philosophy. (shrink)

The article examines work by contemporary American artist Kiki Smith, who proposes a future in which human and nonhuman bodily borders merge. The artist’s contribution to the more-than-human artistic entanglements is juxtaposed with Joseph Beuys’s artistic manifesto from 1974 which proposes, among other things, an attempt to get outside of the represented human towards the asignified ahuman. In Kiki’s sculpture, both human and nonhuman animals undergo constant morphogenesis, becoming hybrid forms far beyond the human-social paradigm, implying that the human and (...) nonhuman binary, due to the exchange of affective entanglements, is no longer valid in the heyday of techno-scientific development. The analyzed work shows that both human and nonhuman bodies are raw materials not separated from one another but always interconnected with the world and its ongoing material processes. Thus, the article emphasizes that it is only through the transgression of the human and nonhuman border that one can acknowledge the more ethical and political ways of cooperation needed for the appreciation of the multispecies dimension of our world and its survival. (shrink)

The paper gives insight into the revaluation of popular Gothic aesthetics in Jim Jarmusch’s 2014 production Only Lovers Left Alive. Drawing on critical theory and the postmodern theoretical framework, the article suggests that the film transgresses contemporary culture immersed in a “culture of death” that has produced a vast amount of cultural texts under the rubric of “Gothicism.” By considering Jean Baudrillard’s concept of transaesthetics and Judith Halberstam’s writings on contemporary monstrosity, the paper shows that a commodified Gothic mode has (...) lost its older deconstructive functions that operated on the margins of the mainstream. Now entirely focused on the duplication of the same aesthetic codes and signs, Gothic productions conform to the rules of postindustrial culture, enriching entertainment imagery with the neutralized concept of “otherness.” Hence, the article engages primarily with Jarmusch’s indie aesthetics that goes beyond easily recognizable patterns and generic conventions and allows the director to emphasize that the arts are rejuvenating forces, the antidote to a commoditized environment. Then, the focus is on the construction of main characters—Adam and Eve, ageless vampires and spouses—who thanks to nostalgic theatricality and performance reconfigure the mainstream monstrosity. Ultimately, the article emphasizes that Jarmusch’s film, to a large extent, becomes a warning against the inevitable results of advanced capitalism practiced on a global scale. (shrink)

This article seeks to introduce a greater degree of precision into our understanding of Madhyamaka Buddhist ontological non-foundationalism, focussing specifically on the Madhyamaka founder Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE). It distinguishes four senses of what the ‘foundation’ whose existence Mādhyamikas deny means; that is, (1) as ‘something that stands under or grounds things’ (a position known as generic substantialism); (2) as ‘a particular kind of basic entity’ (specific substantialism); (3) as ‘an individual essence (a haecceity or thisness of that object) by (...) means of which it is identical to that very object, to itself’ (modal essentialism); and (4) as ‘an essence in the absence of which an object could be of a radically different kind or sort of object than it in fact is’ (sortal essentialism). It then proceeds to delineate the Madhyamaka refutation of the specific substantialist position in terms of its argued denial of dharma as basic entity; of generic substantialism and modal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of svabhāva as both foundation for and essence of putative entities; and of sortal essentialism in terms of its argued denial of essentialist conceptions of conceptual thought (vikalpa), mental construction (prapañca), and in short the entire domain of ratiocination (kalpanā), by means of its notion of conceptual imputation (prajñaptir upādāya)—a denial strictly speaking ontological, but of what are putative epistemic entities. The final portion of the article explains the relationship of ontological to other forms of non-foundationalism according to Madhyamaka. (shrink)

This article is about the problem of non-disclosure of an assumed method and approach to international law. That makes some real and current issues of international more difficult to grasp – and how to debate about something if there is a misunderstanding of the basics? The problem is depicted with two examples: the attitude of international law toward the statehood of Taiwan along with the on-going development of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Both reveal the clash between so-called black-letterism and (...) a policy-approach to international law. Meanwhile the doctrinal method is fully functional and mostly accepted in domestic law, though often contested in international law. But after all, international law being sui generis law is not just an instance of the domestic-type law which is the effect of particular features of the international community. (shrink)

This article investigates the structures of an identifiably Buddhist philosophy of religion, understood as the philosophical exposition and exploration of Buddhist religiosity. I thus theorize what forms a philosophy of religion structured according to Buddhist principles and paradigms might take, address various theoretical and methodological considerations, and survey a range of candidate schemas, which latter are arranged under textual, sectarian, and doctrinal rubrics. Overall, this project is undertaken on the understanding that the study of Buddhism, among other global traditions, need (...) not and should not replicate conceptual structures imposed upon it from without, and that philosophy of religion is enriched by attention to the resolutely plural philosophies of religions worldwide. (shrink)

Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness: Tradition and Dialogue, edited by Mark Siderits, Ching Keng and John Spackman. Brill, 2021. 356pp., €135/$162. Hb ISBN-13: 9789004440890; e-PDF ISBN-13: 9789004440913.

Philosophy of religion has been the object of penetrating critiques concerning its continued near-complete blindness to all but a single religion. The need for philosophy of religion to open up so as to include more than merely occasional and tokenistic treatments of ‘Other’ religions is clearly evident from the slew of recently published titles concerned with diversifying the field. In this light, a book such as Victoria Harrison’s Eastern Philosophy of Religion should surely come as a welcome addition. And yet, (...) unfortunately, this book turns out to be a case study in how not to diversify philosophy of religion in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In the first part of the book Ewa Bińczyk discusses postulates that have been formulated in response to the problem of the unwanted consequences of the practical success of technoscience (deriving mainly from science and technology studies). In the second part Tomasz Stępień analyses nanotechnology as example of technoscience development and presents the nano-assessment framework.

Emotion understanding (EU) is the capacity to understand the nature, causes, and consequences of the emotional experience of the self and others. The cultural differences and similarities in the development of EU are still not well recognized, especially within Slavic culture and language. We tested 180 Polish children aged 5–11 years using the Test of Emotion Comprehension and compared their results with data from British and Italian children. We revealed a similar pattern of EU development between the three groups, showing (...) a growing number of the core EU components with age. In all samples, the three difficulty-differentiated clusters of EU components were distinguishable. Some cultural differences were observed only in a few EU components – especially, British and Italian children recognized the cognitively-based individualistic aspect of emotions to a higher degree than Polish children. These results supplement the current knowledge about EU development in children within European cultures. (shrink)

This is an essay in comparative philosophy and philosophy of religion building on the ontological claims espoused by two major thinkers in the Buddhist and Christian philosophical traditions: Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250) and Hegel (1770–1831). I use Nāgārjuna’s fourfold tetralemma (catuṣkoṭi) and Hegel’s threefold dialectic (Dialektik) to propose a novel understanding of the ontological status of the self in its relation to itself and to its other, the no-self. Thus, I apply the tetralemma to the self, arguing that, to attain ontic (...) completion, the self must itself reflect the tetralemmic form in the totality of its being – nothing – both-being-and-nothing – neither-being-nor-nothing. These in turn correspond to the Hegelian in-itself, for-another, both-in-itself-and-for-another, and neither-in-itself-nor-for-another. (shrink)

The presented analyses are focusing on three predominant theoretical approaches in the philosophy of science and technology: technoscience (STS), technology assessment (TA) and converging technologies (NBIC). On this base are extrapolated the coordinates of the heuristics of technosciences.

This article explores the implications of Bernard Stiegler’s concept of the Neganthropocene, coined to reconfigure the entropic and apocalyptic conditions of the Anthropocene, for the artistic project Air Morphologies. Created by a London-based duo, Matterlurgy, the interactive Virtual Reality research project investigates the materiality and composition of air pollution particles, their causes, effects and morphological agency. Matterlurgy’s project, which locates viewers in the Virtual Reality environment and engages them in participatory activities, becomes a techno-ethical practice of nurturing ways to think (...) and care for the more-than-human world essentially transformed and dominated by the anthropogenic factors. The artistic practice indicates that we need to think collectively, not about but with nature, technology, history, objects and theories. As the article shows, with such strategies, we will be able to acknowledge more-than-human interconnections, human-nature-technics connections and rework the conventional patterns of knowledge production to heal the adverse outcomes of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

In the paper we give a sucient condition of the Interpolation Property in propositional calculi; then we establish the power of the class of the systems with Craig's property. Next we show that there does not exist a minimal R0-system with Craig-Godel-Lindenbaum's property. Finally, we generalize Sobocinski-Tarskis theorem concerning Sobocinski-Tarski's property.

. In this paper we propose a new definition of entailment and construct a system S of predicate calculus based on this entailment. It is also shown that all well-known set theories can be based on the system S.

The present paper is a continuation of [6] and [7]. Thus the content of this paper is the following. At first we establish properties of systems S 2 n and S 2∗ n , where systems S 2 n and S 2∗ n are extensions of Rasiowa-S lupecki’s systems Sn and S ∗ n . Then we shall show that for every cardinal number m there exist a system ST 4 m of propositional calculus and a system SP 4 m (...) of predicate calculus such that the system ST 4 m has exactly m Lindenbaum’s oversystems and the system SP 4 m has exactly m Lindenbaum’s oversystems, where 1 ≤ m ≤ 2 ℵ0. (shrink)

There are various authors who discussed the nature and manner of the existence of aesthetic values and the characterisation of aesthetic experience, among others, Thomas Acquinas, Roman Ingarden, Władyslaw Tatarkiewicz, Stanisław Ossowski, and Mieczysław Wallis. Taking into consideration their positions, the author claims that, potentially, each object as a coincidence of respective qualities is suitable for an aesthetic attitude. It may appear aesthetically somewhat, such that it alone may move (with its contents), i.e. it may draw attention, stir, delight, arouse (...) fancy, affect strongly. All this may be done ..disinterestedly\", therefore without any reference to the practical sphere (to the sphere of usefulness, profit), nor should this object be a source of pleasure (,,cause good composition\"). (shrink)