Buddhist philosophy is the ancient Indian philosophical system that developed within the religio-philosophical tradition of Buddhism. It comprises all the philosophical investigations and systems of rational inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in ancient India following the parinirvāṇa of Gautama Buddha, as well as the further developments which followed the spread of Buddhism throughout Asia.
Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one does not know whether the entity exists.
Nagarjuna was an Indian monk and Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher of the Madhyamaka school. He is widely considered one of the most important Buddhist philosophers. Jan Westerhoff considers him to be "one of the greatest thinkers in the history of Asian philosophy."
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: "Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?"
Substance theory, or substance–attribute theory, is an ontological theory positing that objects are constituted each by a substance and properties borne by the substance but distinct from it. In this role, a substance can be referred to as a substratum or a thing-in-itself. Substances are particulars that are ontologically independent: they are able to exist all by themselves. Another defining feature often attributed to substances is their ability to undergo changes. Changes involve something existing before, during and after the change. They can be described in terms of a persisting substance gaining or losing properties. Attributes or properties, on the other hand, are entities that can be exemplified by substances. Properties characterize their bearers; they express what their bearer is like.
Chandrakirti or "Chandra" was a Buddhist scholar of the Madhyamaka school and a noted commentator on the works of Nagarjuna and those of his main disciple, Aryadeva. He wrote two influential works on madhyamaka, the Prasannapadā and the Madhyamakāvatāra.
In classical theistic and monotheistic theology, the doctrine of divine simplicity says that God is simple . God exists as one unified entity, with no distinct attributes; God’s existence is identical to God’s essence.
Śūnyatā, translated most often as "emptiness", "vacuity", and sometimes "voidness", or "nothingness" is an Indian philosophical concept. In Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and other philosophical strands, the concept has multiple meanings depending on its doctrinal context. It is either an ontological feature of reality, a meditative state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience.
The Middle Way as well as "teaching the Dharma by the middle" are common Buddhist terms used to refer to two major aspects of the Dharma, that is, the teaching of the Buddha. The first phrasing, refers to a spiritual practice that steers clear of both extreme asceticism and sensual indulgence. This spiritual path is defined as the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to awakening. The second formulation refers to how the Buddha's Dharma (Teaching) approaches ontological issues of existence and personal identity by avoiding eternalism and annihilationism.
Mādhyamaka, otherwise known as Śūnyavāda and Niḥsvabhāvavāda, refers to a tradition of Buddhist philosophy and practice founded by the Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna. The foundational text of the Mādhyamaka tradition is Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. More broadly, Mādhyamaka also refers to the ultimate nature of phenomena as well as the non-conceptual realization of ultimate reality that is experienced in meditation.
The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, abbreviated as MMK, is the foundational text of the Madhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. It was composed by the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna.
Tsongkhapa was an influential Tibetan Buddhist monk, philosopher and tantric yogi, whose activities led to the formation of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also known by his ordained name Losang Drakpa or simply as "Je Rinpoche". He is also known by Chinese as Zongkapa Lobsang Zhaba or just Zōngkābā (宗喀巴).
The Buddhist doctrine of the two truths differentiates between two levels of satya in the teaching of the Śākyamuni Buddha: the "conventional" or "provisional" (saṁvṛti) truth, and the "ultimate" (paramārtha) truth.
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima.
In scholastic philosophy, Actus Purus is the absolute perfection of God.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to metaphysics:
In scholastic logic, differentia is one of the predicables; it is that part of a definition which is predicable in a given genus only of the definiendum; or the corresponding "metaphysical part" of the object. In the original, logical sense, a differentia is a concept — the notion of "differentia" is a second-order concept, or a "second intention", in the scholastic nomenclature. In the scholastic theory it is a kind of essential predicate — a predicate that belongs to its subjects de re necessarily. It is distinguished against the species by expressing the (specific) essence of the object only partially and against the genus by expressing the determining rather than the determined part of the essence.
In logic, reductio ad absurdum, also known as argumentum ad absurdum or apagogical arguments, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.
Ousia is a philosophical and theological term, originally used in ancient Greek philosophy, then later in Christian theology. It was used by various ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, as a primary designation for philosophical concepts of essence or substance. In contemporary philosophy, it is analogous to English concepts of being, and ontic. In Christian theology, the concept of θεία ουσία is one of the most important doctrinal concepts, central to the development of trinitarian doctrine.
John Duns Scotus was a Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, university professor, philosopher and theologian. He is one of the four most important Christian philosopher-theologians of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages, together with Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham.
