In June of 2008, the International Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Philosophy (ISCWP) convened its third Constructive Engagement conference, on the theme of “Comparative Philosophy Methodology.” During the opening speeches, Prof. Dunhua ZHAO, Chair of the Philosophy…

Any philosophical method that treats the analysis of the meaning of a sentence or expression in terms of a decomposition into a set of conceptually basic constituent parts must do some theoretical work to explain the puzzles of intensionality. This…

It is commonly believed that philosophical comparison depends on having some common measure or standard between and above the compared parts. The paper is to show that the foregoing common belief is incorrect and therewith to inquire into the possibility…

Parmenides expelled nonbeing from the realm of knowledge and forbade us to think or talk about it. But still there has been a long tradition of nay-sayings throughout the history of Western and Eastern philosophy. Are those philosophers talking about…

Regarding each philosophy as a variation of that of Spinoza, this article compares the German Idealism of Schelling and Hegel with the Indian Vedānta of Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, as well as Abhinavagupta’s Kaśmiri Śaivism. It argues that only Hegel’s philosophy…

There has long been a debate on the possible  similarity between some forms of Indian and Greek idealistic monism (Advaita and Neoplatonism). After a basic historical introduction to the debate, the text proposes that Paramādvaita, also known as Kashmiri Shaivism,…

This paper argues that efforts to understand historically remote patterns of thought are driven away from their original meaning if the investigation focuses on reconstruction of concepts, instead of cognitive ‘complexes’. My paper draws on research by Jan Assmann, Jean-Jacques…

In recent years, discussions of Buddhist ethics have increasingly drawn upon the concepts and tools of modern ethical theory, not only to compare Buddhist perspectives with Western moral theories, but also to assess the meta-ethical implications of Buddhist texts and…