Feminized AIs designed for in-home verbal assistance are often subjected to gendered verbal abuse by their users. I survey a variety of features contributing to this phenomenon—from financial incentives for businesses to build products likely to provoke gendered abuse, to the impact of such behavior on household members—and identify a potential worry for attempts to criticize the phenomenon; while critics may be tempted to argue that engaging in gendered abuse of AI increases the chances that one will direct this abuse (...) toward human beings, the recent history of attempts to connect video game violence to real-world aggression suggests that things may not be so simple. I turn to Confucian discussions of the role of ritualized social interactions both to better understand the roots of the problem and to investigate potential strategies for improvement, given a complex interplay between designers and device users. I argue that designers must grapple with the entrenched sexism in our society, at the expense of “smooth” and “seamless” user interfaces, in order to intentionally disrupt entrenched but harmful patterns of interaction, but that doing so is both consistent with and recommended by Confucian accounts of social rituals. (shrink)

In this expansive and highly original two-volume work, Jim Behuniak reformulates John Dewey's late-period "Cultural turn" and proposes that its next logical step is an "intra-Cultural philosophy" that goes beyond what is commonly known as "comparative philosophy." Each volume models itself on this new approach, arguing that early Chinese thought is poised to join forces with Dewey in meeting an urgent cultural need: namely, helping the Western tradition to correct its outdated Greek-medieval assumptions, especially where these result in pre-Darwinian inferences (...) about the world. Relying on the latest findings in Chinese philosophy, these volumes establish "specific philosophical relationships" between Dewey's ideas and early Chinese thought for this purpose, showing how together they can assist us in getting our thinking "back in gear" with the world as it is currently known through the biological, physical, and cognitive sciences. Volume One: Dao and Nature engages Dewey with themes generally associated with "Daoism," and includes discussion of the organization of organic form, teleology, cosmology, knowledge, the body, and technology. Volume One thus works to establish "Chinese natural philosophy" as an empirical framework in which to consider the cultural-level phenomena examined in Volume Two: Dao and Culture. (shrink)

What are the fundamental divisions in ethics? Which divisions capture the most important and basic options in moral theorizing? In this article, I reject the ‘Textbook View’ which takes the tripartite division between consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics to be fundamental. Instead, I suggest that moral theories are fundamentally divided into three independent divisions, which I call the neutral/relative division, the normative priority division, and the maximizing division. I argue that this account of the fundamental divisions of ethics better captures (...) the main concerns that normative ethicists have when assessing moral theories. It also helps us make progress in comparative ethics and makes visible theoretical possibilities obscured by the Textbook View. (shrink)

The contextual dimension of ren or li is celebrated in English studies of Confucian ethics. However, it often gives way to the issue of individual practice in studies concerning the relationship be...

The concept of the self and its relation to moral action is complex and subject to varying interpretations, not only between different academic disciplines but also across time and space. This paper presents empirical evidence from a cross-cultural study on the Buddhist and Confucian notions of self in SMEs in Vietnam and Taiwan. The study employs Hwang’s Mandala Model of the Self, and its extension into Shiah’s non-self-model, to interpret how these two Eastern philosophical representations of the self, the Confucian (...) relational self and Buddhist non-self, can lead to moral action. By demonstrating the strengths of the model, emphasizing how social and cultural influences constrain the individual self and promote the social person leading to moral action, the paper extends understanding of the self with empirical evidence of the mechanisms involved in organizational contexts. (shrink)

The proposed paper presents an argument in favor of a Rawlsian approach to ethics for Internet technology companies (den Hoven & Rooksby, 2008; Hoffman, 2017). Ethics statements from such companies are analyzed and shown to be utilitarian and teleological in nature, and therefore in opposition to Rawls’ theories of justice and fairness. The statements are also shown to have traits in common with Confucian virtue ethics (Ames, 2011; Nylan, 2008).

This article describes the development and teaching of a course on global engineering ethics in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. It outlines course objectives, methods, and contents, and instructor experience and plans for future development. This is done with the goal of helping educators to plan standalone courses and/or integrated modules on global engineering and technology ethics, which address challenges arising from the increasingly cross-cultural and international environments of contemporary technology and engineering practice. These efforts are motivated by the global (...) environments of engineering, as well as recent research in empirical moral psychology. Although this course was developed and taught in China, as a course on global engineering ethics taught to students from throughout the world, its approach could be beneficial elsewhere. (shrink)

In the Lunyu, Confucius remarks on the implausibility—or impossibility—of a life lacking in xin 信, reliability (2.22). In existing discussions of Confucian philosophy, this aspect of life is often eclipsed by greater emphasis on Confucian values such as ren 仁 (benevolence), li 禮 (propriety) and yi 義 (rightness). My discussion addresses this imbalance by focusing on reliability, extending current debates in two ways. First, it proposes that the common translation of xin as denoting coherence between a person’s words and deeds (...) is inadequate. The translation fails to capture the longer-term consistency in a person’s actions and behaviours in different circumstances across time. Second, it explores how the Lunyu passages discuss the processes of learning that prepare a person for reliable action. (shrink)

Engineering programs in the United States have been experimenting with diverse pedagogical approaches to educate future professional engineers. However, a crucial dimension of ethics education that focuses on the values, personal commitments, and meaning of engineers has been missing in many of these pedagogical approaches. We argue that a value-based approach to professional ethics education is critically needed in engineering education, because such an approach is indispensable for cultivating self-reflective and socially engaged engineers. This paper starts by briefly comparing two (...) prevalent approaches to ethics education in science and engineering: professional and philosophical. While we acknowledge that both approaches help meet certain ethics education objectives, we also argue that neither of these is sufficient to personally engage students in authentic moral learning. We make the case that it is important to connect ethics education to the heart, which is extensively driven by values, and present a value-based approach to professional ethics education. We provide some classroom practices that cultivate a safe, diverse, and engaging learning environment. Finally, we discuss the implications of a value-based approach to professional ethics education for curriculum design and pedagogical practice, including opportunities and challenges for engineering faculty eager to incorporate value-based inquiry into their classrooms. (shrink)

This paper explores whether MacIntyrean virtue ethics concepts are applicable in non-Western business contexts, specifically in SMEs in Taiwan, a country strongly influenced by the Confucian tradition. It also explores what differences exist between different polities in this respect, and specifically interprets observed differences between the Taiwanese study and previous studies conducted in Europe and Asia. Based on case study research, the findings support the generalizability of the MacIntyrean framework. Drawing on the institutional logics perspective and synthesizing this with MacIntyrean (...) concepts, the paper explains the differences between the studies largely by reference to the Confucian tradition operating at both the micro-level within firms and at the macro-level as a means of harmonizing the potentially competing institutional logics to which firms are subject. The recent weakening of this tradition, however, suggests that increased conflict may characterize the future. (shrink)

The present paper compares three models of modernized Confucian Ontology. The philosophers under debate belong to the most important, well-known and influential theoreticians in modern Taiwan and mainland China respectively. Through a contrastive analysis, the paper aims to critically introduce three alternative models of ontology, which have been developed from the Chinese philosophical tradition by the most well-known Taiwanese philosopher Mou Zongsan and by two most influential mainland Chinese theoreticians, Li Zehou and Chen Lai respectively. In this paper, I will (...) analyze and critically introduce Li Zehou’s and Chen Lai’s respective critiques of Mou Zongsan’s basic assumptions that have been reflected in his methodological paradigms, while also exposing some major differences within their own lines of thought. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, language is part of a social activity in both Wittgenstein and Xunzi 荀子, and for both clarification of language is central to their philosophical projects; the goal of this article is to explore the extent of resonance and discord that may be found when comparing these two philosophers. While for Xunzi, the rectification of names (zhengming 正名) is anchored in a regard for establishing, propagating, and/or restoring a harmonious social system, perspicuity is for Wittgenstein represented as a philosophical (...) end in itself. The article ventures study in particular the themes of perspicuity and aspect-perception in Wittgenstein together with the topics of correcting names and the cultivation of the heart-mind (xin 心) in the Xunzi. The aspiration of this project is to gain an overview of the role(s) of clarification projects in different philosophical traditions, all while not overlooking the different historical contexts and philosophical ends of these two philosophers. (shrink)

This essay attempts to provide a preliminary outline of a theory of identity. The first section addresses what the sociologist Niklas Luhmann has called ‘the problem of identity’, or, in other words, the mind–society (rather than the mind–body) problem: In how far can the internal (psychological) self and the external (social) persona be integrated into a unit? The second section of the essay briefly defines a basic vocabulary of a theory of identity. ‘Identity’ is understood as the existentially necessary formation (...) of a coherence between the ‘self’ (the ‘I’ as it is experienced in thoughts and feelings), its body and its social ‘persona’ (the individual person with its social attributes). Three different major paradigms of identity formation are distinguished from one another: a sincere identity is constructed through a firm commitment of the self to its social roles; an authentic identity is constructed through the creation of a social persona on the basis of one’s unique and original self; a ‘profilic’ identity, as we call it, is shaped by successfully presenting a personal profile under conditions of second-order observation as they prevail, for instance, in the social media, but also in other contemporary social systems. In the third section of the essay, we present a sketch of the historical sequence of these three paradigms of identity. Although these paradigms are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, it seems that sincerity flourished in pre-modern society, while authenticity came to prominence along with the functional differentiation of modern society and is now, along with the increased significance of second-order observation, gradually overshadowed by the influence of profilicity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTo assess the strength of Lloyd's conception of analogy, in particular, his innovative conceptual apparatus ‘the multidimensionality of reality’ and ‘the semantic stretch’, I propose the notion of hermeneutic mechanism as a rival tool of investigation. Hermeneutic mechanism manifests in the interaction of negative and positive hermeneutic forces, the dynamic interdependence between ideal universality and contextualized individuality, and the organism-like ‘hermeneutic circle’. I argue that hermeneutic mechanism not only offers a meta-methodological perspective for appreciating Lloyd's methodological development of analogy for (...) cross-cultural studies, but also incorporates both Lloyd's quest for diversity and his critique of logical dichotomy, and moreover overcomes the explicatory flaw in his ‘multidimensionality of reality’ and colour metaphor. (shrink)

In contemporary Western moral philosophy literature that discusses the Chinese ethical tradition, it is a commonplace practice to use the Chinese term daode 道德 as a technical translation of the English term moral. The present study provides some empirical evidence showing a discrepancy between the terms moral and daode. There is a much more pronounced difference between prototypically immoral and prototypically uncultured behaviors in English (USA) than between prototypically bu daode 不道德 and prototypically bu wenming 不文明 behaviors in Mandarin Chinese (...) (Mainland China). If the Western concept of immorality is defined in contraposition to things that are matters of etiquette or conventional norms and thus tied to a more or less tangible moral / conventional distinction, then we are dealing with a different structure in Mandarin Chinese – the prototypically bu daode and bu wenming behaviors seem to largely overlap. We also discuss whether bu lunli 不倫理 and bu hefa 不合法 can be considered adequate candidates for translation of immorality and we answer in the negative. (shrink)

When should you engage with difficult arguments against your cherished controversial beliefs? The primary conclusion of this book is that your obligations to engage with counterarguments are more limited than is often thought. In some standard situations, you shouldn't engage with difficult counterarguments and, if you do, you shouldn't engage with them open-mindedly. This conclusion runs counter to aspects of the Millian political tradition and political liberalism, as well as what people working in informal logic tend to say about argumentation. (...) -/- Not all misleading arguments wear their flaws on their sleeve. Each step of a misleading argument might seem compelling and you might not be able to figure out what's wrong with it. Still, even if you can't figure out what's wrong with an argument, you can know that it's misleading. One way to know that an argument is misleading is, counterintuitively, to lack expertise in the methods and evidence-types employed by the argument. When you know that a counterargument is misleading, you shouldn't engage with it open-mindedly and sometimes shouldn't engage with it at all. You shouldn't engage open-mindedly because you shouldn't be willing to reduce your confidence in response to arguments you know are misleading. And you sometimes shouldn't engage closed-mindedly, because to do so can be manipulative or ineffective. -/- In making this case, Jeremy Fantl discusses echo chambers and group polarization, the importance in academic writing of a sympathetic case for the opposition, the epistemology of disagreement, the account of open-mindedness, and invitations to problematic academic speakers. (shrink)

Indirect situationist critiques of virtue ethics grant that virtue exists and is possible to acquire, but contend that given the low probability of success in acquiring it, a person genuinely interested in behaving as morally as possible would do better to rely on situationist strategies - or, in other words, strategies of environmental or ecological engineering or control. In this paper, I develop a partial answer to this critique drawn from work in early Confucian ethics and in contemporary philosophy and (...) psychology. From early Confucian ethics, I lean on the concept of li, or ritual. Ritual represents both a set of situational manipulations that are especially effective at directly producing moral behavior and at indirectly cultivating virtue over time, and also a virtue that consists of facility with and expertise in these situational manipulations. Appealing to the particular example of social power, I then argue that one is justified in attempting to acquire virtue if one knows that one will frequently encounter circumstances in which purely situationist strategies lose effectiveness, if these circumstances also carry moral urgency: the risk of great harm or opportunity for great benefit to others is high, and if utilizing the potent combination of situationist strategies and virtue envisioned by the early Confucians as ritual is possible. (shrink)

This essay explores the contractual dimension in Confucianism. It demonstrates that essential to Confucianism is the concept of three contracts: the contract of mind with oneself, the cultural contract with society and community; and the moral contract with humanity and the universe at large. Confucianism may not be labelled as contractualism. Nonetheless one would not have an adequate understanding of Confucianism without a view of the contractual dimension of Confucianism. Confucianism may not be labelled as realism. However, essential to Confucianism (...) is the idea of the total unity of the self, society, and the world, and the total harmony of heaven, earth, and humankind. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe question of the relation between humans and nature lies at the foundation of any philosophy. With the daily worsening environmental crisis, we are forced to face this ancient question again. Yet when we put it into the form of ‘humans and nature’, a metaphysics is already implied and the problem of nature has not yet been questioned. At this moment, the very question that needs to be put forward is, ‘What is nature’? The question of nature will be interrogated (...) through a comparative view in this essay. First, I argue the modern understanding of nature lies at the root of today’s environmental problems. Then, I go back to early Daoism to explore Daoist thinking on ziran. The meaning of ‘dao emulates ziran’ is brought to light through a detailed interpretation of the ziran of dao and things. Ziran penetrates the dao, the heavenly, the earthly and the human. It is with the understanding of ziran that the nature of humans and all things are illuminated. Heidegger’s... (shrink)

One area of the East–West comparative philosophy that has received a good deal of attention in recent years is the relationship between Confucianism and American Pragmatism. Scholars engaging these traditions have argued that they are mutually elucidating and mutually reinforcing. Often, upon locating resonance between a Confucian philosopher and an American Pragmatist philosopher, scholars combine the conceptual resources of the two, developing a Confucian–Pragmatist hybrid concept or theory. Some critics have been skeptical of the alleged compatibility between Confucian and American (...) Pragmatism, holding that proper understanding of Confucian and American Pragmatist traditions reveals an unbridgeable incommensurability between the two. This article describes the state of the comparative scholarship on Confucianism and American Pragmatism, identifying thematic trends and areas of debate. In addition, some lines of scholarship that might augment this area of comparative philosophy are suggested. (shrink)

In recent years, it has become a popular trend for the scholars in comparative philosophy to interpret Confucian moral theory by means of Aristotelian virtue ethics. However, this interpretation overlooks the relation-centred characteristics of Confucian ethics that is lacking in Aristotelian ethics. In this article, I will argue that there is relation-based ethics in the Western tradition—the ethics of Thomas Aquinas. By examining Aquinas's theory of love, I will show the relational characteristics of his ethics. I will use Aquinas's theory (...) of love to interpret three important points of Confucian ethics: filial reverence and material support are both integral parts of xiao孝 (filial piety); the importance of remonstration for xiao; and the symmetrical features of Confucius's virtues. (shrink)

In this volume, leading scholars in Asian and comparative philosophy take the work of Joel J. Kupperman as a point of departure to consider new perspectives on Confucian ethics. Kupperman is one of the few eminent Western philosophers to have integrated Asian philosophical traditions into his thought, developing a character-based ethics synthesizing Western, Chinese, and Indian philosophies. With their focus on Confucian ethics, contributors respond, expand, and engage in critical dialogue with Kupperman’s views. Kupperman joins the conversation with responses and (...) comments that conclude the volume. (shrink)

Engineering is a social enterprise. A successful engineering career depends on how engineers manage their relationships with diverse stakeholders including managers, clients, contractors, and the p...

1. When we face a choice among conflicting actions, it is necessary to prioritize one action over others. This paper explores the issue of whether there is a universal priority, and if so, how we c...

Interpretations of Nietzsche as a virtue theorist have proliferated in recent years as commentators have sought to read him as a modern eudaimonistic philosopher while also attempting to show what makes his contribution to this tradition valuable and distinctive.1While some commentators still contend that interpreting Nietzsche as a eudaimonist is antithetical to his overtly-stated philosophical aims,2 over the last decade there has been a upsurge of support for such readings, especially from commentators who emphasise what they claim is the pervasive (...) influence of the Hellenistic tradition on his work. Keith Ansell-Pearson has argued that Epicurus was a key influence on Nietzsche’s middle period, for example; whereas Michael Ure has claimed that the Stoic thought of Seneca and Epictetus was also highly influential.3 Nevertheless, even those commentators who agree that Nietzsche can be informatively situated, or is even best situated, within the Hellenistic tradition cannot agree on two seemingly-intractable puzzles which any virtue-theoretical reading must solve in order to give a full account of his moral philosophy. The puzzles can be stated as follows: Puzzle 1: Which character traits does Nietzsche endorse as virtues? Puzzle 2: What is Nietzsche’s ethical ideal? This article offers an exegetical strategy to shed light on both puzzles, especially the first one regarding which character traits Nietzsche endorses as virtues which, as we shall see, is tougher to answer by a straightforward appeal to his texts. To elucidate this puzzle, I will propose that his approving comments regarding excellence-based moral philosophy indicate that his own ethics is also structured in terms of an ethical ideal with a requisite set of virtues which, following his ancient philosophical influences, he views as fundamentally connected. As Julia Annas notes, one the most distinctive ‘assumptions which ancient theories make [is] the relationship of [our] virtues to our final end’,4 and given Nietzsche’s interest in, and apparent endorsement of, ancient eudaimonism – especially compared to his invariably scathing remarks on the modern deontological and utilitarian traditions – we have reason to think that he shares this view.5 What is significant for this article, however, is that Nietzsche’s commitment to a kind of eudaimonism modelled on the ancient world offers a potential way to solve both puzzles. If his virtues and ethical ideal are connected in a similar way to ancient eudaimonistic theories, then understanding his ethical ideal allows us to infer which character traits he endorses as virtues, and vice versa. Although it might be objected that a method tackling both puzzles in tandem would be unworkable if their solutions were contained in each other, in what follows I will show that Nietzsche’s extensive comments on his ethical ideal of ‘becoming what one is’ positions us in a strong position to infer which character traits he prizes most highly. I will call these character traits ‘virtues of self-cultivation’. (shrink)

If one cannot establish givens, such as Platonic ideas, or determiners, such as Kantian categories, as a point of departure for philosophical inquiry, then how is philosophical inquiry to proceed in a non-question-begging manner? This, of course, is the familiar problem of grounding philosophical discourse. In this essay, I hope to offer a Zhuangzian solution—that is, a solution derived from analysis of the Zhuangzi 莊子 text—to this perennial philosophical problem. As a result, I hope to give the reader a critical (...) glimpse into a Zhuangzian philosophy without foundations, thereby providing a potential solution to the preceding problem while displaying the continued relevance of the Zhuangzi text. (shrink)

Chenyang Li’s new book, The Philosophy of Confucian Harmony, has been heralded as the first book-length exposition of the concept of harmony in the approximately 3,000 year old Confucian tradition. It provides a systematic analysis of Confucian harmony and defence of its relevance for contemporary moral and political thought. In this philosophical discussion of Li’s book, I expound its central claims, contextualize them relative to other salient work in English-speaking Confucian thought, and critically reflect on them in light of a (...) conception of harmony that is salient in the sub-Saharan African tradition. Hence, this article aims to continue the nascent dialogue between indigenous Chinese and African philosophical traditions that has only just begun. Li responds to this critical notice in the same issue of the journal. (shrink)

To the question “What normative ethical theory does early Confucianism best represent?” researchers in the history of early Confucian philosophy respond with more than half a dozen different answers. They include sentimentalism, amoralism, pragmatism, Kantianism, Aristotelian virtue theory, care ethics, and role ethics. The lack of consensus is concerning, as three considerations make clear. First, fully trained, often leading, scholars advocate each of the theories. Second, nearly all participants in the debate believe that the central feature of early Confucianism is (...) its moral thought. However, these normative ethical theories are logically inconsistent with one another, the third point. The entailment is unavoidable: the majority of scholars of early Confucian normative ethics must be incorrect about their attributions of a normative theory to early Confucianism. It would appear, then, that we need a new dao 道 or pathway for the study of early Confucian moral thought. One alternative is to adopt an immersively interdisciplinary research methodology that pivots on the recognition that early Confucianism is a social-functional system the governing purpose of which is to influence cultural leaders. (shrink)

This essay explores the correlation between shu 恕 and ren 仁 in Confucius’ teachings and its broader implications concerning the role of the golden rule. It first shows that whereas the golden rule is premised on equality between agent and recipient, Confucius’ correlation of shu with ren aims mainly at establishing a more solid foundation for the hierarchy-specific duty of the ruler to care for the ruled. It thus reveals that this conflict arises from the golden rule’s incompatibility with asymmetrical (...) relationships, a long-standing issue concerning its validity as a moral axiom. It then addresses this conflict by demonstrating that the golden rule can effectively function in conformity with humanity even in asymmetrical relationships by way of inducing an agent’s viewpoint to shift from existing sociopolitical asymmetry to one-to-one human equality. On this basis, lastly, it examines the concurrence of the ideas of shu, human nature, and ren in ancient China. (shrink)

This article examines the reasons early Confucians offer to support the belief that clothing is formative of its wearer’s character, as well as the arguments other early Chinese texts raise to object to it. It focuses on early Confucian discourses about three representative items of clothing, including the cap used in the coming-of-age ceremony, the accessories made by jade, and a style of clothing named shenyi 深衣. These cases demonstrate that, in early Confucian thought, clothing is said to be able (...) to shape the wearer’s character by registering in the wearer its moral symbolism with both psychological-cognitive and bodily means. While this emphasis on symbolism also invites objections that undermine the normative status early Confucians want to ascribe to a specific style of clothing, their discourses still enrich the current understanding of Confucian self-cultivation, in terms of both its method and goals. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLaozi is the most translated Chinese text. It has profound philosophical thoughts and is written in a pithy style. It is essential to present its cultural, social, and historical contexts t...

Within educational philosophy and theory, there has been an international re-turn to envision study as an alternative formation to disrupt the defining learning logic. As an enrichment, this paper articulates “Daoist onto-un-learning” as an Eastern form of study, drawing upon Roger Ames’s interpretation of the ancient Chinese correlative cosmology and relational personhood thinking. This articulation is to dialogue with the conceptualizations of study shared by Giorgio Agamben, Derek Ford, and Tyson Lewis, and unfolds in three steps. First, I examine how (...) their conceptualizations of study constrain the studier-doing-study logic as a commonsensical expression of “foundational individualism” and anthropocentric disordering. Second, re-invoking the ancient Chinese wisdom, I envision “Daoist onto-un-learning” as a non-individualistic and non-anthropocentric form of study, re-configuring study and learning no longer as two disparate, if not necessarily oppositional, formations but into a Daoist bipolar yin-yang movement. Finally, I story-tell my doctoral research experience as a Daoist onto-un-learning journey, a spiralling learning-study movement, to unpack the ways it suspends and overturns the modern-Western trap/trope of anthropocentric-foundational individualism. In so doing, this paper further internationalizes and supplements the current study scholarship in relation to learning in a way so-far hardly explored yet cross-culturally provocative. (shrink)

The Chinese tianrenheyi thesis bespeaks a correlative cosmology irreducible to the Western metaphysics. This article historicizes tianrenheyi for new implications to help rethink the given concepts of ‘person/thing,’ ‘environment/nature,’ and ‘relationality’ in contemporary ethical and environmental education in three steps. First, it turns to Yu Ying-Shih’s writing for a historical and ethical picture of tianrenheyi as an ‘Axial breakthrough’ in Confucius' time and with direct relevance to Confucian person-making education. Second, it moves on to Roger Ames’ unpacking of tianrenheyi as (...) hospitalized in a ‘correlative cosmology’ and ‘Confucian relational personhood’ to help us re-understand Confucian ‘person’ as being relational. Finally, it shows how these re-invoked philosophical–ethical–cosmological theses expose a ‘foundational individualism’ which grounds and confines current educational thinking to an anthropocentric ordering. As an alternative, this article calls for a productive symbiotic conjoining between humans and their cultural–natural environs toward nurturing today’s youth into ecologically literate, responsible, and responsive co-beings. (shrink)

An ongoing debate in comparative research is about whether we should see cultural diversities as manifestations of essential differences or as superficial variations on a universal blueprint. Edward Slingerland has pointed to cognitive science and the use of embodied metaphors to emphasize the universality of concept formation and cognition across cultures. He suggests that this should quiet the “cultural essentialists” who take fundamental differences in Eastern and Western thinking as their starting points. Michael Puett has also leveled a critique of (...) cultural essentialism in support of a presuppositionless approach, and Slingerland’s conclusions seem to offer him support. However, I will argue that even if all modern humans are broadly similar in metaphor use and cognitive processes, research in the humanities must continue to account for the differences implied by the particular metaphors employed and emphasized in diverse traditions. I contend that responsible hermeneutic practice does this through provisional, yet indispensable, generalizations. (shrink)

This article proposes to challenge the generally accepted argument that early Chinese cosmology transcended questions of gender by presenting a new analysis of the Xian 咸 and other relevant hexagrams in the Classic of Changes, as well as their classical commentaries. This new study shows that, the concept of the resonant gendered relation of husband and wife played a significant role in constructing social relations and cosmological modes implied in this significant classic. The harmonious husband–wife relation was placed at the (...) center of the social, political, and cosmic order. This may be one reason that from about the same period, Confucian moral and political philosophy always emphasized the importance of ordering one’s family before governing the state. In this sense, the Chinese cosmology, as seen in the Classic of Changes, does not transcend gender; on the contrary, it is gendered. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I shall briefly examine the basic characteristics of Confucian familial morality, especially of the concept of filial piety, and argue that ancient Confucians tend to be conservative on allowing breach of filial obligations although they may not entirely exclude particular considerations to exceptional situations to a certain degree. I shall then argue that this conservative aspect of the Confucian idea of filial piety accurately captures some distinctive features of familial relationships and may thus shed light on our (...) understanding of the ethical nature of human family life and our philosophical investigation of familial ethics. (shrink)

It is part of a global trend today that new relationships are being forged between religion and society, between spirituality and materiality, giving rise to announcements that we live in a ‘postsecular’ or ‘desecularized’ world. Taking up two educational movements, the mindfulness movement in the West and the revival of Confucian education in China, this paper examines what and how postsecular orientations and sensibilities penetrate educational discourses and practices in different cultural contexts. We compare the two movements to reveal a (...) new quality of hybrid modernization in that they react, in different ways, to certain pathologies that are identified as consequences of secular modernity. Burnout syndrome, the sense of a spiritual void, but also the loss of a spiritual and cultural identity are being perceived as correlating to a one-sided push towards a modernity that emphasizes secular rationalization over mindfulness and Westernization over cultural particularity. The two case studies mark a critical insight on the present condition and limits of secularism and highlights the ongoing negotiations of values and modes of self-cultivation in schools. In an increasingly pluralistic world, the entanglement of the secular, spiritual, religious and wisdom traditions provides the opportunity to rethink education as a creative realm and an impossible possibility to re-engage the minds and lives of those in the hybrid pedagogical time. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis 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’. This reading of Zhuangzian role-playing provides a fresh perspectives on ‘playing’ or ‘rambling’ as the central philosophical concept in the Zhuangzi. (shrink)

The Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra criticizes the traditional practice of dwelling in an isolated place for self-cultivation and advocates returning to the human realm with a liberated mind and compassionate engagement. This new theory of detachment aims at defining the Bodhisattva, a new ideal character, for the rising Mahāyāna movement. In his theory of eremitism at court, Guo Xiang 郭象 describes a sage image of governing the empire with a detached mind. This image is invested with the concept of self-liberation from (...) reality and defines a new ideal character that actively engages in sociopolitical affairs while becoming freed from personal concerns. Guo Xiang’s sage image is similar to the Bodhisattva image in several aspects, and textual and historical evidence shows that Guo likely read the two early translations of the Aṣṭasāhasrikā and other Buddhist texts and was influenced by them to a certain extent. With the influence of Buddhist ideas, Guo completed the Mysterious Learning’s mission of harmonizing the teaching of names with spontaneity. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss subjective desire and its subtle relationship with moral facts based on a comparative study of the Analects of Confucius and the Lotus Sutra. I pick out two points in this pair of classics in order to examine their ideas about accessing the highest wisdom: (1) the relationship between desire and Confucian ren, humanity, benevolence or virtue in the Analects, and (2) the role of learning and the ontological status of the mind and the world in (...) the Lotus Sutra. Through comparative study, I argue that the Confucian Analects and the Lotus Sutra contain two different versions of desire-based subjectivism (DBS). The difference is that Confucianism is an example of desire-based moral subjectivism (DBS-moral), and the Lotus Sutra demonstrates desire-based ontological subjectivism (DBS-ontological). (shrink)

The idea of technocracy has been widely criticized in Western literature in the philosophy and sociology of technology. A common critique of technocracy is that it represents an “antidemocratic” and “dehumanizing” ideology. This paper invites Western scholars to reconsider their oppositions to technocracy by drawing on resources from Confucian ethics. In doing so, this paper synthesizes the major ethical challenges of technocracy mainly concerned by Western scholars in philosophy, political theories, sociology, and policy studies. This paper argues that incorporating Confucian (...) resources such as the rule of virtue into technocracy may be helpful for reexamining these ethical challenges to technocracy that are deeply rooted in Western liberal democratic ideologies. The Confucian rule of virtue means that social policies should be made by the virtuous and capable and these policies need to have impacts on the moral progress of the society. Confucian values provide ethical guidance for technocrats in assessing the moral quality of the sociotechnical systems they build. From the Confucian perspective, sociotechnical systems are often assessed based on the criterion whether and how these sociotechnical systems contribute to a process of harmonization. This paper will introduce some practical cases that demonstrate how technical experts and expertise contribute to organizational and social management. In these cases, virtues and the rule of virtue do play a crucial role: virtues either determine the selection of technocrats and the legitimization of their political power or are embedded in engineering design and affect human behavior in the use context. (shrink)

Engineering ethics calls the attention of engineers to professional codes of ethical responsibility and personal values, but the practice of ethics in corporate settings can be more complex than either of these. Corporations too have cultures that often include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and policies, but few discussions of engineering ethics make any explicit reference to CSR. This article proposes critical attention to CSR and role ethics as an opportunity to help prepare engineers to think through the ethics of (...) their professional practice. After a brief overview of the evolution of social responsibility within engineering ethics in the United States, this article shares empirical research with practicing engineers in the mining and energy industries to explore how their formal ethics training did and did not prepare them to grapple with the ethical dimensions of their professional practice. It then illustrates the ways in which these dilemmas and the strategies employed for navigating them are framed within CSR policies and practices and resonate more strongly with role ethics rather than ethical theory as currently taught in most US engineering programs. The article concludes that engineering ethics teaching and learning would benefit from explicitly incorporating critical discussions of role ethics and CSR. (shrink)

توماس لویس تلاش می‌کند نشان دهد که چرا تاریخ برای فلسفۀ دین اهمیت دارد. وی استدلال می‌کند که فهم اینکه چهره‌های اثرگذار در تاریخ مدرن فلسفۀ دین چگونه تلاش می‌کرده‌اند مفهوم دین را متحول کنند، هم اهمیت مطالعات تاریخی برای فلسفۀ دین را نشان می‌دهد و هم محوریت فلسفۀ دین را در مجموعۀ مطالعات دینی نمایان می‌سازد. وی تلاش می‌کند نمایان سازد که چگونه نشان داده شدن مسیرهای پیموده شده در فلسفۀ دین با مطالعۀ تاریخ فلسفه می‌تواند به پیشبرد فلسفۀ (...) دین کمک کند. در این نوشته، نشان خواهیم داد که چگونه می‌توان استدلال لویس را به اهمیت مطالعۀ سنت‌های مختلف فکری در فلسفۀ دین نیز گسترش داد. با استفاده از صورت‌بندی‌ای که رابرت نویل از «فلسفۀ مقایسه‌ای هنجاری» می‌کند، از سویی، و پیاده‌سازی آن از باب نمونه بر نگاه هگل به رابطۀ ایمان و عقل، از سوی دیگر، تلاش خواهیم کرد نشان دهیم که نه تنها مطالعۀ تاریخ فلسفۀ دین در یک سنت می‌تواند به پیشبرد فلسفۀ دین در آن سنت کمک کند، بلکه مطالعۀ تاریخ فلسفۀ دین در سنت‌های مختلف فلسفی نیز می‌تواند برای پیشرفت در مواجهه با مسائل فلسفۀ دین الهام‌بخش باشد. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 68-83.