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.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

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.     

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

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

"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.     

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...     

《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...     

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”。     

一个论及“无”的西方思想家:约翰·司格脱·爱留根那

中世纪早期爱尔兰基督教哲学家约翰·司格脱·爱留根那(约公元800-877年)的重要性不仅在于他将希腊神秘主义作家如亚略巴古的狄奥尼修斯的作品翻译成拉丁文,而且还在于他在其巨著《自然的分类》中所构建的一个包括上帝与自然的宇宙论。爱留根那将神圣自然视为超越于所有存有与非存有的"无"。"创造"被视为这种超越的无以存有的形式的自我显现。爱留根那将人的心灵也看作是避免所有限制与定义的无的形式。其作品深深地影响了包括埃克哈特大师在内的中世纪晚期的神秘主义者。爱留根那的思想早已被用以与佛教相比较,而我将通过本文来探寻这种比较的合理性。     

Hermeneutical Philosophy and Pragmatism: A Philosophy of Science

Two philosophical traditions with much in common, (classical) pragmatism and (Heidegger's) hermeneutic philosophy, are here compared with respect to their approach to the philosophy of science. Both emphasize action as a mode of interpreting experience. Both have developed important categories – inquiry, meaning, theory, praxis, coping, historicity, life-world – and each has offered an alternative to the more traditional philosophies of science stemming from Descartes, Hume, and Comte. Pragmatism's abduction works with the dual perspectives of theory (as explanation) and praxis (as culture). The hermeneutical circle depends in addition on the lifeworld as background source of ontological meaning and resource for strategies of inquiry. Thus a hermeneutical philosophy of research involves three components: lifeworld (as ontological and strategic), theory (as explanatory), and praxis (as constitutive of culture). This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

生活哲学:一种哲学观

哲学观问题日益引起学者们的关注。本文从分析生活概念入手,尝试性地提出一种哲学观——生活哲学观,此种哲学观认为,哲学是人生活的一种形式,其功能在于保持人的生成意识。