This review article surveys five recent texts in the field of Asian philosophy. The reviewer looks at the practicability of each work for the classroom, as well as for scholars in the field. Strong points of each text are noted, as well as the intricacies of the introductions to each text supplied by the editor or translator of the respective books.The texts reviewed have as their subject China and Confucianism, with the exception of one work on Zen, though the link (...) to China is present in consideration of the history of Zen. (shrink)

Thomas Nagel contends that the actual philosophical problem in the meaning of life is the independent world we live in, and only requires a self-transcendent being who glimpses an independent world. I argue that Nagel is mistaken to think that self-transcendence evokes the same anxiety for humans living in the world of Dante as Darwin. Nagel’s view from nowhere is rather a modem version of the world. Secondly, while I concede that there is a common anxiety felt by self-transcendence in (...) glimpsing an independent objective world, we also view that world through a set of beliefs that conditions how we see that world. (shrink)