The Worldwide Significance of Chinese Aesthetics in the Twenty-First Century

Through comparisons between traditional Chinese and Western aesthetics, this article tries to explain the worldwide significance of Chinese aesthetic tradition in the twenty-first century. In contrast to cognitive-rational spirit and the tendency to distinguish the subjectives and objectives of traditional Western aesthetics, traditional Chinese aesthetics shows a distinctive practical-emotional spirit and a tendency to harmoniously unite human beings with nature, and believes that beauty is, first and foremost, a free state or way (Dao) of human life; the most important thing for human beings is how to make their own lives and existence beautiful. Therefore, it puts forward some persuasive and valuable insights into beauty and art, thus playing an independent and constructive role in intercultural aesthetic dialogues of the twenty-first century. Translated from Journal of Xiaogan College, 2004:5     

The analyst as a citizen in the world

Beginning with a ‘big dream’ from almost fifty years ago, this paper tracks movement back and forth from an inner/individual adaptation to life to outer/collective adaptations through various stages of a life's journey. The rhythm between more inner orientation at one stage gives way to more outer adaptation at another stage and vice versa. This same movement can be paralleled by an exclusive emphasis on analysis at one stage and more of a mixture of analysis and activism at another stage. At the heart of this narrative is the realization that an inner big dream of decades before, symbolised both an inner path of developing a relationship with life‐promoting energies and an outer path represented by facilitating others’ discovery and participation in those energies. The dream therefore anticipated a more activist future of connecting inner and outer, individual and collective in various professional projects. This has resulted in occasional glimpses of the fact that the ‘spirit of the depths’ and ‘the spirit of the times’ can have a common meeting ground.     

“Emotionally, Soulfully, Spiritually ‘Free to Think and Act’: The Helen Flanders Dunbar (1902–59) Memorial Lecture on Psychosomatic Medicine and Pastoral Care”

This essay aims to stimulate rethinking about religious and medical healing and wholeness. While psychiatrist (Helen) Flanders Dunbar (1902–1959) is well known as a psychosomatic investigator and as Medical Director of the Council for Clinical Training, the initial home of Anton Boisen's groundbreaking movement for the clinical pastoral education of institutional chaplains and parish ministers, she is less appreciated as a theologically-trained scholar. This essay explores an earlier era's understanding of the spiritual and the more soulful components of healing and how Dunbar combined these to focus on helping all peoples become free to think and act. This essay was originally delivered as The Helen Flanders Dunbar Memorial Lecture on Psychosomatic Medicine and Pastoral Care at Columbia Presbyterian Center of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York on November 2, 1999.     

Ideology,Doping and the Spirit of Sport

The current World Anti-doping Code can be characterised as a tough approach to doping. In this paper we investigate how the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) justifies this tough approach. To this end, WADA advances two justificatory arguments. It maintains, first, that protection of the spirit of sport warrants tough measures and, second, that athletes have voluntarily consented to the Code. We argue that in the way they are presented by WADA, neither of these arguments can withstand scrutiny. In the second part of the paper, we go on to show that these arguments are in fact ideological in nature. The specific aim of these arguments is not to be correct, but rather to distort social reality, because in this way they can be used to ward off any critical discussion of the Code. We conclude that WADA’s interest is to create a façade of justice, not in serving justice itself.     

Zhuangzi’s idea of ‘spirit’: acting and ‘thinging things’ without self-assertion

In contrast to his contemporaries who take the heart–mind as the ruler of a person, Zhuangzi suggests that one’s action is guided by the spirit (shen 神). Questions arise as one articulates the function of spirit and its relationship with the heart–mind. In this article, I articulate the relationship between heart–mind and spirit to show three points: first, spirit is a kind of qi 氣 that can be tied or run smoothly, or rather the mechanism triggered by the functioning of smooth qi. This reading brings the skill passages together with the fasting of heart–mind (xin zhai 心齋) passage. Second, the proceeding of spirit admits no fixed ways and is not confined to any particular organ or faculty, so it avoids the problem of self-assertion mentioned in Qiwulun. Third, the proceeding of spirit implies that one’s practice takes as many particularities of the context as possible into account, so the person has a higher chance to reduce conflict in interacting with things and other people and bring out their potential. This is a reason why skilful practices are related to Zhuangzi’s ideal of nourishing life, both physiologically and psychologically.     

Return to nature

Abstract

This essay explores the various ways in which in the history of philosophy the imperative to return to nature has been understood. Against this background, it takes up the question as to how the concept of nature is to be determined in contemporary thought.     

Passion or Perjury: Center or Circumference?

Are all transcendental claims a lost cause because they can have no objective empirical truth? Or does the transcendent still move among us as immanent, and, if so, how so? The question of ultimacy and the validity of the symbolic is considered through the views of Paul Ricoeur and Carl Jung.     

医学职业潜规则的颠覆与“伦理生态”的营造——论医学职业精神重构的第一要务

我国的医学职业精神重构是一项庞大的系统工程,目前的第一要务是营造良好的医学伦理生态,而要达到上述近远期目标,则必须从颠覆医学职业潜规则起步。颠覆是破,营造是立,二者相辅相成,而且都需要从认识的困惑与误区中走出来,都需要政府、卫生行政管理部门及其官员、医院院长和一线医务人员的同心协力。其中,政府、卫生行政管理部门及其官员合乎医学职业精神的积极作为是最为关键的首要环节。     

艾滋病人的临终关怀

中国已经面临艾滋病人发病和死亡的高峰期.对艾滋病人开展临终关怀,长期以来并没有得到学术界应有的重视.强调在宽容原则的指导下,在理解和尊重的社会环境中,从生理、心理和心灵三个方面关怀艾滋病人,并指出对艾滋病人开展临终关怀具有重大的意义.     

从"非心理学"视角看术语连等式:心理=心灵=精神——兼议心理学"首席"术语的英汉互译

术语规范化是一门学科成熟的标志之一。作为现代心理学“首席”术语的心理,乃源自灵魂而非精神。从西方舶来后,却将它与精神和心灵混用,使心理学主干术语远离规范化的要求。从理论心理学“本土化”的研究取向出发,本着以“我”为主的学术立场,建议按术语单义性和大众习惯性的原则来英译心理学中三个主干术语—心理、心灵和精神。