What I pay attention to in this article is the relationship between Su-wun (水雲) and Da-seok (多夕) in their thoughts. As is generally known, Dong-hak (東學) has been recognized as an independent national religion which rediscovered the forgotten God of Korean People. It is indicated by the fact that Dong-hak is a system of thought which has inherited and developed the theory of three foundations (三才) as the worldview of Cheonbugyeong. In this paper, what I find to be missing in (...) Da-seok's thought is that he did not mention Su-wun's Dong-hak. Given the fact that Da-seok had much interest not only in Buddhism and Confucianism butalso in Cheonbugyeong, it is more or less unexpected that he took Donghak, which was closely related to the scripture, out of the question in his writing. For this reason, the main task of this article is to correlate Su-wuns' Dong-hak and Daseok's thoughts (Understanding of Christianity) in the framework of the idea three foundations (三才) originating from Cheonbugyeong. In order to make these points clear, I will discuss the following in order: First, the theory of three foundationsproclaimed in Cheonbugyeong as the fundamental framework of both Dong-hak and Da-seok's thoughts. Second, the fundamental feature of Da-seok's understanding of Christianity. Third, comparison of Da-seok's understanding of Christianity and Dong-hak in term of their fundamental structure. Lastly, the encounter between Da-seok's Christianity and Dong-hak and its implications for the world history and theology of life. (shrink)

Time distortion in individuals with social anxiety has been defined as the seemingly slower passage of time in social situations and is related to both arousal and valence. Consequently, adaptive behavior is disrupted and interpersonal situations avoided. We explored the effects of valence and arousal on time distortion in individuals with social anxiety. Participants were assigned to two groups, High Anxiety (HA) and Low Anxiety (LA), presented with four types of facial expression stimuli (positive-high arousal, positive-low arousal, negative-high arousal, and (...) negative-low arousal), and asked to estimate the duration of stimulus presentation. Results indicated that, relative to other stimuli, the HA and LA groups perceived longer presentation for high-arousal negative and low-arousal positive stimuli, respectively. These findings suggest that anxious individuals’ time distortion was more severe in situations that evoked high arousal and involved negative emotion. (shrink)

Molodtsov introduced 1999 the concept of soft set as a new mathematical tool for dealing with uncertainties that is free from the difficulties that have troubled the usual theoretical approaches. In this paper we apply the notion of soft sets by Molodtsov to ordered semigroups. The notions of soft ordered semigroup, soft ordered subsemigroup, soft left ideal, and left idealistic soft ordered semigroup are introduced, and various related properties are investigated.

Comparative Political Theory and Cross-Cultural Philosophy explores new forms of philosophizing in the age of globalization by challenging the conventional border between the East and the West, as well as the traditional boundaries among different academic disciplines. This rich investigation demonstrates the importance of cross-cultural thinking in our reading of philosophical texts and explores how cross-cultural thinking transforms our understanding of the traditional philosophical paradigm.

Through corporate social responsibility activities, a firm can develop the capability for managing and benefiting from stakeholder relationships. This study refers to such a capability as stakeholder influence capacity. In a host country, locally sourcing parts and/or materials can generate economic value and improve social welfare. Moreover, local sourcing provides opportunities for a foreign firm to apply and advance SIC while closely interacting with host-country stakeholders. Accordingly, we expect that a firm, having gained SIC through CSR activities in its home (...) country, will be more likely to source parts and/or materials in the host country. We also expect that the relationship between SIC and host-country sourcing is conditional upon a foreign firm’s intangible resources and liabilities of foreignness. Our empirical analysis, using Korean datasets, supports the positive relationship between CSR and local sourcing. We find that this positive relationship is more pronounced either when the firm is committed to technology development or when its home and host countries are geographically or culturally distant. (shrink)

This is a response to the recent essay by Elizabeth M. Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker on “Comparative Religious Ethics as a Field of Study.” I clarify my earlier positions on method and virtue in comparative religious ethics and try to respond to some of the issues that Bucar and Stalnaker raise in regard to my arguments specifically and the field more generally. I argue that while we need not measure the practical impact of scholarly work in comparative religious ethics purely (...) in terms of political or social action, I nevertheless worry that defining the goals of comparative inquiry in terms of the production of bewilderment, intellectual vertigo, or skeptical questions can lead to impressionistic or therapeutic methodological norms. In a similar vein, I refine my earlier position on externalism that acknowledges the impossibility of a purely externalist approach but also notes the desirability of coming to understand others “in their own terms” prior to engaging in the process of transmutation. I also question Bucar and Stalnaker's pessimism about the potential of producing “rigorously convincing ethical theory from the lived experience of regular folk,” suggesting that perhaps we are working with different conceptions of the sociology of knowledge. Finally, I consider whether we are currently in the midst of an epistemological crisis and conclude with some reflections on the rationality of the craft of comparative religious ethics. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical appraisal of the recent turn in comparative religious ethics to virtue theory; it argues that the specific aspirations of virtue ethicists to make ethics more contextual, interdisciplinary, and practice-centered has in large measure failed to match the rhetoric. I suggest that the focus on the category of the human and practices associated with self-formation along with a methodology grounded in “analogical imagination” has actually poeticized the subject matter into highly abstract textual studies on normative voices (...) within traditions, largely in isolation from considerations of socio-historical context, political and institutional pressures, and the lived ethics of non-elite moral actors. I conclude with some programmatic suggestions for how the field of comparative religious ethics can move forward. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical appraisal of the recent turn in comparative religious ethics to virtue theory; it argues that the specific aspirations of virtue ethicists to make ethics more contextual, interdisciplinary, and practice-centered has in large measure failed to match the rhetoric. I suggest that the focus on the category of the human and practices associated with self-formation along with a methodology grounded in “analogical imagination” has actually poeticized the subject matter into highly abstract textual studies on normative voices (...) within traditions, largely in isolation from considerations of socio-historical context, political and institutional pressures, and the lived ethics of non-elite moral actors. I conclude with some programmatic suggestions for how the field of comparative religious ethics can move forward. (shrink)

This paper examines the antecedents of organizational commitment for adopting corporate environmental responsibility and green practices in the case of the logistics industry in South Korea. Seven hundred and eighty employees and top management from logistics companies were sampled. The data were analyzed using factor analysis, structural equation modeling techniques, and one-way analysis of variance. The results showed that social expectations, organizational support, and stakeholder pressure were the important antecedents for the adoption of corporate environmental responsibility and green practices. In (...) the path analysis, social expectations had the greatest impact on both stakeholder pressure and green practice adoption. Moreover, we found that the higher the job titles were, the more willing they were to adopt green practices. This indicated that the current top management of Korean logistics companies is well aware of being mandated to make a commitment to corporate environmental responsibility and green practices. (shrink)

This focus issue considers the normative implications of the recent emergence in genome editing technology known as CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) or CRISPR‐associated protein 9. Originally discovered in the adaptive immune systems of bacteria and archaea, CRISPR enables researchers to make efficient and site‐specific modifications to the genomes of cells and organisms. More accessible, precise, and economic than previous gene editing technologies, CRISPR holds the promise of not only transforming the fields of genetics, agriculture, and human medicine, (...) but also heralding a new era of democratized biotechnology. However, the speed with which developments in the field have progressed threatens to overwhelm our normative sensibilities about the long‐term practical and ethical implications. The contributors to this focus issue attempt to think through some of the more salient moral and practical consequences of CRISPR in the context of religious ethics, particularly as they relate to themes of autonomy, human flourishing, social justice, and the ethics of enhancement. (shrink)

This essay examines the intra-poetic relationship between the "Inner Chapters" and the "Syncretist Chapters" of the Zhuangzi , exploring the affinities and tensions between the two competing works by analyzing not only how the Syncretist authors deliberately displace and recast the precursor poem by engaging in an act of creative revisionism, but also how the "Syncretist Chapters" unconsciously reveal a hidden debt to the "Inner Chapters," especially in regard to the practices of inner cultivation and a cosmology of the Dao. (...) As will be argued, the sociopolitical dimensions of syncretic Daoist thought, most pointedly in regard to the art of rulership, seem to be premised on the kind of inner cultivation that we find in the "Inner Chapters." Indeed, for the Syncretist it is precisely the sovereign's ability to be "inwardly a sage, outwardly a king" , to coordinate the cosmological and the political, that permits her to "adjust and attune the empire and be in harmony with men." The "Syncretist Chapters" can thus be viewed as a corrective movement within the history of early Daoism that, in an act of creative revisionism, completes and reconstitutes the "tradition of the Way.". (shrink)

This paper attempts to recast Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream within the larger normative context of the 'Inner Chapters' and early Daoism in terms of its moral significance, particularly in the way that it prescribes how a Daoist should live through the 'significant symbol' of the butterfly. This normative reading of the passage will be contrasted with two recent interpretations of the passage - one by Robert Allinson and the other by Harold Roth - that tend to focus more on the epistemological (...) and mystical concerns of the text. As will be argued, the undue emphasis on the epistemological and mystical significance of the passage not only comes to grief when considered in light of philosophical and textual concerns but also obscures the moral dimensions of the passage that are more congruent with the 'Inner Chapters' as a whole. (shrink)

According to our data, 38.5 % of S&P 1500 firms have at least one professor on their boards. Given the lack of research examining the roles and effects of academic faculty as members of boards of directors on corporate outcomes, this study investigates whether firms with professor–directors are more likely to exhibit higher corporate social responsibility performance ratings. Results indicate that firms with professor–directors do exhibit higher CSR performance ratings than those without. However, the influence of professor–directors on firm CSR (...) performance ratings depends on their academic background—the positive association between the presence of professor–directors and firm CSR performance ratings is significant only when their academic background is specialized. Finally, this positive association weakens when professor–directors hold an administrative position at their universities. (shrink)

Despite the increasing number of studies on user experience and user interfaces, few studies have examined emotional interaction between humans and deformable objects. In the current study, we investigated how the anthropomorphic design of a flexible display interacts with emotion. For 101 unique 3D images in which an object was bent at different axes, 281 participants were asked to report how strongly the object evoked five elemental emotions (e.g., happiness, disgust, anger, fear, and sadness) in an online survey. People rated (...) the object’s shape using three emotional categories: happiness, disgust–anger, and sadness–fear. It was also found that a combination of axis of bending (horizontal or diagonal axis) and convexity (bending convexly or concavely) predicted emotional valence, underpinning the anthropomorphic design of flexible displays. Our findings provide empirical evidence that axis of bending and convexity can be an important antecedent of emotional interaction with flexible objects, triggering at least three types of emotion in users. (shrink)

The contributors to this reflection on the field consider the legacy of Christian ethics in comparative religious ethics (CRE), particularly in regard to whether the latter has escaped the parochialism and hegemony of the former, whether the legacy is simply vicious or whether it can be virtuous, and the specific ways in which the former has influenced the discipline of CRE in regard to methods and themes. Beyond these methodological questions, the contributors also speak to the historical development of Christian (...) ethics and CRE in the cultural and institutional contexts of late twentieth century America and provide reflections on the politics of CRE as it is now practiced and debated in the field and in the academy. (shrink)

This study examines the normative foundations of early Confucian ethics and suggests that rather than attempting to understand Confucian ethics in the language of ‘morality’ a more productive way would be to appreciate Confucianism as an ethics of propriety that can be articulated in terms of social roles, ritual decorum, and relational dependence. I argue that Western notions of ‘morality’ betray a thicker, more culturally loaded concept that possesses a limited utility in regard to comparative study. We can appeal to (...) a kind of methodological charity where we not only maximize the sense of the text or subject's sayings but also privilege the categories of thought that are native to the text's or speaker's lexicon. With this in mind, we can understand Confucian ethics as an ethics of propriety that departs substantially from Western moral systems, including virtue ethics, and challenges our received views on justice, autonomy, and personal identity. (shrink)

This paper presents a rereading of David Little and Sumner Twiss's Comparative Religious Ethics in the context of its initial reception and legacy within the field of religious ethics and argues that we can read it more charitably as a piece of pragmatism rather than as a work of formalism or semi-formalism. If one does not read Little and Twiss as committed positivists concerned with realizing a specific research program associated with the “twilight of logical empiricism,” then their theoretical and (...) methodological recommendations, illustrated in their case studies, appear more pragmatic in nature and less excessively rigid. By rereading Comparative Religious Ethics in this light, we can see more clearly its relevance for the field today, particularly regarding the fundamental importance of the discursive activity of practical reasoning, or the game of giving and asking for reasons, in the study of religious ethics. (shrink)

John Hick's "pluralistic hypothesis" of religion essays a comprehensive vision of religious diversity and its attendant soteriological, epistemological, and ontological implications. At the heart of Hick's proposal is the belief in the transcendental unity and soteriological identity of all religions. While coherent and compelling, Hick's model militates against those traditions that do not possess an ultimate noumenal referent that undergirds the phenomenal responses of culturally conditioned traditions. One of those traditions, namely Sōtō Zen Buddhism, at once defies Hick's categories and (...) presses for an alternative understanding of the epistemological, metaphysical, and soteriological issues. (shrink)

ArgumentMutuality in “contact zones” has been emphasized in cross-cultural knowledge interaction in re-evaluating power dynamics between centers and peripheries and in showing the hybridity of modern science. This paper proposes an analytical pause on this attempt to better invalidate centers by paying serious attention to the limits of mutuality in transcultural knowledge interaction imposed by asymmetries of power. An unusually reciprocal interaction between a Japanese forester, Ishidoya Tsutomu, at the colonial forestry department, and his Korean subordinate Chung Tyaihyon is chosen (...) to highlight an inescapable asymmetry induced by the imperial power structure. Ishidoya, positioning himself as a settler expert, as opposed to a scientist in Tokyo, pursued localized knowledge in growing interaction with Chung, resulting in Ishidoya's career change as a herbalist focusing on traditional medicine and Chung's leadership in Korean-only botanizing. However, their mutual transformations, limited by asymmetric constraints on their choices, did not unsettle the imperial power structure or the centrality of centers. (shrink)

Introduction -- Daoism and "morality" -- Hearing the silent harmony: revisioning ethics in the Zhuangzi -- Travellers on the way: friendship in the Zhuangzi -- The preservation of the Way: rights, community, and social ethics in the Zhuangzi -- The great returning: death and transformation in the Zhuangzi -- Inwardly a sage, outwardly a king: the Way as ruler.

I present a brief historical narrative of the legacy of Christian ethics in comparative religious ethics (CRE) that attempts to make sense of the tensions within the field from the perspective of the politics of identity with reference to its changing content and practices—its internal history—and what might be called the background conditions—its external history—that shaped not only the content and methods of CRE but also its self‐understanding. Given the politics of Christian identity and the historical development of religious ethics (...) within the American academy, I recommend that scholars of CRE adopt a more confessional mode of inquiry that makes explicit their ultimate commitments. (shrink)

This paper examines the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the light of the early Confucian thinker Mencius, arguing in essence that Mencian theories of moral development and self-cultivation can help us to recover the moral significance of Twain's novel. Although 'ethical criticisms' of Huckleberry Finn share a long history, I argue that most interpretations have failed to appreciate the moral significance of Jim, either by focusing on the moral arc of Huck in isolation or by casting Jim in one-dimensional terms (...) simply as a symbol or example of human dignity. By invoking the Mencian ideas of 'moral power' ( de ), human goodness, and the virtues of sympathy and humaneness, this study attempts to bring into relief the many ways that Jim, particularly in his role as an exemplar, functions as an active force in the moral life of Huck. It is hoped that this revised Mencian reading of Huckleberry Finn can restore the moral center of the novel and contribute to the growing discussion on the virtues in moral education. (shrink)