NTU Philosophical Review

The so-called Critical Buddhism was originated by two Buddhist scholars at Komazawa University: Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shiro. It stirred up great controversyby its claims that the teachings of Tathāgatagarbha, Buddhanature, original erllightenment, and the philosophy of Kyoto School are not Buddhist, and aroused great interest and responses from Buddhists and Buddhologist in Japan, North America and Taiwan.The criticism of Hakamaya and Matsumoto aimed at a number of different targets which touched on four levels: Buddhological, sectarian, social criticism, and philosophical. The main issues include: Tathāgatagarbha thought, Dhātu-vāda, Karma, original enlightenment, “Wa" thought, Buddhism," social discrimination, etc.These issues are too broad to be dealt with in a short article; therefore, this article focuses only on the issues in Buddhist doctrine and social discrimination. Hakamaya and Matsumoto maintain that Tathāgatagarbha thought goes against the most basic Buddhist teachings of causality (pratityasamutpada) and non-self (anātman) , and thus is a form of dhatu-vada. The first half portion of this article, based on the 'Srīmālā-devi Sūtra, Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, Ratnagotravibhāga 'Sāstra and Buddha-nature Treatise, refutes their claims.At the level of social criticism, Critical Buddhism blamed the idea of Wa (harmony), which derives from Tathāgatagarbha thought, for social discrimination and injustice. Thesecond half of this article refutes this claim by giving exampIes in which Tathāgatagarbha (Buddha-nature) thought is in fact the bases of social equality, freedom and justice.

It certainly is difficult to grasp the intentions of the late Confucius. Everything hinges on the adequate choice and interpretation of the historical sources that have come down to us. This essay takes the analects as a basis to further explore Confucius' later thought as expressed in the Yizhuan and the Chunqiu. As the author's analysis of the difficult "late spring" passage in the analects shows, Confucius in his later life was primarily concerned about the way of heaven (tiandao). The dao in the Yizhuan and the theory of the three ages in the Chunqiu elaborate on this theme. It is time for us to realize the value of the historical material such as the Teng Wengong chapter in the Mencius, the Kongzi shijia chapter in the Shiji and the recently unearthed Yao chapter of the Yizhuan to get a clearer understanding of the late Confucius.

According to her major research on death and dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross proposes that the final phases of a terminally ill patient may undergo such stages as denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. From our dialogue with Dr. Kubler-Ross, we come to realise that each stage IIlay prove to be an occasion for one to learn his lesson concerning the meaning of life. If a person manages to make good use of the opportunity, he may attain such an edifying transfiguration of life that reveals that dying can be a challenge for one to confront one's ultimate concern, a chance for achieving spiritual growth, and a pathway through which one may appropriate for oneself the value of love.

This essay is divided into three sections. In the first section, I point out that in Heidegger the nature of language is monologue, then I analyze the characteristics of it. In the second section, I show that in Gadamer the nature of language is dialogue, and I then analyze the concept of dialogue. In the last section, I argue that the concept of monologue contradicts the nature of language, while a dialogical concept of language is acceptable.

Since the end of 19th century, it's undoubtedly well-known between the so-called "Platonforscher" that a lot of the hermeneutic difficulties exist in various interpretations on Plato's Cratylus, especially in respect of the unsolvable contradiction between the conventionalistic - nominalistic and naturalistic - realistic interpretations. I try to reduce the discussed problems of this dialogue to the following 9:1. For what purpose does Plato write Cratylus?2. Who is Plato's antagonist?3. What does Plato claim on the correctness in name (ὀν ομάτων ὀρθότητα)?4. Is Socrates' etymology strictly meanful?5. In what chronological period does Plato write this dialogue?6. What are Cratylus' and Hermogenes' propositions for the correctness of name?7. What differences between Plato's and Aristotle's assertions about the correctness in name?8. As a younger disciple of Heraclitus, is Cratylus' stand point the same with Aristotle's report in Metaphysics?9. Does Cratylus understand Heraclitus' doctrine correctly?There are various answers to the above-mentioned problerns between the "Plaotnforscher", because they tempt to solute these problems on the basis of analytical method, which inevitably arises hermeneutic difficulties by interpreting CratyIus. By Plato, philosophizing means "dialegesthai" (διαλέ γεοθαι) and dialectic is a method of asking and answering. Platonic dialogues are the results or literal records of the to-and- fro-oration. If one wants to conceive Plato's philosophy, then he must comtemplate argumentative speculation between the partners in dialogue. If one predeterminated his studies with analytic tendence, then he should miss Plato's dialectic activity and its appearantly antinomic consequence.The problems are treated by following theoretical steps: 1. An analysis of the dialectical roles of Socrates, CratyIusand Hermogenes in this dialogue.2. An anlysis of the different assertions of the correctness in name.3. On the basis of these two analyses, I try to answer the above-mentioned problems.

Quine and Davidson advocate tile thesis that assignment of semantic contents and intentional states is underdetermined by the totality of behavioral evidence. More specifically, given all the empirical data, the decision as to how to attribute semantic and intentional content is arbitrary. Given the indeterminacy thesis and Davidson's contention that semantic and intentional content are, in principle, publicly accessible, it follows that there is no such things as unique reference, determinate meaning and definite mental content. Furthermore, since such things are not factual matters in anyone's language and mind, they are not objects for anyone, including the agent himself, to know of. However, Davidson also endorses the view that even though we sometimes are not certain about what other speakers believe and mean, we are nonethelessusually certain about what we ourselves believe and mean. This view seems to be at a conflict with the thesis of indeterminacy as it applied to the first person case. It has been argued, most pointedly by Malpas, that in Davidson's account there is no incompatibility between the indeterminacy in the first person case and the intuition that we usually have knowledge of our the content of own utterances and intentional states. In this paper, I mainly argue for two points: first, Malpas' reconciliation for Davidson is based on a seriously misunderstanding of some of Davidson's own ideas and is therefore inadequate; second, so long as we distinguish two kinds of knowledge involved in the seemingly conflict propositions, the conflict will be proved to be merely apparent.