'Voices of Feminist Liberation' brings together a wide range of scholars to explore the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether, one of the most influential feminist and liberation theologians of our time. Ruether's extraordinary and ground-breaking thinking has shaped debates across liberation theology, feminism and eco-feminism, queer theology, social justice and inter-religious dialogue. At the same time, her commitment to practice and agency has influenced sites of local resistance around the world as well as on globalised strategies for ecological sustainability and (...) justice. 'Voices of Feminist Liberation' examines the potential of Ruether's thinking to mobilize critical theology, social theory and cultural practice. The scholars gathered here present their personal engagements with Ruether's thinking and teaching. The book will be invaluable to scholars, policy-makers, and activists seeking to understand how colonial and patriarchal oppression in the name of religion can be confronted and defeated. (shrink)

The theme of the philosopher as therapist dominates Nietzsche's entire opus, from his earliest writings to the Zarathustra period and beyond. Nietzsche wishes to hasten the coming and future sanctification of a new type of synthetic human being, and his entire teaching is shaped by his own struggles against illness.Yet few Nietzsche scholars have paid this crucial therapeutic element of his thought sufficient attention. This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field is composed around the Nietzschean insight, which (...) has its roots in the Hippocratic tradition of ancient medicine, that beliefs, behaviours, ideals and patterns of striving are not things for which individuals or even cultures are responsible. Rather, they are symptoms of what an individual or culture is, which symptoms require diagnostic interpretation and evaluation. The book identifies three principal approaches in Nietzsche's philosophy: diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic. Each essay takes up this essential insight into Nietzsche's therapeutic philosophy from a different perspective and collectively they reveal an array of insightful approaches to self-induced enhancement, for both individuals and cultures. (shrink)

In a behavioral study we analyzed the influence of visual action primes on abstract action sentence processing. We thereby aimed at investigating mental motor involvement during processes of meaning constitution of action verbs in abstract contexts. In the first experiment, participants executed either congruous or incongruous movements parallel to a video prime. In the second experiment, we added a no-movement condition. After the execution of the movement, participants rendered a sensibility judgment on action sentence targets. It was expected that congruous (...) movements would facilitate both concrete and abstract action sentence comprehension in comparison to the incongruous and the no-movement condition. Results in Experiment 1 showed a concreteness effect but no effect of motor priming. Experiment 2 revealed a concreteness effect as well as an interaction effect of the sentence and the movement condition. The findings indicate an involvement of motor processes in abstract action language processing on a behavioral level. (shrink)

Neo-Confucianism is a philosophically sophisticated tradition weaving classical Confucianism together with themes from Buddhism and Daoism. It began in China around the eleventh century CE, played a leading role in East Asian cultures over the last millennium, and has had a profound influence on modern Chinese society. -/- Based on the latest scholarship but presented in accessible language, Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction is organized around themes that are central in Neo-Confucian philosophy, including the structure of the cosmos, human nature, ways (...) of knowing, personal cultivation, and approaches to governance. The authors thus accomplish two things at once: they present the Neo-Confucians in their own, distinctive terms; and they enable contemporary readers to grasp what is at stake in the great Neo-Confucian debates. (shrink)

Shaftesburys Dialog «The Moralists», ein Schlüsseltext der englischen Literatur und Ästhetik des frühen achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, ist bisher nur ideengeschichtlich interpretiert worden. Die vorliegende Studie zeichnet anhand weitgehend unbekannter Quellen aus dem Shaftesbury-Nachlass zum erstenmal die ebenso langwierige wie komplizierte Genese und Druckgeschichte des Textes nach. Shaftesburys hier erstmals veröffentlichte Briefe und Anweisungen an den Drucker und Verleger John Darby werfen neues Licht auf den Wandel der Typographie und der Buchgestaltung in der Epoche des englischen Neoklassizismus.

There is a broad public interest in the current discussion about evolution and creation, a discussion led mainly by scientists on the one hand and theologians on the other. The scientists argue for the evolution of the cosmos and nature without a creator, while the theologians defend the idea of creation. However, the perspective of natural philosophy is largely missing from the debate. Since this is no longer represented in contemporary philosophical trends, this study revives it from the aristotelian-thomist tradition (...) with its valuable insights into the finality of nature, which the author uses in his attempt to mediate between scientific and theological viewpoints. (shrink)

Mengzi believed that tyrannical rulers can be justifiably deposed, and many contemporary scholars see this as evidence that that Mengzi endorsed a right of popular rebellion. I argue that the text of the Mengzi reveals a more mixed view, and does so in two respects. First, it suggests that the people are sometimes permitted to participate in a rebellion but not permitted to decide for themselves when rebellion is warranted. Second, it gives appropriate moral weight not to the people’s judgments (...) about the justifiability of rebelling, but rather to certain affections and behaviors that closely track their life satisfaction. I contend that in both respects the permissions Mengzi grants the people fall short of a proper right of rebellion. I conclude that the more historical account of Mengzi’s “just revolt theory” suggests an intriguing division of justificatory labor, and note some of the advantages of this account. (shrink)

As recorded in the Analects, Kongzi (Confucius) held that using punishment to influence ordinary citizens will do little to develop a sense of shame (chi 恥) in them. This term is usually taken to refer to a sense of shame described here as “ autonomous,” understood as a predisposition to feel ashamed when one does something wrong because it seems wrong to oneself, and not because others regard it as wrong or shameful. Historically, Confucian philosophers have thought a great deal (...) about the habits and character traits necessary for someone to have a sense of shame that is truly autonomous. The article looks at their views on this matter and shows how they help to articulate the hypothesis that coercive punishments undermine or work at cross-purposes with the cultivation of an autonomous sense of shame. It then uses this analysis to explicate the proposal that governing people by cultivating a sense of shame is to be preferred to governing by threat of punishment. It concludes by weighing its merits as a view about effective governance, observing that its strength and plausibility depends on whether we take the threat of punishment to be direct or indirect. (shrink)

An exceptional contribution to the teaching and study of Chinese thought, this anthology provides fifty-eight selections arranged chronologically in five main sections: Han Thought, Chinese Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, Late Imperial Confucianism, and the early Twentieth Century. The editors have selected writings that have been influential, that are philosophically engaging, and that can be understood as elements of an ongoing dialogue, particularly on issues regarding ethical cultivation, human nature, virtue, government, and the underlying structure of the universe. Within those topics, issues of (...) contemporary interest, such as Chinese ideas about gender and the experiences of women, are brought to light. -/- Introductions to each main section provide an overview of the period, while brief headnotes to selections highlight key points. -/- The translations are the works of many distinguished scholars, and were chosen for their accuracy and accessibility, especially for students, general readers, and scholars who do not read Chinese. Special effort has been made to maintain consistency of key terms across translations. -/- Also included are a glossary, bibliography, index of names, and an index locorum of The Four Books. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up one of Wang Yangming’s most audacious philosophical claims, which is that an achievement that is entirely concerned with correcting one’s own inner states, called “establishing sincerity” (licheng 立誠) can help one to fully grasp (jin 盡) all ethically pertinent matters, including those that would seem to require some ability to know or track facts about the wider world (e.g., facts about people very different from ourselves, facts about the needs of plants and animals). Wang (...) makes a claim to this effect in some of his letters and recorded discussions. -/- I begin with a brief, historical reconstruction of what Wang means by “establishing sincerity” and then turn to two sets of controversies regarding his audacious claim. The first has to do with how we should understand the proposal that establishing sincerity helps or positions a person to fully grasp all ethically significant concerns. On the interpretation of Chen Lai 陳來, Wang doesn’t think that establishing sincerity is sufficient by itself to have this grasp, only that it lays a necessary psychological foundation for all attempts to do so, so that it leaves much more work to do. I largely agree with Chen’s reading but find it isn’t strong enough to capture what’s most important and controversial about Wang’s view. On my stronger reading, Wang doesn’t just think that establishing sincerity provides a necessary foundation for a complete grasp, he also thinks that it describes the most difficult and demanding step or part of the process – the other steps come much more naturally and easily. The second set of controversies has to do with whether we can preserve Wang’s core account of virtuous moral agency without his strong ethical nativism, according to which we have an inherent capacity and disposition to track what is ethically important or salient about people and things very much unlike ourselves. I consider some arguments and interpretations of Wang’s thought that might allow us to bypass his nativist presuppositions, and conclude that they do not succeed. Even if we cannot accept his ethical nativism, however, there is a range of important ethical norms for which Wang’s prescriptions are powerful and prudent. The result of this study, I hope, will be an account of Wang’s thought which better positions us to see what parts are (and are not) worth bringing to ongoing debates about the nature of ethics, moral knowledge, and moral virtue. (shrink)

This paper is about two proposals endorsed by Xunzi. The first is that there is such a thing as a moral expert, whose moral advice we should adopt even when we cannot appreciate for ourselves the considerations in favor of it. The second is that certain political authorities should be treated as moral experts. I identify three fundamental questions about moral expertise that contemporary philosophy has yet to address in depth, explicate Xunzi’s answers to them, and then give an account (...) of politically authorized moral expertise as Xunzi understands it. The three questions at the heart of this study are these: how should we distinguish between knowing the correct course of action on another’s authority and knowing it for oneself? What exactly are the underlying considerations that the expert grasps and the novice does not? Who are the experts and in what spheres of life can they legitimately claim expertise? (shrink)

A follow-up to Tiwald's book review of Angle's Sagehood.

A crucial tenet of virtue-based or expertise-based theorizing about politics is that there are ways to identify and select morally and epistemically excellent people to hold office. This paper considers historical challenges to this task that come from within Greek and Confucian thought and political practice. Because of how difficult it is to assess character in ordinary settings, we argue that it is even more difficult to design institutions that select for virtue at the much wider political scale. Specifically, we (...) argue that the vast majority of proposals that purport to select for virtue are either (a) unlikely to be effective, (b) not implementable at the scale of most current nations, or (c) have already been incorporated into most democratic states. Thus defenders of meritocratic institutions should take more seriously the practical barriers that will almost certainly arise when trying to implement these proposals at scale. Historical proponents of meritocratic values were well aware of concerns about the feasibility of their political ideals, and we should be too. (shrink)

Social scientists have not integrated relevant knowledge from the biological sciences into their explanations of human behavior. This failure is due to a longstanding antireductionistic bias against the natural sciences, which follows on a commitment to the view that social facts must be explained by social laws. This belief has led many social scientists into the error of reifying abstract analytical constructs into entities that possess powers of agency. It has also led to a false nature-culture dichotomy that effectively undermines (...) the place of biology in social scientific explanation. Following the principles of methodological individualism, we show how behavioral explanations supported by data and theory from the neurosciences can be used to correct the errors of reificationist thinking in the social sciences. We outline a mechanistic approach to the explanation of human behavior with the hope that the biological sciences will begin to find greater acceptance among social scientists. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to explicating Dai Zhen’s defense of self-interested desires, over and against a tradition that sets strict limits to their range and function in moral agency. I begin by setting the terms of the debate between Dai and his opponents, noting that the dispute turns largely on the moral status of directly self-interested desires, or desires for one’s own good as such. I then consider three of Dai’s arguments against views that miscategorize or undervalue directly self-interested desires. (...) I begin with the most widely recognized line of defense, which holds that the suppression of such desires makes those in positions of authority less sensitive to the mistreatment of those with whose interests they are entrusted. I call this the “Pity for the Powerless” argument. I then explore an argument that Dai offers in the form of a multi-faceted metaphor, which likens the suppression of desires to attempts to block or dam natural waterways. I call this is the “Damming the Desires” argument. I conclude with a brief summary of a third and fundamental defense implied by structural features of ethics as Dai understands them. On my reading, Dai thinks ethics is concerned first and foremost with the character traits and resultant behavior that allow us to participate in relationships, and the relationships in question are mutually beneficial, not one-sided or reciprocal. I call this the “Argument from Mutual Fulfillment.” On the view spelled out here, directly self-interested desires are not just morally tolerable, nor is the possession of them merely a necessary condition for the possession of moral virtue; instead, moral virtue is constituted in part by self-interested desires. This is the strong position that Dai endorses when he characterizes the Confucian path as the “way of mutual fulfillment.”. (shrink)

This paper explicates the influential Confucian view that “people” and not “institutional rules” are the proper sources of good governance and social order, as well as some notable Confucian objections to this position. It takes Xunzi 荀子, Hu Hong 胡宏, and Zhu Xi 朱熹 as the primary representatives of the “virtue-centered” position, which holds that people’s good character and not institutional rules bear primary credit for successful governance. And it takes Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 as a major advocate for the “institutionalist” (...) position, which holds that institutional rules have some power to effect success independently of improvements in character. Historians have often called attention to this debate but left the major arguments and positions relatively unspecified. As I show, the Confucian virtue-centered view is best captured in two theses: first, that reforming people is far more demanding than reforming institutional rules; second, that once the rules have reached a certain threshold of viability, further improvements in those rules are unlikely to be effective on their own. Once we specify the theses in this way, we can catalogue the different respects and degrees to which the more virtue-centered political thinkers endorse virtue-centrism in governance. Zhu Xi, for example, turns out to endorse a stronger version of virtue-centrism than Hu Hong. I also use this account of the major theses to show that Huang Zongxi, who is sometimes regarded as historical Confucianism’s foremost institutionalist, has more complicated and mixed views about the power of institutional reform than scholars usually assume. (shrink)

This article spells out a forgotten debate in Confucian ethics that concerns the finer points of empathy, sympathy, and perspective-taking (sometimes called ‘role-taking’). The debate’s central question is whether sympathy is more virtuous when it is automatic and other-focused – that is, when we engage in perspective-taking without conscious effort and sympathize without significant reference to our selves or our own feelings.

In this chapter the author defends the view that the major variants of Confucian ethics qualify as virtue ethics in the respects that matter most, which concern the focus, investigative priority, and explanatory priority of virtue over right action. The chapter also provides short summaries of the central Confucian virtues and then explains how different Confucians have understood the relationship between these and what some regard as the chief or most comprehensive virtue, ren (humaneness or benevolence). Finally, it explicates what (...) most Confucians take to be a requirement of all virtues, which the author calls “wholeheartedness,” and concludes by highlighting some neglected implications of the wholeheartedness requirement for ethics more generally. These include reasons for linking conceptions of virtue and human nature, for thinking that good character necessitates that individuals change how things seem to them, and for endorsing automatic as opposed to intensively deliberative judgments and decisions. (shrink)

I argue that Dai Zhen’s account of sympathetic concern is distinguished from other accounts of sympathy (and empathy) by several features, the most important of which are the following: First, he sees the awareness of our similarities to others as a necessary condition for sympathy but not a constituent of it. Second, the relevant similarities are those that are grounded in our common status as living creatures, and not in our common powers of autonomy or other traits that are often (...) taken to be distinguishing features of persons. Finally, Dai thinks that when we properly sympathize with others, we value their well-being in a way that mimics the way we value our own. This last feature helps to explain two important claims about the place of sympathy in moral action: that it necessarily requires perspective-taking (at least with respect to most other human beings), and that it provides indirect motives to be virtuous, which even imperfect moral agents can draw upon. In the course of making my argument, I identify salient differences between Dai’s variant of sympathy and some of its closest relatives, including Aristotelian pity and Buddhist compassion. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explicate several general views and arguments that bear on the notion and contemporary theories of human welfare, as found in two foundational Daoist texts, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. Ideas drawn from the Daodejing include its objections to desire theories of human welfare and its distinction between natural and acquired desires. Insights drawn from the Zhuangzi include its arguments against the view that death is bad for the dead, its attempt to develop a workable theory of (...) well-being for those who are skeptical about such theories, and the prudential benefits of what I call "philosophical double-vision.". (shrink)

Many virtue epistemologists conceive of epistemic competence on the model of skill —such as archery, playing baseball, or chess. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: epistemic competences and skills are crucially and relevantly different kinds of capacities. This, I suggest, undermines the popular attempt to understand epistemic normativity as a mere special case of the sort of normativity familiar from skilful action. In fact, as I argue further, epistemic competences resemble virtues rather than skills—a claim that (...) is based on an important, but often overlooked, difference between virtue and skill. The upshot is that virtue epistemology should indeed be based on virtue, not on skill. (shrink)

Epistemic constitutivism (EC) holds that the nature of believing is such that it gives rise to a standard of correctness and that other epistemic normative notions (e.g., reasons for belief) can be explained in terms of this standard. If defensible, this view promises an attractive and unifying account of epistemic normativity. However, EC faces a forceful objection: that constitutive standards of correctness are never enough for generating normative reasons. This paper aims to defend EC in the face of this objection. (...) I do so in two steps. First, I dispute a crucial assumption underlying the case against EC: that constitutive standards of correctness in general are ‘reason-giving’ only if and because there is also a prior reason to comply with them. Second, I outline a strategy of how EC can meet the challenge of explaining what’s special about the activity of believing such that, unlike other standard-governed activities, it is capable of generating normative reasons. (shrink)

This chapter explains how Xunzi's text and views helped shape the thought of the Neo-Confucian philosophers, noting and explicating some areas of influence long overlooked in modern scholarship. It begins with a general overview of Xunzi’s changing position in the tradition (“Xunzi’s Status in Neo-Confucian Thought”), in which I discuss Xunzi’s status in three general periods of Neo-Confucian era: the early period, in which Neo-Confucian views of Xunzi were varied and somewhat ambiguous, the “mature” period, in which a broad consensus (...) formed and then became orthodoxy for several centuries, and a late and often overlooked reassessment of Xunzi that took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the second section (“Debating Human Nature on Xunzi’s Terms”), I discuss in greater detail Neo-Confucian criticisms of Xunzi’s views on human nature, noting that in key respects the Neo-Confucians accepted Xunzi’s somewhat uncharitable characterization of the doctrine that human nature is good, thereby taking on a considerably greater burden of proof than necessary. In the third section (“Virtue without Roots”), I attempt to explicate what is perhaps the most prominent but also the most laconic Neo-Confucian criticism of Xunzi, which is that Xunzi misunderstands the “great root” or “great foundation” of cosmic and social order, finding it in conventional human relationships rather than in the deeper, purer and more powerful inner workings of human nature. In the final section (“The Accretional Theory of Knowledge Acquisition”), I explain how the major differences between Xunzi and his Neo-Confucian critics can be cast as a dispute about how moral knowledge is acquired, where Xunzi’s critics assume that acquiring moral knowledge of any meaningful kind is impossible without a natural base or foundation of moral knowledge to begin with. (shrink)

An overview of Dai's ethics, highlighting some overlooked or misunderstood theses on moral deliberation and motivation.

In Stephen Angle’s Sagehood, he contends that Neo-Confucian philosophers reject ways of moral thinking that draw hard and fast lines between self-directed or prudential concerns (about what is good for me) and other-directed or moral concerns (about what is right, just, virtuous, etc.), and suggests that they are right to do so. In this paper, I spell out Angle’s arguments and interpretation in greater detail and then consider whether they are faithful to one of the chief figures in Neo-Confucian thought. (...) I begin by identifying some of the better-known ways in which moral philosophers give special treatment to prudential considerations, and say which of these Angle’s reading of the Neo-Confucians appears to rule out. After laying this groundwork, I proceed to test Angle’s interpretation against the moral thought of history’s most influential Neo-Confucian philosopher, Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), arguing that even on Angle’s own reading, there are certain respects in which Zhu preserves the distinction, although by Angle’s lights these ways are perhaps less pernicious than their contemporary equivalents. I also look closely at how Angle uses the psychological structure of humane love (ren 仁) to undermine the prudence-versus-morality distinction. Here I suggest that the better way to phrase his point is to say that prudence drops out or becomes an ethically incoherent concept, which is something quite different from rejecting or collapsing the distinction between prudence and morality. (shrink)

Someone acts in a morally worthy way when they deserve credit for doing the morally right thing. But when and why do agents deserve credit for the success involved in doing the right thing? It is tempting to seek an answer to that question by drawing an analogy with creditworthy success in other domains of human agency, especially in sports, arts, and crafts. Accordingly, some authors have recently argued that, just like creditworthy success in, say, chess, playing the piano, or (...) archery, creditworthy moral success is a matter of getting things right by way of manifesting a relevant skill. My main aim in this paper is to bring out an important structural difference between moral creditworthiness and creditworthiness in sports, arts, and craft, undermining attempts to use examples of the latter as a model for understanding the former. As an alternative, I propose an account of morally creditworthy action, according to which such action is a matter of manifesting virtue, not skill—a claim that's based on an important, but underappreciated, difference between the sorts of excellences constituting virtues and skills. The paper thus contributes to a more nuanced picture of normative achievements across different domains of human agency, highlighting largely overlooked structural dissimilarities among them. (shrink)

The past couple of decades have witnessed a remarkable burst of philosophical energy and talent devoted to virtue ethical approaches to Confucianism, including several books, articles, and even high-profile workshops and conferences that make connections between Confucianism and either virtue ethics as such or moral philosophers widely regarded as virtue ethicists. Those who do not work in the combination of Chinese philosophy and ethics may wonder what all of the fuss is about. Others may be more familiar with the issues (...) but have doubts about the fruitfulness of this line of inquiry. It is therefore worth asking whether a constructive engagement between Confucianism and virtue ethics is worth turning into a significant, multi-generational research agenda. Most answers to this question will fall somewhere between two poles. At one end is the view that the line of inquiry has run its course, if ever there were a course to run in the first place; at the opposite end is the view that we’re only just getting started. And then there is a wide range of more moderate views falling between these two positions. Far from having exhausted the potential of virtue ethical approaches to Confucianism, I think we are standing on a philosophical gold mine that we’ve only just begun to tap. In what follows I would like to explain briefly why I take this to be the case. (shrink)