The debate on whether Confucianism is a source of corruption or root of morality, which initiated about ten years ago in China and was mainly between Liu Qingping 劉清平 and Guo Qiyong 郭齊勇, entered a second stage when Deng Xiaomang 鄧曉芒 criticized Confucian ethics based on filial piety, and Guo Qiyong and (mainly) his (former) students persistently defended their points of view. This essay is a review of the main theme of the debate at this second stage.

本书把最新反映邓小平哲学思想特色的论述分为:解放思想,实事求是,照辩证法办事,改革是解放和发展生产力的必由之路,面向世界,吸收人类文明成果等10部分加以编辑。.

Confucianism advocates the lofty moral ideal of “humane love” (ren ai 仁愛) and condemns immoral actions. Strangely enough, however, Mencius, a “paradigmatic Confucian intellectual” who believed that “a true man cannot be corrupted by wealth, subdued by power, or affected by poverty” (Tu 1989a: 15), highly commended such typically corrupt actions as bending the law for the benefit of relatives or appointing people by mere nepotism when he talked about Shun 舜 in the text of the Mencius. In the first (...) four sections of this article, I will address the issue of how Confucianism encourages a special kind of corruption through its fundamentally consanguineous affection. Then, in the remaining sections, I will try to respond to some criticisms of my views by a few Chinese scholars. (shrink)

: Confucianism is often valued as a doctrine that highlights both the individual and social dimensions of the ideal person, for it indeed puts special emphasis on such lofty goals as loving all humanity and cultivating the self. Through a close and critical analysis of the texts of the Analects and the Mencius, however, it is attempted to demonstrate that because Confucius and Mencius always take filial piety, or, more generally, consanguineous affection, as not only the foundation but also the (...) supreme principle of human life, the individual and social dimensions are inevitably subordinated to and substantially negated by the filial precisely within the Confucian framework, with the result that Confucianism in essence is neither collectivism nor individualism, but "consanguinitism.". (shrink)

Mencius regards the 'heart of commiseration' as the 'beginning of humaneness', so as to set up a universal and sufficient foundation for the Confucian ideal of humane love in the human 'heart-nature'. Through a close and critical analysis of the very text of the Mencius, however, this essay tries to show that if in the light of the fundamental spirit of Confucianism, especially in the light of the principles of 'one root' and 'love with distinctions' advocated by Mencius himself in (...) his criticisms on Moist school, this doctrine is not tenable exactly within the Confucian framework, with the result that the ideal of humane love is always rootless in Confucian theory. (shrink)

In his doctrine of 'extending affection' (tui en), Mencius holds that one can transform particular consanguineous affection into universal humane love by the way of 'taking this heart here and applying it to what is over there'. Through a critical analysis of the text of the Mencius, it is attempted to argue that although this doctrine can combine the two mainstays of Confucian thought, i.e., filiality and humaneness, into an integrated unity, it is not tenable within the Confucian framework in (...) the light of the fundamental spirit of Confucianism, especially in the light of the principle of 'love with distinctions' advocated by Mencius himself, which definitely gives consanguineous affection the supreme position in human life. (shrink)

In his dialogue with Zai Wo about the three-year mourning, Confucius establishes a principle of 'justification by feeling at ease,' and insists that one should transcend natural desires by moral emotions. More significantly, he further regards kinship love as the ultimate root and supreme principle of human life. Thus, this dialogue contains almost all the basic elements of the Confucian spirit of consanguineous affection.

Through a comparative analysis of the stories of Abraham and Guo, this article tries to argue that some particularistic claims of Christianity and Confucianism, which regard faith in God or filial piety to parents respectively as the sole ultimate principle of human life, may constitute the spiritual mainstay of such serious evils as murdering the innocent in certain in-depth paradoxes. Only by assigning a supreme position to their universal ideas of loving all humans through their self-transformations could the two ethico-religious (...) traditions prevent those morally unacceptable evils motivated by their particularistic claims and overcome their in-depth paradoxes. (shrink)

本书立足于儒家大师的经典文本, 通过学术性的分析论证, 集中探讨了孔孟荀、董仲舒、宋明儒学以及当代儒学的核心观念, 运用学术批判方法指出了儒家伦理陷入的深度悖论. 本书在批判儒家伦理、正当与善的关系、平等等问题上的一些见解和论证, 为作者在国内外学术界首次明确提出, 具有鲜明的原创性.

Through comparisons between traditional Chinese and Western aesthetics, this article tries to explain the worldwide significance of Chinese aesthetic tradition in the twenty-first century. In contrast to cognitive-rational spirit and the tendency to distinguish the subjectives and objectives of traditional Western aesthetics, traditional Chinese aesthetics shows a distinctive practical-emotional spirit and a tendency to harmoniously unite human beings with nature, and believes that beauty is, first and foremost, a free state or way (Dao) of human life; the most important thing (...) for human beings is how to make their own lives and existence beautiful. Therefore, it puts forward some persuasive and valuable insights into beauty and art, thus playing an independent and constructive role in intercultural aesthetic dialogues of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This essay argues that individual-oriented informed consent is inadequate to protect human research subjects in mainland China. The practice of family-oriented decision-making is better suited to guide moral research conduct. The family’s role in medical decision-making originates from the mutual benevolence that exists among family members, and is in accordance with family harmony, which is the aim of Confucian society. I argue that the practice of informed consent for medical research on human subjects ought to remain family-oriented in mainland China. (...) This essay explores the main features of this model of informed consent and demonstrates the proper authority of the family. The family’s participation in decision-making as a whole does not negate or deny the importance of the individual who is the subject of the choice, but rather acts more fully to protect research subjects. (shrink)

This paper presents a new cosmological argument based on considerations about grounding. I argue that, by assuming three plausible principles about grounding, we can construct a cosmological argument for the existence of a unique ungrounded being that ultimately grounds everything else. At the end of the paper I consider two possible objections, and offer my replies to them.

On the one hand, Confucianism and Christianity advocate universal love for all humans on the ultimate basis of particular love for parents or for God respectively. On the other hand, they have to sacrifice the former for the latter in cases of conflict since they give top priority merely to the latter. In order to overcome this paradox in theory and realize the ideal of universal love in practice, they should transform their particularistic frameworks into universalistic ones and assign a (...) supreme position to their ideas of universal love for all humans, which imply in a potential way a modern, humanistic principle ‘respect the deserved rights of every human being’. (shrink)

Intra-organization and inter-organization collaboration and governance are becoming increasingly important for megaprojects. Different stakeholders form intricate links in a network structure. This study explores the role and effect of hybrid governance on complex network projects, such as urban rail transit projects. This included conducting a questionnaire survey with 116 professionals from organizations involved in urban rail transit projects and adopting structural equation modelling to analyze the data. The results analyzed the levels of intra-organization and inter-organization trust under the conditions of (...) power asymmetry and power sharing. A higher level of power asymmetry was associated with lower hybrid governance performance. In contrast, a higher level of power sharing is associated with better hybrid governance performance. The results are generalizable to other projects with complicated organizational and network relationships. (shrink)

Capturing the interrelations among risks is essential to thoroughly understand and promote coal mining safety. From this standpoint, 105 risks and 135 interrelations among risks had been identified from 126 typical accidents, which were also the foundation of constructing coal mine risk network. Based on the complex network theory and Pajek, six parameters were employed to reveal the topological properties of CMRN. As indicated by the results, CMRN possesses scale-free network property because its cumulative degree distribution obeys power-law distribution. This (...) means that CMRN is robust to random hazard and vulnerable to deliberate attack. CMRN is also a small-world network due to its relatively small average path length as well as high clustering coefficient, implying that accident propagation in CMRN is faster than regular network. Furthermore, the effect of risk control is explored. According to the result, it shows that roof collapse, fire, and gas concentration exceeding limit refer to three most valuable targets for risk control among all the risks. This study will help offer recommendations and proposals for making beforehand strategies that can restrain original risks and reduce accidents. (shrink)

In the discussion of global ethics, philosophical ethics risks losing its distinct theoretical horizons. This predicament arises primarily from philosophy's failure to anchor its own object and to provide a rational basis for global justice from within its current confined theoretical paradigm. Against this background, this paper will first prioritize global co-existence as the primary concern of global ethics, then propose ontological co-existence justice as its foundational principle, and finally argue that the normative validity of co-existence justice is predicated on (...) the nations fulfilling the critical requirements of modern civilization, namely, the advancement of individual freedom. (shrink)

本书包括:法律与立法的二元观、普通法法治国的建构、普通法法治国的建构过程等内容。.

Direction of the embyro's head rotation is determined by asymmetrical expression of several genes (such as shh, Nodal, lefty, and FGF8) in Hensen's node. This genetically determined head-turning bias provides a base for light-aligned population lateralization in chicks, in which the direction of the lateralization is determined by genetic factors and the degree of the lateralization is determined by environmental factors.

This study adapts a Medical English Language Anxiety Scale based on Horwitz’s Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale and examines students’ anxiety in medical English vocabulary, listening and speaking, communication, literature reading, and academic paper writing. The biographical factors related to medical English language anxiety were also tested. The questionnaire sets including five dimensions were distributed to the students from a medical university in Sichuan, China, and were statistically analyzed by using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 21.0. By employing the adapted MELAS, (...) it was found that 85.2% of the medical students surveyed suffered moderate and higher anxiety. Among all dimensions, students with listening and speaking anxiety recorded the highest, followed by literature reading anxiety, English academic writing anxiety, communication anxiety, and vocabulary learning anxiety. We also found that the anxiety of rural medical students in each dimension was higher than that of urban medical students. This study suggests that English teachers should be fully aware of their students’ language anxiety situation, design interesting class activities, and create a relaxed English learning atmosphere in classroom teaching to make students less nervous when learning medical English in class. (shrink)

Socrates regards rational knowledge as the decisive factor of human life and even ascribes all virtues and moral actions to it, thereby stressing the ‘rationales’ of ethics. In contrast, Confucius regards kinship love as the decisive factor of human life and even grounds all virtues and moral actions on it, thereby stressing the ‘emotionales’ of ethics. Therefore, we should not lump them together by conceiving Confucius’ ethics also as based on ‘moral reason’.

The Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions tries to establish a global ethic by jointly affirming some irrevocable and unconditional ethical directives on the grounds of their special ultimate realities. Through some case analysis of Christianity and Confucianism, this essay argues that, because these religions often assign a supreme position to these ultimate realities alone and make them trump anything else in a particularistic way, they have to subordinate those ethical directives to these realities. As a result, those (...) ethical directives themselves are no longer irrevocable and unconditional, for they are conditioned bythese ultimate realities and thus are revocable in the cases of conflict with the latter. In other words, the particularistic claims of these religions may permit their adherents to perform such immoral deeds as murder, theft, or lying for the sake of their ultimate realities in real life. Therefore, if the world’s religions genuinely hope to establish a global ethic on the basis of their own religious grounds, they must trust in their ultimate realities in a universalistic way instead of in a particularistic way—that is, they may not place these ultimate realities above a minimum humanist principle ‘every human being must be treated humanely’ absolutely, but should assign a supreme position to the latter and intrinsically integrate it with their trust in their special ultimate realities through a critical and creative self-transformation. (shrink)

Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi regard the human as an emotional being and especially consider such moral feelings as humane love, filial piety and devoted loyalty to be the constituent elements of humanity. On the one hand, they try to integrate the corresponding multiple roles of the humane person, filial son and loyal subject in harmony in order to make one become a true human in the ethical sense; on the other hand, they assign a supreme position merely to filial piety (...) or loyalty in cases of conflict because they regard one's parents or ruler as the greatest root of one's life, respectively. As a result, their ideas about humanity fall into some in-depth moral paradoxes, which might be resolved by a post-Confucian transformation of the traditional Confucian framework from particularistic consanguinism to universalistic humanism. (shrink)

Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz’s book Nothing to Come: a Defence of the Growing Block Theory of Time offers an incredibly rich and skillful defense of the growing block theory (GBT), a view of time that arguably has much intuitive appeal, and which has been under attack from many sides. Nonetheless, I have to report that the book’s tense-logical course of treatment has not worked for me; I still struggle with making sense of the GBT. This article begins by drawing (...) out some implications of the book’s set up. First, the notion of existence in play here is not interpretable on the basis of ordinary usage. Second, it would be a mistake to take the tense-logical framework to have any metaphysical significance. I then articulate two main worries about their version of the GBT. The first worry takes a familiar shape: it is just hard to see how their view is dynamic in the relevant sense. The second worry is that the topic seems to have been changed. C&R’s logical system helps itself to key notions whose intended interpretation includes a solution to every metaphysical puzzle about the GBT, so that these puzzles are not so much addressed as enshrined in a formal system. That is, their view seems to answer the question of how language should behave, if the GBT were (somehow) true. (shrink)

本书包括《南询录》校注记、《南询录》校注、记录邓豁渠生平的文献资料、研究邓豁渠的两篇论文这四个部分的内容。.

本书围绕着一个“人”的主题,展示了作者关于“人生”、“人格”和“人性”的一些思考。.

在当代中国, 探讨文化复兴问题不仅具有重要的学术价值, 而且具有重大的现实意义.本书是一本直接以文化复兴为研究对象的专著, 分为上下两篇.上篇是理论篇, 严格地探究了文化复兴的生存论基础, 即历史文化对生活的建构功能; 下篇是应用篇.

Ling zhi wu -- Ren zhi jing -- Ling hun zhi lü.

With a previous paper (Niu & Wang, 1995), a general, hypothetical outline of the mechanism of carcinogenesis was proposed. With reference to the fact of starvation-induced hypermutation in micro-organisms, we propose that the hypoxia commonly seen in the cells at the centre of solid tumours might also result in hypermutation, and then p53-dependent programmed cell death. Like the apparently adaptive mutations in micro-organisms, only those genes (e.g. p53) that enable the cells to escape from apoptosis may be selected.

From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, carcinogenesis should be looked upon as a protective mechanism against destruction of DNA. Because genes expressed in embryonic cells are covered and protected by heterochromatinization, they are the most appropriate ‘alternate genes’ compared to genes that are expressed already in somatic cells. When DNA-damage occurs, the embryonic genes can be activated. Some somatic cells exhibit some features of embryonic cells.

Elsewhere I have suggested that the B-theory includes a notion of passage, by virtue of including succession. Here, I provide further support for that claim by showing that uncontroversial elements of the B-theory straightforwardly ground a veridical sense of passage. First, I argue that the B-theory predicts that subjects of experience have a sense of passivity with respect to time that they do not have with respect to space, which they are right to have, even according to the B-theory. I (...) then ask what else might be involved in our experience of time as passing that is not yet vindicated by the B-theoretic conception. I examine a recent B-theoretic explanation of our ‘illusory’ sense of passage, by Robin Le Poidevin, and argue that it explains away too much: our perception of succession poses no more of a problem on the B-theory than it does on other theories of time. Finally, I respond to an objection by Oreste Fiocco that a causal account of our sense of passage cannot succeed, because it leaves out the ‘phenomenological novelty’ of each moment. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation and a partial defense of Kit Fine's ‘Argument from Passage’, which is situated within his reconstruction of McTaggart's paradox. Fine argues that existing A-theoretic approaches to passage are no more dynamic, i.e. capture passage no better, than the B-theory. I argue that this comparative claim is correct. Our intuitive picture of passage, which inclines us towards A-theories, suggests more than coherent A-theories can deliver. In Finean terms, the picture requires not only Realism about tensed facts, but (...) also Neutrality, i.e. the tensed facts not being ‘oriented towards’ one privileged time. However unlike Fine, and unlike others who advance McTaggartian arguments, I take McTaggart's paradox to indicate neither the need for a more dynamic theory of passage nor that time does not pass. A more dynamic theory is not to be had: Fine's ‘non-standard realism’ amounts to no more than a conceptual gesture. But instead of concluding that time does not pass, we should conclude that theories of passage cannot deliver the dynamicity of our intuitive picture. For this reason, a B-theoretic account of passage that simply identifies passage with the succession of times is a serious contender. (shrink)

Usually, the B-theory of time is taken to involve the claim that time does not, in reality, pass; after all, on the B-theory, nothing really becomes present and then more and more past, times do not come into existence successively, and which facts obtain does not change. For this reason, many B-theorists have recently tried to explain away one or more aspect(s) of experience that they and their opponents take to constitute an experience of time as passing. In this paper, (...) I examine three prominent proposals of this kind and argue that, though intriguing, the proposals undermine, to some extent, the assumption that there is an element of experience that B-theorists need to take to be illusory. (shrink)

Some naturalists feel an affinity with some religions, or with a particular religion. They may have previously belonged to it, and/or been raised in it, and/or be close to people who belong to it, and/or simply feel attracted to its practices, texts and traditions. This raises the question of whether and to what extent a naturalist can lead the life of a religious believer. The sparse literature on this topic focuses on religious fictionalism. I also frame the debate in these (...) terms. I ask what religious fictionalism might amount to, reject some possible versions of it and endorse a different one. I then examine the existing proposals, by Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Lipton, Andrew Eshleman and Howard Wettstein, and show that even on my version of religious fictionalism, much of what has been described by these authors is still possible. (shrink)