陈·香——写在神学毕业季

正晚间,图书馆的阅览室里照旧只有我和勤工俭学的管理员两个人,但并不代表这里安静适合学习。尽管我们已经关闭了所有的窗户,甚至拉上了厚窗帘,但隔壁礼堂喧嚣的排练声响仍有力地穿透进来。我以老师的身份跑去表达了抗议,但收效甚微,不过几分钟礼貌性地减弱,随即又在亢奋的情绪中失控了。管理员无奈地对我说:"没用的,现在同学们都热衷于此。"这话我能理解:年轻人爱动、爱唱、爱展示是天性使然,本无可厚非,毕竟我也曾经历过热血躁动的青春时期。     

多么奇妙的更新

正"你是位奇妙的神,你是位奇妙的神,你创造了山林你创造大海,你使雀鸟在天空自由自在。你是位奇妙的神……"傍晚,疲惫的我点出手机里的这首赞美诗,合上眼睛,听着六岁的小孩子歌唱。这是他在主日学里学的第一首歌,旋律优美,宛如天籁。当时我录制下来,并且设了自动重复。听着听着,仿佛《诗篇》里的音律和叹息,渐渐拂     

先秦易学的"神明"概念与荀子的"神明"观

"神明"是<易传>关键概念之一,亦在先秦两汉思想范畴中被广泛使用.各家"神明"概念都与"天地"有关,并涉及天地自然造化之过程,古代"神明"不是作为某种祭祀对象而存在,也不表示神祇和鬼神的意义.笔者搜集归纳有关先秦两汉"神明"之资料,发现"神明"一词之用意牵涉天地万物之"德"概念.古人认为,天地万物之死生运行皆源自"德",皆由神明之安排,但"神明"并不具备造物主身份,而是天地合德概念."神明之德"被视为万物造化的原因,若以两个字来表达"神明"的本质,则应是"生机"一词.郭店<太一>阐明了"神明"体现天地的相辅,于是"神明"的作用即是天地之间的媒介、气化主宰者,故为"生机".荀子的"神明"观念,保留天地观的出发点,但同时集中于微观宇宙——"人"的核心概念.荀子对"神明"的定义近于黄老学派,既将"神明"视为"道"的唯一产物,又看作知"道"的唯一依据.只是黄老学派以神明论及天地观,而苟子藉此来探讨儒家的"君子养心"之议题.荀子之外,养生学派也将"心"视为"神明出"的器官,然而养生学派的观点是在表达"神明"是人中的"生机",而荀子藉此"神明"观,来探讨认识论的伦理问题.荀子的神明观,被宋明理学所继承.     

全国政协民宗委主任钮茂生、全国政协副秘书长蒋作君看望慰问中国道教协会负责人

2008年1月30日上午,中共中央统战部部长杜青林、副部长斯塔在二局局长周宁等人的陪同下,到北京白云观看望慰问中国道教协会负责人并与之进行了座谈.     

对"先天图与二进制关系"之争的考察与辨析

在11世纪,宋代易学家邵雍详细阐释了先天图;17世纪末18世纪初,德国数学家、哲学家莱布尼茨系统地提出了二进制.二者具有何种关系成为一个经久不衰的话题.本文首先认真地梳理和辨析了前人的研究成果,其次从反思先天图和二进制的文化意义出发,得出以下结论二进制是纯粹的数学方法,先天图是意蕴丰富的哲学符号,二者区别甚大,没有实质性的关系.     

一节阐明教内外关系的经文——中国基督教第八次代表会议闭幕礼拜的证道

我们感谢赞美天父的眷顾、救主耶稣基督的恩待和圣灵的引导,使我们中国基督教第八次代表会议圆满完成各项议程,胜利闭幕了.刚才我们所读的经文,可以作为会议所通过的工作报告和各项决议的圣经依据,证明会议所指明的方向、所坚持的原则、所提出的任务,都是正确的,天经地义的.     

诸恶莫作 众善奉行——中国道教界坚决反对打着宗教旗号大搞分裂祖国的罪恶行径

正当全国人民庆祝"两会"胜利召开和喜迎奥运之际,达赖集团却有组织、有预谋地精心策划和煽动极少数不法分子在拉萨等地进行打砸抢烧破坏活动,妄图把西藏从祖国分裂出去。对于这种政治图谋和罪恶行径,我们道教界表示强烈的愤慨和     

王重阳平等思想探析

全真道创始人王重阳,建立了以心性修炼为基础的道教内丹思想,力倡每个人都具有平等的心性本体,道性俱足,皆有成仙的可能.这一平等的思想体现在人与自然的关系上,就是万物平等,无有高下;体现在与其他教派的关系上,则是儒、释、道三家圆融平等;而在处世待人上,就要平等待人,不分人之贵贱高低,均须恭敬处之.本文试对这一思想的产生背景、内涵进行探析,进一步揭示其对于悟道、修道和传道的作用和影响.     

杨时承洛启闽的理学思想

程门弟子杨时承洛南传,开拓了洛学在南方的传播与发展,特别是为南宋朱熹闽学的诞生并上承二程洛学为儒学正脉提供了必要的学脉渊源.杨时的理学思想即是以洛学为宗,在洛学的论域内所作的阐释与发挥,他强调理本气化,重视分殊之用,主张反身格物,关注静中体验未发等,这些观点虽不为后学朱熹完全泥守,但却有开启闽学端绪之意义.杨时的理学思想在程朱理学的传衍中起上承下启的作用.     

光辉的足迹——在玄奘法师逝世一千三百周年纪念大会上的讲话

今年正逢玄奘法师诞辰1400周年纪念，为了缅怀这位佛门巨匠和世界文化伟人，佛教界在西安隆重举行了纪念玄奘法师诞辰1400周年法会及玄奘三藏院落成、玄奘顶骨舍利安奉、玄奘法师铜像揭幕庆典，还与学术界联合举办了“玄奘精神与西部文化学术研讨会”等系列纪念活动。　　早在1964年，已故的中国佛教协会赵朴初会长在首都佛教界、文化界纪念玄奘法师逝世1300周年大型集会上发表讲话，全面回顾了玄奘法师充实饱满的一生和极不平凡的成就，对玄奘法师的伟大精神及其对当今世界的意义作了高度评价。赵朴老在讲话中提出的编辑出版《玄奘全集》、编写《玄奘年谱》、校订《大唐西域记》等设想，在其后的三十多年中陆续成为现实；而修建玄奘纪念馆、设计制作玄奘法师雕像等愿望，也在佛教界的不懈努力下终得圆满。在纪念玄奘法师诞辰1400周年之际，重温赵朴老的这篇讲话，感到分外亲切。本期还选登了黄心川先生、惟贤法师在学术研讨会上的发言，特约日本法相宗大本山药师寺副住持安田 胤先生介绍玄奘法师与日本法相宗的因缘，请王尧先生介绍《大唐西域记》藏译本的有关情况，以此作为玄奘法师诞辰1400周年的纪念。     

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Virtue Ethics and Being Morally Moved</Emphasis>

This essay shall discuss the moral feeling of “being morally moved” (daode gandong 道德感动) and explore its philosophical significances in understanding the nature of virtue ethics, especially that of Confucian ethics as exemplary ethics. I would like to argue that the feeling of being morally moved, similar to other feelings such as resentment or indignation, should be seen as one of the most important testimonies or manifestations of our morality or moral consciousness. It has played a very important role of moral judgment and moral cultivation in the history of Chinese moral philosophy and in its everyday moral practices. Instead of being a testimony of morality as cold laws or norms, “being morally moved” is a testimony to our moral virtues, and it should be a living motive of our moral actions as well.     

Seeing by Feeling: Virtues,Skills, and Moral Perception

Champions of virtue ethics frequently appeal to moral perception: the notion that virtuous people can “see” what to do. According to a traditional account of virtue, the cultivation of proper feeling through imitation and habituation issues in a sensitivity to reasons to act. Thus, we learn to see what to do by coming to feel the demands of courage, kindness, and the like. But virtue ethics also claims superiority over other theories that adopt a perceptual moral epistemology, such as intuitionism – which John McDowell criticizes for illicitly “borrow[ing] the epistemological credentials” of perception. In this paper, I suggest that the most promising way for virtue ethics to use perceptual metaphors innocuously is by adopting a skill model of virtue, on which the virtues are modeled on forms of practical know-how. Yet I contend that this model is double-edged for virtue ethics. The skill model belies some central ambitions and dogmas of the traditional view, especially its most idealized claims about virtue and the virtuous. While this may be a cost that its champions are unprepared to pay, I suggest that virtue ethics would do well to embrace a more realistic moral psychology and a correspondingly less sublime conception of virtue.     

Is Mozi a utilitarian philosopher?

In this essay I argue that Mozi’s philosophy is anything but utilitarianism by way of analysing four ethical theories. Utilitarianism is an ethics in which the moral subject is an atomic individual human being, and its concern is how to fulfill the interests of the individual self and the social majority. Confucian ethics is centered on the notion of the family and its basic question is that of priority in the relationship between the small self and the enlarged or collective self. Opposite to these two moral theories is Mozi’s ethics: The interests that Mozi is primarily concerned with are not the interests of my individual self or my collective self, but the interests of the other. The fulfillment of the material needs of the other is my moral obligation. The arguments are centered on the three basic concepts, “the I,” “the we,” and “the other.” The significance of Mozi’s thought in modern or postmodern context lies in its striking resemblance to the philosophy of a contemporary western philosopher, Levinas. In both Mozi and Levinas, there is a suspension of utilitarianism. __________ Translated from Zhongguo Zhexue Shi 中国哲学史 (History of Chinese Philosophy), 2005 (1)     

Is Xunzi��s Virtue Ethics Susceptible to the Problem of Alienation?

In this essay I argue that if Kantian and consequentialist ethical theories are vulnerable to the so-called “problem of alienation,” a virtue ethics based on Xunzi’s ethical writings will also be vulnerable to this problem. I outline the problem of alienation, and then show that the role of ritual (li) in Xunzi’s theory renders his view susceptible to the problem as it has been traditionally understood. I consider some replies on Xunzi’s behalf, and also discuss whether the problem affects other Confucian and eudaimonian approaches to virtue ethics. I close by considering some solutions to the problem and the affect that this result has on the argumentative dialectic between the three major ethical traditions.     

Karyn Lai, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Learning from Chinese Philosophies: Ethics of Independent and Contextualised Self</Emphasis>, Aldershot,UK: Ashgate, 2006, 218 pp., ISBN: 0754633829, hb

Learning from Chinese Philosophies explores early Confucianism and Daoism in order to engage today’s problems. By bringing into thoughtful play Confucian ideas of self and society and Daoist understanding of situated self, the author uses the debate between the two philosophies to argue for her understanding of Confucian moral thinking and Daoist metaethics. According to Lai, Daoist metaethics question dichotomous frameworks and discuss the unity of opposites enabling dynamic interplay of nonantagonistic polarities. Lai not only rejects comparisons of Confucianism to consequentialist and deontological moral theories, but also the view that Confucian ethics is a form of virtue ethics. Instead, she argues that the Analects is a manual for moral decision making that requires skills “to unravel and analyse the complex features of particular situations and to pick out those which are morally relevant.” Together, Confucianism and Daoism offer views of interdependent relationality that help to reconceptualize contemporary problems and criticize existing thinking and practices. Lai applies what she has learned from these two Chinese philosophies in a critique of feminist care ethics. Despite a few flaws, this is a clearly written work with stimulating interesting ideas and it lives up to the promise of demonstrating the continued relevance of Chinese philosophies.

儒家伦理与情感

The Confucian understanding of emotions and their ethical importance confirms and exemplifies the contemporary Western renewed understanding of the nature of emotions. By virtue of a systematic conceptual analysis of Confucian ethics, one can see that, according to Confucians, the ethical significance of emotions, lies in that an ethical life is also emotional and virtues are inclinational. And a further exploration shows that the reason for the ethical significance is both that emotions are heavenly-endowed and that there exists a union of emotions and reason in Confucian ethics. This will constitute a challenge to the so-called mainstream ethical theories which have been popularly engaged in seeking justifications for abstract moral rules. __________ Translated from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Research), 2007, (3): 86–92     

Agrarian Philosophy and Ecological Ethics

Mainstream environmental ethics grew out of an approach to value that was rooted in a particular conception of rationality and rational choice. As weaknesses in this approach have become more evident, environmental philosophers have experimented with both virtue ethics and with pragmatism as alternative starting points for developing a more truly ecological orientation to environmental philosophy. However, it is possible to see both virtue ethics and pragmatism as emerging from older philosophical traditions that are here characterized as “agrarian.” Agrarian philosophy stresses the role of nature, soil and climate in the formation of moral character as well as social and political institutions. As such, reaching back to the agrarian tradition may provide a way to move forward with both virtue oriented themes as well as pragmatist themes in developing ecological ethics.     

人生终极的理性自觉——儒家"命"的观念

The Confucian idea of “ming 命 (destiny)” holds that in the course and culmination of human life, there exists some objective certainty that is both transcendent and beyond human control. This is a concept of ultimate concern at the transcendental theoretical level in Confucianism. During its historical development, Confucianism has constantly offered humanist interpretations of the idea of “destiny”, thinking that the transcendence of “destiny” lies inherently within the qi endowment and virtues of human beings, that the certainty of “destiny” is in essence contingency at the beginning of life and linear irreversibility towards its end, and that to live in light of ethics and physical rules — having a “commitment to human affairs” — means putting “destiny” into practice. As all these facts show, the Confucian ultimate concern regarding human life is full of rational awareness. __________ Translated by Huang Deyuan from Kongzi yanjiu 孔子研究 (Study on Confucius), 2008, (2): 4–11     

A path to the Oasis: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sharī‘ah</Emphasis> and reason in Islamic moral epistemology

I propose a framework for comparative Islamic—Western ethics in which the Islamic categories Islam, Iman, and Ihsan are juxtaposed with the concepts of obligation, value, and virtue, respectively. I argue that shari’a refers to both the obligation component and the entire structure of the Islamic ethic; suggesting a suspension of the understanding of shari’a as simply Islamic “law,” and an alternative understanding of usul al-fiqh as a moral epistemology of obligation. I will test this approach by addressing the question of reason in Islamic moral epistemology via an examination of an argument advanced by a founding usul scholar Muhammad bin Idrīs al-Shāfi‘ī (150 A.H./767 C.E.).     

Hursthouse’s Virtue Ethics and Abortion: Abortion Ethics without Metaphysics?

This essay explicates and evaluates the roles that fetal metaphysics and moral status play in Rosalind Hursthouse’s abortion ethics. It is motivated by Hursthouse’s puzzling claim in her widely anthologized paper “Virtue Ethics and Abortion” that fetal moral status and (by implication) its underlying metaphysics are “in a way, fundamentally irrelevant” to her position. The essay clarifies the roles that fetal ontology and moral status do in fact play in her abortion ethics. To this end, it presents and then develops her fetal metaphysics of the potential and actual human being, which she merely adumbrates in her more extensive treatment of abortion ethics in her book Beginning Lives. The essay then evaluates her fetal ontology in light of relevant research on fetal neural and psychological development. It concludes that her implied view that the late-stage fetus is an actual human being is defensible. The essay then turns to the analysis of late-stage abortions in her paper and argues that it is importantly incomplete.