New in the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Series

Schopenhauer is widely recognized as the Western philosopher who has shown the greatest openness to Indian thought and whose own ideas approach most closely to it. This book examines his encounter with important schools of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and subjects the principal apparent affinities to a careful analysis. Initial chapters describe Schopenhauer’s encounter with Indian thought in the context of the intellectual climate of early nineteenth-century Europe.

Principal sections of the book consider the two main pillars of Schopenhauer’s system in relation to broadly comparable ideas found, in the case of Hindu thought, in Advaita Vedānta, and within Buddhism in the Mādhyamika and Yogācāra schools. Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the world as representation, or a flow of impressions appearing in the consciousness of living beings, is first considered. The second main pillar of Schopenhauer’s system, the doctrine of the world as will, is then examined and its relationship to Indian thought explored. This section of the work breaks new ground in the study of Schopenhauer, for although the similarity of his ethical and soteriological teaching to that of Indian religions (particularly Buddhism) has long been noted the underlying reasons for this have not been grasped. It is demonstrated that they are to be found in hitherto unrecognized affinities, of which Schopenhauer himself was largely unaware, between the metaphysics of the will and Indian ideas relating to karmic impressions (vāsanās), the store-consciousness, the causal body, and śakti as the “force” or “energy” that maintains the existence of the world.

Final chapters discuss the controversial and difficult question of the relation of the will to final reality in Schopenhauer’s thought in the light of Indian conceptions, and suggest that the two central pillars of his philosophy may be seen, to a greater extent than previously supposed, as a bridge by which the Eastern and Western traditions of philosophical thought may be brought into a closer and more creative relationship.

Society for Asian and Comparative Monographs, No. 24
May 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3735-8 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

Japanese Philosophy: Voted One of 2012′s Most Outstanding Reference Publications

Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, was named an Outstanding Reference Source by the Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association. The award was established in 1958 to recommend the most outstanding reference publications for small and medium-sized public and academic libraries. The selected titles are valuable reference resources and are highly recommended for inclusion in any library’s collection.

Japanese Philosophy was also recently recognized as an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice Magazine:

“This massive tome will stand for the forseeable future as the gold standard for comprehensive treatment of all matters of Japanese philosophy. The three editors, all significant names within this small but growing subfield, have assembled an impressive group of established and up-and-coming scholars to translate and provide introductions to each entry, resulting in a readable sourcebook remarkable in both scope and acuity of analysis. . . . Essential.”

New in the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monograph Series

Compassion is a word we use frequently but rarely precisely. One reason we lack a philosophically precise understanding of compassion is that moral philosophers today give it virtually no attention. Indeed, in the predominant ethical traditions of the West (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics), compassion tends to be either passed over without remark or explicitly dismissed as irrelevant. And yet in the predominant ethical traditions of Asia, compassion is centrally important: All else revolves around it. This is clearly the case in Buddhist ethics, and compassion plays a similarly indispensable role in Confucian and Daoist ethics.

In Compassion and Moral Guidance, Steve Bein seeks to explain why compassion plays such a substantial role in the moral philosophies of East Asia and an insignificant one in those of Europe and the West.

Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs, No. 23
January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3641-2 / $45.00 (CLOTH)

New in the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monograph Series

Is the world one or many? In One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong, Ji Zhang revisits this ancient philosophical question from the modern perspective of comparative studies. His investigation stages an intellectual exchange between Plato, founder of the Academy, and Ge Hong, who systematized Daoist belief and praxis. Zhang not only captures the tension between rational Platonism and abstruse Daoism, but also creates a bridge between the two.

“This is a work of great intellectual daring, requiring immense erudition and impressive power of synthesis. The topic, comparing the ontological ideas of Plato and Ge Hong with special reference to their implications for the one-many problem, is unique, stimulating and highly important, identifying a crucial area for cross-cultural and comparative research and producing a creative, informed, thoughtful, incisive and skillful response to the considerable challenge of making such an ambitious project bear fruit.” —Dr. Brook Ziporyn, Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University

Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs, No. 22
December 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3554-5 / $27.00 (PAPER)

Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook Now Available in Paperback

Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, and John C. Maraldo, is now available in paperback.

From a July 2011 blog post: In 1980 Thomas Kasulis (then assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i) dreamed of putting together an anthology focused directly on Japanese philosophical thought. Thirty-one years later, Kasulis and fellow editors James Heisig and John Maraldo have produced what will be an essential reference for English readers interested in traditional or contemporary Japanese culture and the way it has shaped and been shaped by its great thinkers over the centuries. The story behind the Sourcebook’s development, which involved dozens of scholars from around the world, can be found in the Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture Bulletin 35 (2011).

August 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3618-4 / $35.00 (PAPER)

Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook

The idea for Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook can be traced back to 1980, when Thomas Kasulis (then assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i) dreamed of putting together an anthology focused directly on Japanese philosophical thought. Thirty-one years later, Kasulis and his fellow editors James Heisig and John Maraldo have produced what will be an essential reference for English readers interested in traditional or contemporary Japanese culture and the way it has shaped and been shaped by its great thinkers over the centuries. The story behind the Sourcebook’s development, which involved dozens of scholars from around the world, can be found in the Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture Bulletin 35 (2011).

July 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3552-1 / $70.00 (CLOTH)

Confucian Role Ethics

Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, by Roger T. Ames, is an exploration of what constitutes and how one becomes an authentic, moral human being as conceived in the Confucian tradition. The book establishes an interpretive context by exploring some of the cosmological foundations of Confucian philosophy through discussion of commentary on the Yijing (The Book of Changes), Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Chinese cosmology. The author proceeds to delineate the morals and ideals of a Confucian life and its foundation in feelings of familial intimacy and its human-centered religiousness. These ideas are contrasted with the principle and virtue based traditions of the Abrahamic religions as well as of the individualistic tradition beginning in ancient Greece. Lastly, Ames attempts to critically assess the strengths and weaknesses of Confucian role ethics as articulated in the early canonical texts, discussing both its return to prominence and feasibility as a system of ethical conduct for the present day.

April 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3576-7 / $31.00 (PAPER)

UH Press Exhibiting at the East-West Philosophers’ Conference

During May 16-24, University of Hawai‘i Press will be exhibiting at the Tenth East-West Philosophers’ Conference, held at the East-West Center’s Imin Center on the University of Hawai‘i campus. The conference’s theme, “Value and Values: Economics and Justice in an Age of Global Interdependence,” brings together philosophers from different cultures and with different perspectives to reflect upon a productive and sustainable relationship between economics and ethics.

The conference is free and open to the public.

A Hermeneutics Reader

In Japan’s Frames of Meaning: A Hermeneutics Reader, Michael F. Marra identifies interpretative concepts central to discussions of hermeneutical practices in Japan and presents English translations of works on basic hermeneutics by major Japanese thinkers. Discussions of Japanese thought tend to be centered on key Western terms in light of which Japanese texts are examined; alternatively, a few Buddhist concepts are presented as counterparts of these Western terms. Marra concentrates on Japanese philosophers and thinkers who have mediated these two extremes, bringing their knowledge of Western thought to bear on philosophical reinterpretations of Buddhist terms that are, thus, presented in secularized form.

Michael Marra is the author or editor of Representations of Power: The Literary Politics of Medieval Japan, Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader, A History of Modern Japanese Aesthetics, Kuki Shuzo: A Philosopher’s Poetry and Poetics, and The Poetics of Motoori Norinaga: A Hermeneutical Journey.

October 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3460-9 / $55.00 (CLOTH)

Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics

Conventional wisdom has it that the concept of individualism was absent in early China. In Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics, an uncommon study of the self and human agency in ancient China, Erica Fox Brindley provides an important corrective to this view and persuasively argues that an idea of individualism can be applied to the study of early Chinese thought and politics with intriguing results. She introduces the development of ideological and religious beliefs that link universal, cosmic authority to the individual in ways that may be referred to as individualistic and illustrates how these evolved alongside and potentially helped contribute to larger sociopolitical changes of the time, such as the centralization of political authority and the growth in the social mobility of the educated elite class.

“Contrary to common claims about the absence of individualism in early China and its supposed reification in ‘the West,’ both the Western and Chinese traditions have historically been characterized by diverse and constantly evolving attitudes toward the individual. This book serves as an important corrective to monolithic or essentializing accounts of early Chinese thought, and the narrative concerning the evolution of the concept of the individual in early China is an interesting and novel one. It will appeal widely to people working on early Chinese thought and comparative religion more broadly.” —Edward Slingerland, University of British Columbia

June 2010 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3386-2 / $52.00 (CLOTH)