scholarly journals The Disputed Middle Ground: Tibetan Mādhyamikas on How to Interpret Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 991
Author(s):  
John Powers

By the twelfth century, a broad consensus had developed among Tibetan Buddhists: The Middle Way School (Madhyamaka) of Nāgārjuna (c. 2nd century), as interpreted by Candrakīrti (c. 600–650), would be normative in Tibet. However, Tibetans had inherited various trajectories of commentary on Madhyamaka, and schools of thought developed, each with a particular reading. This article will examine some of the major competing philosophical stances, focusing on three figures who represent particularly compelling interpretations, but whose understandings of Madhyamaka are profoundly divergent: Daktsang Sherap Rinchen (1405–1477), Wangchuk Dorjé, the 9th Karmapa (1556–1603), and Purchok Ngawang Jampa (1682–1762). The former two contend that Nāgārjuna’s statement “I have no thesis” (nāsti ca mama pratijñā) means exactly what it says, while the latter advocates what could be termed an “anthropological” approach: Mādhyamikas, when speaking as Mādhyamikas, only report what “the world” says, without taking any stance of their own; but their understanding of Buddhism is based on insight gained through intensive meditation training. This article will focus on how these three philosophers figure in the history of Tibetan Madhyamaka exegesis and how their respective readings of Indic texts incorporate elements of previous work while moving interpretation in new directions.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine celebrates the richness and variety of medical history around the world. In recent decades, the history of medicine has emerged as a rich and mature sub-discipline within history, but the strength of the field has not precluded vigorous debates about methods, themes, and sources. Bringing together over thirty international scholars, this book provides a constructive overview of the current state of these debates, and offers new directions for future scholarship. There are three sections: the first explores the methodological challenges and historiographical debates generated by working in particular historical ages; the second explores the history of medicine in specific regions of the world and their medical traditions, and includes discussion of the ‘global history of medicine’; the final section analyses, from broad chronological and geographical perspectives, both established and emerging historical themes and methodological debates in the history of medicine.


2020 ◽  
Vol V (IV) ◽  
pp. 86-92
Author(s):  
Mazhar Hayat ◽  
Nafees Parvez ◽  
Kaneez Fatima

This article reflects Tariq Ali's efforts to understand the reality of the myth of 'the clash of civilizations' as a socio-materialist scientist to metabolize compellingly inter-connected dimensions of historical 'reality'. The deconstruction of the historic reality provides us with a new prism to view the world from different perspectives, looking at new directions in the politico-historic enterprise. West has had a long tradition of misinterpreting the Crusades as holy wars were meant for the glorification of Christian divine faith, and they have become a metaphor for blessing humanity with West's superior moral values against the 'horror' of Islam. Western academia has been promoting this deceptive view of two 'incommensurable' civilizations. Huntington stretches this view to develop his philosophy of the clash of civilizations'. Tariq Ali is a Marxist socialist who interprets the Spanish history and rewrites the history of the Muslims' relationship and the Christians from a materialist perspective to disprove Huntington's thesis that Islam and Christianity are inherently incompatible for peaceful coexistence because of their totalizing teleological claims. Ali's Islam Quintet, a sequence of five novels, exposes the imperialist agenda behind the clash theory. This article analyzes Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, the first novel of Ali's Islam Quintet, to evaluate Ali's critique of the clash of civilizations.


This book brings together a number of the major historians now entering the field, and rethinking the way they write their histories. The book includes the reflections of China experts, historians of India and Japan, of Latin America, Africa, and Europe on their past writing, and the new directions in which global history is taking them. The book shows the rapid advances in the field from early and inspiring questions of encounters between East and West, of the wealth and poverty of nations — why are we so rich and they so poor? — and the crisis of empires to new thinking on global material cultures, on composite zones and East Asian development paths. It presents historians at a crossroads: enjoying the great excitement of moving out of national borders and reconnecting parts of the world once studied separately, but also facing the huge challenge of new methodologies of comparison, collaboration and interdisciplinarity, and the problems of the rapidly disappearing tools of foreign languages.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-41
Author(s):  
M. Mucharom Syifa

The religious phenomenon of Islam in post-reform Indonesia is thought to have experienced extremism and radicalism. The explosion of terrorism in the name of Islam that occurred between 1998 and 2018 made the face of Indonesian Islam in the world. Whereas in fact Islam in Indonesia is Islam that promotes moderate principles (tawassuth / washatiah) in preaching, namely taking a middle ground between the opposite two extreme poles. Da’wah method of Washatiyatul Islam or Moderation of Islam is a method of da’wah that emphasizes the Islamic values of Rahmatan Lil Alamin. Da’wah is friendly with tradition, so it can grow in a multicultural and multi-religious society. It is this characteristic of accommodative Islam that is the stronghold of the prevention of radical religious ideas. This article using the epistemological-historical-holisitic approach wants to explore the concept of moderation of Islam in the context of the Indonesian nation and the shallowness of religious reasoning. As a result, none of the strong references say that the spread of Islam in ancient Archipelago was by radical means. The history of Islam in the archipelago has struggled with diverse localities. Islam is not present to break down or chop away existing traditions and local culture, but try to dialect with the context in which Islam is located. Because of its flexible nature, Islam is able to survive and develop so that it raises a new Islamic style that is unique and does not exist in any part of the world.


2021 ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Violeta Demeshchenko

This article examines the state of such a science as anthropology in the modern scientific environment. It outlines a range of interesting issues regarding changes in general, as well as paradigm shifts that occur in modern anthropological knowledge. The article analyzes historical origins of the cultural-anthropological paradigm in the sociophilosophical context. The study notes new directions of anthropology development as a science; it points out that sociocultural reality and its dynamic characteristics are studied within the postmodernity since the aspects of human connections and their environment were not studied within classical anthropological models previously. Modern anthropology can be described as a general anthropology with the numerous branching. Such a modern direction focuses on those integration features that allow to present humanity as a whole. This new direction, developing at the junction of philosophy and anthropological science in general, has developed certain criteria for scientific synthesis. Today, anthropology seeks to synthesize philosophical and scientific knowledge about a man into a single cognitive picture of the world based on the general scientific methods considering comprehensive and systematic approaches.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
M Mucharom Syifa

Abstract: The religious phenomenon of Islam in post-reform Indonesia is thought to have experienced extremism and radicalism. The explosion of terrorism in the name of Islam that occurred between 1998 and 2018 made the face of Indonesian Islam in the world. Whereas in fact Islam in Indonesia is Islam that promotes moderate principles (tawassuth / washatiah) in preaching, namely taking a middle ground between the opposite two extreme poles. Da'wah method of Washatiyatul Islam or Moderation of Islam is a method of da'wah that emphasizes the Islamic values ​​of Rahmatan Lil Alamin. Da'wah is friendly with tradition, so it can grow in a multicultural and multi-religious society. It is this characteristic of accommodative Islam that is the stronghold of the prevention of radical religious ideas. This article using the epistemological-historical-holisitic approach wants to explore the concept of moderation of Islam in the context of the Indonesian nation and the shallowness of religious reasoning. As a result, none of the strong references say that the spread of Islam in ancient Archipelago was by radical means. The history of Islam in the archipelago has struggled with diverse localities. Islam is not present to break down or chop away existing traditions and local culture, but try to dialect with the context in which Islam is located. Because of its flexible nature, Islam is able to survive and develop so that it raises a new Islamic style that is unique and does not exist in any part of the world.   Keywords: Moderation of Islam, Integration-Interconnection, Nationality Jurisprudence, Radicalism, Islam rahmatan lil alamin.   Abstrak : Fenomena keagamaan islam di Indonesia pasca reformasi ditengarai banyak mengalami ekstrimisme dan radikalisme. Ledakan terorisme atas nama Islam yang terjadi antara tahun 1998 hingga 2018 menjadikan wajah Islam Indonesia mendapat sorotan di dunia. Padahal sejatinya Islam yang ada di Indonesia adalah Islam yang mengedepankan prinsip moderat (tawassuth/washatiah) dalam berdakwah, yaitu mengambil jalan tengah di antara dua kutub ekstrim yang berlawanan. Metode dakwah Washatiyatul Islam atau Moderasi Islam adalah metode dakwah yang mengedepankan nilai-nilai Islam Rahmatan Lil Alamin.  Dakwah yang ramah dengan tradisi, sehingga dapat tumbuh dalam masyarakat yang multikultultural dan multireligi. Karakteristik Islam akomodatif inilah yang menjadi benteng pencegahan faham keagaamaan radikal. Artikel ini dengan menggunakan pendekatan epistemologis-historis-holisitik ingin menelisik konsep moderasi Islam dalam konteks bangsa Indonesia dan kedangkalan nalar beragama. Hasilnya, tak ada satupun referensi kuat yang mengatakan bahwa penyebaran Islam di Nusantara zaman dahulu adalah dengan cara-cara radikal. Sejarah Islam di Nusantara telah mengalami pergumulan dengan lokalitas yang beragam. Islam hadir bukan untuk mendobrak atau membabat habis tradisi dan budaya lokal yang ada, melainkan mencoba untuk berdialektika dengan konteks di mana Islam berada. Oleh karena sifat fleksibelnya itu, Islam mampu bertahan dan berkembang sehingga memunculkan corak keislaman baru yang khas dan tidak ada di belahan dunia manapun.   Kata Kunci : Moderasi Islam, Integrasi-Interkoneksi, Fiqih Kebangsaan, Radikalisme, Islam rahmatan lil alamin.


Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. NOTHAFT

This article offers the first study and critical edition of the Liber de motibus planetarum (Lmp), a neglected Latin text on planetary theory that appears anonymously and without any clear indication of date or place of origin in nine manuscripts of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. An analysis of its sources and parallels to other Latin treatises and translations from Arabic indicates that the Lmp originated in England in the third quarter of the twelfth century. A plausible terminus post quem is provided by the appearance of similar passages in the anonymous treatise Ptolomeus et multi sapientum (1145), which can be linked to Abraham Ibn Ezra and his astronomical tables for the meridian of Pisa. The Lmp would appear to be historically significant for its relatively detailed textual and diagrammatic presentations of Ptolemy’s planetary models as composed of multipart physical orbs. While it is generally accepted that physicalized or ‘orbed’ versions of these models entered Latin astronomy through the influence of Ibn al-Haytham’s Maqāla fī hayʾat al-ʿālam (On the Configuration of the World), the early history of this idea in a Latin context has not been studied to any deeper extent. In this regard, the Lmp offers clear evidence that Ptolemaic orbs and diagrams representing them already were a part of Latin astronomy three centuries before Peuerbach’s Theoricae novae planetarum (1454).


IEE Review ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 37 (10) ◽  
pp. 355
Author(s):  
D.A. Gorham

1997 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Borys Lobovyk

An important problem of religious studies, the history of religion as a branch of knowledge is the periodization process of the development of religious phenomenon. It is precisely here, as in focus, that the question of the essence and meaning of the religious development of the human being of the world, the origin of beliefs and cult, the reasons for the changes in them, the place and role of religion in the social and spiritual process, etc., are converging.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document