Our paper examines the impact of the intersection of cultural and gender identity on moral reasoning. Much research has been done on gender differences in moral thinking/reasoning, and increasingly research has also examined cultural differences in moral thinking. In agreement with a number of scholars we support the following claims about culture, moral reasoning, and concepts of self: concepts of self and approaches to moral reasoning are connected, concepts of self are differing by gender and culture, moral reasoning differs by (...) gender and culture. We propose that philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, follow the lead of psychology and strive to be as inclusive as possible by including the full range of human diversity and experience. For philosophers, this would mean embracing – indeed, starting from – a multicultural, feminist approach to moral theories and questions; this approach would not only be sensitive to gender and cultural bias, but also offer an alternative model to the paradigmatic rational, autonomous, independent agent of traditional moral theory. The implications of this go far beyond moral reasoning, but also have implications for other areas of philosophy as well, such as recent work in philosophy of mind on the idea of extended cognition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Benjamin I. Schwartz (1916-1999)Hoyt Cleveland TillmanBenjamin Sadie Schwartz was born on December 12, 1916,1 to Hyman and Jennie Weinberg Schwartz. In the wake of the Depression, this struggling family moved from the immigrant section of East Boston (near what became Logan Airport) to Orchestra, a working-class section of the city. Ben's intelligence and dedication to learning earned him the opportunity to study at Boston Latin, the city's premier (...) high school for talented youths, and he won a scholarship to attend Harvard College in 1934. Because the collegiate life of Harvard's house system was inaccessible to him, Ben commuted daily from home and ate his sack lunches with the other "townies" on the steps outside the buildings in Harvard Yard. The nationalizing experiences of being Jewish and poor surely enhanced his sensitivity to tensions within cultures and sharpened the critical edge of his reflections on elites and their ideologies. Moreover, his own experiences enabled an empathy with economically and culturally disadvantaged students, for he generously extended himself especially to such students during his long teaching career at Harvard, from 1950 through 1987. Indeed, his office door was always open to students, and no one needed an appointment to come to discuss ideas with him. Furthermore, his critical concerns about contemporary trends in society and polity continued to be central to his life as an engaged intellectual even after he had retired from formal teaching duties.After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1938 with a major in Romance Languages and Literatures, he went on to earn a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1940. Unable to find a regular teaching position, he worked as a substitute teacher. Blessed with an enduring and profound spirituality, he considered becoming a rabbi. World War II intervened to change his life. Serving as a cryptanalyst from 1942 to 1946 in the Signal Corps, he decoded Japanese military cables; and he worked in 1946-1947 as a censor of the Japanese press during the beginning phase of the American Occupation. He rose to the rank of captain. With the educational benefits extended to veterans, he returned to Harvard, where he initially sought to focus on Buddhism, but his professors discouraged him on the grounds that the field required too many Asian languages for someone to begin in his thirties. He was admonished to focus on modern China, for that field required only that he supplement the Japanese language, which he had gained during his military service, with a reading knowledge of Chinese. He threw himself enthusiastically into reading both modern Chinese and what he referred to as "outbidding classical Chinese" because he loved to read texts to explore cultures and encounter peoples. Within less than three years, he not only earned a master's [End Page 183] in East Asian Studies and a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages but also became, in 1950, a Harvard instructor in history and government. Rising quickly through the ranks, he was promoted to assistant professor in 1951, associate professor in 1956, and professor in 1960. Moreover, he became widely regarded as "the scholar's scholar" at Harvard's East Asian Research Center.His first book, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao (Harvard University Press, 1951), was a revised version of his doctoral dissertation. Modern China scholars have in later years hailed this pioneering work for going against the tide of American political assumptions about Soviet Russian control of the communist movement in China. He demonstrated that Mao had defied Soviet orders and deviated from Soviet plans in struggling to gain power in China; furthermore, Ben also suggested that communism was devolving through expansion. Establishing an intellectual orientation that informed his later work, Ben was also using texts from a movement to explore the conscious life of leading figures and their personalities in the context of concrete historical circumstances and contingencies in order to determine how ideas related to actions. Providing translated texts for others to join the exploration of the interaction between ideology and behavior, he was one of three compilers of A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Harvard, 1952). He... (shrink)

Wattpad is a popular online writing website in which individuals write, upload, and comment on original stories. In 2020, the platform had more than a hundred million registered users. In this article, we use a mixture of close and distant reading methods to study how lay authors wrote about the COVID-19 global pandemic during its first year. We examine some of the formal and generic norms these authors used to narrativize this event; how such norms evolved over time as the (...) pandemic dragged on; and how these online COVID stories differ from more established online genres, such as mystery and romance. Overall, this article explores how a large reading and writing public, leveraging the novel affordances of user generated content, came to respond to a massive social crisis in real time, before they knew how it would end. This exploration allows us to accomplish two things. First, we are able to situate real-time pandemic stories against the retrospective narratives that we expect from literary fiction. How does writing crisis in real time and in a collaborative mode produce its own unique plot and narrative structures, and how do stories written in the immediate wake of the pandemic anticipate later mainstream cultural productions (fiction, film, television)? Second, we gain a broader understanding of how new genres of writing emerge within a cultural ecosystem increasingly defined by generic predictability and the recycling of familiar cultural intellectual property (IP), such as The Avengers and Harry Potter. COVID-19 dramatically disrupted global economic, political, and health systems. How did it also disrupt cultural systems? (shrink)

In December 1980 an elementary school teacher in Minnesota obtained a Restraining Order to ensure that a severely brain damaged friend would receive emergency medical care in her nursing home if she needed it. This situation focussed attention on the need for better understanding, among medical professionals and consumers alike, of the significance of a “No Dr. Blue/Do Not Resuscitate” order.

We have been studying Middle English alliterative verse for over a century, but so far we lack an authoritative description of the rhythmic constraints that governed the poets who wrote alliterative verse. Though some scholars have tried to show the survival of Sievers's five types, few editors have dared, in the absence of a comprehensive and authoritative account of the meter, to emend or choose between the variants in the manuscripts on metrical grounds. Two factors largely account for this state (...) of affairs: the apparent variety of the verse form itself and the failure of students of the meter to distinguish the practices of poets from those of the scribes. (shrink)

"A major transformation in thought took place during the Southern Sung (1127-1279). A new version of Confucian teaching, Tao-hsueh Confucianism (what modern scholars sometimes refer to as Neo-Confucianism), became state orthodoxy, a privileged status which it retained until the twentieth century." "Existing studies of the new Confucianism generally depict a single line of development to and from Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the greatest theoretician of the tradition. In this study of unprecedented scope, however, Hoyt Cleveland Tillman offers an integrated intellectual (...) history of the development of Tao-hsueh Confucianism which for the first time places Chu Hsi within the context of his contemporaries. Tillman's methodological strategy allows a rich, complex picture of the Tao-hsueh movement to emerge - one that is sure to transform the field of Sung Confucianism." "To reconstruct the evolution of the Tao-hsueh group, Tillman studies a number of Confucians from four distinct periods, reflecting the basic diversity that existed among them. His discussion is deeply grounded in political and philosophical history and in research on the social networks that joined the members of the Tao-hsueh group. Within this framework, he provides a vivid account of the changing scope of the movement, tracing its development into a "fellowship" and at times a political faction and demonstrating its movement from diversity to gradually increasing exclusiveness, particularly under the influence of Chu Hsi. Close attention is given to confrontational writings and debates within the group, which covered such issues as humaneness, the function of the mind, uses of the Book of Changes, social welfare programs, teaching methods, expediency, and the grounds for knowledge and authority." "A superbly erudite work, Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi's Ascendancy is an invaluable contribution to the study of the history of Confucian thought in China."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

I believe the material should be utilized as supplemental data for exploring Ch'en Liang's intellectual development.Ch'en's thought evolved through a tao-hsueh ...

Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 interpretations systematized the Five Classics; moreover, he elevated the “Four Books” to such a supra-canonical status that these texts along with his commentaries became the core curriculum for civil service examinations from the early 13th century to the 20th century. Inquiring into what was the essential and unique Song 宋 character of Classical scholarship, we will highlight the canonical Ritual Classics because these texts were crucial for centuries, especially during the Han 漢 through Tang 唐 dynasties. We (...) show how Zhu updated ritual practices by focusing on the Yili 儀禮 as the crucial Classic for guidelines on etiquette, and also rebalanced the relation between rituals and moral “principles.” We will explore how Zhu’s systematization of moral principles and ritual did not fully resolve tensions from his major 11th-century philosophical predecessors regarding principles and ritual, as well as the Four Books and the Five Classics. Even if Dai Zhen’s 戴震 criticism of Zhu was somewhat misplaced or overstated, tensions within Zhu’s views provide us a basis for understanding Dai’s attacks and ambivalence among Qing 清 and 20th-century scholars toward Zhu Xi’s philosophy. (shrink)

: What philosophical and historical insights might be gained by juxtaposing and linking two distinct areas of Zhu Xi's comments, those on guishen (conventionally glossed as ghosts or spirits) and those on the transmission and succession of the Way (daotong)? There is considerable evidence that he regarded canonical rites for ancestors and teachers as insufficiently satisfying, and thus he sought enhanced communion with the dead. His statements about spirits and especially his prayers to Confucius' spirit served to enhance his confidence (...) that he had gained the transmission of Confucius' dao and that nothing being passed down to him had been lost. In the rituals and prayers to Confucius, Zhu Xi also projected himself as mediator between his students and Confucius' spirit. After hearing such prayers and participating in the ritual sacrifices, Zhu's students would become more convinced of his special status in the transmission of the Way. This inquiry into these spiritual and philosophical issues ultimately demonstrates the compelling importance of Zhu's practical concerns. (shrink)

Referring to James Legge's translation of the Liji 禮記, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's justification for legalizing same-sex marriage was based on the statement, "Confucius taught that marriage lies at the foundation of government."1 Justice Kennedy universalized and applied Confucius' comment in a way that Confucius would never have imagined it would be. Yet, Justice Kennedy's universalization fits into a legacy of Western utilizations of the wisdom of the ancient Chinese sage. Although in recent history many Europeans and North Americans (...) regard universal values as a challenge to other societies to reform, it is important to remember that, in the eighteenth century, Europeans looked to China for universal... (shrink)

本书探讨朱熹的思维世界,它不但是思想史的研究,并注意的社会背景,因此也可以说是思想史与社会史交互为用的研究。.

本书探讨朱熹的思维世界,它不但是思想史的研究,并注意的社会背景,因此也可以说是思想史与社会史交互为用的研究。.

This research extends our understanding of ethical decision making on the part of leaders by merging social role and self-construal perspectives. Interdependent self-construal is generally seen as enhancing concern for justice and moral values. Across two studies, we tested the prediction that non-leading group members’ interdependent self-construal would be associated with lower levels of unethical decision making on behalf of their group but that, in contrast, this relationship would be weaker for leaders, given their social role. These predictions were experimentally (...) tested by assigning participants to the role of leader or non-leading group member, and assessing the association between their interdependent self-construal and their unethical decision making. Across both studies, interdependence predicted less unethical decision making on behalf of one’s group for non-leading group members. However, the leader role was shown to weaken, and even reverse, this relationship. This research demonstrates that self-construal influences group-based ethical decision making, but that the nature of this influence is moderated by social role. (shrink)

Important marine mammal areas (IMMAs)—‘discrete habitat areas, important for one or more marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation’ (IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force 2018, p. 3)—were introduced in 2014 by the IUCN Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force to support marine mammal and wider ocean conservation. IMMAs provide decision-makers with a user-friendly, actionable tool to inform them of the whereabouts of habitat important for marine mammal survival. However, in view of (...) their non-prescriptive, evidence-based and biocentric nature, the conservation effectiveness of IMMAs is strictly dependent on politicians’ willingness to make use of them. It has been the customary task of advocacy non-governmental organisations to lobby decision-makers to stimulate respect for environmental law, but the scientific community is increasingly joining this effort. Scientists can effectively strengthen a healthy relationship between scientific objectivity and political advocacy without damaging the credibility of conservation science. Thus, those undertaking the identification of IMMAs can be among those responsible for strongly advocating the implementation of IMMAs and other conservation initiatives. (shrink)

It is well understood that Wittgenstein defends religious faith against positivistic criticisms on the grounds of its logical independence. But exactly how are we to understand the nature of that independence? Most scholars take Wittgenstein to equate language-games with belief-systems, and thus to assert that religions are logical schemes founded on their own basic beliefs and principles of inference. By contrast, I argue that on Wittgenstein’s view, to have religious faith is to hold fast to a certain picture of the (...) world according to which one orients one’s actions and attitudes, possibly even in dogmatic defiance of contrary evidence. Commitment to such a picture is grounded in passion, not intellection, and systematic coherence is largely irrelevant. (shrink)

While differences do exist, there are many ethical issues which transcend national barriers. In order to contribute to the development of understanding of global ethics, this study documents the existing ethical perspectives of collegiate business students from two countries and identifies the determinants of their ethical orientations.A survey instrument was administered to USA and New Zealand (NZ) students enrolled in undergraduate business programs. The research instrument measured students' ethical perspectives across multilayered ethical domains and their self-professed decision method used in (...) evaluating ethical scenarios. (shrink)