Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 28-29.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Poe?Why Not Peirce?Roger SeamonFrederick Crews has twice tried to mock deep interpretation to death, but it won't work. There is, as he himself says, "a desperate need to root around and 'find' some redeeming features of Pooh to hang on to," and thus The Pooh Perplex did not, and Postmodern Pooh will not, put an end to the love affair between literary interpreters and deep meanings.1 The (...) opposition of Plato and Aristotle did not do it in the ancient world,2 and Dr. Johnson was still protesting two millennia later: "They see with great clearness whatever is too remote to be discovered by the rest of mankind, but are totally blind to what lies immediately before them. They discover in every passage some secret meaning, some remote allusion, some artful allegory... which no other reader ever suspected" (Rambler, p. 176). Early in the last century academic critics tried to resist the practice within academe, but they too failed, and Crews himself only gave it up after writing one of the best works of the genre, The Sins of the Fathers.3Disbelieving in literary deep meanings is roughly the equivalent of being an atheist. We have a strong propensity to find them in both natural and cultural phenomena. Stars and entrails are interpreted as symbols of a deeper reality, and we create such devices as the I Ching and the Tarot deck to gain entrance to a hidden world of meaning. Dreams, which straddle nature and culture are, perhaps, the most common object upon which to exercise the impulse, and Hayden White reminds us that this propensity has also been part of our intellectual traditionfrom the time that Plato set the world of ideas over against the world of things and Aristotle set the contemplative life over against the active life as end to means. This Absurdist moment [White is speaking about post-structuralist [End Page 256] literary interpretation] was potentially present from the beginning of modern European humanism, with its gnostic bent, its celebration of scholarship as an end in itself, its notion of privileged readers enjoying the status of priests interpreting the book of life. It was potentially present in modern Western philosophy, with its insistence that things are never what they appear to be but are manifestations of noumenal essences whose reality must be supposed but whose "natures" can never be known.4We are often not content with surface meaning in life and texts, but wish to find what Paul Tillich calls, none too modestly, "ultimate reality," which "characterizes the whole appearing world as non-ultimate, preliminary, transitory and finite," and "it is the awareness of the deceptive character of the surface of everything we encounter which drives one to discover what is below the surface."5There is, however, an oddity that may offer non-believers in deep interpretation some consolation. Philosophical texts, which share many characteristics with literary ones (see below, p. 4, for a discussion of the relevant similarities), are almost wholly immune from deep interpretation. There is no hope for us skeptics that literary deep interpreters will abandon their trade, so all we can do is console ourselves with trying to understand why our rich and beloved surfaces are so often abandoned for the very dubious depths. Crews says that interpreters "yearn to have their 'values' validated by books—the killer app of the 1400s" (Postmodern Pooh, p. 136); yes, but why don't other disciplines, such as history and philosophy, engage in the same practice? What is it about literature that makes it vulnerable? Why, in particular, are philosophical texts almost totally immune to such interpretation? As my title puts it, why Poe, why not Peirce?But why just Poe and Peirce, philosophy and literature, in the first place? There are, of course, many other kinds of discourse, but literary and philosophical texts have an especially intimate relationship. First, they have a canonical status that, for example, history no longer does, and it is the canon that attracts hermeneutic attention. Students of philosophy and literature learn a canon—or did until recently, and that is not true of modern historians, psychologists, and economists. Second... (shrink)

The subtitle of this book raises the question of what cognitive science can teach ethics. The answer, I believe, is "very little" or at least "little that ethics doesn't know already." This can be seen in the fact that, with one important exception, the authors to which Johnson most often refers are not cognitive scientists, but are instead those moral philosophers engaged in developing fundamental criticisms of "modern" or "enlightenment" morality, philosophers such as Taylor, Williams, and MacIntyre. What (...) class='Hi'>Johnson does take from cognitive science is a set of terms, a general viewpoint, and a methodology which leads him to look at how ordinary people actually go about solving moral problems. Fortunately, this methodology yields some interesting results. (shrink)

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

Editor's note: This fragment by Roger T. Simonds was the last essay he wrote before his death from leukemia on 10 September 1995. It has been edited by Dr Peggy Muñoz Simonds. Please send all correspondence to Peggy Muñoz Simonds, 5406 Beech Ave., Bethesda, MD 20814, USA.

In his own time, Lao Sze-Kwang formulated his own intra-cultural approach to the philosophy of culture that begins from the interdependence and organic nature of our cultural experience. In this essay, I address three questions: Why did Lao abandon his early reliance on the Hegelian model of philosophy of culture and formulate his own “two- structured” theory? Again, given Lao’s profound commitment and contribution to Chinese philosophy and its future directions, why is it not proper to describe him as a (...) “Chinese philosopher?” And why is the much accomplished Lao Sze- Kwang not installed in the CUHK pantheon as yet one more of the great “New Confucian” philosophers (xinruxuejia 新儒學家) to be associated with this institution? (shrink)

Uses a comparative hermeneutical method to explain the most important terms in the classical Confucian philosophical texts, in an effort to allow the tradition to speak on its own terms.

The earliest Analects yet discovered, this work provides us with a new perspective on the central canonical text that has defined Chinese culture--and clearly illuminates the spirit and values of Confucius.

Roger T. Ames's A Sourcebook in Classical Confucian Philosophy is a companion volume to his Conceptual Lexicon for Classical Confucian Philosophy. It includes texts in the original classical Chinese along with their translations, allowing experts and novices alike to make whatever comparisons they choose. In applying a method of comparative cultural hermeneutics, Ames has tried to let the tradition speak on its own terms. The goal is to encourage readers to move between the translated text and commentary, the philosophical (...) introduction that attempts to sensitize them to the interpretative context, and the companion Lexicon of key philosophical terms, with the expectation that in the fullness of time they will be able to appropriate the original Chinese terminologies themselves. Armed with their own increasingly robust insight into these philosophical terms, readers will be able to carry this nuanced understanding over into their critical reading of other available translations. Ultimately, for students who would understand Chinese philosophy, tian 天 must be understood as tian 天, and dao 道 must be dao 道. (shrink)

Composed more than 2,000 years ago during a turbulent period of Chinese history, the Dao de jing set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Daoism, as this subtle but enduring philosophy came to be known, offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary. Now in this luminous new translation, based on the recently discovered ancient bamboo scrolls, China scholars Roger T. (...) Ames and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the Dao de jing into our contemporary world. Though attributed to Laozi, “the Old Master,” the Dao de jing is, in fact, of unknown authorship and may well have originated in an oral tradition four hundred years before the time of Christ. Eschewing philosophical dogma, the Dao de jing set forth a series of maxims that outlined a new perspective on reality and invited readers to embark on a regimen of self-cultivation. In the Daoist world view, each particular element in our experience sends out an endless series of ripples throughout the cosmos. The unstated goal of the Dao de jing is self-transformation–the attainment of personal excellence that flows from the world and back into it. Responding to the teachings of Confucius, the Dao de jing revitalizes moral behavior by recommending a spontaneity made possible by the cultivated “habits” of the individual. In this elegant volume, Ames and Hall feature the original Chinese texts of the Dao de jing and translate them into crisp, chiseled English that reads like poetry. Each of the eighty-one brief chapters is followed by clear, thought-provoking commentary exploring the layers of meaning in the text. The book’s extensive introduction is a model of accessible scholarship in which Ames and Hall consider the origin of the text, place the emergence of Daoist philosophy in its historical and political context, and outline its central tenets. The Dao de jing is a work of timeless wisdom and beauty, as vital today as it was in ancient China. This new version will stand as both a compelling introduction to the complexities of Daoist thought and as the classic modern English translation. (shrink)

In his Introduction to The Encyclopaedia Logic, G.W.F. Hegel reflects at great length upon the question “Where does philosophy begin? Where does the inquiry start?” And in this reverie, he concludes that because philosophy “does not have a beginning in the sense of the other sciences” it must be the case that “the beginning only has a relation to the subject who takes the decision to philosophise.”1 For Hegel himself, it is the ultimate project of such philosophizing to bring this (...) person—the finite spirit, the single intellect, the philosopher—into identity with God as the object of pure thinking. And it is also for Hegel that, like Confucianism, persons are not facts but achievements... (shrink)

Henry Rosemont, Jr., in his Against Individualism has mounted a compelling argument that foundational individualism in its various iterations has become a malevolent ideology implicated in and aggravating many of the pressing problems of our time. The overall thrust of his thesis can be stated rather simply. The industrial democracies and most of the rest of the world are dominated by a corporate capitalism the interests of which are served largely by a procedural justice grounded in a foundational individualism that (...) compounds the benefits of a few and marginalizes the possibility of realizing a distributive justice for the many. Hence, the more that academic and political forces are successful in defending... (shrink)

Discussing the history of universal human rights and Confucian values, Ames asserts that a growing dialogue between China and the United States would benefit China in terms of political and individual rights and the United States in terms of a greater sense of civic virtue.

This special issue of Philosophy East and West is dedicated to the inaugural meeting of the World Consortium for Research in Confucian Cultures, convened at the University of Hawai‘i and the East-West Center, October 8-12, 2014, on the theme “Confucian Values in a Changing World Cultural Order,” to explore the contributions of Confucian thought to world culture. The conference brought together leading scholars from partner institutions around the world to explore critically the meaning and value of Confucian culture in the (...) twenty-first century. The purpose of this initial meeting was to address the questions “What is the contemporary form of ‘Confucian’ culture?” “What are its historical failings and limitations?”... (shrink)

‘To translate’ means quite literally ‘to carry across, to bring across,’ that is, ‘to remove from one place to another.’ The questions I want to address in this essay are: To what extent have we been successful in, first, understanding the Chinese philosophical narrative and, then, in ‘carrying it across’ into the western academy? To what extent have we been able to grow and ‘appreciate’ our own philosophical parameters by engaging with this antique tradition? The self-conscious strategy of translation, then, (...) must be to go beyond word-for-word translation and attempt to enable students of Chinese philosophy to read the seminal texts by providing them with a means of developing their own sophisticated understanding of a set of critical Chinese philosophical terms. The premise is that there is no real alternative but to cultivate a nuanced familiarity with the key Chinese vocabulary itself. It is in this effort to take Chinese philosophy on its own terms, then, that we must begin from the interpretive context by taking into account the tradition’s own indigenous presuppositions and its own evolving self-understanding. We must be aware of the ambient, persistent assumptions that have given the Chinese philosophical narrative its unique identity over time. (shrink)

Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

Distinguished scholars discuss the problem of self-deception, or rather, self and deception.

Comparative philosophy, moving back and forth between two or more cultural sites, can ideally provide a window on alternative cultural narratives, and at the same time, enable us to excavate those presuppositions underlying our own tradition. But if, in the process, we fail to identify and set aside those cultural assumptions which illumine our own way of seeing the world, that same window will, in the glare of our own prejudices, serve as nothing more than a mirror with which to (...) contemplate our own cultural reflection, concealing differences while redefining the alternative ways of living and thinking as deceptively familiar. (shrink)

Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China, has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or (...) lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the "idea" of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey's "idea" of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a "Confucian democracy." Just as Dewey's "idea" of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi's Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process "starting here and going there" through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Philosophy, like most things Chinese, must be understood in terms of continuities. And any discussion of the cultural interests of contemporary China must begin from context: the “where” and the “whenh” of things. In contrast to Western philosophy, which began from the decontextualizing metaphysical sensibilities of the classical Greeks, the Chinese tradition is resolutely historicist. Reason is a series of historical instances of reasonableness; culture is a specific historical pattern of human flourishing; logic is the internal coherence of this particular (...) human narrative; knowledge modestly is local and site‐specific – making one's way smoothly and without obstruction; truth is proximate – the capacity to foster productive relationships that begin with the maintenance of one's own integrity and extend to the enhancement of one's own natural, social and cultural contexts. (shrink)

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative (...) values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order. (shrink)

In this volume, representatives of different cultures and with alternative conceptions of human realization explore themes at the intersection of a changing ...

The Westphalian model of international relations has given us a zero-sum game of winners and losers that has proven to be ineffective in addressing the pressing issues of our times. Philosopher Zhao Tingyang has argued that by conceptualizing international relations from the planetary perspective of tianxia, we can develop a sense of "worldness" that at once acknowledges the plurality of moral ideals defining of the world's cultures and seeks practical ways to formulate a shared morality for the solidarity needed to (...) bring the world's people together. In this spirit, political theorist Michael Walzer, in his Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, wants "to endorse the politics of difference and, at the same time, to describe and defend a certain sort of universalism." For Walzer "thin" morality does not mean minor or emotionally shallow morality; on the contrary, thin and intensity come together as "morality close to the bone." Turning to alternative philosophies, the contributors to this volume seek to move beyond liberal thinking on a minimalist ethic to include other cultural values-those of the Confucian, Buddhist, Indian, Islamic, Ubuntu, Japanese, European, and Jewish traditions. In order to reconceive of the world as a world, these scholars seek to formulate an answer to the contemporary challenge of a fragmented and failing Westphalian "internationality," and in so doing, to offer possible conceptions of a shared and practicable morality sorely needed at a planetary scale. (shrink)

本书介绍了中国式的超越和西方文化超越的神学论;理性、关联性与过程语言;中国的性别歧视观;儒家思想与实用主义;儒家民主主义等内容。.

Given the accelerating robotic AI revolution and China’s perceived central role in it, how will this grand transformation in the human experience be received and responded to within a distinctively Confucian cultural context?

In his new book, Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times, Joseph Chan observes that Confucianism from its inception has suffered from a gap between its lofty aspirations and its historical reality—that is, there has been a severe discrepancy between its strong and resilient regulative ideals and a persistent pattern of traditionally weak social and governmental institutions and their practices. To overcome this historical disparity, Chan argues that contemporary Confucians should draw upon Western liberal institutions to the extent that (...) they can provide effective measures of governance. At the same time, these modern democratic resources should be modified in such a way... (shrink)

At the end of 2013, China introduced what it calls the ‘One Belt, One Road Initiative’. From a Chinese perspective, this initiative is nothing less than a strategy...

In this book philosophers, scholars of religion, and activists address the theme of responsibility. Barbara Darling-Smith brings together an enlightening collection of essays that analyze the ethics of responsibility, its relational nature, and its global struggle.

Will democracy figure prominently in China's future? If so, what kind of democracy? In this insightful and thought-provoking book, David Hall and Roger Ames explore such questions and, in the course of answering them, look to the ideas of John Dewey and Confucius.