In earlier days, the main guiding principle in Taiwanese education was Confucian ethics, which arguably also provides a strong and culturally resonant context for stimulating thought about the nuances of moral issues. However, as Taiwanese society has changed, Confucianism has largely disappeared from children's education, and many educational experts (though not all) think Confucian education is old-fashioned and unhelpful for enhancing children's thinking. Globalisation and modernisation has meant that the curriculum has instead been substantially influenced by Western concepts, which seem more up to date, but which lack the same degree of implicit cultural resonance. Reflecting this shift, the Ministry of Education has provided Multi-edition Teaching Materials to help develop children's thinking, but these are based on Western methods, including the use of contemporary moral dilemmas to stimulate debate (cf. Fisher 1998, 2005a,b; Lipman 1977, 2003; Trickey and Topping 2004). Materials of this kind are likely to be largely unfamiliar to most children, potentially undermining their ability to engage in productive discussion. The objectives of this research were therefore to a) investigate the comparative benefits of using the Analects of Confucius and contemporary moral dilemmas as the focus of dialogic teaching aimed at developing children's critical thinking; b) examine the growth of children's discursive skills over time and across the primary school age range, via extended application of materials of both types; c) consider the impact of teacher behaviour within dialogic lessons on this development; and d) examine in more detail the constraints on the use of dialogic teaching in Taiwanese schools, and how its introduction might be better assisted. The main study employed an extended comparative intervention across six classes of Taiwanese children, involving two types of experimental group, Two classes of each of different age groups (7 to 8, 9 to 10, and 11 to 12 year olds) were engaged in dialogic teaching over a 12 week period, but using different materials, either the Analects or moral dilemma stories. Three further classes served as control groups, one at each age level, who followed the regular curriculum without dialogic teaching intervention. Pre-tests of students' language achievement scores in Chinese were used to establish equivalence between conditions. A post-test, which involved children writing an essay on either an Analect or a moral dilemma, was used to examine the intervention outcomes. A survey of participants' parents was employed to gain information on how far ethical and philosophical issues are discussed at home, in what context, and whether or not moral dilemmas and Confucian ideas ever form part of that discussion. The objective was to establish whether the supposed difference between the two in cultural resonance is actually borne out in parental conversations with children. Interviews were used to evaluate teachers' viewpoints on whether dialogic teaching could be modified in Taiwanese primary schools to employ either the traditional Analects of Confucius or Western philosophical moral dilemma children stories to effectively cultivate Taiwanese children's ability to think critically. Detailed content analysis of both in-class discussions over the 12-week period of the intervention and the subsequent post-test essays found that the dialogic intervention improved children's articulation and explanation of moral issues relative to the control group, with all the age groups showing increasingly differentiated dialogue despite the reduction, or even the removal, of teacher support during the discussions. Disagreements, agreements, elaborations and questions all increased in frequency. In terms of differences between the impact of the Analects and the moral dilemma interventions, use of disagreements, agreements, and explanations progressed more consistently during the course of the Analects lesson, whilst there was greater fluctuation in the frequency of these in the moral dilemma lessons. The youngest age group showed less sign of gain in use of questions in the Analects lessons, and produced fewer agreements and explanations during the course of those lessons. The two interventions were much more comparable in these respects among the older two age groups. In general, the dialogue data indicated that children in the youngest age group gained more from the moral dilemma lessons, whilst the two older age groups gained more from the Analects lessons. This corresponds with the parents' usage: the survey results showed that parents talked about the issues relevant to moral dilemmas more often than discussing Chinese proverbs with their children, but that the latter was more likely to occur where parents were better educated, and in families with older children. Taken together, this suggests that the Analects may be a better resource for promoting critical thinking once children have attained a certain level of understanding. The interview responses revealed that teachers agreed with the benefit of developing children's thinking by means of dialogic teaching. However, most of them merely used it as part of whole class discussions and individual talks about deviant behaviour with specific pupils because of a tight and stressful curriculum and large class sizes. The key to progress may be finding better ways to provide teachers with direct experience of how to use group discussions in class, perhaps with the more responsive older students and more culturally resonant materials.

This thesis compares the ethical theories of two 8th century Indian philosophers, Śāntideva and Śaṅkara. In order to construct their ethics from philosophical premises, a metaphysical approach has been taken. A comparison of these two philosophers has never been made, nor has there been any major comparative study of the ethics of their two traditions, Indian Madhyamaka Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta. In opening the way for further comparisons between these two schools, I wish to question the manner in which scholars have consistently divided them along self/non-self (ātman/anātman) lines. The key to the comparison is thus the notion of individuated self (jīva) rather than the less personal ātman. Once the full implications of Advaita metaphysics are understood, whereby all consciousness is ultimately that of the one brahman, then, at the individuated level of consciousness, the ethical situation is strangely similar to the Buddhist with their notion of non-self (anātman). We thus have two rival schools positing a radical notion of the individual as having no unified centre of moral agency. Both schools adopt a methodology of Two Truths, the relative and the ultimate, in order to allow for both a provisional ethical framework and the potential for world transcendence. It was decided that the most convenient form of ethical comparison was a qualified form of altruism, here called “constructive altruism”. This is a form of other-regarding ethics which allows for the concept of a non-giver, i.e. a person who has realised selflessness and has seen through the “illusion” of individuation. This person then takes it upon himself to construct the other so as to gain a focus for the compassionate activity of teaching. The aim of such teaching is the liberation (mokṣa) of freedom-seeking disciples from this cyclic existence (saṃsāra) and its prevalent potential for suffering (duḥkha).

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This book attempts a comparative study between Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), a Neo-Confucian master of the Song Dynasty in China, and Meister Eckhart (1260-1327), a scholastic and mystic in the medieval West. With a focus on the theme of human intellect as presented in the works of the two thinkers, this study also explores the massive hermeneutical framework in which that concept is unfolded in Zhu Xi and in Eckhart. Thus, the complexity of each thinker’s understanding of the human intellect is demonstrated in its own context, and the common themes between them are discussed in their own terms. Based on a systematic study of the original texts, the comparison between Zhu Xi and Meister Eckhart goes much deeper than a general dialogue between East and West. The comparative model of this book, based strictly on textual study, aims to develop an in-depth communication between a scholastic Confucian mind and his equally sophisticated counterpart in Christendom, in the hope that the intellectual brilliance and spiritual splendour of one thinker will be illuminated by the light of the other. Probably only when one encounters a like-minded counterpart brought up in a totally different tradition will such a mutual illumination become meaningful.

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This work consists of a critical translation from the Arabic of "(On) First Philosophy", [title in Arabic], the major philosophical text of Yaʻqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. ca. 870 A.D.); and a detailed study of this text in relation to cognate treatises of al-Kindī's, and to works of classical and late Greek philosophy. Al-Kindī's ideas are also compared with those of his contemporaries among the theologians and philosophers of the 9th and 10th centuries. The translation is formally patterned upon the Arabic edition of "First Philosophy" by Muḥammad Abū Rīdah (Cairo, 1950). A critical apparatus accompanying the translation notes differences in my reading of the manuscript from that of Abū Rīdah, and also refers, wherever helpful, to the readings of another (less careful) Arabic edition, that done by Aḥmad al-Ahwānī (Cairo, 1948). The introduction to the translation consists of four chapters: l) a resumé of what is currently known of al-Kindī's life and times, and of the most important literature relating to al-Kindī philosophical studies; 2a) a description of the text and translation of "On First Philosophy" and a summary of its contents; 2b) a philosophical analysis of al-Kindī's views in "First Philosophy" and cognate texts; 3) a reevaluation of al-Kindī's relation to the muʻtazila. The following is a brief summary of the major points of the commentary and introduction, which expand upon the remarks and allusions found in the translation. Our growing awareness of the social and cultural forces at work in 9th century Baghdad helps us to locate al-Kindī, the "philosopher of the Arabs", in a complex environment of competing ethnic and religious groups; with none of whom, however, can we identify al-Kindī with any certainty. His main involvement appears to have been with the tradition of Greek philosophy and sciences newly acquired by the Moslems; to the elucidation and propagation of which tradition many of his writings are directed. "On First Philosophy" thus shares with many of his writings a disarming combination of elementary philosophical definitions and rather sophisticated arguments; the proofs of which, however, are usually given in a repetitious manner. Al-Kindī's favorite formulation of arguments -in which he uses a combination of logical and factual premises to reach a conclusion considered by him as "necessary"- is that identified with Stoic logic, viz., the hypothetical and disjunctive "syllogism". In the repetitive and uneven style of his presentation, as well as in other ways, "First Philosophy" appears to have been presented originally in oral lecture form, probably at the court of the caliph. A number of his remarks in this and other treatises tally with recently discovered sayings attributed to al-Kindī in the abridgement of Abū Sulayman al-Sijistānī's Ṣiwān al-Ḥikmah, a source which also inclines one to revise in al-Kindī's favor the rather one-sided negative judgements of his personality known from antiquity. Al-Kindī emerges from this study as a subtle and relatively private man about whom the last word has yet to be written. Much, however, of al-Kindī's theoretical philosophy can be gleaned from a study of "On First Philosophy". The treatise analyzes causation, perception, substance and the categories and predicables of existence; presents elementary principles of logic; and defines the concepts of eternity and of body, motion and time, all of which are deemed finite. Unity and multiplicity (i.e., plurality) are examined separately and shown to require each other in the existence of every object; which is then seen as possessing unity in a non-essential, accidental way. This leads to the assumption of an essential cause for all accidental unity, which essential unity must be totally unlike any other kind of unity imaginable; neither one by number, form (including neither intellect or soul), genus or even by analogy. This unique, True One, however, as responsible for the unity of all else, is considered the (ultimate) cause of the becoming of all substances and of the creation of the world from nothing; achieved apparently by a process of emanation which is just barely mentioned. This reference to emanation, and the emphasis upon the existence of an ultimate One above all of creation, indicates a strong Neo-Platonic influence in al-Kindī's thought, though he does not attempt to construct an ontological scheme of universal hypostases existing between the One and man. He is similarly vague, in "First Philosophy" and elsewhere, on the status of the individual intellect and its entire relation to a possibly universal agent intellect. Al-Kindī is using a composite source (or sources) in this area as well as in many others, making use of Alexander of Aphrodisias' division of the intellect, though not of his identification of the Agent Intellect with the Divine Mind. Al-Kindī distinguishes between the One and all else, including any universal intellect, probably going further in his transcendental view of the one than even his Plotinian source. It is Aristotle's Metaphysics however, rather than Plotinus' Enneads, which serves as al-Kindī's main source in "First Philosophy", and he often follows the Arabic text of Aristotle's work quite closely, though never slavishly. He works with Aristotle's remarks on the general nature of all substance and being, supplementing the Metaphysics sources with material that ultimately goes back to the Categories, Posterior Analytics, Physics, and De Anima. He does not refer at all to Aristotle's unmoved mover; rejecting, with the denial of potential infinity as a philosophically significant concept, the notion of an eternal universe and of an infinite extension of time and movement. His proofs for the finiteness of all body, and concomitants of body, follow arguments originally presented by John Philoponus, and which also appear in a number of al-Kindī's contemporaries (though he does not follow John Philoponus in other, related areas); while his arguments for the absurdity of predicating unity or plurality exclusively of anything are descended ultimately from Plato's Parmenides, though they probably reached al-Kindī through a paraphrase contained in some Middle or Neo-Platonic work, or a doxography of the sort he uses elsewhere. A Hellenistic commentary to Porphyry's Isagoge serves as yet another major source for various parts of "First Philosophy", especially for a discussion of the predicables and the relation of unity and plurality to them. Al-Kindī probably referred to this same source for a critical discussion of number theory, with which he would also have been familiar from the Metaphysics and from Nichomachus of Gerasa's Introduction to Arithmetic though significant metaphysical differences exist between Nichomachus and al-Kindī. The Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ of the following century were also highly familiar with Nichomachus' work, as well as with all of the same authorities used by al-Kindī in "First Philosophy" and elsewhere; and a brief comparison of their Rasāʼil and al-Kindī's writings indicates a common source for many of their views. Al-Kindī had a number of disciples, notably Isaac Israeli and Aḥmed b. al-Ṭayyib al-Sarakhsī. Both men, like al-Kindl, seem to have been a-political figures in their respective communities; and, again like him, al-Sarakhsī at least could not escape being drawn into the politics of his day; and apparently also being victimized by personal or politically motivated changes at court which masqueraded as pious anti-Muʻtazila action.

This study investigates Western curatorial practices towards the darśan, the visual contact established between the Hindu worshipper and the deity who is believed to give life to its material representation, expressed by two sets of Indian storytelling scrolls, the Bengali pats and the Rajasthani paṛs. Whilst the scrolls, especially the Rajasthani ones, are believed to be the temples and the icons of the deity depicted, Western curators appreciate them either as examples of ethnographic theories, or as pure art works. On the one hand, materiality is thus animistically empowered (see Faure, 1998), and, consequently, is treated as an anthropomorphic entity or fetish. On the other hand, materiality is considered as a reified idea, an objectification of a social structure, or of an ideal of beauty. Latour (2010) calls this phenomenon of reification a factish concept, which is revered in a semi-spiritual or post-secular way. Modernity, according to Latour, is characterised by this opposition between self-evident, abstract and intellectual notions –e.g. the categories of the sacred and of the profane –and the concrete and irrational reality. The differentiation between reality and ideas recalls the broader boundary between the human and the nonhuman. According to Merleau-Ponty (2003 [c. 1956]), materiality coincides with nature, one of the fundamental criteria of the categorisation of human/nonhuman. While human characteristics are highly rational, materiality, along with animality, is confined within the irrational realm and is considered as a passive actor, except for Gell’s (1998) theorisation of material agency. However, his conceptualisation depends upon an anthropomorphisation of the artefact by invoking the particular example of children’s play with toys. The present thesis explores the contribution of phenomenology, as the study of embodiments and incarnations, in problematising the role of materiality in its relationships with humans, and so the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman. On the one hand, the study employs phenomenology as a methodological tool, according to which the researcher’s body reveals a particular and intersubjective appraisal of materiality. On the other hand, phenomenology, corroborated by posthumanist studies, is the theoretical approach by which the duality object/subject is problematised. By this logic, phenomenology challenges the ontological idea of the I or human as separated from the Other or the nonhuman, by replacing it with a hybridism and a fusion between the perceiving and the perceived. Fieldwork data problematises this anthropomorphisation of materiality. In fact, visitors’ responses escape from the curators’ control and reveal how museum artefacts possess an agency independent from any human projection. In addition, data emphasises the irreconciliability between epistemic categories and the empiric reality. For instance, the Durkheimian notions of the sacred and of the profane become inapt to describe the phenomenon of the recreation of religious contexts and places, such as temples and altars.

This thesis is a comparative study that focuses on the writings of an Oxford-trained Indian Christian theologian, priest and Bishop named A.J. Appasamy (1891-1975), and his theological interaction with the texts and tradition of the Srivaiṣṇava reformer Rāmānuja (1017-1137). For my doctrinal focus I have chosen to explore Appasamy’s four-fold Johannine application of the ‘Body of God’ analogy - the ‘Universe’, ‘Incarnation’, ‘Eucharist’ and ‘Church’ being his four divine embodiments. Post-Independence, Appasamy faced criticisms from expatriate theologians who described his theological project as ‘bold heresies’, a ‘synthesis of Christianity and Vedanta’ that has ‘shifted the axis’ from Christianity to ‘Hindu religion’. By following the leads in Appasamy writings back to his devotional tradition, I argue that such charges are, in fact, baseless and that his application of the analogy is rooted, rather, in the sacramental theology of his own Anglican tradition. To do so I demonstrate how his views on divine embodiment closely reflect the theological developments that took place in the first half of the last century between the time of Charles Gore and William Temple. Methodologically, I am arguing for the need to understand theological discourse as being semiotically and traditionally situated, embedded in mythic narrative and embodied in ritual practice. In doing so, however, I further argue that just as Appasamy’s detractors have failed to read him in the context of his devotional tradition, so, too, has Appasamy done with Rāmānuja. By reading Rāmānuja more as a Vedāntic philosophical theologian than as a sectarian practitioner, he has abstracted the Ācārya from his tradition - a tradition that is undoubtedly temple-based. On this basis I challenge Appasamy’s use of Rāmānuja’s terms and propose what I believe to be a better reading of John’s Gospel for future comparative interaction with the Srivaiṣṇava tradition.

Over the past thirty years, academic dialogue on the relationships between science and religion within historical, theological and philosophical contexts has flourished, with the importance of this dialogue being positively expressed. In particular, at the intersection of psychology and religion there is a triple relationship between these domains and in this thesis, we bring the Hindu tradition of Classical Yoga into this discourse, aiming for a psychological understanding of the Yogasutra of Patañjali as the primary text of this tradition. With a 'psychology in religion' perspective we identify key psychological concepts in the first six sutra of the text, explicate and explore its psychological dimension, through referencing with other key sutra or aphorisms in the Yogasutra. With a robust methodology consisting of a hermeneutic and phenomenological based close reading of the text and rigorous conceptual analysis, we construct a detailed model of the mind contextualised within the principles and practice of Yoga. We discuss the modifications and states of the mind, the underlying subliminal factors; the nature of embodiment, identity and subjective experience, and the affective and volitional aspects of the individual, as explicated from the text. In Section Three of this thesis we take a dialogical and comparative approach at the intersection of psychology and religion. Csikszentmihalyi has asserted that there is a close resemblance between Yoga and Flow, the latter being developed within the domain of Western Positive Psychology. We carry out a detailed comparative analysis of the phenomenology of Flow and Samadhi presented within a proposed methodology and framework of dimensions of subjectivity and consciousness, to investigate this claim. Clarifying the conceptual differences, establishing parallels and demonstrating common topographical and functional areas in the two phenomena, opens the possibility for an empirical investigation, which we propose. Finally, we point out the contributions of this study and suggest future directions for research in this field.