To give the necessary affirmation to the historical role played by the Legalists and to study and analyze the Legalists' writings from the Marxist point of view is a major task on the ideological front called for by the deepening of the Campaign to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius. Han Fei was an outstanding representative of the Legalists of the late Warring States period. He summed up the experience, both positive and negative, of the newly emerging landlord class in the (...) process of instituting reform, and he criticized the reactionary Confucianism. He thus fully and theoretically formed a comprehensive system of Legalist thought which served as a direct theoretical preparation for the establishment of a unified feudal state under a centralized authority. The "Wu Tu" is representative of the more than one hundred thousand words of Han Fei's writings. This important political essay made a revolutionary criticism of the reactionary ideology hindering the progress of the newly emerging landlord class and outlined a theoretical program by which the landlord class could exercise an all-round dictatorship over the slave-owning class. Acquiring a clear understanding about this will help us see further through the ultra-Right essence of Lin Piao's practice of honoring Confucius and opposing Legalism. (shrink)

Increasingly skillful forgery of Marxism and increasingly skillful disguise of various antimaterialist theories as Marxism are the characteristics of modern revisionism in political economy, tactics, and general philosophy ." In this remark, Lenin unmistakably pointed out the old tricks of the various revisionists who frenziedly attacked Marxism. In philosophy, veteran revisionists such as Bernstein and his ilk who followed on the tail of bourgeois professors of philosophy called for "return to Kant," integration of Marxism with Kantianism, and replenishment of Marxism (...) with Kantianism. Russian revisionists such as Bogdanov and his ilk advocated integration of Marxism with Machism and of socialism with religion and replenishment of Marxism with Machism. In short, they disguised various idealist theories as Marxist philosophy and used these theories to "replenish" or supersede Marxist philosophy while at the same time saying that this was the development of Marxist philosophy. (shrink)

The book entitled the Huang Ti nei ching [Canonical Works of Huang Ti] has two sections - the "Su Wen" section and the "Ling Shu" section - and each section contains eighty-one articles. It was written by several authors in different historical periods. According to historical records and scholars' studies of the content and context of the book, we can roughly say that it was written in the period between the late years of the Warring States era and the early (...) years of the Eastern Han dynasty. Seven articles in the "Su Wen" section were materials from an "older version" and were merged into the book by Wang Fing in the Tang dynasty. They were probably written by scholars in the Eastern Han period or a little later. The two articles on acupuncture and pathology have been proved forgeries made in the Tang-Sung period. They should not have been included in the book because they contain more idealist dregs than do the other articles. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue that Du Châtelet’s account of motion is an important contribution to the history of the absolute versus relative motion debate. The arguments we lay out have two main strands. First, we clarify Du Châtelet’s threefold taxonomy of motion, using Musschenbroek as a useful Newtonian foil and showing that the terminological affinity between the two is only apparent. Then, we assess Du Châtelet’s account in light of the conceptual, epistemological, and ontological challenges posed by Newton to (...) any relational theory of motion. What we find is that, although Du Châtelet does not meet all the challenges to their full extent, her account of motion is adequate for the goal of the Principia: determining the true motions in our planetary system. (shrink)

Chien-ming Chung-kuo che-hsueh shih [A Short History of Chinese Philosophy] compiled by Yang Yung-kuo is a good product of the Campaign to Criticize Lin Piao and Confucius and it is a book widely read by workers, peasants and soldiers. Philosophical struggle is closely linked to political struggle, a given philosophical thought is the theoretical basis of a given political line, and philosophy is a tool for class struggle. Ever since class society has existed, part of the history of philosophy has (...) simply been the reflection of the class struggle in philosophy in various historical periods. In the preface to the book, the compiler points out that "one of the common characteristics of the revisionist bosses within our Party has been to tamper with Marxism from the reactionary Confucian viewpoint for the sinister purpose of creating public opinion calling for the restoration of capitalism." An understanding of the many instances and the general laws of the philosophical struggles in Chinese history will help us thoroughly criticize the ideological origins and the ultrarightist nature of revisionism from a highly developed philosophical world view. One of the important characteristics of Confucian thought is that it uses eclecticism to camouflage its stubborn advocacy of old things and to oppose revolutionary dialectics and the philosophy of struggle. The unrepentant capitalist-roaders within the Party are using an eclectic strategem to carry out the revisionist line. Thus, reading this book on the history of philosophy by Yang Yung-kuo and acquainting ourselves with the sordid actions which Confucius took to carry out restoration and retrogression with the aid of eclecticism will benefit the present struggle against the Right-leaning wind of reversing decisions. (shrink)

Ths historical legacy inherited by thinkers of the Ch'un-ch'iu period comprised, briefly speaking: a religious world outlook characterized by ancestor worship; the ethical concept of filial piety and brotherliness, which was linked to ancestor worship, or derived therefrom; the concept of a ritual system; the conditions of aristocratic politics and scholar bureaucracy. These were things shaped on the basis of the blood ties in a patriarchal and racial society, and they were passive, from the standpoint of progress, being the obstacle (...) that hindered people from making big strides forward. Next, there were the tendency toward simple materialism and dialectics, which was born from the bowels of religious world outlook; the materialist philosophy of complaint against and hatred and cursing of Heaven; the belief in things and in laws; and Shih Po's doctrine of "Things are produced when matter combines." These were positive things, especially the last three, which emerged at a time when the slave system had begun to collapse, and which formed the premise of their ideological advance. Who among the thinkers of the Ch'un-ch'iu period would inherit and develop these things, what questions would be raised, probed, discussed, or argued on the common basis of their traditional thought, and what specific forms would be used to answer these questions had to be determined by their class stand and by the characteristics of the period in which they lived. (shrink)

"Now we have heard that, as for those sages before Confucius, if it had not been for Confucius, there would have been no way for them to be known, and as for those sages after Confucius, if not for him, there would have been no one for them to emulate. He is called the one who transmitted Yao and Shun as if they were his own ancestors, who took as his model Wen and Wu, patterned himself after the hundred kings, (...) and served as the pattern to be imitated for ten thousand generations." This is an important passage of an edict issued in the eleventh year of the Ta-te Emperor of the Yuan dynasty which bestowed upon Confucius the exclusive title of Fully Perfected Great Sage [ta-ch'eng chih-sheng]. Obviously, in terms of human attainment, Confucius was truly a great person of great learning, character, and usefulness. For two thousand years, his doctrines and his behavior as a man have had a great role and influence in China's cultural and material systems, scholarly thought, social morality, and even her order or disorder, prosperity or decay. If we were to remove his role and influence, then could two thousand years of China's history and culture have developed as it has, with a tradition still present? This is a good question. From this it is clear that Confucius' relationship to Chinese culture was most important. (shrink)

Everybody knows that the Revolution of 1911 was an anti-imperialist and antifeudal democratic revolution led by the revolutionary and democratic group of the bourgeoisie in the period of the old democratic revolution in China. The leader of that revolution was Sun Yat-sen, and the guiding ideology was his old Three People's Principles. It is well known that Chairman Mao has made a series of scientific appraisals of these facts, but the newspapers and magazines controlled by the anti-Party clique of Wang (...) Hung-wen, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, Chiang Ch'ing and Yao Wen-yuan openly oppose Chairman Mao's scientific appraisals, betraying the fundamental principles of Marxism, distorting the Revolution of 1911 as a struggle between Confucians and Legalists, and replacing Sun Yat-sen as the standard-bearer of the revolution with Chang T'ai-yen, who played first an active and then a devastating role in the revolution. All this is part of the clique's attack on the Party in order to usurp the Party, seize power, restore capitalism and fabricate the "history" of the struggle between the Confucians and the Legalists. (shrink)

The philosophical thought of the Ch'un-ch'iu period was derived and developed from the thought of the Yin dynasty and the Western Chou , there being an inseparable relationship of succession and transformation between them. Thus, in studying the philosophical thought of the Ch'un-ch'iu period, it is necessary to refer back to Yin-Chou thought. The courage and resolve evidenced by an attitude of so-called "cutting off the miscellaneous streams" in order to start with Lao Tzu or Confucius is really a very (...) awkward way of dissecting history. (shrink)

The "gang of four" — Wang Hung-wen, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, Chiang Ch'ing and Yao Wen-yuan — have created great chaos by confusing the relations between ourselves and the enemy, obliterating the differences between the two kinds of contradiction, wrecking Chairman Mao's policy of uniting with, educating and reforming intellectuals, calling intellectuals the "stinking number nine," smothering the revolutionary initiative of the broad masses of intellectuals, and destroying the ranks of revolutionary intellectuals.

Humility, in a variety of forms, has been examined in educational contexts in recent years. However, its association with a particular pedagogical method remains an unexplored area of inquiry. Likewise, social justice and student voice are a concern in international education arenas, including in higher education, but are not usually connected to virtue acquisition or demonstration. The student voice for social justice (SVSJ) pedagogical method, based on the framework of Nancy Fraser, seeks to aid practitioners in higher education to ensure (...) that social justice and student voice, mediated by notions of humility, are at the forefront of higher education practices across disciplines. This is accomplished by creating spaces for students’ active participation and voice in course content development and classroom learning. In this paper, we expand philosophical explorations of intellectual humility (IH) and cultural humility (CH) as virtues that mediate teaching and learning practices and interactions in classrooms during SVSJ implementation. This ensures that each student is recognised as an important knowledge holder and that diverse ways of knowing, knowledge systems and cultural traditions are valued in higher education teaching and learning spaces. (shrink)