La démocratie en Grèce ancienne est souvent blâmée par les modernes : on admire le modèle, mais il semble inachevé pourquoi néglige-t-on de se demander en quoi elle est déjà trop démocratique? La politique est en crise, la cité est divisée, et pourtant, la démocratie antique, généreusement idéalisée, peut servir de modèle, par ses dérives, ses défaillances et ses crises, si l'on veut mieux comprendre le politique d'aujourd'hui. La pratique abusive de l'accusation publique volontaire, inhérente à la démocratie grecque, a (...) largement participé à la corruption du système. La délation met en évidence la corruption de l'idéal d'une société de confiance qui est celle de la cité d'Athènes, que l'on pourrait retrouver dans l'idéal de transparence qui caractérise les démocraties contemporaines. Pages de début Préface Avant-propos Introduction I. Sycophantes et délation II. La corruption institutionnaliséeIII. Les rouages de la démocratie Conclusion Bibliographie Pages de fin. (shrink)

English summary: French description: Pensees du corps: se peut-il que le corps pense, qu'il ne soit pas un simple objet de reflexion, mais un sujet de pensee a part entiere?La demarche philosophique est ici confrontee a un corpus de pratiques et d'arts gestuels japonais (danse, theatre, arts martiaux). Une serie d'experiences significatives bousculent les idees recues et poussent le penseur a un renouvellement radical de ses methodes et de ses concepts. En resulte une philosophie de terrain, incarnee et immanente, qui (...) met en lumiere la profonde rationalite du corps. Y compris dans ses deploiements qui d'ordinaire resistent a l'analyse: sensation et action.Nul besoin d'avoir recours a un relativisme culturaliste friand d'exotisme, encore moins a un quelconque irrationalisme. Les pensees du corps dessinent un espace de publicite et d'intelligibilite, une forme d'universalite que chacun peut intimement eprouver et affiner. Loin de constituer un dehors, le corps apparait comme le lieu de production d'un savoir et d'une pensee universellement partageables. (shrink)

1. Introduction A series of laboratory tests mandated by the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades were undertaken in 2017 to determine the characteristics and properties of four samples of earth‑based material from the joints of ancient walls at the archaeological site of Delos. Based on the experimental results, three variations of an earth‑based mortar were tested in order to select the most compatible one in terms of characteristics and properties, for the stabilization of said structures....

This paper proposes the development of a new model of treatment for survivors of sexual abuse suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Foa, Rothbaum, Riggs, and Murdock and Foa, Rothbaum, and Furr support Prolonged Exposure as a highly effective treatment for PTSD. However, PE can be intimidating to survivors, contributing to hesitancy to participate in the treatment. This paper posits that animal-assisted therapy will decrease anxiety, lower physiological arousal, enhance the therapeutic alliance, and promote social lubrication. The paper also posits that (...) AAT will enhance the value of PE by making it more accessible to survivors, increasing social interaction, and perhaps decreasing the number of sessions required for habituation to the traumatic memories. (shrink)

Cet article comporte deux parties liées entre elles : l’une étudie le « manger cru » dans le régime alimentaire des Grecs, l’autre le rituel ômophagique dionysiaque. De l’étude conjointe des sources littéraires et épigraphiques, il apparaît que ce dernier pourrait consister en une séquence de gestes révélant l’ambiguïté du dieu, entre animalité, humanité et divinité, et s’accordant avec la pratique alimentaire des Grecs.

Charles Bell’s Bridgewater Treatise on the hand should be read as elaborating philosophies of pedagogy and the senses, and as fitting with Bell’s work on the nervous system. In The Hand, Bell argues that sensory reception must be coupled with muscular action to establish true knowledge, elevating the ‘doing’ hand to epistemological parity with the long-superior ‘seeing’ eye. Knowledge in anatomy was typically couched in terms to do with sight and depiction; but according to Bell, anatomy simply could not teach (...) the sort of feeling that one would encounter inside a living body. Instead, anatomy taught students to map the parts so that their fingers, moving through a surgical field, could ‘see’ and therefore could know and could act. This elevation of the status of the hand also had social implications that fit with Bell’s reformist politics. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the Business Ethics literature by unpacking the multimodal construction of moral narratives in popular culture and its portrayals of organizations and organizational roles. Understanding such portrayals and their construction is crucial to Business Ethics scholarship because they shape organizational imaginaries, influencing understandings and expectations of the ethical/moral responsibilities of organizations and the actors within them. In particular, we study the construction of moral narratives within a reality TV show that focuses on immigration and border control at (...) an airport. We find that the immigration officers are depicted as rational and heroic figures whilst the travellers are presented as emotional and potentially dangerous characters. Our analysis highlights how this is achieved via five multimodal editing dimensions—the structure of interactional scenes, the ability to address the camera, the narrator’s comments, the visual and music effects—that are key in constructing clearly defined personae. We show how, through the intersubjective construction of clear-cut characters, the show downplays the moral complexity of its content. Portraying immigration officers as heroic, while presenting travellers as potentially dangerous, allows for a silencing of any ethical questioning of immigration officers’ organizational practices. (shrink)

This paper argues that naturalistic philosophy does not meet its own empiricist mandate. It argues from an empiricist perspective. Naturalists either claim that philosophy is like science in significant ways, or they claim that philosophy ought to be like science. This paper, being chiefly focused on the former claim, argues that naturalistic philosophy is nothing like science. Using Papineau’s markers for the similarities between naturalistic philosophy and science, I argue, counter Papineau, that the method employed in naturalistic philosophy is not (...) a posteriori and its claims are certainly not synthetic in the same way as that of science. This methodological distinction between science and philosophy is one made by Carnap. To show how the methods are distinct I compare two papers; I compare the method employed by Andy Clark in his philosophical paper on the brain as a prediction error minimisation machine with that employed by Rees and Haynes in their neuroscientific paper on mental content. (shrink)

Beginning with a dialogue written in the Mencius (late 4th c. B.C.), this article traces an old discussion in Chinese philosophy concerning the question of whom one shouldtake care of. Confucius (551-479 B.C.) values the capacity for empathy or 'likening to oneself'. He thereby promotes, without explicitly arguing for it, a revaluation and extension of the traditional attitude of gradual concern, starting from close relatives and radiating outward. The first opposition to this attitude comes from the Mohists (5-4th c. B.C.), (...) who promote 'concern for everybody', with stringent argumentation by analogy. Mencius, finally, reluctantly enters the discussion to defend the Confucian attitude. Although the Confucian and Mohist attitudes may seem to resemble Western discussions between ethical universalism and particularism, both opponents take spontaneous emotions as their starting-point and both argue by reasoning in the form of presenting analogies. While Mencius relies mainly on the emotions being conducted by a convincing analogy, the Mohists give primacy to the structure of infallible analogical reasoning, forcingthe emotions towards morality. (shrink)

Most COVID-19 and work-related well-being research is centred around the adverse effects on employees’ psychological well-being and is not focused on the work-related well-being of those infected by SARS-CoV-2. Furthermore, COVID-19 and work-related well-being research is generally aimed at healthcare workers. The current study focused on investigating the difference in the level of burnout, anxiety, depression and stress between previously infected and uninfected participants. This study used a cross-sectional survey design and non-probability quota sampling to collect data. A retrospective pre-post (...) design was used to determine the difference between the level of burnout of the participants before and after infection. Working adults in South Africa were targeted and divided into those previously infected and those not yet infected with COVID-19. Participants completed questionnaires relating to burnout, depression, anxiety, and stress. A comparison of means revealed a significant increase in burnout after being infected. Infected participants had significantly higher burnout, anxiety, depression, and stress levels than their non-infected counterparts. Emotional exhaustion, withdrawal, and stress were the most prevalent psychological ill-health problems. The results of this study indicated that a SARS-CoV-2 infection has a detrimental impact on participants’ psychological well-being and mental health compared to their own initially reported levels of burnout before infection, as well as compared to the levels of burnout, depression, anxiety and depression of the non-infected participants. Based on the findings, specific recommendations to industrial psychologists were made to manage the psychological impact of COVID-19 on employees. (shrink)

Thomas Paine fonde son exigence de démocratie représentative sur une interprétation de la théorie du contrat qui refuse au politique toute dimension héréditaire. Pionnier, à la fois libéral et républicain, il s’attache à défendre l’égalité des droits politiques, notamment le suffrage universel, aussi bien dans la jeune république américaine que dans la France révolutionnaire. Membre du cercle girondin, il fut également victime de la Terreur, mais échappe à la guillotine.

Background: Recently, attention has grown toward cerebellar neuromodulation in motor learning using transcranial direct current stimulation. An important point of discussion regarding this modulation is the optimal timing of tDCS, as this parameter could significantly influence the outcome. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effects of the timing of cerebellar anodal tDCS on motor learning using a sequential finger-tapping task.Methods: One hundred and twenty two healthy young, right-handed subjects were randomized into four groups. They performed 2 days of FTT (...) with their non-dominant hand on a custom keyboard. The task consisted of 40 s of typing followed by 20 s rest. Each participant received ca-tDCS at the appropriate timing and performed 20 trials on the first day. On the following day, only 10 trials of FTT were performed without tDCS. Motor skill performance and retention were assessed.Results: All participants showed a time-dependent increase in learning. Motor performance was not different between groups at the end of T1. ca-tDCS did not facilitate the retention of the motor skill in the FTT at T2. Thus, our findings indicate an absence of the effect of ca-tDCS on motor performance or retention of the FTT independently from the timing of stimulation.Conclusion: The present results suggest that the outcome of ca-tDCS is highly dependent on the task and stimulation parameters. Future studies need to establish a clear basis for the successful and reproducible clinical application of ca-tDCS. (shrink)

Critical reflections on the work of Angus Charles Graham, renowned Western scholar of Chinese philosophy and sinology.

The mediatization concept rests on the increasing centrality of media in everyday spheres. Within academia, mediatization is explored in various ways, such as through the use of social media, news media, and researchers’ adoption of certain media logic(s). While many studies focus on media logic(s) as an explanatory device, it can also be seen as a contextual relationship between actors enacted for various purposes. This paper explores how academics enact media logic(s) in climate communication and for what purpose. By drawing (...) on interviews with initiators of open letters on climate change, this paper illustrates that media logic(s) is evoked as a publishing strategy and a way to demarcate academics from news media journalists. The study thus suggests a conceptual shift from debates about what media logic(s) is to what it does in specific communication contexts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Free as a Bird: Varro De Re Rustica 3C. M. C. GreenMarcus terentius varro is a most difficult writer to assess. The very high regard in which he was held by the greatest writers of his—or any—time is supported by a fragmentary structure made up of a mass of tantalizing titles, excerpts, and allusions gathered from later authors, the reflection of his Res Divinae in Augustine, the extant books (...) of his De Lingua Latina, and De Re Rustica. The last of these, De Re Rustica, is the only complete work of Varro’s we possess, and therefore on it must be tested all our theories and suppositions about Varro as a writer. Unhappily, the artistic weaknesses of this work seem only too apparent. 1 The subject—managing a villa economy—is not one to readily attract most readers in and of itself, and Varro’s undeniable learnedness is exhibited to us in a narrative full of “hasty remarks, conversational language, rhetorical nostalgia, and, crowning all, the anacoluthons,” all of which muddle his discussion, and produce a prose “style” that defies categorization, if not description. 2It is truly unsettling, then, that the opening of each of the books of [End Page 427] De Re Rustica presents to us a Varro whose urbane wit and literary skill are much more in accord with our expectations from the immensely learned friend of all the great writers of the late Republic, and particularly from the author of Menippean Satires. Such is the disparity between the charm of the dialogues’ setting and the dry exposition of the factual material, and so indifferently are they linked, that one could suppress the first, as Boissier suggests, 3 without noticeably affecting the second. The result, a learned and somewhat tedious discussion of agriculture, would be understandable: practicality and Cato’s crabbed example would naturally excuse Varro from the higher artistic requirements. Yet the dramatic dialogue suggests that the author intended more than a dry exposition of material—though it is a suggestion which is left unfulfilled and, at first sight, seems to do little more than demonstrate its irrelevance.My aim in this essay is to suggest that we have been taking Varro at once too seriously, and, paradoxically, not seriously enough. That is, we have been reading De Re Rustica so intently as a (lady-)farmer’s vade mecum—Varro began the project, he says, at the request of his young wife who wanted to know how to manage her new estate (1.1.1–4)—that we have not given its author’s wit and literary subtlety the attention they deserve. The ruthless either/or of academic categorization has misled readers; either Varro is joking, they tend to assume, or he is serious. That he might be both at the same time is an idea that needs more help than we have so far been given. It is my contention that his wit is more carefully wrought, and is reaching toward far more serious matters than the details of how to farm.If we begin, first, by allowing the possibility that Varro had a purpose beyond packaging some important agricultural information in a decent volume; and if we then proceed by taking the paradoxes of De Re Rustica as being intentional, and therefore having meaning, we may at least open the door to new observations. The genre is defined (or so it seems) immediately by the opening of book 1, the dedication to Fundania; it is a handbook, since that is what Varro’s bride asked for. Yet the dialogue form signals some kind of philosophical genre, taken more or less seriously. We look, therefore, to Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, in which Ischomachus and Socrates discuss farming and, in particular, Ischomachus’ [End Page 428] fifteen-year-old wife’s management of her part of the oikos. 4 Then there is the dramatic framing of the three books, each with a very distinctive and rather unphilosophical setting, and dates that are mutually discordant. 5 This, combined with the enchanting name-play lavished on most of the characters in the dialogue, 6 suggests a comedic influence. The whole mixed bag taken together—handbook, philosophical... (shrink)

This paper investigates the impact of changing science policy doctrines on the development of an academic field, working life research. Working life research is an interdisciplinary field of study in which researchers and stakeholders collaborated to produce relevant knowledge. The development of the field, we argue, was both facilitated and justified by the, at the time dominant, science policy orthodoxy in Sweden, sector research. Sector research science policy doctrine favoured stakeholder-driven research agendas in the fields relevant to the sector. This (...) approach to agenda setting was highly contested by Swedish universities and left scientists vulnerable to the fallout from any conflicts arising among the stakeholder groupings that were part of the governance arrangement. Our case shows that working life research was in part a victim of the struggle between science and policy over who sets the agenda for science in Sweden. In this struggle, each side chose to use ‘scientific quality’ as a proxy for furth ing its respective interests and visions for how science should be governed. The paper argues that this case is of interest to the continued elaboration of the Mode 2 thesis and the debate about ‘relevant science’. We find that the close association with stakeholders and the concomitant dependence it created left working life research unable to defend itself against its critics and that this state of affairs was particularly problematic for social science research on working life. (shrink)

The problem of whether "Chinese philosophy" exists and deserves a place in Philosophy departments has not only remained unsolved but has even hardly led to any meaningful debate. The fact that repeated appeals to universality and fairness have largely remained unanswered indicates the limits of rationality in this matter. I have argued in the past that the futility of rational arguments is related to our emotional attachment to entities that fall beyond our control, such as the institutions where we are (...) trained, and that, like a family, shape our views on a subconscious level.1 This essay is not yet another argument in favor of Chinese philosophy, but turns to the institutional level, more specifically the European... (shrink)

The question of whether or not there is such a thing as "Chinese philosophy" is seldom explicitly raised, but the implicit answers to this question--although different in China and the West--dominate institutional and academic decisions. This article not only constructs a typology to recognize, differentiate, and evaluate various answers to this question, but it also takes the sensitivity of this matter seriously by comparing it with one's attachment to something as sensitive, arbitrary, and meaningless as a family name.

In October of last year, the Sinology Department of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven organized a one-week seminar on the topic "Contemporary Chinese Scholars on Chinese Philosophy" , together with the philosophy departments of Beijing University and the K.U. Leuven. Each of the five morning sessions consisted of a lecture by a Beijing University scholar, followed by the response of a K.U. Leuven scholar and discussion with the audience. The lectures covered the fields of Song-Ming thought , pre-Qin daoism , comparative (...) philosophy , early twentieth-century thought and post-1949 thought . This issue contains the five lectures as well as the brief responses, preceded by an introduction that sets out the major topics and central questions of the conference. (shrink)

Allow me first to congratulate the speaker for his most interesting talk. His strategy is well taken and convincing: Look at a Zhuangzi chapter that has been largely neglected by philosophers, identify its concerns, and read other Zhuangzi chapters through these concerns, rather than as mere variants of Western "philosophy." The concerns of the chapter "The Human World" lie, first of all, with staying alive when giving political advice or being sent on a diplomatic mission. The art of staying alive (...) in such circumstances is identified as shu "techniques," and confirms the political framework in which the writings of Masters originated. But the speaker avoids reducing the Chinese Masters to mere politics—a branch that did not exist separately in China—by stressing the importance of a more fundamental value, namely dao: a "way of life" that can be trained as a firm background for the "art of survival." That way of life entails a calmness, alertness, broad vision, and an open mind. The expression "daoshu," which combines this fundamental attitude with concrete strategies, might be a good candidate to replace the expression "Chinese philosophy." Most of my reflections concern this suggestion in light of the central topic of the whole conference: What is "Chinese philosophy?" I conclude with a question on the chapter "The Human World.". (shrink)

The body, touch and its sensations are present, sometimes viewed in contradictory ways, both expressed, visualized, and rejected, in early modern art and literature. In seven essays moving from the 16th to the mid-18th century, and from Italy and Spain to France and Sweden, this volume explores strategies used by early modern women poets, philosophers, and artists in order to create subversive expressions of the body, gender and the senses. Showing how body and soul, the carnal and the divine, the (...) senses and the mind, could be represented as intertwined and dependent on each other in various ways, it gives due attention to European women writers and artists that in unconventional ways responded to the period's two main intellectual and philosophical attitudes - Epicurean and Stoic - towards the body and its senses. These attitudes not only intersect in the period's discussions of virtue and other moral phenomena, but are central to critical assessment of the relations between emotions, perception, and reason. By following this topic from a gender perspective, the book highlights other forms of subjectivity than the ones usually related to the early modern period's dominating subjectivation of female bodies, thinking and desires. (shrink)

Personality assessments are frequently used to make decisions and predictions, creating a demand for assessments that are non-discriminatory. South African legislation requires psychological tests to be scientifically proven to be valid, reliable, fair and non-biased. In response to the necessity for a measure sensitive to indigenous differences, South African and Dutch researchers developed the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI). The SAPI represents a theoretical model of personality that uses an indigenous (emic) and universal (etic) approach to capture South Africa’s rich (...) multicultural and multilingual view of personhood. The development of SAPI items and its simultaneous translation from English into all official languages necessitated the investigation of all the translated language versions’ psychometric properties. This study used Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling to examine the factor structure and model fit of two indigenous language versions of the SAPI, targeting the Tshivenda and the Southern Sotho languages. To accomplish this objective, Study 1 (N= 290) was done in South Africa among the Tshivenda ethnic group, while Study 2 (N= 293) was conducted in South Africa among the Sesotho ethnic group. An acquiescence response pattern was noticed in both studies, possibly to adhere to group consensus and emphasizing harmony within relationships. The ESEM solutions generated an excellent fit for both language versions, and most facets loaded acceptably on their expected factors. The Neuroticism factor proved to be problematic in both language versions. Within the Tshivenda version, the Emotional Stability facet did not generate adequate loadings on any SAPI factors. In contrast, neither Emotional Stability nor Negative Emotionality loaded sufficiently on the Neuroticism factor for the Southern Sotho version. While the overall fit of the six-factor model was excellent, the language in which a person completes a personality questionnaire seems to influence such an assessment’s factor structure. The Tshivenda and Sesotho versions of the SAPI cannot yet be positioned as equitable alternatives when using an indigenous version of the SAPI is needed. The implications of the results and proposals for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

Hospitals have adopted a rhetoric of family-centered maternity care, and one of the ways in which they show their commitment to it is through the integration of the husband-as-coach model of childbirth into delivery practices. I argue that this model's widespread popularity testifies less to the culture's endorsement of a woman-centered approach than to healthcare's appropriation of “natural” childbirth as a site for the production and reproduction of patriarchal and capitalist power.

A linguistic convention is a principle or norm that has been adopted by a person or linguistic community about how to use, and therefore what the meaning is of, a specific term. Examples of such norms or principles are those expressed by propositions that express the laws of logic or those that express implicit definitions. Arguments about the epistemic status of linguistic conventions, very broadly, fall into two camps: the one holds that the basis of linguistic conventions is objective and (...) that, therefore, such conventions are genuinely truth-bearing. Knowledge of such conventions is therefore knowledge of the objective truth of such conventions. This camp might be labelled ‘realist’. The other holds that there is no known basis to linguistic conventions and that conventions are, to the best of our knowledge, not objective, but invented. Their truth is stipulated by the relevant speaker or linguistic community. Such truth is, consequently, trivial and knowledge of such conventions simply knowledge of the stipulation. This camp might be labelled ‘anti-realist’. These are three standard accounts of the epistemic status of linguistic conventions, which all play into the first camp: (1) knowledge by intuition, (2) inferential a priori knowledge and (3) a posteriori knowledge. I give reasons why these accounts should be rejected. I then argue that linguistic conventions, if conceived of as trivial truths, are knowable non-inferentially a priori. Such an epistemic account provides support for the second camp. In this regard, I marshal support from some recent work by Wright and Hale. (shrink)

The common approach to discussing Confucius’ advocacy of “correction of names” is to join the current academic debate about its meaning, usually in philosophical terms. Rather than joining in, however, this article describes the debate itself as a historically situated discourse largely dating from the early Republican era. I argue that Hu Shi 胡適 played a crucial but largely forgotten role in the creation of this discourse. While the core of the current discourse on zhengming consists of views that can (...) be traced to him, this discourse is nowadays often regarded as fact rather than a specific interpretation. By forgetting the historicity of this interpretation, academic reflection risks ossification and the loss of its critical spirit. The mere repetition of Hu Shi’s discourse is also contrary to his own spirit, which sought to call into question established views. (shrink)

Imagine: the Western world falls apart under political, financial, and social pressure. One result is that all funding for philosophy is suspended and diverted to STEM courses. Politicians in the U.S. and Europe, along with their voters, declare the whole tradition of philosophy a total fiasco for its inability to prevent the crisis or to show a way out. Because of this lack of funding and respect, philosophy no longer exists as an academic discipline in the mid-twenty-first century, but only (...) as a private hobby of maladjusted, wealthy eccentrics.At the same time, China has become so confident and rich that ample funding for research on the "masters" is provided. A... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is "Chinese Philosophy" a Proper Name?A Response to Rein RaudCarine DefoortIn the preface to his Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shi wrote: "Today, the two main branches of philosophy meet and influence each other. Whether or not in fifty years or one hundred a sort of world philosophy will finally arise cannot yet be ascertained."1 Although uncertain, Hu was still hopeful, since he believed that the (...) two major traditions of modern world philosophy, founded in Europe and China, had finally met. That was in 1919. Now, almost a century later, we can respond to Hu's speculation with relative certainty: a world philosophy has not arisen and is not on the rise. In fact, the situation is much worse: Chinese ancient thought is not even considered "philosophy" by most Western specialists in the field.For Feng Youlan, Hu's contemporary, this lack of recognition had become a major frustration by the end of his life. Feng earnestly felt that "parts of classical Chinese philosophy have a contribution to make to the elevating of man's spiritual sphere and in solving universal problems in human life."2 But on the last page of the last volume of his New Edition of the History of Chinese Philosophy, completed a few weeks before his death in November 1990, Feng concluded that Western philosophers had not even begun to consider ancient Chinese thought to be worthy of their attention: "Chinese traditional philosophy has always been regarded as a part of sinological studies and is considered as having no relation to philosophy."3 Feng's sentiment is still widely shared today; for instance, in the Yearbook of Chinese Philosophy for 2001, Zheng Jiadong remarks that "in the West, especially in Europe, the legitimacy of 'Chinese philosophy' has always been questioned; 'Chinese philosophy' [End Page 625] has to a large extent been considered a strange thing of questionable antecedents."4 Others confirm that "Chinese thinking has been all but excluded from the discipline of philosophy in Western seats of learning."5Indeed, various eminent European philosophers, such as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and, more recently, Jacques Derrida on his visit to Shanghai in 2001,6 have proclaimed that ancient Chinese thought is not really philosophy. Kant, for example, stated that "Philosophy is not to be found in the whole Orient.... Their teacher Confucius teaches in his writings nothing outside a moral doctrine designed for the princes."7 Even sinology scholars sometimes wonder whether ancient Chinese thought ought to be labeled "philosophy."8 But more powerful than such explicit rejections of the legitimacy of "Chinese philosophy," which are nowadays relatively rare, is the dominant and implicit Western (especially European) view, embedded in the organization of academic conferences, journals, university curricula (as Feng Youlan remarked), and bookstores, that ancient China did not have philosophy. The average European bookstore, for instance, does not display the Laozi or Yijing on the "philosophy" shelf, but rather among various types of wisdom or practical knowledge, between Celtic myths, herbal medicine, and the art of astrology. However unobtrusive, this organizational given reveals more clearly and influentially than any contemporary scholar explicitly states, that the name "Chinese philosophy" for the Chinese masters and some Classics is not proper—or, to put it in ancient Chinese terms: this ming 名 is not zheng 正.9The twenty-first century, however, has seen strong indications of change, not in the sense that "Chinese philosophy" is now being generally accepted as one of the two main branches of world philosophy, as Hu Shi had hoped, but in the sense that the debate has been reopened, both in China and in the West. In China, the appropriateness of the label "Chinese philosophy" for ancient Chinese thought was questioned by some leading scholars in the first part of the twentieth century. But in the last decade the matter has been experienced as a crisis and challenge, and has been discussed much more broadly and vividly by Chinese academia: conferences are being dedicated to the question of the "legitimacy of 'Chinese philosophy"' (Zhongguo zhexue hefaxing 中国哲学的合法性), newspapers report on it, and some journals devote whole forums to it.10 About one hundred articles or chapters related... (shrink)

During recent decades China has been visited by various "heats": the "Culture Heat" in the mid-1980s, the "Cultural Criticism Heat" in the late 1980s, the "Mao Zedong Heat" in the early 1990s, the "Chinese Traditional Studies Heat" in the late 1990s, and the "Old Three Classes Culture Heat" also in this decade, to name only the most prevalent. It is not always clear when and how a hot topic turns into a "heat," precisely what is burning, and how to handle (...) it. "Heats" are cultural movements, difficult to grasp and controversial among intellectuals: To some they are a hearth to turn to, to others a disaster to flee. (shrink)