The Chinese ethical tradition has often been thought to oppose Western views of the self as autonomous and possessed of individual rights with views that emphasize the centrality of relationship and community to the self. The essays in this collection discuss the validity of that contrast as it concerns Confucianism, the single most influential Chinese school of thought. Alasdair MacIntyre, the single most influential philosopher to articulate the need for dialogue across traditions, contributes a concluding essay of commentary. This is (...) the only consistently philosophical collection on Asia and human rights and could be used in courses on comparative ethics, political philosophy and Asian area studies. (shrink)

Throughout much of Chinese history, Mencius (372-289 BC) was considered the greatest Confucian thinker after Confucius himself. Following the enshrinement of the Mencius (an edited compilation of his thought by disciples) as one of the Four Books by Sung neo-Confucianists, he was studied by all educated Chinese. This book begins a reassessment of Mencius by studying his ethical thinking in relation to that of other early Chinese thinkers, including Confucius, Mo Tzu, the Yangists, and Hsün Tzu. The author closely examines (...) his ethical concepts and terms, showing how they were used in the Mencius and other texts. (shrink)

This chapter presents two cross-linguistic studies of knowledge-how attributions that compare English and Japanese speakers. The first study investigates the felicity judgements of ordinary people about knowledge-how sentences, where we find a large difference in judgements about the sentences in which a person lacks an ability to perform a certain action but is nevertheless attributed the relevant knowledge of how to perform that action. The second study investigates the frequency of the natural occurrences of knowing-how constructions in English and Japanese (...) through Google search and corpora, where we find virtually no natural occurrence of Japanese knowing-how constructions. These results suggest that the attribution of knowledge-how in Japanese is radically different from the English counterpart in that it neither requires nor is required by the relevant physical ability. We then explore the philosophical implications of these radical differences in the use of knowing-how constructions between English and Japanese speakers for the debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. One such implication is that English “know how” sentences themselves may not delineate a philosophically significant category of knowledge. (shrink)

This paper analyses the concept of the Imagination of Henry Corbin (1903–1978) in relation to Daisetsu T. Suzuki (1870–1966). Besides being a renowned orientalist and scholar of Islamic thought, Corbin was a philosopher par excellence whose original thought deserves to be studied. So, I present this paper as a contribution to the evaluation of Corbin as a philosopher. In doing so, I shall shed light upon the philosophical affinity between Corbin and Suzuki, which has thus far rarely been discussed in (...) depth. Their ideas, in fact, resonate with each other—or Corbin is sympathetic to Suzuki—at a deep level, especially on the argument of Imagination, through Suwedenborgian thought, into whom both channel their interests. An exploration of this relationship of influence with Suzuki shall make a great contribution to a better understanding of Corbin’s own concept of Imagination, which could shake up our taken-for-granted idea of “imagination.”. (shrink)

With the emergence of environmental sustainability and green business management, increasing demands have been made on businesses in the areas of environmental corporate social responsibility. Furthermore, the influence of ECSR on green capital investment, environmental performance, and business competitiveness has also been the subject of attention from enterprises. However, in previous studies, the mediating role of green information technology capital in the relationship between ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness, has not been investigated by researchers. In order to bridge this (...) gap in the ECSR literature, this study aims to examine the influence of ECSR on green IT capital, and the consequent effect of green IT capital on environmental performance and business competitiveness. Data were collected from 358 companies from the top 1000 manufacturers in Taiwan. The results confirmed that ECSR has significant positive effects on green IT human capital, green IT structural capital, and green IT relational capital. Green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have positive effects on environmental performance and business competitiveness, and environmental performance has a positive effect on business competitiveness. In addition, green IT structural capital and green IT relational capital have partial mediating effects on ECSR, environmental performance, and business competitiveness. The implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

The paper presents a perspective on our relation to our environment that is inspired by Confucian thought and that stands in contrast to certain common strands in contemporary philosophical discussions. It conceptualizes our relation to what we encounter on a day-to-day basis primarily in terms of the way we experience and respond to situations, rather than to the objects affected in the situations. From this perspective, the contemporary philosophical distinction between a first- and a third-person point of view is often (...) not suited for describing our responses to situations. Instead, our responses to situations can vary along different dimensions, including the way we direct our attention, our thoughts and sentiments, our motivations, etc., and these variations admit of degrees. Such variations depend on various factors, such as the different ways in which one relates to the object affected in a situation and the kind of person one is. and cannot be adequately described in terms of a shift from one point of view to another. The paper discusses two examples, anger and compassion, to illustrate this alternative perspective, but the discussion can be extended to other areas such as gratitude. (shrink)

In recent decades there has been increasing demand for and considerable efforts to conduct cross-disciplinary research. However, assessment of research quality in such endeavours still is often based on mono-disciplinary criteria and not seldom carried out by reviewers without strong cross-disciplinary experience. The authors suggest a two-pronged approach to cross-disciplinary research evaluation. One part should comprise an individual review of all the disciplines involved based on their mono-disciplinary sets of criteria. The other part should be a separate evaluation of the (...) cross-disciplinary aspects based on the review of “problem formulation”, “integration and scope of the disciplines”, “parts and the whole”, “practical managerial aspects” and “the applied aspects”. The pros and cons of implementing this approach in a stepwise manner or simultaneously is discussed. It is suggested that funding agencies develop more fair sets of review procedures for cross-disciplinary research and show willingness to allocate extra funds and time to such forms of research that sometimes are regarded as relatively more “risky” than conventional mono-disciplinary types. (shrink)

Through an examination of the problematic forms of pride highlighted in early texts and the traits to which they are opposed, the paper identifies three main dimensions of humility in early Confucian thought. These include a deflated self-conception, caution and fearfulness, as well as seriousness and awe. It then shows that the term jing 敬 is closely related to all three dimensions, and hence that this is the term in early Confucian thought closest to encompassing all the different aspects of (...) humility understood in a broad sense. (shrink)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, more than 4 million Italians migrated to the United States of America (U.S.), which they regarded as a utopia. The film _The Legend of 1900_, which was inspired by Alessandro Baricco’s monologue _Nocecento_ and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, tells the story about the genius pianist 1900, an orphan, who is fostered by Danny, a black coalman in the boiler room of an ocean liner, and whose parents are presumably Italian immigrants. Due to (...) immigration law, 1900, a man with neither identity, visa, nor legal papers, cannot legally set foot on American soil. As a genius pianist, his existence is nothing more than that of musician—an entertainer to passengers on the gigantic trans-Atlantic liner Virginian, the only place he is permitted to live. According to Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, a ship is “a piece of floating space, a placeless place”—a vessel transporting people to the land of their dreams. However, 1900, who has no legal status, will never arrive in utopia aboard Virginian. He can only construct a heterotopia—a mirror of utopia—so that it to him is a utopia. In the eyes of the law, 1900 is a legally non-existent person on Virginian, a placeless place. However, it is this lawless heterotopia and isolation that create a genius. In this paper, I illustrate how Virginian, as a place outside the law of land, metaphorically gives birth to a pianist, 1900, and why 1900 at the end chooses not to leave the ship, while also discussing the meaning behind the film and the relationship between law and space. (shrink)

The use of the term hsing in the Meng-tzu is discussed, along with Mencius' views on jen-hsing. It is argued that while the use of hsing need not connote something unlearned and shared, Mencius did view jen-hsing in terms of certain unlearned emotional predispositions shared by all jen. He regarded jen as a species distinguished from other animals by its capability of cultural accomplishment, and felt that it is the presence of the emotional predispositions that makes this possible.

The article discusses Dai Zhen's views on pattern. For Dai, pattern has to do with ensuring that the means by which one attains one's emotional propensities and satisfies one's desires will not prevent others from doing the same. The heart/mind has the capacity to know pattern on such basis and such knowledge will guide action. Ethical failure is due to a deficiency in knowledge, and self-cultivation involves developing one's capacity to know so that one can grasp the pattern in any (...) affair one encounters. (shrink)

The child objection is a major challenge for reductionism, which requires hearers to have positive reasons for testimonial justification. However, it has been pointed out that anti-reductionism, which requires only the absence of negative reasons, or defeaters, suffers from the same kind of problem. The child objection presupposes the empirical thesis that “children do not have the capacity to consider reasons,” but the plausibility of this assumption may be revealed by developmental psychology research on selective trust. This paper uses recent (...) epistemological studies as a guide to narrow down the types of defeaters that children are required to consider, and then clarifies what kind of reasons various experiments can be said to test the ability to consider, and in what sense children who pass the test can be said to be “considering” reasons. In doing so, we clarify the scope and limits of the implications that selective trust studies can have for reductionism and anti-reductionism. We then suggest what future psychological research is desired from an epistemological interest to go beyond the current limitations. (shrink)