Early Daoism, as articulated in the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, indirectly addresses environmental issues by intimating a non-reductive naturalistic ethics calling on humans to be open and responsive to the specificities and interconnections of the world and environment to which they belong. "Dao" is not a substantial immanent or transcendent entity but the lived enactment of the intrinsic worth of the "myriad things" and the natural world occurring through how humans address and are addressed by them. Early (...) Daoism potentially corrects both anthropocentrism and biocentrism in environmental ethics by disclosing the things themselves in the context of the selfcultivation of life. Given increasing environmental devastation and the dominance of views, practices, and institutions reducing nature to a background and/or raw material for human activity, this "ethics of encounter" discloses the life of things as inexhaustibly more than human projects and constructs, extending ethical recognition and responsibility beyond social relations and the social self. (shrink)

Various esoteric traditions apply different modes of expression for the same metaphysical truths. We may name the two most known esoteric languages as ecstatic and scholastic. Early Daoist use of reverse symbolism as for metaphysical truths and its critical way of viewing formalist understanding of traditional teachings, common virtues and popular beliefs show that it applies an ecstatic language, which, being called shaṭḥ in Sufi terminology, has a detailed literature and technical description in Sufism. This article tries, after a (...) short survey of the concept of shaṭḥ in Sufism, to consider some early Daoist teachings such as wuwei, disparagement of moralism, and disparagement of rationality from an Eastern Sufi point of view regarding shaṭḥ to achieve a clearer insight into the gnostic aspects of the tradition, and to avoid certain possible misunderstanding of the teachings. (shrink)

Xuantong 玄同 (tentatively translated as dark oneness) is a unique Daoist idea that represents an ideally mental and physical state as a result of cultivation. However, owing to limited context in the Laozi, there is no consensus on the interpretation of xuantong. Contemporary studies have also neglected xuantong’s evolution in early texts and assumed a homogeneous understanding, and hence, failed to provide a nuanced account. In this article, I investigate how xuantong evolves from the Guodian Laozi to the Huainanzi (...) and Wenzi. I argue that although xuantong may originate from the Laozi, it is in the Wenzi that a coherent theory of xuantong is accomplished. This theory advocates an orderly process of cultivation that covers internal mental states, external acts, and integration with the whole universe. The cultivation would eventually lead people to adopt an undifferentiated perspective on, and reach oneness with, all things in the universe. (shrink)

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the (...) myriad things, and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

Ideas found in the early Daoist texts can inform current debates about disability, since the latter often involve assumptions about personhood and agency that Daoist texts do not share. The two canonical texts of classical Daoism, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi, do not explicitly discuss disability as an object of theory or offer a model of it. They do, however, provide conceptual resources that can enrich contemporary discussions of disability. Two particular ideas are discussed here. Classical Daoist thinking (...) about the body undermines normative assumptions about it that attributions of ‘disabled’ often depend upon; and Daoism vividly problematises the common inferential leap from perceived and pronounced incapacity to a more general judgment of “useless”. In conclusion, I suggest that Daoism’s skepticism and particularistic approach to experience suggest caution about the value of appealing to theoretical models of disability. (shrink)

I consider the intertextuality between Chinese and Western thought by exploring how images, metaphors, and ideas from the texts associated with Zhuangzi and Laozi were appropriated in early twentieth-century German philosophy. This interest in “Lao-Zhuang Daoism” encompasses a diverse range of thinkers including Buber and Heidegger. I examine how the problematization of utility, usefulness, and “purposiveness” in Zhuangzi and Laozi becomes a key point for their German philosophical reception; how it is the poetic character of the Zhuangzi that (...) hints at an appropriate response to the crisis and loss of meaning that characterizes technological modernity and its instrumental technological rationality; that is, how the “poetic” and “spiritual” world perceived in Lao-Zhuang thought became part of Buber's and Heidegger's critical encounter and confrontation with technological modernity; and how their concern with Zhuangzi does not signify a return to a dogmatic religiosity or otherworldly mysticism; it anticipates a this-worldly spiritual or poetic way of dwelling immanently within the world. (shrink)

Can we conceive of disorder in a positive sense? We organize our desks, we discipline our children, we govern our polities--all with the aim of reducing disorder, of temporarily reversing the entropy that inevitably asserts itself in our lives. Going all the way back to Hesiod, we see chaos as a cosmogonic state of utter confusion inevitably reigned in by laws of regularity, in a transition from fearful unpredictability to calm stability. In contrast to a similar early Chinese notion (...) of chaotic disorder (luan), early Daoists posit a type of chaos that is to be cultivated rather than feared. This chaos is a primal disorder, akin to Hesiod's, but rather than threatening disruption, it is replete with creative potential and through spontaneous action yields orderly processes that proceed from the concretion of things to their dissolution and back, in a complex web of relations. This processional activity, although taken in one sense as cosmogonic, in a more important sense is immanent at every moment of activity. This article identifies terms of chaos, such as dun dun 沌 沌, hundun 渾 沌, and xingming 涬 溟 in Laozi and Zhuangzi and examines the passages in which they occur. Analyzing these passages brings us to a better understanding of "chaos" in a Chinese sense and to a familiarity with related terms in its semantic field, such as xuan 玄 (dark, mysterious), miao 妙 (subtle/profound), wei 微 (minute/inchoate), xiao 小 (small/minute), and pu 樸 (uncarved block). We see that the Daoist ideal is to return to a chaotic inchoateness by melding with the cosmos and there finding a repository of creative potential. This notion of chaos as the inchoate is used a springboard into understanding the origins of Daoist spontaneity. (shrink)

In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emotions" in rendering early Chinese texts into English. Over time, sophisticated translators and interpreters have taken this advice to heart, and qing has come to be interpreted as "the facts" or "what is genuine in one." In these English terms all sense of interrelationality is gone, leaving us with a wooden, objective stasis. But we also know, again partly through the work (...) of Graham, that interrelationality was of fundamental importance in the early Chinese cosmology and that qing, by later carrying the meaning of "emotions," expressed that interrelationality. I take as my project in this article the recovery of an emotional adumbration in the qing of early Chinese texts, notably the Mencius, from which Graham begins his discussion. With an eye to explicating qing in the Mencius, and with a sensitivity to an implied notion of interrelationality in early texts, I survey early literature from the Shu Jing to late commentaries on the Yi Jing. I find that usages of qing and contexts in which qing is used inevitably illuminate it as key term in the evocation of interrelationality, shading it with emotional overtones. Emotions, of course, are inherently interrelational, and even more so in a Chinese world in which the internal and the external are in constant communication by way of a cosmic interchange of arousal and response among all things. That qing, as a term which later comes to explicitly mean "emotions," should have a centuries old convention of emotional connotation prior to its explicit definition should come as no surprise. The corroboration of this supposition entails a complex investigation and analysis, however, and it is a preliminary step in this investigation and analysis that I undertake here. (shrink)

This paper examines Confucian, Daoist and Legalist view of self-realization zide 自得.

The Early Han enjoyed some prosperity while it struggled with centralization and political control of the kingdom. The Later Han was plagued by the court intrigue, corrupt eunuchs, and massive flooding of the Yellow River that eventually culminated in popular uprisings that led to the demise of the dynasty. The period that followed was a renewed warring states period that likewise stimulated a rebirth of philosophical and religious debate, growth, and innovations. Alan K. L. Chan and Yuet-Keung Lo's Philosophy (...) and Religion in Early Medieval China is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on medieval China. It is a companion volume to their coauthored work, Interpretation and Literature in Early .. (shrink)

The first contribution, by Mercedes Valmisa, begins by repositioning the Zhuangzi 莊子 as a whole within pre-Qin thought under the impact of newly excavated materials. Moving away from the traditional classification of texts according to schools, it focuses instead on varying approaches to life issues. Centering the discussion on life situations and changes we have no control over, including the unpredictable vagaries of fate (ming 命), it outlines several typical responses. One is adaptation, finding ways to go along with what (...) life demands, and even availing oneself of the new opportunities it brings about. Another is a turning inward, a focus on the inner self, holding on to ethical and other standards and making sure on does the right thing regardless of the outcomes of one's actions. While the former appears in several chapters of the Zhuangzi, notably in chapter 6, the latter is central to the Qiongda yishi 窮達以時 (Failure and Success Depend on Opportunity), a manuscript excavated at Guodian. However tempting it may be to characterize one approach as Daoist and the other as Confucian, they both appear within the Zhuangzi together with a third approach to fate, showing the fluidity of philosophical discussion and the futility of thinking along the lines of traditional boundaries. (shrink)

Scholars working in philosophy of action still struggle with the freedom/determinism dichotomy that stretches back to Hellenist philosophy and the metaphysics that gave rise to it. Although that metaphysics has been repudiated in current philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the dichotomy still haunts these fields. As such, action is understood as distinct from movement, or motion. In early China, under a very different metaphysical paradigm, no such distinction is made. Instead, a notion of self-caused movement, or spontaneity, is (...) elaborated. In this article a general conception of spontaneity from early Daoism is explained, detailing its constituent aspects. Similar notions appeared from time to time in Western philosophy, and these instances are pursued, exploring how their instantiations differed from Daoist spontaneity and why. Based on these approximate examples of spontaneity and on early Daoist spontaneity, new criteria are postulated for a plausible theory of action that dispenses with presuppositions that eventuate in a freedom/determinism dichotomy, and instead the possibility is offered of a general model of action that can be applied smoothly across current philosophical and cognitive scientific subdisciplines. (shrink)

This paper explores the contribution of early Daoist thought to contemporary feminist philosophy. It has often been noted that the Daodejing stands in contrast to other texts of the same period in its positive evaluation of femininity and of values associated with the feminine. This paper takes a cautious approach to the Daoist concept of the feminine, noting in particular its emphasis on the characteristic of feminine submissiveness. On the other hand, the paper seeks to demonstrate that the Daoist (...) treatment of contrastive pairs--in particular, the Daoist notion of complementarity--provides a powerful conceptual scheme within which the notions of both femininity and masculinity may be articulated. (shrink)

The classical Chinese philosophical tradition (ca. 6th to 3rd centuries BCE) contains rich discussion of skill and expertise. Various texts exalt skilled exemplars (whether historical persons or fictional figures) who guide and inspire those seeking virtuosity within a particular dao (guiding teaching or way of life). These texts share a preoccupation with flourishing, or uncovering and articulating the constituents of an exemplary life. Some core features thought requisite to leading such a life included spontaneity, naturalness, and effortless ease. However, there (...) was also significant disagreement during this ‘Warring States’ or ‘Hundred Schools’ period on which skills were valuable, how one should cultivate them, and who exactly ought to serve as exemplars. In this chapter, I discuss two prominent types of expertise and their attendant skills. The first is expertise at a particular craft, occupation, or dao, which finds its most poignant celebration in the early Daoist anthology Zhuangzi. Interest in crafts or skilled occupations was likely motivated by a perceived (or implied) analogy with living a good life more generally. The second concerns ethical expertise, a prominent and widely held ideal within the Ruist (Confucian) and Mohist schools. Both maintain that ethical expertise consists of an ability to apply past models or precedents to current cases, though they diverge on what those models are and how to properly apply them. The aim is to provide non-specialists an overview of this literature in Daoism, Confucianism, and Mohism, while also providing suggestions about further research. (shrink)

One critique of the early Daoist texts associated with Laozi and Zhuangzi is that they neglect the human and lack a proper sense of ethical personhood in maintaining the primacy of an impersonal dehumanizing “way.” This article offers a reconsideration of the appropriateness of such negative evaluations by exploring whether and to what extent the ethical sensibility unfolded in the Zhuangzi is aporetic, naturalistic, and/or religious. As an ethos of cultivating life and free and easy wandering by performatively enacting (...) openness and responsiveness to things in an immanent this-worldly context, the Zhuangzi is oriented toward the relational attunement of disposition and practice rather than toward metaphysics or religion in a transcendent sense. It consequently suggests an immanent anarchic ethics without principles while neither forgetting nor reifying the sacred and the mundane in its playful illumination of the biospiritual dynamics of cultivating life. (shrink)

In this paper I consider two different perspectives on aesthetic experience. On the one hand, there is the tradition of Plato that proposes a metaphysical representation of the world in which sensible and over-sensible are rigidly separated. On the other hand, the early Chinese tradition of Daoism suggests an undivided experience of the world in which the aesthetic engagement with the myriad things (wanwu 萬物) makes actions effective. In particular, I consider how the Zhuangzi, one of the main (...) books of philosophical Daoism, offers an excellent opportunity to rethink the aesthetic experience of the world not as subordinated to epistemology or to the supersensible but as a possibility to adapt oneself to changing circumstances. (shrink)

This paper focuses on an early Chinese conception of genealogical argumentation in the late Warring States text Han Feizi and a possible response it has to the problem of genealogical self-defeat as identified by Amia Srinivasan —i.e., the genealogist cannot seem to support their argument with premises their interlocutor or they themselves can accept, given their own argument. The paper offers a reading of Han Fei’s genealogical method that traces back to the meditative practice of an earlier Daoist text (...) the Zhuangzi and its communicative strategy, providing a conception of genealogy aimed at undoing fixations on political systems in order to bring about a more adaptive state—specifically, genealogy that does not require epistemological commitment to its premises. (shrink)

In Chinese history the periods known as Spring and Autumn (770-476 BC) and the Warring States (475-221 BC) were times of conflict and political instability caused by the increasing power of centralized and competing states. During this time of crisis many schools of thought appeared to offer different philosophical doctrines. This paper describes and studies ideas about the limitation of power defended by these different schools of ancient Chinese thought, and suggests some reasons why they failed to prevent the emergence (...) of an authoritarian imperial government in early China. (shrink)

Confucian writings on ritual from the classical period (ca 8th-3rd centuries BCE), including instruction manuals, codes of conduct, and treatises on the origins and function of ritual in human life, are impressive in scope and repay careful engagement. These texts maintain that ritual participation fosters social and emotional development, helps persons deal with significant life events such as marriages and deaths, and helps resolve political disagreements. These early sources are of interest not only to historians and Sinologists, but also (...) to philosophers and social scientists; they contain enduring insights into the nature and status of rituals more generally. This chapter surveys classical Confucian theories of the origins and functions of ritual, and summarizes some strident critiques of them from contemporary thinkers in the Mohist, Daoist, and Legalist schools of thought. The aim is to indicate key issues as well as promising strategies for analyzing ritual in Confucian thought and action. (shrink)

The article explores the inner logic and defining features of Daoist freedom. It argues that Daoist freedom can be meaningfully understood as psychological hygiene, and it suggests that Daoist xuan-jie (懸解) can be rendered possible only if one can rid oneself of intensional suffering—an idea ultimately inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche. This comparative approach enables the article to contribute to the received way of understanding Daoist freedom by stressing its dialectics: by being at ease with one’s social and political environment, Daoist (...) freedom demands social criticism, calling for room for people to be able to act spontaneously so that all can nurture their distinctive natures and have a full and free exercise of their natural abilities. The article aims to achieve two objectives at once: it aims to argue for the understanding of Daoist freedom as psychological hygiene, and it defends this reading by bringing two dimensions of Daoist freedom into a consistent whole. In a constantly changing and increasingly pluralistic world, psychological hygiene and social criticism are both necessary for leading a robust and healthy human life. (shrink)

I argue that Zhuangist Daoism manifests what I label the spiritual aspiration to emulation, and then use this to challenge some of John Cottingham's attempts to confine authentic spiritual experience to theistic traditions.

Although significant differences undoubtedly exist between Daoism and Kant’s philosophy, the two systems also have some noteworthy similarities. After calling attention to a few such parallels and sketching the outlines of Kant’s philosophy of religion, this article focuses on an often-neglected feature of the latter: the four guiding principles of what Kant calls an “invisible church”. Numerous passages from Lao Zi’s classic text, Dao-De-Jing, seem to uphold these same principles, thus suggesting that they can also be interpreted as core (...) features of a Daoist philosophy of life. A crucial difference, however, is that members of a Daoist church would focus on contentment, whereas Kantian churches modeled on Christianity would strive for perfection. The article therefore concludes by considering what a synthesis might look like, if a Kantian church were to be based on a Daoist interpretation of these four fundamental principles. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explicate several general views and arguments that bear on the notion and contemporary theories of human welfare, as found in two foundational Daoist texts, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. Ideas drawn from the Daodejing include its objections to desire theories of human welfare and its distinction between natural and acquired desires. Insights drawn from the Zhuangzi include its arguments against the view that death is bad for the dead, its attempt to develop a workable theory of (...) well-being for those who are skeptical about such theories, and the prudential benefits of what I call "philosophical double-vision.". (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed (...) a philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

Mystical religious experiences typically purport to engage with the transcendent and often claim to involve encounters with spiritual entities or a detachment from the material world. Daoism diverges from this paradigm. This paper examines Daoist mystical experiences of bodily transformations and explores their epistemological implications. Specifically, we defend the justificatory power of Daoist somatic experiences against the disanalogy objection. The disanalogy objection posits that mystical experiences, in contrast to sense perceptions, are not socially verifiable and thereby lack prima facie (...) epistemic value. We argue that some Daoist mystical bodily states, being essentially spatiotemporal, are exempt from this challenge. This leads to a broader understanding of mysticism and offers a partial resolution to the disanalogy objection. (shrink)

Mystical religious experiences typically purport to engage with the transcendent and often claim to involve encounters with spiritual entities or a detachment from the material world. Daoism diverges from this paradigm. This paper examines Daoist mystical experiences of bodily transformations and explores their epistemological implications. Specifically, we defend the justificatory power of Daoist somatic experiences against the disanalogy objection. The disanalogy objection posits that mystical experiences, in contrast to sense perceptions, are not socially verifiable and thereby lack prima facie (...) epistemic value. We argue that some Daoist mystical bodily states, being essentially spatiotemporal, are exempt from this challenge. This leads to a broader understanding of mysticism and offers a partial resolution to the disanalogy objection. (shrink)

The Primitivist (responsible for chapters 8-11 of the heterogeneous Zhuangzi) has largely been interpreted as just another exponent of the philosophy of the Laozi or Daodejing. This is a shame, because the Primitivist is an idiosyncratic thinker whose theories do not simply reiterate those found in the Laozi. In this essay, I argue that even though the Primitivist embraced some of the values of the Laozi’s brand of Daoism, (e.g. simplicity, harmony with nature, being rid of knowledge, etc.) he (...) would have censured its prescriptions; he had little faith that order could be achieved through an emphasis on minimalism, by doing nothing, or by advocating a change (or reversal) in values. Instead, the Primitivist suggests that the only way to curb the massive disorder of the late Warring States period was to purge the world of its root causes—namely, of all the artifice that kept the masses in competitive, violent strife—and suppress their reappearance. Without such a purge, the masses would be helpless to lead a natural, instinctual, pre-reflective mode of existence. By advocating such a strategy, the Primitivist seems to have membership in what must be a very exclusive group: he is a Daoist who thinks the world can only be brought into order by doing something—indeed, doing a whole lot of unpleasant, nasty things. I thus situate the Primitivist within the trend toward authoritarianism that characterized the period in which he wrote (3rd century BCE). (shrink)

It should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with his concept of ‘negative capability’ and even a cursory understanding of Daoism that John Keats’ thought resonates strongly with that tradition. Given the pervasive, reductive understanding of Keats as a mere Romantic, however, this source of insight has been used to little advantage. His poem Hyperion, for example, has been roundly criticized as an untidy Romantic fragment. Here, by contrast, I will argue for a strategic understanding of Hyperion as (...) a masterpiece in the Daoist tradition. (shrink)

This introductory article outlines how this special issue contributes to existing scholarship that calls for a rethinking and re-evaluation of common assumptions about early modern philosophy. One way of challenging existing narratives is by questioning what role systems or systematicity play during this period. Another way of rethinking early modern philosophy is by considering assumptions about the role of philosophy itself and how philosophy can effect change in those who form philosophical beliefs or engage in philosophical argumentation. A (...) further way of advancing early modern scholarship is by examining the tight links between early modern views on metaphysics and epistemology, on the one hand, and moral, social, and political philosophy, on the other hand. Moreover, there are ongoing debates whether and how the traditional distinction between rationalism and empiricism, which has been questioned for several reasons, should be replaced. It has been proposed to replace it with a distinction between experimental and speculative philosophy, but this distinction cannot easily accommodate early modern debates concerning moral, social, and political philosophy. In addition to highlighting several ways how early modern philosophy has and can be rethought, we summarize how the papers in this special issue contribute to these ongoing efforts. (shrink)

In order to have an effective and reliable understanding of the basic moral concepts, moral propositions and moral reasoning in Daoist ethical thoughts, it is necessary to use the methods of doing philosophy and doing ethics to engage in research work, and thus draw an intellectual conclusion about Daoist ethics. The methods of Daoist ethics mainly include analysis, explanation and comparison. The method of analysis focuses on logical analysis and language analysis of moral language in the classic texts of Daoist (...) ethics. The method of interpretation focuses on effective translation and understanding of moral language with unclear meaning in Daoist ethics. The method of comparison focuses on critical dialogue between ancient Daoist ethical thoughts and contemporary ethical theories and comparison between Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist ethics. Explaining the method of doing Daoist ethics clearly will promote the dialogue and understanding between Daoist ethics and contemporary ethics. (shrink)

This chapter argues that ZHU Xi was influenced by Daoism. His philosophy begins with the Diagram of the Great Polarity or Taijitu 太極圖 which has Daoist origins. Later in life he studied two Daoist texts, namely, The Seal of the Unity of the Three in the Zhou Book of Changes or the Zhouyi Cantongqi 周易參同契, and The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of the Secret Talisman or the Huangdi Yinfujing 黃帝陰符經. The chapter begins with a discussion about the nature of (...) class='Hi'>Daoism and inner meditative alchemy. Then I discuss the Diagram of the Great Polarity. Finally, ZHU Xi’s study of the above two texts is analyzed. (shrink)

Many ancient traditions recognise certain people as exemplars of virtue. I argue that some of these traditions incorporate a 'cosmic' mode of emulation, where certain of the qualities or aspects of the grounds or source of the world manifest, in human form, as virtues. If so, the ultimate objection of emulation is not a human being. I illustrate this with the forms of Daoist exemplarity found in the Book of Zhuangzi, and end by considering the charge that the aspiration to (...) cosmic emulation is inhumane. (shrink)

Parmenides expelled nonbeing from the realm of knowledge and forbade us to think or talk about it. But still there has been a long tradition of nay-sayings throughout the history of Western and Eastern philosophy. Are those philosophers talking about the same nonbeing or nothing? If not, how do their concepts of nothing differ from each other? Could there be different types of nothing? Surveying the traditional classifications of nothing or nonbeing in the East and West have led me to (...) develop a typology of nothing that consists of three main types: 1) privative nothing, commonly known as absence; 2) negative nothing, the altogether not or absolute nothing; and finally 3) original nothing, the nothing that is equivalent to being. I will test my threefold typology of nothing by comparing the similarities and differences between the conceptions of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism. With this study, I hope that I will clarify some confusion in the understanding of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism, and shed light on the central philosophical issue of “what there is not”. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss parthood status in mereologi- cally interpreted Daoist metaphysics, based on the Daodejing. I depart from the dao and you interrela- tion, which mereologically overlap by sharing parts. I consider the case of a complete overlap, which (a) challenges proper parthood, according to which a part cannot be identical with the whole that it com- poses, and (b) entails the question of identity that, while complying with classical mereology, cannot be consis- tent with Daoist metaphysics. The (...) discussion leads to abandoning proper parthood and antisymmetry axiom from classical axiomatics. It also shows a plausible fur- ther direction for mereological reconstruction. (shrink)

Supporting young researchers to peer-review and edit journal submissions will also accelerate their training, says Quan-Hoang Vuong. -/- *Citation: -/- Quan-Hoang Vuong. (2022, Sept. 11). Early career researchers can help fix peer review delays. Times Higher Education.

This paper considers how women and gender are conceptualised within early German Romanticism and argues that work by early German Romantic women should be addressed in scholarship on this movement. The chapter addresses feminist critiques of early German Romanticism as exemplified by the work of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, concluding that an essentialist view of traditional gender characteristics informs central aspects of these writers’ work, including their view of the relationship between human beings and nature and their (...) theories of language and poetry. The paper argues that a thoroughgoing critique of gender categories and development of the implications of this critique are found in the early German Romantic writings, not of Schlegel and Novalis, but of Dorothea Veit-Schlegel and Karoline von Günderrode. (shrink)

This chapter offers an interpretation of Roger Ames' use of the field-focus ontology, tying the topic to Daoist meditation practices.

In this article, modern standards of early years mathematics education are criticized and a proposal for change is presented. Today's early years mathematics education standards rest on a view of mathematics that became obsolete already at the end of the 19th century while the spirit of children's mathematics is precisely the spirit of modern mathematics. The proposal for change is not a return to the “new mathematics” movement, but something different.

In this paper, we attempt to de-naturalize the prevailing economistic imaginary of work that Max Weber and later commentators described as ‘protestant work ethic,’ epitomized in the figure of homo economicus. We do so by contrasting it with the imaginary of skillful work that can be found in vignettes about artisans in the Zhuangzi. We argue that there are interesting contrasts between these views concerning 1) direct goal achievement vs. indirect goal achievement through the cultivation of skills; 2) the hierarchization (...) of mental versus physical dimensions of work; 3) the crafting of non-dominating relationships between the working subject, their object, and their instruments of work, which leads to questions about the sustainability of these relationships; and 4) the relationship between work and well-being, which the Daoist texts conceptualize in a much more holistic, but also more presentist way than Western economic rationality. We conclude by pointing out the relevance of these differences for several contemporary debates about work, by denaturalizing a dominant imaginary of work, by distinguishing different forms of work, by suggesting a different relation between work and nature, and by raising questions about the desirability of the automation of work. (shrink)

This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.

We show that early vision can use monocular cues to rapidly complete partially-occluded objects. Visual search for easily detected fragments becomes difficult when the completed shape is similar to others in the display; conversely, search for fragments that are difficult to detect becomes easy when the completed shape is distinctive. Results indicate that completion occurs via the occlusion-triggered removal of occlusion edges and linking of associated regions. We fail to find evidence for a visible filling-in of contours or surfaces, (...) but do find evidence for a "functional" filling-in that prevents the constituent fragments from being rapidly accessed. As such, it is only the completed structures—and not the fragments themselves—that serve as the basis for rapid recognition. (shrink)

This essay defends two theses regarding the explanation, or ground, of modality in the early modern period. First, for philosophers in the period, essences ground a range of important modal facts. Second, as the period progresses, we witness increased skepticism about certain modal facts, due to a growing skepticism about the scope or existence of essences. These theses are supported by examination of three case studies: Descartes’ treatment of substance and mode (which forms the core of his ontology); Malebranche’s (...) treatment of causation (which bears on his defense of occasionalism); and Locke’s treatment of necessary connections among properties (which is related to his accounts of individuals and kinds). It is shown that in each case, claims about necessity and possibility take center stage, and that in each case, the status of these claims hinges on the status of claims about essences. (shrink)

Review of Daoist Identity. History, Lineage, and Ritual, by Livia Kohn and Harold D. Roth.

The Whorfian hypothesis has received support from recent findings in psychology, linguistics, and anthropology. This evidence has been interpreted as supporting the view that language modulates all stages of perception and cognition, in accordance with Whorf’s original proposal. In light of a much broader body of evidence on time perception, I propose to evaluate these findings with respect to their scope. When assessed collectively, the entire body of evidence on time perception shows that the Whorfian hypothesis has a limited scope (...) and that it does not affect early stages of time perception. In particular, all the available evidence shows that the scope of language modulation is limited in the case of time perception, and that the most important mechanisms for time perception are cognitive clocks and simultaneity windows, which we use to perceive the temporal properties of events. Language modulation has distorting effects, but only at later stages of processing or with respect to specific categorization tasks. The paper explains what is the role of these effects in the context of all the available evidence on time cognition and perception. (shrink)

The subtle and complex relation between Confucianism and modern democracy has long been a controversial issue, and it is now again becoming a topical issue in the process of political modernization in contemporary China. This paper argues that there are some quite basic early Confucian values and principles that are not only compatible with democracy, but also may become the theoretic foundation of modern democracy in China. Early Confucianism considers 'the people's will' as the direct representative of 'Heaven's (...) will', with which it legitimizes political power. Confucian theory of 'human nature is good' endorses equal potential good for every man. These principles can be used in reasoning towards a system of democracy. In terms of decision-making, the Confucian 'Doctrine of the Mean' accords with certain democratic principles. The independent personality and committed individualism advocated by early Confucianism is a required civic merit in a democratic society. These fundamental Confucian principles, through contemporary hermeneutics, may provide a philosophic grounding for democracy and support the construction of a democratic system with a Chinese dimension. To get democracy rooted in the spirit of traditional Chinese culture will benefit the healthy and smooth development of democracy in China. (shrink)

It is hardly a novel claim that the work of Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) contains influences from philosophical Daoism, but I argue that this influence has yet to be fully understood. Several scholars criticize Le Guin for misrepresenting Daoist ideas as they appear in ancient Chinese philosophical texts, particularly the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi. While I have sympathy for this charge, especially as it relates to Le Guin’s translation of the Dao De Jing, I argue that (...) it fails to understand the extent to which her fiction contains her own philosophical development of Daoist ideas. Looking at some of her most influential works (e.g., The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, A Wizard of Earthsea, etc.), I suggest that Le Guin’s fiction is better seen as a refocusing of Daoist concepts such as complementary contrasts and non-action (wu wei) in the contexts of modern feminism, modern anarchism, science fiction, and fantasy. Le Guin was not trying to represent ancient Daoism as a scholar. Rather, she was trying to reimagine Daoism as a creative artist and philosopher in her own right. This way of viewing Le Guin’s work does not fully exorcise the specter of the possibility of Orientalist cultural appropriation, but it does make the issue more complex in a way that can deepen further conversations. To what extent can an artist be guilty of misrepresentation if representation was not, strictly speaking, her goal? I end with a brief reflection on what is perhaps the deepest philosophical lesson of Le Guin’s work: everything is more complicated than it first appears. On that note, the present article is an attempt not just to do philosophy about Le Guin, but to do philosophy in a Le Guinian fashion, which requires rethinking the metaphor of combat that guides much academic philosophy today. (shrink)

Sartre’s account of the emotions presupposes a conception of human nature that is never fully articulated. The paper aims to render such conception explicit and to argue that frustration occupies a foundational place in Sartre’s picture of affective existence.

In this paper we shall open a perspective from which the relatedness between the early analytic philosophy and Husserl’s phenomenology is so close that we can call the two programs with one name: “rigorous philosophy”, or “theory of forms”. Moreover, we shall show that the close relatedness between the two most influential philosophical movements of the 20th century has its roots in their common history. At the end of the paper we shall try to answer the question why being (...) rather related at the beginning, their ways parted in the subsequent years. (shrink)