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)

The fluctuation-dissipation theorem is a central theorem in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics by which the evolution of velocity fluctuations of the Brownian particle under a fluctuating environment is intimately related to its dissipative behavior. This can be illuminated in particular by an example of Brownian motion in an ohmic environment where the dissipative effect can be accounted for by the first-order time derivative of the position. Here we explore the dynamics of the Brownian particle coupled to a supraohmic environment by considering (...) the motion of a charged particle interacting with the electromagnetic fluctuations at finite temperature. We also derive particle’s equation of motion, the Langevin equation, by minimizing the corresponding stochastic effective action, which is obtained with the method of Feynman-Vernon influence functional. The fluctuation-dissipation theorem is established from first principles. The backreaction on the charge is known in terms of electromagnetic self-force given by a third-order time derivative of the position, leading to the supraohmic dynamics. This self-force can be argued to be insignificant throughout the evolution when the charge barely moves. The stochastic force arising from the supraohmic environment is found to have both positive and negative correlations, and it drives the charge into a fluctuating motion. Although positive force correlations give rise to the growth of the velocity dispersion initially, its growth slows down when correlation turns negative, and finally halts, thus leading to the saturation of the velocity dispersion. The saturation mechanism in a supraohmic environment is found to be distinctly different from that in an ohmic environment. The comparison is discussed. (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)

This book explains the general intellectual climate of the early Ch'ing period, and the political and cultural characteristics of the Ch'ing regime at the time. Professor Huang brings to life the book's central characters, Li Fu and the three great emperors - K'ang-hsi, Yung-cheng, and Chien-lung - whom he served. Although the author's main concern is to explain the contributions of Li Fu to the Lu-Wang school of Confucianism, he also gives a clearly written account of the Lu-Wang (...) and Ch'eng-Chu schools from the twelfth century to the eighteenth. In a clear, succinct style, Huang explains the historical differences between the Ch'eng-Chu and Lu-Wang schools without sacrificing the subtleties of either. The book culminates in a discussion of the hero-emperor K'ang-hsi's appropriation of the 'Tradition of the Way' from his intellectual officials, which denied them their traditional role as moral censors and critics of the emperor's exercise of authority. (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 social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

The articles assembled in this volume present an important selection of Professor Jao Tsung-i’s research in the fields of comparative mythology, early Chinese hemerology and the interrelation between divination, morals and ritual in early Chinese thought.

Hsiin Yiieh's Shen-chien is one of the four major philosophical works that have survived from the later Han dynasty. Presented here for Western readers is an English translation by Ch'i-ytin Ch'en of the entire work, supplemented with selections of Hsiin Yiieh's other essays. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books (...) while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Future-directed intentions, it is widely held, involve behavioral dispositions. But of what kind? Suppose you now intend to Φ at future time t. Are you thereby now disposed to Φ at t no matter what? If so, your intention disposes you to Φ even if around t you will come to believe that Φ-ing would be crazy. And would not that be a crazy intention to have? – Like considerations have led Luca Ferrero and others to believe that only intentions (...) with strong internal conditions are capable of rationality. This paper explores in how far a broadly dispositional view of intention supports their claims. Its first point will come as a surprise: Intentions indeed involve dispositions toward follies in plenty. Natural objections against this bizarre-sounding claim are shown to fail, and standard counterfactual analyses of disposition locutions are shown to underpin it further. However, since the dispositions at issue are pro tanto dispositions, the consequences are not as odd as might be expected: When hedged by reasonable habits to reconsider one’s intentions, dispositions toward follies do not entail any actual crazy behavior. On balance, unconditional intention is therefore found rational after all. Dispositions toward crazy actions need not be crazy dispositions. (shrink)

By comparing the political systems in different dynasties, this book illustrates the continuous evolution of traditional Chinese political systems, and evaluates the merits and demerits of the political systems in different dynasties. It also provides detailed records of the evolved government organizations, the names and functions of various offices, the titles and responsibilities of officials. The book consists of five chapters, each of which focuses on one of the five dynasties respectively -- Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and Qing, and a (...) concluding summary. Combining historical facts and anecdotes from history to make the discussion straightforward, interesting, and easy to understand, this is an ideal book for anyone interested in the history of China, particularly its traditional political systems. (shrink)