Ugo Zilioli / Jan Westerhoff (Anthology Editors)
Ancient Greek and Indian Buddhist Philosophers
on Reality and Selfhood
London: Bloomsbury 2025, 304 pp.
— ISBN 9781350460362 —
Interreligiöse Bibliothek (IRB): Buch des Monats Januar 2026 >>>
Description
Key areas and aspects of ancient philosophy in Greek and Indian Buddhist traditions are illuminated in this collection.
Covering an extended period of time, from early (5th century BC), through Hellenism (at Cyrene), to post-Hellenistic times (up to the 7th century AD) it begins by focusing on historical themes and methods in ancient Greece and India. This sketch of historical and philosophical connections between the regions, from Classical times to post-Hellenism, sets the ground for deeper exploration between these two traditions. Attention is placed on reality and selfhood. An international team of contributors deal with topics including consciousness, personal identity and personhood. They tackle metaphysical questions about composition and material constitution of things, shedding light on the challenges Greek and Buddhist thinkers faced. Converging analyses and shared themes are identified in a substantive introduction to the collection. Key philosophical terms from ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Tibetan are included in a glossary. This is an important contribution to the growing literature in ancient comparative philosophy.
Details über academia.edu >>>
Review: ‚This collection makes a significant contribution to one of the most intriguing questions posed about ancient philosophy: whether the Greek and Indian traditions may have influenced one another. I came away from it less skeptical about this than I had been before. Along with thought-provoking discussions of historical connections between these two rich traditions, the book offers illuminating comparisons, for instance of Pyrrhonism and Buddhism, Plato and Vasubandhu, and in-depth studies of thinkers from both traditions.‘ Peter Adamson (wikipedia)
Authors:
>>> Ugo Zilioli is John Fell Fund Researcher at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK. He has published widely on ancient Greek philosophy and, more recently, on Buddhist and comparative philosophy. His previous publications, as editor, include Atomism in Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2020) and From the Socratics to the Socratic Schools (2015).
>>> See more (academia.edu) >>>
>>> Jan Westerhoff is Professor of Buddhist Studies at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University, UK.
>>> Homepage Jan Westerhoff >>>
See also:
>>> Buddhismus – Religion ohne Gott? (IRB Blog-Archiv) >>>
>>> Literaturempfehlungen: Vielfalt des Buddhismus
(mit Originaltexten und Übersetzungen) (IRB Blog-Archiv) >>>
>>> Carola Roloff (Bhikṣuṇī Jampa Tsedroen):
Buddhismus – Gender – Dialog – Meditation (IRB Blog-Archiv)
Table of Contents / Inhaltsverzeichnis
PART I Exchanges and influence.
1. J. Westerhoff/ U. Zilioli, Ancient Greek and Indian Buddhist philosophies:
status of the art and a comparative appraisal.
2. Matt Cobb, Travel and Intellectual Exchange across
the Ancient Indian Ocean world (ca. 100 BCE to 600 CE).
PART II Nihilism, eliminativism and and Simplemindednness.
3. Roberta Ioli, Being and not being in Gorgias‘ proper demonstration.
For a non-eliminativist reading of PTMO.
4. Ugo Zilioli, On What Is Not: Gorgias and Nagarjuna on nihilism.
5. Diego Zucca, An Aristotelian Viewpoint on the Presence of an
Eliminitavist Trend in Presocratic Philosophy.
6. Sonam Kachru, For and Against Simplemindedness in Buddhist Metaphysics.
PART III Indeterminacy and Scepticism.
7. Ugo Zilioli, Pyrrho’s revelation. On the hieratic style and oral origin of the Aristocles passage,
between East and West.
8. Refik Güremen, Pyrrho and Vagueness: A Fregean Analysis
9. Anish Chakravarty, Interweaving Ancient Philosophical Traditions:
Sañjaya’s Gymnosophism and Pyrrhonism.
PART IV Selfhood, Consciousness and Re-birth.
10. Enrico Piergiacomi, The Treasury of the Self. Democritus on Physics and Moral Identity.
11. Joachim Aufderheide, No-Self in Plato and Vasubandhu.
12. Andrea Sangiacomo, Consciousness in the Pali discourses of the Buddha
13. Szilvia Szanyi, Rebirth Without a Self: Sthiramati on the Transformation of Consciousness.
