Chinese and Greco-Roman ethics present highly articulate views on how one should live; both of these traditions remain influential in modern philosophy. The question arises how these traditions can be compared with one another. Comparative ethics is a relatively young discipline; this volume is a major contribution to the field. Fundamental questions about the nature of comparing ethics are treated in two introductory chapters, and core issues in each of the traditions are addressed: harmony, virtue, friendship, knowledge, the relation of (...) ethics to morality, relativism, emotions, being and unity, simplicity and complexity, and prediction. (shrink)

This paper reflects on two ideas addressed in Benoît Vermander’s essay “Edit by Number.” First, how can we apply “coherence in structure” to the historical development of textual production and edition in ancient China? And second, what concept of number underlies the considerations in the Huáinán Zǐ 淮南子? To answer the first question, this article compares the different compositional patterns of texts that, as with the Lǎo Zǐ 老子and the Yì Jīng 易經, are available to us in different versions. The (...) result of the comparison shows that the differences seem to outweigh the coherent patterns, so we must assume that some texts have undergone very large changes historically. Regarding the concept of number, different views on number are highlighted in texts of the Warring States Period and the Hàn 漢 dynasty, which shows that the Huáinán Zǐ contains a very specific concept of number and its own theory of the One. (shrink)

The present paper gives a systematic account of the concept of virtue represented by de 德 in the “Book of Changes.” It starts with a short summary of the impact of this concept on later Song dynasty philosophy. In this traditional view, “virtue” is considered to be a natural entity which contains intrinsic dynamics. This naturalistic view of morality is later contrasted with earlier notions of de or “virtue” in the canonized edition of the “Changes.” The paper first examines its (...) meaning in the oracle sayings and then moves on to the “Traditions of the Changes,” Yizhuan 易傳. Placed in its own historical context, the concept of “virtue” goes together with ideas of destiny, political authority and spirit-like efficacy. (shrink)

Conversion to sound at the close of the 1920s ushered in a decade-long period of French film production that standard accounts by Alan Williams and Colin Crisp cast as all but unparalleled in aesthetic impact and thematic scope. Despite chronic underfunding and structural disarray in an industry that never fully rebounded after the Great War, French audiences enjoyed a robust domestic culture of stars, screenwriters, and directors whose concern for richly detailed narratives and moody “atmospherics” laid the foundations for the (...) classic French cinema. Key to an understanding of this period that saw René Clair, Jean Renoir, and Julien Duvivier rise to international prominence alongside—or... (shrink)