Eastern Philosophy

To speak of “Eastern philosophy” in the singular is, strictly, a Western simplification: the label gathers ancient and mutually independent traditions from China, India, and Japan, separated by languages, problems, and deeply different presuppositions. What unites them is not a shared doctrine but the fact that — in parallel with the Greek origins of philosophy, during what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age (c. 8th–3rd century BCE) — they developed rigorous, systematic answers to the great questions about reality, knowledge, the self, and right conduct. ...

In 1818, a thirty-year-old philosopher published in Dresden a work the world received with near-total indifference: The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung). Arthur Schopenhauer was convinced he had deciphered the riddle of the world — and he was not mistaken about the importance of what he had written, only about the patience he would need. Decades of obscurity would pass before Europe recognised in him one of the most original thinkers of the nineteenth century: the philosopher who dared to assert that the essence of reality is not reason, progress, or spirit — but a blind, irrational, and insatiable drive called Will. ...

Adi Shankara Note on dating: The dates of Ādi Śaṅkara (also spelled Shankara; honorifically Śaṅkarācārya, “the teacher Śaṅkara”) are disputed. Tradition places him at 788–820 CE, but many modern scholars prefer an earlier dating, around c. 700–750 CE. His biography became interwoven with hagiographical material, so that many episodes of his life belong more to legend than to verifiable historical record. Śaṅkara is the most influential systematizer of Advaita Vedānta, the “non-dualist” current of Hindu philosophy. His work consists chiefly of rigorous commentaries on the canonical texts, in which he defends a metaphysics where the multiplicity of the world is ultimately reducible to a single reality. His influence on later Indian thought — and on the Western reception of Hinduism — is immense. ...

Buddha Note on sources and dating: The dates of Siddhārtha Gautama (also called Śākyamuni, “the sage of the Śākya clan”) are a matter of scholarly controversy. The traditional chronology places him at c. 563–483 BCE, but revised research of recent decades favours a “short chronology,” locating his death around 400 BCE (an approximate lifespan of c. 480–400 BCE). Equally important: the Buddha’s teachings were transmitted orally for generations and were only set down in writing centuries later, above all in the Pāli Canon (Tipiṭaka, Sanskrit Tripiṭaka). These texts are therefore not writings of the Buddha himself but later records of the monastic community, and reconstructing what he historically taught is a delicate philological task. ...

Confucius (Chinese: Kǒngzǐ 孔子, “Master Kong”; Jesuit Latinisation: Confucius) was born in the state of Lu (present-day Shandong province, China) in 551 BCE and died in 479 BCE. He was a teacher, public official, and moral reformer who, after a life of frustrated political efforts, devoted himself to teaching and to the study of the ancient Chinese classics. His thought is known principally through the Lunyu (Analects 論語), a compilation of sayings and dialogues made by his disciples and the later tradition — the historicity of individual passages is a matter of debate among specialists. ...

Dogen Note on romanisation: Japanese names are given in Hepburn romanisation, with the original characters in parentheses on first occurrence. Macrons (ō, ū) indicate long vowels. Dōgen Kigen (道元希玄), also known as Dōgen Zenji (道元禅師, “Zen Master Dōgen”), is the Japanese founder of the Sōtō (曹洞) school of Zen. He took monastic vows in his teens on Mount Hiei, the centre of Tendai Buddhism, and in 1223 sailed to Southern Song China, where he studied with Master Tiantong Rujing (天童如淨) in the Caodong lineage, the Chinese parent of the Japanese Sōtō. He returned to Japan in 1227 bringing, in his own words, “eyes horizontal, nose vertical” — that is, nothing more than the direct experience of practice. In 1244 he founded Eihei-ji (永平寺), still one of the two head temples of Sōtō. ...

Laozi (老子) Essential historical note: The existence of Laozi as an individual historical figure is debated among specialists. The historian Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BCE), in the Shiji, records several traditions about Laozi without being able to decide between them — an indication that the uncertainty is ancient. The text attributed to him, the Dàodéjīng (道德經, “Classic of the Way and Virtue”, also called the Laozi), may be a compilation of material from different sources; modern scholarship places the current form of the text in the 4th or 3rd century BCE. The figure of Laozi as an ancient sage who supposedly met Confucius and then left China westward is probably legendary. ...

Mencio Note on sources: The dates of Mencius (孟子 Mèngzǐ, “Master Meng”; personal name Kē 軻) are conventional estimates — c. 372–289 BCE — based on traditional historical chronologies. The text Mèngzǐ (孟子), compiled in 7 books (piān), is considered more unified than Confucius’s Analects, although it also involved contributions from disciples in its final redaction. Mencius is honored in the Confucian tradition as the “Second Sage” (Yàshèng 亞聖), immediately below Confucius. ...

Nāgārjuna Nāgārjuna (c. 150–c. 250 CE) is the founder of the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism and is regarded in many Buddhist traditions as the second Buddha. His work exercised decisive influence on Tibetan, Chinese (and thence Japanese and Korean) Buddhism, as well as on subsequent Indian philosophy. His principal work, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK — Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), is one of the most commented and debated texts in the history of philosophy. ...

Nishida Kitaro Note on romanisation: Japanese names are given in Hepburn romanisation, with the original characters in parentheses on first occurrence. Macrons (ō, ū) indicate long vowels. In the Japanese convention, the family name (Nishida) precedes the given name (Kitarō); the Japanese order is followed here, in keeping with current editorial practice for modern Japanese philosophers. Nishida Kitarō (西田 幾多郎) is the founder of the Kyoto School and the most influential modern Japanese philosopher of the twentieth century. A Rinzai Zen practitioner from his youth — under the masters Setsumon and Kōshū — he was trained in philosophy at the Imperial University of Tokyo and lectured at Kyoto Imperial University, where he gathered around himself the generation that would give body to the so-called “school.” His project may be described as the attempt, without comparable precedent in modern Japan, to articulate Buddhist meditative experience with the vocabulary and rigour of European (chiefly German) philosophy — without reducing one to the other. ...

Wang Yangming Wang Yangming (王陽明 Wáng Yángmíng, 1472–1529; courtesy name Bó’ān, personal name Shǒurén 守仁) is the most influential Neo-Confucian thinker of the Ming dynasty and the founder of the so-called “school of mind” (xīnxué 心學). Besides being a philosopher, he was a senior state official and a successful military commander, and his doctrine arose in dialogue with that practical experience. His thought constitutes the chief alternative to the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy of Zhu Xi, the “school of principle” (lǐxué 理學), which dominated the imperial examination system. ...

Xunzi Xunzi (荀子 Xún Zǐ, “Master Xun”; personal name Kuàng 況), who lived around c. 310–c. 235 BCE, is, alongside Confucius and Mencius, one of the three great thinkers of classical Confucianism. He was active during the Warring States period and was a figure of prestige at the Jixia Academy in the state of Qi. His philosophy stands out for its argumentative rigour and its naturalism: whereas other Confucians grounded morality in a morally engaged celestial order, Xunzi grounds it in human culture, ritual, and deliberate education. ...

Zhu Xi Note on romanisation: Chinese names are given in pinyin, with the original characters in parentheses on first occurrence. Tones are not graphically marked, in line with current editorial usage. Zhu Xi (朱熹), a Southern Song philosopher, is the great systematiser of what is conventionally called Neo-Confucianism — also known as Lixue (理學, “Learning of Principle”) or the Cheng-Zhu school, after the Cheng brothers (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi), whose writings Zhu Xi organised into a synthesis. A government official and teacher, he spent most of his life lecturing at private academies and revising the classical texts. His historical importance is hard to overstate: the educational curriculum grounded on his commentaries to the Sishu (四書, “Four Books”) was the basis of the Chinese imperial examinations from 1313 to 1905, and through that channel it also shaped the thought of Korea, Vietnam and Japan. ...

Note on sources and authorship: The dates of Zhuangzi (莊子, “Master Zhuang”; personal name Zhōu 周) are uncertain — c. 369–286 BCE is the conventional scholarly estimate, derived from mentions in period texts. The eponymous text Zhuangzi (莊子), as transmitted to us, is a compilation in three sections: the 7 inner chapters (nèipiān 內篇), generally attributed to Zhuangzi himself by modern scholarship; the 15 outer chapters (wàipiān 外篇) and the 11 miscellaneous chapters (zápiān 雜篇), regarded as works by later disciples and commentators. The edition that reached modernity is due to the scholar Guo Xiang (c. 252–312 CE). ...