about Zeno’s Paradoxes

In the 5th century B.C.E., Zeno of Elea offered arguments that led to conclusions contradicting what we all know from our physical experience–that arrows fly, that runners run, and that there are many different things in the world. The arguments were paradoxes for the ancient Greek philosophers. Because the arguments turn crucially on the notion that space and time are infinitely divisible, Zeno can be credited with being the first person in history to show that the concept of infinity is problematical.

In his Achilles Paradox, the fastest runner of antiquity, Achilles, races to catch a slower runner–for example, a tortoise that is crawling slowly away from him. The tortoise has a head start, so if Achilles hopes to overtake it, he must run at least to the place where the tortoise is when he sees it, but by the time he arrives there, it will have crawled to a new place, so then Achilles must run to this new place, but the tortoise meanwhile will have crawled on, and so forth. Achilles will never catch the tortoise, says Zeno, because the series of goals has no final member. Therefore, good reasoning shows that fast runners never can catch slow ones. So much the worse for the claim that motion really occurs, Zeno says in defense of his mentor Parmenides who had argued that motion is an illusion.

Although very few scholars today would agree with Zeno’s conclusions, we can not escape them by jumping up from our seat and chasing down a tortoise. What is required is a principled way out that does not get us embroiled in new paradoxes nor impoverish our mathematics and science.

This article explains his nine known paradoxes and considers the treatments that have been offered. Aristotle accused Zeno of not paying sufficient attention to the fact that there are no actual infinities but only potential infinities, and that durations divide into intervals but never into indivisible instants, and his treatment became the generally accepted solution until the late 19th century. The Standard Solution that is favored by most philosophers today employs the apparatus of calculus which has proved its indispensability for the development of modern science. Its key ideas are that space, time and motion are continua; that positions, distances, times, durations and speeds all should be treated as continuous variables whose values are real numbers or intervals of real numbers; that an object can have a positive speed at a point-place; and that some infinite series of positive terms can have a finite sum. From this perspective, Zeno was working with false assumptions. This Standard Solution took hundreds of years to perfect and was due to the flexibility of intellectuals who were willing to replace old theories and their concepts with more fruitful ones, despite the damage done to common sense and our naive intuitions. The article ends by exploring newer treatments developed since the 1960s.

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu

Zhang Zai (Chang Tsai, 1020—1077 CE)

Zhang Zai was one of the pioneers of the Song dynasty philosophical movement called “Study of the Way,” often known as Neo-Confucianism. One of the most distinctive features of many of these new ways of thought being formulated at the time was an increased interest in metaphysics, usually influenced by the Classic of Changes (Yijing). Zhang’s most significant contributions to Chinese philosophy were primarily in the area of metaphysics, where he came up with a new theory of qi that was very influential. He is also credited with differentiating original nature and physical nature, which was to become a key concept in the most prominent Song philosophers, the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi). Ethically, his most influential doctrines were found in the brief essay “Western Inscription,” where he propounded the ideas of being one body with all things and universal caring. After his death, most of his disciples were absorbed into the Cheng brothers’ school and his thought become known primarily through the efforts of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi, who honored Zhang as one of the founders of the Study of the Way.

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu

about Zhong Hui (Chung Hui, 225–264 CE)

Zhong Hui (Chung Hui) was a major philosophical figure during China’s early medieval period (220-589 CE). An accomplished interpreter of the Laozi and the Yijing, Zhong Hui contributed significantly to the early development of xuanxue—literally “learning” (xue) of the “dark” or “mysterious” (xuan) Dao (“Way”), but sometimes translated as “Neo-Daoism“. He also was a major political figure whose ambition eventually led to his untimely demise. Virtually all of Zhong Hui’s writings have been lost, which perhaps explains why he has been given scant attention by students of Chinese philosophy. Had he not failed in his attempt to overthrow the regime of his day, no doubt his writings would have been preserved and given the attention they justly deserve. In particular, his views on human “capacity and nature” (caixing), as developed in his interpretation of the Laozi, are major contributions to xuanxue philosophy, which dominated the Chinese intellectual scene from the third to the sixth century CE. In contrast to other thinkers of the time, who argued that capacity and nature are the same (tong), different (yi), or diverge from one another (li), Zhong Hui argued that they coincide (he). In effect, he proposed that what is endowed is potential, which must be carefully nurtured and brought to completion through learning and effort. While one’s native endowment is not sufficient, one must have some material to begin with in order to achieve the desired result. Thus, it cannot be said that the latter has nothing to do with the former.

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu

about Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi, 1130—1200)

A preeminent scholar, classicist and a first-rate analytic and synthetic thinker, Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi) created the supreme synthesis of Song-Ming dynasty (960-1628 CE) Neo-Confucianism. Moreover, by selecting the essential classical Confucian texts–the Analects (Lunyu) of Confucius, the Book of Mencius (Mengzi, the Great Learning (Daxue) and the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong)—then editing and compiling them, with commentary, as the Four Books (Sishu). In doing so, Zhu redefined the Confucian tradition and outlook. He restored its original focus on moral cultivation and realization from the more bureaucratic stance of Confucians of the preceding Han and Tang dynasty (206 BCE-905 CE) who concentrated on the Five Classics (Wujing) of classical antiquity. The Four Books became required reading for the imperial examination system from the Yuan dynasty (1280-1341) until the system was abolished near the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) in 1908. In his philosophical work, Zhu fused the concepts of the principal Northern Song (960-1126 CE) thinkers, Shao Yong (1011-77), Zhou Dunyi (1017-73), Zhang Zai (Chang Tsai, 1020-77) and the brothers Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and Cheng Hao (1032-85) into a rich, grand synthesis. Zhu Xi’s thought has been the starting point for intellectual discourse and the focus of disputation for the last 800 years. His influence spread to Korea and Japan, which adopted Confucianism and the imperial examination system and were enamored of Zhu’s intellectual achievements. To study traditional Chinese philosophy, especially Confucian thought, one must engage the ideas and works of Zhu Xi.

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu

about Slavoj Zizek (1949—)

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic. He was described by Terry Eagleton as the “most formidably brilliant” recent theorist to have emerged from Continental Europe. Zizek’s work is infamously idiosyncratic. It features striking dialectical reversals of received common sense; a ubiquitous sense of humor; a patented disrespect towards the modern distinction between high and low culture; and the examination of examples taken from the most diverse cultural and political fields. Yet Zizek’s work, as he warns us, has a very serious philosophical content and intention. Zizek challenges many of the founding assumptions of today’s left-liberal academy, including the elevation of difference or otherness to ends in themselves, the reading of the Western Enlightenment as implicitly totalitarian, and the pervasive skepticism towards any context-transcendent notions of truth or the good. One feature of Zizek’s work is its singular philosophical and political reconsideration of German idealist philosophy (Kant, Schelling and Hegel). Zizek has also reinvigorated Jacques Lacan’s challenging psychoanalytic theory, controversially reading him as a thinker who carries forward founding modernist commitments to the Cartesian subject and the liberating potential of self-reflective agency, if not self-transparency. Zizek’s works since 1997 have become more and more explicitly political, contesting the widespread consensus that we live in a post-ideological or post-political world, and defending the possibility of lasting changes to the new world order of globalization, the end of history, or the war on terror.

This article explains Zizek’s philosophy as a systematic, if unusually presented, whole; and it clarifies the technical language Zizek uses, which he takes from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxism, and German idealism. In line with how Zizek presents his own work, this article starts by examining Zizek’s descriptive political philosophy. It then examines the Lacanian-Hegelian ontology that underlies Zizek’s political philosophy. The final part addresses Zizek’s practical philosophy, and the ethical philosophy he draws from this ontology.

Source : http://www.iep.utm.edu

about Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tzu, 369—298 BCE)

Zhuangzi, or “Master Zhuang” (also known in the Wade-Giles romanization as Chuang-tzu) was, after Laozi, one of the earliest thinkers to contribute to the philosophy that has come to be known as Daojia, or school of the Way. According to traditional dating, he was an almost exact contemporary of the Confucian thinker Mencius, but there appears to have been little to no communication between them. He is ranked among the greatest of literary and philosophical giants that China has produced. His style is complex—mythical, poetic, narrative, humorous, indirect, and polysemic.

Zhuangzi espoused a holistic philosophy of life, encouraging disengagement from the artificialities of socialization, and cultivation of our natural “ancestral” potencies and skills, in order to live a simple and natural, but full and flourishing life. He was critical of our ordinary categorizations and evaluations, noting the multiplicity of different modes of understanding between different creatures, cultures, and philosophical schools, and the lack of an independent means of making a comparative evaluation. He advocated a mode of understanding that is not committed to a fixed system, but is fluid and flexible, and that maintains a provisional, pragmatic attitude towards the applicability of these categories and evaluations.

The text through which we know his work was the result of the editing and arrangement of the Jin dynasty thinker and commentator Guo Xiang (Kuo Hsiang, d. 312 CE), who reduced what had been a work in fifty-two chapters to the current edition of thirty-three chapters, excising material that he considered to be spurious. Zhuangzi’s version of Daoist philosophy was highly influential in the reception, interpretation, and transformation of Buddhism in China.

Source : http://www.iep.utm.edu