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The Deviant Philosopher >

Ian James Kidd

Lesson: Understanding the Literary Style of the Analects

On a first reading – and a second and third – Analects does not always seem to Western readers like a philosophical work. In place of crisp definitions, arguments, and replies to criticisms, one finds anecdotes, snippets of conversations, and descriptions of what might seem trivialities – like how Confucius liked to straighten his mat! Many therefore find Analects dull, puzzling, strange, cryptic, frustrating or – worse – as a pseudo-philosophical text empty of any genuine moral insight. Such attitudes are encouraged by a history of racist and distorting stereotypes of aged sages spouting cryptic lines of ‘Oriental wisdom’.

Lesson: Ibn-Rushd on the Obligation to Philosophise

Texts and Courses Primary Texts The Decisive Treatise (excerpted in D.E. Cooper and P.S. Fosl, eds., Philosophy: The Classic Readings) Secondary Texts for Instructor Taylor, Richard C. (2000) ‘“Truth Does Not Contradict Truth”: Averroes and the unity of truth’, Topoi 19: 3-16. Taylor, Richard D. (2005) ‘Averroes: Religious Dialectic… Read More »Lesson: Ibn-Rushd on the Obligation to Philosophise

Lesson: Daoism, Dao, and Metaphor

Daoism is the philosophy of the Way (dao), but an immediate problem is that, as the famous opening lines of the Daodejing tells us, dao ‘cannot be spoken of’. Although the early Daoists offer us different arguments about why dao is ineffable, they agree that it is not amenable to literal propositional description. But this does not mean that we are left empty-handed, for we can draw upon other ways of speaking…

Lesson: Ibn-Tufayl and the State of Nature

A central concern of the ‘golden age’ of Islamic philosophy was the relationship between Hellenistic philosophy and the Islamic tradition. What is the proper relationship between Greek philosophy – a product of a pagan culture ignorant of the definitive revelation given to the Prophet Mohammad – and the tradition grounded in that revelation? A key question was the authoritative status of the Islamic religious and cultural tradition: is authentic participation in that tradition a necessary precondition for a relationship with Allah or are there other, alternative routes that dispense with the specific teachings and practices of Islam?