本书为“高校人文与科学教育丛书”之《中西历史的人文精神》。全书主要包括中国人文精神的历史演变,中华传统人文精神的近代转换以及中国人文精神的当代建构等.

Intern physicians are generally more burdened by stress than the general population. This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the current situation regarding burnout and explore its association with the self-evaluation of competence among Chinese dental interns. A self-administered anonymous survey was conducted on 91 dental interns in the Peking University School of Stomatology, from August 2019 to June 2020. It consisted of a psychological stress questionnaire, including burnout and self-evaluation of clinical competence. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to (...) determine the differences between self-evaluation scores of clinical competence. Results showed average scores for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment of 22.22 ± 9.04, 8.16 ± 5.21, and 36.08 ± 7.76, respectively. Dental clinical technology was considered more useful than other clinical competencies, and there was a correlation between its importance and the stress caused by its deficiency. Significant associations were found between stress due to a lack of dental clinical technology and high emotional exhaustion. Burnout was common among the dental interns, which may be a valuable finding. Among the six different aspects of clinical competence, “dental clinical technology” represented the most stressful item. Strengthening pre-clinical training and promptly conducting targeted training in the early clinical process may be considered as decompression measures. (shrink)

Resumo: Paul Lengrand escreveu extensivamente sobre a filosofia da educação física, ao longo de sua vida. Esses trabalhos foram meticulosamente coletados, categorizados e sintetizados. De acordo com um estudo perceptivo, a postura vitalícia de Paul Lengrand sobre a filosofia da educação física foi significativamente influenciada por seu histórico singular, demandas sociais e interações interpessoais. Além disso, foi revelado que sua visão sobre a filosofia da educação física era uma extensão de seu profundo compromisso com a filosofia da educação, no decorrer (...) da vida, ao mesmo tempo que a aprimorava e refinava. A educação física e o esporte são conteúdos importantes da educação física, ao longo da vida. O esporte não deve ser visto como uma atividade muscular, mas deve ser combinado com a situação atual, moral e arte, e o período deve ser integrado com a educação, durante a vida. Centrada inequivocamente em torno de abraçar o exercício físico em todos os momentos da existência humana, a educação física foi considerada como uma dimensão indispensável da vida que exemplifica a durabilidade, a progressão gradual e a abrangência da filosofia da educação física, ao longo da vida. (shrink)

Given the close relatedness of local issues, water scarcity, and sustainability, this research sought to investigate the factors affecting residents’ willingness to reuse direct and indirect potable water in the arid region. Utilizing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), an analysis was undertaken with a sample of 1,831 water consumers in the City of Albuquerque, the most populous city in New Mexico, United States. The primary analysis revealed positive associations between local concerns about drought or water scarcity and population growth with (...) residents' willingness to reuse direct and indirect potable water. Conversely, concerns about water quality and water bills were found to be negatively associated with the willingness to utilize directly and indirectly recycled water for drinking. In light of these findings, the study explores the potential of fostering an eco-surplus culture by cultivating a sense of environmental responsibility and acknowledging the relationship between local issues and environmental conditions. Simultaneously, the study proposes collaboration between the government and residents to promote water reuse programs to conserve water resources effectively. (shrink)

Each of us bears a unique name given to us at birth. When people use your name, they typically refer to you. But what is the linkage that ties a name to a person and hence allows it to refer? Li's book approaches this question of reference empirically through the medium of referential intuitions. Building on the literature on philosophical and linguistic intuitions, she proposes a linguistic-competence-based account of referential intuitions. Subsequently, using a series of novel experiments, she investigates the (...) variation of referential intuitions across different cultures, as well as the developmental trajectory and the underlying causes of the observed cultural differences. What she finds is that the cultural patterns of referential intuitions are already in place around age seven, and the differences are largely attributable to the distinct perspective taking strategies favoured by easterners and westerners, rather than the moral valence of actions involved in the experimental materials. These results are taken to better support referential pluralism (in particular, the ambiguous view) than referential monism. By undertaking this fascinating research, Li's book provides new insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying people's referential usage of names. It will be valuable to students and scholars of linguistics, philosophy of language and experimental philosophy, and in particular, to those who research into semantic intuitions and theories of reference. (shrink)

Few would deny that something ontologically depends on something else. Given that something depends on something, what depends on what? Huayan Buddhism 華嚴宗, a prominent Chinese Buddhist school, is known for its extensive thesis of interdependence, according to which everything depends on everything else. This intriguing thesis is entangled with seemingly paradoxical claims that everything is not only identified with everything else but also contained within it. Moreover, the radical thesis of interdependence entails that dependence is pervasive and symmetric. In (...) this paper, I first develop a contemporary interpretation of Huayan interdependence by employing the definitional account of essence and the essence-based account of dependence. Through these contemporary resources, I elucidate and unify the theses of interdependence, mutual identity, and mutual containment within Huayan Buddhism. I then propose a unique framework of ontological dependence that suggests varying degrees of ontological dependence, aimed at accommodating and explaining away our intuitions against pervasive and symmetric dependence. By contemporizing Huayan Buddhism, I explore its potential and facilitate engagement between contemporary metaphysics and Huayan Buddhism. (shrink)

According to Zhiyi 智顗 (538–597), the founder of the Chinese Buddhist Tiantai school 天臺宗, “one object is all objects;” hence, all objects are profoundly interconnected. In this paper, I critically examine Zhiyi’s metaphysics of objects as presented in the historical Tiantai texts and subsequently develop a contemporary and accessible thesis of interconnectedness by integrating Zhiyi’s views with resources from contemporary analytic philosophy, particularly relative identity. By drawing on Zhiyi’s insights and incorporating contemporary philosophical ideas, I also illustrate how historical Chinese (...) Buddhism and contemporary analytic metaphysics can be mutually informing. (shrink)

In this article, I elaborate on the approach to joy preserved in East Asian Yogācāra texts authored by Xuanzang and his disciple, Kuiji. I argue that these Yogācāra Buddhists propose a contextualist approach that does not presume joy to be an emotion with an essential property but rather perceives joy as always contextualized in lifeworlds at the personal and interpersonal levels. As such, Xuanzang and Kuiji outline two contrasting pictures of joy to capture how it is experienced in the lifeworld (...) of ignorance and the lifeworld of wisdom, respectively. Upon delineating what joy is and how it is experienced, I continue to explore what joy can promise. Since joy does not have an inherent property, people can always make a collaborative effort to recontextualize joy for inclusion and emancipation. As such, I hope to draw on the Yogācāra analysis of joy to enrich the feminist discussion on happiness. (shrink)

The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: - Examine how knowledge acquisition and knowledge dissemination are associated with academic staff’s job satisfaction and teaching motivation - Examine whether job satisfaction mediates the relationship between knowledge acquisition, knowledge dissemination and teaching motivation.

This research investigates 266 business students' panel data across 4 time periods and tests a theoretical model involving intrinsic religiosity, the love of money, Machiavellianism, and propensity to engage in unethical behaviors. There was a short ethics intervention between Times 3 and 4. We identified good apples and bad apples using the PUB measure collected at Time 4. From Time 3 to Time 4, good apples became more ethical, whereas bad apples became less ethical after the ethics intervention. Moreover, for (...) the whole sample, intrinsic religiosity deterred unethical intentions not only directly but also indirectly through the absence of Machiavellianism. Before the ethics intervention, intrinsic religiosity curbed unethical intention directly for good apples but indirectly for bad apples. After the intervention, only the indirect effect was significant for bad apples. Intrinsic religiosity offers us hope to open the hearts of the lost sheep and bring them home. Research results were discussed in light of this study's theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions; Judeo-Christian ethics and values; challenging roles of educators and executives in educating Gen-Yers; creating a sea change of the ethical social norm in schools, organizations, and society, or ethical community building, and promoting ethical behavior; and future directions for research. (shrink)

“[…] only by uniting the power of the entire village could they chase Snake away.” —In “The Virtue of Sacrifice”; The Kingfisher Story Collection [1].

Constellations, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 329-342, September 2022.

Polysemy has recently emerged as a popular topic in philosophy of language. While much existing research focuses on the relatedness among senses, this article introduces a novel perspective that emphasizes the continuity of sense individuation, sense regularity, and sense productivity. This new perspective has only recently gained traction, largely due to advancements in computational linguistics. It also poses a serious challenge to semantic minimalism, so I present three arguments against minimalism from the continuous perspective that touch on the minimal concept, (...) the distinction from homonymy, and the quasi‐rule‐like nature of polysemy. Last, I provide an account of polysemy that incorporates this continuous perspective. (shrink)

The multiverse theodicy proposes to reconcile the existence of God and evil by supposing that God created all and only the creation-worthy universes and that some universes like ours are, despite their evils, creation-worthy. Drawing on work in population ethics, this paper develops a novel challenge to the multiverse theodicy. Roughly, the challenge contends that the axiological underpinnings of the multiverse theodicy harbor a ‘mere addition paradox’: the assumption that creating creation-worthy universes would always make the world better turns out (...) to have morally repugnant consequences akin to those of the assumption that adding worthwhile lives to a population would always make the overall welfare of the population better. Further, the challenge leverages this difficulty into an argument against God’s having created all and only the creation-worthy universes, and hence against the multiverse theodicy. Responses to this challenge are considered but found wanting, largely because of commitments of the multiverse theodicy that have no analogs in population ethics. (shrink)

Keith Donnellan’s distinction between the attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions has spurred debates regarding the truth conditions of the utterance “the F is G” with definite descriptions used referentially. In this article, I present a semantic account of referential descriptions, grounded in the contextual factors of the utterance, including the speaker’s intention and presupposition as well as the interlocutor’s recognition of them. This account is called the IPR-semantic account, according to which the speaker’s intention (I), presupposition (P), and (...) the interlocutor's recognition (R) jointly determine whether “the F” in an utterance “the F is G” is used referentially or attributively, and the meaning of “the F” is determined by whether it is used referentially or attributively. Moreover, I argue that the meaning of the referential description “the F” is the intended object e, embodied with a property H that has prompted the speaker to presuppose that e is F and to intend to use “the F” to refer to e, as well as the interlocutor to recognize the presupposition and intention. According to the IPR-semantic account, the utterance “the F is G” with “the F” used referentially expresses a singular proposition, namely, that e is G, and it is true if and only if the intended object e is G. Additionally, I argue that the IPR-semantic account not only surpasses some alternative semantic accounts but also outperforms Kripke’s pragmatic account. (shrink)

Background Emergency nurses who thrive at work experience positive emotions that help reduce burnout and thus enhance career calling. However, few studies have focused on the relationships among thriving at work, career calling, and moral distress among emergency nurses. Objectives To investigate the relationships among thriving at work, career calling, and moral distress and to explore the mediating role of career calling in the relationship between thriving at work and moral distress among emergency nurses. Design A quantitative, cross-sectional study. Methods (...) A cross-sectional study was conducted by reference to 390 emergency nurses in China using an online survey that include the Thriving at Work Scale, the Career Calling Scale, and the Moral Distress Scale-Revised. The data were analyzed using SmartPLS software. Ethical consideration The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Hunan Normal University (No. 2023-388). Findings Among emergency nurses, thriving at work is positively associated with career calling, while career calling is negatively associated with moral distress. Career calling negatively and completely mediates the relationship between thriving at work and moral distress (β = −0.087, p < 0.01). Discussion Theoretically, the findings enhance our understanding of the relationships among thriving at work, career calling, and moral distress among emergency nurses. Conclusion By emphasizing the benefits of thriving at work, nursing managers can improve nurses’ level of thriving at work by providing a favorable environment, a flexible scheduling system, and appropriate authorization as well as by ensuring organizational fairness and providing training opportunities in a hierarchical manner. (shrink)

Ethics is frequently concerned with how to resolve clashes between competing claims from claimants of different kinds. The idea of moral status is crucial to understanding how (1) competing claims...

In this paper, I argue that since artworks cannot take moral responsibility, it is impossible to establish any sort of ethical criticism towards them for their own sake. Ethical criticism of art is inevitably directed at the artist(s), who can take moral responsibility for creating or performing the art in certain ways. Therefore, we should distinguish between two types of criticism towards art: (1) the ethical criticism should be contextualized within the author-work framework, meaning that the extent to which the (...) author can take moral responsibility will significantly affect the ethical criticism of art, while artworks can serve as acts or evidence of acts (of the author) in ethical criticism; (2) ‘ethical’ criticism of art for the work’s own sake should be excluded from the ethical issue and instead reconstructed in the causal issue. (shrink)

Resumen: Desde su aparición, el deconstruccionismo filosófico ha sido considerado como una ideología no convencional y anti dogmática, que tiene un fuerte significado de referencia para la reforma de los cursos de inglés en las universidades chinas. China se encuentra en un periodo crítico de transformación, que exige que la enseñanza universitaria del inglés cambie radicalmente los conceptos educativos tradicionales y lleve a cabo reformas integrales de la enseñanza del inglés. Al mismo tiempo, cuestiones como la adaptabilidad transcultural y la (...) comunicación en la enseñanza del inglés en China han atraído gradualmente la atención de la gente. La comunidad académica de China lleva muchos años debatiendo cuestiones relacionadas con la enseñanza del inglés, pero son pocos los que han situado la enseñanza del inglés desde una perspectiva filosófica. En respuesta a los problemas de comprensión insuficiente de las diferencias culturales y de sistemas incompletos de evaluación cognitiva en la enseñanza intercultural del inglés actual, este artículo pretende mejorar las capacidades interculturales de las personas mediante una perspectiva deconstructiva, comprendiendo así mejor las diferencias culturales, respetando el multiculturalismo, promoviendo el desarrollo diverso de los estudiantes y profundizando en la enseñanza del inglés. Por lo tanto, este artículo intenta explorar la adaptabilidad transcultural del inglés desde la perspectiva de la deconstrucción filosófica y cómo lograr la reforma de la enseñanza del inglés en China, lo que tiene un importante significado práctico para los campos relacionados. Mediante el estudio de la comunicación intercultural en inglés desde la perspectiva de la estructura filosófica, se puede concluir que aplicar el estructuralismo a la enseñanza intercultural del inglés ayuda a comprender mejor las diferencias culturales, respetar el multiculturalismo, abogar por el diálogo y la comunicación, y reconstruir un nuevo sistema cognitivo. (shrink)

According to Tom Roberts and Joel Krueger's frustrated pro-attitude account of loneliness, loneliness is primarily characterized as an affective state in which individuals perceive certain social goods as unattainable. The frustration of pro-attitudes, or the desire for social connections, plays a significant role in understanding the nature of loneliness. However, in this article, I argue that the frustrated pro-attitude account falls short in explaining a specific type of loneliness known as clueless loneliness, wherein a person feels lonely without experiencing a (...) salient frustration of pro-attitude. By analyzing five cases of clueless loneliness—the case of desiring the wrong thing, the case of failing to form concrete desires, the case of having an illusion of desire fulfillment, the case of holding self-deceptive beliefs about need fulfillment, and the case of lacking a desire for social goods—I propose a revised account that acknowledges the complexity of loneliness and the potential disconnect between perceived social goods and the actual fulfillment of one's need for connection. My objective in this article is to demonstrate that this revised understanding of loneliness provides a more comprehensive framework for examining the nature of loneliness and its impact on different groups of people within society. (shrink)

In the team context, leaders usually develop differentiated leader-member exchange relationships with employees, resulting in some employees having relatively inferior relationships with the leader than others. Nevertheless, how and when employees with low relative leader-member exchange (RLMX) relationships react toward the leader have been rarely considered in empirical research. Drawing upon social comparison theory, we develop a cross-level moderated mediation model to examine how and when RLMX may lead to employee’s unethical pro-leader behavior (UPLB). We propose that employees with low (...) RLMX would feel envy which in turn motivates them to engage in UPLB in order to gain the rewards and resources that are distributed by the leader. Further, we argue that envy is less likely to motivate low RLMX employees to engage in UPLB when distributive justice climate is high, because high distributive justice indicates that rewards and resources are distributed fairly (based on work contribution rather than engaging in unethical behaviors that please the leader). Data were obtained from 504 employees in 102 divisional teams in a large retail corporation at three time points. Results of the multilevel moderated mediation analysis show that envy mediates the effect of RLMX on UPLB and that the indirect relationship is moderated by team-level distributive justice climate. These findings suggest the importance of adopting a social comparison perspective to understand the negative consequences of RLMX via emotional mechanisms. (shrink)

The scarcity of women’s writings in antiquity presents an intractable problem for feminists intending to integrate women’s perspectives into the existing philosophical canon. One way to undo the erasure of women is for feminists to look to the east; in China, there is an abundance of well-preserved women’s writings, along with their biographical records, as early as the 6th century BCE. This essay will provide a survey of those women’s records, focusing on the 6th century BCE to the 4th century (...) CE, as a way to reimagine the discipline of Philosophy and its canon. (shrink)

This study aims to provide an overview of RECs (research ethics committees) in Chinese universities, encompassing both medical and non-medical studies. The primary objective is to identify major challenges faced by RECs in Chinese universities and draw meaningful implications from the findings. The investigation focuses on 42 comprehensive Chinese universities, and the results reveal that while all universities have implemented RECs in various forms, only 28.6% explicitly stipulate ethical review requirements for non-medical disciplines. Furthermore, RECs in Chinese universities encounter various (...) challenges, including insufficient attention to research ethics review, inadequate ethics review systems and regulations, a lack of education and training, and lacking ethics review for non-medical research. This paper proposes recommendations for establishing robust RECs in Chinese universities, seeking to enhance ethical governance in research. By addressing the challenges identified, these recommendations aim to strengthen ethical oversight, foster a culture of responsible research, and uphold the highest ethical standards across diverse academic disciplines. (shrink)

Preventing firms from engaging in greenwashing is a topic of significant theoretical and practical interest. This study examines the impact of penalties for environmental violations (PEVs) on mitigating greenwashing using a dataset of firms listed on China's A-share market operating in heavily polluting industries from 2014 to 2020. We also examine how firm-level characteristics moderate the relationship between PEVs and greenwashing. Our results demonstrate that PEVs can deter firms from engaging in greenwashing and that this negative effect is more pronounced (...) for firms with greater financial slack, effective internal controls and political connections. Additional analysis indicates that PEVs have a negative effect on greenwashing for firms in the growth and mature stages but not for firms in the ‘shake-out’ stage, and that there is a deterrence effect. Our findings have important implications for mitigating greenwashing behaviours through collaboration between governments and firms. (shrink)

The process of Marxism China is a process in which China conforms to the historical requirements of modernization, catches up with modernization and seeks a new path of modernization. Under the background of the modernization movement and the modernity problems that followed, the China of Marxist philosophy undoubtedly has a new problem domain. From the perspective of practice, the logical thread of Marxism in China is the modernization of China. Theoretically, the construction of China's modernity is the theme of Marxism (...) China. Therefore, the construction of modernity is an important perspective for the study of Marxism in China. Marxist philosophy China's modernity construction shows some basic principles in interaction. We should criticize the capital logic to promote the China-orientation of Marxist philosophy and China-orientation of Marxism, promote the transformation of China's traditional culture into the theoretical resources of modern construction, and realize the "free and all-round development of human beings" as the common goals of China-orientation of Marxism and modern construction of China. (shrink)

This article delves into the philosophical nuances involved in translating the Confucian concept of you yu yi 游於藝 into English. The concept, which refers to engaging in various arts or skills, poses challenges when it comes to choosing the appropriate English translation. By examining Confucian texts and philosophical interpretations, the study aims to shed light on the multifaceted nature of the concept and provide insights into the complexities of cross-cultural translation. Through a meticulous analysis of linguistic, cultural, and philosophical factors, (...) this study aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on translation theory and the preservation of cultural concepts. (shrink)

The novel coronavirus pandemic is intensifying all over the world, but some countries, including China, have developed extensive and successful experience in controlling this pandemic. In this context, some questions arise naturally: What can countries caught up in the epidemic learn from China’s experience? In regions where the outbreak is under control, what would lead to a resurgence of the epidemic? To address these issues, we investigate China’s experience in anticontagion interventions and reopening process, focusing on the coevolution of epidemic (...) and awareness during COVID-19 outbreak. Through an empirical analysis based on large-scale data and simulation based on a metapopulation and multilayer network model, we ascertain the impact of human movements and awareness diffusion on the epidemic, elucidate the inherent patterns and effective interventions of different epidemic prevention methods, and highlight the crunch time of each measure. The results are also employed to analyze COVID-19 evolution in other countries so as to find unified rules in complex situations around the world and provide advice on anticontagion and reopening policies. Our findings explain some key mechanisms of epidemic prevention and may help the epidemic analysis and decision-making in various countries suffering from COVID-19. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether physical cleansing can reduce the mindset effect in problem-solving in two experiments. Both experiments followed the same procedure. In the first stage, participants formed a mindset through the Luchins’ water-jar task (Experiment 1) or the idiom maze task (Experiment 2). The second stage is cleansing manipulation. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to clean their hands with wipes (cleansing condition) or examine the packaging of the wipes (no-cleansing condition). In Experiment 2, participants were asked to (...) watch a washing-hands video (cleansing condition) or watch an examining-pen video (no-cleansing condition). At last, all participants completed the mindset effect test problems. The results showed that the participants in the cleansing condition were less affected by the mindset than those in the no-cleansing condition, indicating that physical cleansing reduced the mindset effect. Our results provide new evidence for the clean-slate effects and support the hypothesis that physical cleansing is an embodied process of psychological separation. (shrink)

In November 2011, Citizenship and Immigration Canada paused the parents/grandparents (PGP) sponsorship immigration and announced a new Super Visa program simultaneously to facilitate family reunification, specifically among older adults waiting to be reunified with their children in Canada. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the experiences of immigrant families with the Super Visa Program. In total, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Toronto with Chinese immigrants and parents holding a Super Visa. Our findings revealed that Super Visa program is (...) helpful for family reunification, especially for those whose regular visa applications are not successful. However, Super Visa is still a visitor visa and parents/grandparents have to leave after a maximum of two years. This temporary status of their parents does not promote among immigrants a sense of belonging in Canada, but reinforces their feeling of being treated as “foreigner”. They also debunked the stigma that older parents/grandparents come to Canada for better welfare and are non-contributor and a burden to Canadian society. We observe older parents/grandparents are categorized as “undesirable” and their unpaid contributions to immigrant family and Canada society are rendered invisible. We argue there exits an inherent link between PGP policy changes and social injustice. Behind the negative portrayal of older parents/grandparents and policy changes on them is State’s neoliberal governmentality grounded upon market norms and mechanism. The immigration and social injustice inflicting on older PGP migrants manifests that neoliberal immigration regime is still structurally raced, gendered, classed, and may be intertwined with other stigmatizing dynamics such as ageist, ableist etc. within the State’s power relationship. (shrink)

We propose a two-step guessing game to measure the depth of thinking. We apply this method to the P beauty contest game. Using our method, we find that 81% of subjects do not make choice following best response reasoning while the classical method would suggest only 12%. The result suggests that the classical method has the fundamental problem that it cannot distinguish if a submitted number is due to best response reasoning or not. It also suggests that traditional level k (...) analysis falsely attributes some sophistication to random players, and that the degree of false attribution is large. Our procedure provides an alternative way to identify whether the individual has best response reasoning which is essential for any positive level of depth of thinking and differentiates between the depth of thinking and random choice, and hence provides a very different conclusion, which is suggestive of limitations of the classical method. (shrink)

Since the beginning of human history, there has been no society that did not have any religion. Man meets his need to believe, encoded in his nature by turning to God. God has not left humans alone in their journey on earth, and from time to time, He has intervened in the world through his prophets. The prophethood, which constitutes one of the main subjects of theology, is an important institution in God-human communication. The messengers chosen by God convey to (...) people the information that they received through revelation and offer teachings that will bring them to salvation. The idea of salvation by God when suffering or feeling helpless has driven people to the expectation of a savior. Nearly all religions except Shintoism have the awaited savior belief in the world. Accordingly, the savior will emerge in an environment of chaos where disasters are experienced, and a moral collapse is observed. The expected savior will drive people away from this turmoil, bring them happiness, well-being, and lead them to salvation. Although there is a savior belief in Judaism and Christianity, Muslims claim that the awaited savior in these religions is Muhammad. Muslim thinkers who believe that Muhammad was heralded in previous scripts, tried to find evidence on the subject from the Bible. One of the Islamic scholars who did researches for this purpose is Shamsuddin al-Samarqandi. Shamsuddin Mohammed b. Ashraf al-Husayni al-Samarqandi is an important Turkish-Islamic scholar who lived in Turkestan at the end of the 7th century and the first quarter of the 8th century. Samarqandi is a versatile scholar who produced important works in various fields such as philosophy, logic, mathematics, discussion, debate and astronomy. Shamsuddin al-Samarqandi is one of the eminent scholars who have written his name in the history of science and philosophy with his works. He adopted a critical and analytical style in almost every field, putting the science of logic at the center of his system. His constructive criticisms had an important function in understanding and interpreting the ideas of numerous thinkers, from Greek philosophers to Islamic philosophers and representatives of philosophical theology. In addition to all these, Samarqandi did not hesitate to criticize the Christian and Jewish belief systems, religions such as Sanawiyyah and Zoroastrianism, and the teachings of the naturalist philosophers regarding the relationship between God and the world in the light of rational and scriptural evidence. Samarqandi, who distinguished himself in rational sciences, also showed himself with his background in theology. Due to his exceptional intellectual interest, he analyzes some key concepts and divine codes related to the Bible, making original inferences about the loyalty of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Samarqandi interprets some passages of the Torah and the New Testament, which he considers as signs of Muhammad's prophethood, in the axis of language, logic and the rules of shariah, and concludes that Muhammad is the last prophet to be announced. The conceptual framework that he mostly focuses on in this regard contains Mount Paran, Paraklite, comparison with Moses, and the good news given to the Ishmaelites. Samarqandi makes inferences about the environment in which Muhammad appeared, his qualities, and his lineage, based on the aforementioned concepts. Samarqandi also responds to the criticisms raised by the Ahl al-Kitab about the principles, such as the abolition of other religious rules constituting the basis of Muhammad's legitimacy and establishment of Islam instead, and him being a universal prophet. An important privilege of Samarqandi is that he not only grounds his claims on a theoretical scale but also engages in debates with the leaders of the Ahl al-Kitab. Although Samarqandi exhibits a satisfactory analytical attitude in most of his claims, he displays a sophisticated approach based on the method of coercion (ilzām) in some of his claims. Although he adheres to the tradition of beshair al-nubuwwah in general, he gives a different perspective and strong reasoning to the same evidence within the tradition with the effect of his identity as a verifier (muhaqqik). (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article delves into the advent of Chinese Buddhism in Africa and its entanglement with politics and the contemporary Chinese transnationalism. It explores the previously uncharted territory of the endeavours of Chinese Buddhist organisations and the transnational elements of Chinese religions in Africa. Drawing on ethnographic data from South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana and Malawi, this article examines the mobility of transnational Chinese Buddhism, probes retrospectively into its origins and drives, and investigates its connections with the evolving China–Africa/taiwan–africa engagements. We (...) argue that contemporary Chinese Buddhism in Africa is a product of connections and competitions between states, African politics, and the multi-layered Chinese diaspora. The political, social and cultural influences of transnational Chinese Buddhists in Africa warrant further exploration and analysis. (shrink)