ABSTRACTMerleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception begins with a critique of the philosophical notion of sensation. Even though it is often generally said to be aimed at traditional psychology or empiricism, Merleau-Ponty’s critique is without question also applicable to Husserl’s notion of sensation. The first half of this paper will offer an interpretation of Husserl’s conception of sensation as the stuff of perception and the pregivennesses for all of the Ego’s operations. And then it will attempt to show how Merleau-Ponty’s critique in (...) the Phenomenology of Perception can precisely be viewed as aiming at Husserl. In the end, we should be able to see that Merleau-Ponty’s critique is still relevant today, especially in regard to some recent attempts to put Husserl into the camp of non-representationalism in contemporary philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This essay attempts to approach the dispute over the conceptualist or non-conceptualist interpretation of Husserl’s conception of intentional experience from a specific question: Is the intuitive act essentially a carrier of meaning? In the sixth Investigation, Husserl apparently tries to show that intuition is no carrier of meaning and therefore must be unified with a meaning-conferring act in order to be meaningful. But it seems to me that the brief arguments given by Husserl here are far from conclusive and that (...) there are passages in the Logical Investigations which suggest otherwise. I will try to demonstrate that the sense conferred by the interpretation in perception is not different from linguistic meaning, and therefore perception is actually a synthetic act of fulfillment and is always meaningful. The conceptualist reading is no less convincing and no less susceptible to objections than the non-conceptualist one. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to elucidate Franz Brentano's concept of immanent object through his own words and from his own perspective. The prevalent account of Brentano's revival of intentionality, his initial failure to distinguish between object and content, and his wrong‐headed immanentism, is largely derived from his students. Brentano's objection to it, although well known, is seldom heeded. In fact, plenty of guidelines have been provided by Brentano himself in his writings on how his concept of immanent object (...) is to be understood. I begin with his distinction between two senses of “object,” which, I argue, must be clearly set apart from distinction between two modes of object. I then examine three different interpretations of the term “in‐existence”: the locative, the inherentist, and the objective interpretation. In the end, after dismissing the first two interpretations, I argue that Brentano is best understood as maintaining an objective and deflationary account of mental in‐existence. (shrink)

The concept of fore-structure is central to Heidegger’s idea of interpretation. Gadamer later incorporated this concept into his own theory of philosophical hermeneutics. But there are indeed certain signifcant differences between their accounts of the fore-structure, and these differences are o ften neglected by scholars. This essay will first present Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure, and then we will demonstrate the differences between Heidegger and Gadamer. At last, we will draw out some implications of Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure to textual Interpretation.

Since the Opium War, the traditional Chinese society has been increasingly subject to the crushing impact of the modern Western civilization. Confucianism, as the normative discourse that had prevailed over the Chinese society for more than two thousands years, had inevitably to face the Western challenge head-on. From the end of the nineteenth century onward, the influence of Confucianism as regards the actual life of the Chinese people continues to diminish, and its normative place has almost been completely taken up (...) by the modern social theories imported from the West. Some Chinese scholars, therefore, has declared that Confucianism has become a "wandering ghost". But at the same time, there are also many contemporary Confucians who try to find a new body for the "ghost" of Confucianism. At the academic domain, this kind of attempt is usually based upon some sort of "modern interpretation" of Confucianism. But paradoxically, this kind of modern interpretation usually borrows its interpretative frameworks from the West. It goes without saying that the respective backgrounds upon which Confucianism and those modern West theories arose are gravely different. Hence, these modern interpretations generally tend to abstract the discourse of Confucianism from its social and historical background and treat it as some sorts of purely abstract concepts. But even after the abstraction, this kind of modern interpretations could still hardly fit well into the discourse of Confucianism. The aim of the present treatise is to re-interpret the discourse of Confucius, by means of both careful scholarship and detailed philosophical arguments, based upon the words of Confucius himself and other informations concerning his social and historical surroundings, in order to show that the discourse of Confucius is intricately involved with its living background. The author is going to point out that the discourse of Confucius is actually not so much concerned with "metaphysics of morals" of whatsoever sort as with the order and disorder of the society. At the end of the treatise, the author will also try to re-evaluate, with reference to the recent results of scientific research, the significance of Confucianism in the modern world. (shrink)

The development of Christian thought on Heidegger can not be ignored. Heidegger was born in a conservative Catholic family, he entered college was originally a theological student. Even after he was formally separated from the Catholic system, he also regarded as a Christian theologian since. Until 1935, he was also born in the beliefs of his distress. This paper will focus on "Being and Time," presented by the theme of Christianity, Christianity is still trying to point out many of his (...) early ideas the source of important concepts. The influence of Christianity on the intellectual development of Heidegger can hardly be exaggerated. Heidegger was born in a conservative Catholic family. He first entered university as a student of theology. Even after his formal break with the system of Catholicism, he still considered himself a Christian theologian, and as late as 1935, he still had to struggle with the faith of his birth. The theme of this treatise is the Christian influence on Heidegger as it is displayed in Being and Time. It aims at showing that many important concepts in this opus magnum of Heidegger have their origin in Christian thought. (shrink)