Xiong Shili on the Nature,the Mind and the Origin of Badness as Evidenced in Ming Xin Pian 明心篇 (Explaining the Mind )

The question of the origin of badness is a core problematic in New Confucian philosopher Xiong Shili’s 熊十力 (1885–1968) Ming Xin Pian明心篇 (Explaining the Mind; 1959), a work representative of his thought towards the end of his life. In this essay, I examine how Xiong uses the concepts of the nature (xing 性) and the mind (xin 心) to explain the origin of moral badness. Xiong asserts that the Buddhists never concerned themselves with the problem of the origin of ignorance and delusion, afflictions that in turn lead to suffering and wrongdoing. Xiong sets out to redress what he claims the Buddhists had failed to do. I argue that the conceptual structure of both Xiong Shili’s and Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130–1200) theoretical approaches to this problem are isomorphic. The isomorphism is significant because it suggests that Xiong consciously drew on Zhu Xi and/or the Buddhist models that Zhu in turn drew on. I provide evidence to show that even as late as 1959, and despite his increasingly entrenched criticisms of Buddhism, Xiong continued to draw on key concepts and models drawn from Buddhist philosophy of mind.     

Death, Badness, and the Impossibility of Experience

Some have argued (following Epicurus) that death cannot be a bad thing for an individual who dies. They contend that nothing can be a bad for an individual unless the individual is able to experience it as bad. I argue against this Epicurean view, offering examples of things that an individual cannot experience as bad but are nevertheless bad for the individual. Further, I argue that death is relevantly similar.     

Reaching for Virtue, Stumbling on Sin: Concepts of Good and Evil in a Postmodern Era

Although our culture struggles to understand the origins and nature of good and evil behavior, the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis contribute to the discourse primarily indirectly. By examining early Judaism and Christianity, the authors seek to clarify the foundation of contemporary understanding of good and evil in Western society. Looking through the multiple filters of religion, philosophy, psychoanalysis and psychology, groundwork is laid for definitions of good and evil, which can be understood subjectively and measured objectively. As we investigate morality, will, and choice in the varied ologies and across time, we note how much emotion and volition are secondary in modern thinking about evil. Moreover, the place of will as a positive force in development is largely ignored, except by prescient thinkers like Otto Rank. To grasp evil's nature we need to integrate past with present, contrast conscious to unconscious desires, and allow that being bad is not necessarily unnatural or pathological, but can be a transitional stage in the growth of one's conscience.     

Your death might be the worst thing ever to happen to you (but maybe you shouldn’t care)

Deprivationism cannot accommodate the common sense assumption that we should lament our death iff, and to the extent that, it is bad for us. Call this the Nothing Bad, Nothing to Lament Assumption. As such, either this assumption needs to be rejected or deprivationism does. I first argue that the Nothing Bad, Nothing to Lament Assumption is false. I then attempt to figure out which facts our attitudes concerning death should track. I suggest that each person should have two distinct attitudes toward death: one determined by agent’s reasonable expectations about when she will die and one determined by the amount of metaphysically possible good one reasonably believes death precludes.