Personality is a relatively regular habit of a person. It exerts a specific influence on personal behavior and the corresponding results. At the same time, personality can provide a certain degree of explanation for the differences among individuals in behavior and the related consequences. Economic differences are one of the discrepancies that exist among individuals. In order to explore the quantitative relationship between personality and individual income, this study takes 376 active employees of Chinese startups as the primary (...) research objects. Additionally, considering the simplification and convenience of the survey, the annual salary investigated by this study is the pre-tax income of active startup employees. It uses quantitative methods to analyze the relationship between their personality traits and annual salary. Unlike the measures used in previous studies, this study employed the HEXACO-60 Inventory created by Ashton and Lee to investigate employees’ personality traits. Compared to the Big Five model, HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Consciousness, Open to Experience, and Agreeableness) adds a new dimension to evaluate personality traits, called Honesty-Humility (H-H). H-H did not appear in previous studies related to personality and individual income. Therefore, there is no reference to the relationship between H-H and personal earnings. Considering that the content of H-H is highly consistent with the components of inter locus of control and the core spirit advocated by the Confucian culture, which influences Chinese people profoundly, this paper proposes a bold hypothesis, that is, H-H has a positive correlation with employees’ annual salaries. Meanwhile, other corresponding hypotheses for the correlation between the other personality traits in HEXACO and employees’ annual salaries are proposed. After that, the above hypotheses are tested with the help of correlation analysis. Then, the following conclusions can be quickly drawn. Consciousness, eXtraversion, Open to Experience, and Honesty-Humility positively correlate with employees’ annual salaries. In comparison, Emotionality and Agreeableness negatively correlate with employees’ annual salaries. (shrink)

Business gang refers to the enterprise cluster formed by geographical relationship, which has always been the focus of research on entrepreneurship and regional economic development. The research of new institutional economics shows that culture, as an informal system, will change the social psychology, thinking mode and behavior of economic individuals, and provide a good environment for the growth of start-ups, thus affecting economic activities and economic development. Taking the five modern business gangs in China as the research subject, this paper (...) uses the comparative method to analyze the regional cultural differences of the five modern business gangs, as well as the differences of the entrepreneurs’ psychological characteristics and startup behaviors. Through the analysis of the economic data of the provinces where the modern business gangs are located, this paper summarizes the differences of economic development in different regions. It is concluded that regional culture has a significant impact on the development of modern business gangs and regional economy. It is necessary to give full play to the advantages of regional culture and promote the high-quality development of modern business gangs and regional economy. (shrink)

Religion emerged among early humans because both purposive and non-purposive explanations were being employed but understanding was lacking of their precise scope and limits. Given also a context of very limited human power, the resultant foregrounding of agency and purposive explanation expressed itself in religion’s marked tendency towards anthropomorphism and its key role in legitimizing behaviour. The inevitability of death also structures the religious outlook; with ancestors sometimes assigned a role in relation to the living. Subjective elements such as the (...) experience of dreams and the internalization of moral precepts also play their part. Two important sources of variation among religions concern the adoption of a dualist or non-dualist perspective, and whether or not the religion’s early political experience is such as to generate a systematic doctrine subordinating politics to religion. The near ubiquity and endurance of religion are further illuminated by analysis of its functions and ideological role. Religion tends to be socially conservative but has the potential to be revolutionary. (shrink)

A framework is developed for understanding what is “taken for granted” both in philosophy and in life generally, which may serve to orient philosophical inquiry and make it more effective. The framework takes in language and its development, as well as mathematics, logic, and the empirical sphere with particular reference to the exigencies of life. It is evaluated through consideration of seven philosophical issues concerned with such topics as solipsism, sense data as the route to knowledge, the possible reduction of (...) geometry to logic, and the existence and status of human rights. Various dichotomies and the notion of continuity are evidently highly strategic. (shrink)

Drawing mainly from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his middle period writings, strategic issues and problems arising from Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics are discussed. Topics have been so chosen as to assist mediation between the perspective of philosophers and that of mathematicians on their developing discipline. There is consideration of rules within arithmetic and geometry and Wittgenstein’s distinctive approach to number systems whether elementary or transfinite. Examples are presented to illuminate the relation between the meaning of an arithmetical generalisation or theorem (...) and its proof. An attempt is made to meet directly some of Wittgenstein’s critical comments on the mathematical treatment of infinity and irrational numbers. (shrink)

In a study drawing from both evolutionary biology and the social sciences, evidence and argument is assembled in support of the comprehensive appli- cation of selfish gene theory to the human population. With a focus on genes giving rise to characteristically-human cooperation (“cooperative genes”) in- volving language and theory of mind, one may situate a whole range of pat- terned behaviour—including celibacy and even slavery—otherwise seeming to present insuperable difficulties. Crucially, the behaviour which tends to propa- gate the cooperative genes (...) may be “at cost” to the genes of some who may be party to the cooperation itself. Explanatory insights are provided by Trivers’ parent-offspring conflict theory, Lack’s principle, and Hamilton’s kin selec- tion mechanism. A primary observation is that cooperation using language and theory of mind is itself interdependent with full human conceptualization of a world of objects and of themselves as embodied beings. Human capaci- ties inhering in, or arising out of, the ability to cooperate are also responsible for a vitally important long-term process, the domestication of animals and p- lants. The approach illuminates the difference between animal and human sexual behaviour, and the emergence of kinship systems. Again, recent pat- terns of population growth become much more explicable. It is argued that the gene is the single controlling replicator; the notion of the meme as a sec- ond independent replicator is flawed. (shrink)

A perspective in the philosophy of mathematics is developed from a consideration of the strengths and limitations of both logicism and platonism, with an early focus on Frege’s work. Importantly, although many set-theoretic structures may be developed each of which offers limited isomorphism with the system of natural numbers, no one of them may be identified with it. Furthermore, the timeless, ever present nature of mathematical concepts and results itself offers direct access, in the face of a platonist account which (...) generates a supposed problem of access. Crucially too, pure mathematics has its own distinctive method of confirming or validating results - mathematical proof - which supplies a higher level of confidence and objectivity than that available elsewhere. The dichotomy of invention and discovery is too jejune a framework for analysing creative mathematical activity. The Gödelian platonist perspective is evaluated and queried through scrutiny of the part played by mathematical resources and constraints in relation to human activity. It appears that there can be non-causal mathematical explanations and mathematical constraint on purely natural processes. Valuable implications of Quine’s naturalism are explored, but one must be cautious of his thesis of confirmational holism. The distinction between algebraic and non-algebraic mathematical theories usefully contributes to our understanding of the internally differentiated nature of the subject. (shrink)

Progress may be made in resolving the tension between free will and determinism by analysis of the necessary conditions of freedom. It is of the essence that these conditions include causal and deterministic regularities. Furthermore, the human expression of free will is informed by understanding some of those regularities, and increments in that understanding have served to enhance freedom. When the possible character of a deterministic system based on physical theory is considered, it is judged that, far from implying the (...) elimination of human freedom, such a theory might simply set parameters for it; indeed knowledge of that system could again prove to be in some respects liberating. On the other hand, it is of the essence that the overarching biological framework is not a deterministic system and it foregrounds the behavioural flexibility of humans in being able to choose within a range of options and react to chance occurrences. Furthermore, an issue for determinism flows from the way in which randomness (e.g. using a true random number generator) and chance events could and do enter human life. Once the implications of that issue are fully understood, other elements fit comfortably together in our understanding of freely undertaken action: the contribution of reasons and causes; the fact that reasons are never sufficient to account for outcomes; the rationale for the attribution of praise and blame. (shrink)

The extent of confusion between symbols and that which is symbolised is examined across five institutional spheres. Religion is the institution most marked by confusion of this type; indeed in some respects the symbolic mes- sage of religion may be the extent of the substantive reality. On the other hand, the very existence of the nation state may be judged to depend upon the exercise of the human imagination; hence providing a source of instability which may lead to the excesses (...) of nationalism. In regard to social status, the main problematical element is a certain circularity: it is necessary to get peo- ple to exhibit differences in behaviour which are then used to justify or con- stitute the status differences themselves. In politics, the symbolism of left and right threatens to strangle creative thinking, while in education the tendency on all sides to orient towards public systems of measurement and grading undermines the claim that what is really important is pupil and student learn- ing. A social cost is being paid for the failure to recognise and, where possible, address the issues identified. (shrink)

Originally published in 1979, the aim of this work was to analyse the occupational role of the university teacher, with the help of data collected within a specific university institution. This involves examining both what is expected of university teachers and what they actually do, and accounting for the patterns which their activities exhibit. Since the university teacher's occupation is multi-faceted it is necessary to examine several areas of activity including teaching, research and 'external' professional activities, as well as a (...) number of types of relationships in which lecturers are involved. Data is presented and interpreted from interviews with the staff of four selected departments of a British provincial university (classics, pure mathematics, civil engineering and psychology) and also from questionnaire surveys of staff and students. Sociologically the university may be regarded as an organisation or institution, and the behaviour of its members understood through the notion of 'social role'. On the educational side of the study the central concern is with the teacher-pupil relationship. We are also confronted with a basic human problem of how employed people weave elements to give meaning to their working lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.1 (2004) 47-54 [Access article in PDF] Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research*(A Recommended Manuscript) Adopted on 16 October 2001Revised on 20 August 2002 Ethics Committee of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai, Shanghai 201203 Human embryonic stem cell (ES) research is a great project in the frontier of biomedical science for the twenty-first century. Be- cause the research (...) involves the use of human embryos, it triggers serious debate on ethical issues. Opponents consider the embryo to be an early form of human life that should be respected and not destroyed. However, the majority of scientists support embryonic stem cell research, believing that it offers good prospects for the treatment of diseases that have remained incurable until now and so will benefit humankind. The Ethics Committee of the Department of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai seriously discussed the ethical debate initiated by embryonic stem cell research. We concluded that we should support the scientists of our country in actively carrying out human embryonic stem cell research for the noble cause of "medicine being a beneficent art." For the healthy and orderly development of human embryonic stem cell research in our country, we put forward the following recommended Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research as a reference for leaders, administrative departments, and related scientists. Preface Article 1. Human embryonic stem cells are the primitive cells that play the main role in the growth and development of a human body. These [End Page 47] primitive cells have the potential for infinite proliferation, self-renewal, and multi-directional differentiation. If scientists can discover the mechanism of differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, it will be possible to induce differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to form various types of human cells for clinical cell therapy. If human embryonic stem cell research can be integrated with modern biomedical engineering techniques, it also will be possible to make repair and replacement of human tissues and organs a reality. Article 2. There are two ways to classify human embryonic stem cells. One way is to classify them according to their potential for differentiation. There could be three kinds of stem cells: totipotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, and unipotent stem cells.A totipotent stem cell has the potential to develop into a whole individual. It can differentiate into the more than 200 cell types in the whole body, construct any tissue or organ of the body, and finally develop into a whole individual. The fertilized egg and the cleavage cells at the very early stage of embryonic development are totipotent stem cells.A pluripotent stem cell has the potential to differentiate into many cell types derived from the three embryonic layers. However, it has lost the capacity to develop into a complete organism.A unipotent stem cell is derived from the further differentiation of the pluripotent stem cell. It can differentiate only into one cell type such as a hematopoietic stem cell, neural stem cell, and others.The other way is to classify human stem cells according to their source. There could be two kinds of human stem cells: embryonic stem cells and tissue stem cells (also called adult stem cells). The former involves experimentation with embryos, which has serious ethical implications. Ethical issues associated with the latter are mainly expressed in the various opinions regarding the allocation of health resources. Article 3. Human embryonic stem cells are the group of cells called the blastocyst inner cell mass during the early stage of embryonic development. They are the main source of totipotent stem cells, and hence the focal and hot point in stem cell research. Studies on the clinical application of embryonic stem cells probably will involve use of the somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT) technique, which destroys the early human embryo. At present, the ethical and moral debate is very serious in human embryonic stem cell research regarding whether the research will develop... (shrink)

James A. Diefenbeck, Wayward Reflections on the History ofPhilosophyThomas R. Flynn Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason. Volume 1:Toward an Existential Theory of HistoryMark Golden and Peter Toohey Inventing Ancient Culture:Historicism, Periodization and the Ancient WorldZenonas Norkus Istorika: Istorinis IvadasEverett Zimmerman The Boundaries of Fiction: History and theEighteenth‐Century British Novel.

Although lean search is seen as an important action in lean startup, previous studies have less knowledge on how to realize it, especially in the face of traditional plans that cannot cope with sudden changes in the environment. To fill the research gap, this study investigates the effects of improvisation on lean search. Meanwhile, this research also discusses the moderating effects of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity and the environmental uncertainty to identify the boundary conditions of this relationship. Supported by the cross-sectional (...) data from 203 Chinese startups, the results show that explorative and ambidextrous improvisation are positively associated with lean search. However, the effect of exploitative improvisation on lean search is unsupported. Additionally, technology uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between exploitative improvisation and lean search. Market uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between explorative improvisation and lean search. However, the entrepreneurial team heterogeneity negatively moderates the relationship between ambidextrous improvisation and lean search. These findings contribute to understanding how startups could conduct lean search in a rapidly changing environment, which provides theoretical guidance for improving the success rate of startups. (shrink)

In 1978, 16 months after Mao Zedong’s death, China’s new leader, Deng Xiaoping, introduced market reforms and an “opening” to the West that allowed the US company Hewlett-Packard to enter China in 1981. Shortly thereafter, HP began a partnership with the Chinese company Legend Computer, through which HP transferred its technology in four main areas: product technology, business model, management practices, and strategic planning processes. This technology transfer seems to be a “just exchange” in that HP received access to (...) China’s market while China received key managerial, marketing, and product technologies. Although multinationals are often criticized for their dealings with developing nations, the HP–Legend case provides an illustration of how a company from an industrialized nation can deal justly with a developing nation and assist in advancing its development. The transfer of technology from HP to Legend was facilitated by several factors, including HP’s historical willingness to help startups, its strategic posture, a favorable local environment, Legend’s recognition of its own needs, its willingness to learn from a foreign company, and the incentives to share technology that the Chinese government provided. (shrink)

In 1978, 16 months after Mao Zedong's death, China's new leader, Deng Xiaoping, introduced market reforms and an "opening" to the West that allowed the US company Hewlett-Packard (HP) to enter China in 1981. Shortly thereafter, HP began a partnership with the Chinese company Legend Computer (now Lenovo), through which HP transferred its technology in four main areas: (1) product technology, (2) business model, (3) management practices, and (4) strategic planning processes. This technology transfer seems to be a "just (...) exchange" in that HP received access to China's market while China received key managerial, marketing, and product technologies. Although multinationals are often criticized for their dealings with developing nations, the HP–Legend case provides an illustration of how a company from an industrialized nation can deal justly with a developing nation and assist in advancing its development. The transfer of technology from HP to Legend was facilitated by several factors, including HP's historical willingness to help startups, its strategic posture, a favorable local environment, Legend's recognition of its own needs, its willingness to learn from a foreign company, and the incentives to share technology that the Chinese government provided. (shrink)

Studies of ethical challenges that can confront practicing scientists and engineers in the entrepreneurial stage of the overarching research-and-innovation process are virtually non-existent. This paper explores ethical challenges that arose at a specific entrepreneurial startup: Theranos, the defunct blood-testing company. The fundamental ethical responsibilities of scientists and engineers offer a framework useful for evaluating the conduct of practicing scientists and engineers from an ethical responsibility perspective. Questionable conduct by Theranos’s former top managers has been widely discussed. However, the fact that (...) a number of Theranos scientists and engineers responded to ethical challenges in several phases of the innovation/entrepreneurial stage with ethically responsible conduct has gone largely unrecognized. Ten mini cases involving these practitioners are discussed. Their deeds reflect different harm-prevention strategies. The Theranos case suggests several ethics-related takeaways for scientists and engineers who work or may work in technical startups. Familiarity with the FERSEs and knowledge of the ethical challenges, ethically responsible conduct, and harm-prevention strategies exhibited in the Theranos case provide valuable intellectual resources for startup scientists and engineers who aspire to be ethically responsible professionals. (shrink)

"Co-publication agreement between China Social Sciences Press (China) and Paths International Ltd (UK)"--Colophon.

Investor recommendation is a critical and challenging task for startups, which can assist startups in locating suitable investors and enhancing the possibility of obtaining investment. While some efforts have been made for investor recommendation, few of them explore the impact of startups’ features, including partners, rounds, and fields, to investor recommendation performance. Along this line, in this paper, with the help of the heterogeneous information network, we propose a FEatures’ COntribution Measurement approach of startups on investor (...) recommendation, named FECOM. Specifically, we construct the venture capital heterogeneous information network at first. Then, we define six venture capital metapaths to represent the features of startups that we focus on. In this way, we can measure the contribution of startups’ features on the investor recommendation task by validating the recommendation performance based on different metapaths. Finally, we extract four practical rules to assist in further investment tasks by using our proposed FECOM approach. (shrink)

This book treats Chinese philosophy today as a global project, presenting the work of both Chinese and Western philosophers.

Chinese Philosophy provides a clear, accessible conception of the Chinese philosophical sensibility and its evolution throughout history.

_A wide ranging consideration of the work of contemporary ethicist David Wong._.

Understanding Chinese philosophy requires knowledge of the referential framework prevailing in Chinese intellectual traditions. But Chinese philosophical texts are frequently approached through the lens of Western paradigms. Analysing the most common misconceptions surrounding Western Sinology, Jana Rošker alerts us to unseen dangers and introduces us to a new more effective way of reading Chinese philosophy. Acknowledging that different cultures produce different reference points, Rošker explains what happens we use rational analysis, a major feature of the European (...) intellectual tradition, to read Chinese philosophy. We rely on impossible comparisons, arrive at prejudiced assumptions and fail to arrive at the truth, the consequence of applying a different methodology to the process of perceiving, understanding and interpreting reality. Instead of transferring concepts and categories from Western sinology onto socio-cultural Chinese contexts, Rošker constructs a new methodology of reading, understanding and interpreting Chinese philosophy. She opens our eyes to the basic problems of Western paradigms, encourages intercultural approaches and allows us to master a more autochthonous understanding of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

A set of moral problems known as The Trolley Dilemmas was presented to 3000 randomly selected inhabitants of the USA, Russia and China. It is shown that Chinese are significantly less prone to support utility-maximizing alternatives, as compared to the US and Russian respondents. A number of possible explanations, as well as methodological issues pertaining to the field of surveying moral judgment and moral disagreement, are discussed.

Presenting a comprehensive portrayal of the reading of Chinese and Buddhist philosophy in early 20th-century German thought, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in early Twentieth-Century German Thought examines the implications of these readings for contemporary issues in comparative and intercultural philosophy. Through a series of case studies from the late 19th-century and early 20th-century, Eric Nelson focuses on the reception and uses of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism in German philosophy, covering figures as diverse as Buber, Heidegger, and Misch. He (...) argues that the growing intertextuality between traditions cannot be appropriately interpreted through notions of exclusive identities, closed horizons, or unitary traditions. Providing an account of the context, motivations, and hermeneutical strategies of early twentieth-century European thinkers' interpretation of Asian philosophy, Nelson also throws new light on the question of the relation between Heidegger and Asian philosophy. Reflecting the growing interest in the possibility of intercultural and global philosophy, Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in early Twentieth-Century German Thought opens up the possibility of a more inclusive intercultural conception of philosophy. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/chinese-and-buddhist-philosophy-in-early-twentieth-century-german-thought-9781350002562/#sthash.1lY6OTYj.dp uf. (shrink)

This book outlines and analyzes the economic development of China between 1949 and 2007. Rather than being narrowly economic, the book addresses many of the broader aspects of development, including literacy, morality, demographics and the environment. The distinctive features of this book are its sweep and that it does not shy away from controversial issues. For example, there is no question that aspects of Maoism were disastrous but Bramall argues that there was another side to the whole programme. More recently, (...) the current system of government has presided over three decades of very rapid economic growth. However, the author shows that this growth has come at a price. Bramall makes it clear that unless radical change takes place, Chinese growth will not be sustainable. This large, comprehensive text is relevant to all those studying the economic history of China as well as its contemporary economy. It is also useful more generally for students and researchers in the fields of international and development economics. (shrink)

Over the past decade, investments in agricultural and food technology startups have grown to previously unknown dimensions. Mushrooming agri-food tech startups that promise to solve critical issues in the agri-food system through technological innovation are increasingly perceived as an attractive new investment opportunity for venture capitalists and investors. This paper investigates how digital agri-food technologies are narrated, constructed, and promoted for financial investment. Through qualitative content analysis of agri-food tech industry reports, articles, and commentaries we trace the logic, (...) rationales, and narratives of this most recent investment rush, and reveal its immanent techno-finance fixes. We conceptualize the agri-food imaginaries produced within the agri-food tech discourse as financialized imaginaries, and argue that they are specifically tailored to construct, incentivize, and legitimize this new agri-food tech space for financial investment. In their attempt to raise money from investors, venture capital firms further fuel this development by discursively creating an ‘agri-food tech investment rush’—similar to the land and gold rushes of the past. Investments in agri-food tech startups, however, are presented to investors as both a profitable investment opportunity as well as a moral obligation, allowing for food production to cope with neo-malthusian and environmental threats. This paper contributes to our understanding of digitization as a socio-technical project, which includes the active envisioning and promotion of desirable agri-food futures. (shrink)

Transnational articulation programmes are one way China is attempting to advance its higher education system. We report a study of twelve Chinese students’ experiences in two China-Australia 2...

This study investigates the interrelation of outer appearance and spatial configuration of modern Chinese court buildings with the party-state’s strategy of building regime legitimacy. The spatial element of this relation is explored in four different court buildings in Kunming, Chongqing, Shanghai and Xi’an. It is argued that court buildings contribute to the empowerment of individuals who appear as parties in trials. Courthouses also facilitate the courts’ function of exercising social control and the application of an instrumentalist approach to the (...) principle of public trials. Both the grounding of court buildings in the past and their compliance with international models of a modern independent judiciary are aspects of consolidating regime legitimacy. (shrink)

Ecological innovation is an inevitable trend for firms to enhance competitiveness and sustainably operate in the context of green economy. The previous literature has rarely discussed the influence of ambidextrous learning on the eco-innovation performance of startups and ignored the moderating effect of top management’s environmental awareness from the perspective of microscopic psychology. We have conducted a questionnaire survey on 212 firms established within 4 years in the Pearl River Delta of China, using the structure mode and the PROCESS (...) by Hayes (2013) to analyze the influence of ambidextrous learning, such as exploratory learning and exploitative learning, by startups on eco-innovation performance and verify the moderating effect of top management’s environmental awareness. The results show that: exploratory learning and exploitative learning have a positive and significant influence on eco-innovation performance, indicating that the organizational learning of startups is conducive to improving eco-innovation performance; under the moderating effect of top management’s environmental awareness, the influence of exploratory learning and exploitative learning on eco-innovation performance may differ. The results also show that in the process of organizing ambidextrous learning, startups should help raise the environmental awareness of top management to improve the eco-innovation performance, thus providing guidance for startups to carry out eco-innovation activities and for local governments to make decisions on green economy. (shrink)

Did Chinese mysticism vanish after its first appearance in ancient Taoist philosophy, to surface only after a thousand years had passed, when the Chinese had adapted Buddhism to their own culture? This first integrated survey of the mystical dimension of Taoism disputes the commonly accepted idea of such a hiatus. Covering the period from the Daode jing to the end of the Tang, Livia Kohn reveals an often misunderstood Chinese mystical tradition that continued through the ages. Influenced (...) by but ultimately independent of Buddhism, it took forms more various than the quietistic withdrawal of Laozi or the sudden enlightenment of the Chan Buddhists. On the basis of a new theoretical evaluation of mysticism, this study analyzes the relationship between philosophical and religious Taoism and between Buddhism and the native Chinese tradition. Kohn shows how the quietistic and socially oriented Daode jing was combined with the ecstatic and individualistic mysticism of the Zhuangzi, with immortality beliefs and practices, and with Buddhist insight meditation, mind analysis, and doctrines of karma and retribution. She goes on to demonstrate that Chinese mysticism, a complex synthesis by the late Six Dynasties, reached its zenith in the Tang, laying the foundations for later developments in the Song traditions of Inner Alchemy, Chan Buddhism, and Neo-Confucianism. (shrink)

Specific Chinese models for theories of knowledge were premised upon a structurally ordered external reality; since natural (or cosmic) order is organic, it naturally follows the 'flow' of structural patterns and operates in accordance with structural principles that regulate every existence. In this worldview, our mind is also structured in accordance with this all-embracing, but open, organic system. The axioms of our recognition and thought are therefore not arbitrary, but follow this rationally designed structure. The compatibility of both the (...) cosmic and mental structures is the basic precondition that enables humans to perceive and recognize external reality. The present study shows that this paradigm of structural epistemology can already be found in the earliest Chinese theories of knowledge. The introduction of Chinese models and their incorporation into Western discourses fills an important theoretical gap in the Western model of structuralism. This book offers an insight into epistemological systems that arose outside the discourses of the Euro-American tradition. It can thus help us to eliminate and supersede certain culturally conditioned prejudices as to the superiority and omnipresence of Western theoretical models, while demonstrating incontrovertibly that the results of Western discourses are by no means the only force driving theoretical innovation at the present time. (shrink)

Chinese Philosophy: Overview of Topics If Chinese philosophy may be said to have begun around 2000 B.C.E., then it represents the longest continuous heritage of philosophical reflection. Trying to mention each philosopher or every significant thinker is not possible. This article is highly selective by choosing philosophers according to two basic principles: Those who … Continue reading Chinese Philosophy: Overview of Topics →.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name?A Response to Rein RaudCarine DefoortIn the preface to his Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shi wrote: "Today, the two main branches of philosophy meet and influence each other. Whether or not in fifty years or one hundred a sort of world philosophy will finally arise cannot yet be ascertained."1 Although uncertain, Hu was still hopeful, since he believed (...) that the two major traditions of modern world philosophy, founded in Europe and China, had finally met. That was in 1919. Now, almost a century later, we can respond to Hu's speculation with relative certainty: a world philosophy has not arisen and is not on the rise. In fact, the situation is much worse: Chinese ancient thought is not even considered "philosophy" by most Western specialists in the field.For Feng Youlan, Hu's contemporary, this lack of recognition had become a major frustration by the end of his life. Feng earnestly felt that "parts of classical Chinese philosophy have a contribution to make to the elevating of man's spiritual sphere and in solving universal problems in human life."2 But on the last page of the last volume of his New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy, completed a few weeks before his death in November 1990, Feng concluded that Western philosophers had not even begun to consider ancient Chinese thought to be worthy of their attention: "Chinese traditional philosophy has always been regarded as a part of sinological studies and is considered as having no relation to philosophy."3 Feng's sentiment is still widely shared today; for instance, in the Yearbook of Chinese Philosophy for 2001, Zheng Jiadong remarks that "in the West, especially in Europe, the legitimacy of 'Chinese philosophy' has always been questioned; 'Chinese philosophy' [End Page 625] has to a large extent been considered a strange thing of questionable antecedents."4 Others confirm that "Chinese thinking has been all but excluded from the discipline of philosophy in Western seats of learning."5Indeed, various eminent European philosophers, such as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and, more recently, Jacques Derrida on his visit to Shanghai in 2001,6 have proclaimed that ancient Chinese thought is not really philosophy. Kant, for example, stated that "Philosophy is not to be found in the whole Orient.... Their teacher Confucius teaches in his writings nothing outside a moral doctrine designed for the princes."7 Even sinology scholars sometimes wonder whether ancient Chinese thought ought to be labeled "philosophy."8 But more powerful than such explicit rejections of the legitimacy of "Chinese philosophy," which are nowadays relatively rare, is the dominant and implicit Western (especially European) view, embedded in the organization of academic conferences, journals, university curricula (as Feng Youlan remarked), and bookstores, that ancient China did not have philosophy. The average European bookstore, for instance, does not display the Laozi or Yijing on the "philosophy" shelf, but rather among various types of wisdom or practical knowledge, between Celtic myths, herbal medicine, and the art of astrology. However unobtrusive, this organizational given reveals more clearly and influentially than any contemporary scholar explicitly states, that the name "Chinese philosophy" for the Chinese masters and some Classics is not proper—or, to put it in ancient Chinese terms: this ming 名 is not zheng 正.9The twenty-first century, however, has seen strong indications of change, not in the sense that "Chinese philosophy" is now being generally accepted as one of the two main branches of world philosophy, as Hu Shi had hoped, but in the sense that the debate has been reopened, both in China and in the West. In China, the appropriateness of the label "Chinese philosophy" for ancient Chinese thought was questioned by some leading scholars in the first part of the twentieth century. But in the last decade the matter has been experienced as a crisis and challenge, and has been discussed much more broadly and vividly by Chinese academia: conferences are being dedicated to the question of the "legitimacy of 'Chinese philosophy"' (Zhongguo zhexue hefaxing 中国哲学的合法性), newspapers report on it, and some journals devote whole forums to it.10 About one hundred articles or chapters related... (shrink)

This book deals with the basic views of those philosophers and their influence on Chinese history and culture.