Is There a Place for Traditional Values and Virtues in Society Today?

This paper argues that rather than looking to the past for a previously developed set of traditional values and virtues we should instead look to the past for ways of thinking about morality and ethics which may be found in the “tradition” and which may also be relevant for the contemporary situation. It examines the causes of the disconnection between traditional ways of thinking and the contemporary situation at two levels: the marginalization of morality and the disarray in ethics. Both aspects are found to be rooted in the emergence of the empirical scientific differentiation of consciousness. The paper then goes on to ask what resources in the tradition may be found to overcome the gap between ancient and modern, or traditional and contemporary, ways of thinking about morality and ethics. The contemporary relevance of the thought of Bernard Lonergan to this issue is examined.     

The wrong side of history

Psychoanalysis (including analytical psychology), once a pioneering and forward‐looking movement of the early 20^th century has now become a conservative backward‐looking ‘tradition’. After considering some of the internal problems associated with this historical change such as idealization and tribalism, some ways forward are suggested – a focus on clinical excellence as practical craft, openness to the unknown and engagement with others beyond the confines of private practice.     

THINKING COMPARATIVELY ABOUT RELIGION AND WAR

In contrast to the period when the Journal of Religious Ethics began publishing, the study of religion in relation to war and connected issues has prospered in recent years. This article examines three collections of essays providing comparative perspectives on these topics, two recently authored studies of Buddhism and Islam in relation to war, and a compendious collection of texts on Western moral tradition concerning war, peace, and related issues from classical Greece and Rome to the present.     

Construction, reconstruction, deconstruction: The fall of the Soviet Union from the point of view of conceptual history

The fall of the Soviet Union is analysed in conceptual terms, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte. The author seeks to interpret the instrumental role of the concepts perestrojka, glasnost′, reform, revolution, socialist pluralism, and acceleration in the Soviet collapse. The semantics and pragmatics are related to a wider intellectual and political context, and the conceptual perspective is used to help explain the progress of events. The author argues that the common notion of the reform policy concepts as clichés is not valid.

中医是科学吗?

中医是否科学的争论由来已久,科学观不同,答案各异.肯定者认为它是东方传统科学,否定者则视之为传统文化、实用技术或巫术.正确认识这一问题具有科学、文化与产业三方面的意义.应以求实的态度、历史的观点和系统的方法探讨之,其结果不仅有利于中医的发展,也有助于对科学本质的理解.     

基于整合视角的幸福感内涵研析与重构

幸福感是一个关注个体最佳心理功能和体验的概念, 国内外对幸福感的研究主要分为两个取向——主观幸福感（subjective well-being, SWB）和心理幸福感（psychological well-being, PWB）, SWB关注个体享乐, PWB关注个体潜能实现。在对现有文献研究的基础上, 分析了SWB和PWB的特点及其间的区别与联系, 并在一个系统的视角下, 从主体行为感知角度对幸福感进行整合, 提出了个体幸福感整合模型, 呈现了基于主体同一性的幸福感整合路径及特点。在此基础上, 重新界定了幸福感的概念, 从时间维度分析了个体幸福感的整体变化趋势。     

中国企业伦理研究的本土意识

中国的企业伦理研究必须具备相应的本土意识,即,既要带着中国文化的意识去观察和分析现实的企业伦理问题,又要通过对文化传统的研究,探询自身的理论支点,为企业行为提供规范导向。要使这种具有本土特色的企业伦理研究得以可能,就必须有相应的方法论自觉,将本土意识贯穿于我们对经济实践的分析、基础问题的研究以及企业伦理理论的建设之中。     

WHAT IT TAKES TO LIVE PHILOSOPHICALLY: OR,HOW TO PROGRESS IN THE ART OF LIVING

This essay presents an account of what it takes to live a philosophical way of life: practitioners must be committed to a worldview, structure their lives around it, and engage in truth-directed practices. Contra John Cooper, it does not require that one’s life be solely guided by reason. Religious or tradition-based ways of life count as truth directed as long as their practices are reasons responsive and would be truth directed if the claims made by their way of life are correct. The essay argues that these three conditions can be met by progressors as well as sages. Making progress in how one acts in the world, and improving one’s understanding and direction through being part of a community is living a philosophical way of life. The offered view acknowledges more ways to develop the art of living and enables a broader range of people to count as living philosophically.     

JEFFREY STOUT ON DEMOCRACY AND ITS CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN CRITICS

Jeffrey Stout addresses two of the main criticisms of liberal democracy by its contemporary neotraditionalist Christian critics: that liberal democracy is destructive of social tradition, and thereby of virtue in the citizenry, and that liberal democracy is inherently secular, committed to expunging religious voices from the public arena. I judge that Stout effectively answers these charges: liberal democracy has its own tradition, it cultivates the virtues relevant to that, and it is not inherently hostile to piety. What Stout does not do, I suggest, is take the next step of showing, positively, that Christianity can and should affirm the substance of liberal democratic society. This is due, in good measure, to the fact that Stout never tells us, except in off‐hand comments, what he takes the substance of liberal democracy to be. And this, in turn, is due to his way of employing pragmatism: he uses pragmatism to give an account of human society generally, not of liberal democratic society. I raise some questions about the general account that pragmatism gives of human society, and thus about the account that it would give of liberal democracy.