The history of philosophy in contemporary philosophy: The view from Germany

Conclusion I have frequently mentioned objective problems and topics in the preceding sections. But what exactly is the force of objective here? As my remarks should have made clear I have been using objective to contrast with purely historical. A purely historical approach never gets beyond reproduction, commentary, and interpretation. I call an approach objective when it involves a philosopher who advances his own theses and claims.This minimal understanding of objectivity (in the context of my remarks in this paper) by no means implies that there are problems and topics, systems of concepts, methods, and similar factors that are eternal, completely independent of the contingencies of history (of philosophy, of the sciences), that are not relative to a language, to a logic, to a model, etc. Indeed whether there are problems, etc., in just this absolute, atemporal sense is itself a question for systematic philosophy. It seems clear that the formulation of a problem can only take place against a cognitive background of some sort and within some conceptual scheme.³⁴ Such an assumption is made by most if not all analytic philosophers. But the fact that a philosophical tradition recognizes conceptual schemes does not make it a purely historical, non-objective philosophy, in the sense already introduced and described. A philosopher who explicitly accepts a certain conceptual scheme proceeds in an entirely objective and systematic (and not purely historical) manner when, within this framework, he formulates his own theses.This paper is the text of a talk. the title is due to Barry Smith.     

Human dignity: A challenge to contemporary philosophy

The United States is the hegemon. As the world's superpower, it dominates political discourse and economic policy. Around the world, our hegemony inspires in turn admiration, intimidation, anger, retaliation, and despair. What is the future of our hegemonic world? Is it viable? How will it maintain order? How one answers these questions depends on one's worldview. Many view the world in the clockwork/domination model. Others view it in terms of a self-organizing/web model. Current United States policy works within the first paradigm. I consider the world situation within the self-organization/web paradigm and propose effective methods for conscious evolution.     

Neoplatonic tendencies in Russian philosophy

The Absolute is a basic and fundamental issue for philosophy as such. I present different concepts of the Absolute (substantialism, energetism, escapism, methodologism). We can say that contemporary European philosophy “orphaned” the neo-Platonic tradition. Thereafter Russian philosophy developed in an intensive and turbulent as well as relatively uniform fashion, in view of the well-established Neo-Platonist context. This makes Russian philosophy not only part of a lasting universally acknowledged tradition; not only has Russian philosophy continued to develop currents of thought abandoned by modern European philosophiers, but it is also heir to a philosophical tradition of particular quality and value in the universal history of thought.     

Writing the history of Russian philosophy

This article addresses the writing of the history of Russian philosophy from the first of such works—Archimandrite Gavriil’s Russian Philosophy [Russkaja filosofija, 1840]—to philosophical histories/textbooks in the twenty-first century. In the majority of these histories, both past and present, we find a relentless insistence on the delineation of “characterizing traits” of Russian philosophy and appeals to “historiosophy,” where historiosophy is employed as being distinct from the historiographical method. In the 1990s and 2000s, the genre of the history of Russian philosophy has grown increasingly conservative with regards to content, with histories from this period demonstrating an almost exclusive Orthodox focus. This conservatism, in turn, has contributed to widespread contention in recent years over the status of these philosophical textbooks—disagreements that often lead to either (1) further appeals to “historiosophical” methods; or (2) denials of the domestic philosophical tradition altogether, where the response to the query “Is there philosophy in Russia?” is emphatically negative. This article argues that the contemporary disputes over the development and preservation of the Russian philosophical canon are in many ways part of a larger debate over the roles of Orthodoxy and the history of philosophy in post-Soviet philosophical thought.     

Two different approaches to philosophy a critical reflection on contemporary Chinese philosophy

By means of critical reflection on the current situation of Chinese philosophy, this article aims to clarify two different approaches to philosophy. One is for scholars to focus on original texts and thought tradition, concerned with interpretation and inheritance; even in this way, scholars can achieve theoretical innovation through creative interpretation. The other is for researchers to face up questions from academics and from reality, and mainly to do theoretical creation in philosophy on a profound theoretical background, strictly following academic norms and standards. For contemporary Chinese philosophy, the two approaches are indispensable, but the serious problem is that the first approach absolutely is dominant, but the second is too weak. The correct choice of Chinese philosophy should be to let hundreds of flower bloom, to let different approaches compete with each other, and to cooperatively establish the prosperity of contemporary Chinese philosophy.     

Personal construct theory and general trends in contemporary philosophy

This paper is a modest attempt to chart something of the broad trends in contemporary philosophy (the philosophy of the last half century)–trends against which personal construct theory might be aligned, evaluated, or simply reflected upon. These trends themselves emerge from a complex scene in philosophical effort. This scene is marked by increasing specialization, the appearance of new, sometimes interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., bioethics), and the emergence of new sociohistorical and technical phenomena that give rise to new problems. The material that follows is in three parts. The first presents some general observations concerning philosophy and the broadest outline of its development. The second considers the nature of personal construct theory in terms of its own constructivist philosophy, and in relation to other historical philosophical systems, particularly phenomenology. The third part relates personal construct theory to the outline in the first part and attempts some conclusions. In general, I will suggest that as concern with process or praxis moves further toward center stage in philosophy, personal construct theory comes more and more into prominence and its philosophical integrity becomes more obvious.     

A comparison of retrospective accounts of childhood near-death experiences with contemporary pediatric near-death experience accounts

I compared five childhood near-death experiences (NDEs) reported by adults and another five NDEs reported by minors, in terms of Ring's five NDE stages, Greyson's four NDE components, Moody and Perry's 12 NDE traits, Sabom's 16 general characteristics, and Gallup and Proctor's 10 basic positive experiences. In this combined pool of 47 NDE characteristics (which were interdependent), only two relating to time sense showed significant differences between the adults' retrospective reports of childhood NDEs and the children's contemporary NDE reports, and that number of differences would be expected by chance. This study therefore supports the claims of previous researchers that adults' retrospective reports of childhood NDEs are not embellished or distorted.     

情感儒学:当代哲学家蒙培元的情感哲学

当代著名哲学家、中国哲学史家蒙培元的情感哲学,学界称之为"情感儒学"。他提出了"人是情感的存在"、"情感是人的基本的存在方式"、"儒家哲学是情感哲学"等一系列重要命题。他的哲学思想有"主体""心灵""超越""境界"与"自然"这几个最重要的关键词,并由"情感"观念贯通起来。他有一个重要命题即"情感可以上下其说":往下说,情感与生理心理相联系,就是主体心灵的感性层面,即是一种形而下的自然经验;往上说,情感与实践理性相联系,乃是主体心灵的超越层面,即是一种形而上的超越体验。情感儒学实可谓两千年来儒家主流哲学之大翻转,即颠覆了以宋明儒学为代表的"性本情末""性体情用"的观念架构,回归孔孟的情感本源观念,由此引发了当代儒家哲学研究的"情感转向"。     

Feeling good and functioning well: distinctive concepts in ancient philosophy and contemporary science

This paper is an invited response to Kashdan, Biswas-Diener, & King (2008) and to Waterman's (2008) commentary. Kashdan et al. assert that the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being is unwarranted philosophically and scientifically. We disagree, because a correct understanding of Aristotle refutes Kashdan et al.'s claims, and we refute three specific claims made about the definition, measurements, and overlap of kinds of subjective well-being. We re-analyze data from Keyes' (2005b) paper on mental health, and find that nearly half (48.5%) of the MIDUS national sample has high hedonic well-being. However, only 18% are flourishing, which requires a high level of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. The remaining 30.5% with high hedonic well-being but moderate eudaimonic well-being has nearly twice the rate of mental illness as flourishing individuals. Costs are incurred, we conclude, by science and citizens when we do not distinguish and achieve both kinds of well-being.     

The Ego: the problem and the term as treated by Russian philosophy

The starting point of the investigation is the correspondence between the term and concept of Ego (“I”) and the various types of experience. Two main ways of introducing and applying of the term “I” (Ego) in Russian philosophy are investigated from the semantic-analytical point of view. The first takes the Ego as initially existed either as a spiritual substance or a given form uniting experiences. This way of treating is realized in L. Lopatin’s and V. Soloviev’s philosophical teachings. The second containing some moments of reflexion on the concept treated the Ego as a result of experience. It was developed in M. Karinskij und G. ?pet. In context of difference between the Ego and the subject or consciousness the question of the owner of consciousness is considered.     

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     

Pure reason and contemporary philosophy of religion: the rational striving in and for truth

This essay urges contemporary philosophers of religion to rethink the role that Kant’s critical philosophy has played both in establishing the analytic nature of modern philosophy and in developing a critique of reason’s drive for the unconditioned. In particular, the essay demonstrates the contribution that Kant and other modern rationalists such as Spinoza can still make today to our rational striving in and for truth. This demonstration focuses on a recent group of analytic philosophers of religion who have labelled their own work ‘analytic theology’ and have generated new debates, including new arguments about Kant bridging philosophy and theology. Cultivation of a reflective critical openness is encouraged here; this is a practice for checking reason’s overly ambitious claims about God.