Courage in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Analects</Emphasis>: 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 20^th 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.     

What Do Women Want? A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems

Recent attempts to medicalize women’s sexual “dysfunction” are critiqued and a “New View” of women’s sexual problems is introduced. The author argues for a female-centered perspective on women’s sexual desires and problems, based on a review of the literature on women’s sexuality and her observations of young women’s sexual experiences from 25 years of teaching Human Sexuality to undergraduate women. The review suggests that a pill or a patch cannot adequately address the sexual problems commonly experienced by US women.     

A Comparison of Dewey’s and Russell’s Influences on China

John Dewey and Bertrand Russell visited China at around the same time in 1920. Both profoundly influenced China during the great transition period of this country. This article will focus on the differences between the two great figures that influenced China in the 1920s. This comparison will examine the following five aspects: 1. Deweyanization vs. Russellization; 2. Dewey’s “Populism” vs. Russell’s “Aristocraticism”; 3. Dewey’s “Syntheticalism” vs. Russell’s “Analyticalism”; 4. Dewey’s “Realism” vs. Russell’s “Romanticism”; 5. Dewey’s “Conservatism” vs. Russell’s “Radicalism”. This examination will highlight that, although their visit left indelible impressions among Chinese intellecturals, for the radical Marx–Leninists, any Western philosophy and socio-political theories, including Dewey’s and Russell’s, were prejudicial, outworn, and even counterrevolutionary. Soon “Marxi–Leninization” was gradually substituted for “Deweyanization” and “Russellization.”     

Two for the show: Anti-luck and virtue epistemologies in consonance

This essay extends my side of a discussion begun earlier with Duncan Pritchard, the recent author of Epistemic Luck.Pritchard’s work contributes significantly to improving the “diagnostic appeal” of a neo-Moorean philosophical response to radical scepticism. While agreeing with Pritchard in many respects, the paper questions the need for his concession to the sceptic that the neo-Moorean is capable at best of recovering “‘brute’ externalist knowledge”. The paper discusses and directly responds to a dilemma that Pritchard poses for virtue epistemologies (VE). It also takes issue with Pritchard’s “merely safety-based” alternative. Ultimately, however, the criticisms made here of Pritchard’s dilemma and its underlying contrast of “anti-luck” and “virtue” epistemologies are intended to help realize his own aspirations for a better diagnosis of radical scepticism to inform a still better neo-Moorean response.     

"浩然之气"的创生性与先天性——从冯友兰先生《孟子浩然之气章解》谈起

Feng Youlan emphasizes the concept of “creativity” in his article “Explanation of Mencius’ Chapter on Strong, Moving Vital Force”, in particular highlighting the problem whether the “strong, moving vital force” is “innate” or “acquired”. Cheng Hao and Zhu Xi believed the “strong, moving vital force” was endowed by Heaven, so was therefore innate; “nourishment” cleared fog and allowed one to “recover one’s original nature”. Mencius’ theory on “the good of human nature” is illustrated in the concept of integrated “original endowment”. So Cheng Hao and Zhu Xi’s theory of “recovering the original nature” proposed that the “strong, moving vital force” was innate, which is in complete agreement with Mencius and of which there is ample evidence in Mencius. However, “nature” is “created by the accumulation of righteousness”. Namely, it is the completion and presentation of the process of creation and transformation of human beings. Only when we consider both Cheng Hao and Zhu Xi’s theory and Feng Youlan’s theory can we fully understand Mencius’ theory of “the nourishment of the strong, moving vital force”, which is of great theoretical and academic value in accurately understanding Mencius and the Confucian theory of mind-nature. Translated by Lei Yongqiang from Shehui kexue zhanxian 社会科学战线 (Social Science Front), 2007, (5):12–16     

牟宗三先生以"自律道德"的理论诠释儒学之蠡测

Mou Zongsan uses the highest moral principle “autonomy” to interpret Confucius’ benevolence and Mencius’ “inherent benevolence and righteousness”, focuses on the self-rule of the will. It does not do any harm to Mencius’ learning, on the contrary, it is conducive to the communication between Chinese and Western philosophies. If we stick to Kant’s moral self autonomy and apply it to interpreting Zhu Xi’s moral theory, similarly we will discover the implications of Zhu Xi’s “autonomy” in his moral learning. Therefore, it is inappropriate for Mou Zongsan to say that Zhu Xi’s ethics belongs to the autonomous one. __________ Translated from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Researches), 2005, (6): 33–39     

No unchallengeable epistemic authority,of any sort,regarding our own conscious experience – Contra Dennett?

Dennett argues that we can be mistaken about our own conscious experience. Despite this, he repeatedly asserts that we can or do have unchallengeable authority of some sort in our reports about that experience. This assertion takes three forms. First, Dennett compares our authority to the authority of an author over his fictional world. Unfortunately, that appears to involve denying that there are actual facts about experience that subjects may be truly or falsely reporting. Second, Dennett sometimes seems to say that even though we may be mistaken about what our conscious experience is, our reports about “what it’s like to be us” must be correct. That view unfortunately requires a nonstandard and unremarked distinction between facts about consciousness and facts about “what it’s like.” Third, Dennett says that reports about experience may be “incorrigible.” However, that claim stands in tension with evidence, highlighted by Dennett himself, that seems to suggest that people can be demonstrably mistaken about their own experience. Dennett needlessly muddies his case against infallibilism with these unsatisfactory compromises.     

Dynamic Deontic Logic and its Paradoxes

In Meyer’s promising account [7] deontic logic is reduced to a dynamic logic. Meyer claims that with his account “we get rid of most (if not all) of the nasty paradoxes that have plagued traditional deontic logic.” But as was shown by van der Meyden in [4], Meyer’s logic also contains a paradoxical formula. In this paper we will show that another paradox can be proven, one which also effects Meyer’s “solution” to contrary to duty obligations and his logic in general. Presented by Hannes Leitgeb     

Discussions

Summary  In their paper, ‘When are thought experiments poor ones?’ (Peijnenburg and David Atkinson, 2003, Journal of General Philosophy of Science 34, 305-322.), Jeanne Peijnenburg and David Atkinson argue that most, if not all, philosophical thought experiments are “poor” ones with “disastrous consequences” and that they share the property of being poor with some (but not all) scientific thought experiments. Noting that unlike philosophy, the sciences have the resources to avoid the disastrous consequences, Peijnenburg and Atkinson come to the conclusion that the use of thought experiments in science is in general more successful than in philosophy and that instead of concocting more “recherché” thought experiments, philosophy should try to be more empirical. In this comment I will argue that Peijnenburg’s and Atkinson’s view on thought experiments is based on a misleading characterization of both, the dialectical situation in philosophy as well as the history of physics. By giving an adequate account of what the discussion in contemporary philosophy is about, we will arrive at a considerably different evaluation of philosophical thought experiments.

For I am convinced that we now find ourselves at an altogether decisive turning point in philosophy, and that we are objectively justified in considering that an end has come to the fruitless conflict of systems. We are already at the present time, in my opinion, in possession of methods which make any such conflict in principle unnecessary. What is now required is their resolute application. (Schlick, ‘The Turning Point in Philosophy’, 1930/1959, p. 54).

     

Evald Il’enkov as an Interpreter of Spinoza

E.V. Il’enkov is regarded as perhaps the most “Spinozist” of Soviet philosophers. He used Spinoza’s ideas extensively, especially in developing his concept of the ideal and in his attempts to give a more precise philosophical formulation to the “activity approach” of the cultural- historical school of Soviet psychology. A more detailed analysis reveals, however, that Il’enkov’s reception of Spinoza was highly selective, and that there are substantial differences between them.     

亨佩尔确证悖论及其解决方案探析

To solve the highly counterintuitive paradox of confirmation represented by the statement, “A pair of red shoes confirms that all ravens are black,” Hempel employed a strategy that retained the equivalence condition but abandoned Nicod’s irrelevance condition. However, his use of the equivalence condition is fairly ad hoc, raising doubts about its applicability to this problem. Furthermore, applying the irrelevance condition from Nicod’s criterion does not necessarily lead to paradoxes, nor does discarding it prevent the emergence of paradoxes. Hempel’s approach fails to adequately resolve the paradox. __________ Translated from Ziran Bianzhengfa Yanjiu 自然辩证法研究 (Studies in Dialectics of Nature), 2005, (8): 33–37     

Physicalism as an attitude

It is widely noted that physicalism, taken as the doctrine that the world contains just what physics says it contains, faces a dilemma which, some like Tim Crane and D.H. Mellor have argued, shows that “physicalism is the wrong answer to an essentially trivial question”. I argue that both problematic horns of this dilemma drop out if one takes physicalism not to be a doctrine of the kind that might be true, false, or trivial, but instead an attitude or oath one takes to formulate one’s ontology solely according to the current posits of physics.     

What Children Feel About Their First Encounter with Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

The first meeting in psychotherapeutic and psychosocial work, has a big impact on the continuation. It is a less explored research field. Children’s “voices” tend to come in the back-ground in family therapy and other settings. In a project at CAP (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) the children’s views were collected in interviews with parents and therapists present. The grounded theory analysis process was used. The children addressed the importance of the therapist’s actions and positions in helping them to be able to communicate and to be in a dialogue. To be accepted and allowed to express feelings was important, and so was how the therapist managed to adjust to each person in the room and give space for various perspectives.     

孝意识的时间分析

The reason for the emergence of consciousness of filial piety is that parental care could activate reciprocal filial piety. Parental care and filial piety are two supplementary phenomena caused by the same time consciousness. Phenomenology neglects consciousness of filial piety because it lacks the thinking that sees the fundamental “meaning of time” in the intersection of “past” and “future”. The consciousness of filial piety can only be really constituted by a human being’s personal experience. “Frustrations in personal life” and “breeding of children for oneself” are two occasions for an adult to fight against the separating effect of individualized consciousness and regain awareness of filial piety. Translated by Huang Deyuan from Beijing Daxue Xuebao 北京大学学报 (Journal of Peking University), 2006, (1): 14–24     

Cosmology of Mind

In Il’enkov’s “Cosmology of mind,” written in his younger days in the tradition of Spinoza and Engels, the thinking mind appears as a necessary attribute of matter. Like all other main forms of matter in motion, the mind has its cosmic purpose and predestination. Il’enkov argued that it has to close the beginning and the end of the Big Cycle in order to return the dying Universe to its fiery youth. Il’enkov believed that this is the sole way to save the Universe from “thermal death” following the inevitable increase in entropy.     

Laughing at finitude: Slavoj Žižek reads <Emphasis Type="Italic">Being and Time</Emphasis>

“Laughing at Finitude” interprets Slavoj Žižek’s intellectual project as responding to a challenge left by Being and Time. Setting out from discussions of Heidegger’s book in The Parallax View and The Ticklish Subject, the essay exfoliates Žižek’s response to the Heideggerian version of a “philosophy of finitude”—both finding the central insight of Žižek’s work in Heidegger’s radical proposal for “anticipatory resoluteness” and developing Žižek’s critique of Being and Time as indicating Heidegger’s retreat from that proposal within the very book where it appears. Žižek reads Being and Time’s existential thematic as proposing a radical subjectivism and, unlike other Heidegger-critics, praises this aspect of the project. Indeed, Žižek claims that the weakness of Being and Time as a whole is that it is insufficiently radical in its subjectivism. For him, Heidegger is a thinker of ambiguous value, one who develops a program from whose own demands he hides. “Laughing at Finitude” both articulates this accusation of self-deception in Heidegger and examines the imperatives necessary to avoid it, for a dialectical shift from the “tragic” voice in existential treatments of finitude and for a revolutionary collectivist re-conception of social “Mitsein.” It suggests, in the process, Žižek’s own intellectual itinerary.

On the origin and development of the idea of “de” in Pre-Qin times

In ancient Chinese thoughts, de is a comparatively complicated idea. Most of the researchers translated it directly into “virtue”, but this translation is not accurate for our understanding of the idea of “de” in pre-Qin times. Generally speaking, in Pre-Qin times, the idea of “de” underwent three developmental periods. The first is the de of Heaven, the de of ancestors; the second the de of system; and the third the de of spirit and moral conducts. In a long period of history, the idea of “de” never cast off the influence of tian Dao (the way of Heaven). It was in Western Zhou Dynasty that the idea of “de” shook off the dense fog of the mandate of Heaven. However, it was the thinkers in Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States who made contributions to bring it deep into people’s mind. The ancient Chinese thoughts were mainly concerned with people’s recognition and development of their own abilities, with people’s seeking harmony and balance between human-beings and nature, and with people’s seeking harmonious and balanced human relations. The development of the idea of “de” played a very important role in this context. __________ Translated from Zhongguo Shehui Kexue 中国社会科学 (China Social Sciences), 2005(4) by Lei Yongqiang     

Evald Il’enkov and World Philosophy

To ascertain the context of Il’enkov’s philosophy, the author delves into the history of philosophy since the Sophists and Plato. For Il’enkov, philosophy is not an abstract science “about everything,” but a study of ideas – forms which are identical for thinking and being. These objective and universal forms of thought are explained as products and schemes of human activity creating the world of culture and reified in its “smart” things.     

Developing Feminist Conversation Analysis: A Response to Wowk

This paper responds to Maria Wowk’s (Human Studies, 30, 131–155, 2007) critique of “Kitzinger’s feminist conversation analysis”, corrects her misrepresentation of it, and rebuts her claim to have cast doubt on whether it is “genuinely identifiable” as conversation analysis (CA). More broadly, it uses Wowk’s critique as a springboard for continuing the development of feminist conversation analysis through: (i) discussion of appropriate methods of data collection and analysis; (ii) clarification of CA’s turn-taking model and an illustrative deployment of it in the analysis of a single case and of a collection (of if/then compound TCUs); (iii) exposition of a feminist CA understanding of “participants’ orientations”, and of the relevance of the distinction between participants’ and analysts’ orientations for feminist work. Finally, I suggest that feminist work in CA makes important contributions to the development of CA as a discipline.