The influence of Confucianism: a narrative study of Hong Kong teachers’ understanding and practices of school guidance and counselling

School guidance seeks to promote the whole person growth of students. It is regarded as an integral part of an educational programme. In Hong Kong secondary schools, a team of teachers are responsible for school guidance. This article examines how guidance teachers made sense of their caring work in general and specifically the counselling services they offered to students. With the use of a narrative analysis and personal experience methods, the study explores the experience of guidance teachers in counselling. Twelve in-service teachers who had enrolled in the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education were interviewed. The influence of the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism, emerging as a theme from the data, was prominent, as its key principles were incorporated into the teachers’ personal systems of counselling. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong schools. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive approaches to counselling and culturally competent practices for helping are discussed.     

Stonewalling through Schizophrenia: An Anti-Gay Rights Culture in Hong Kong?

With its British colonial legacy and Chinese make-up, Hong Kong provides a stimulating stadium and lens through which to examine the validity of the use of “culture” in arguing against homosexuality and the development and protection of the rights of sexual minorities. After a brief account on the legal developments in Hong Kong on homosexuality, this article examines how the argument that Hong Kong has an inherently anti-gay rights culture, which simultaneously emphasizes Confucianism and Christianity, and which the government then uses to stonewall the development and protection of the rights of sexual minorities, merely illuminates an underlying schizophrenia as to what that culture actually is. In the process of my diagnosis, I will also discuss whether Confucianism and Christianity indeed oppose homosexuality and sexual minority rights.

儒家经典英译与儒家思想的跨文化传播

儒家经典是中国传统文化的瑰宝。儒家经典的外译特别是英译,一直是西方国家了解中国文化的重要途径之一,也为西方读者提供了更为广阔的欣赏儒家思想的空间。儒家经典英译其本质是一种跨文化传播活动。儒家经典众多的译本由于译者的背景、传播目的和目标受众的不同,也呈现出不同的风格。     

齐鲁饮食文化形态中的儒学思想

齐鲁饮食文化深受儒学思想的影响,形成了一定文化形态的饮食观念,影响人们的日常生活,并在一定的时间和空间范围内起着促进或制约社会发展的作用。齐鲁饮食习俗中“上顺天道、适时进食”的自然生态观,“长幼有序、进食有礼”的礼俗观,“敬天爱人”和谐观,“孝敬父母、以和为贵”伦理观,“以大惟美”待客观,是齐鲁饮食文化形态的主要特征,是儒学思想实现社会统治方略和社会管理的具体体现。新的历史时期,齐鲁饮食文化不断与时俱进,加强自身发展与对外交流,去粗存精引领社会饮食文化健康和谐发展。     

Ancient Chinese philosophical advice: can it help us find happiness today?

Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism are three main classic Chinese philosophy schools, which all deal with the question of how one should live. In this paper, we first review these ancient recommendations and next consider whether they promise a happy life in present-day society. Recommended behaviours found in the ancient texts are compared with conditions for happiness as observed in present-day empirical investigations. Classic Confucianism appears to offer the most apt advice for finding happiness in present-day society, in particular because it recommends that one should be involved in real life. Classic Taoist advice is second best: its strong point is that it advises us against too much social conformism and bookishness. The advice given by classic Buddhists is better not followed in modern society.     

Confucianism between Tradition and Modernity, Religion, and Secularization: Questions to Tu Weiming

The article discusses central assumptions of Tu Weiming’s program of overcoming the “enlightenment mentality” and throws a critical light on his conceptions of religious or spiritual Confucianism, of a Confucian modernity, and of the “multiple modernities” theory in general. It defends a unitary rather than multiple concept of modernity in terms of the realization of a morally controlled “principle of free subjectivity” and tries to show how Confucianism, understood as a secular ethics, could contribute to this goal.     

The Ideal of Harmony in Ancient Chinese and Greek Philosophy

This article offers a study of the early formation and development of the ideal of harmony in ancient Chinese philosophy and ancient Greek philosophy. It shows that, unlike the Pythagorean notion of harmony, which is primarily based on a linear progressive model with a pre-set order, the ancient Chinese concept of harmony is best understood as a comprehensive process of harmonization. It encompasses spatial as well as temporal dimensions, metaphysical as well as moral and aesthetical dimensions. It is a fundamentally open notion in the sense that it does not aim to conform to any pre-set order. This broader, richer, and more liberal understanding of harmony has had a profound influence on Chinese culture as whole in its long history.     

《易传》"立象以尽意"思想发微

“言”、“象”、“意”之间的关系问题,是易学研究中一个至关重要的问题。以老庄道家“言不尽意”论立论,《易传》作者不仅第一次明确提出了“言不尽意”的命题,而且首创“立象以尽意”之说,不仅实现了《周易》由卜筮之书到哲学之书的整体转换,而且完成了儒道言意思想的创造性整合,从而确立了其在中国思想文化史上至为重要的地位。至于“象”能否尽“意”,《易传》作者并没有说。没有说并不等于没有问题。而这个问题在其后的提出和讨论,则不仅直接引发了魏晋玄学的“言意之辨”,实现了两汉经学向魏晋玄学的转换和玄学本体论哲学的理论建构,而且通过玄学“言意之辨”,即按照“言不尽意”和“得意忘言”的理论和方法,不仅为佛教的中国化和宋明理学的综合创新开辟了广阔的道路,同时也为以“意象”为核心的中国审美文化的繁荣和发展奠定了坚实的思想理论基础,而这也正是《易传》“立象以尽意”思想的意义和价值所在。     

儒家思想对于现代心理咨询的启示

儒家思想曾居中国传统文化主导地位。鉴于文化的传承性和对心理健康作用的必然性,儒家思想的心理咨询价值应当充分关注。文章强调,不宜刻板化否定儒家思想的心理咨询价值。基于心理咨询的常见问题,文章初步讨论了儒家思想对心理咨询可能有贡献的9个领域：人生意义、应对、生死教育、哀伤辅导、心理调节、人际认知、社会生活技能、人格发展、心理咨询技术等。进而,讨论了以儒家思想为资源,以心理学为目的,通过整理和发现、发展、操作化和验证等环节,构建儒家心理咨询学说的方法论问题     

孟子与马斯洛思想中理想人格的比较

中国儒家主要代表之一的孟子,和西方人本主义心理学创始人之一的马斯洛,这两位身处不同时空的学者在各自的思想中塑造的理想人格却具备了许多共通之处。该文从理想人格的提出、形成基础、特征以及实现途径几个方面进行了比较,从而为现代社会理想人格的塑造提供有益启示。