Confucian love and global ethics: how the cheng brothers would help respond to christian criticisms

There is an increasing awareness that we are living in a global village, which demands a global ethics. In this article, I shall explore what contributions Confucianism, particularly its conception of love, can make. It has often been claimed that Confucian love is love with distinction, as a natural feeling, and as merely human love and so it is inferior to the Christian love, which is universal, commanded, and based on divine love. Drawing on the resources of the Cheng brothers’ neo-Confucianism, I shall explore how Confucianism can make creative responses to such criticisms and thus make a unique Confucian contribution to the emerging global ethics.     

Hating the One You Love

Many testimonies, as well as fictional works, describe situations in which people find themselves hating the person that they love. This might initially appear to be contradiction, as how can one love and hate the same person at the same time? A discussion of this problem requires making a distinction between logical consistency and psychologically compatibility. Hating the one you love may be a consistent experience, but it raises difficulties concerning its psychological compatibility.     

Coming to Our Senses: Feeling and Knowledge in Theology and Ministry

This essays returns to a question I explored years ago as a pregnant and nursing mother: What is the nature of tactile knowledge and how might the construction of theology take such knowledge into greater consideration? Feeling as a source and site for knowledge has been derided for centuries despite efforts of modern psychologists to rehabilitate its role and of feminist theorists to challenge its sexist stereotypes. This essay explores the relationship between feeling, bodies, and knowledge in theology, reviewing negative perceptions and viable avenues for positive reconstruction. It argues that the repression of feeling has troubling consequences for theological education and that theological studies has much to gain from the “affective revolution” in the sciences.     

Fiction,Pleasurable Tragedy,and the HOT Theory of Consciousness

Abstract

The ‘feeling fiction problem’ asks: is it rational to be moved by what happens to fictional characters? The so-called ‘paradox of tragedy’ is embodied in the question: Why or how is it that we take pleasure in artworks which are clearly designed to cause in us such feelings as sadness and fear? My focus in this paper is to examine these problems from the point of view of the so-called ‘higher-order thought theory of consciousness’ (HOT theory) which says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought that one is in that state. I examine the feeling fiction problem in light of the HOT theory and through a critique of Colin Radford's view. For example, I argue that Radford equivocates in his use of the term ‘aware’ in his response to some of the proposed solutions to the feeling fiction problem. Finally, I show how Susan Feagin's approach to the paradox of tragedy can be analysed and supported by the HOT theory.     

Role Ethics or Ethics of Role-Play? A Comparative Critical Analysis of the Ethics of Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gītā

Both Confucianism and the Bhagavad Gītā emphasize the moral authority of social roles. But how deep does the likeness between these ethical philosophies run? In this essay I focus upon two significant points of comparison between the role-based ethics of Confucianism and the Gītā: (1) the interrelation between formalized social roles and family feeling, and (2) the religious dimension of moral action. How is it that Confucians ground their social roles in family feeling, while the Gītā emphasizes rupture between role and sentiment? Furthermore, are we to understand Confucianism as presenting a social philosophy that eschews religious concerns, whereas the Gītā denies the moral significance of family feeling in lieu of obtaining soteriological freedom? Examining the aesthetic and religious dimensions of the ethics of Confucianism and the Gītā clarifies a key distinction that both views implicitly make, albeit for divergent reasons: the difference between living one’s roles and playing one’s roles.     

The value of a liberal education: An essay on the power of knowing

Conclusion It is not easy to summarize what has been suggested in this essay. But in greatly simplified terms, something like this may serve.The understanding which comes through education increases the power of man over himself and his world; it increases his awareness, his capacity to influence, to accept and to enjoy. Everybody knows these things, but an explanation of how this power arises has been attempted. To do this, understanding, was said to be a process, a dynamic act, and four perspectives on this act, each showing one of the ways in which power is created have been presented.First, it was suggested that thought is the process of discriminating the field of feeling. This implies a much closer connection between thought and feeling than is ordinarily held. The particular power here is expressed in terms of the idea that the form of thought both expresses and limits at the same time. Due to this you get clear elements not only expressed in their own right, but deriving part of their clarity and individuality because of their explicit exclusion from other elements of the same field. Second, the power of knowing was explained as due to the tension between levels of significance It was suggested that concepts are fields of meaning composed of mutually constituting levels or particularity and generality.Third, it was suggested that the power of knowing comes through the extension of the range of significant feeling through the use of imagination.Finally, the double aspect of consciousness, which allows man both to do something consciously and to guide such doing self-consciously, was indicated as of major importance to the power and practice of a liberal education because it constitutes the power which frees man from himself.No one can liberate another person by organizing his experience for him. That he must do for himself; it is his life. But educators are in the business of disciplining the student in the truly human fashion which includes the organization of our experience in terms of dynamically interacting levels of generality and significance, the objectifying and clarifying of the field of feeling through thought, the broadening and deepening of that range of feeling through the imaginative projection of possibilities for feeling, as well as the steady consciousness of self that frees man from himself.These four aspects constitute the power which man's nature gives to him alone. It is because of this power that man has been called a rational animal. And along side of this power any others which he may be said to possess are as nothing. Indeed, it is open to question whether there are any other separate powers. Someone may want to mention the power of human love, but a moment of reflection should show that all we consider of most value in human love is an expression of the powers of which we have spoken. A liberal education is of value precisely because it is aimed at the development of those qualities of truly human activity which characterize man at his best. We may have to accept something less than this due to human frailty, but we need not be content to aim at anything less.     

KNOWLEDGE HAPPENS: WHY ZAGZEBSKI HAS NOT SOLVED THE MENO PROBLEM

I argue that Linda Zagzebski's proposed solution to the Meno Problem faces serious challenges. The Meno Problem, roughly, is how to explain the value that knowledge, as such, has over mere true belief. Her proposed solution is that believings—when thought of more like actions—can have value in virtue of their motivations. This meshes nicely with her theory that knowledge is, essentially, virtuously motivated true belief. Her solution fails because it entails that, necessarily, all knowledge is motivated in a way that resembles the motivation of actions. Crucially, Zagzebski says the value derived from motivation comes from certain laudable feelings—like love of truth (she is explicit that love is a feeling). But there are possible cases of knowledge—probably some of which are actual—in which subjects do not or cannot experience these feelings.     

A green Augustine: On learning to love nature well

Augustine of Hippo has expressed a vision of beauty in nature that could, if better known, encourage traditional Christians and secular ecologists to affirm the ground they have in common. For Augustine the ideal would be to see nature as God sees it, feeling deeply both its beauty and its impermanence, loving nature without clinging to it. With such clear seeing would come love and the motivation for sustained and skillful action. This paper discusses Augustine's paradigm and what blocks us from seeing it, and then frames principles for an authentically Augustinian response.     

THINKING ABOUT FEELINGS: WORKING WITH THE STAFF OF AN EATING DISORDERS UNIT

I would like to share with colleagues some thoughts about the fascinating and disturbing states of mind and body that I found when working in an Eating Disorders Unit, and try both to describe and to think further about how these impact on the work of the staff and upon my task.

Some recurrent themes are: splitting and projection, showing up in many areas as either/or states of mind, which can affect the whole team at times; the refusal to let anything in, which seems linked to disastrous unconscious muddles between food and love, love and hate, etc; a great unconscious terror that, given the slightest acknowledgment, need will emerge as greed; horror of fatness, and body dysmorphic confusions; enactment in place of feeling/thinking; antagonism to change and growth.

Despite common themes and ways of behaving that can make these patients seem superficially very alike, it is their differences that are so striking; it seems clear that there is unlikely to be a single identifiable precursor. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the search for meanings is not always the same as seeking after causes, and that neither is the same as blame, often a difficult balance to hold where splitting is so prevalent a defence.     

Brain correlates of subjective freedom of choice

The subjective feeling of free choice is an important feature of human experience. Experimental tasks have typically studied free choice by contrasting free and instructed selection of response alternatives. These tasks have been criticised, and it remains unclear how they relate to the subjective feeling of freely choosing. We replicated previous findings of the fMRI correlates of free choice, defined objectively. We introduced a novel task in which participants could experience and report a graded sense of free choice. BOLD responses for conditions subjectively experienced as free identified a postcentral area distinct from the areas typically considered to be involved in free action. Thus, the brain correlates of subjective feeling of free action were not directly related to any established brain correlates of objectively-defined free action. Our results call into question traditional assumptions about the relation between subjective experience of choosing and activity in the brain’s so-called voluntary motor areas.     

Jen,love and universality—Three arguments concerning jen in Confucianism

Universality, rather than partiality, is the characteristic of Confucian jen. This article puts forward three arguments to clarify confusion of interpretation: (1) that jen, rather than shu, is the main thread running through the whole system of Confucianism, and that by its two procedures of chung and shu, it presents itself as an integration of one's self with others; (2) that jen, as love, does not signify a natural preference, but an ethical refinement of an ordinary feeling of fondness, that it derives from such a feeling but goes beyond it, and that it functions as a universal commitment which begins with family affection but is not limited to it; (3) that jen, as universal love, is deontological in motive, not only in contrast to a mutuality of love but also in opposition to a utilitarianism of love.     

The Force of Habit

Habits figure in action-explanations because of their distinctive force. But what is the force of habit, and how does it motivate us? In this paper, I argue that the force of habit is the feeling of familiarity one has with the familiar course of action, where this feeling reveals a distinctive reason for acting in the usual way. I do this by considering and rejecting a popular account of habit's force in terms of habit's apparent automaticity, by arguing that one can do something out of habit and from deliberation, before going on to defend The Familiarity View.     

Response

The theme of love has long been neglected in studies on African myths. The often-heard explanation is that African myths and folktales do not tell stories about love because they primarily express social interests and obligations while love ‐ intended as both emotional imperative and biological drive ‐ is an individual need and feeling. This latter definition relies on a very specific understanding of ‘love’: the Romantic love of 19th century European novels. This paper argues that when love means attraction, affection, passion, and necessity, it turns up as liaisons dangereuses in many African narratives. Love becomes a driving force that generates gender constructions by reinforcing the unity of the couple or by fuelling the struggle between partners. In the case of Kabyle narratives (Algeria),1 conceptualisations of love as well as the relationships between myths and folktales are explored by analyzing formula tales2 and the only known collection of Kabyle Berber myths: those collected by Leo Frobenius, ethnologist and historian of religion, at the beginning of the 20th century and published in the first volume of his Volksmarchen der Kabylen in 1921. The discussion of the relationship between Kabyle myths and folktales touches upon a well-known interpretative problem in the study of religion: the articulation of myth and ritual with history as communities respond to sweeping social, political, and religious changes, such as the coming of Islam, colonization, decolonization, and globalization.     

Reclaiming Desire: Love Is Not Enough

How may desire be disrupted in a person's life and how may it be reclaimed in treatment? To what degree are the dynamics of therapeutic action predicated on the relational aspects of treatment versus time-honored understandings of the reconfiguration of dynamic forces within the psyche? These questions are considered in the context of a discussion of a detailed clinical case. The paper suggests that although much may be gained in the love and the “new outcome” experienced in treatment, an essential function of interpretation is to enable desire to be reclaimed from entrapment in relational demands and obligations from the past and within the treatment relationship. In this manner, analytic treatment mirrors a developmental a trajectory that begins in complex relational exchanges, but from which emerges—in the best of circumstances—an individual whose possession of his or her own mind and desire has derived from, and yet is independent of, the specific relational foundations in which desire was shaped.     

Some thoughts on happy and unhappy love

The subjective nature of love and happiness makes it difficult to examine them objectively. Outlining the purpose of human life as the search for happiness and the avoidance of suffering, Freud began the systematic study of the psychology of love. His most enduring contribution was the discovery of the link between adult and infantile love. Oedipal love gives us the feeling of certainty about what true love is. Mutuality and positive reciprocity are the secret of happy love. Love is a strong motivational drive in life, a force for psychosocial development and a central interest for humanity. It has a remarkable power for the enhancement of integration. Love is a simultaneous attempt to find something new and re-find something old. The author examines which psychological factors lead to a happy result and what factors lead to failure.     

On Trygve Braatøy’s concept of analytic love. An assumption on the actuality of one of the pioneers in Norwegian psychoanalysis

Is analysis still a cure of love? And is the analyst’s love and warm feelings for his patient a prerequisite for doing psychoanalysis? Trygve Braatøy addresses these complex matters in his book from 1954. The concept of love and its relation to sexuality is discussed, and how to understand love in the analytic setting. His points of view are compared with Freud’s and those of some second-generation analysts, his Norwegian colleagues and contemporary analysts, as well as modern writers. Braatøy defines himself as a true Freudian, but his clinical theory regarding love and countertransference has strong resemblances to Rank and Ferenczi and his followers, both in Europe and USA. Braatøy sums up that the therapist’s capacity to love and have a surplus of warmth ought to be the most prominent factor when selecting candidates for psychoanalytic training. Braatøy is a modern writer, with his ideas founded on clinical experience and intuition.     

Gandhi's Universal Ethic and Feminism: Shared Starting Points but Divergent Ends

Like the dominant moral philosophers in the Western tradition, Mahatma Gandhi reaches moral conclusions that emphasize universality, impartiality, and detachment. This is in apparent contrast to feminist philosophers who have put forth a scheme for reaching moral conclusions that gives centrality to feeling, experience, and interdependence. In the following, I show that Gandhi shares significant agreement with feminists in spite of the kinds of moral conclusions he reaches. The crucial difference between Gandhi and the feminist critics lies in how the distinctiveness of the other is understood. For Gandhi, I show, that the distinctiveness of others which evokes our affection is significant only in so far as it is a starting point that aides us in reaching the highest form of moral concern—a kind of agape (unselfish love for all).     

Dangerous love in mythical narratives and formula tales

The theme of love has long been neglected in studies on African myths. The often-heard explanation is that African myths and folktales do not tell stories about love because they primarily express social interests and obligations while love – intended as both emotional imperative and biological drive – is an individual need and feeling. This latter definition relies on a very specific understanding of ‘love’: the Romantic love of 19th century European novels. This paper argues that when love means attraction, affection, passion, and necessity, it turns up as liaisons dangereuses in many African narratives. Love becomes a driving force that generates gender constructions by reinforcing the unity of the couple or by fuelling the struggle between partners.In the case of Kabyle narratives (Algeria),¹ conceptualisations of love as well as the relationships between myths and folktales are explored by analyzing formula tales² and the only known collection of Kabyle Berber myths: those collected by Leo Frobenius, ethnologist and historian of religion, at the beginning of the 20th century and published in the first volume of his Volksmärchen der Kabylen in 1921.The discussion of the relationship between Kabyle myths and folktales touches upon a well-known interpretative problem in the study of religion: the articulation of myth and ritual with history as communities respond to sweeping social, political, and religious changes, such as the coming of Islam, colonization, decolonization, and globalization.     

Guiding trustful behavior: The role of accessible content and accessibility experiences

Trust has been identified as a key ingredient to the prosperity of close relationships, organizations, and societies. While research mainly focused on the antecedents and consequences of trust, much less is known about how individuals assess whether there are enough reasons to warrant trustful action. Two experiments explored the how and when of this assessment, suggesting that antecedents may not only be integrated as content information per se (as generally assumed), but in a feeling‐based summary form. Specifically, our results show that the ease or difficulty associated with the identification of antecedents to trust may guide trustful behavior. Furthermore, it is shown that such a feeling‐based influence is particularly likely to occur in conditions of personal certainty. Together these results extend prior research in the domains of trust and economic games, and further attest to the fundamental role cognitive feelings play in social life. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Let's get serious: communicating commitment in romantic relationships

Are men or women more likely to confess love first in romantic relationships? And how do men and women feel when their partners say "I love you"? An evolutionary-economics perspective contends that women and men incur different potential costs and gain different potential benefits from confessing love. Across 6 studies testing current and former romantic relationships, we found that although people think that women are the first to confess love and feel happier when they receive such confessions, it is actually men who confess love first and feel happier when receiving confessions. Consistent with predictions from our model, additional studies have shown that men's and women's reactions to love confessions differ in important ways depending on whether the couple has engaged in sexual activity. These studies have demonstrated that saying and hearing "I love you" has different meanings depending on who is doing the confessing and when the confession is being made. Beyond romantic relationships, an evolutionary-economics perspective suggests that displays of commitment in other types of relationships--and reactions to these displays--will be influenced by specific, functional biases.