Brook Ziporyn's Books

Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond

By: Brook Ziporyn

A new approach to the theism-scientism divide rooted in a deeper form of atheism. Western philosophy is stuck in an irresolvable conflict between two approaches to the spiritual malaise of our times: either we need more God (the “turn to religion”) or less religion (the New Atheism). In this book, Brook Ziporyn proposes an alternative that avoids both totalizing theomania and atomizing reductionism. What we need, he argues, is a deeper, more thoroughgoing, even religious rejection of God: an affirmative atheism without either a creator to provide meaning or finite creatures in need of it—a mystical atheism. In the legacies of Daoism and Buddhism as well as Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Ziporyn discovers a critique of theism that develops into a new, positive sensibility—at once deeply atheist and richly religious. Experiments in Mystical Atheism argues that these “godless epiphanies” hold the key to renewing philosophy today.

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385

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226835251

ISBN 13

9780226835259

Being and Ambiguity

Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Being and Ambiguity

Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism

By: Brook Ziporyn

Being and Ambiguity is a brilliant work of philosophy, filled with insights, jokes, and topical examples. Professor Ziporyn draws on the works of such Western thinkers as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, and Hegel, but develops his main argument from Tiantai school of Chinese Buddhism. This important work introduces Tiantai Buddhism to the reader and demonstrates its relevance to profound philosophical issues. Ziporyn argues that we can make both of the claims below simultaneously: This book is about everything. It contains the answers to all philosophical problems which ever shall exist. This book is all claptrap. It is completely devoid of objective validity of any kind. These claims are not contradictory. Rather, they state the same thing in two different ways. To be objective truth is to be subjective claptrap, and vise versa. All interchanges of any kind - conversations, daydreams, sensations - are not only about something but also about everything. Thus, this book concerns itself with no less than the nature of what is and what it means for something to be what it is. It provides a new approach to the basic Western philosophical and psychological issues of identity, determinacy, being, desire, boredom, addiction, love and truth.

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Page Count

475

Publisher

Open Court

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812699270

ISBN 13

9780812699272

Evil and/or/as the Good

Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tian¬tai Buddhist Thought

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Evil and/or/as the Good

Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tian¬tai Buddhist Thought

By: Brook Ziporyn

“Other than the devil, there is no Buddha; other than the Buddha, there is no devil.” The Chinese monk Siming Zhili (960–1028) uttered this remark as part of his justification for his self-immolation. An exposition of the intent, implications, and resonances of this one sentence, this book expands and unravels the context in which the seeming paradox of the ultimate identity of good and evil is to be understood. In analyzing this idea, Brook Ziporyn provides an overview of the development of Tiantai thought from the fifth through the eleventh centuries in China and contributes to our understanding of Chinese intellectual culture and Chinese Buddhism, as well as to basic ontological, epistemological, and axiological issues of interest in modern philosophy.

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Page Count

496

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

1684170346

ISBN 13

9781684170340

Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries

By: Zhuangzi,Brook Ziporyn

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Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries

By: Zhuangzi,Brook Ziporyn

This volume is a translation of over two-thirds of the classic Daoist text Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), including the complete Inner Chapters and extensive selections from the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters, plus judicious selections from 2000 years of traditional Chinese commentaries, which provide the reader access to the text as well as to its reception and interpretation. Brief biographies of the commentators, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index are also included.

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271

Publisher

Hackett Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0872209113

ISBN 13

9780872209114

Beyond Oneness and Difference

Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Beyond Oneness and Difference

Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents

By: Brook Ziporyn

Beyond Oneness and Difference considers the development of one of the key concepts of Chinese intellectual history, Li. A grasp of the strange history of this term and its seemingly conflicting implications—as oneness and differentiation, as the knowable and as what transcends knowledge, as the good and as the transcendence of good and bad, as order and as omnipresence—raises questions about the most basic building blocks of our thinking. This exploration began in the book's companion volume, Ironies of Oneness and Difference, which detailed how formative Confucian and Daoist thinkers approached and demarcated concepts of coherence, order, and value, identifying both ironic and non-ironic trends in the elaboration of these core ideas. In the present volume, Brook Ziporyn goes on to examine the implications of Li as they develop in Neo-Daoist metaphysics and in Chinese Buddhism, ultimately becoming foundational to Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism, the orthodox ideology of late imperial China. Ziporyn's interrogation goes beyond analysis to reveal the unsuspected range of human thinking on these most fundamental categories of ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

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434

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438448198

ISBN 13

9781438448190

Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond

By: Brook Ziporyn

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385

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226835251

ISBN 13

9780226835259

The Penumbra Unbound

The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang

By: Brook Ziporyn

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The Penumbra Unbound

The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang

By: Brook Ziporyn

The Penumbra Unbound is the first English language book-length study of the Neo-Taoist thinker Guo Xiang (d. 312 C.E.), commentator on the classic Taoist text, the Zhuangzi. The author explores Guo's philosophy of freedom and spontaneity, explains its coherence and importance, and shows its influence on later Chinese philosophy, particularly Chan Buddhism. The implications of his thought on freedom versus determinism are also considered in comparison to several positions advanced in the history of Western philosophy, notably those of Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Fichte, and Hegel. Guo's thought reinterprets the classical pronouncements about the Tao so that it in no way signifies any kind of metaphysical absolute underlying appearances, but rather means literally "nothing." This absence of anything beyond appearances is the first premise in Guo's development of a theory of radical freedom, one in which all phenomenal things are "self-so," creating and transforming themselves without depending on any justification beyond their own temporary being.

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197

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0791487164

ISBN 13

9780791487167

Emptiness and Omnipresence

An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism

By: Brook A. Ziporyn

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Emptiness and Omnipresence

An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism

By: Brook A. Ziporyn

This “rich and rewarding work” explores the connections between ancient Buddhist doctrine and contemporary philosophy (Publishers Weekly). Tiantai Buddhism emerged in sixth century China from an idiosyncratic and innovative interpretation of the Lotus Sutra. It went on to become one of the most complete, systematic, and influential schools of philosophical thought developed in East Asia. In Emptiness and Omnipresence, Brook A. Ziporyn puts Tiantai into dialogue with modern philosophical concerns to draw out its implications for ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Ziporyn explains Tiantai’s unlikely roots, its positions of extreme affirmation and rejection, its religious skepticism and embrace of religious myth, and its view of human consciousness. Ziporyn reveals the profound insights of Tiantai Buddhism while stimulating philosophical reflection on its unexpected effects.

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Page Count

336

Publisher

Indiana University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0253021200

ISBN 13

9780253021205

Being and Ambiguity

Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Being and Ambiguity

Philosophical Experiments with Tiantai Buddhism

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Page Count

486

Publisher

Open Court Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0812695429

ISBN 13

9780812695427

Ironies of Oneness and Difference

Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Ironies of Oneness and Difference

Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li

By: Brook Ziporyn

Providing a bracing expansion of horizons, this book displays the unsuspected range of human thinking on the most basic categories of experience. The way in which early Chinese thinkers approached concepts such as one and many, sameness and difference, self and other, and internal and external stand in stark contrast to the way parallel concepts entrenched in much of modern thinking developed in Greek and European thought. Brook Ziporyn traces the distinctive and surprising philosophical journeys found in the works of the formative Confucian and Daoist thinkers back to a prevailing set of assumptions that tends to see questions of identity, value, and knowledge—the subject matter of ontology, ethics, and epistemology in other traditions—as all ultimately relating to questions about coherence in one form or another. Mere awareness of how many different ways human beings can think and have thought about these categories is itself a game changer for our own attitudes toward what is thinkable for us. The actual inhabitation and mastery of these alternative modes of thinking is an even greater adventure in intellectual and experiential expansion.

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338

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438442904

ISBN 13

9781438442907

Beyond Oneness and Difference

Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Beyond Oneness and Difference

Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents

By: Brook Ziporyn

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Page Count

434

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438448198

ISBN 13

9781438448190

The Penumbra Unbound

The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang

By: Brook Ziporyn

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The Penumbra Unbound

The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang

By: Brook Ziporyn

Explores the work of Guo Xiang, a Neo-Taoist thinker who developed a radical philosophy of freedom and spontaneity.

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Page Count

200

Publisher

SUNY Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0791456625

ISBN 13

9780791456620

Book's by Brook Ziporyn

Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Being and Ambiguity

Being and Ambiguity

Evil and/or/as the Good

Evil and/or/as the Good

Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries

Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings with Selections from Traditional Commentaries

Beyond Oneness and Difference

Beyond Oneness and Difference

Experiments in Mystical Atheism

Experiments in Mystical Atheism

The Penumbra Unbound

The Penumbra Unbound

Emptiness and Omnipresence

Emptiness and Omnipresence

Being and Ambiguity

Being and Ambiguity

Ironies of Oneness and Difference

Ironies of Oneness and Difference

Beyond Oneness and Difference

Beyond Oneness and Difference

The Penumbra Unbound

The Penumbra Unbound

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