Transformations of Mind: Philosophy as Spiritual PracticeThe book offers a conception of philosophy as a form of self-enquiry which begins not in reflection, but in silence and meditation, conceived as conditions for the emergence and cessation of contending states of mind which influence perception and action. The philosopher thus becomes a kind of cartographer of a shifting interior landscape. This underlying perspective explains the personal nature of the writing and its mixing of genres. The book draws on both the Greek and Buddhist traditions, recognising that it is time for Western thinkers to acknowledge and respond to an intercultural canon. It aims to integrate ethics and a non-theistic philosophy of religion through the medium of aesthetics, mapping Buddhist 'mindfulness' and the Greek virtues and vices of temperance and licentiousness, continence and incontinence, onto an account of the development of moral sentiments and their relation to practical judgement in the context of oppressive political and social realities. |
Contents
A philosophy that is not a philosophy | 8 |
Contrary states | 26 |
you hear the grating roar | 39 |
The energy for war | 63 |
The division of the soul | 72 |
Wandering between two worlds | 92 |
Kants aesthetic ideas | 101 |
And his rational ones | 116 |
Theism nontheism and Haldanes Fork | 149 |
Erotic reformations | 171 |
A language of grasping and nongrasping | 200 |
sinne like clouds ecdipsd my mind | 230 |
Concentration continence and arousal | 256 |
Uneasily he retraces his steps | 271 |
References | 287 |
290 | |
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Common terms and phrases
absolute beauty action aesthetic idea akrasia alaya-vijnana Alcibiades already Arnold arousal attention beauty of soul become believe body Buddhist claim concentration conception consciousness constituted context contingent darkling plain depends desire determinate dhyana Dover Beach dukkha emotion energy enkrateia eromenos eros ethical experience expression faith feeling gives grasper and grasped harmony of soul human imagination impulse intentional objects judgment Kant Kierkegaard kind knowledge language light live look means meditation mind moral motivation moved mudita nature Nietzsche non-duality notion one's ostensive definition ourselves particular perception perfected aspect perhaps person philosophy Plato pleasure possibility present rational realise reality reason refers reflection relation response rience samadhi seems sense sensibility sexual Simone Weil simply Socrates someone sophrosune spiritual subject and object subject-object talk Tanabe Tanabe Hajime temperance theism things thought tion tradition truth understanding virtue virya Wittgenstein wrong