The Freedom of Thought: Patočka on Descartes and Husserl

Pato?ka highlights the central role of Cartesianism in our tradition of thinking. Yet, today, brain scientists often claim to have overcome Cartesian dualism. In this paper, I argue that the Cartesian conceptions of human nature and sensory perception remain presuppositions of brain science, where perception is largely equated with thinking. Equating perception and thinking means that thinking is a determined process, which leads to an erosion of critique. Critique, and the freedom of thought it entails, is essential to Descartes, Husserl and Pato?ka. I examine the differences, as well as the relationship, between Descartes method of doubt, Husserl’s phenomenological epochē and Pato?ka’s universalization of the epochē. I also show how Descartes’, Husserl’s and Pato?ka’s way into critique present different ways to understand self, things and the world. In conclusion, I suggest that Pato?ka presents a promising way to critique mechanistic understandings of thinking by rethinking both subject and object.     

On the problem of the meaning of life in ��Chinese Philosophy��

The goal of “(modern) Chinese Philosophy” established during the period of the May 4th Movement is to reestablish the meaning of life for Chinese people. However, because it takes the approach of interpreting Chinese thinking through a Western lens, thus forming a discourse pattern of “Chinese A is Western B,” which is only capable of manifesting Western culture, “Chinese Philosophy” is made logically impossible as the ideological source from which modern Chinese thinkers could construct the meaning of life. The ideological source of the still lasting traditional lifestyle is Yili Xue 义理学 (The Learning of Righteousness and Principles); whereas that of modern life, which was established as an imitation of the West, is Western culture. Neither of them takes “Chinese Philosophy” as its ideological source. Therefore, “Chinese Philosophy” is excluded from the construction of the meaning of life, and falls into the dilemma of life meaning.     

The Concept of Experience by John Dewey Revisited: Conceiving, Feeling and ��Enliving��

The concept of experience by John Dewey revisited: conceiving, feeling and ??enliving??. Dewey takes a few steps towards a differentiation of the concept of experience, such as the distinction between primary and secondary experience, or between ordinary (partial, raw, primitive) experience and complete, aesthetic experience. However, he does not provide a systematic elaboration of these distinctions. In the present text, a differentiation of Dewey??s concept of experience is proposed in terms of feeling, ??enliving?? (a neologism proposed in this paper) and conceiving. Feeling refers to the basic mode of experience where action, emotion, cognition and communication constitute an original unity. Enliving, aesthetic experience, constitutes the lifeworld, as a person-in-world experience. Even though enliving is holistic and relational, a certain distance emerges between action, emotion and cognition which allows contemplation and choice. Conceiving, on the other hand, refers to the isolating and abstracting understanding of the world with even greater distance between action, emotion and cognition. Such a differentiation provides a clearer understanding of the scope of education. It avoids the risks of regressive tendencies in the concept of experience, and it helps to include conceiving within the realm of experience.     

The Action of God in the World—A Synthesis of Process Thought in Science and Theology

A foundational belief of monotheistic religions is that God acts in the world. In this paper, the case is made that divine action has its origins in the molecular world. Within a metaphysical framework of process thought, a hypothesis is constructed in which God's action in the world, God's ‘initial aim’ for all actualities, is divine motivation of chemical becoming.     

Clearing Up Obstructions: An Image Schema Approach to the Concept of ‘Datong’ 大通 in Chapter 6 of the Zhuangzi

In much of modern scholarship, the notion of datong 大通 in Zhuangzi’s famous zuowang 坐忘 (sitting in disregard) passage is often interpreted as either Dao or a mental/spiritual state of an ideal person, a person who has obtained Dao. In either case, however, the association between datong and such interpretation lacks detailed justification resulting from an insufficiently understood relation between datong and its immediately preceding statements. Different from the more common readings, I propose a cognitive approach based on an image schema related to non-obstruction. In order to demonstrate the philosophical importance of this schema, I will first briefly point out the problems of previous scholarship regarding the zuowang passage. Second, I will introduce the image schema related to non-obstruction based on a number of examples taken from the Zhuangzi. Finally, I will apply this methodology and introduce a cognitive experience-based interpretation of the zuowang passage.     

The Significance of Shendu in the Interpretation of Classical Learning and Zhu Xi’s Misreading

According to recently excavated bamboo and silk material, the idea of du 獨 in the concept shendu 慎獨 does not refer to a spatial notion of dwelling in solitude or a solitary dwelling; rather it is the state before having made contact with external things, or the state “before feelings are aroused” (weifa 未發) of the inner heart/mind. It refers to internal thoughts and volitions, or “casting aside external sensations” (sheti 舍體). Shen 慎 should be glossed in accordance with the Erya 爾雅 (Approaching Elegance), rendering it as “sincerity” (cheng 誠). Shendu then means to “cause one’s will to be sincere” (chengqiyi 誠其意). Zheng Xuan 鄭玄, in explaining shendu as being “cautious of the actions one performs in private” (shen qi xianju suowei 慎其閒居所為), completely strayed from the original meaning as found in the bamboo-silk texts. Zhu Xi 朱熹, seeing the insufficiencies of Zheng Xuan’s interpretation of shendu, broadened the meaning of du, and in particular added a spiritual meaning to it. However, due to influence by Zheng Xuan, Zhu Xi still preserved some misreadings of the term; especially in his interpretation of shendu in the Daxue 大學 (Great Learning) and Zhongyong 中庸 (Doctrine of the Mean). Considering that the Neo-Confucian methods of cultivation embodied in the ideas of “abiding in reverence and enriching the self” (jujing hanyang 居敬涵養), and “being refined and focused” (weijing weiyi 惟精惟一) actually accorded more with the original meaning of shendu, Zhu Xi’s misreading of shendu is indirectly related to the loss of its original meaning due to the broken transmission of the ancient texts.     

Moral Emotions,Awareness, and Spiritual Freedom in the Thought of Zhu Xi (1130–1200)

It is well known that the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi (1130–1200) particularly emphasizes the role of emotions in human life. This paper shows that the four ‘moral emotions’ (e.g. feelings like ‘compassion’ and ‘disdain’ as described in the Mencius) are central to Zhu's thinking, insofar as only their genuine actualization enables the individual to achieve spiritual freedom. Moreover, I discuss the crucial notions of ‘awareness’/‘perception’ (zhījué) and ‘knowledge’/‘wisdom’ (zhī), in order to reveal the complex dynamic that moral emotions are said to create in the moral agent. I also analyse two important passages from the Mencius (1A/7 and 2A/6) and examine how Zhu Xi, in his exegetical glosses, defines the conditions of virtuous agency as based on the moral emotions. Finally, I explain the reasons why Neo-Confucians like Zhu Xi have sometimes been described as Kantian thinkers avant la lettre.     

The Thought Experiment of Maxwell’s Demon and the Origin of Irreversibility

The problem of the irreversibility’s origin in thermodynamic processes occupies a distinguished place among many and lasting attempts by researchers to derive irreversibility from molecular-mechanical principles. However, this problem is still open and no universally accepted solution may be given during any course. In this paper, I shall try to show that the examining of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment may provide insight into the difficulties that emerge, looking for this origin because: (i) it is connected with the notion of irreversibility, and (ii) one of its functions is that of the “reversibility objection.” In order to illustrate this point, I study Boltzmann’s approach to the problem of a molecular-mechanical interpretation of irreversibility and I show that an auxiliary assumption (the selected direction of time) is responsible for producing irreversibility. But this result is accordant with the predictions of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment: the assumptions of this kind are not dictated by molecular-mechanical principles but are separate input in the model-systems used.

The Concept of the Subject in the Philosophical Hermeneutics of Hans‐Georg Gadamer

Abstract

Certain critics, e.g. Manfred Frank and Hans‐Herbert Kögler, claim that Hans‐Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics reduces the individual subject to a mere instrument of history and tradition, the latter reproducing themselves through the subject. However, Gadamer also emphasizes the active role of the subject in shaping and creating history and tradition. In this article I argue that the critics mistakenly emphasize a one‐sided conception of history. By incorporating both active and passive aspects of the subject, Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics provides the means by which the individual may be conceived more aptly in an interdependent, dialectical relation to their corresponding historical, cultural, and social context.     

‘Exploding the Limits of Law’: Judgment and Freedom in Arendt and Adorno

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt struggled to defend the possibility of judgment against the obvious problems encountered in attempts to offer legally valid and morally meaningful judgments of those who had committed crimes in morally bankrupt communities. Following Norrie, this article argues that Arendt’s conclusions in Eichmann are equivocal and incoherent. Exploring her perspectival theory of judgment, the article suggests that Arendt remains trapped within certain Kantian assumptions in her philosophy of history, and as such sees the question of freedom in a binary way. The article argues that Adorno’s philosophy of freedom provides the resources to diagnose and overcome Arendt’s shortcomings. Adorno’s position provides a way of embracing the antinomical character of judgment, by emphasising the need for elements of reason and nature in the phenomenon of freedom. In Adorno’s lights, judgment becomes an attempt to express a ‘spirit of solidarity’ with the tragic status of the potentially free but actually unfree subject of modernity.

Reading Xunzi through Nāmā: Two Ancient Inquiries into the Nature of Names

This essay is a comparison between two ancient theories of language—the 5th century BCE Indian etymologist Yāska and the 4th century BCE Chinese philosopher Xunzi 荀子. Specifically, it is a reading of the theory of “the rectification of names” in Xunzi through the lens of Yāska. Xunzi is known for his view that humanity’s innate tendencies need to be shaped through education and ritual. Similarly, ancient Indian authors like Yāska understand that a person is created, or made, through the performance of Vedic sacrifice. Both thinkers’ constructivist theories of language and meaning proceed from these ritual assumptions. However, Yāska would query Xunzi’s inherent distrust of multiple meanings of words and their negative effects on a functional state. Guided instead by a theory of the transcendence of Vedic language, Yāska would argue that the more one can proliferate possible meanings the more powerful a word becomes.     

Freedom of Expression,Laïcité and Islam in France: The Tension between Two Different (Universal) Perspectives

ABSTRACT

In France, freedom of expression is perceived as a sort of liberté matricielle, a matrix of other fundamental freedoms. As such, it is reflected in many constitutional provisions, including those referring to religion. In addition, the practical exercise of freedom of expression remains strictly linked with the principle of laïcité, which is part of the institutional, legal and intellectual history of the French Republic and has even become the basis of its founding “values.” All this, however, also implies an accentuation of individual freedom of expression, which normally takes precedence over the protection of religions, sometimes justifying caricature of divinities, rules, rites and symbols. The legal cases related to the right to satirical expression are examples of this. The article underlines the role of freedom of expression in the light of the principle of laïcité, which normally rejects the communitarian dimension of religious rights, which may explain some important aspects of, on the one hand, the evolution of legislation regarding both hate speech and blasphemy within French liberal constitutionalism and, on the other, the relationship between freedom of expression and the secular state. This approach offers a possibility of better evaluating existing French law in relation to some religious nomoi groups, specifically, Islamic organizations. These issues are particularly analysed from two perspectives: the right to criticize or challenge religions and the right to satirize. This analysis makes it possible to identify the legal limits of freedom of expression before and after the 2015 Charlie Hebdo tragedy and highlights the difficulties faced by the so-called laïcité à la française in dealing with today's multicultural societies. The need emerges for a proper balance to be struck between religious diversity and protection of human rights – not only the rights of groups to be different, but also the rights of persons within these groups, which also involves the efforts of religious denominations to articulate their claims in order to make them more compatible with constitutional rights, including those referring to freedom of expression.     

The Retentional and the Repressed: Does Freud's Concept of the Unconscious Threaten Husserlian Phenomenology?

This paper investigates the claims made by both Freudian psychoanalysic thought and Husserlian phenomenology about the unconscious. First, it is shown how Husserl incorporates a complex notion of the unconscious in his analysis of passive synthesis. With his notion of an unintentional reservoir of past retentions, Husserl articulates an unconscious zone that must be activated from consciousness in order to “come to life.” Second, it is explained how Husserl still does not account for the Freudian unconscious. Freud's unconscious could be called, in phenomenological terms, a repressed retentional zone that differs from both near and far retention. Finally, an analysis is offered for the significance of this psychoanalytic argument for phenomenology. Does phenomenology provide a complete account of the psychical life of the subject without the Freudian unconscious? Does phenomenology suggest, as is often done, that Freud's “discovery” of the unconscious is a fantastical invention? Or, does the Freudian unconscious represent a true stumbling block for phenomenology?     

Lost in Space? Education and the Concept of Nature

Although the idea of nature has allbut disappeared from recent discussion ofeducation, it remains highly relevant to thephilosophy and practice of education, sincetacit notions of human nature and whatconstitutes underlying reality – the `natural'order of things – necessarily orientateseducation in fundamental ways. It is arguedthat underlying our various senses of nature isthe idea of nature as the `self-arising' whoseintrinsic integrity, mystery and valueimplicitly condition our understanding ofourselves and of the reality in which we live.I argue that the acknowledgement of nature soconceived opens up a perspective on educationthat requires us to review currently dominanttechnological notions of truth and knowledge,and also of what should characterize theprocess of education, reasserting the properplace of more intuitive, local and dialogicalknowledge and relationships.