John Dewey and the Virtue of Cook Ding’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dao</Emphasis>

Certain discussions about “relativism” in the philosophy of Zhuangzi turn on the question of the morality of his dao 道. Some commentators, most notably Robert Eno, maintain that there is no ethical value whatsoever to Zhuangzi’s dao as presented in the Cook Ding episode and other “knack passages.” In this essay, it is argued that there is indeed a moral dimension to Cook Ding’s dao. One way to recognize it is to explore the similarity between that dao and John Dewey’s notion of educational method. There are moral traits that Dewey can appeal to in recommending his method. It is argued here that these traits represent the moral features of Cook Ding’s dao as well.     

Wen,Haiming, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Confucian Pragmatism as the Art of Contextualizing Personal Experience and World</Emphasis>

Certain discussions about “relativism” in the philosophy of Zhuangzi turn on the question of the morality of his dao 道. Some commentators, most notably Robert Eno, maintain that there is no ethical value whatsoever to Zhuangzi’s dao as presented in the Cook Ding episode and other “knack passages.” In this essay, it is argued that there is indeed a moral dimension to Cook Ding’s dao. One way to recognize it is to explore the similarity between that dao and John Dewey’s notion of educational method. There are moral traits that Dewey can appeal to in recommending his method. It is argued here that these traits represent the moral features of Cook Ding’s dao as well.     

Xunzi Versus Zhuangzi: Two Approaches to Death in Classical Chinese Thought

The contrasting approaches to death and bereavement in classical Confucianism and Daoism epitomize the different orientations of the two ethical traditions. Confucianism, here represented by Xunzi, interprets and manages death and bereavement through distinctive cultural practices, specifically rituals and associated norms of propriety, which are intended to bring order, harmony, and beauty to human events and conduct. Daoism, here represented by the Zhuangzi, contextualizes and copes with death and loss through an understanding of and identification with natural processes. Both approaches address death and bereavement through a systematic, naturalistic philosophy of life that makes no appeal to a conception of divinity or a personal afterlife. For Xunzi, the heart of this system is ritual propriety, through which all human affairs—including inevitable, natural events such as death—must be mediated. For the Zhuangzi, by contrast, rigid, ritualized cultural forms are an obstacle to coping efficiently with natural processes such as death. Rather than constructing a sphere of “the human” as distinct from “the natural,” the Zhuangzi urges us to situate the human within nature in a way that removes the opposition between the two. This essay contrasts and critiques the two approaches, contending that although Xunzi’s theory of ritual presents a plausible account of the relation between humanity, culture, and nature, it fails to address death appropriately as an inexorable, natural event. By contrast, the Zhuangzi presents an attractive way of relating human life and death to nature and thus perhaps offers a means of finding solace concerning death. The essay suggests, however, that the Zhuangist stance may be grounded primarily in a certain ethical or aesthetic attitude, rather than in an objectively compelling argument. Ultimately, both approaches may rest as much on contrasting ethical and aesthetic sensibilities as on rational argumentation.     

MARTIN RÁZUS: Literary and Philosophical Reflections on Morality1

Martin Rázus (1888–1937) was one of the most important personalities of Slovak Lutheran social, political, cultural, literary, and intellectual life during the first half of the twentieth century. First, I examine the picture of Slovak rural morality portrayed in the works of Rázus, particularly his 1929 novel Svety[Worlds], in which Rázus presents the morality of the people in the Slovak countryside from the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the 1920s. Second, as the ethical and moral issues of life are crucial topics of Rázus's philosophical and ethical reasoning, I examine Rázus's ethical treatise Argumenty[Arguments] (1932), in which he develops, explains, and philosophically justifies many of his ideas concerning the ethics and morality expressed in his literary works and political and religious essays.     

Case method strategies for teaching sexual ethics to relativists and skeptics

Many undergraduates are culturally shaped to avoid making ethical judgments. They spontaneously adopt relativist and skeptical strategies such as “It all depends,” or “Whose morality?” or “Who's to say?” as ways of fending off the challenge of making moral decisions. The current tsunami that is washing away traditional sexual norms is both a result and a cause of this cultural shift. Case studies can mitigate this decline and help students to grow in both confidence and ability to make good ethical judgments. The case method, used with a Socratic pedagogy, engages imagination and counters the deficits in empathy found in many contemporary students. It moves students toward understanding morality itself. Against skepticism, it assists students in exercising practical reason, culminating in decision. Five cases invite students to overcome extreme relativism, to look for and evaluate relevant differences, and to enter into ethical discussion with other students on the sexual issues they face in their college years.     

论曾国藩家训伦理思想及其现代意义

曾国藩家训伦理思想是中国仕宦家训的发展颠峰。其主要内容是：孝悌乃家和之方,勤俭乃兴家之本,谦敬乃交接之要,知足乃立身之术。其基本方法是：以身立范法、严爱殷责法、因材施教法。这些内容和方法对于当今家庭伦理道德、社会公德、行政道德、劳动伦理及消费伦理的建设具有重要的启示和借鉴作用。     

Jonah: A Fantasy of Flight

This paper “Nostalgia” has two distinct parts: One, accounting for nostalgia, by pointing out a systematic distortion in cases of nostalgic memories—idealizing the past and presenting it as a sentimental realm of pure innocence. This distortion typifies kitsch morality, morality guided by sentimentality that can easily turn into brutality. For attacking the innocent seems to justify any brutality in return. Two, an account of what is an ethics of memory, claiming that memory as the case of nostalgia suggests is a fertile ground for ethical discourse, which is different from the politics of memory.     

What is Enshrined in Morality? Understanding the Grounds for Nietzsche’s Critique

Abstract

It is a truism that Nietzsche is a critic of morality. But what does Nietzsche have against this institution of morality? I consider the prominent interpretation of Brian Leiter’s that Nietzsche takes morality to task for its bad effects in hampering the flourishing of great individuals and cultures. There are good reasons, I argue, to resist this reading as the best, and certainly as the exclusive, account of the grounds for Nietzsche’s criticism of morality. I go on to propose an alternative construal that sees Nietzsche as objecting to the expressive character of moral values themselves (an under-explored notion in anglophone ethics and social philosophy that I seek to elucidate in the paper). My project, in the first instance, is the exegetical one of understanding what is going on in Nietzsche’s texts when he criticizes morality. Nonetheless, there are important philosophical lessons to be learned here from Nietzsche’s work, if not necessarily about the actual failings of morality itself, then about the kinds of ethical and ideological objections that philosophers and cultural critics can sensibly raise. One of the central styles of critique that we see in Nietzsche’s work, exemplified especially in his criticism of morality, involves interpreting social and cultural phenomena, as one might interpret texts or works of art, with an eye toward extracting the meaning or significance they have in light of the ideals they enshrine, and then attacking them, on broadly ethical grounds, on account of this. It thereby creates the space for criticizing institutions not just for what pernicious effects they have, but for the intrinsically objectionable character of what they express.     

The Compatibility of Hegelian Recognition and Morality with the Ethics of Care

I draw connections between Hegel’s concepts of recognition and morality and demonstrate how they are compatible with an ethic of care. I explore Hegel’s Sittlichkeit and demonstrate the role that intersubjective recognition plays in the development and sustainment of ethical communities. I demonstrate how his emphasis on the community and interpersonal relationships play an important role in his moral theory. I then contrast Hegelian and Kantian views of morality and argue that Hegel’s account places greater emphasis on attending to the needs of others and showing genuine concern for their well-being. By highlighting the intersubjective nature of recognition between self-consciousnesses, and the interconnectedness of agents in an ethical community, I maintain Hegel’s morality is compatible with an ethic of care because it emerges out of intersubjective mutual recognition and its foundation is built upon responding to the needs of particular others and protecting the bonds of the community.     

Playing By and With the Rules: Norms and Morality in Play Development

This article, Piaget’s theory of moral development in play behaviour is critically reviewed and framed within the philosophical debate on morality. On this basis, an alternative socio-cognitive model for describing normative evolution in play development is proposed. Special attention is paid to the transition from children’s play to adult games, for the purpose of demonstrating that some relevant features of morality stagnate, rather than progress, during such transition. Finally, some speculations are offered on the connection between moral involution in play and ethical behaviour in life, with reference to contemporary Western societies.     

A posthumanist reading of knowledge in Zhuangzi and Jacques Lacan

This article proposes a posthumanist reading of knowledge in Zhuangzi and Jacques Lacan from four interconnected aspects. First, knowledge is inseparable from practice, as is exemplified in Lacan’s original rewriting of Zhuangzi’s ‘agreement between name and actuality’ as the dialectic relationship between Other and other. Then, knowledge leads us to explore the mysterious knowledge behind the surface, which resists linguistic expression and defies human agency. Furthermore, the importance of the mysterious knowledge compels us to figure out the accesses to reach this unknown territory. Finally, the availability of the opaque knowledge, in a circular form, returns to the beginning question albeit on a more advanced level: the methods of putting the unknown knowledge into practice. Apart from these four logical aspects, the new perspective of posthumanism enables us to go beyond anthropocentric understanding of knowledge and bracket it within a broad framework of cross-species becoming.     

Moral Philosophers as Ethical Engineers: Limits of Moral Philosophy and a Pragmatist Alternative

Ever since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law‐like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question (a) whether this is possible and (b) what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social technology” that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life.     

Pluralism and Ambivalence in the Evolution of Morality

Much good work has been done on the evolution of human morality by focusing on how “selfish genes” can give rise to altruistic human beings. A richer research program is needed, however, to take into account the ambivalence of naturally evolved biopsychological motivators and the historical pluralism of human morality in religious systems. Such a program is described here. A first step is to distinguish the ultimate cause of natural selection from proximate causes that are the results of natural selection. Next, some proximate causes are suggested as possible conditions of biological and emotional valuing as well as of customary social morality and individual rational ethical thought. Finally, different moral perspectives of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity are briefly presented in order to illustrate how one might inquire about the selection of a variety of biopsychological and cultural proximate causes that enable the evolution of a plurality of religious moral systems.     

Moral objectivism across the lifespan

We report the results of two studies that examine folk metaethical judgments about the objectivity of morality. We found that participants attributed almost as much objectivity to ethical statements as they did to statements of physical fact and significantly more objectivity to ethical statements than to statements about preferences or tastes. In both studies, younger participants attributed less objectivity to ethical statements than older participants. Females were observed to attribute slightly less objectivity to ethical statements than males, and we found important interactions between attributions of objectivity and other factors, such as how strong participants’ moral opinions were and how much disagreement about the issue they perceived to exist within society. We believe our results have significant implications for debates about the nature of folk morality and about the nature of morality in general.     

Beyond sincerity and pretense: role-playing and unstructured self in the Zhuangzi

This article engages with a recent view that the Daoist Classic Zhuangzi advances an alternative to the Confucian role-ethics. According to this view, Zhuangzi opposes the Confucian idea that we should play our social roles with sincerity and instead argues that we should take the liberty to detach ourselves from the roles we play and ‘pretend’ them. It is argued in this article that Zhuangzi’s ideal of role-playing is based neither on sincerity nor on pretense. Instead, it is akin to the excellence of theatre actors when they enact a role: they are able, for a limited time, to restructure their personality into a particular role, but de-structure it again when the performance is over. The prerequisite for this ability is to keep one’s self fundamentally unstructured, or, as Zhuangzi puts it, ‘empty’ (xu 虛). This reading of Zhuangzian role-playing provides a fresh perspectives on ‘playing’ or ‘rambling’ (you 遊) as the central philosophical concept in the Zhuangzi.     

The hedgehog and the Borg: Common morality in bioethics

In this commentary, I critically discuss the respective views of Gert and Beauchamp–Childress on the nature of so-called common morality and its promise for enriching ethical reflection within the field of bioethics. Although I endorse Beauchamp and Childress’ shift from an emphasis on ethical theory as the source of moral norms to an emphasis on common morality, I question whether rouging up common morality to make it look like some sort of ultimate and universal foundation for morality, untouched by the dialectics of time and reflective equilibrium, was an equally good move. As for Gert’s magisterial conception of common morality, I conclude that certain elements of his system are controversial at best and woefully inadequate at worst. He has a tendency to find in common morality what he himself put there, and his highly restricted conception of duties of assistance strikes this reader as ad hoc, inadequately defended, and unworthy of a project whose goal is to lessen the amount of misery in the world.

Guo Xiang on Self-so Knowledge

The perspective on zhi 知 (‘knowledge’) is often identified as a key distinction between the Zhuangzi 莊子 and its most famous commentator, Guo Xiang 郭象. Many scholars who recognize this distinction observe that zhi almost always has negative connotations in Guo Xiang’s writing, whereas certain types of knowledge can be positive in the Zhuangzi (e.g. da zhi 大知 ‘greater knowledge’ or zhen zhi 真知 ‘genuine knowledge’.) In this way, Guo Xiang’s comments on zhi seem to stray from the ‘original meaning’ of the Zhuangzi, and are often dismissed as inaccurate mis-readings, imbued with mysticism and relativism. However, by taking into consideration some aspects of Guo Xiang’s socio-historical context, and the larger structure of his complex philosophical system, we find a project quite distinct from that of the Zhuangzi. Like many other Wei-Jin period thinkers, Guo aims bridging some of the gaps the Daoist classic creates between itself and the Confucian tradition. This exposes Guo Xiang’s first goal, which, like his intellectual contemporaries, is to unify Daoist and Confucian ideas. In addition, I will argue that if we look at the larger context of Guo Xiang’s own philosophical approach, and interpret his notion of zhi within this framework, then we find a strong argument for an alternative to the epistemological perspectives in the Zhuangzi – one that includes mysticism and relativism, but goes beyond them.     

On the Legacy of Christian Ethics in Comparative Religious Ethics

This essay is an exploratory inquiry into possible Christian ethical residues in the field of comparative religious ethics (CRE), focusing particularly on the themes of tradition and canon, trajectories of ethical reflection, emancipatory criticism, common morality, and the notion of discipline. It is suggested that even if such traces exist, they may not be detrimental to the field as currently practiced.     

公德建设要超越伦理本位传统

公德是公共行为的道德规范.公德建设能够推动法治建设.在中国,由于长期伦理本位传统的影响,公德建设滞后,影响了中国道德建设,也遏制了中国法治建设的发展.推动中国公德建设必须超越伦理本位传统,将公德建设纳入法治轨道.     

Aristotle's different possibilities

Marxism is often claimed to be incompatible with any kind of ethical theory, because of its assumptions of economic determinism, of the class character of morals, and of the subordination of morality to politics. But the author proposes that these assumptions can be interpreted in such a flexible way as not to rule out the freedom of choice and responsibility, die relative independence of morals from economic conditions and political ends, and concepts of universal human value and a specifically moral ideal. A humanist philosophy, centered in Marx's analysis of alienation, provides a sufficiently rich theoretical basis for the solution of both ethical and meta‐ethical’ problems.