This book introduces traditional and modern aesthetics and arts, comparing the similarities and differences between traditional and modern Chinese aesthetics. It also explores the aesthetic implications of traditional Chinese paintings, and discusses the development of aesthetics throughout history, as well as the changes and improvements in Chinese aesthetics in the context of globalization.

From 1978 to 1985 there was a craze for aesthetics in China. This was anticipated by a "great aesthetics discussion" between 1956 and 1962, but its cause lay more in its significance for Chinese society immediately after the Cultural Revolution. It played an important part in the ideological liberation movement, which transformed the minds of the Chinese; it encouraged the spread of Western ideas in China, and it broke up the ossified Zhdanovist system in Uterary and artistic theory, making the (...) Chinese reflect on their own tradition, recognize Western culture and thus try to develop an aesthetics of both China and the world. (shrink)

本书作者选择中国古代和西方古代、近代以及现代哲学中有重要影响的哲学经典著作为解读文本,结合目前文献和学术研究的新成果,对其进行既符合文本原意又有一定新意的解读,具体内容包括了段意概括、重点和难点分析及 重要思想阐释四个部分。.

The rapid worldwide spread of COVID-19 forced many countries to enforce complete lockdown and strict quarantine policies. The strict lockdown and quarantine affect the psychological state of people toward cryptocurrency. The current research aims to examine the effect of COVID-19 on Bitcoin prices concerning cumulative deaths and confirmed cases. The research comprises daily data from January 20, 2020, to April 30, 2020, during the initial worldwide breakout of COVID-19. This research employed the augmented Dickey-Fuller test to check the stationarity of (...) data, the co-integration test for the interdependency of variables, and the vector error correction model for identifying the direction and long or short-run relationship between Bitcoin prices and COVID-19. The research results show that Bitcoin prices are negatively significant and related to COVID-19 in the short-run. A unidirectional relationship between Bitcoin prices and cumulative deaths is also observed. Investors and the public’s psychological state were positively significant to Bitcoin prices in the long-term because of cashless transactions, unbanked, and less risky virus traveling. The second reason behind the positive psychological relation is un-centralization and easy-to-make payments by Bitcoin. This study’s finding provides timely evidence to decision-makers on Bitcoin price volatility and its impacts on the public’s psychological states regarding COVID-19. (shrink)

In his recent papers, Professor Yong Huang has been attempting to interpret the ethics of Zhuangzi from the perspective of patient moral relativism. Generally speaking, there are two sorts of moral relativism that are discussed in the contemporary philosophical literature: agent relativism and appraiser relativism. The former means that the moral judgments of rightness and wrongness of an action depend on the agent’s moral standards, while the latter considers the appraiser’s standards as the only criteria for assessing the moral appropriateness (...) of a certain action. In contrast to agent relativism and appraiser relativism, “patient relativism” advocates that whether an action is moral or not should be evaluated in... (shrink)

Let me begin by expressing my sincere gratitude to Professor Huang for his great work on the theory of patient moral relativism and to the editors of Philosophy East and West for giving me this opportunity not only to discuss my thoughts with Professor Huang but also to clarify and further develop my critique. In this reply, I shall focus on two things: first, I will briefly summarize and explain my ideas in my previous comment; second, I will tackle Huang’s (...) response in detail and discuss some points of disagreement.In “Is Zhuangzi a Patient Relativist?” I argue not only that the theory of patient relativism itself is problematic but also that it is inaccurate to interpret the Zhuangzi as espousing patient moral... (shrink)

Important strides have been made toward understanding the relationship between self-efficacy and life satisfaction. However, existing studies have largely focused on work and academic domains, leaving self-efficacy in the finance domain less frequently investigated. The present study applied the self-efficacy construct to the finance domain, namely “financial self-efficacy”, and tested the sequential mediating roles of high standards tendency and investment satisfaction in the relationship between FSE and general life satisfaction. A total of 323 employees from finance-related businesses completed anonymous questionnaires (...) regarding FSE, high standards tendency, investment satisfaction, and general life satisfaction. Results indicated that FSE influenced general life satisfaction through investment satisfaction, and sequentially through high standards tendency and investment satisfaction. These results provide contributions to the current literature on life satisfaction, and positive psychology literature by shedding light on the roles of high standards tendency and investment satisfaction in the relation between FSE and general life satisfaction. (shrink)

Chinese people attach importance to intuition and imagery in ways of thinking that are quite sensible, but the result, i.e. the thoughts that are popularized in virtue of political power, are rather rational. These rational thoughts, which were influenced by Buddhism and continually became introspective, had been growing more irrational factors. Up to the middle and late Ming Dynasty, when the economy was developed, they merged with the growing emphasis on daily needs of food and clothes and the envisagement to (...) the utilitarian circumstances, and finally broke through the threshold of rationalism. Under the attack of Geng Dingxiang, Li Zhi who emphasized these thoughts was forced beyond his previous boundaries and led a whole variation in how he viewed a series of issues including values, humanity, ethics and aesthetics. This indicated a historical change from rationalism to irrationalism in Chinese humanism and aesthetics thoughts. (shrink)

本书以中国近世思想家李贽生平事实与著述编年为研究依据,以与文学关系密切的心学思想为描述主体,依年逐文考察伊斯兰教、儒学、心学、老庄、佛学以及百姓日用迩言对李贽思想蕴育、生成、演变的影响,对李贽思想中许 多重要问题一一加以重新审视。.

Extensive conflicts of interest at both individual and institutional levels are identifiable in scientific research and healthcare in China, as in many other parts of the world. A prominent new case from China is He Jiankui’s experiment that produced the world’s first gene-edited babies and that raises numerous ethical, political, socio-cultural, and transnational questions. Serious financial and other COI were involved in He’s genetic adventure. Using He’s infamous experiment as a case study, this paper explores the wider issue of financial (...) and other COI in scientific research and healthcare in China, especially institutional conflict of interest and policy-related COI. Taking a socio-ethical perspective, it examines China’s state policies and its massive efforts to transform and commercialize scientific research, the lack of policies and oversight mechanisms for regulating COI, as well as major ethical issues arising from COI including the undermining of public trust. Some practical suggestions are offered for institutional reform and institutional development so that COI, particularly ICOI, can be avoided or more effectively managed in scientific research in China. (shrink)

In this study, we developed and validated an instrument that researchers can use to measure the collective effort of principals and teachers who excise their own unique leadership to genera...

Research in school success in contemporary China has argued that market reforms have reproduced the advantages for children from the cadre and the professional families while simultaneously creating new opportunities for children of the new arising economic elites. However, it has performed less for traditional peasant families. This book places a special emphasis on how rural parents from different social backgrounds use _guanxi_ to maintain the interconnectedness between their families and schools to create advantages for their children in school success. (...) It investigates, by an ethnographic study in a rural county in middle China, how families from different social backgrounds within rural society get involved in the schooling of their children and how this contributes to different patterns of school success. The book argues that schools provide few formal and routine channels for rural parents to become involved in their children’s schooling. This raises the importance of family strategic initiatives to employ _guanxi_ in the creation of advantages for their children’s school success. It concludes with discussions about _guanxi_ as an important mechanism for social exclusion in post-socialist China. Chapters include: Family Strategies, Parental Involvement, and School Success The Roles of Parents: Voices of Parents in Zong Regarding School Involvement Policy Discourses: Missing the Link between Family and School Peasants: Family and Kinship The Blurring Division between Home and School This concise and comprehensive book is a qualitative study that will appeal to researchers and advance students in Chinese education and society. (shrink)

I distinguish two types of ethical efforts. One of them can be called ideological efforts in morality, which begins with the quest for truth. Once in possession of the truth, people can make moral laws and apply them to a society, demanding that all members of the society abide by them. The other may be called sentimental education, which depicts the formation of morality as being based on sentiments in this way: people live in an intimate relationship to foster a (...) sentiment of trust, develop their propriety sense in regard to a certain relationship, and formulate it as a moral law. In the context of global ethics, I hold that the fundamental momentum in morality is driven by sentimental education, while ideological efforts in morality can only play a complementary role. (shrink)

China has a longstanding tradition of stressing the values of harmony and coherence, and Chinese society has often been portrayed as a culture in which conflict avoidance is viewed more positively than direct confrontation and argumentation. In order to evaluate the validity of this claim, this paper sketches Chinese people’s feelings and understandings about interpersonal arguing by reporting results of a data collection in China, using measures of argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, argument frames, and personalization of conflict. These results were compared (...) to those from a US sample. Chinese and US data differed in complex ways, but did not show Chinese respondents to be more avoidant. The Chinese correlations among variables were a reasonable match to expectations based on Western argumentation theories, although they did not replicate the US results precisely. The paper offers evidence that Chinese respondents had a more sophisticated understanding of interpersonal arguing than their US counterparts, and were more sensitive to the constructive possibilities of face-to-face disagreement. (shrink)

Against the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic, college students’ learning engagement has become a key issue in universities and society. Guided by the theories of existential positive psychology and social perception, we explored the positive effect of a growth mindset on learning engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 1,040 college students from universities in Henan Province of China effectively completed online questionnaires. The results showed that growth mindset was positively related to learning engagement and negatively associated with perceived (...) COVID-19 event strength and perceived stress; perceived COVID-19 event strength was positively related to perceived stress, while perceived COVID-19 event strength and perceived stress were negatively associated with learning engagement. Growth mindset affected learning engagement through three indirect paths: the mediating role of perceived COVID-19 event strength, the mediating role of perceived stress, and the serial mediating role of both perceived COVID-19 event strength and perceived stress. The results indicated that the growth mindset could contribute to college students’ learning engagement through the roles of perceived COVID-19 event strength and perceived stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study advances the understanding of the mechanism underlying the relationship between growth mindset and college students’ learning engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the findings of the study have important implications for promoting college students’ learning engagement during the pandemic. (shrink)

Based on its productionguideline, organic agriculture has set foritself the goals of minimizing all forms ofpollution and maintaining sustainability of thefarming system. By striving for these goals,organic farming meets the demands of anincreasing number of consumers who are criticalof conventional production methods. This papergives an overview of the present state of theart in the different issues. Possibilities ofand limitations in performing the self-aimedgoals under the basic standards of organicagriculture are discussed. Concerningenvironmental protection, in general, the riskof adverse environmental effects is (...) lower withorganic than with conventional farming methods,though not necessarily so; with reference tosoil fertility and nutrient management, organicfarming is suited to improve soil fertility andnutrient management markedly on the farm level;regarding biodiversity, comparison studies showthat organic farming has more positive effectson biodiversity conservation; in relation toproduct quality, under the basic standards oforganic farming, there is no sufficientevidence for a system-related effect on productquality due to the production method. (shrink)

Objectives The objectives of the study are to understand the current practice of informed consent in medical research in public hospitals in Shanghai, and to share our views with other countries, especially developing countries. Methods In the study, 145 consent forms (CFs) of the selected research projects in eight public hospitals with ethics committees in Shanghai were audited, and the principle investigators (PIs) of these research projects and 40 student subjects who had participated in clinical drug tests were surveyed by (...) questionnaires. Results The CFs of medical researches in public hospitals with ethics committees in Shanghai were generally acceptable. However, there were some defects in the CFs. Although most of the surveyed PIs had correct recognition of informed consent, some processes of informed consent were not in accordance with generally accepted requirements. A large number of the PIs considered the greatest difficulty with informal consent was lack of correct recognition of subjects or legally authorised representatives on medical research. Discussion Informed consent in medical research should consider the research ethics, the background of potential subjects, the local resources and culture of medical research. In addition, special protection is needed for student subjects in informed consent as well as efforts for building and restoring the public's trust in biomedical research. Conclusion The informed consent in Shanghai's public hospitals with ethics committees was generally acceptable and the achievement of adequate informed consent is influenced by many factors. (shrink)

Talk is a way of human existence. Through talk we can trace signs of existence. However, existence is not merely limited to the restricted domain of talk. Language serves as a medium of communication between people and is a resort of written signs. The sphere of existence, at the same time, is much deeper than that of language. In this vaster sphere of existence, and especially in aspects such as relations between man and god, man and universe, man and the (...) self, much more space is devoted to communications without words. Throughout history, records in written signs constitute only a small part of existence. The relationship between language and existence is open, as is the relationship between method and substance. However, existence in this relationship is prior to language, which has existence as its main subject. (shrink)