Traditions

Explore particular intellectual conversations through the arguments taught here.

3 readings
Abhidharma
Abhidharma is the part of the Buddhist tradition that worked out, in systematic lists and analyses, the metaphysics behind the Buddha’s teachings. Its thinkers held that composite things are built from simple elements with natures of their own, and Nāgārjuna’s arguments are addressed mostly to them.
1 reading
Advaita Vedānta
Śaṅkara’s reading of self and brahman introduces nonduality. How can knowledge remove ignorance without turning ordinary experience into nothing at all?
1 reading
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy includes traditions of close attention to argument, language and inference. Frege offers one route into it, though the tradition has no monopoly on clarity.
1 reading
British Quaker sacramental reflection
British Quaker sacramental reflection can locate grace throughout life while questioning whether outward rites are necessary. The named statements read here are not a single view held by all Quakers.
1 reading
Buddhist theories of knowledge
Dharmakīrti’s selected argument asks what inferential knowledge requires, and why a dependable connection is difficult to establish.
1 reading
Care ethics
Care ethics examines the moral significance of relationships, need and responsive support. It can question institutions as well as personal conduct without treating care as naturally women’s work.
1 reading
Catholic sacramental teaching
Catholic sacramental teaching understands the Eucharist through memorial and divine presence. The official account examined here is not a survey of every Catholic’s personal belief.
1 reading
Classical Yoga
Read Yoga’s account of discipline, discernment and liberation beside Sāṃkhya. Yoga has its own ethical commitments and a distinctive place for Īśvara.
5 readings
Confucian learning and ritual
The selected Analects passages connect learning, humaneness and inherited forms. How the three relate is debated, and the collection preserves several voices rather than a single speech we can recover.
1 reading
Early Buddhist discourses
Selected early discourses address suffering, changing experience and dependent arising. How do their arguments bear on the task of release?
1 reading
Empiricism
Empiricist arguments give experience a central role in understanding knowledge. Locke and Berkeley show how that shared emphasis can lead to sharply different conclusions.
1 reading
Epicureanism
Epicureans pursue a pleasant life through measured desire and freedom from disturbance. Pleasure, on this view, is not constant stimulation.
1 reading
Existentialism
Existentialism explores agency, commitment and responsibility without assuming a ready-made human purpose. Its thinkers differ over religion, situation and what freedom requires.
1 reading
Fa tradition
Arguments later grouped under the Legalist label ask what standards, assessment and coercive power can accomplish. The label does not mean one organized school, and the arguments should not be read as a modern rule of law.
3 readings
Falsafa
Follow selected philosophical inquiries written in Arabic through translation, commentary and criticism. The arguments and religious commitments of each thinker remain distinct.
1 reading
Feminist epistemology
Fricker gives an account of unfair credibility; Harding argues for changing the starting points of inquiry. Compare them without smoothing over their disagreement.
1 reading
Frankfurt School critical theory
Frankfurt School critical theory examines social institutions and the forms of reason they embody. Horkheimer and Adorno ask how criticism can expose domination within promises of progress.
1 reading
Haudenosaunee political thought
Read the Onondaga Nation’s public account of representation alongside Kahente Horn-Miller’s discussion of consent at Kahnawà:ke, keeping the communities distinct.
1 reading
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics concerns interpretation and understanding. Gadamer asks how a situated reader can revise assumptions without pretending to read from nowhere.
1 reading
Hermetic thought
Self-recognition, divine life and the authority of a teacher are connected in Poimandres, one work that does not stand for the whole Hermetic tradition.
1 reading
Huayan
Fazang’s inquiry into parts and wholes introduces Huayan. It is a specific argument, not a general slogan about interconnectedness.
1 reading
Ifá interpretation
One recorded Oyo poem is read here alongside questions about destiny and conduct. Keep three things apart: the performance, its editor’s explanation and a philosopher’s critical interpretation.
1 reading
Jain thought
Selected Jain arguments address living beings, nonviolence and partial standpoints. Keep their liberating purpose in view, along with the limits of each claim.
1 reading
Jewish philosophical interpretation
Maimonides takes up selected Jewish questions about scripture and reason. His reading of divine language is one interpretation, not a creed that every reader shares.
1 reading
Kalām
Al-Ghazali’s challenge to necessity introduces theological argument here, though his selected discussion does not stand for every kalām position.
1 reading
Kantian ethics: a rule for everyone?
Kant asks whether a person can will the principle of an action as a universal law. The reading works through the false-promise case and a disagreement about how much the test can decide.
1 reading
Kyoto School
The Kyoto School names a philosophical setting associated with Nishida and later thinkers. Their arguments differ, and each has to be read within the politics of imperial Japan.
6 readings
Madhyamaka
Follow a selected argument about emptiness and intrinsic nature, with its account of conventional truth and consequences.
1 reading
Mīmāṃsā
Mīmāṃsā argues about Vedic injunctions, language and knowledge. Even once scriptural authority is defended, what it requires by way of obligation and action still has to be interpreted.
1 reading
Mohism
Mohists appeal to benefit, harm and inclusive concern. An impartial standard is one thing, a persuasive reason to accept it another; the gap between them stays open.
1 reading
Neoplatonism
Plotinus’s account of intelligibility, dependence and return opens the way into Neoplatonic inquiry; later interpreters should not all be credited with the same system.
1 reading
New Confucianism
New Confucianism includes varied efforts to reconstruct Confucian thought under modern conditions. Liang Shuming offers one approach, not a doctrine shared by every participant or state.
2 readings
Nishnaabeg thought
Read Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s situated account of learning, land and responsibility, with its limits on who may share knowledge and on whose behalf.
3 readings
Nyāya
Nyāya accounts connect perception, inference and testimony with knowledge. They also show how a reason can be challenged.
18 readings
Phenomenology
Phenomenology examines how things appear in experience. Husserl and Merleau-Ponty place their emphasis differently, on directedness, changing perspectives and the body’s access to the world.
1 reading
Philosophy of liberation
Philosophy of liberation begins inquiry from conditions of exclusion and domination. Dussel’s project is one contested approach, not the entirety of Latin American philosophy.
2 readings
Pragmatism
Pragmatism ties meaning and inquiry to practical consequences. Peirce, James and later uses of the idea differ, and useful inquiry cannot be reduced to believing whatever feels comforting.
1 reading
Pyrrhonism
Pyrrhonian inquiry sets reasons against one another and withholds assent when they balance. Questions remain about how to act in ordinary life and whether tranquility follows.
1 reading
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism gives languages and inherited texts a central place in education and criticism. Erasmus shows how that work could support Christian renewal.
1 reading
Sāṃkhya
Sāṃkhya distinguishes consciousness from changing nature. What supports that distinction, and what would liberation mean for a witness that never changes?
1 reading
Sikh teaching
Particular Sikh teachings and communal practices express devotion and equality. Stating a commitment is not the same as fully realizing it in every community.
1 reading
Stoicism
Epictetus’s account of judgment, choice and virtue leads into Stoic ethical practice. If outcomes do not decide whether a life is good, what follows?
1 reading
Upanishadic inquiry
Selected Upanishadic dialogues ask about the self, ultimate reality and liberation. They are read one by one, not as a single doctrine that all their interpreters share.
1 reading
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism judges conduct by its consequences for well-being. Questions about aggregation, distribution and whose interests count set it apart from simply following what the majority prefers.
1 reading
Vedānta
Vedānta inquiries into brahman and liberation draw on shared scriptural works but disagree about the self, about difference and about what knowledge accomplishes.
1 reading
Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
Rāmānuja holds that selves and the world are real, dependent on brahman and distinct within its unity. How can such difference belong to brahman instead of vanishing once it is understood?
1 reading
Yogācāra
Yogācāra accounts of representation and conditioned experience challenge the idea of an independent owner of consciousness. Calling them idealism does not settle how they should be interpreted.
1 reading
Zen
Selected passages from Dōgen on practice and awakening introduce Zen. Zen takes its name from Chinese Chan, but a shared name does not make their histories the same.