Scholarly accounts of the training of pity in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile focus on how Emile's tutor activates the psychological mechanisms necessary for the feeling of pity in book 4 of the text. This account is inadequate, for it fails to show how Emile acquires the evaluative ability to make the judgment about who deserves pity as well as the willingness to adjudicate his own and others' interests. In this article, Wing Sze Leung argues that books 1 through 3 (...) lay the foundation by developing in Emile the attitudes and dispositions that guide him in his judgment-making about which kind of life he should pursue. Books 4 and 5 then develop Emile's ability to make interpersonal judgments of pity through habituated practice. By gradually cultivating Emile's sensitivity to the potential conflict between his self-interests and others' well-being, as well as the resolution to refrain from infringing on others' interests and to pursue the common good, Rousseau's long-term educational project molds Emile's disposition to act as justice demands. The article concludes with a brief response to some criticisms about Rousseau's educational project. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMerleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception begins with a critique of the philosophical notion of sensation. Even though it is often generally said to be aimed at traditional psychology or empiricism, Merleau-Ponty’s critique is without question also applicable to Husserl’s notion of sensation. The first half of this paper will offer an interpretation of Husserl’s conception of sensation as the stuff of perception and the pregivennesses for all of the Ego’s operations. And then it will attempt to show how Merleau-Ponty’s critique in (...) the Phenomenology of Perception can precisely be viewed as aiming at Husserl. In the end, we should be able to see that Merleau-Ponty’s critique is still relevant today, especially in regard to some recent attempts to put Husserl into the camp of non-representationalism in contemporary philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The concept of fore-structure is central to Heidegger’s idea of interpretation. Gadamer later incorporated this concept into his own theory of philosophical hermeneutics. But there are indeed certain signifcant differences between their accounts of the fore-structure, and these differences are o ften neglected by scholars. This essay will first present Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure, and then we will demonstrate the differences between Heidegger and Gadamer. At last, we will draw out some implications of Heidegger’s concept of fore-structure to textual Interpretation.

Die Buchreihe Linguistische Arbeiten hat mit über 500 Bänden zur linguistischen Theoriebildung der letzten Jahrzehnte in Deutschland und international wesentlich beigetragen. Die Reihe wird auch weiterhin neue Impulse für die Forschung setzen und die zentrale Einsicht der Sprachwissenschaft präsentieren, dass Fortschritt in der Erforschung der menschlichen Sprachen nur durch die enge Verbindung von empirischen und theoretischen Analysen sowohl diachron wie synchron möglich ist. Daher laden wir hochwertige linguistische Arbeiten aus allen zentralen Teilgebieten der allgemeinen und einzelsprachlichen Linguistik ein, die aktuelle (...) Fragestellungen bearbeiten, neue Daten diskutieren und die Theorieentwicklung vorantreiben. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to elucidate Franz Brentano's concept of immanent object through his own words and from his own perspective. The prevalent account of Brentano's revival of intentionality, his initial failure to distinguish between object and content, and his wrong‐headed immanentism, is largely derived from his students. Brentano's objection to it, although well known, is seldom heeded. In fact, plenty of guidelines have been provided by Brentano himself in his writings on how his concept of immanent object (...) is to be understood. I begin with his distinction between two senses of “object,” which, I argue, must be clearly set apart from distinction between two modes of object. I then examine three different interpretations of the term “in‐existence”: the locative, the inherentist, and the objective interpretation. In the end, after dismissing the first two interpretations, I argue that Brentano is best understood as maintaining an objective and deflationary account of mental in‐existence. (shrink)

Since the Opium War, the traditional Chinese society has been increasingly subject to the crushing impact of the modern Western civilization. Confucianism, as the normative discourse that had prevailed over the Chinese society for more than two thousands years, had inevitably to face the Western challenge head-on. From the end of the nineteenth century onward, the influence of Confucianism as regards the actual life of the Chinese people continues to diminish, and its normative place has almost been completely taken up (...) by the modern social theories imported from the West. Some Chinese scholars, therefore, has declared that Confucianism has become a "wandering ghost". But at the same time, there are also many contemporary Confucians who try to find a new body for the "ghost" of Confucianism. At the academic domain, this kind of attempt is usually based upon some sort of "modern interpretation" of Confucianism. But paradoxically, this kind of modern interpretation usually borrows its interpretative frameworks from the West. It goes without saying that the respective backgrounds upon which Confucianism and those modern West theories arose are gravely different. Hence, these modern interpretations generally tend to abstract the discourse of Confucianism from its social and historical background and treat it as some sorts of purely abstract concepts. But even after the abstraction, this kind of modern interpretations could still hardly fit well into the discourse of Confucianism. The aim of the present treatise is to re-interpret the discourse of Confucius, by means of both careful scholarship and detailed philosophical arguments, based upon the words of Confucius himself and other informations concerning his social and historical surroundings, in order to show that the discourse of Confucius is intricately involved with its living background. The author is going to point out that the discourse of Confucius is actually not so much concerned with "metaphysics of morals" of whatsoever sort as with the order and disorder of the society. At the end of the treatise, the author will also try to re-evaluate, with reference to the recent results of scientific research, the significance of Confucianism in the modern world. (shrink)

Previous studies on parenting adult children with ASD were scarce, and their intervention protocols mainly were derived from established work with children. Development of an applicable adult-oriented protocol and demonstration of its effectiveness is warranted. The present study outlined the development and evaluation of Core Autism Parenting Skills, which targets to enhance parenting self-efficacy intervention for adult children with ASD by addressing two intervention goals in parallel: acquisition of parenting skills and cultivating positive attributes. In CAPS, PSE is operationalised into (...) four parent roles: to observe, reinforce, empathise, and accompany, each with requisite attributes, skills, and prescribed training. Twenty-seven parents with adult children with ASD were recruited. They completed measures assessing their PSE, competence in the four parent roles, and emotional well-being at pre-training, post-training and 2-month follow-up. The intervention was well-received by the participants and reported significant improvements in PSE, parent role competence at post-training and 2-month follow-up. The applicability of PSE and parent role competence in constructing effective parenting intervention for adult children with ASD was supported. (shrink)

The development of Christian thought on Heidegger can not be ignored. Heidegger was born in a conservative Catholic family, he entered college was originally a theological student. Even after he was formally separated from the Catholic system, he also regarded as a Christian theologian since. Until 1935, he was also born in the beliefs of his distress. This paper will focus on "Being and Time," presented by the theme of Christianity, Christianity is still trying to point out many of his (...) early ideas the source of important concepts. The influence of Christianity on the intellectual development of Heidegger can hardly be exaggerated. Heidegger was born in a conservative Catholic family. He first entered university as a student of theology. Even after his formal break with the system of Catholicism, he still considered himself a Christian theologian, and as late as 1935, he still had to struggle with the faith of his birth. The theme of this treatise is the Christian influence on Heidegger as it is displayed in Being and Time. It aims at showing that many important concepts in this opus magnum of Heidegger have their origin in Christian thought. (shrink)

Debates among contemporary philosophers and literary scholars on the moral value of representational art revolve around how art appreciation influences the audience—whether viewer or reader. Martha Nussbaum, a distinguished scholar in law and ethics who has initiated many lively dialogues on this subject, holds that we have a great deal to learn from literary works—in particular, realist novels—because they so concretely depict the ways in which personal and social circumstances shape human emotions, actions, and choices. While Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (...) can motivate impartial concern, she posits, Henry James’s The Golden Bowl demonstrates how we should conduct moral deliberation.1 Noël Carroll, a principal... (shrink)

This essay attempts to approach the dispute over the conceptualist or non-conceptualist interpretation of Husserl’s conception of intentional experience from a specific question: Is the intuitive act essentially a carrier of meaning? In the sixth Investigation, Husserl apparently tries to show that intuition is no carrier of meaning and therefore must be unified with a meaning-conferring act in order to be meaningful. But it seems to me that the brief arguments given by Husserl here are far from conclusive and that (...) there are passages in the Logical Investigations which suggest otherwise. I will try to demonstrate that the sense conferred by the interpretation in perception is not different from linguistic meaning, and therefore perception is actually a synthetic act of fulfillment and is always meaningful. The conceptualist reading is no less convincing and no less susceptible to objections than the non-conceptualist one. (shrink)

This book is a collection of articles on different aspects of university education in China since the late nineteenth century, addressing how far the ideal of modern university education, which has gradually been developed in the West since the age of European Enlightenment, was adopted or transformed by Chinese universities.

CONTENTS: Walter Hopp: How to Think about Nonconceptual Content Jeff Yoshimi: Husserl on Psycho-Physical Laws Mark van Atten: Construction and Constitution in Mathematics Ronald Bruzina: Husserl's "Naturalism" and Genetic Phenomenology Andrea Staiti: Different Worlds and Tendency to Concordance: On Husserl's Phenomenology of Culture Rosemary R. P. Lerner : The Cartesian Meditations' Foundational Discourse: An Obsolete Project? Sebastian Luft: Lerner on Foundation, Person, and Rationality George Heffernan: The Phronimos, the Phainomena, and the Pragmata: Are We Responsible for the Things that Appear (...) to Us to Be Good for Us? Michael J. Sigrist: Husserl on God, Existence, and Transcendental Analysis Hans Pedersen: On Heidegger's Appropriation of Aristotle's Concept of Phronesis Ka-wing Leung: Heidegger on Animal and World Abraham Stone: On the Teaching of Virtue in Plato's Meno and the Nature of Philosophical Authority Michael Kelly: A Glimpse of Envy and its Intentional Structure Anne C. Ozar : The Value of a Phenomenology of the Emotions for Cultivating One's Own Character Review Essay Molly Brigid Flynn: The Agent of Truth: Reflections on Robert Sokolowski's Phenomenology of the Human Person (Noesis 2011). (shrink)

Marcus William Hunt argues that prepositional gratitude to God is metaphysically impossible. This is because a fitting target of prepositional gratitude should be able to be benefited in return. Having the maximum well-being, God cannot be benefited in return and fails to be a fitting target. This view is debatable as some argue that God’s well-being can be increased in some peculiar sense. This paper proposes that Zhu Xi (1130-1200), a Confucian philosopher in China, can offer some plausible perspective. The (...) ultimate reality in Zhu, while perfectly good itself, can be in a better state of being when it has more manifestations (namely, when humans fulfill their moral nature.) This can serve as a parallel to suggest alternative conceptualizations of God and of his well-being, which always guarantee his maximum well-being in an intensive sense, while allow for an increase in his well-being in an extensive sense. In other words, we can uphold God as perfectly good per se while admit his having varying degrees of external well-being, which can account for his relationship with things, especially human beings, in the world. (shrink)

“Looking for Asian America shows real people engaged in the full range of human activity. This is no small accomplishment for the photographer or his subjects. For Asian Americans it is extraordinary to be merely ordinary. To others, even if not to themselves, Asian Americans appear to be contradictions of identity—a Chinese-Yankee is a knockoff.” —Frank H. Wu, from the Foreword In search of contemporary Asian America, celebrated photographer Wing Young Huie—the only member of his family not born in (...) China—traveled with his wife Tara through nearly forty states to explore and document the funny, touching, and sometimes strange intersection of Asian American and American cultures. Looking for Asian America illustrates their rich and surprising journey across the United States. Through Huie’s eyes, keenly aware of his own Midwestern roots and perspective, we witness such images as a Vietnamese Elvis, Miss Congeniality on her cell phone in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a Hmong street sign in rural North Carolina, a meditating Falun Gong protestor in Washington, D.C., a bubble tea Valley Girl, and a Chinese theme park in Orlando. Huie’s camera captures ABCs, FOAs, and a self-described “redneck” Chinese restaurant owner near the Okefenokee Swamp. Taken together the photographs reveal a complex portrait of the U.S. cultural landscape, and their dignified elegance invites a closer, deeper look. Accompanied by the personal reflections of both Wing and Tara Huie, the nearly one hundred spectacular photos tell a story that both mirrors and contradicts stereotypes of Asian Americans, ultimately questioning what it means to be ethnic and American in the twenty-first century. Wing Young Huie has received widespread acclaim for his works, including Lake Street USA, documenting the cultural landscape of his native Minnesota. He is a recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship and two-time recipient of the McKnight Photography Fellowship. He lives in Minneapolis. Frank H. Wu is dean of Wayne State University Law School and the author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. Anita Gonzalez teaches in the Master of Liberal Studies Program at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

Medication error is the most common and consistent type of error occurring in hospitals. This article attempts to explore the ethical issues relating to the nursing management of medication errors in clinical areas in Macau, China. A qualitative approach was adopted. Seven registered nurses who were involved in medication errors were recruited for in-depth interviews. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis. Regarding the management of patients, the nurses acknowledged the mistakes but did not disclose the incidents to (...) patients and relatives. Concerning management of the nurses involved by senior staff, most participants experienced fairness, comfort and understanding during the process of reporting and investigation. The ethical issues relating to the incidents were discussed, particularly in the Chinese context. There is a need for further study relating to the disclosure of medication incidents to patients and some suggestions were made. (shrink)

This paper attempts to investigate how and why organisations in Macao’s gambling industry engage in corporate social responsibility. It is based on an in-depth investigation of Macao’s gambling industry with 49 semi-structured interviews, conducted in 2011. We found that firms within the industry were emphasising pragmatic legitimacy based on both economic and non-economic contributions, in order to project positive images of the industry, while glossing over two domains of adverse externalities: problem gambling among visitors, and the pollution and despoliation of (...) the environment. By engaging symbolically rather than substantively in CSR, the gambling firms were diverting attention away from issues of moral legitimacy, in order to be allowed to continue to pursue “business as usual” as a means of obtaining substantial financial returns in a social, cultural and socio-political context that was exerting relatively little public pressure to improve corporate social and environmental performance. We conjecture that the gambling firms were feeding on borrowed time. (shrink)

Spitale, Germani, and Biller-Andorno’s (2024) PHERCC matrix sets out a useful and systematic framework for risk and crisis communication in public health emergencies. A problem in ensuring effective messaging is the extent to which the messaging environment is *quiet* or *noisy*: in other words, whether or not a message has to *compete with other messages* at the same time. I use the example of the UK’s experience during COVID-19, which was marked by tensions between the devolved regional governments—and consequently divergent (...) policy responses—which sowed confusion among the populace. More generally, if policymakers try to account for the needs of competing publics simultaneously (in order to meet the inclusivity and understandability principles), this may increase the noise problem and so actually undermine effective public health messaging. The issue of noisy messaging environments reveals a tradeoff between inclusivity and understandability versus effectiveness in risk and crisis communication. (shrink)

Guanxi is perceived as a major determinant for successful business in China. This research paper investigates the importance of Guanxi from the Hong Kong Businessmen's viewpoint. It confirms previous findings in this area and adds on new dimensions. Therefore, practitioners and academics may further refine their knowledge in this subject.

This article offers a reading of Sartre's phenomenological ontology in light of the pre-modern understanding of ‘transcendentals’ as universal properties and predicates of all determinate beings. Drawing on Sartre's transcendental account of nothingness in his early critique of Husserl as well as his discussion of ‘determination as negation’ in Being and Nothingness, this article argues that Sartre's universal predicate of ‘the not’ (le non) could be understood in a similar light to the medieval scholastic conception of transcendentals. But whereas the (...) scholastics saw the transcendental properties of oneness, truth, and goodness as reflections of God's divine perfections, Sartre's predicate of the ‘not’ operates as an atheistic transcendental which signifies the non-being of God – that God is not. By comparing Sartre's phenomenological ontology to medieval theological metaphysics, this article not only highlights the atheist underpinnings of Sartre's entire ontological schema in Being and Nothingness but also offers a new way of interpreting Sartre as a systematic transcendental metaphysician. (shrink)

[Adapted from publisher-provided promotional materials by English Book Review Editor, Janny HC Leung]M. Catherine Gruber (2014) I’m Sorry for What I’ve Done: The Language of Courtroom Apologies. Oxford University Press, USA, ISBN: 978-0-19-932566-5This book examines 52 apologetic allocutions produced during federal sentencing hearings. The practice of inviting defendants to make a statement in their own behalf is a long-standing one and it is understood as offering defendants the opportunity to impress a judge or jury with their remorse, which could (...) be a factor in the sentence that is imposed. Defendants raised the topics of the offense, mitigation, future behaviour and the sentence in different ways and this book explores the pros and cons associated with the different strategies that they used. Based on corpus data, Gruber argues that the application of Austin’s (1962) performative–constative continuum reveals that offense-related utterances that fall closer to the constative end are.. (shrink)

Obstetric ultrasound is the well-recognized prenatal test used to visualize and determine the condition of a pregnant woman and her fetus. Apart from the clinical application, some businesses have started promoting the use of fetal ultrasound machines for nonmedical reasons. Non-medical fetal ultrasound (also known as ‘keepsake’ ultrasound) is defined as using ultrasound to view, take a picture, or determine the sex of a fetus without a medical indication. Notwithstanding the guidelines and warnings regarding ultrasound safety issued by governments and (...) professional bodies, the absence of scientifically proven physical harm to fetuses from this procedure seems to provide these businesses with grounds for rapid expansion. However, this argument is too simplistic because current epidemiological evidence is not synchronous with advancing ultrasound technology. As non-medical fetal ultrasound has aroused very significant public attention, a thorough ethical analysis of this topic is essential. Using a multifaceted approach, we analyse the ethical perspective of non-medical fetal ultrasound in terms of the expectant mother, the fetus and health professionals. After applying four major theories of ethics and principles (the precautionary principle; theories of consequentialism and impartiality; duty-based theory; and rights-based theories), we conclude that obstetric ultrasound practice is ethically justifiable only if the indication for its use is based on medical evidence. Non-medical fetal ultrasound can be considered ethically unjustifiable. Nevertheless, the ethical analysis of this issue is time dependent owing to rapid advancements in ultrasound technology and the safety issue. The role of health professionals in ensuring that obstetric ultrasound is an ethically justifiable practice is also discussed. (shrink)

Legal interpreting and translation are some of the oldest and most frequently practised bilingual activities in Hong Kong. The principles and operation of the bilingual legal system actually impinge on the legal interpreting services and the practices of legal interpreting services also in ways impact on the system itself. This study adopts a historical approach to analyse the jurisprudence and administration of legal interpreting in Hong Kong courts from 1966 to 2016, across the 1997 dividing line between British colonial rule (...) and the return of Hong Kong to the government of mainland China. It focuses on the opinions of judges and other participants in courtroom proceedings as recorded in Hong Kong case reports. It is discovered that the jurisprudence of having an interpreter to interpret for participants who do not speak the language of the court is clearly indicated and well versed in the precedents. However, there is a gap between the jurisprudence and the actual interpreting services, mainly caused by the malpractices of the concerned administration department and some of the law enforcement agents working in the frontline. (shrink)

This study investigates how firms in the gambling industry manage their corporate social disclosures about controversial issues. We performed thematic content analysis of CSDs about responsible gambling, money laundering prevention and environmental protection in the annual reports and stand-alone CSR reports of four USA-based multinational gambling firms and their four Macao counterparts. This study draws on impression management theory, camouflage theory and corporate integrity theory to examine the gambling firms’ CSDs. We infer that the CSD strategies of gambling firms in (...) Macao and the USA did not serve as vehicles for reflexivity about social responsibility or social responsiveness. Instead, the firms camouflaged legitimacy gaps about sensitive topics by adopting assertive or defensive façades, disclaiming ethical responsibility, curtailing disclosure, or offering zero disclosure. Differences between CSD strategies according to topic, location, time, and reporting channel appear to reflect four factors: pressure to report, availability of good news, whether a firm was assuming ethical responsibility for addressing the topic, and the prospective readership. This study extends our understanding of the contextual and topic-specific factors affecting the quantity and character of CSDs by firms in a contested industry. (shrink)

Ray and Cooper (2024) argue that bioethicists should take environmental justice seriously as a matter of health justice; as part of this project, they defend a legal right to a healthy environment....

In this paper we investigate nonnormal modal systems in the vicinity of the Lewis system S1. It might be claimed that Lewis's modal systems (S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5) are the starting point of modern modal logics. However, our interests in the Lewis systems and their relatives are not (merely) historical. They possess certain syntactical features and their frames certain structural properties that are of interest to us. Our starting point is not S1, but a weaker logic S1 (S1 (...) without the schema [T]). We extend it to S1D, which can be considered as a deontic counterpart of the alethic S1. Soundness and completeness of these systems are then demonstrated within a prenormal idiom. We conclude with some philosophical remarks on the interpretation of our deontic logic. (shrink)

This article offers a reading of Plato in light of the recent debates concerning the unique ‘ontology’ of International Relations (IR) as an academic discipline. In particular, this article suggests that Plato’s metaphysical account of the integral connection between human individual, the domestic state, and world order can offer IR an alternative outlook to the ‘political scientific’ schema of ‘levels of analysis’. This article argues that Plato’s metaphysical conception of world order can not only provide IR theory with a way (...) to re-imagine the relation between the human, the state, and world order. Moreover, Plato’s outlook can highlight or even call into question the post-metaphysical presuppositions of contemporary IR theory in its ‘borrowed ontology’ from modern social science, which can in turn facilitate IR’s re-interpretation of its own ‘ontology’ as well as its distinct contributions to the understanding of the various aspects of the social world and human life. (shrink)

In Heidegger’s Black Notebooks some ideas about political embodiment can be found, which have come under suspicion to justify the Third Reich’s race law. In the following article, the analysis and discussion of Heidegger’s political embodiment will firstly be traced back to the traditional understanding of the human as a “rational animal”, and will then look at how the “racial being” is subsequently developed and eventually transformed into political absolute subjectivism. Moreover, Heidegger’s in-depth explanation and critique on Nietzsche’s metaphysics, which (...) he views as having transformed human experiences to a metaphysical representation and thus misunderstanding human nature, will also be clarified. Through Heidegger’s critic on biologism, a profound disclosure which potentially imply an attack of the racism at his time can be shown. Furthermore, Heidegger’s thinking of Being as a kind of emancipation of European political embodiment will also be analyzed. Lastly, although Heidegger and Confucianism have different ideas of lived-body, both schools basically show the same fundamental understanding of human nature. In regard to this, their understanding of political embodiment, their similarities and divergences, will be elucidated. (shrink)

This paper looks at the role of state and society in the history of epidemic governance in China for an appreciation of the way China manages the current COVID-19 epidemic.

This article offers a comparative reading of the ontologies of David Bentley Hart and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as their respective appeals to phenomenology as a philosophical method. While it may seem odd to compare one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated atheists with one of contemporary Christianity’s most highly-acclaimed critics of atheism, this article shows that there are many surprising parallels between the ontological outlooks of Hart and Sartre, namely their conceptions of God as the unity of being and (...) consciousness and their accounts of human consciousness as a desire to ‘become God’. By examining the similarities and differences between Sartre’s and Hart’s philosophical and theological works, this article seeks to highlight the phenomenological aspects of Hart’s theological outlook and consider how Hart’s appeal to the phenomenological analysis of intentional consciousness in his theological work can illuminate our understanding of the ongoing engagements between theology and phenomenology. (shrink)

An accessible introduction to Confucian moral philosophy.

In both the literal and metaphorical senses, it seemed as if 1970s America was running out of gas.

Assuming the existence of a monster model, tameness, and continuity of nonsplitting in an abstract elementary class (AEC), we extend known superstability results: let $\mu>\operatorname {LS}(\mathbf {K})$ be a regular stability cardinal and let $\chi $ be the local character of $\mu $ -nonsplitting. The following holds: 1.When $\mu $ -nonforking is restricted to $(\mu,\geq \chi )$ -limit models ordered by universal extensions, it enjoys invariance, monotonicity, uniqueness, existence, extension, and continuity. It also has local character $\chi $. This generalizes (...) Vasey’s result [37, Corollary 13.16] which assumed $\mu $ -superstability to obtain same properties but with local character $\aleph _0$.2.There is $\lambda \in [\mu,h(\mu ))$ such that if $\mathbf {K}$ is stable in every cardinal between $\mu $ and $\lambda $, then $\mathbf {K}$ has $\mu $ -symmetry while $\mu $ -nonforking in (1) has symmetry. In this case:(a) $\mathbf {K}$ has the uniqueness of $(\mu,\geq \chi )$ -limit models: if $M_1,M_2$ are both $(\mu,\geq \chi )$ -limit over some $M_0\in K_{\mu }$, then $M_1\cong _{M_0}M_2$ ;(b)any increasing chain of $\mu ^+$ -saturated models of length $\geq \chi $ has a $\mu ^+$ -saturated union. These generalize [31] and remove the symmetry assumption in [10, 38].Under $(<\mu )$ -tameness, the conclusions of (1), (2)(a)(b) are equivalent to $\mathbf {K}$ having the $\chi $ -local character of $\mu $ -nonsplitting.Grossberg and Vasey [18, 38] gave eventual superstability criteria for tame AECs with a monster model. We remove the high cardinal threshold and reduce the cardinal jump between equivalent superstability criteria. We also add two new superstability criteria to the list: a weaker version of solvability and the boundedness of the U-rank. (shrink)

Yat-hung Leung debates Chenyang Li’s view of harmony and benevolence in Confucian teachings: Which is the more fundamental and important value, and ultimate ideal? In The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony, Li delineates a distinctively Confucian conception of “deep harmony” as the basic ideal of Chinese culture and especially Confucianism. Leung questions that depiction of things, arguing that benevolence does and should hold that place of honor. Leung focuses his arguments against two claims: firstly, that harmony should be (...) understood as the supreme value in Confucian thought, and secondly, that the ideal of harmony is of greater value to us today than that of benevolence. Leung points out that in the influential texts and traditions of Confucian philosophy, benevolence is of higher value than harmony. He disputes both the representative nature of the texts Li relies on as well as Li’s portrayals of some of those texts. We more properly understand Confucian harmony and benevolence in the inverse relation, with harmony as the product of benevolence, and thereby come to see that the substantive action-guiding content of benevolence in fact has the greater value to contemporary life. (shrink)

Recent philosophy has witnessed a renewed interest in the works and ideas of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). But while contemporary scholarship has sought to rehabilitate Bergson’s insights on time, memory, consciousness, and human freedom, comparatively little attention has been paid to Bergson’s relationship to pantheism. By revisiting the ‘pantheism’ controversy surrounding Bergsonian philosophy during Bergson’s lifetime, this article argues that the panentheistic notion of ‘being-in-God’ can serve as an illuminating framework for the interpretation of Bergson’s philosophy. By examining the ‘pantheist’ readings (...) of Bergson and comparing and contrasting Bergson’s philosophy of life with Spinoza’s panentheistic metaphysics, this paper shows that an account of ‘being-in-Life’ is key to Bergson’s metaphysical outlook as well as his account of philosophy as a practice of ‘intuitive’ thinking. In so doing, this paper highlights some of the implicit religious motifs not only in Bergson’s metaphysical outlook but also in his conception of the task of philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophy is presented in a wide range of forms, none of which can be convincingly claimed to be the “genuine” one. Historically speaking, there is not one “proper” way of doing philosophy, evidencing what may be called the social contingency of philosophy. This paper aims to provide a “critical” philosophy of today, in the Kantian sense of a philosophy that reflects on the conditions of its possibility, and thereby acknowledges the limitations they impose. Conceptually, our approach is grounded in Niklas (...) Luhmann’s social systems theory, in which “functional differentiation” and “second-order observation” are two crucial characteristics of modern society. The paper discusses how presentations of philosophy align themselves with the second-order observation mechanisms of the specific social systems in which they are “hosted.” This paper deals in particular with two such systems: academics and social media. These forms of presenting philosophy produce two different kinds of philosophy presenters: the expert and the influencer. (shrink)

This article offers a philosophical reading of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels by bringing the tetralogy into conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology. In addition to highlighting the striking similarities between Ferrante’s notion of smarginatura (‘dissolving margins’) and Sartre’s depiction of the existential sensation of nausea, this article argues that the two main characters of Ferrante’s tetralogy, Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, respectively exemplify Sartre’s ontological categories of ‘being-for-oneself’ and ‘being-for-others’ in his phenomenological account of human existence. However, Ferrante—like Simone de (...) Beauvoir before her—goes beyond Sartre in her ability to offer an account of the imperfect existential freedom of women, who remain constrained in their pursuit of authenticity by social and cultural factors. Drawing on Ferrante’s assertion that readers ‘are both Elena and Lila’ as well as her recent claim that there are within her two kinds of writing (broadly equated to the ‘compliant’ Elena and ‘impetuous’ Lila), we establish Ferrante’s exploration of the ambivalent features of human subjectivity as a consummate philosophical and literary project. (shrink)

To evaluate and extend climato-economic theory, the use of more micro units of analysis, such as cities and families, may open up new data sources. The consideration of environmental demands other than thermal climate may also broaden the range of useful data. Longitudinal designs can provide causal evidence, and so can experiments if the theory can be applied to individuals.

This article considers how the notions of ‘word’ and ‘conversation’ can contribute to contemporary developments in theological metaphysics by drawing on Christoph Schwöbel’s ontological rendition of Martin Luther’s theology. By way of reading Schwöbel’s theological ontology of conversation with reference to John Milbank’s theology of the gift, this article shows that Schwöbel’s conception of the Trinity as an eternal ‘conversation’ can be understood as an ontology of ‘word-exchange’ in a fashion similar to Milbank’s account of trinitarian ‘gift-exchange’. Moreover, the article (...) argues that Schwöbel’s Lutheran construal of creation as God’s ‘created words’ (verba creata) can present a transcendental account of ‘word’ or verbum which complements Milbank’s ontology of the gift or donum. By bringing to light these perhaps surprising convergences between Schwöbel’s Lutheran theology of ‘the word’ and Milbank’s Christian Neo-Platonic theology of ‘the gift’, this article highlights some of the often-overlooked metaphysical insights in Luther’s theology of the word, which can contribute not only to ecumenical theological dialogue, but also foster new perspectives and conversations for contemporary developments and discussions in theological metaphysics. (shrink)