200 Philosophical Concepts

Two hundred ideas from Greek, Indian, Chinese, Islamic, African and Western thought — each explained plainly, then properly, with the case that shows what it means.

How this list was made

What a page here does, and what it does not

Each entry answers one question: what is this? It is explained twice — first in plain words for someone who has never met the term, then as a philosopher would put it, with the distinctions that actually do the work. Then there is a case: not an analogy for the idea, but a real situation in which the question arises and has to be settled one way or the other.

What you will not find is a history of the term. Every encyclopaedia already carries that, and it is what makes reference pages read as filler. Where the history bears on the meaning it appears in a single line — who fixed the word and in which book — and both of those are links rather than paragraphs.

Plain first, and deliberately

The plain account comes before the technical one on every page. That order is not a matter of layout. It is the account most readers arrived for, and leading with the specialist version is how a reference site loses the people it was built for while telling itself it is being rigorous.

What is actually disputed

Every concept here is contested. That is largely why it survived the selection: ideas nobody argues about stop being philosophical and become definitions. So each entry ends by saying what the disagreement is and who is on which side of it.

A page that presents a contested concept as settled is worse than no page at all, because it is quietly false and reads as authoritative. Justification, free will, the self and truth have no agreed account, and pretending otherwise would be the easiest way to make this section useless.

Commonly confused with

Karma is not cosmic payback. Nirvāṇa is not annihilation. Dialectic is not debate. A language game is not a game. Nature, in most of the sentences in which philosophers use it, has nothing to do with the countryside.

Every entry names at least one thing it is regularly mistaken for and says what the difference is. These are the corrections people actually arrive looking for, and they are also what ties the section together: each one is a link to another entry.

There is no "world traditions" section, and that is the point

Concepts are filed by what they are about, never by where they came from. Karma sits with causation, because it is a claim about how consequences follow from acts. Śūnyatā sits with nothingness and emptiness, because that is the argument it is part of. Anātman sits directly beneath ātman and beside personal identity, since the three are one long dispute. Wu wei sits with agency and free will. Ubuntu sits in ethics, next to moral personhood.

Forty-four entries carry a non-European tradition, and they appear in all ten themes rather than in an appendix. A section called "concepts from other traditions" would say that the European material is the subject and the rest is decoration, which is both false and the opposite of what a reader needs when they are trying to understand a single idea.

The tradition that fixed each term is recorded in its own field, and can be filtered on. Sixty-five entries are marked cross-tradition, because being, truth, causation and justice were not fixed anywhere in particular.

Where the term came from

Each entry names its term in its own script where it has one, with a transliteration, and gives the unaccented spelling as well so that either finds the page. Where a date is disputed or traditional it is marked as such rather than printed flat, because a date is a claim about a record and not a fact about an idea.

One consequence worth stating: li appears twice. 禮, ritual propriety, is in ethics; 理, principle or pattern, is in metaphysics. Same romanisation, different character, different concept, and collapsing them into one page would produce a single confidently wrong entry rather than two right ones.

Every concept links out

A concept page names the philosophers who argued about it, the works where the argument happens, and the schools that formed around a position on it. Those are live links into the rest of this atlas, and they run both ways.

This is the reason the section is here rather than anywhere else. An isolated glossary is a dead end. A concept that connects to the person who fixed it, the book that fixed it and the movement that carried it is the same information doing considerably more work.

It is a selection

Two hundred concepts in ten themes cannot be the complete vocabulary of philosophy, and nothing here pretends otherwise. Terms were merged where two headings would have produced one page said twice, and left out where the idea is a component of another rather than a subject of its own. What remains is meant to be the set you would need to read almost anything in the rest of this atlas without being stopped by a word.

200 entries

Being and reality

Actuality - energeia Actuality Being at work rather than merely being able to - the condition of a thing that is doing what it is for. c. 330 BC Appearance and reality Appearance and reality The possibility that things are systematically not as they present themselves, and what follows if they are not. c. 475 BC Becoming - gignesthai Becoming Reality understood as process rather than as things - what is, taken to be what is happening. c. 500 BC Being - to on Being Existence considered in itself, rather than the study of any particular thing that exists. c. 475 BC Contingency Contingency What is the case but might not have been - and whether that is a fact about the world or about our ignorance. c. 1020 Emergence Emergence The appearance of properties at one level of organisation that the parts do not have and that were not obviously predictable from them. 1875 Essence - to ti ēn einai Essence What makes something the kind of thing it is, as distinct from the features it merely happens to have. c. 330 BC Existence Existence The condition of being real, as distinct from being merely thought of, described or defined. c. 1020 Form - eidos Form The organising structure that makes something what it is, as distinct from the material it is made of. c. 380 BC Identity Identity What makes something the same thing, either as one thing rather than two or as one thing over time. 1714 Infinity - apeiron Infinity That which has no limit - and the long argument over whether anything actual can be like that. c. 570 BC Li (principle) - lǐ Li (principle) The intelligible pattern in things - what makes each thing the kind of thing it is, and the reason it can be understood at all. c. 1175 Matter - hylē Matter What a thing is made of, considered apart from what it has been made into. c. 330 BC Māyā - māyā Māyā The appearance that conceals - the world as ordinarily taken, real enough to act on and not what it is taken to be. c. 800 Necessity - anankē Necessity What could not have been otherwise - and the several very different reasons a thing might not have been able to be otherwise. c. 330 BC Nothingness - mu Nothingness Absence considered as a subject in its own right - and whether there is anything to consider. c. 475 BC Particulars Particulars Individual things - this one and no other - and what it is that makes one of them this one. c. 330 BC Possibility Possibility What could be the case, whether or not it is - and the question of what makes such a claim true. c. 330 BC Potentiality - dunamis Potentiality A real capacity to become or to act, present in a thing while it is not being exercised. c. 330 BC Qi - qì Qi The vital, material energy that constitutes and animates everything - not a substance things are made of, but the activity they are. c. 320 BC Relationality Relationality That things are constituted by their relations rather than possessing their natures independently and then entering into them. c. 150 Substance - ousia Substance Whatever it is that has properties, as distinct from the properties it has. c. 330 BC Universals Universals Whatever it is that many different things share when the same word is true of all of them. c. 380 BC Yin and yang - yīn yáng Yin and yang Complementary and interdependent aspects whose alternation constitutes change - never two forces, and never fixed to anything. c. 300 BC Śūnyatā - śūnyatā Śūnyatā That nothing has an independent nature of its own - everything is what it is only in relation to conditions, including emptiness itself. c. 150

Cause, time and change

Causation Causation The relation by which one thing brings about another - used constantly and never satisfactorily analysed. c. 330 BC Chance - tuchē Chance Outcomes not fixed by what preceded them - or by ignorance of what did, which are very different claims. c. 330 BC Change - metabolē Change Something being different at one time from another while remaining the same thing - which is either obvious or impossible. c. 500 BC Dependent origination - pratītyasamutpāda Dependent origination That everything arises in dependence on conditions and nothing exists independently - the Buddhist alternative to causes acting on things. c. 450 BC Determinism Determinism That the state of the world at any moment, together with the laws, fixes every later state. 1677 Explanation Explanation Making something intelligible by showing why it is so - and the question of what makes an account explanatory rather than merely true. 1948 Fate - moira Fate That an outcome will occur whatever anyone does - which is a stronger and stranger claim than determinism. c. 250 BC Karma - karma Karma Action and its consequences for the agent - a moral causal order, understood very differently across the traditions that share the word. c. 700 BC Space - chōra Space The extension in which things are located - and whether it is a container, a set of relations, or a form of experience. 1716 Teleology - telos Teleology Explanation by what something is for - expelled from physics, indispensable in biology, and still unsettled. c. 330 BC Time - chronos Time The order and passage of events - and the question of whether passing is a feature of the world or of the observer. c. 397

Knowledge, truth and reason

A priori and a posteriori A priori and a posteriori Knowledge that does not depend on experience for its justification, and knowledge that does. 1781 Abduction Abduction Reasoning to whatever would best account for what you have observed - the only mode that generates new ideas. 1878 Belief - doxa Belief Taking something to be the case - the basic attitude that can be true or false, and the one you cannot adopt at will. c. 380 BC Coherence Coherence Truth or justification understood as fit within a system, rather than as contact with something outside it. 1807 Correspondence Correspondence Truth understood as a relation between what is said and how things are - the theory almost everyone assumes and nobody can state. c. 1270 Deduction Deduction Reasoning in which the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are true. c. 330 BC Doubt Doubt Withholding assent - and the difference between doubt that leads somewhere and doubt that is manufactured to prevent it. 1641 Experience - empeiria Experience What is undergone and learned from - both the raw material of knowledge and, in the plural, the sum of what one has lived. c. 330 BC Fallibility Fallibility That any belief, however well supported, may turn out to be wrong - held as a working principle rather than as a counsel of despair. 1878 Ignorance - avidyā Ignorance Not merely the absence of knowledge but, in several traditions, an active misapprehension that has to be removed. c. 450 BC Induction - epagōgē Induction Reasoning from observed cases to a general claim - reliable, indispensable, and without any accepted justification. c. 330 BC Inference - anumāna Inference Moving from what you have to what you do not - concluding one thing on the strength of another. c. 330 BC Intuition Intuition Understanding that arrives without conscious inference - and the question of whether it is a source of knowledge or a fast summary of experience. 1641 Justification Justification What makes a belief one a person is entitled to hold, rather than one they merely happen to have. 1641 Knowledge - epistēmē Knowledge Believing something true, on grounds that make the truth of it no accident. c. 369 BC Maʿrifa - maʿrifa Maʿrifa Knowledge arrived at by direct realisation rather than by argument - and the claim that some things can be reached no other way. c. 1100 Objectivity Objectivity Judgement that does not depend on who is making it - and the question of whether anything is like that. 1781 Perception - aisthēsis Perception Awareness of the world through the senses - and the question of whether it delivers the world or a version of it. c. 330 BC Pramāṇa - pramāṇa Pramāṇa A reliable source of knowledge - and the Indian tradition's question of how many there are. c. 200 Reason - logos Reason The capacity to work out what follows, what to conclude and what to do - and the question of what it is for. c. 500 BC Scepticism - skepsis Scepticism The position, or the practice, of holding that knowledge is not available - or of declining to settle whether it is. c. 200 Subjectivity Subjectivity Experience and judgement from a particular position - both a limitation on knowledge and the only place any of it happens. 1846 Testimony - śabda Testimony Knowledge taken from what others report - the source almost everything anyone knows actually came from. 1764 Truth - alētheia Truth The property a claim has when things are as it says they are - and the argument over what that amounts to. c. 330 BC Wisdom - phronēsis Wisdom Sound judgement about what matters and what to do - a capacity that knowledge alone does not supply. c. 340 BC

Logic, language and interpretation

Category - katēgoria Category A fundamental class used to organise thought or reality - and the question of whether the divisions are found or imposed. c. 330 BC Catuṣkoṭi - catuṣkoṭi Catuṣkoṭi Four exhaustive alternatives where European logic recognises two - and the practice of rejecting all four. c. 150 Concept Concept A general unit of thought that lets a mind classify, and the question of what having one consists in. 1781 Definition - horos Definition An account of what something is or what a word means - and the question of what makes one correct. c. 330 BC Dialectic - dialektikē Dialectic Reasoning that proceeds through opposition - by question and answer, or by contradictions that force a position to develop. c. 380 BC Discourse Discourse An organised system of statements, categories and practices that settles what can be said and who can say it. 1966 Excluded middle Excluded middle The principle that every proposition is either true or false, with no third option - and the traditions that decline it. c. 330 BC Hermeneutic circle Hermeneutic circle That the parts are understood through the whole and the whole through its parts - a circle that is not vicious but is how understanding works. 1927 Interpretation Interpretation The activity of determining what something means - and the question of whether the meaning is found or made. 1819 Language game Language game A rule-governed practice in which words get their meaning from what is done with them. 1953 Meaning Meaning What a word, sentence, action or life signifies - and the question of what makes it signify that rather than something else. 1892 Non-contradiction Non-contradiction The principle that nothing can both be and not be, in the same respect and at the same time. c. 330 BC Paradox Paradox An argument that appears sound and leads somewhere unacceptable - which means something in it must go, and it is never obvious what. c. 450 BC Proposition Proposition The content expressed by a statement - what is true or false, as distinct from the words used to say it. 1903 Rectification of names - zhèngmíng Rectification of names That social order depends on words matching what they name - and that fixing the language is a political act. c. 480 BC Reference Reference The relation between an expression and the thing it picks out. 1905 Sense Sense The way an expression presents what it refers to - what is left over when two names for the same thing still differ. 1892 Sign and symbol - sēmeion Sign and symbol Something that stands for something else - and the question of how much of that standing-for is convention. 1868 Speech act Speech act An utterance that performs an action rather than describing one. 1955 Sufficient reason Sufficient reason That everything has an explanation - and the question of whether anything is entitled to assume so. 1714 Validity Validity The property of an argument whose conclusion cannot be false if its premises are true - a guarantee about form, and about nothing else. c. 330 BC

Mind, self and consciousness

Agency Agency The capacity to act rather than merely to move, and the sense that a movement is one's own doing. c. 340 BC Anātman - anātman Anātman That no permanent, independent self is to be found - not that there is no person, but that there is no owner behind the person. c. 450 BC Authenticity Authenticity Living from commitments one actually owns, rather than from those absorbed unexamined from everyone else. 1927 Consciousness Consciousness The fact that there is something it is like to be a subject - awareness itself, rather than what one is aware of. 1641 Desire Desire Orientation toward something not yet had - and whether wanting is a state that represents the world or one that pushes at it. c. 380 BC Embodiment Embodiment That mind and experience are shaped by having a body, and are not merely housed in one. 1945 Emotion - pathos Emotion States combining feeling, judgement and motivation - and the question of which of the three is doing the defining. c. 340 BC Free will Free will The capacity to choose and to have been able to choose otherwise - and whether anything answers to that description. c. 397 Imagination - phantasia Imagination The capacity to represent what is absent, altered or not the case at all. c. 330 BC Intentionality Intentionality The property of being about something - the way a thought, unlike a stone, is directed at what it is not. 1901 Intersubjectivity Intersubjectivity Shared understanding between subjects - and the argument that it comes before individual subjectivity rather than after it. 1913 Mind - nous Mind The domain of thought, feeling and awareness - and the question of where its boundary falls. c. 450 BC Mind–body problem Mind–body problem How mental and physical phenomena are related, given that neither an identity nor a separation between them survives inspection. 1641 Other minds Other minds How anyone knows that other beings have experience, given that only one case is ever available from the inside. 1865 Personal identity Personal identity What makes someone at one time the same person as someone at another - and whether that is what actually matters. 1694 Qualia Qualia The felt quality of an experience - what seeing red or feeling pain is like from the inside, as distinct from anything measurable about it. 1929 Responsibility Responsibility Being properly held to account for what one has done - and the conditions under which holding someone to account makes sense. c. 340 BC Self Self The subject to whom experiences and actions are attributed - and whether anything answers to that description. 1694 The unconscious The unconscious Mental processes that shape what a person does while remaining outside awareness. 1900 Will Will Wanting treated as a faculty - the part of a person that decides, as distinct from the part that reasons or the part that feels. c. 397 Wu wei - wú wéi Wu wei Acting without forcing - effectiveness that comes from according with how things already run rather than imposing on them. c. 350 BC Ātman - ātman Ātman The innermost self - not the personality or the body, but the awareness that all of those appear to. c. 700 BC

Ethics and character

Ahiṃsā - ahiṃsā Ahiṃsā Non-injury to living beings - a discipline covering thought and speech as well as action, and not merely a policy of restraint. c. 500 BC Alterity Alterity Difference that cannot be reduced to a variation on oneself - otherness that resists being absorbed into a familiar category. 1961 Autonomy - autonomia Autonomy Governing oneself by one's own considered judgement - and the question of how much of that judgement is one's own. 1785 Care Care Attentive responsiveness to particular others, proposed as a moral foundation rather than a supplement to principles. 1982 Compassion - karuṇā Compassion Concern at another's suffering together with the wish to relieve it - and the question of whether the feeling is what does the work. c. 450 BC Conscience - syneidēsis Conscience The internal judgement that one's own conduct is right or wrong - and the question of what authority it has. c. 397 Consequences Consequences Judging an act by what it brings about - and the difficulty of knowing what that is. 1789 De - dé De The power that accrues to someone whose conduct is right - authority that works without being exercised. c. 500 BC Dharma - dharma Dharma The sustaining order of things, and the conduct it requires of a particular person in a particular position. c. 700 BC Dignity Dignity Worth that commands respect and cannot be traded - the claim that a person is not a price. 1785 Double effect Double effect The principle that causing a harm as a foreseen side effect can be permissible where causing it as a means or an end would not. c. 1270 Duty Duty What one is required to do irrespective of what one wants, and irrespective of what it produces. 1785 Filial piety - xiào Filial piety Obligation within the family, taken as the root from which all wider obligation grows. c. 480 BC Flourishing - eudaimonia Flourishing A life going well through the full exercise of human capacities - a condition rather than a feeling. c. 340 BC Happiness - eudaimonia Happiness Well-being or a life going well - and the argument over whether that is a feeling, a judgement or a condition. c. 340 BC Is–ought gap Is–ought gap That no description of how things are yields a conclusion about how they ought to be, without something evaluative already smuggled in. 1739 Li (ritual propriety) - lǐ Li (ritual propriety) The forms of conduct through which relations are made right - and the claim that form shapes disposition rather than merely expressing it. c. 480 BC Moral law Moral law A standard of conduct binding on everyone, holding whether or not any legislature has enacted it. c. 1270 Moral luck Moral luck Judgement resting on factors outside anyone's control - which is supposed to be impossible and happens constantly. 1976 Moral personhood Moral personhood The status of being owed moral consideration in one's own right - and the question of what confers it. 1694 Pleasure - hēdonē Pleasure Experience that is positively valued in itself - and the argument over whether it is the only thing that is. c. 300 BC Ren - rén Ren Humaneness - the disposition that makes conduct toward others fully human, and the central virtue of the Confucian tradition. c. 480 BC Suffering - duḥkha Suffering Painful or unsatisfactory experience - and the question of whether it is an accident of life or a structural feature of it. c. 450 BC The golden mean - zhōngyōng The golden mean Excellence as the fitting point between excess and deficiency - not the midpoint, but the amount the situation calls for. c. 340 BC The good - to agathon The good What is ultimately worth pursuing - and whether there is one such thing or many. c. 380 BC The good life The good life The question of how a human being ought to live, taken as one question rather than as a list of separate problems. c. 400 BC The Other The Other Another person encountered as making a claim on you before any theory about them - the ethical relation taken as prior to knowledge. 1961 Ubuntu Ubuntu Personhood realised through other persons - a claim about what a human being is, not advice about being sociable. 1969 Utility Utility Benefit produced, taken as the measure of right action - and the problem of adding it up across people. 1789 Value Value What it is for anything to matter - and whether mattering is discovered in the world or conferred on it. 1887 Virtue - aretē Virtue A settled excellence of character - a disposition to feel, judge and act well, not merely to follow rules. c. 340 BC

Society, politics and power

Alienation Alienation Separation from one's own activity, its products, other people, or oneself - a condition produced by arrangements rather than by temperament. 1844 Civil disobedience Civil disobedience Public, conscientious breach of law aimed at changing it, undertaken by people who accept the legal order in general. 1971 Common good Common good Goods that are shared rather than divided - benefits nobody has alone and everybody loses together. c. 1270 Country Country In Aboriginal Australian thought, a living network of land, waters, beings, ancestry and obligation - not a place one is from but a party one is answerable to. Covenant - berit Covenant A binding relationship that constitutes the parties rather than merely exchanging obligations between them. c. 1140 Domination Domination Being subject to another's arbitrary power - whether or not that power is ever exercised. 1997 Emancipation Emancipation Release from domination or subordination - and the question of what has actually changed when it is granted rather than taken. 1843 Equality Equality Equal moral standing, opportunity or treatment - and the question of equality of what. 1762 Hegemony - hēgemonia Hegemony Dominance maintained through consent rather than force - where the arrangement is accepted by those it disadvantages. 1935 Ideology Ideology A framework of ideas that organises social life and, on the critical account, conceals the arrangement it serves. 1846 Justice - dikaiosunē Justice The fair distribution of rights, benefits and burdens - and the argument over what fairness requires. c. 380 BC Legitimacy Legitimacy The entitlement to exercise power - as distinct from the ability to exercise it. 1651 Liberty Liberty Freedom from interference, or the capacity to govern oneself - two ideas that share a word and recommend different states. 1859 Oppression Oppression Systematic disadvantage imposed on a group, produced by structures rather than requiring anyone to intend it. 1990 Power Power The capacity to shape what others do, what they can do, and what they take to be possible. 1532 Praxis - praxis Praxis Action that carries theory within it and changes what it acts on - as against theory applied afterwards. 1845 Property Property Socially recognised control over things - a relation between people about a thing, rather than between a person and a thing. 1689 Recognition Recognition Being acknowledged by others as what one is - treated not as a courtesy but as a condition of being a self at all. 1807 Revolution Revolution The replacement of a political order rather than of its occupants - and the question of what could warrant it. 1789 Rights Rights Justified claims that protect interests, choices or status - and the question of where they come from. 1689 Social contract Social contract Political order understood as arising from agreement among the governed - as history, as hypothesis, or as a test. 1651 Solidarity Solidarity Standing with others on the basis of a shared situation or cause, including where one's own interest is already secured. 1848 Sovereignty Sovereignty Supreme authority within a territory, answerable to no higher power - and the question of whether anything actually has it. 1651 The state The state The standing apparatus of rule over a territory - and the question of what, if anything, justifies it. 1532 Tikkun olam - tiqqun ʿolam Tikkun olam The obligation to repair what is broken in the world - a phrase whose meaning has shifted three times. c. 200 Tolerance Tolerance Deliberately not suppressing what one has the power and the reason to suppress. 1689

Life, death and meaning

Absurdity Absurdity The confrontation between a human demand for meaning and a world that supplies none - located in the relation, not in either side. 1942 Anxiety Anxiety Unease with no particular object, arising from freedom itself - a philosophical concept rather than a clinical one. 1844 Death Death The end of a life - and the surprisingly unsettled questions of when it occurs and whether it is bad for the one who dies. c. 300 BC Despair Despair In Kierkegaard's technical sense, a misrelation in the self's relation to itself - not a mood but a structural condition. 1849 Finitude Finitude That a human life is bounded - in time, in knowledge, in power - and that this shapes everything within it rather than merely ending it. 1927 Hope - elpis Hope Orientation toward a wanted outcome that is possible and not assured - and the question of whether it helps or evades. c. 1270 Meaning of life Meaning of life Whether a human life can be significant, and what would make it so - a question distinct from whether it is happy or good. 1942 Mokṣa - mokṣa Mokṣa Release from the round of rebirth and from what binds one to it - the final aim of the Hindu, Jain and Yogic traditions. c. 800 Nihilism Nihilism That nothing has value, meaning or purpose - a family of distinct claims usually run together. 1887 Nirvāṇa - nirvāṇa Nirvāṇa The extinction of craving, and with it of suffering and rebirth - named by a metaphor of a flame going out. c. 450 BC Saṃsāra - saṃsāra Saṃsāra The recurring round of birth, death and rebirth - and the condition liberation is liberation from. c. 700 BC

Beauty and art

Aesthetic experience Aesthetic experience A way of attending that seeks nothing from what it attends to - and the question of whether such a state exists. 1790 Art - technē Art What makes something a work of art at all - a question that only became urgent when the obvious answers stopped working. 1964 Beauty - to kalon Beauty What pleases in being contemplated - and the two-thousand-year argument over whether that is a fact about the object or about us. c. 380 BC Creativity Creativity The production of what is both new and valuable - and the question of whether it is a faculty or a process. 1790 Mimesis - mimēsis Mimesis Art as imitation of the world - the oldest account of what art does, and the oldest charge against it. c. 380 BC Mono no aware - mono no aware Mono no aware The poignancy of things because they pass - an aesthetic in which impermanence is the source of value rather than a loss. 1796 Rasa - rasa Rasa The savoured emotional essence a work produces in a prepared audience - Indian aesthetics' answer to what art is for. c. 1000 Taste Taste The capacity to judge aesthetic value - and whether such judgements can be better or worse rather than merely different. 1757 The sublime The sublime What overwhelms the capacity to take it in - and is found valuable for overwhelming it. 1790

Cosmos, the sacred and ultimate reality

Arguments for God Arguments for God The attempts to establish that God exists by reasoning rather than by revelation. 1078 Brahman - brahman Brahman The ultimate reality underlying everything - and, on the strongest reading, not different from the self. c. 800 Cosmos - kosmos Cosmos The universe considered as an ordered whole - a claim about arrangement rather than a synonym for everything. c. 530 BC Creation Creation The world's origination from a source - and whether that is an event in time or a relation of dependence. c. 400 Dao - dào Dao The Way - the course things follow and the source they follow it from, named by a word that means road. c. 350 BC Faith - pistis Faith Commitment that goes beyond what the evidence establishes - held as a virtue by some traditions and as a failure by others. c. 1270 Fiṭra - fiṭra Fiṭra The original disposition every human is born with - on the standard reading, an innate orientation toward God. c. 1100 God God A supreme being, variously conceived - and a concept whose attributes generate most of the problems attached to it. c. 1270 Immortality - athanasia Immortality Continuing to exist after bodily death - and the question of what would have to persist for it to be you. c. 380 BC Mana Mana Efficacy that shows itself in results - a Māori and wider Pacific concept badly served by its English career as a magical force. Mysticism Mysticism Experience reported as direct contact with ultimate reality - and the question of whether it is evidence of anything. 1902 Nature - phusis Nature What things are of themselves, and the whole of what is not made by us - two senses that constantly interfere. c. 330 BC Soul - psuchē Soul What makes a living thing alive - which for Aristotle includes plants, and for the modern reader means almost the opposite. c. 330 BC Tapu Tapu Restriction arising from sacredness - the Pacific concept that gave English the word taboo and lost most of its meaning on the way. Tawḥīd - tawḥīd Tawḥīd The oneness of God - not a count but a claim about unity so strict that it constrains everything sayable about the divine. c. 1100 The Dreaming The Dreaming The Aboriginal Australian framework of ancestral creation, law and country - named in English by a word that misleads in almost every respect. The problem of evil The problem of evil That the suffering in the world is hard to reconcile with a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good. c. 400 The sacred The sacred What is set apart and treated as not available for ordinary use - a category defined by a boundary rather than by a content. c. 400 Transcendence Transcendence Being beyond the reach of ordinary experience or concepts - and the problem of saying anything about what is beyond saying. c. 260