In the last decade a great amount of literature that elaborates on Leibniz’ cultural and philosophical openness has emerged. It is therefore odd that there has not been made any direct comments on Chung-Ying Cheng interesting analyses of Leibniz’s writings on Chinese philosophy (Cheng 2000, 2002). By giving a critical review of Cheng’s work on this topic, it is the aim of this paper to integrate some problems of Sino-western philosophical encounters into the Leibniz scholarship of today. In the course (...) of analyzing Cheng’s arguments the paper points to some problems in his approach to Leibnizian philosophy and its “encounter” with Chinese classics. After challenging Cheng’s reading of Leibniz and suggesting alternative interpretations, the paper discusses whether thisunderstanding of Leibniz could designate a positive approach to Sino‐western philosophical exchange. Central to this, the question is raised whether or not it can be shown that Leibniz remained open to rethink his own philosophy in the light of his meeting with Chinese philosophy. While the paper agrees with Cheng in the judgement that Leibniz did not arrive at a complete understanding of the Chinese classic Yijing, it claims that Cheng’s analysis contradicts some of Leibniz’s other writings on China as well as Leibniz’s general ambition of supporting global philosophical exchange. (shrink)

This article uses the idea of resilience as a point of departure for analysing some contemporary challenges to the climate justice movement posed by social-ecological sciences. Climate justice activists are increasingly rallying for a system-change, demanding fundamental changes to political bureaucracy and the economy, which would put ecology, biodiversity and climate change first for all future political decisions. Since the concept of resilience has taken up a central role in recent developments in ecological sciences, it has also become part of (...) the activist debate. The article’s main argument is that the scientific framework behind resilience is not politically neutral and that this framework tends to weaken the activist’s demands for a just transition and place more emphasis on technical and bureaucratic processes. (shrink)