This article examines whether the likelihood and amount of firm charitable giving in response to catastrophic events are related to firm advertising intensity, and whether industry competition level moderates this relationship. Using data on Chinese firms’ philanthropic response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, we find that firm advertising intensity is positively associated with both the probability and the amount of corporate giving. The results also indicate that this positive advertising intensity-philanthropic giving relationship is stronger in competitive industries, and firms in (...) competitive industries are more likely to donate. This study thus provides evidence suggesting that even in the wake of catastrophic events, corporate philanthropic giving is strategic. (shrink)

Does a board with greater gender diversity make better investment decisions? Drawing on Austrian economic cycle theory and work groups theory, we argue that such board openness will help male board members to overcome gender biases, discrimination, and conflicts; integrate different perspectives under the economic cycle and crisis; and foster an environment in which better decisions are made. The results of an empirical study of 14,609 firm-quarter observations from 1,555 listed firms in China between 2007 and 2009 strongly support our (...) arguments. We find that a Chinese board is more likely to accept female directorship during an economic crisis than during an economic prosperity stage. Boards with greater gender diversity are more likely to make tough, counter-cyclical investments to improve firm performance during a crisis. Our study enriches the board decision-making literature by exploring the impacts of board gender diversity on firm performance within the context of an economic crisis. The results of our study also carry significant managerial implications for overcoming gender stereotypes, biases, and prejudices on a board. (shrink)

Offers the first focused study of the shifei debates of the Warring States period in ancient China and challenges the imposition of Western conceptual categories onto these debates. In recent decades, a growing concern in studies in Chinese intellectual history is that Chinese classics have been forced into systems of classification prevalent in Western philosophy and thus imperceptibly transformed into examples that echo Western philosophy. Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel offer a methodology to counter this approach, and illustrate their (...) method by carrying out a transcultural inquiry into the complexities involved in understanding shi and fei and their cognate phrases in the Warring States texts, the Zhuangzi in particular. The authors discuss important features of Zhuangzi’s stance with regard to language-meaning, knowledge-doubt, questioning, equalizing, and his well-known deconstruction of the discourse in ancient China on shifei. Ma and van Brakel suggest that shi and fei apply to both descriptive and prescriptive languages and do not presuppose any fact/value dichotomy, and thus cannot be translated as either true/false or right/wrong. Instead, shi and feican be grasped in terms of a pre-philosophical notion of fitting. Ma and van Brakel also highlight Zhuangzi’s idea of “walking-two-roads” as the most significant component of his stance. In addition, they argue that all of Zhuangzi’s positive recommendations are presented in a language whose meaning is not fixed and that every stance he is committed to remains subject to fundamental questioning as a way of life. (shrink)

This book is an investigation into the descriptive task of moral philosophy. Nora Hämäläinen explores the challenge of providing rich and accurate pictures of the moral conditions, values, virtues, and norms under which people live and have lived, along with relevant knowledge about the human animal and human nature. While modern moral philosophy has focused its energies on normative and metaethical theory, the task of describing, uncovering, and inquiring into moral frameworks and moral practices has mainly been left to social (...) scientists and historians. Nora Hämäläinen argues that this division of labour has detrimental consequences for moral philosophy and that a reorientation toward descriptive work is needed in moral philosophy. She traces resources for a descriptive philosophical ethics in the work of four prominent philosophers of the twentieth century: John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Charles Taylor, while also calling on thinkers inspired by them. (shrink)

The book questions two key dichotomies: that of the apparent and real, and that of the internal and external. This leads to revised notions of the structure of experience and the object of knowledge. Our world is experienced as possibilities of action, and to know is to know what to do. A further consequence is that the mind is best considered as a property of organisms' interactions with their environment. The unit of analysis is the loop of action and perception, (...) and the central concept is the notion of habit of action, which provides the embodied basis of cognition as the anticipation of action. This holds for non-linguistic tacit meanings as well as for linguistic meanings. Habit of action is a teleological notion and thus opens a possibility for defining intentionality and normativity in terms of the soft naturalism adopted in the book. The mind is embodied, and this embodiment determines our physical perspective on the world. Our sensory organs and other instruments give us instrumental access to the world, and this access is epistemic in character. The distinction between the physical and conceptual viewpoint allows us to define truth as the correspondence with operational fit. This embodied epistemic truth is however not a sign of antirealism, as the instrumentally accessed theoretical objects are precisely those objects that experimental science deals with.. (shrink)

Research investigating the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions under which leader humility influences employee voice remains underdeveloped. Drawing from approach–inhibition theory of power and leader humility literature, we developed a moderated-mediation model in which personal sense of power (i.e., employees’ ability to influence other individuals such as their leader) was theorized as a unique mechanism underlining why employees feel motivated to speak up under the supervision of humble leaders. Additionally, the cultural value of power distance was proposed to be a (...) relevant boundary condition to influence such relationship. We tested the model using time-lagged supervisor–subordinate matched data. Results of mixed models analyses provided support for our hypotheses confirming that employees’ personal sense of power mediates the relationship between leader humility and employee voice, and such relationship was found to be stronger when employees’ power distance was lower rather than higher. (shrink)

The main aim of this essay is to show that, for Stevens, the concept of reality is very fluctuating. The essay begins with addressing the relationship between poetry and philosophy. I argue, contra Critchley, that Stevens’ poetic work can elucidate, or at least help us to understand better, the ideas of philosophers that are usually considered obscure. The main “obscure” philosophical work introduced in and discussed throughout the essay is Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism. Both a (shellingian) philosopher and a (...) (stevensian) poet search for reality. In order to understand Stevens’ poetry better, I distingush several concepts of reality: initial reality (the external world of the common sense), imagined reality (a fiction, a product of one’s mind), final reality (the object of a philosopher’s and a poet’s search) and total reality (the sum of all realities, Being). These determinations are fixed by reason (in the present essay), whereas in Stevens’ poetic works, they are made fluid by the imagination. This fluidity leads the concept of reality from its initial stage through the imagined stage to its final stage. Throughout this process, imagined reality must be distinguished from both a mere fancy and its products. Final reality is, however, nothing transcendent. It is rather a general transpersonal order of reality created by poetry/the imagination. The main peculiarity of final reality is that it is a dynamic order. It is provisional at each moment. Stevens (and Schelling too) characterizes this order as that of a work of art which is a finite object, but has an infinite meaning. Stevens calls this order “the central poem” or the “endlessly elaborating poem”. If ultimate reality is a poem created by the imagination, one may ask who is the imagining subject. I argue that this agent is best to be thought as total reality, that is, as Being. Stevens, however, maintains that if there were such an agency, it would be an inhuman agency, “an inhuman meditation”. The essay concludes, in a Derridian manner, with the claim that this agency cannot have any name; it is the “unnamed creator of an unknown sphere, / Unknown as yet, unknowable, / Uncertain certainty” (OP: 127). It is best thought as an X, as an unknown variable. Being has no name. (shrink)

This book provides a philosophical assessment of the idea of personhood advanced in popular self-help literature. It also traces, within academic philosophy and philosophical scholarship, a self-help culture where the self is brought forth as an object of improvement and a key to meaning, progress and profundity. Unlike other academic treatments of the topic of self-help, this book is not primarily concerned with providing a critique of popular self-help and self-transformative practices. Rather, it is concerned with how they work to (...) shape contemporary forms and ideals of moral personhood and are conductive to moral renegotiation and change. The book consists of two parts with somewhat different argumentative strategies. Part 1 consists of an overview and reassessment of popular self-help literature and its sociological and journalistic critics, written from a moral philosophical perspective. Part 2 opens with discussion of the current attraction, among a range of philosophers, to self-transformative themes. The chapters assess the strand of self-transformative philosophy found in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot, Stanley Cavell and Iris Murdoch. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the theme of social change and moral renegotiation in contemporary societies, which is a central but underestimated undercurrent in discussions on contemporary self-transformative practices. The book's dual perspective-on both popular self-help and self-transformative currents in philosophy-enables a cultural and moral philosophical analysis of contemporary ethical ideals of personhood, as well as reflection on the literatures available for its development. The Making of the Good Person will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in moral philosophy, history of philosophy, psychology, sociology and literary studies. (shrink)

Jean Mas artiste de l'Ecole de Nice renoue ici avec la mouche, grande absente de sa production artistique. La cage à mouches. Traversant différents champs du savoir et de l'expression, le questionnement de la mouche nous révèle une démarche philosophique qui tendrait vers un but, montrer à la mouche comment se sortir du piège à mouches. Wittgenstein. Au fil des pages, avec humour, se détendent des concepts, des situations rocambolesques qui jalonnent le parcours de l'artiste ou l'expérience esthétique participe de (...) l éthique. Entendre la mouche, voler, c'est qu'ici elle cherche à prendre la place du créateur, à le déposséder de son lieu pour s'y installer. Etre la, c'est à l'instar de l'insecte trouver un endroit pour l'habiter. Zigzaguons gaiement avec la mouche dans cette incroyable histoire d art! Répondre à ces questions, c'est aussi se jouer de la maison des mots qui nous accueille! (shrink)

Több politikatudománnyal foglalkozó kötettel jelentkezett már Szabó Márton, aki eddigi kutatásait összegezve, egy alternatív szemléletű politikatudomány szemléletébe és kutatásába kívánja bevezetni olvasóit. Célja, hogy bizonyítsa: a politika reális valóságában meghatározó módon jelen van az egyének nyilvános és közös értelmezése és diskurzusa. Hogy a politika ezért nem tekinthető pusztán csak objektív rendszernek, hanem emberek által teremtett és értelmezett valóság. A szerző ezen szemlélet jegyében hét nagyobb egységben mutatja be a politika minden fontos területét, kezdve a politikai tények összetett természetével, folytatva a (...) politikai cselekvések és megismerési módok sajátosságaival. Külön vizsgálja az intézményi kereteket, a politika szereplőit, a politikai ügyeket. Kritikailag elemzi az empirikus politikatudományi kutatás meghatározó területeit, végül a politikatudomány sokféleségével foglalkozik. A vaskos kötetet forrás- és irodalomjegyzék zárja. (shrink)

Finance ethics have drawn increasing attention from both government regulators and academic researchers. This paper addresses the issue of insider trading ethics. Previous studies on insider trading ethics have failed to provide convincing arguments and consistent results. In particular, the arguments against insider trading are based primarily on moral and philosophical grounds and lack empirical rigor. This study intends to establish and examine the relationship between the ethical issue and economic issue of insider trading. We argue that the ethics of (...) insider trading is in essence an economic rather than a moral issue. It is so far not clear to what extent insider trading may increase or decrease shareholders wealth. Until then, we must take care to avoid over-regulating insider trading. (shrink)

This article examines whether the charitable giving amount and likelihood of firm response to catastrophic events relate to firms’ ownership type using a unique dataset of listed firms in China, where state ownership is still prevalent. Based on the data of Chinese firms’ response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, we find that the extent of corporate contributions for state-owned firms following this disaster is less than that for private firms. State-owned firms are also less likely to respond in␣this disaster compared (...) to private firms. The results also␣reveal that firm size, profitability, geography, cash resource available, and leverage affect firms’ philanthropic disaster response behavior in China. (shrink)

Discusses the conditions of possibility for intercultural and comparative philosophy, and for crosscultural communication at large. This innovative book explores the preconditions necessary for intercultural and comparative philosophy. Philosophical practices that involve at least two different traditions with no common heritage and whose languages have very different grammatical structure, such as Indo-Germanic languages and classical Chinese, are a particular focus. Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel look at the necessary and not-so-necessary conditions of possibility of interpretation, comparison, and other forms (...) of interaction and how we can speak of similarities and differences in this context. The authors posit that it is necessary to dissolve the question of universalism versus relativism by replacing the ideal language paradigm with a paradigm of family resemblances and that it is not necessary to share a common language to engage in comparison. Numerous case studies are presented, including many comparisons of Western and Chinese concepts. (shrink)

Deschamps, Léger Marie,1716-1774; enlightenment; utopias; art and philosophy; philosophy, modern; 18th century.

This volume sets out to discuss the role of norms and normativity in both language and linguistics from a multiplicity of perspectives. These concepts are centrally important to the philosophy and methodology of linguistics, and their role and nature need to be investigated in detail. The chapters address a range of issues from general questions about ontology, epistemology and methodology to aspects of particular subfields (such as semantics and historical linguistics) or phenomena (such as construal and code-switching). The volume aims (...) to further our understanding of language and linguistics as well as to encourage further discussion on the metatheory of linguistics. Due to the fundamental nature of the issues under discussion, this volume will be of interest to all linguists regardless of their background or fields of expertise and to philosophers concerned with language or other normative domains. (shrink)

◎孔子為何周遊列國？因為沒有一個國君想用儒家治國，他只好到處教書遊說。 ◎秦國用法家統一天下，漢高祖劉邦用道家蓄積國力，直到漢武帝登基，儒家才被注意。 ◎儒學為何從沒人理，轉眼變治國工具？這得從董仲舒的「解釋」說起。 ◎儒學就像作業系統，幾千年來更新過四次版本，孔子的儒學不等於現在的儒學。 作者馬大勇，清華大學、上海交通大學國學特聘教授。 曾被推舉為最受歡迎的中文教授。 在本書中，他將儒家文明分為五個時期： 孔子奠基期、孟子成熟期、兩漢經學期、宋代理學期和明代心學期。 解析儒家思維是如何像電腦作業系統一樣，歷經四次的版本更新， 從原本的中庸之道、民為貴、君為輕的民主思想， 一步步變成君權神授，天人感應， 成為各朝代帝王穩固皇權的最佳推手。 就此儒學變成帝王學，開啟了千年以來人民為皇權奴隸的中央集權體制。 ◎孔子的儒學，是教你如何當君子 《論語》中，仁字出現了104次，禮字出現74次， 孔子的重要理念「中庸之道」，更成為宋元以後科舉考試的必讀書。 這個具有人道主義的思維，為何不被當時的統治者如春秋諸侯或秦國採納？ 因為亂世中，做君子的好處太少，當小人能得到的利益比較多。 ◎孟子是民主思想的啟蒙者，但被後代皇帝刪掉了 孟子思想的最大亮點就是「民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕」， 這套民主思維後來為何會消失？ 因為明太祖朱元璋看到「君為輕」三個字，就把《孟子》一書狠狠摔地上， 刪節版《孟子》就此誕生，往後一百年，學生學到的孔孟儒學知識都是不完整的。 ◎因為董仲舒的「特殊解釋」，從此百家遭罷黜，皇帝獨尊儒術 秦國用法家思想滅六國一統天下，漢高祖劉邦用道家治國，修生養息， 兩大皇權都對儒家思維沒興趣，直到漢武帝劉徹時期， 董仲舒為了拍皇帝馬屁，重新解釋，儒術從此轉化帝王術。 他口中的儒教，跟孔孟闡述的儒學，哪裡不一樣？差在造神。 ◎宋元明清重新詮釋儒學，想當官者必讀四書 宋、元之後，孔子的《中庸》又重新被提起， 因為它教你用大學之道維持國家秩序。 儒學家朱熹更讓《四書集注》成為為官者的必讀聖書。 至於為什麼是宋朝與明朝，跳過了大唐盛世？ 因為東漢黨錮之禍殺害許多知識分子，儒家文化走向低谷； 南北朝興盛佛教；至於唐朝則儒、釋、道並重。 直到韓愈寫的《原道》為儒家文明打下基礎，在宋代發揚光大。 打天下靠武力，龍椅要坐穩就靠統治， 儒家思想如何經過五階段改造，從民主思維變中央集權， 而且延續千年「至今」不墜。 本書特色 儒學為何從沒人理，轉眼變治國工具？這得從董仲舒的「解釋」說起。 孔子的儒學，如何經過五階段改造，從民主思維變中央集權。 名人推薦 淡江大學中文系教授／高柏園.

本書在認識論的基礎上對思維問題進行了哲學探究，主要內容包括：一是通過對認識的結構和本質、過程和矛盾、規律和限度以及認識與實踐的關係等一系列重要認識問題的探究，闡明了認識的機理，為思維哲學奠定了堅實的認 識論基礎；二是通過對思維的本質和形態、方法和方式以及創新思維的探究，闡明了思維的機理，以此構建了思維哲學的主體部分；三是通過對真理的概念、核對總和發展問題的探究，闡明了真理的機理，以此作為思維哲學的邏 輯終結。.

al-Juzʼ al-awwal. Dirāsāt fī al-manṭiq wa-falsafat al-ʻulūm -- al-juzʼ al-thānī. Dirāsāt fī al-manhaj wa-al-ʻilm al-ʻArabī.

This study tests the hypothesis that the perception of philosophy as a male-oriented discipline contributes to the pronounced gender disparity within the field. To assess the hypothesis, we determined the extent to which individuals view philosophy as masculine, and whether individual differences in this correspond with greater identification with philosophy. We also tested whether identification with philosophy correlated to interest in it. We discovered, first, that the more women view philosophy as masculine, the less they identify with it, and second, (...) that the less women identify with philosophy, the less they want to major in it. Interestingly, this result does not hold for men—their viewing philosophy as masculine does not correspond to their identification with it, nor does it correlate with their likelihood of majoring in it. We also discovered that the typical student does not have a preconceived notion of philosophy as masculine; this suggests that they come to view philosophy as masculine the more they do it, which in turn supports the possibility that teaching the discipline differently may prevent students from conceiving of philosophy as masculine, thus allowing a path to reducing the gender disparity. (shrink)