THE CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY

By Chinese philosophy I mean the main streams of traditional Chinese philosophy such as Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism and the contemporary reconstruction of the philosophical insights of these schools. Are they still meaningful for us today? Before I can answer the question, first of all I would like to give a very brief review of the conditions that led to our present situation, and then we may find ourselves in a position to give a proper assessment of the contemporary significance of Chinese philosophy in our journey towards the post-modern era.     

THE RELATIONSHIP OF RELIGION AND ETHICS: A COMPARISON OF NEWMAN AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

John Henry Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent is a commonly cited source for the idea that religion and ethics are in some fashion mutually implicated, and specifically the idea that religious belief can be grounded in our moral experience. ¹ In this paper I aim to do two things. First of all, I shall try to show that Newman's account of the relationship between religious and ethical understanding, as expounded in the Grammar , is more richly nuanced than one might suppose from reading the work of his commentators, and indeed anticipates a great deal of recent discussion in the philosophy of religion. Secondly, I shall argue that one strand of Newman's case in particular merits further attention in the context of current debate; here I shall argue that Newman's position is reminiscent of recent discussion in the philosophy of mind concerning the sense in which feelings are intentional, and articulates a view which is at best underdeveloped in recent work in philosophy of religion.     

NOTES ON THE CONCEPT OF CREATIVITY IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY

The concept of creativity is very much in currency today in interpreting Chinese philosophy. In working out these notes my intent is twofold: first, to delineate the original content of Chinese though in connection with this concept; second, to search after the meaning of this term in Western philosophy in Bergson and Whitehead, in order to make a possible comparison.     

THE CONCEPT OF CONTINUOUS CREATION PART I: HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY USE

The concept of continuous creation is now widely used in the context of reflections on the dialogue between science and religion. The first part of this research work seeks to understand its meaning through a twofold elaboration: (1) the historical setting of the three philosophical trends in which this concept was developed: scholastic (conservation), Cartesian (conservation through repetition of the creative act at each instant), and dynamic (interpreting the emergence of radical and contingent novelty in nature as a sign of the continuity of creation); (2) a philosophical and theological critique of the concept of continuous creation regarding the question of the relationship between change and creation, in the light of its highly polymorphous contemporary use, and, in opposition, its absence within the Catholic Magisterium. This work opens the field a further step toward reflection on a renewed concept of continuous creation.