Every philosophical mode has a unique conceptual system. Qi has consistently been a fundamental part of ancient Chinese philosophy, and its significance is obvious. Guided by the idea of re-evaluating all values, Yan Fu, who was deeply influenced by Western philosophy and logic, used reverse analogical interpretation to present a new explanation of the traditional Chinese concept of qi. Qi thus evolved into basic physical particles. Yan’s philosophical effort has great significance: The logical ambiguity that had haunted qi (...) was overcome. However, qi gradually evolved into a particular existence as it was Westernized. It completely lost its internal flavor as indigenous Chinese philosophy. Its previous philosophical abstraction and universality diminished and at the same time it was not Westernized into the pure concept of Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

In the Chinese tradition, the relationship between art and philosophy is conceptually explored in terms of the relationship between dao and wen, which may respectively be viewed as representing philosophy and art. Over history, discourses on dao 道 and wen 文 are central to studies of Chinese literature, art, culture, and civilization. But just as dao holds a range of ideas in Chinese philosophy, wen is also one of the most complex terms in Chinese tradition, whose (...) denotations and connotations are multifaceted and open to interpretations. This article argues that the elusive nature of wen can be understood adequately from the perspective of language philosophy and aesthetics via its relationship to the metaphysical principle of the Dao. By examining the discourses on wen and dao, this article advances a thesis with three interrelated ideas: wen as manifestations of the Tao is an instance of “humanized nature”; the birth of wen marked the beginning of reflections on literature and art, hence inaugurating aesthetics in the Chinese tradition; and the early discourses on wen have determined the distinctiveness of Chinese aesthetic consciousness. (shrink)

The history of art in Russia and China is closely intertwined in the XX century, including thanks to the creative and pedagogical activities of Russian artists who found themselves in exile. Largely thanks to them, Harbin and Shanghai became major art centers in the 1920s–1930s. This period is characterized by fruitful processes in the country's art and culture, but also political upheavals at the same time. The problem of the study is to determine the peculiarities of the perception and interpretation (...) by the emigrant masters of events from the life of the Chinese people, the atmosphere that prevailed in China. Thus, the subject of the study is the paintings and graphics of the largest emigrant artists of the specified period, and the object is the images of China of those years, conveyed in their works, and the means of implementing the idea. The main purpose of this article is to determine the range of themes and subjects that Russian emigrant artists addressed when creating images of contemporary China, as well as the specifics of their artistic embodiment. It is achieved by analyzing the historiography of this issue in Russian art criticism, as well as analyzing the creative works of such prominent representatives of the artistic intelligentsia in exile as M.A. Kichigin and his daughters, V.S. Podgursky, Ya.L. Likhonos, V.A. Asypkin. The study of the thematic component of their works shows that the masters were attracted by events from the life of ordinary people, as well as psychological portraits of residents of Chinese cities. Artistically, the artists remained committed to the Russian school, but allowed the influence of expressive features of Chinese painting. (shrink)

This book engages in critical discussion of the role of reason and rationality in philosophy, the human mind, ethics, science, and the social sciences. Philosophers from Poland, Germany, and the United States examine reason in the light of emotion, doubt, absolutes, implementation, and interpretation. They throw new light on old values.

This book engages in critical discussion of the role of reason and rationality in philosophy, the human mind, ethics, science, and the social sciences. Philosophers from Poland, Germany, and the United States examine reason in the light of emotion, doubt, absolutes, implementation, and interpretation. They throw new light on old values.

The philosophy of language in the Gongsun Longzi 公孫龍子 has been a hot topic since the 20th century, but there is still controversy about what point Gongsun Long 公孫龍 is making. This article reviews representative studies of the philosophy of language in the Gongsun Longzi in Sinophone academia since 2000. Some studies (especially in journal articles) conceive that one or two of the discourses are on the philosophy of language, while the other discourses concern ontology, epistemology, semiotics, or logic. In (...) contrast, certain scholars read the whole book as being about the philosophy of language. The divergence lies in whether the common thread is linguistic meaning or concept, and whether Gongsun Long’s doctrine is unveiled by one or several theories. These differences lead to a wide variation in their interpretation of the key terms and claims in the Gongsun Longzi. It is found that there is no theoretical framework that can perfectly interpret the book without incurring any criticism, and more efforts are needed to elucidate the philosophy of language in the Gongsun Longzi. (shrink)

Three issues essential to our insight into the concept and function of historical consciousness, and the description thereof, form the core of this book: historical truth, historical comment and criticism, and ideology (including the historian's trustworthiness). Taking as a point of departure the workings of these concepts in Chinese historical thinking, the volume carefully draws comparisons with similar topics in the Western tradition. It thus advocates and shows a truly comparative approach that sets the stage for an intercultural (...) dialogue on this important subject. The first comprehensive work on the political and cognitive dimensions of Chinese historical consciousness set against its Western counterpart. (shrink)

The surprising story of how Greek classics are being pressed into use in contemporary China to support the regime’s political agenda As improbable as it may sound, an illuminating way to understand today’s China and how it views the West is to look at the astonishing ways Chinese intellectuals are interpreting—or is it misinterpreting?—the Greek classics. In Plato Goes to China, Shadi Bartsch offers a provocative look at Chinese politics and ideology by exploring Chinese readings of Plato, (...) Aristotle, Thucydides, and other ancient writers. She shows how Chinese thinkers have dramatically recast the Greek classics to support China’s political agenda, diagnose the ills of the West, and assert the superiority of China’s own Confucian classical tradition. In a lively account that ranges from the Jesuits to Xi Jinping, Bartsch traces how the fortunes of the Greek classics have changed in China since the seventeenth century. Before the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Chinese typically read Greek philosophy and political theory in order to promote democratic reform or discover the secrets of the success of Western democracy and science. No longer. Today, many Chinese intellectuals use these texts to critique concepts such as democracy, citizenship, and rationality. Plato’s “Noble Lie,” in which citizens are kept in their castes through deception, is lauded; Aristotle’s Politics is seen as civic brainwashing; and Thucydides’s criticism of Athenian democracy is applied to modern America. What do antiquity’s “dead white men” have left to teach? By uncovering the unusual ways Chinese thinkers are answering that question, Plato Goes to China opens a surprising new window on China today. (shrink)

El artículo tiene como objetivo mostrar la ejemplaridad del modelo de la critica de arte que practica A. C. Danto, en una época marcada por la tensión entre la globalización y el multiculturalismo. En primer lugar se aborda la relación entre crítica de arte y filosofía del arte, pues en el caso de Danto se trata de dos aspectos inseparables; Duchamp introdujo la reflexión filosófica en el corazón del discurso artístico, y Danto responde a esta situación como filósofo y como (...) crítico. El arte es para Danto una forma de pensamiento, y la experiencia del arte consiste en engranar pensamiento con pensamiento. Esta posición polemizo con lo respuesta puramente estética, puramente sensible, que el formalismo ha cultivado con lo reducción de la obra de arte a objeto estético. En segundo lugar, se describen tres tareas de la crítica: 1.) La descripción del significado de la obro y del modo como lo encarna. 2.) El compromiso de la crítica con el público lector y no con el lector erudito. 3.) La independencia y la solvencia ética del crítico. El arte no es una demanda de la globalización sino una necesidad fundamental de la subjetividad humana; la crítica de arte de Danto pretende hacer de la experiencia del arte una contribución para aprender a vivir en el pluralismo. (shrink)

Drawing on several issues and methods in Western philosophy, from analytical philosophy to semiotics and hermeneutics, the author throws new light on the ancient Zhuangzi text. Engaging Daoism and contemporary Western philosophical logic, and drawing on new developments in our understanding of early Chinese culture, Coutinho challenges the interpretation of Zhuangzi as either a skeptic or a relativist, and instead seeks to explore his philosophy as emphasizing the ineradicable vagueness of language, thought and reality. This new interpretation of the (...) Zhuangzi offers an important development in the understanding of Daoist philosophy, describing a world in flux in which things themselves are vague and inconsistent, and tries to show us a Way (a Dao) to negotiate through the shadows of a "chaotic" world. (shrink)

interest. But the question is whether we have to accept this point of view. Although our interpretations, criticisms and theory-constructions are ...

Structuralism as well as other methods of literary criticism, take positions analogous to ones espoused in some philosophies of science. Examples are: regarding a discipline as self-contained, having no necessary connection with the external world; taking interpretation (or the postulating of theories) as an arbitrary process, valid if it makes sense of the data, thus avoiding questions of truth; diminishing individuality by overemphasizing the learned aspects of a discipline (reading as governed by assimilated rules, research as controlled by shared (...) goals and methods and implicit agreement on fundamental questions). Interdisciplinary exchange should lead to greater awareness both of difficulties of these positions and of proposed solutions to the difficulties they raise. (shrink)

Introduction: Fielding Derrida -- Jacques Derrida's early writings : alongside skepticism, phenomenology -- Analytic philosophy, and literary criticism -- Deconstruction as skepticism -- Derrida, Husserl, and the commentators : a developmental approach -- A transcendental sense of death : Derrida and the philosophy of language -- Literary theory's languages : the deconstruction of sense vs. the deconstruction of reference -- Jacques Derrida and the problem of philosophical and political modernity -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : the problem of (...) modernity -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : historicism and history in two interpretations of Husserl's late writings -- Derrida's contribution to phenomenology : a problem of no species -- Foretellese : futures of Derrida and Marx. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Language, Truth, and Literary Interpretation: A Cross-cultural ExaminationYanfang TangReflections on the philosophy of language in China and the West suggest that philosophers’ critiques of language center on two issues: its inadequacy and its metaphoricity. The former indicates the inability of the signifier to capture the multiplicity of the signified, whereas the latter reflects the semantic surplus of the signifier over its referent. While modern Western philosophers focus on the (...) metaphoricity, frequently referred to as the “play,” of the sign, philosophers in traditional China targeted what they believed to be the inherent inadequacies of words in their discussions. 1 Both aspects of language are considered the cause of equivocal or ineffective speech, and thus of impediment to correct understanding, and yet philosophers of the two cultural traditions have come to different conclusions about reading or literary study.To Western philosophers and literary critics, the metaphoricity of language incurs a serious problem for reading. Because the sign, in its incessant play, always points to more than is needed to the point that its real reference is blurred or covered up, correct reading of a literary text becomes impossible. Such phrases, frequently appearing in contemporary critical writings as “the tyranny of words,” “the indeterminacy of meaning,” and “the unreadable text,” testify to the widespread concern about the problems of language in the West. On the other hand, despite their acute awareness of the intrinsic deficiency of words, Chinese philosophers and poets never gave up their hope in the efficacy [End Page 1] of writing and literary understanding. Indeed, the enterprise of creative writing and literary criticism boomed in China at the time when the philosophical aphorism that “words do not exhaust meaning” (yan bu jin yi) was brought home to almost every poet and critic flourishing between the third and fourth centuries. For the following one and a half millennia the question of the objectivity of meaning, the crux of Western post-structuralist discourse and quarrels, has never been raised in Chinese philosophical or literary discussions. This wide contrast of outlooks on reading informed by the same disillusionment with language is rather intriguing. To account for this phenomenon this article attempts to look at the differences in the way language is perceived and practiced in China and the West. It shall also probe into the concepts of truth underlying the two cultural traditions because such an inquiry sheds some important light on the different perceptions people in the two parts of the world hold concerning language and literary practice.Metaphoricity: The Way In or Out of the Dilemma?It is interesting to say that while twentieth-century discoveries about the metaphoricity of language have made some Western critics conclude that “all reading is misreading” and that “there is no such a thing as an objective meaning,” this same awareness—that language is essentially metaphorical in nature, that it always says more than what it appears to—posed a solution for Chinese philosophers and poets to get out of the linguistic dilemma in which they found themselves. But before we enter the topic, let us first look at the dominant views of language in each cultural tradition. First, as Yip Wai-lim and others have demonstrated, the Chinese philosophical tradition began with a rejection of language as a reliable means for cognition and expression. 2 Philosophers in ancient China viewed language, or in their own terminology, words, as an instrument for expressing ideas in the mind or describing objects in the world, but they considered them inherently limited and thus unable to carry out their tasks effectively. The earliest statement of this conception is recorded in the ancient classic the Book of Changes, where it says: “Writing does not exhaust words, and words do not exhaust meaning.” 3 Attributed to Confucius and thus also representing Confucian ideas, 4 this statement was elaborated, amplified, and developed into a systematic argument by Daoist (Taoist) philosophers Lao [End Page 2] Zi and Zhuang Zi (369?-286? bc). Approaching the issue from the perspective of Dao (Tao), these founders of Daoist school viewed language as intrinsically limited in its function of representing Dao. This is because Dao, the cosmic principle or pattern, is dynamic in... (shrink)

This work, edited by Henry Rosemount, Jr, is Volume I in the series of "Critics and Their Critics". Angus C. Graham is the leading translator and interpreter of Chinese philosophical texts; he has written philosophical works of his own, he has written at length and in detail on early Chinese grammar and philology, he has translated Chinese poetry, and he has published some of his own poetry. Graham's polymathic achievement explains the polygenous nature of his collection, which (...) has some essays ranging broadly over aesthetics, ethics, religion, and epistemology; others providing concentrated discussion of specific problems in early Chinese syntax, semantics, etymology, and paleography; and yet others being admixtures, moving by turns through etymology, epistemology, and problems of the translation, interpretation, and dating of Chinese texts. (shrink)

" The essays, mostly commissioned by the editor, explore the presuppositions and consequences of arguing for the importance of the author's intentions in the ...

Several scholars have recently proposed that Confucianism should be regarded as a form of virtue ethics. This view offers new approaches to understanding not only Confucian thinkers, but also their critics within the Chinese tradition. For if Confucianism is a form of virtue ethics, we can then ask to what extent Chinese criticisms of it parallel criticisms launched against contemporary virtue ethics, and what lessons for virtue ethics in general might be gleaned from the challenges to Confucianism in (...) particular. This paper undertakes such an exercise in examining Han Feizi, an early critic of Confucianism. The essay offers a careful interpretation of the debate between Han Feizi and the Confucians and suggests that thinking through Han Feizi's criticisms and the possible Confucian responses to them has a broader philosophical payoff, namely by highlighting a problem for current defenders of virtue ethics that has not been widely noticed, but deserves attention. (shrink)

This chapter sheds new light on the interaction between Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism by exploring and comparing the thoughts of the ninth century Huayan-Chan Buddhist Zongmi 宗密 and the twentieth century Neo-Confucian Mou Zongsan 牟宗三. It reveals the structural parallel between their opposing theories: both hold a doctrine of true mind as the central component, and both are influenced by the tathāgatagarbha 如來藏 doctrine of The Awakening of Faith. The former uses them to synthesize Huayan and Chan Buddhist soteriology; (...) the latter assimilates them into his framework of Neo-Confucian moral metaphysics. Seen as a response to Zongmi’s criticism of Confucian metaphysics in general, and the shortcomings of the mandate of heaven and the lack of causal theory in particular, Mou stresses the universality of the Confucian Dao, which is supported by the Song Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi’s unified ontological principle. Rather than appealing to the mandate of heaven, Mou makes clear in following Wang Yangming that the Confucian Dao can be manifested by the sage through his infinite intellectual mind, which is immanent in every human being, so as to solve the problem of the highest good without postulating a transcendent god nor appealing to the karmic causality. Mou’s response, supplemented by other Neo-Confucian theories such as Xiong Shili’s and Tang Junyi’s, is a prominent example of how Confucian tradition meets the challenge of Chinese Buddhism while absorbing Buddhist influence. However, the author also points out that Mou’s Neo-Confucian philosophy provides a possibility of defending Chinese Buddhism in face of the critique raised by Critical Buddhism. (shrink)

Philosophers, political theorists, and all readers seriously interested in the possibility of a moral life will find sustenance and inspiration in this book.

This chapter considers the relationship between philosophy and literature both as forms of writing and thinking, but also (which is a more original contribution) as historically specific instititutions of enquiry. The argument is that part of the historical and cultural situatedness of philosophy is as a written form of cultural production, but one located within institutions (Universities above all) that already have a different 'department' specialising in understanding written forms of cultural production. This suggests that there might be an overlooked (...) reciprocal influence. In particular, what new challenges for its own thinking can philosophy discover in the contemporary practices of literary analysis? A case study is detailed concerning recent forms of ecological criticism. (shrink)

The research programme of the philosophy of information (PI) proposed in 2002 made it an independent area or discipline in philosophical research. The scientific concept of ‘information’ is formally accepted in philosophical inquiry. Hence a new and tool-driven philosophical discipline of PI with its interdisciplinary nature has been established. Philosophy of information is an ‘orientative’ rather than ‘cognitive’ philosophy. When PI is under consideration in the history of Western philosophy, it can be regarded as a shift of large tradition. There (...) are three large traditions at large, known as Platonic, Kantian and Leibniz-Russellian. In the discussion of the position of the possible worlds, we have modal Platonism and modal realism, but both of the theories are made in the framework of Western philosophy. In this essay, it is argued that possible worlds could be seen as worlds in information, which is then an interpretation of modal information theory (MIT). Our interpretation is made on the basis of Leibniz’s lifelong connection with China, a fact often overlooked by the Western philosophers. Possible world theory was influenced by the Neo-Confucianism flourishing since the Song Dynasty of China, the foundation of which is Yijing. It could be argued that Leibniz’s possible world theory was formulated in respect to the impact of the thoughts reflected in Yijing, in that one of the prominent features is the model-theoretic construction of theories. There are two approaches to theory construction, i.e., axiom-theoretic and model-theoretic. The origin of the former is from ancient Greece and the latter from ancient China. And they determined the different features of theoretic structures between the oriental and occidental traditions of science and technology. The tendency of the future development of science and technology is changing from the axiom-theoretic to the model-theoretic orientation, at least the two approaches being complementary each other. To some extent, this means the retrospective of tradition in the turning point of history, and some of the China’s cultural traditions might become the starting points in formulating the future Chinese philosophy of science and technology. (shrink)

In online communication, writers incorporate into fictional representation imaginaries that arise from the interaction between various artistic manifestations. This paper explores the work of two spanish authors, Patricia Esteban Erlés and Albert Soloviev in order to study the social impact and ethical aspects of hypermedial short stories in the virtual space, since their works function as vehicles for social criticism. At the same time, the paper addresses fundamental questions associated with the understanding and interpretation of hybrid narrative microtexts.

Art, Beauty and Imitation in Plato's Philosophy -- Art and Imitation in Aristotle -- Horace, Pseudo-Longinus and the Aesthetics of Literature in Hellenism -- Plotinus, Neo-Platonic and Christian Conception of Beauty -- The Middle Ages and Dante Alighieri -- The Heritage of Kantian Philosophy in Romanticism -- Moritz: Beyond the Concept of Imitation -- Theory of Poetry of Early German Romanticism -- Hegel: Art as a Form of the Absolute Spirit -- Schopenhauer: Art as Disinterestedness and Knowledge of Reality -- (...) Nietzsche: Knowledge and Art -- Symbolism and Aestheticism -- Benedetto Croce: Art and intuition -- Linguistics and Criticism -- Antonio Gramsci: The Role of Intellectuals in Culture -- Structuralism -- Martin Heidegger: The Work of Art and Truth -- Hans-Georg Gadamer: Poetry and Interpretation -- Critical Theory: A New Attitude towards Art and Society -- Perspectives of Post-Structuralism -- The Practice of Deconstruction -- Contemporary Schools and Traditions in Literary and Critical Theory -- Postmodern and the New Character of the Literary Work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Chinese Buddhism and the Threat of Atheism in Seventeenth-Century EuropeThierry MeynardWhen the Europeans first came to Asia, they met with the multiform presence of Buddhism. They gradually came to understand that a common religious tradition connected the different brands of Buddhism found in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, and China. I propose here to examine a presentation of Buddhism written in Guangzhou by the Italian Jesuit Prospero Intorcetta (1626-1696) (...) around the year 1668. This text was later edited by the Flemish Jesuit Philippe Couplet (1623-1693) and published in Paris in 1687, within an encyclopedia on Chinese thought titled Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (The Chinese Philosopher Confucius, hereafter called CSP).In the first part of this study, I shall introduce the background of the Jesuit encounter with Buddhism, first in Japan and then in China, as well as their literary production on the subject. Then, I shall examine Intorcetta's presentation of Chinese Buddhism, especially his understanding of the two faces of Buddhism: Pure Land Buddhism, which he categorized as superstition, and Chan Buddhism, categorized as atheism. These two notions of superstition and atheism seem contradictory, but in fact they are derived from Intorcetta's interpretation of the Buddhist theory of the "two truths." I shall conclude with an evaluation of Intorcetta's account. Because this early presentation of Buddhism exists only in Latin, I have inserted excerpts that I have translated.Historical Background of the Encounter with BuddhismSince the sixteenth century, missionaries have traveled to different regions of Asia and collected information about the religions they encountered, including Buddhism. They also exchanged information among themselves, asking questions of colleagues in order to confirm and complete information. The missionary reports were sent to Europe for their superiors and were sometimes published as such, but more often incorporated into larger works. [End Page 3]The First Encounter, from Japan to ChinaAmong the first reports reaching Europe about Buddhism were the letters of the Spanish Jesuit Francis-Xavier (1506-1552), who drew information from Yajiro, a Japa nese he met in Malacca in 1547. During his own stay of more than two years in Japan, in 1549-1551, Francis-Xavier had exchanges with monks and could progress in his understanding of Buddhism. His letters were very influential among the network of Jesuit schools in Europe, being copied and read at many venues.1 Other missionaries in Japan, like Cosme de Torres (1510-1570), Luís Fróis (1532-1597), and Baltasar Gago (1515-1583), went further in understanding Buddhism.Also, when, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Jesuit missionaries approached Buddhism in China, their understanding was already shaped by fifty years of knowledge gained in Japan. Just as in Japan, the China Jesuits were interested in Buddhism because it provided them with an indigenous vocabulary in which to express Christian ideas. Thus, the missionary was perceived as a kind of Buddhist monk. The symbolic identification with Buddhism went even further than in Japan, because for more than ten years in Guangdong, from 1579 to 1595, they adopted Buddhist dress and shaved their heads.However, as the missionaries deepened their understanding of the Buddhist doctrine, they realized that many tenets could not be reconciled with Christianity. Since they were greatly concerned about disseminating the orthodox faith and avoiding dubious theories, which they believed to be the tricks of the devil, they distanced themselves from Buddhism and became closer to Confucianism, whose discourse, which focused on moral life in the present world, did not directly conflict with the supernatural truths of Christianity. While Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607) and Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) had initially started interacting with Chinese culture by using Buddhism, later on Ricci abandoned this approach and started to use Confucianism as the main medium. In the Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), Ricci wrote for his Chinese readers a strong refutation of the Buddhist doctrine from the standpoint of Aristotelian philosophy.2 He criticized the concept of selflessness (wuwo) on metaphysical grounds, writing that everyone should draw their existence from an ultimate origin. In his Della entrata della Compagnia di Gesù e Christianità nella China (Entry of the Society of Jesus into... (shrink)

An accessible introduction to cultural theory and an original polemic about the purpose of criticism. What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, violent disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These conflicts have renewed the Culture Wars over the legacy of the 1960s, becoming entangled in national politics and leading to a new set of questions. Does a concern with race, gender, and sexuality, with unacknowledged power and privilege, with identity, (...) give present critics the right to criticize the great works of the past? If we have learned to see those works in terms of historical differences rather than universal truths, how is it that they speak to us at all? In the study of the world's cultures, there is more than one way to avoid being Eurocentric; which way should we choose? Re-examining key thinkers since 1970, including Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Hortense Spillers, Fredric Jameson, and Stuart Hall, Criticism and Politics offers both a non-specialist introduction to recent cultural theory and a strong new interpretation of how this theory applies to the everyday issue of what cultural critics do and how they should feel about what they do. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problem of Definition Problems of Interpretation Nature and Convention Transcendence Death and the Afterlife Problems of Evil Fatalism and Free Will? Divine Command Theory Piety and Divine Simplicity Works cited.

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)

The book explores ancient interpretations and usages of the famous Delphic maxim “know yourself”. The primary emphasis is on Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman sources from the first four centuries CE. The individual contributions examine both direct quotations of the maxim as well as more distant echoes. Most of the sources included in the book have never previously been studied in any detail with a view to their use and interpretation of the Delphic maxim. Thus, the book contributes significantly to the (...) origin and different interpretations of the maxim in antiquity as well as to its reception history in ancient philosophical and theological discourses. The chapters of the book are linked to each other by numerous cross-references which makes it possible to compare the different views of the maxim with each other. It also helps readers to notice relationships and trajectories within the material. The explorations of the relevant sources are also set in the context of ongoing debates about the shape and nature of ancient conceptions of self and self-knowledge. The book thus demonstrates the wide variety of philosophical and theological approaches in that the injunction to know oneself could be viewed and how these interpretations provide windows into ancient discourses about self and self-knowledge. (shrink)

My aim in this dissertation is to challenge Chad Hansen's mereological interpretation of ancient Chinese philosophy by providing my own interpretation based on theories of lei. Hansen's mereological interpretation is composed of two radical claims: One is to say that since ancient Chinese philosophy is dominated by nominalism, we do not have to introduce any abstract entities in interpreting ancient Chinese philosophy. The other is to say that Chinese nominalism is mereological. ;Against Hansen's first claim, I (...) argue that since nominalism does not always go along with the non-committment of abstract entities and ancient Chinese philosophy show the committment to abstract entities despite its nominalistic trend, we need to introduce abstract entities in our interpretation of ancient Chinese philosophy. Against Hansen's second claim, I argue that Chinese nominalism is based on theories of lei instead of mereology. Chinese lei-based nominalism is more like traditional forms of Western nominalism in that it is the scheme of individuals/similarities-among-individuals and that it emphasizes the conventional characteristics of determining similarity. Nevertheless, this dissertation prefers the Chinese term "lei" instead of the Western term "similarity" because the former better discloses Chinese contexts without unnecessary Western imposition. ;My lei-based interpretation is suggested with regard to three realms. These realms are linguistic features of Classical Chinese, theories of language in ancient China, and philosophical doctrines in ancient China. ;A close examination on linguistic features of Classical Chinese shows that these features simply disclose the conventional characteristics of Chinese characters, the pragmatics--priority conception of language, and individual/similarity semantical scheme, not the mereological scheme. In my discussion of theories of language in ancient China, I claim that besides Hansen's four Chinese assumptions about language , we also should emphasize the relativity of language, the articulatory nature of language, and the semantic role of lei as typical Chinese assumptions about language. All of these Chinese assumptions show why lei came to play a central role in Chinese theories of language. Lastly, I examine not only Hansen's favorite example which he uses to support his interpretation: Gongsun Long's white horse paradox, but also Mencian theory of human nature and Neo-Mohist theory of disputation, in order to show that lei was a theory of classification extensively discussed among ancient Chinese philosophers. (shrink)

Focusing on early Chinese ethical and political thought across multiple schools and thinkers, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the research being done in Chinese comparative ethics and political philosophy. In addition to chapters on Chinese comparative and interpretative thought, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy brings early Chinese ethics and political philosophy into conversation with Western and Indian Philosophy, as well as Western Theology. Contributors discuss numerous texts and (...) schools in Pre-Qin and Han Philosophy, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, the Xunzi, the Liyun, and the Zhuangzi. The volume also shows how early Chinese ethical and political theories can be used to contextualise contemporary philosophical issues, such as metaethics, human rights, emotions, and the connection between ethics and metaphysics. The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students encountering early Chinese ethics and political philosophy for the first time. (shrink)

Mengzi dui yu ru jia si xiang he Zhonghua wen ming de gong xian ju gong zhi wei, xue xi ru jia si xiang, chuan cheng Zhonghua wen ming, yang cheng du li ping deng de ren ge, bu neng bu du"Mengzi". "Mengzi" shi yi bu zheng zhi shu ji, jiang de shi wei jun zhi dao. Yi ci wei xian suo, ben shu zai shu li Mengzi qi ren de ji chu shang, zhuo zhong cong xing shan lun, ren (...) zheng lun he ren ge lun san ge fang mian chan shu liao Mengzi de si xiang ti xi. (shrink)

Steve Coutinho's Zhuangzi and Early Chinese Philosophy: Vagueness, Transformation and Paradox, is a comparative philosophy project masterfully carried out on two levels, the methodological and the interpretive. Coutinho provides a translation of the Zhuangzi that is both contextually rooted and philosophically rich. Whether or not one agrees with Coutinho's interpretation, there is much to be gleaned from his book. The first few chapters create a meta-philosophical structure that the rest of the book puts to use. Given the lucid movement (...) from development to application, there is something here for both the newcomer to comparative philosophy and those well versed in Warring States Chinese philosophy. To readers in .. (shrink)

Leibniz was writing his "Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese" as the Leibniz-Clarke Controversy developed. Both were terminated by his death. These two fronts show interesting doctrinal correlations. The first is Leibniz' concern for the "decadence of natural religion." The dispute with Clarke began with it, and the Discourse is a defense of Chinese natural religion in order to show its agreement with Christian natural religion. The Controversy can be summed up as "clockmaker God versus idle (...) God." Leibniz wants to escape from the perverse consequences that all criticism of divine voluntarism seems to cause. Thus, his elaboration is directed at a distinct concept of a God that rules without interposing, a supramundane intelligence. And the Leibnizian interpretation of the natural theology of the Chinese can be viewed the same way: it emphasizes a First Principle, Li, which rules without interposing. (shrink)

Perhaps the best approach to the Chinese conception of reason is to focus on the concept li, commonly translated as “principle,” “pattern,” or sometimes “reason.” While these translations in context are perhaps the best, having an explication of the uses of li is desirable and instructive for understanding some main problems of Chinese philosophy. Because there is no literary English equivalent, one cannot assume that li has a single, easily comprehensible use in Chinese discourse. This assumption is (...) especially problematic when it comes to appreciating the basic concerns of Confucian ethics. A closer examination of the uses of li and “principle” reveals a complexity that cannot be captured by a simple formula. Apart from the question whether li and “principle” are functionally equivalent, one may also ask whether li in Confucian ethics can be properly considered a context‐independent notion in the way that “principle” can. For a contemporary Confucian moral philosopher, Confucian ethics is more plausibly viewed as a form of virtue ethics. Absent an explanation of the uses of li, the translation of li as “principle” unavoidably leads to such misleading questions as: “What are the principles of Chinese or Confucian ethics?” “If such principles exist, do they serve as premises for the derivation of moral rules?” “Are Confucian principles universal or relative?” While these questions are fundamental in Western moral theory, their importance for Confucian ethics depends on a prior consideration of the status of principles in Confucian ethics. (shrink)

This chapter considers the relationship between philosophy and literature both as forms of writing and thinking, but also (which is a more original contribution) as historically specific instititutions of enquiry. The argument is that part of the historical and cultural situatedness of philosophy is as a written form of cultural production, but one located within institutions (Universities above all) that already have a different 'department' specialising in understanding written forms of cultural production. This suggests that there might be an overlooked (...) reciprocal influence. In particular, what new challenges for its own thinking can philosophy discover in the contemporary practices of literary analysis? A case study is detailed concerning recent forms of ecological criticism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reflections on Beardsley's AestheticsProblems in the Philosophy of CriticismDonald Crawford (bio)Monroe Beardsley's Aesthetics was published the year I was a junior philosophy major at the University of California, Berkeley, and by the end of that academic year, I had completed semester courses in the history of ancient as well as modern philosophy, logic, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. The requirements remaining for me in philosophy in my senior (...) year were a course in either epistemology or metaphysics, plus five elective philosophy courses. I had fairly developed interests in literature, especially poetry, classical music, film, and the visual arts, so it seemed natural for me to select a course in aesthetics as one of my remaining electives. Nonetheless, I had no idea what aesthetics was. When I looked up the word in the dictionary, I found the following definition: "The branch of philosophy dealing with beauty or the beautiful, especially in the fine arts." Even today, the Berkeley philosophy course catalog entry for aesthetics simply says, as it did then, "Aesthetics: Visual arts/literature and music. Form, expression, representation, style; interpretation and evaluation."Interpretation and evaluation sounded worth pursuing. At that time I had no doubt that almost any music by Bach was better than that by Offenbach, that Van Gogh's Starry Night was in a different class than Norman Rockwell's covers for the Saturday Evening Post, or that Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) was a far better film than Attack of the Crab Monsters of the same year. And I was fully convinced that some poems lent themselves to more interesting and profound readings—that is, interpretations—than others and therefore were better poems. So a course that dealt with the interpretation and evaluation of the visual arts, literature, and music was enticing. The class lectures were rather dull, however, and I began to have regrets for enrolling. Besides, the required text was brand new and had several drawbacks: there were no used copies available so it was expensive ($7.50!), and its 591 pages were bound in hardback and heavy. [End Page 19]Yes, the text was Beardsley's Aesthetics, and my now well-worn copy is complete with my original revealing and indelible underlines that remind me of my naiveté. I recall being immediately struck by the book's epigraph—a quotation from David Hume: "I am uneasy to think I approve of one object, and disapprove of another; call one thing beautiful, and another deform'd; decide concerning truth and falsehood, reason and folly, without knowing upon what principles I proceed." This encouraged me to think that this book and course would teach me the principles that underlay my unreasoned critical comparative evaluations of poems, films, and other works of art. Was this false optimism? After glancing at the table of contents, I quickly turned to chapter 10, "Critical Evaluation," where I read on page 454: "The problems to which we now come have been put off as long as possible in the hope that a circumspect approach would make them more vulnerable." I wasn't quite sure what that meant ("vulnerable" to what?), but it seemed to imply that it was necessary to start at the beginning of the book.1 So I did just that. To my delight, almost immediately, on page 3, Beardsley provided his definition of "aesthetics," saying: "[A]esthetics consists of those principles that are required for clarifying and confirming critical statements. It can be thought of, then, as the philosophy of criticism, or metacriticism" (3-4; emphasis in the original). Unless by "critical statement" Beardsley meant judgments of beauty, this didn't really correspond with either Webster's definition or the course description of aesthetics. Beardsley's concept of a critical statement was much broader than that in common use today, and it reflected the attitude of the founders of the American Society for Aesthetics, who named their journal the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (JAAC). Beardsley said he would be "using the term 'critical statement,' very broadly, to refer to any statement about a work of art" (3) and that a critical statement "need not be a value judgment at... (shrink)

Much of the literature exploring Chinese international student engagement with critical thinking in Western universities draws on reductive essentialisations of ‘Confucianism’ in efforts to explain cross-cultural differences. In this paper I review literature problematising these tendencies. I then shift focus from inferences about how philosophy shapes culture and individual students, toward drawing on philosophy as a ‘living’ resource for understanding and shaping the ideal of critical thinking. A cross disciplinary approach employs historical overview and philosophical interpretation within and beyond (...) the Confucian tradition to exemplify three types of criticality common in Chinese philosophy. These are criticality within tradition, criticality of tradition, and critical integration of traditions. The result is a refutation of claims or inferences (intentional or implicit) that Chinese philosophy is not conducive to criticality. While this paper focuses ontypesof criticality, it also reveals a commonmethodof criticality within Chinese philosophy, in the form of ‘creation through transmission’. This resonates with recent research calling for less confrontational and more dialogical engagement with critical processes. However, I also draw attention to examples of confrontational argumentation within Chinese philosophy, which may provide valuable resources for educators and students. Finally, I conclude careful and explicit consideration is needed regarding the types of criticality sought within Western universities to prevent educators and students from ‘speaking past’ one and other instead of ‘speaking with’ one and other in critical dialogue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mahāyāna Interpretation of Christianity:A Case Study of Zhang Chunyi (1871–1955)Lai Pan-chiu and So Yuen-taiMahāyāna Buddhism is one of the most popular religions in East Asia. It reflects the characteristics of the culture of East Asia and has had a tremendous impact on the culture(s) of the region. When Christianity was introduced into East Asia, it did not enter a religious vacuum. Because the people of East Asia have their (...) own culture, including their worldviews, values, and preunderstandings of religion, it is expected that they may interpret the Christian religion in a way significantly different from the Western interpretation of Christianity. One of these possible ways of reinterpreting Christianity is facilitated by the Mahāyāna Buddhist framework.This paper consists of an analysis of the Mahāyāna interpretation of Christianity made by Zhang Chunyi (1871–1955).1 Zhang was a rather well-known Sinologist who published several commentaries on Chinese classics, including Mozi, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. Though he had been well trained in Chinese classics, he was attracted to Christianity, with the hope that Christianity might contribute to the social reform of China. He even received baptism in an Anglican church in 1905. However, because of his in-depth study of Buddhism and his disappointment with the actual practices of the Christian churches at that time, he eventually converted to Buddhism during the 1920s. From that point, he formally promoted the slogan "Buddhicizing Christianity" (Fohua Jidujiao). His proposal for Buddhicizing Christianity includes a severe criticism of the "foreign" form of Christianity being "imported" to China mainly by the Western Protestant missionaries who, according to Zhang, preached a simplistic and even distorted "gospel" for they lacked the spiritual training (nei xue, lit., "inner learning") as well as the intellectual ability to understand sophisticated Chinese philosophy and genuine Christianity. Partially under his influence, some of his contemporary Chinese Christians were converted to Buddhism. In fact, he published at least eight books on interpreting and reforming Christian doctrines from the perspectives of Buddhism, Confucianism, and so on.2 He was probably the most prolific writer on the subject of his generation and one of the pioneers [End Page 67] in what is now called Mahāyāna theology. This brief outline of his rather unusual religious journey might have indicated the importance of the study of his Buddhist interpretation of Christianity. However, owing to mainly sociopolitical turmoil as well as the religious atmosphere at that time and in the subsequent decades, his Buddhist interpretation of Christianity has not been formally studied for decades.In recent years, more and more studies of Buddhist-Christian dialogue take place in the Chinese context.3 It is important to study previous cases of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, Mahāyāna theology, and so on. Some of these cases, including Zhang's, have been studied.4 This paper aims to examine Zhang's thought critically and to show that although Zhang advocated a Mahāyāna interpretation of Christianity before and after his conversion to Buddhism, his interpretations before and after his conversion to Buddhism are significantly different. It is proposed that whereas his interpretation before his conversion aimed at the indigenization of Christianity and thus, the evangelization of the Chinese, his interpretation after conversion was made with a view to converting the Christians to Buddhism, even though both aimed at the reformulation, or even reform, of Christianity.Zhang's Proposal of "Buddhicizing christianity"Zhang was a scholar of classical Chinese literature, active during the Republican era. He was knowledgeable in Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and Moism. His study of Moism remains highly regarded.5 Zhang became a Christian and worked for the Christian Literature Society for China (Guan xue hui) in Shanghai for some years. He published several books with a view to indigenizing Christian theology by interpreting it through Chinese philosophical and religious concepts. Zhang's attempt aimed at reinterpreting Christian doctrines within the Buddhist framework in order to make Christianity more acceptable to the Chinese. However, in the 1920s, he himself converted to Buddhism and began to promote his proposal of "Buddhicizing Christianity" (Fohua Jidujiao),6 aiming to convert Christians to Buddhism.Because Zhang had... (shrink)

The Han dynasty Huainanzi is a compendium of knowledge. This edited volume follows a multi-disciplinary approach to explore how and why the Huainanzi was produced and how we should interpret the work.

In the 20th century, the adaptation of William Shakespeare's classic dramas onto the Chinese stage have attracted great interest. The study of such cross-cultural adaptations has positive significance not only for development of literary theory, literary criticism and literary history, but also in that it promotes unusual forms of innovation with regards to the study of performance in general. Chinese adaptations to performance and opera have allowed Chinese people to understand the essence of Shakespeare's plays, presented (...) in a more forms, and as a consequence, such adaptations function as a bridge for Sino-foreign cross-cultural exchanges and interpretations. These paper traces a panorama of Shakespeare's adaptations onto the Chinese stage in the year that celebrates the 500 anniversary of his death. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion by Selusi AmbrogioCatherine König-Pralong (bio)Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion. By Selusi Ambrogio. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. How Modern Historians of Philosophy Drew Their World MapsIn his latest book, Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European (...) Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion, Selusi Ambrogio presents an extensive survey of how Indian and Chinese traditions were conceived of and staged in modern European historiography. This study, which surpasses in detail and scope other works devoted to the same topic,1 reconstructs 150 years of philosophical historiography. Otto van Heurn's Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo (published in 1600) included for the first time contemporary and ancient Indian thinkers in the philosophical doxography; at the other end of the time span considered, Jacob Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae (1744) sanctioned the exclusion of Chinese and Indian thinkers by means of a detailed criticism of their pseudo-philosophies. Moreover, Ambrogio makes the choice to focus on the history of philosophy, unlike Étiemble, for example,2 who was interested in philosophy in a broad sense—academic and non-academic—as well as in travel accounts, the writings of the Jesuits, and those of their opponents, among other sources. According to Ambrogio, the histories of philosophy were more representative of "the common European understanding of these civilizations," since they "were not openly written for controversialist aims" (p. 2). Even though one may wonder whether defining philosophy ("what philosophy is and its role"—ibid.) and legitimizing its scholarly practice is a less political or less polemical undertaking than pamphlets, letters, and philosophical essays,3 it is probably true that philosophical historiography produced an effect of objectification or an appearance of neutrality.The author's main thesis is that the exclusion of all non-Greeks or non-Europeans from the history of philosophy does not date from the nineteenth century and Hegel, as is generally thought, but precisely from the moment when Indian and Chinese "civilizations" were considered by historians of philosophy and included in the philosophical historiography: from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards (p. 3). Applying a segregationist model, modern historians of philosophy developed a dialectic of [End Page 203] identification—the author speaks of "reception"—and exclusion. They defined the European philosophical mind by demarcating it from other ways of thinking, which they situated in place and time on a civilizational world map. Encompassing the world from Europe produced in return processes of definition and situation. Philosophy was established in a territory and identified with a "culture" or "mind" that began to think itself in relation to the rest of the world under the name of Europe.4I will discuss Ambrogio's remarkable work in three moments. First, I will develop some particularly interesting conclusions drawn from the study; namely, they address periodization, the production of cultural categories, and the valorization of theory. I will then discuss the main thesis as well as some problematic issues, before concluding on the subject of a world absent from Ambrogio's book, the Near and Middle East.I. Logic of Time and Cultural TerritorializationAmbrogio's book is composed of three parts that address three successive historiographical models. First, the "perennialist universalism" (p. 57)—represented by, among others, Otto van Heurn, Thomas Burnet, Isaac Vossius, François Bernier, Georg Horn, and François de la Mothe le Vayer—included ancient India and then China in the "prisca theologia"; on the other hand, it described contemporary Indian and Chinese thinkers as "barbarian" philosophers. In this constellation, Buddhism began to function as the negative part of Oriental thought. According to the Jesuits, it had polluted and corrupted the original Chinese wisdom, often identified with Confucianism.The second model constructed an "Atheistic Asia," which was used either as a positive anthropological image (for example in Pierre Bayle), or as a negative foil for Lutheran philosophy and theology (for example in Johann Franz Buddeus). In the pages he dedicates to these endeavors, Ambrogio often moves away from philosophical doxography, represented by André-Fran... (shrink)