Hādhihi Ḥāshiyat al-ʻAllāmah al-fāḍil al-Shaykh Zayn al-Marṣafī ʻalá Sharḥ baytay al-Maqūlāt lil-ʻAllāmah al-Sujāʻī [microform]

Microfilm.

Excerpta isagogarum et categoriarum /

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Zazen, philosophy of mind, and the practicality of realising impermanence

This dissertation involves a general overview of the meditative practice of zazen and analytic philosophy of mind while suggesting a potential bridge between them in the form of an analysis of the practicality of realising impermanence. By the end of my argument I hope to have offered up some compelling evidence in favour of the idea that analytic philosophy would benefit greatly from adopting principles which are best learned and expressed through the practice of, and scholarship around, Zen Buddhism and in particular the treatment of the concept of impermanence. I demonstrate the Western philosophical tendency to make dichotomous assumptions about the nature of mind, even when explicitly denying a dualist framework. I do so by examining the historical and philosophical precedent for dualistic thinking in the work of figures such as Plato and Descartes. I expand on this idea by examining the psychology of categorisation - i.e. creating mental categories and boundaries - and demonstrating how such categorisations feeds back into behaviour in practical ways, both positive and negative. The Zen Buddhist principle of impermanence states that all phenomena are impermanent and therefore lack essential nature; this includes intellectual concepts such as the metaphysical framework of the analytic approach to mind. Impermanence is a principle which is realised through the embodied practice of zazen. By demonstrating its application to analytic philosophy of mind I show that zazen (and mindfulness practice in general) provides an ongoing opportunity for clearing up entrenched world views, metaphysical assumptions and dogmatic thinking. This in turn may promote a more holistic and ultimately more rewarding comprehension of the role of first-person experience in understanding the world. My argument is not limited to analytic philosophy of mind but reflects broad aspects of thinking in general, and I explain its application to issues of social importance, in particular education systems.

Hybrid philosophy and rational vitalism in Canguilhem and Ortega y Gasset

This paper explores the problem of the synthesis between vitalism and rationalism, in contemporary philosophy. With this aim, we compare the intellectual careers of Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995) and José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955). We contrast their conceptions of philosophy as “hybrid” knowledge, closely related to science, as well as their points of view on Vitalism, anthropology, the technique and the perspectivism. To avoid that comparison is purely abstract and ahistorical, we use the method of the sociology of philosophy. This forces us to locate both paths in their respective philosophical fields and generational units, also according to his social background and professional career.

Gibt es eine politische Philosophie der Europäischen Union? = Is there a political philosophy of the European Union?. ZEI Discussion Paper C223, 2014

In a theoretical context, the European Union is generally interpreted through the prism of integration theories, which in turn reflect the ever changing empirical reality of the integration process. ZEI Director Ludger Kühnhardt asks if and to what extent the process of European integration has begun to generate a specific political philosophy which uses the EU - and not the classical notion of the state – as the starting and reference point for its reasoning. Kühnhardt examines examples – such as the European notion of civil rights and the notion of the Union itself, but also critical categories such as euroskepticism – which indicate that the EU itself is beginning to be the starting point and frame of reference for a reflection on the common good. For now, a political philosophy in the context of the European Union exists only in an embryonic stage, but the topic may generate intellectual insights through further and deeper research.

Disorderly categories in picture postcards from colonial Papua and New Guinea

At the turn of the century in Melbourne, a notice typed on the verso of a postcard stated that the South Yarra Baptist Young Men's class was meeting on the following Sunday at 2.45 p.m. The card, published in the United Kingdom, was numbered 51828 in the Valentine series of Papuan postcards.1 The image, a photograph of Hanuabada village taken in the early 1880s, and the text, written early in 1900, are contradictory and constitute separate realms of evidence that invite a renegotiation of meaning, analysis, and interpretation of the relationships between images, tourism, colonial rule, and ethnographic knowing. The visual evidence suggests the postcard may have played an ethnographic, educative role in the public understanding of Papua, which had just become an Australian Territory and was not yet well known. It is also suggestive of educative roles related to mission endeavours, subimperialist ambitions and the new tourist traffic through the ports of Port Moresby, Samarai, and Rabaul.

Existential experience : the unfolding

This paper reports on a project concerned with the relationship between person and space in the context of achieving a contemplative state. The need for such a study originated with the desire to contribute to the design of multicultural spaces which could be used for a range of activities including prayer and meditation. Given that the words ‘prayer’ and ‘meditation’ are highly value-laden and potentially alienating for some people, it was decided to use the more accessible term ‘contemplative’. While the project is still underway,several findings have emerged that can be reported on and are of relevance to the conference both methodologically and substantively. Informed by phenomenological methodology, data were collected from a diverse group of people using photo-elicitation and interviewing. The technique of photo-elicitation proved to be highly effective in helping people to reveal their everyday lived experience of contemplative spaces. This methodological aspect of the project is described more fully in the paper. The initial stage of analysis produced two categories of data: varying conceptions of contemplation and contemplative space; and, common understandings of contemplation and contemplative space. From this it was found that achieving a state of contemplation involves both the person and the environment in a dialectic process of unfolding. The unfolding has various physical, psycho-social, and existential dimensions or qualities which operate sequentially and simultaneously. In the paper, these are labelled:the unfolding of the core; distinction; manifestation; cleansing; creation; and sharing, and have parallels with Mircea Eliade’s 1959 definition of sacred as 'something that manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane’. It also connects with the views of Nishida Kitaro from the Kyoto School of Philosophy on the theme of ‘absolute nothingness’: ‘the body-mind is dropped off and we are united with the consciousness of absolute nothingness’ (Kitaro in Heisig, 2001, p. 169). According to Marion (2005), ‘nothingness’ is defined by givenness. In the paper, this fold of givenness is interpreted in the context of the qualities of the environment that accomplish the act of coming forward into visibility through the dialectic relationship with a person. (Eliade, 1959, Heisig, 2001, Marion, 2002)