Daoism and Chinese Martial Arts

The now-global phenomenon of Asian martial arts traces back to something that began in China. The idea the Chinese communicated was the dual cultivation of the spiritual and the martial, each perfected in the other, with the proof of perfection being an effortless mastery of violence. I look at one phase of the interaction between Asian martial arts and Chinese thought, with a reading of the Zhuangzi 莊子 and the Daodejing 道德經 from a martial arts perspective. I do not claim that the authors knew about martial arts. It was not Daoist masters who took up martial arts, but martial arts masters who, at a specific time, turned to Daoism to explain the significance of their art. Today, though, Daoist concepts are ubiquitous in martial arts literature, and a reading of these classics from a martial arts perspective shows how they lend themselves to philosophical thinking about this practice.     

Family Development and the Martial Arts: A Phenomenological Study

This article outlines the results of a grounded-theory, phenomenological study about the impact of the martial arts on the process of family development. Thirty-two couples and families with at least four months of martial arts study experience were interviewed to identify data and data themes about how the martial arts enhanced family development. Themes identified were self-defense, self-confidence, physical vitality, concentration, respect, friendship, moral development, spirit, training for life, grades, respect for life, and the importance of the martial arts instructor.     

天下功夫汇峨眉 融合佛道文化的峨眉武术

一峨眉武术是起源于四川峨眉一山地区,并广泛流传于整个四川乃至西南地区的武术的总称。峨眉武术发祥于峨眉山,起源于殷商时期。《华阳国志·巴志》云:周武王伐纣,实得巴蜀之师。……巴师勇锐,歌舞以凌殷人,前徒倒戈。此中的巴渝舞就是峨眉武术的最早记载。战国时司徒玄空(后人称白猿道人)被尊为峨眉武术的始祖,他模仿峨眉山间猿猴的动作创制峨眉通臂拳,至今仍在民间流传。     

Using Video Feedback to Improve Martial Arts Performance

This study used video feedback to enhance the martial arts performance of capoeira, an Afro‐Brazilian martial art that utilizes acrobatic movements (revesado, au de costa, and macaco). A multiple baseline across behaviors was used for five participants where baseline conditions consisted of standard coaching. The intervention consisted of video feedback, in which the participants were filmed attempting a movement and immediately viewed the video afterwards, while receiving positive and corrective feedback from the instructor. The target behaviors were scored on a 15‐item checklist, resulting in a percentage correct. A second video feedback condition similar to the first was also introduced to some participants, in which participants practiced the movements with live feedback before being filmed again. Results show that the video feedback conditions increased performance over baseline in most cases. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Capoeira as a Clinical Intervention: Addressing Adolescent Aggression With Brazilian Martial Arts

Aggression in adolescents is harmful and emotionally devastating to youth and surrounding communities. This article integrates martial arts and therapeutic principles into a culturally sensitive model that cultivates change in the aggressive behaviors of disenfranchised adolescents. The art form of Capoeira is proposed for promoting positive behavioral change. La agresión en los adolescentes es dañina y emocionalmente devastadora para los jóvenes y sus comunidades. Este artículo integra artes marciales y principios terapéuticos en un modelo culturalmente sensible que cultiva el cambio de los comportamientos agresivos de los adolescentes marginalizados. Se propone el arte de la Capoeira para promover un cambio positivo en el comportamiento.     

Democratizing Creativity: How Arts/Philosophy Can Contribute to the Question of Arts Bias

This article critically deconstructs the 21st-century economization and massification of creativity. It extends the discussion of arts bias and the associated ideas that artistic creativity is institutionalized, elitist, and an obstruction to more profitable applications of creativity. A tension is thus highlighted between the historically prevalent domain of art, and newer domains which focus on everyday, functional, organizational and the dark sides of creativity. The aim is to open up a genuine debate about the place of art in modern creativity discourse, and to examine the problematic theme of democratization in creativity as it relates to cultural, economic and industrial issues. A new framework for conceiving creativity in hermeneutics is also suggested, with a view to cohesively and logically balancing the artistic with other domains, and eliminating some of the current problems that render creativity less than it has been regarded in generations past.     

从物化到虚无:关联与重思

作为一个现代性反思的概念,"物化"应予以细分。分别对应Verdinglichung和Versachlichung的是"物化"与"物象化"("事化")。"物象化"("事化")是切入问题的关键,它意味着制度愈来愈成熟、规范、严格、见事(物)不见人。是着眼于其效率的提高还是对个性的压抑?无论如何,立场的选取,相应的认知方式,都会驱使"虚无"问题的呈现。"虚无主义"意味着一种现代化的方案,意味着一种整合各种价值的雄心,一种整体地把握世界的冲动,更意味着难以割舍的主体性立场。这个主体性立场规定着谈论"物化"与"虚无"的基本边界。     

易学视野下的武术文化研究——《周易》与太极拳

<周易>是中国文化史上最古老、也是地位最显要的一部典籍.因为它年代久远,就自然对中华传统文化的形成起到了源头活水的作用;由于它地位显要,因而中国传统文化的诸多方面都受到它的影响而与之交融会通.探讨<周易>与太极拳的关系,有助于人们从根本上深刻认识太极拳的文化内涵.太极拳的名称受<周易>的深刻影响;太极拳的理论源于<周易>的阴阳学说;<周易>思想指导着太极拳内功的修炼;太极拳体现了<周易>"天人合一"的思想;太极拳蕴含<周易>"仁义诚敬、刚柔并济"的道德标准.     

Sartre and Bergson: A Disagreement about Nothingness

Abstract

Henri Bergson's philosophy, which Sartre studied as a student, had a profound but largely neglected influence on his thinking. In this paper I focus on the new light that recognition of this influence throws on Sartre's central argument about the relationship between negation and nothingness in his Being and Nothingness. Sartre's argument is in part a response to Bergson's dismissive, eliminativist account of nothingness in Creative Evolution (1907): the objections to the concept of nothingness with which Sartre engages are precisely those raised by Bergson. Even if Sartre's account of nothingness in its entirety is found to be flawed, I argue that the points he makes specifically against Bergson are powerful.

My discussion concludes with a brief examination of the wider philosophical background to Sartre's and Bergson's discussion of nothingness: here I point to some important aspects of Sartre's early philosophy, including some features of his conception of nothingness, that may testify to Bergson's positive influence on his thought.     

Nothingness and the Human Umwelt

In the paper I argue that the great impact of empiricism on psychology and the enclosed dualist agenda traps psychological phenomena into subjectivism. By discussing the phenomena of nothingness in biological and cultural life it is argued that meaning must be considered as a phenomenon that represents both a fit and a misfit of the individual with the environment. By stressing the overall presence of nothingness phenomena it is argued how the reduced ontology of empiricism—and its blindness to relations and transformations out of which meaning grows—should be overcome. In human cultural life, transformations are constitutive and ongoing changes are being produced to make sure that continuity as well as discontinuity will happen. The analysis of especially one case—the removal of an Amish school after a shooting episode—serves to prove how meaning grows out of cultural processes as people produce their own conditions of life. From a cultural-ecological point of view, analyzing meaning at the level of individual phenomenology, hence, means analyzing the ‘total psychological situation’ (legacy of Kurt Lewin). This may for instance include analyzing how people live, what they consider important and worth preserving, what must be changed, what are their core values and how do institutional arrangements contribute to keeping up that which is valued or to changing that which is not, etc. Meaning may be viewed the lived-out experience—the domain of self-generativity in human life.     

"中国哲学","道术",还是可道术化的广义哲学?

将中国古代学术中的某一部分叫做"哲学",并按照冯友兰先生的主张,认为"科学的方法,即是哲学的方法"[1],然后循名责实地建构出一个"逻辑的、科学的"中国哲学,这条道路已将中国古学研究和使古学当代化的努力引入了困境.最近受到关注的"中国哲学的合法性危机"的讨论只是它的一种表现.这困境可比拟于用现代西医的方法来使中医"科学化"的情况.强迫实施"中西医结合"所导致的是中医思想源头的枯萎,被"废医存药"(其实"药"也在被现成化和胶囊化,或者被危险地"有效成分"化).于是,中医的本来面貌和它的当代活力就离我们越来越远了.     

The Arts of Schooling and the Role of Philosophy: Response to Colin Wringe

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

虚无与虚假之辨：柏拉图的Not-being概念

本论文集中探讨柏拉图哲学中的Notbeing概念。这个概念在“虚无”和“虚假”这两个语义之间的混淆使得柏拉图的哲学论证在多个场合出现困难。首先,它反映在《国家》第五卷中关于“意见”(doxa)的对象问题上;然后,它出现在《泰阿泰德》中在关于“虚假的意见”之可能性问题上;最后,在《智者》中,柏拉图试图彻底澄清这个问题,并最终以他特有的方式解释了Notbeing的“本性”。     

《庄子》:从“道”到“无”的过渡

The first and foremost meaning of Tao in Laozi is the origin of Heaven and Earth, and the second is the root of the growth and development of myriad things. However, Laozi does not explicitly distinguish between these two meanings. It is Wang Bi in his commentaries of Laozi who converted the meaning of Tao as the origin to the foundation of things-as-they-are, and named such foundation Nothingness. He claimed that Nothingness is the foundation of myriad things. This transition of problem-consciousness and t...     

Nothingness,Meinongianism and inconsistent mereology

Synthese - Within the framework of Meinongianism, nothingness turns out to have contradictory features—it seems to be an object and not. In this paper, we explore two different kinds of...