Explore/Religion & world traditions

Religion & world traditions

Understanding a tradition requires distinguishing practices, interpretations and arguments about truth.

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Introduction to Religion & world traditions

How do we study a religious claim?

Religion & world traditions3h · IntroductionBeginner

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Comparing traditions

How can comparison avoid flattening a tradition?

Religion & world traditions14h · TopicSome background

Emptiness and dependence

What does it mean for something to exist dependently?

Religion & world traditions14h · TopicSome background

Read a thinker or author

Søren Kierkegaard

Writing about commitment, anxiety and religious existence, often through pseudonymous voices. Attend to who is speaking and what the text leaves unresolved.

Confucius

Ethical cultivation, relationships and ritual in the Analects and its interpretive traditions. Compare translations before assuming a term has a single English equivalent.

Zhuangzi

Stories and arguments about perspective, language and skilled action. Start with a short episode and examine what its change of viewpoint does.

Nāgārjuna

Madhyamaka arguments about dependence, causation and emptiness. Begin with the target of an argument and keep conventional explanation distinct from intrinsic existence.

Ibn Sīnā

Metaphysics and accounts of intellect in the Arabic philosophical tradition. Follow the distinction between what something is and whether it exists.

Ban Zhao

Historical writing and a contested text on women’s education and conduct in Han China. Read educational possibilities alongside the hierarchy the text assumes.

Sophie Oluwole

Arguments about oral traditions, philosophical reasoning and the comparison of Socrates with Ọ̀rúnmìlà. Distinguish a recorded argument from a claim about an entire tradition.