Necessity and Relative Contingency

The paper introduces a contingential language extended with a propositional constant τ axiomatized in a system named KΔτ , which receives a semantical analysis via relational models. A definition of the necessity operator in terms of Δ and τ allows proving (i) that KΔτ is equivalent to a modal system named K□τ (ii) that both KΔτ and K□τ are tableau-decidable and complete with respect to the defined relational semantics (iii) that the modal τ -free fragment of KΔτ is exactly the deontic system KD. In §4 it is proved that the modal τ -free fragment of a system KΔτw weaker than KΔτ is exactly the minimal normal system K. Presented by Daniele Mundici     

列维纳斯面对康德、黑格尔、海德格尔——当代哲学关于"存在论"的争论

Levinas subverts the traditional “ontology-epistemology,” and creates a “realm of difference,” the realm of “value,” “ethic,” and “religion,” maintaining that ethics is real metaphysics. According to him, it is not that “being” contains the “other” but the other way round. In this way, the issues of ethics are promoted greatly in the realm of philosophy. Nonetheless, he does not intend to deny “ontology” completely, but reversed the relationship between “ontology (theory of truth)” and “ethics (axiology),” placing the former under the “constraint” of the latter. Different from general empirical science, philosophy focuses more on issues irrelevant to ordinary empirical objects; it does have “objects,” though. More often than not, the issues of philosophy cannot be conceptualized into “propositions”; nevertheless, it absolutely has its “theme.” As a discipline, philosophy continuously takes “being” as its “theme” and “object” of thinking. The point is that this “being” should not be understood as an “object” completely. Rather, it is still a “theme-subject.” In addition to an “object,” “being” also manifests itself in an “attribute” and a kind of “meaning” as well. In a word, it is the temporal, historical, and free “being” rather than “various beings” that is the “theme-subject” of philosophy. Translated by Zhang Lin from Wen Shi Zhe 文史哲 (Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy), 2007, (1): 61–70     

Teaching and Truthfulness

Some tendencies in modern education—the stress on ‘performativity’, for instance, and ‘celebration of difference’—threaten the value traditionally placed on truthful teaching. In this paper, truthfulness is mainly understood, following Bernard Williams, as a disposition to ‘Accuracy’ and ‘Sincerity’—hence as a virtue. It is to be distinguished from truth (a property of beliefs), and current debates about the nature of truth are not relevant to the issue of the value of truthfulness. This issue devolves into the question of whether truthfulness is a distinctive virtue of teachers, which they have a special obligation to exercise in the face of competing aims. This paper defends the idea of distinctive professional duties and considers two conceptions of teaching which ascribe a central place to truthfulness. The first conceives of teaching as a personal relationship within which trust, and hence, it is claimed, truthfulness, are paramount. This claim is challenged, and the paper concludes by sympathetically considering a second conception of teaching, articulated by Oakeshott and Heidegger. In this conception, teaching is a ‘releasement’ from ‘the daily flux’ of pupils’ lives through a truthful initiation into the alternatives to this ‘daily flux’ found within ‘the civilized inheritance of mankind’.     

Courage in The Analects: A Genealogical Survey of the Confucian Virtue of Courage

The different meanings of “courage” in The Analects were expressed in Confucius’ remark on Zilu’s bravery. The typological analysis of courage in Mencius and Xunzi focused on the shaping of the personalities of brave persons. “Great courage” and “superior courage”, as the virtues of “great men” or “shi junzi 士君子 (intellectuals with noble characters)”, exhibit not only the uprightness of the “internal sagacity”, but also the rich implications of the “external kingship”. The prototype of these brave persons could be said to be between Zengzi’s courage and King Wen’s courage. The discussion entered a new stage of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties, when admiration for “Yanzi’s great valor” became the key of various arguments. The order of “the three cardinal virtues” was also discussed because it concerned the relationship between “finished virtue” and “novice virtue”; hence, the virtue of courage became internalized as an essence of the internal virtuous life. At the turn of the 20th century, when China was trembling under the threat of foreign powers, intellectuals remodeled the tradition of courage by redefining “Confucius’ great valor”, as Liang Qichao did in representative fashion in his book Chinese Bushido. Hu Shi’s Lun Ru 论儒 (On Ru) was no more than a repetition of Liang’s opinion. In the theoretical structures of the modern Confucians, courage is hardly given a place. As one of the three cardinal virtues, bravery is but a concept. In a contemporary society where heroes and sages exist only in history books, do we need to talk about courage? How should it be discussed? These are questions which deserve our consideration.     

先秦儒家美学之"美"的边界

“Beauty” is a very important concept in Pre-Qin Confucian aesthetics. Pre-Qin Confucian aesthetics generally had two viewpoints when defining beauty: Negatively, by stressing that “beauty” in the aesthetic sense was not “good”; and positively, by stressing two factors: one, that beauty was related to “feeling” which was not an animal instinct, the other was that “beauty” was a special texture with a particular meaning. “Beauty” in Pre-Qin Confucian aesthetics may be defined as “texture (or form)” capable of communicating feeling or triggering a reaction of feeling. __________ Translated from Shanghai shifan daxue xuebao 上海师范大学学报 (Journal of Shanghai Normal University), 2007, (7): 80–85     

Knowing thyself ... in private: Masturbation and philosophy

Karl Marx once compared philosophy to masturbation, essentially seeing both as privative, idealistic, and impractical activities. Indeed, many lay folk see philosophers as “wankers.” While the present state of universities does throw doubt on the liberatory character of contemporary philosophy, Marx’s jibe nonetheless mischaracterizes masturbation. This paper is a brief attempt to correct Marx’s characterization of masturbation by drawing on the work of a thinker ofter associated with “intellectual onanism”: Martin Heidegger. Speaking ontologically, Heidergger’s theories can be developed to show that masturbation it is not privative, but “stretched” in time and place. Moreover, masturbation plays a practical role in the creative development of the self, including the self’s essential bodiliness. While not necessarily defending philosophy against Marx’s charges, this paper does show how even so-called “onanistic” philosophy might be redeemed. “Only a being which, like man, ‘had’ the word... can and must ‘have’ ‘the hand’” —Martin Heidegger “I have a dangerously supple wrist.” —Friedrich Nietzsche     

Mourning Religion: A Response

Mourning Religion is a brilliant collection of essays responding both to Freud’s essay “Mourning and Melancholia” and Peter Homans’ assertion that the academic study of religion represents a creative expression of mourning the loss of religion in secular (western) society. This essay poses questions concerning the role of theology as a mode of analysis; Ricoeur’s concept of “second naiveté” in relation to disillusionment and religion; Celia Brickman’s reflections on globalization, marginalization, and a shift in psychological language from “primitivity” to “vulnerability”; the role of the body in the work of religious studies; melancholia as “re-membering” amid multiplicity and fragmentation; and mourning as protest and resistance. The essay concludes with a reflection on ambiguity and transcendence in dialogue with Freud’s essay “On Transience.”     

What is Classical and Non-Classical Knowledge?

Mamardašvili’s ‘classical’ paradigm of knowledge is seen to be minimally based on extrapolations from Descartes’ classical philosophy to which Mamardašvili attributes features that rather anticipate his own post-classical ontology. The latter is oriented towards the primacy of perception as a subjective process, in which the self-conscious subject constructs the world, not as illusion, but as a ‘picture’ or ‘model’ (Wittgenstein’s Bild). By examining Mamardašvili’s definition of the ‘phenomenon’ against the␣background of Husserl’s ‘reduction’, Wittgenstein’s ‘object’ and the Freudian and post-structuralist psychoanalytic model of subjectivity, the paper arrives at the inference that Mamardašvili is essentially a post-Structuralist thinker who appropriates concepts from various critical and philosophical disciplines to construct his own multi-disciplinary theory of consciousness and perception.     

A philosophy of labour: comparing A. V. Lunačarskij and S. Brzozowski

At the end of 1907 within a couple of months Lunačarskij met both Gor’kij and Brzozowski in Italy and found many important points of contact with each. To compare Lunačarskij’s thought at that time with Brzozowski’s “philosophical program” of 1907 casts some new light on the great variety of interpretations that enlivened Easter European Marxism at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, it explains Lunačarskij’s “economism” as distinct both from Brzozowski’s extreme anthropologism and Gor’kij’s “cosmism”; on the other, it shows that Lunačarskij’s “philosophy of labour” promoted a violent attitude of conquest and humankind’s domination of nature. Although he criticized Brzozowski’s sympathies with German Idealism, Lunačarskij shared with him a deep appreciation of human creative power, which is evident in his peculiar form of collectivism as well.     

The Journeys of Generation Y Missionaries from the United Kingdom: A Modification of Lewis Rambo’s ‘Stages of Religious Change’ Model

The metaphorical journeys of GenY missionaries from the United Kingdom towards commitment to long-term, cross-cultural missionary work overseas were studied using data collected by interview and questionnaire. Lewis Rambo’s ‘stages of religious change’ model describes many aspects of these journeys. The addition of two new dimensions—recognising events that deflect a person from a straight-line trajectory (‘deflection’) and events that provide the encouragement to go on (‘support’)—produces a model that describes these journeys more accurately. The model is further improved by adding new aspects to the ‘quest,’ ‘commitment’ and ‘consequences’ dimensions, and by the identification of differences between men and women. The modified model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the journey of GenY-ers toward a missionary career.     

“Critique” immanent in “practice”: New Frankfurt School and American pragmatism

As a result of a new understanding of the relation between theory and practice, the “New Frankfurt School,” with Jürgen Habermas as its major representative, highly values the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism, in contrast to the first generation Critical Theorists represented by Max Horkheimer. In Habermas, the idea of “critique” is, both substantially and methodologically, closely connected with the idea of “praxis” in the following senses: communicative action, rational argumentation, public discussion and political culture. “Critique” is thus found to be immanent in “praxis”; or, a la Horkheimer, pragmatism turns out to be a “critical philosophical analysis” without “falling back upon objective reason and mythology.” __________ Translated from Huadong Shifan Daxue Xuebao 华东示范大学学报 (Journal of Huadong Normal University), 2001 (5), with minor modifications     

An Infinitary Extension of Jankov’s Theorem

It is known that for any subdirectly irreducible finite Heyting algebra A and any Heyting algebra B, A is embeddable into a quotient algebra of B, if and only if Jankov’s formula χ _A for A is refuted in B. In this paper, we present an infinitary extension of the above theorem given by Jankov. More precisely, for any cardinal number κ, we present Jankov’s theorem for homomorphisms preserving infinite meets and joins, a class of subdirectly irreducible complete κ-Heyting algebras and κ-infinitary logic, where a κ-Heyting algebra is a Heyting algebra A with # ≥  κ and κ-infinitary logic is the infinitary logic such that for any set Θ of formulas with # Θ ≥  κ, ∨Θ and ∧Θ are well defined formulas.     

Liberal pluralism,radical orthodoxy and the right tone of voice

This paper considers two differenttones of voice in philosophy and theology (‘liberal pluralism’ in contrast to ‘radical orthodoxy’) and relates it to a discussion about the theology of religions. ‘Tone of voice’ in this context is intended to denote the affective potency (or not) of a theological perspective as it impacts and influences religious attitudes. In addition, at a related level, ‘tone of voice’ is used when speaking of first-order or second-order perspectives: for example, a first-orderconfessional tone in contrast to a second-ordernotional tone. The paper proceeds to critically engage with John Hick’s pluralism and John Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy particularly from the point of view of considering thetone adopted by both perspectives. The conclusion is that both views are inadequate: Hick’s pluralism—as a second-order meta-theory—lacks the first-order power that is needed to affect ‘hearts and minds’, Milbank’s Radical Orthodoxy has rhetorical power but is an ‘unfounded’ narrative which lacks the ability to rationally engage with thereal world. In the end, the suggestion is that the ‘right tone of voice’, in a religious context, ought to combine a realistic enquiry concerning the order-of-things with a first-order rhetorical strength.     

"本质"的双重含义:自然科学与人文科学——黑格尔、狄尔泰、胡塞尔之间的一点链接

Early in Aristotle’s terminology, and ever since, “essence” has been conceived as having two meanings, namely “universality” and “individuality”. According to the tradition of thought that has dominated throughout the history of Western philosophy, “essence” unequivocally refers to “universality”. As a matter of fact, however, “universality” cannot cover Aristotle’s definition and formulation of “essence”: Essence is what makes a thing “happen to be this thing.” “Individuality” should be the deep meaning of “essence”. By means of an analysis of some relevant Western thoughts and a review of cultural realities, it can be concluded that the difference between the attitudes toward things of the natural sciences and the humane sciences mainly lies in the fact that the former focus on the pursuit of universal regularity, whereas the latter go after the value and significance of human life. The movement from natural things to cultural things is a process in which essence shifts from universality to individuality. It is the author’s contention that what should be stressed in the fields of human culture and society is the construction of an ideal society that is “harmonious yet not identical”, on the basis of respecting and developing individual peculiarity and otherness. Translated by Zhang Lin from Beijing daxue xuebao 北京大学学报 (Journal of Peking University), 2007, (11): 23–29     

Hermann Cohen and Bakhtin’s early aesthetics

In this article, Bakhtin’s early aesthetics is reread in the context of Hermann Cohen’s system of philosophy, especially his aesthetics. Bakhtin’s thinking from the early ethical writing Toward a Philosophy of Act to Author and Hero in Artistic Activity and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics is followed. In Author and Hero, an individual is in his life conceived as involved in cognitive and ethical action but as remaining without a consummative form; the form, or the ‘soul’, is bestowed upon a person by the creative activity of the artist alone. In his understanding of artistic creativity and the relationship between the ‘hero’ and the author, Bakhtin closely follows Cohen, with the exception that for Cohen the object of artistic form-giving is the universal, idealized man, whereas for Bakhtin it is an individual. In the concept of a ‘polyphonic novel’ as developed in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Bakhtin, however, considers this view of the activity of the artist (or the novelist) to apply to the “traditional” novel only, while in a Dostoevskyean novel the characters are not subordinated to any defining power of the author. Bakhtin’s theory of the Dostoevskyean novel is thus a return to the emphasis of the cognitive and ethical autonomy of the individual. His understanding of the encounter between persons as a ‘subject’—‘subject’ or an ‘I’—‘thou’ relation has a predecessor, among others, in Cohen.     

What <Emphasis Type="Italic">Cèyǐn zhī xīn</Emphasis> (Compassion/Familial Affection) Really Is

This essay aims to delineate Mengzi’s view of emotion by analyzing his first ethical sprout, often referred to by the Chinese term cèyǐn zhī xīn 惻隱之心.Previous scholars usually translate this term as “compassion,” “sympathy,” or “commiseration,” in the sense of the painful feeling one feels at the misfortune of others. My goal in this article is to clarify the nature of this painful feeling, and specifically I argue that (1) cèyǐn zhī xīn is primarily construing another being’s misfortune with sympathetic concern, and that (2) the painfulness of cèyǐn zhī xīn comes from this concern-based construal of the object of one’s compassion. My interpretation of cèyǐn zhī xīn as a concern-based construal is an attempt to construct an important alternative to the inclinational view of Mengzian emotions, and it could be also considered as making a crucial step toward a new interpretation of the Mengzian theory of emotional cultivation.     

德性儒学的成就、困境与走向

Beginning with the promotion of morality in Confucianism, a Neo-Confucian movement in modern Chinese philosophy was initiated, in which Confucianism underwent a transition from tradition to modernity. However, Moral Confucianism did not successfully develop the “new kingliness without” from its “sageliness within,” respond to modernization marked by science and democracy, and provide moral impetus for the development of a modern Chinese society or appeal to many beyond the small circle of “elite Confucianists.” The fundamental reason is that it was caught in a web of moral idealism, overemphasizing what ought to be without confronting what actually was. Translated by Huang Deyuan from Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Xuebao 中国人民大学学报 (Journal of Renmin University of China), 2006, (1): 9–15     

Talking About a Universalist World

The paper defends a combination of perdurantism with mereological universalism by developing semantics of temporary predications of the sort ’some P is/was/will be (a) Q’. We argue that, in addition to the usual application of causal and other restrictions on sortals, the grammatical form of such statements allows for rather different regimentations along three separate dimensions, according to: (a) whether ‘P’ and ‘Q’ are being used as phase or substance sortal terms, (b) whether ‘is’, ‘was’, and ‘will be’ are the ‘is’, ‘was’, ‘will be’ of identity or of constitution, and (c) whether ‘Q’ is being used as a subject or predicate term. We conclude that this latitude is beneficial, as it conforms with linguistic reality (i.e., the multiple uses actually in place) and also enables one to turn what is ordinarily perceived as a problem for universalist perdurantism viz., a commitment to all sorts of weird and gerrymandered temporally extended entities, into an advantage, for the richness in questions allows us to make sense of the many different readings of sentences of the same grammatical form.