In contrast to Western science and religion, a topic which has been studied very much since the twentieth century, less research has been done on science and Confucianism. By way of a comparative viewpoint within the history of science, this article will deal with some aspects of science and Confucianism in retrospect, for instance, the Confucian origin of the idea of tian yuan di fang 天圓地方, the natural philosophy of qi, and the wu xing (...) li tian zhi qi 五行沴天之氣 bringing abnormal astrological phenomena and reflecting a negative Confucian relation between politics, ethics, and nature. In the late Ming, Xiong Mingyu found that abnormal astrological phenomena, as atmospheric events, happened in the sublunar region rather than in the stars, and in the present time we can reinterpret the crisis of air pollution or global climate change as reflecting a negative Confucian relation between politics, ethics, and nature and as a warning of collective misbehavior in our use of modern scientific technologies. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 293-302.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 237-240.

영지주의는 우주와 세계의 근원이자 발현자로서의 순수의식이며 모든 존재의 원천이 자 존재 그 자체의 동일자로서 시간과 공간을 넘어선다. 모든 생명 존재의 내면에 빛나는 존재이기 때문에 근원적이고 궁극적인 일자(一者)이면서 다시 모든 생명체에 내재된 보 편적 신성(神性)”1)을 추구하는 종교사상이다. ‘영지’란 ‘영혼의 지혜’를 의미하며 그리스 어 그노시스(Gnosis)의 번역어이다. 지식을 의미하는 Gnosis는 외부세계에 대한 인식과 배움을 통한 지식을 의미하지 않는다. 본질직관이나 내적 영감(靈鑑)과 같이 개인의 독립 적이고 주체적인 ‘신비체험’에 의해서 체득하여 깨닫는 지식을 의미한다. 그러므로 그노 시스는 인간의 영혼과 우주 만물에 내재하는 신이나 근원적 일자를 체험을 (...) 통하여 통찰 하는 것이다. 근원적 일자(一者)를 ‘영혼’과 ‘지성’을 통해 깨달아 궁극적 절대성으로 회귀하는 영지 주의 구원론이 성립하기 위해서는, 먼저 인간은 이 ‘영혼’과 ‘지성’을 자기의 본질로 삼아 야 한다. 또한 그 ‘영혼’은 순선(純善)하거나 조리(條理)적 완전성을 가진 성선(性善)이어 야 한다. 그리고 그 ‘지성’은 궁극적 일자(一者)의 본체성을 경험과 학습을 통해 후천적으 로 인식하는 것이 아닌, 선험적이고 본래적인 생득성을 가져야 한다. 동아시아의 종교 사상은 이와 같은 영지주의적 성격을 명확하게 나타내고 있다. 대승불 교의 불성론은 인간존재의 본질이 깨달음을 통한 해탈에 이를 수 있음을 보여주고 있고, 유교사상에서도 맹자의 성선론을 기초로 내면의 근원적 순수의식을 통찰하는 수양론을 가 지고 있다. 성리학의 미발(未發)공부론과 양명학의 치양지(致良知) 공부론 등은 동아시아의 영지주의 수행론과 수양론의 성격을 명확하게 나타내고 있는 것이다. (shrink)

본 논문은 내성과 외왕으로 압축되는 유가의 성인에 대해 살펴보고, 현대 사회에서 유가가 적응하지 못하게 된 원인을 분석한 뒤에 이를 극복하기 위한 방안을 제시한다. 전통적으로 유가의 성인은 내성을 중시하는 성인과 외왕을 강조하는 성인으로 나뉘며, 도덕과 사업은 이들을 이해하는 핵심이 된다. 내성을 중시하는 성인은 맹자와 『대학』의 논술에서 나타나는 내용을 기반으로 성인의 도덕적 측면을 강조하고, 외왕을 중시하는 성인은 사업을 중시하는 유형으로 『예기』·｢육덕｣·『주역』·순자에서 분명히 나타난다. 하지만 신유가의 선택으로부터 유가의 성인은 편향적으로 발전하게 되었다. 주희와 왕수인을 대표로 하는 신유가는 성인이 도덕을 대변하는 인물 혹은 도덕 그 (...) 자체로 여겼기 때문이다. 성인에 대한 유가의 이러한 태도를 수정하지 않는다면 과학기술이 중요한 영역으로 부상하는 현대 사회에서 유가는 도태되어 외면받는 학문으로 전락할 수밖에 없다. 미래에 유가가 유의미한 학문체계로 남을 수 있기 위해서는 내성과 외왕에 대한 기존의 관점을 수정함으로써 성인에 대한 혁신이 필요하다. (shrink)

Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental crises. (...) Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for Hermeneutics and Science.

A reprint in English of 'Confucianism and African Conceptions of Value, Reality and Knowledge' (International Social Science Journal, Chinese Edition, 2016).

The second installment of Dr. Needham's epic venture into the intellectual history of ancient and medieval China. The work's general emphasis is upon science and technology; the present volume expounds the teachings of the main philosophical systems and schools--Confucianism, Taoism, Mohism, etc.--and describes their bearing upon the scientific thinking of their times. The detail with which these accounts are carried out is staggering, yet the narrative line remains clear. The work's scope, too, is incredible, as Dr. Needham delves (...) fully into the backgrounds, social, cultural, and intellectual, of the various systems of thought. Full references to sources and complementary accounts, frank acknowledgment of the disputedness of certain interpretations, and the provision of the Chinese characters for key terms, increase the work's value for scholars. Certainly this is a monumental achievement, however the details be judged by the experts. The volume is beautifully produced, with tables and many fine illustrations.--V. C. C. (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

This book explores Neo-Confucianism and its relationship to politics by examining the life and work of the two iconic figures of the Joseon dynasty Yi Hwang, (1501-1570, Toegye) and Yi I (1536-1584, Yulgok).

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

The research programme of the philosophy of information (PI) proposed in 2002 made it an independent area or discipline in philosophical research. The scientific concept of ‘information’ is formally accepted in philosophical inquiry. Hence a new and tool-driven philosophical discipline of PI with its interdisciplinary nature has been established. Philosophy of information is an ‘orientative’ rather than ‘cognitive’ philosophy. When PI is under consideration in the history of Western philosophy, it can be regarded as a shift of large tradition. There (...) are three large traditions at large, known as Platonic, Kantian and Leibniz-Russellian. In the discussion of the position of the possible worlds, we have modal Platonism and modal realism, but both of the theories are made in the framework of Western philosophy. In this essay, it is argued that possible worlds could be seen as worlds in information, which is then an interpretation of modal information theory (MIT). Our interpretation is made on the basis of Leibniz’s lifelong connection with China, a fact often overlooked by the Western philosophers. Possible world theory was influenced by the Neo-Confucianism flourishing since the Song Dynasty of China, the foundation of which is Yijing. It could be argued that Leibniz’s possible world theory was formulated in respect to the impact of the thoughts reflected in Yijing, in that one of the prominent features is the model-theoretic construction of theories. There are two approaches to theory construction, i.e., axiom-theoretic and model-theoretic. The origin of the former is from ancient Greece and the latter from ancient China. And they determined the different features of theoretic structures between the oriental and occidental traditions of science and technology. The tendency of the future development of science and technology is changing from the axiom-theoretic to the model-theoretic orientation, at least the two approaches being complementary each other. To some extent, this means the retrospective of tradition in the turning point of history, and some of the China’s cultural traditions might become the starting points in formulating the future Chinese philosophy of science and technology. (shrink)

Every year, the Vietnamese people reportedly burned about 50,000 tons of joss papers, which took the form of not only bank notes, but iPhones, cars, clothes, even housekeepers, in hope of pleasing the dead. The practice was mistakenly attributed to traditional Buddhist teachings but originated in fact from China, which most Vietnamese were not aware of. In other aspects of life, there were many similar examples of Vietnamese so ready and comfortable with adding new norms, values, and beliefs, even contradictory (...) ones, to their culture. This phenomenon, dubbed “cultural additivity”, prompted us to study the co-existence, interaction, and influences among core values and norms of the Three Teachings –Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism–as shown through Vietnamese folktales. By applying Bayesian logistic regression, we evaluated the possibility of whether the key message of a story was dominated by a religion (dependent variables), as affected by the appearance of values and anti-values pertaining to the Three Teachings in the story (independent variables). Our main findings included the existence of the cultural additivity of Confucian and Taoist values. More specifically, empirical results showed that the interaction or addition of the values of Taoism and Confucianism in folktales together helped predict whether the key message of a story was about Confucianism, β{VT ⋅ VC} = 0.86. Meanwhile, there was no such statistical tendency for Buddhism. The results lead to a number of important implications. First, this showed the dominance of Confucianism because the fact that Confucian and Taoist values appeared together in a story led to the story’s key message dominated by Confucianism. Thus, it presented the evidence of Confucian dominance and against liberal interpretations of the concept of the Common Roots of Three Religions (“tam giáo đồng nguyên”) as religious unification or unicity. Second, the concept of “cultural additivity” could help explain many interesting socio-cultural phenomena, namely the absence of religious intolerance and extremism in the Vietnamese society, outrageous cases of sophistry in education, the low productivity in creative endeavors like science and technology, the misleading branding strategy in business. We are aware that our results are only preliminary and more studies, both theoretical and empirical, must be carried out to give a full account of the explanatory reach of “cultural additivity”. (shrink)

While Chinese societies often appear centralized and traditional, presumably impeding technology and innovation, these values may simply reflect the negative-leaning poles of Confucianism. This study proposes a Confucian work ethic dimension that stresses justified tradition. In combination with Western innovative cultures, this Chinese style might facilitate learning about knowledge and morality in an interaction seemingly unique to the Chinese science and technology sector. Specifically, contrary to the Western style that tolerates conflict to achieve harmony, Confucian work ethics -an (...) Eastern way -prefer to respect hierarchy to attain harmony. Samples from the multinational corporations in Shanghai and privately owned enterprises in Hsinchu of Taiwan represent two levels of Westernization. The findings reveal that the two types of cultures almost equally influence the facilitation of learning about morality, whereas the Western way more effectively teaches about professional knowledge and the Eastern way more effectively teaches general knowledge. In addition, though the samples from both locations enjoy positive advantages from their combined cultures, Shanghai appears more Westernized than Taiwan, and Taiwan benefits more from Confucian work ethics and a higher level of quality learning, particularly with regard to morality. This result may suggest the benefits of Confucius' ideas, if they are not used excessively to emphasize the negative aspects. (shrink)

Indeed, this is the first serious book-length study of the subject by a philosopher of science.

Max Weber examined Chinese society and European Puritanism at the beginning of the Twentieth Century in order to find out why capitalism did not develop in China. He found that Confucianism and Puritanism are mutually exclusive, which enabled him to oppose both in the form of two different kinds of rationalism. I attempt neither to refute nor to confirm the Weberian thought model. Instead I show that a similar model applies to Jean Baudrillard’s vision of American culture, a culture (...) that he determined in terms of hyperreality. Instead of rejecting Weber’s thoughts right away, I give Weber’s model a further push and show that through a further twist that “Western culture” has received within particular American constellations, Weber’s understanding of Confucianism and Baudrillard’s understanding of American civilization manifest amazing similarities. (shrink)

I explore the features of universalist thinking in the work of Zhu X i, examining the following: the importance of li in Zhu Xi's cosmology and ethics; the course of moral development of a Confucian sage and the spheres of expanding identity and responsibility; the ideal of impartiality in achieving a composure of unity with the world; and the ideal of differentiated love as an expression of living in accord with li and xing. I conclude with some critical observations regarding (...) these major features of Zhu Xi's universalism, noting some hazards of such cross-cultural analysis, and acknowledging general problems facing the non-pluralistic perspective of his work. (shrink)

This article, translated into Chinese by Tian Kaifang, summarizes and critically reflects on the current state of the literature that has recently begun to put Chinese Confucianism into dialogue with characteristically African conceptions of what is good, what fundamentally exists, and how to obtain knowledge. As most of this literature has addressed value theory, this article focuses largely on it, too. It first illustrates how similar the foundational values are between the two cultural traditions; central to both traditional China (...) and Africa is an ethic prescribing the development of one’s humanness through virtues that honour harmonious relationships. The article then indicates how the two traditions nonetheless have different understandings of the nature of harmony, which have grounded divergent judgments of which practices are morally desirable. The final section of the article discusses ontology and epistemology, which are extremely under-developed in the comparative literature, and it suggests some avenues for future research on these topics. (shrink)

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes original scholarly (...) contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)