Paramārtha’s Ultimate Truth and the Development of Chinese Buddhism’s Ultimate Truth

This paper discusses the development of ideas of the ultimate in the thought of Chinese Buddhism in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The concept of ultimate truth is, along with that of conventional truth, a core concept in Mahāyāna Buddhism. During the Sui Dynasty, Chinese Buddhism developed the unique perspective of the Three Truths, the foundation for which was formed during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. This begins with Jie jie Jing 解節經 (in full, Foshuo Jiejie Jing 佛說解節經) by Paramārtha (499–569), which is a partial translation of Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and presents the theory of ultimate truth (paramārtha) to Chinese Buddhists. Through a comparison of Jiejie Jing with other Chinese and Tibetan translations of Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra, we establish Paramārtha’s thoughts on the ultimate. The relationship between Paramārtha’s thought on the ultimate and the development of the Three Truths is evaluated in a comparison of Paramārtha’s thoughts on ultimate truth with the thinking of nearly contemporary Chinese monks.

Gordon Craig`s "über-marionette" concept as an expressive means of a puppet theatre

Purpose of the article. To study the process of the emergence of stage truth in the live-action puppet art. To define the peculiarity of creating stage truth by the expressive means of the puppet theatre. To analyze the theoretical works by Gordon Craig concerning the aesthetic concept of "über-marionette". To designate the ways of realization of stage truth in puppet theatre with the help of Gordon Craig`s "über-marionette" concept. Methodology of the research consists in the application of methods of system analysis, analogy, comparison, and opposition to analyze the "über-marionette" concept in comparative description with the expressive means and aesthetic principles of the live-action puppet art. The scientific novelty of the article is in the view on the nature of stage truth, in considering Gordon Craig`s "über-marionette" concept in the context of psychophysical image creation in puppet theatre and in searching for the ways to realize stage truth of puppet theatre in the context of new puppeteer`s artistic techniques. Conclusions. A live-action puppet, regardless of its system, genre restrictions, and movement characteristics, obeys its own conventional truth. The Puppeteer has Gordon Craig's stage truth. Gordon Craig in his theory of the "über-marionette" substantiated a new kind of stage truth needed by the puppeteer. Thanks to it the puppeteer can transform in his own way and even identify himself with the doll image. However, Craig did not elaborate on the actor's practice of achieving such stage truth. Guided by his theoretical works, one can only make an assumption about the practical implementation of the "über-marionette" theory in the stage practice of the live-action puppet art.

The Two Truths

This chapter analyzes the two truths. Buddhists care deeply about getting at the truth and as a result have thought a lot about what truth is. One of the most important philosophical ideas to emerge from Buddhism is that of the two truths. Though it is more commonly known as the two truths, it could also be called the Two Realities. What is really true, not just within a set of conventions, is called ultimate truth. This does not entail that conventional truth is always bad or to be abandoned. Conventional truth can be useful as long as it does not blind one to what is really happening. This idea plays two different roles in Buddhism: One is as a philosophical idea about the nature of reality; the other is as an interpretive strategy to make sense of a variety of Buddhist texts.

The art of truth : remarks made between political and legal discourse.

In 1873, Nietzsche claimed that a generally and uniformly valid designation is invented for things. This designation has normative force: as a matter of fact, the «linguistic» legislation dominating the practice of language establishes the first laws of truth (On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense). In other words, for Nietzsche the artificial nature of truth, given the artificial nature of language itself, was out of discussion. In this paper, I approach the contemporary debate on post-truth by juxtaposing it with the idea of «artificial» or «conventional» truth typical of legal discourse and by showing the aporia behind each search for truth. In order to do so, I focus on the specific nature of «legal» truth and I invite to consider the centrality of the performative force of truth-making procedures – crucial for lawyers and legal practice – in order to underline the importance played by technology in the construction of truth also in the political discourse.

The Fifth Corner

This chapter shows how this possibility (ineffability) can be incorporated into the logical machinery by adding a fifth value. In the process, the bearers of semantic values are reinterpreted as states of affairs, which are themselves empty. This is deployed to produce a correspondence theory of conventional truth.

Madhyamaka Ethics

There are two main loci of contemporary debate about the nature of Madhyamaka ethics. The first investigates the general issue of whether the Madhyamaka philosophy of emptiness (śūnyavāda) is consistent with a commitment to systematic ethical distinctions. The second queries whether the metaphysical analysis of no-self presented by Śāntideva in his Bodhicaryāvatāra entails the impartial benevolence of a bodhisattva. This chapter critically examines these debates and demonstrates the ways in which they are shaped by competing understandings of Madhyamaka conventional truth or reality (saṃvṛtisatya) and the forms of reasoning admissible for differentiating conventional truth from falsity and good from bad.

Buddhist Reductionist Action Theory

This essay develops the theory of action presupposed by Buddhist Reductionists. Their account uses the theory of two truths to reconcile the folk theory of human action with the Buddhist claim that there are no agents. The conventional truth has it that persons are substance-causes of actions, and the willings that trigger actions are exercises of a person’s powers in light of their reasons. According to the ultimate truth, there are no persons, only causal series of bundles of tropes. An action is a bodily or mental event in one such series that has the occurrence of a prior intention event as its cause. Facts about causally connected psychophysical elements explain the utility, and thus the conventional truth, of claims about persons as agents. This two-tier account of human agency makes possible a novel approach to making attributions of moral responsibility compatible with psychological determinism.