Category Archives: Comparative philosophy

Cokelet Reviews Bommarito, Inner Virtue

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2018.07.10 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Nicolas Bommarito, Inner Virtue, Oxford University Press, 2017, 208pp., $55.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780190673383.

Reviewed by Bradford Cokelet, University of Kansas

This clear, engaging book proposes a manifest care account of inner virtue and vice — an account explaining when and why inner states such as pleasure, pain, envy, and gratitude make us better or worse people. As far as I know, this is the only contemporary book devoted to the topic of inner virtue, and Bommarito admirably establishes it as an important and interesting one. In addition, it is worth noting that this book will appeal to non-philosophic and even non-academic audiences; the engaging style and numerous entertaining examples will make it easy and fun for readers to think about various inner virtues and join the search for a general account.

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New Book: Makeham, ed., The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi’s Philosophical Thought

I’m very happy to announce the publication of John Makeham, ed., The Buddhist Roots of Zhu Xi’s Philosophical Thought (Oxford). This is the culmination of a multi-year collaborative project that it was my good fortune to be a part of; I am very grateful to John and to the group for the opportunity. Details from Oxford are here and from Amazon are here, and I’ll add some brief information below.

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Blake Reviews Moeller and D’Ambrosio, Genuine Pretending

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2018.06.18 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio, Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi, Columbia University Press, 2017, 221 pp., $35.00, ISBN 9780231183994.

Reviewed by Susan Blake, Bard College

“A romp through ‘the vast wilds of open nowhere'” — Roger Ebert

“Better than any existing work on humor” — Aristotle

“Nothing more than a success” — Guy Smiley

“A demonstration of nothing . . . in a technical sense” — Ford Prefect

“A tour de force through the ‘homeland of non-even-anything'” — Steven Colbert

This book presents a novel reading of the Zhuangzi that illuminates its humor and presents it as responding to philosophical concerns of its day. To the extent that these philosophical concerns are also those of the present day — the search for a sane and healthy response to the impossible demands of sincerity — we can, through the discussion here, gain an understanding of an alternative to the unsatisfying ethical approaches of both sincerity and authenticity. The book is impressive in bringing together diverse passages in this difficult text under one interpretation.

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Tucker Reviews Yusa, ed., Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2018.06.13 View this Review Online   View Other NDPR Reviews

Michiko Yusa, (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, Bloomsbury, 2017, 391pp., $158.40, ISBN 9781474232692.

Reviewed by John A. Tucker, East Carolina University

This book is a valuable contribution to the rapidly growing field of Japanese philosophy. A nicely produced anthology, it includes a thoughtful introduction by the editor, Michiko Yusa, fourteen erudite essays subdivided into five sections, plus a convenient summary of the essays, notes on the contributors, an account of abbreviations and conventions, an appendix including two essays by Nishida Kitarō, a timeline with dates for the thinkers discussed, an index of Japanese texts cited, and a more traditional index, including kanji, of names and terms mentioned in the anthology. Overall, the scholarly apparatuses included make this volume an extraordinarily well-organized and helpful resource for those conducting scholarly explorations of Japanese philosophy.

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