Mou Zongsan incorrectly uses Kant's practical reason to interpret Confucianism. The saying that "what is it that we have in common in our minds? It is the il 理 (principles) and the yi 义 (righteousness)" reveals how Mencius explains the origin of il and yi through a theory of common sense. In "the li and the yi please our minds, just as the flesh of beef and mutton and pork please our mouths," "please" is used twice, proving aesthetic judgment is (...) necessary to understanding Mencius. An analysis of Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming's ideas will show that Confucianism should be interpreted by appealing to aesthetic judgment, and a discussion of Kant's theory of judgment and Gadamer's critique of Kant's theory will support the same point. The conclusion is that Chinese moral philosophy should be interpreted through aesthetic judgment. /// 牟宗三以康德实践理性解说儒学是一错误思路。"心之所同然者何也?谓理 也，义也", 表明孟子以共通感论述理义来源, "理义之悦我心，犹当拳之悦我口" 两用 "悦" 字，证明应当以直感判断力解说孟子。分析朱子、阳明的一些言论证 明以直感判断力解说儒学则若合符节; 并引述康德关于判断力的相关学说、伽达 默尔对康德的批评支持上述论点; 从而主张，中国道德哲学宜以直感判断力来解 释。. (shrink)

Does a penny viewed at an angle in some sense look elliptical, as though projected on a two-dimensional surface? Many philosophers have said such things, from Malebranche (1674/1997) and Hume (1739/1978), through early 20th-century sense-data theorists, to Tye (2000) and Noë (2004). I confess that it doesn't seem this way to me, though I'm somewhat baffled by the phenomenology and pessimistic about our ability to resolve the dispute. I raise geometrical complaints against the view and conjecture that views of this (...) sort draw some of their appeal from over-analogizing visual experience to painting or photography. Theorists writing in contexts where vision is typically analogized to less-projective media--wax signet impressions in ancient Greece, stereoscopy in introspective psychology circa 1900--are substantially less likely to attribute such projective distortions to visual appearances. (shrink)

The traditional Chinese idea of t'ien‐jen‐ho‐i (Heaven and humanity in union) implies that humanity has to live in harmony with nature. As science and technology progress, however, the idea appears increasingly outmoded, and it becomes fashionable to talk about overcoming nature. Ironically, though, the further science reaches the more clearly are its limitations exposed. The exploitation of nature not only endangers many life forms on earth but threatens the very existence of the human species. I propose that a reconstruction of (...) the traditional Chinese idea of T'ien‐jen‐ho‐i will help us envisage a new and salutary relation between humanity and nature. (shrink)

Confucian ethics as applied to the study of business ethics often relate to the micro consideration of personal ethics and the character of a virtuous person. Actually, Confucius and his school have much to say about the morals of the public administration and the market institutions in a more macro level. While Weber emphasizes the role of culture on the development of the economy, and Marx the determining influence of the material base on ideology, we see an interaction between culture (...) – specifically Confucian business ethics – and the economy. In this paper, we are going to study this interaction in several crucial stages of development of Confucianism. The paper concludes by postulating the relevance of Confucian business ethics to the global knowledge economy. (shrink)

This essay attempts to contextualize the importance of Wang Yangming’s 王陽明 philosophy in terms of world philosophy in the manner of Goethe’s innovative plan for “world literature” (Weltliteratur). China has the long history of philosophizing rather than non-philosophy contrary to the glaring and inexcusable misunderstanding of Hegel the Eurocentric universalist or monist. In today’s globalizing world of multicultural pluralism, ethnocentric universalism has become outdated and outmoded. Transversality, which is at once intercultural, interspecific, interdisciplinary, and intersensorial, is a far more befitting (...) response than universality. In this context, what is focused and emphasized in Wang’s world philosophy is mainly fourfold. First, there is the unity or circularity of knowledge and action, that is, knowledge is the beginning of action, and action is the consummation of knowledge. Second, sincerity is the moral soul of Sinism as it is the enabling act of making perform all other virtues, including ren 仁. Third, in Sinism, including Wang’s philosophy, there is no Cartesian dualism in that the mind and the body are inseparable soulmates. Fourth, if ethics is prima philosophia, then geophilosophy is ultima philosophia to sustain and perpetuate all life-forms on earth (geo). (shrink)

This essay begins to explore the philosophical grounds on which Chinese literati thinkers came to legitimate, and in some cases value, alternative ways of life in the early modern era (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). In this essay I examine arguments from two such scholars, the flamboyant iconoclast Li Zhi 李贄 (1527–1602) and his lifelong friend, the historian and classicist Jiao Hong 焦竑 (1540–1620), to show how this interest in the empirical world led them away from their commitments to moral universalism (...) and toward an appreciation of the diversity and plurality of human moral values. (shrink)

This article uses the Confucian and Neo-Confucian slogan that we should strive to “form one body with all things” as a starting point for asking whether the organismic metaphors so central to their ontology might be compatible with and of service to contemporary thinkers in cognitive science and philosophy of mind who are actively pursuing a fully embodied theory of mind. In this article I draw upon lines of inquiry exemplified in the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson and (...) Andy Clark who take different routes to important conclusions that I argue would be even more convincing where they to be seen from within the context of an ontology that draws upon organismic rather than mechanistic metaphors. In short, this article draws attention to the largely unnoticed fact that a fully embodied understanding of mind, one that treats knowledge as a kind of active engagement with the world rather than as a purely cognitive state, points away from mechanistic metaphors and toward organismic ones. (shrink)

In the last part of Ethics Spinoza introduces the doctrine of the intellectual love of God: God loves himself with an infinite intellectual love. This doctrine has raised one of the most discussed puzzles in Spinoza scholarship: How can God have intellectual love if, as Spinoza says, God is Nature itself? After examining existing.approaches to the puzzle and revealing their failures, I will propose a Neo- Confucian approach to the puzzle. I will compare Spinoza's philosophy with Neo-Confucian philosophy and argue (...) that we can develop a new approach to the puzzle by appealing to the comparison. I conclude that the intellectual love of God can be properly understood from different perspectives. From God's perspective it is understood as the creative power of God. From an individual's perspective it is understood as the essence of this very individual. Moreover, once we combine these two perspectives we can reach what I consider to be the correct interpretation of Spinoza' s view: Given that intuitive knowledge and action are one and the same the intellectual love of God should be comprehended not only as man's final fulfillment of freedom through intuitive knowledge, but also as man's self-cultivation in practice. I maintain that a free man, as Spinoza endeavors to become, is equivalent to a Neo-Confucian sage. (shrink)