Students

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Learning Objectives

  1. List the main periods in the development of Indian philosophy.
  2. Compare the literature of each of these periods.
  3. Explain the basis for the distinction between the "orthodox" and "unorthodox" systems.
  4. Evaluate the importance of the distinction between Carvaka and all the other systems.
  5. Analyze how confrontation with physical, mental, and spiritual suffering lead to philosophical thought in India.
  6. Discuss why knowledge, especially self-knowledge, is regarded as the highest philosophical achievement.
  7. Describe how Indian thought assigns responsibility for the human condition.
  1. Evaluate the claim that the people of the Indus civilization had reached a relatively high level of culture and thought.
  2. Explain the significance of the Vedic Hymn of Origins.
  3. Discuss what the sages of the Upanishads are seeking.
  4. Demonstrate how the Taittiriya teaching of sheaths or layers of existence leads to the discovery of Atman.
  5. Analyze the meaning of Uddalaka’s teaching, "You are That (Tat tvam asi).
  1. Define the Jain conception of karmic matter.
  2. Describe its mass aspect, its force aspect, and its atomic constituency.
  3. Analyze the Jain conception of the soul, identifying its principal characteristics.
  4. Evaluate the Jain conception of bondage, specifying how it occurs and how it is constituted.
  5. Explain the meaning of liberation from the Jainist perspective and illustrate how it can be achieved.
  6. Discuss how faith, knowledge, and conduct work together to enable a person to attain the various levels of purification.
  7. Classify the Jain theory of knowledge, distinguishing the meaning of syadvada.
  1. Recognize the significance of the four signs that Siddhartha saw during his chariot rides outside the palace grounds.
  2. Discuss how the Buddha’s enlightenment yielded insight into interdependent arising as the true nature of existence.
  3. Evaluate the truth of the Buddha’s insight from your own perspective.
  4. Define the Noble Four Truths taught by the Buddha in his first sermon and analyze their ability to account for duhkha, its arising, and its elimination.
  5. Demonstrate how, according to the second noble truth, craving gives rise to suffering.
  6. List the components of the Noble Eightfold Path and compare them to each other.
  1. Illustrate how the wheel of becoming reflects the basic principle of the conditionedness of existence.
  2. Discuss how, according to the wheel of becoming, ignorance gives rise to duhkha.
  3. Explain how each of the twelve factors depicted on the rim of the wheel condition and are conditioned by the others.
  4. Recognize how the practice of mindfulness works to eliminate duhkha.
  5. Evaluate the truth of the claim that ignorance is the root condition of duhkha.
  6. Explain the conception of emptiness taught in the Heart Sutra.
  7. Demonstrate how, in the Diamond Sutra, the method of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction is used to explain how things exist in emptiness.
  8. Analyze why the Perfection of Wisdom tradition emphasizes that enlightenment is prajnaparamita (surpassing wisdom).
  1. Analyze why Nagarjuna interprets interdependent arising as emptiness (shunyata).
  2. Explain how Nagarjuna argues against self-existent causes and effects.
  3. Compare samsara and nirvana.
  4. List the three aspects of things, and discuss why Yogacara thinks it important to distinguish between them.
  5. Describe the store consciousness and compare it to the other kinds of consciousness.
  6. Evaluate belief in the store consciousness from your own perspective.
  7. Compare Asanga’s four kinds of knowledge.
  8. Illustrate how, according to Yogacara, duhkha and enlightenment arise.
  1. Describe Arjuna’s dilemma in the Bhagavad Gita.
  2. Compare the ultimate Self (Atman) and the guna-self.
  3. Evaluate this distinction from your own perspective.
  4. Recognize the basic aims in life (purusharthas).
  5. Explain each aim and illustrate their relation to each other.
  6. Analyze why life is ideally divided into four life-stages (ashramas).
  7. Define the four varnas and distinguish them from the castes (jatis).
  1. Analyze why causality is a central topic in Sankhya philosophy.
  2. Recognize Sankhya’s five arguments to show that the effect exists (preexists) in the cause.
  3. Explain what it means to say that the effect exists in the cause and evaluate this claim from your own perspective.
  4. Define the fundamental categories prakriti and purusha and compare them to each other.
  5. List the forces that, according to yoga, constitute the bondage of the Self.
  6. Discuss the eight groups of yogic techniques described by Patanjali for overcoming bondage.
  1. Name the four valid means of knowledge according to Nyaya and discuss whether any of these means of knowledge is completely reducible to the others.
  2. Define perception.
  3. Distinguish between determinate and indeterminate perception, and evaluate the importance of this distinction from your own perspective.
  4. Explain how the invariable connection between objects and events is known.
  5. Evaluate the claim that this invariable connection makes valid inference possible.
  6. List Vaisheshika’s seven fundamental kinds or categories of existence and evaluate this list from your own perspective.
  7. Analyze the Nyaya view of the self.
  8. Discuss the arguments for regarding the self as a unique substance.
  1. Evaluate Shankara’s argument against the possibility of real change.
  2. Analyze Shankara’s concept of appearance.
  3. Explain what Shankara means when he describes the world as an appearance.
  4. Compare Shankara’s theory of perceptual error to the Nyaya theory and the Mimamsa theory.
  5. Compare the interpretations of Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva concerning the relations between selves, things, and Brahman.
  6. Evaluate Ramanuja’s view that the world is the body of Brahman.
  1. Compare the Vedanta philosophers’ understanding of ultimate reality to the devotional understanding in the religious traditions.
  2. Discuss how Vishnu’s incarnation as Krishna reveals his essential functions.
  3. Define Krishna of Vrindavana’s conception of the ultimate nature of reality.
  4. Demonstrate how one should approach the ultimate according to Krishna of Vrindavana.
  5. Analyze why Kali appears in terrifying forms.
  6. Explain how the fundamental polarities are reconciled in Shiva.
  1. Analyze how the five pillars of Islam encompass faith, action, and spiritual realization.
  2. Define the three basic attitudes toward religion found among Indian Muslims.
  3. Distinguish the proper role of reason in relation to faith, according to Al-Ghazali.
  4. Compare the views of Al-Ghazali and Ibn Sina concerning creation, knowledge, and the soul.
  5. Evaluate Ibn Sina’s argument that love is the basis of life and knowledge from your own perspective.
  6. Explain the stages on the Sufi path to God.
  7. Compare Kabir and Guru Nanak.
  1. Explain the fundamental principles of Gandhi’s philosophy.
  2. Discuss how Gandhi’s philosophy figures in his lifestyle and in his role in Indian life.
  3. Evaluate Gandhi’s principle of nonviolence.
  4. Analyze the weaknesses of nonviolence as the basis of social and political action.
  5. Evaluate Aurobindo’s view of the ideal life.
  6. List the three stages of religious life according to Iqbal.
  7. Describe Radhakrishnan’s view of religion.
  8. Evaluate Radhakrishnan’s distinction between the externals and the essence of religion.
  1. Discuss how conditions in pre-Confucian China influenced the development of Confucian and Daoist thought.
  2. Compare the Confucian and Daoist philosophies.
  3. Compare the five processes with the yin-yang.
  4. Describe how Neo-Confucianism incorporated features of earlier thought.
  5. Distinguish the fundamental aim of Chinese philosophy. Explain this aim in terms of "sageliness within and kingliness without."
  6. Define the main characteristics of East Asian thought.
  1. Define hexagram.
  2. Explain how hexagrams symbolize the changing processes that constitute the world.
  3. Recognize what is constant or unchanging, according to the Yijing.
  4. Analyze the significance of Fu Xi’s careful observation and reflection.
  5. Discuss how morality is grounded in the creative processes of the universe.
  6. Evaluate the features of Yijing philosophy that had lasting influence on East Asian thinking.
  1. Analyze Confucianism as a “social humanism.”
  2. Compare humanism to naturalism and supernaturalism.
  3. Define ren.
  4. Discuss the importance of ren in Confucianism.
  5. Distinguish between the virtues of li, xiao, and yi.
  6. Explain how these virtues are related to the way of ren.
  7. Evaluate a Confucian conception of government by virtue.
  1. Explain how Mengzi accounts for evil.
  2. Evaluate Mengzi’s argument that human beings are inherently good.
  3. Discuss Xunzi’s view that human beings are inclined to evil.
  4. Demonstrate how, according to Xunzi, goodness comes about.
  5. Compare Mengzi and Xunzi.
  6. Describe how Mengzi and Xunzi advanced Confucian thought.
  7. List the main modifications that Dong Zhongshu introduced into Confucianism.
  1. Compare the philosophies of Daoism and Confucianism.
  2. Explain what Laozi means when he says, “Therefore when Dao is lost, only then does the doctrine of virtue arise. When virtue is lost, only then does the doctrine of humanity arise”.
  3. Define the Dao to which Laozi refers.
  4. Demonstrate how the Dao functions.
  5. Analyze the role of wuwei (nonaction) in Daoism.
  6. According to the Daodejing, how would a ruler rule?
  1. Describe the relation between human conventions and freedom according to Zhuangzi’s philosophy.
  2. Explain and evaluate Zhuangzi’s four arguments against the ordinary or conventional cognitive framework.
  3. Analyze why Zhuangzi does not provide advice for rulers.
  4. Compare the mundane world and the transcendent realm in Zhuangzi’s philosophy.
  5. Describe the sage according to Zhuangzi.
  1. Explain how Buddhism first came to China and discuss how it was received.
  2. Define the four main schools of Chinese Buddhism.
  3. Compare Tiantai and Huayan.
  4. Compare Chan and Pure Land.
  5. Describe the “Jewel Net of Indra”.
  6. Analyze the core that the image of the Jewel Net conveys.
  1. Explain how Chinese Buddhism and Daoism influenced the development of Neo-Confucianism.
  2. Demonstrate how Zhou Dunyi’s concept of the Great Ultimate (Taiji) provided a basis for Neo-Confucianism.
  3. Discuss the role of the theory of the five agencies thinking in Confucian morality.
  4. Define the Cheng brothers’ concept of principle.
  5. Compare Zhou Dunyi’s concept of the Great Ultimate to the Cheng brothers’ concept of principle.
  6. Analyze the meaning of the statement, “The man of ren forms one body with all things without any differentiation”.
  7. Describe Zhu Xi’s solution to the problem of the relation between good and evil.
  8. Evaluate Zhu Xi’s theory of the priority of principle (li) over material stuff (qi).
  9. Illustrate Wang Yangming’s notions of “manifesting the clear character,” “loving the people,” and “abiding in the highest good”.
  1. Explain how Wonhyo used the idea of one mind to harmonize the diverse schools of Buddhism.
  2. Discuss how the deluded and enlightened minds are related according to Chinul.
  3. Describe the “four-seven” controversy.
  4. Analyze Yi Yulgok’s interpretation of the “four-seven” controversy.
  5. Analyze T’oegye’s interpretation of the “four-seven” controversy.
  6. Compare the philosophies of Yi Yulgok and T’oegye.
  1. Define Zen practice.
  2. Discuss the relationship between daily life, zazen, and enlightenment.
  3. List the basic aims of Zen.
  4. Compare the verses of Huineng and Shenxiu.
  5. Distinguish the philosophical teachings that underlie Zen.
  6. Explain how the oxherding pictures (and commentaries) illustrate the Zen way of enlightenment.
  1. List the main issues in the debates over China’s modernization, and describe how they influenced recent Chinese philosophy.
  2. Recognize the basis for Kang Youwei’s reform efforts.
  3. Evaluate Kang Youwei’s reform efforts.
  4. Explain what Zhang Dongsun means when he says, “ideas... are secretly controlled by social needs.”
  5. Analyze the three central ideas worked out in Xiong Shili’s New Doctrine of Consciousness-Only.
  6. Discuss how Fung Yu-lan views the relation between science and metaphysics in his New Rational Philosophy.
  7. Compare Fung Yu-lan’s view of the relation between substance and function with that of Xiong Shili.
  8. Describe how self and world are related according to Nishida Kitaro.

Weblinks

All links provided below were active on website launch. However, due to the dynamic nature of the Internet, links do occasionally become inactive. If you find a link that has become inactive, please try using a search engine to locate the website in question.

  • Language Tip of the Week
    June Casagrande, author of Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies. This site offers a useful language, usage and style tips on a weekly basis.
  • Dave's ESL Café
    Professor Dave Sperling This site offers a wide range of resources for students and teachers of English as a second language, including language learning resources, job postings, and discussion forums.
  • MLA Style
    This page includes a description of Modern Language Association (MLA) style guidelines for documenting a research paper with a link to frequently asked questions about the style.
  • CMS Style
    This site includes a description of Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) guidelines for documenting with a comprehensive Q&A section.
  • Research and Documenting Sources
    Purdue University Online Writing Lab This section of the Purdue University OWL offers guidelines for finding, evaluating, and documenting sources, as well as advice on writing research papers.
  • Internet Public Library
    University of Michigan School of Information This site offers an interactive tutorial on identifying the argument of an essay.
  • Librarians' Index to the Internet
    The Library of California Created and maintained by librarians, this site offers a searchable annotated subject directory of Web resources that have been selected and evaluated.
  • American Memory
    Library of Congress This site offers links to the digital versions of selected holdings relevant to American history and culture, including photographs, manuscripts, rare books, maps, and recorded sound and moving pictures.
  • NYPL Digital Gallery
    New York Public Library This site offers access to more than 275,000 digitized images from the collections of the New York Public Library. You can search collections or browse by topic to find illustrations, photographs, posters, maps, and manuscripts.
  • The New York Times
    This online version of the The New York Times includes searchable archives.