In A Philosophical Defense of Culture, Shuchen Xiang draws on the Confucian philosophy of "culture" and Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms to argue for the importance of "culture" as a philosophic paradigm. A defining ideal of Confucian-Chinese civilization, culture (wen) spans everything from natural patterns and the individual units that make up Chinese writing to literature and other refining vocations of the human being. Wen is thus the soul of Confucian-Chinese philosophy. Similarly, as a philosopher who bridged the (...) classical age of German humanism and postwar modernity, Cassirer implored his and future generations to think of humankind in terms of their culture and to think of the human being as a "symbolic animal." The philosophies of culture of these two traditions, very much compatible, are of urgent relevance to our contemporary epoch. Xiang describes the similarity of their projects by way of their conception of the human being, her relationship to nature, the relationship of human culture to nature, the importance of cultural pluralism, and the role of the arts in human life, as well as the metaphysical frameworks that gave rise to such conceptions. Combining textual exegesis in classical Chinese texts and an exposition of Cassirer's most important insights against the backdrop of post-Kantian philosophy, this book is philosophy written in a cosmopolitan mode, arguing for the contemporary philosophical relevance of "culture" by drawing on and bringing together two different but strikingly similar streams in our world tradition. (shrink)

Through a key passage (Xici 2.2) from the Book of Changes, this paper shows that Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms shares similarities with the canonical account of symbolic formation in the Chinese tradition: the genesis of xiang (象), often translated as image or symbol. xiang became identified with the origins of culture/civilisation itself. In both cases, the world is understood as primordially (phenomenologically) meaningful; the expressiveness of the world requires a human subject to consummate it in a symbol, whilst (...) the symbol in turn gives us access to higher orders of meaning. It is the self-conscious creation of the symbol that then allows for the higher forms of culture. For both the Xici and Cassirer, symbols and the symbolic consciousness that comes with it is the pre-condition for the freedom, ethics and the cultivation of agency. As for both the Xici and Cassirer, it is human agency that creates these symbols, it will be argued that the Xici is making a Cassirerian argument about the (ethical) relationship between human agency, symbols and ethics/freedom. (shrink)

The overwhelming motif of nineteenth century anti-Semitic discourse is the metaphor of the Jew as a ghost. In all cultures, the ghost represents the antithesis of what is categorically human: it represents the other par excellence. By using the heuristic of the ghost to interpret how Enlightenment discourse has dealt with the other, this article will argue that the Enlightenment model of the self and its relation to others was a contributing factor to Modern Racism. Enlightenment discourse on subjectivity finds (...) its counterpart in Confucian notions of subjectivity. By looking at how ghosts are understood within Confucian discourse and how they are evoked in popular literature, I argue that Confucian philosophy’s model of subjectivity contributed to the success of the Chinese empire’s assimilation project. (shrink)

This article argues that Cassirer’s thinking about the relationship between the different symbolic forms is best elucidated via the paradigm of “organic harmony.” Although Cassirer did not use the term himself, the harmonious cooperation between the parts found in the organic world provided him with a welcome alternative to traditional accounts of order (i.e., identity or hierarchy). This article gives three examples of “organic harmony” from which Cassirer drew inspiration: Goethe’s idealistic morphology, Wilhelm von Humboldt’s account of language, and Herder’s (...) account of history. Through “organic harmony” we can make better sense of and better articulate the pluralism of Cassirer’s PSF. Finally, this article shows how the motif of organic harmony is the normative moment in Cassirer’s own challenge to twentieth-century fascism and argues that the Cassirerian emphasis on finding a coherence which does justice to the uniqueness of particulars—harmony—is an ethical injunction relevant for our times. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University by Daniel BellShuchen Xiang (bio)The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University. By Daniel Bell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. x+ 196. Hardcover $27.95, isbn ISBN 978-0-691-24712-0.In the Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University, Daniel Bell reflects on his experiences of Chinese academia, (...) society and political life from the past two decades, notably the last few years, in which he served as the Dean of the School of Political Science and Public Administration at Shandong University. The role is historic: it is the first time that a foreign dean has been appointed at a political science faculty in mainland China's history. This historic position affords Bell with unique insights that the book records. A deeply personal book that often reads like a memoir (Bell himself compares the work to Rousseau's Confessions), Bell makes no attempts to hide the fact that his account is perspectival, indebted to his own experiences and so not an attempt to speak on behalf of any organization. It is this avowedly perspectival tone that imbues his account with a frankness that endows his account with a convincing authority. One comes away from the book with an investment not only in the China of which Bell is an attentive observer but also in the continuing experiment that is Daniel Bell himself: a Canadian political scientist, visibly invested in Confucianism, working in Confucian-Communist China during historic times.A pervasive theme in this work is a preoccupation with the status of Confucianism for contemporary China. The Confucian texts serve as a hermeneutic framework through which Bell understands many social-political phenomena and runs as a leitmotif throughout the book. This kind of cultural analysis is applied in chapter one, "Dye and Dynamism," in which Bell muses on why Chinese politicians all seem to dye their hair. The answer might be indebted to the Mencian saying (1A.7) that "white-haired people" should be cared for rather than engage in strenuous labor. Dyeing one's hair so that one gives the appearance of still being in the vigors of youth conforms to this tacit Confucian custom. It was Bell's dedication to Confucianism that piqued his interest in becoming the dean at a newly established branch of Shandong University on the coastal city of Qingdao. "What a beautiful opportunity to help promote Confucianism in China," he writes, "while respecting other traditions!" (p. 38).Whilst at Shandong, Bell had the opportunity to reflect on the role of the shuji (书记), an official role that is unique to China. This he does in chapter two, [End Page 1] "The Harmony Secretary." Through his observations, Bell concludes that one of the roles of the shuji is to help keep harmony within his appointed organization, in this case, an academic faculty. In visiting the role of the shuji, Bell highlights an episode between himself and a junior faculty that the shuji mediated in an optimally harmonious manner. I was personally very interested in this anecdote in which said junior faculty "attacked" Bell's work on the faculty WeChat account (p. 41). Bell does not go into detail, but I was left speculating why it was that this junior faculty so vehemently attacked Bell's work and his moral character. Given that Bell is renowned for promoting Confucianism and defending the theoretical legitimacy of China's own indigenous forms of government, I can imagine that perhaps this junior faculty took issue with this profile. Whatever the reason for said junior faculty's disagreement with Bell, the author does not talk about the degree to which Chinese academic life conforms to the attitudes, values, ways of knowing, and power structures perpetuated by western colonizing societies, i.e. coloniality.Bell's own experiences with collective leadership in the administration at Shandong University spurred him to make some conclusions about the qualities needed for effective collective leadership at higher levels of government. This he does in chapter three, "On Collective Leadership." Here, the author reflects on the tendency towards collective decision... (shrink)

By looking at a canonical article representing academic philosophy’s orthodox view against cultural relativism, James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism,” this paper argues that current mainstream western academic philosophy’s fear of cultural relativism is premised on a fear of the racial Other. The examples that Rachels marshals against cultural relativism default to the persistent, ubiquitous, and age-old stereotypes about the savage/barbarian Other that have dominated the history of western engagement with the non-western world. What academic philosophy fears about cultural (...) relativism, it is argued, is the barbarians of the western imagination and not fellow human beings. The same structure that informs fears of cultural relativism, whereby people with different customs are reduced to the barbarian/savage of the western imagination, can be seen in the genesis of international law which arose as a justification for the domination of the Amerindian. It is argued that implicit in arguments against cultural relativism is the preservation of the same right to dominate the Other. Finally, it is argued that the appeal of the fear of cultural relativism is that, in directing moral outrage at others, one can avoid reflecting on the failures of one’s own cultural tradition. (shrink)

A provocative defense of a forgotten Chinese approach to identity and difference Historically, the Western encounter with difference has been catastrophic: the extermination and displacement of aboriginal populations, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonialism. China, however, took a different historical path. In Chinese Cosmopolitanism, Shuchen Xiang argues that the Chinese cultural tradition was, from its formative beginnings and throughout its imperial history, a cosmopolitan melting pot that synthesized the different cultures that came into its orbit. Unlike the West, which (...) cast its collisions with different cultures in Manichean terms of the ontologically irreconcilable difference between civilization and barbarism, China was a dynamic identity created out of difference. The reasons for this, Xiang argues, are philosophical: Chinese philosophy has the conceptual resources for providing alternative ways to understand pluralism. Xiang explains that “Chinese” identity is not what the West understands as a racial identity; it is not a group of people related by common descent or heredity but rather a hybrid of coalescing cultures. To use the Western discourse of race to frame the Chinese view of non-Chinese, she argues, is a category error. Xiang shows that China was both internally cosmopolitan, embracing distinct peoples into a common identity, and externally cosmopolitan, having knowledge of faraway lands without an ideological need to subjugate them. Contrasting the Chinese understanding of efficacy—described as “harmony”—with the Western understanding of order, she argues that the Chinese sought to gain influence over others by having them spontaneously accept the virtue of one’s position. These ideas from Chinese philosophy, she contends, offer a new way to understand today’s multipolar world and can make a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions in the critical philosophy of race. (shrink)

This paper argues that the ‘processual holism’ of Chinese metaphysics explains its characteristic attitude towards non-humans such as animals and demons. As all things are constantly in process and form a continuum, it follows that ontological distinctions between ‘species’ become impossible to delimit. The distinctions one makes are instead understood as perspectival and provisional. These metaphysical assumptions explain the lack of interest in the Chinese tradition for classifying the distinctions between humans and non-human. We see many examples of the different (...) schools of philosophy espousing the view that the distinction between humans and non-humans is tenuous, precarious and subject to change. A key implication that follows is that the Chinese worldview saw no ontological distinction between those considered as ‘Chinese’ and as ‘non-Chinese.’ The unavailability of ontological distinction as an explanation for the existence of difference means that phenomena that are perceived as anomalous, such as ghosts and spirits, are attributed to the perspective of the human agent; anomaly/difference is not understood as ontological. (shrink)

This author-meets-readers discussion centers Shuchen Xiang’s synopsis of her recent book _Chinese_ _Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea_ (2023a), which argues against assumptions that European global colonization and racial atrocities were consequences of human nature. Sungmoon Kim, Bryan W. Van Norden and Don J. Wyatt engage with Xiang about her thesis that historical China upheld a worldview that underscored cross-cultural exchange, mutual flourishing, and growth through cultural encounter. This worldview did not drive it to colonize the world. (...) In contrast, its European counterpart fought difference and therefore sought to conquer the world. (shrink)

Conventional Chinese calligraphy criticism displays a tendency toward what in Western art discourse is known as "formalism," an aesthetic doctrine that claims formal properties to be the proper focus of the study of art. Kang Youwei, a noted calligrapher, scholar, and political reformer, writes that "calligraphy is a study that rests on [its] configuration."1 Kang's dictum suggests two interpretations: first, practicing calligraphy should focus on its xing ; second, appreciating and evaluating calligraphy should concentrate on its xing.In classical calligraphy criticism, (...) discourses on xing inevitably involve another important aesthetic term, shi. For... (shrink)

On January 1, 1958, in the journal Democratic Critique, Zhang Junmai, Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan published the "Manifesto on Chinese Culture for the World: Our Common Understanding of Chinese Scholarship Research and of the Future of Chinese Culture and World Culture."1 This manifesto is commonly seen as the founding statement of the New Confucianism movement. Section 2 of the manifesto, "Three Motives, Approaches, and their Shortcomings in the Study of Chinese Culture in World Scholarship," claimed that Chinese (...) culture had not been understood by three kinds of people who had approached it, namely, Christian missionaries, sinologists, and students of present world history. For the New Confucians, the... (shrink)

This article argues that Ernst Cassirer's views about the concept of substance and his views on mythic consciousness are applicable to the concept of race. By analyzing examples from the most influential and representative racial theories, this article shows that the concept of race functions like the concept of substance whereby random, large-scale, and irreducibly complex phenomena is explained through the deterministic behavior of a smaller, material, constituent part. Given that mythic consciousness explains causality in the same way, this substance-mode (...) explanation of becoming can also be termed “mythic.” Further, under this substance/racial understanding of personhood, humans have no agency to determine their own fates. It is this fatalism that Cassirer railed against in The Myth of the State. In place of this substance (racial) understanding of personhood, and as this article will describe, Cassirer argued for a “functional” (cultural) understanding of personhood. (shrink)

This paper argues that Sinophobia and its relationship to American imperialism can be understood through Jean-Paul Sartre’s analysis of anti-Semitism, which is characterized by an evasive attitude. Under this attitude, the bivalent values of good and evil are pre-existing ontological properties such that the agent promotes the good insofar as she destroys evil. This evasive attitude can also be seen in the economy of the American empire. Revenue for the which exists through undermining the economies of non-pliant states, selling weapons (...) and a disaster-capitalist industry that profits from the chaos that is created. The idea that the states to be imperialized are bivalent others both motivates and justifies this behavior whereby the agent evades self-critique and the need to cultivate her own value. (shrink)

This paper argues that Confucianism had an antiessentialist conception of selfhood. This understanding of self means that they did not have, and could not have had, a concept of “race” in the sense that one's essence determines one's becoming. In the Confucian canon, the embodiment of cultural norms/performance of culturally appropriate actions defines one's human-ness. This account of human agency in becoming human can be seen in the Confucian explanation of moral failure. This assumption of human agency also means that (...) the Confucian understanding of hierarchy is social as opposed to ontological and that differences between peoples are understood to be a result of culture–custom variation. (shrink)

胡適（1891-1962），安徽績溪人。原名嗣穈，後改名胡適，字適之，曾用筆名希彊、臧暉等。新文化運動的奠基人與領袖之一，倡導約翰・杜威的實用主義。1917年回國任教北大，參與編輯《新青年》《努力周報 》《獨立評論》等雜誌，先後擔任中華民國駐美大使、國立北京大學校長、台北「中央研究院」院長等職，著有《中國哲學史大綱》《嘗試集》《胡適文存》等書，並獲諾貝爾文學獎提名。.

內容簡介 二十世紀的「現象學運動」影響了存在哲學（存在主義）、哲學詮釋學、解構主義、現代美學、藝術哲學等等，以及所謂「後現代的文化思潮」之發展。 二十一世紀的今日，我們對「中華古典哲學」的反思，似乎可以從歐洲的現象學運動之思潮中，找到一些足以對話和互為理解的可能。 本書就試著嘗試這種互為理解與東西文化交涉的努力，希望提供給對這個話題有興趣的讀者們，開顯出一扇觀照內外在的哲學之門，而通過這扇門能夠走向人生的智慧之旅。.

人人都有一雙藝術家的眼睛。 「不論你曾崇仰何人何物，並以誰為師，最後你必須回到你自己本身。 藝術從未遠人，只是人遠離了他真正的自己。 在都市中，我們先失去了我們的眼睛，然後我們失去了一切。」－史作檉 本書為史作檉談論藝術美學文章集結，強調人人都有藝術家的眼睛，只在於人們失去了觀看的方式與純粹的初衷。 共分四大篇九章節，從藝術本質談起，援引賈克梅第、康丁斯基、蒙德里安、李德等藝術家創作，從繪畫、雕塑、音樂，旁述及顏氏篆書中的圖形特性，進臻至哲學美學、形上美學，淺明清晰，在一本書的閱讀時間裡就可在繁多 的藝術理論中找到自己的「眼睛」與觀看角度。.

The theoretical and moral bedrock of Western colonialism has been its claim to “universalism.” Central to this universalism is a Cartesian dualism in which only the disembodied mind has access to the universal, and the body, as a mere particular, does not. This paper (Part 1) and the following paper (Part 2) propose an alternative model of “universalism” as the totality of interactions between embodied particulars. This model of “universalism” is based on the relationship between the classical Chinese philosophical concepts (...) of “feeling” (qing, 情), interaction (gan, 感), and the unimpeded free-flow (tong, 通) that results. This Chinese model of universalism is ultimately based on the organicist metaphysics of life that understands meaning and order to be the result of organic interaction between bodies. this paper will show how the dominant Chinese tradition understood the universal as a result of the sympathetic interaction between embodied particulars. (shrink)

This paper analyses the text Vital Dispositions Come Via Mandate (Xing Zi Ming Chu, 性自命出) and argues that central to its account of the cultivation of inner virtue are the affections (qing, 情), the heart-mind (xin, 心), and the techniques of the heart-mind (xinshu, 心术; or simply ‘culture’). Qing, it is argued, are intersubjective, socio-culturally produced non-sensory data that act on the heart-mind and serve as the foundation for moral behavior. Qing is encoded in cultural forms such as Music and (...) poetry. Hence, there is an internal relationship between qing, xin, and xinshu. Correctly understanding the connection between these and how they shape the human being will help elucidate the nature of the Confucian moral program. In foregrounding qing, this paper presents Confucian moral philosophy as grounded in a hermeneutic and sympathetic understanding of the perspective of the other. (shrink)

This paper provides a Confucian account of recognition. In contrast to contemporary recognition discourse (inspired by the Hegelian account of recognition) which emphasizes equal and reciprocal recognition, Confucianism regards the virtuous agent as one who affords recognition to others without seeking recognition for themselves. There is reason to take seriously the Confucian alternative to contemporary recognition discourse. Critical scholars of colonialism have pointed out how the politics of recognition between colonizer and colonized perpetuates the structure of unequal recognition. The comparative (...) perspective on recognition that Confucianism offers will highlight the problematic assumptions that, I argue, actively shape misrecognition in practice. (shrink)

本卷收入胡适哲学与文化方面的论文、函牍、讲演、札记80余篇。其中包括实验主义、我们对于西洋近代文明的态度等重要文章。所收文章全面反映了胡适哲学思想、学术主张和对于中西文化的态度,对于了解和研究胡适本人 以及现代中国学术史、现代中国启蒙运动等内容。.

本书内容包括20世纪90年代以后的生态社会主义概述, 20世纪90年代以后的生态社会主义的新变化与动因, 20世纪90年代以后的生态社会主义的主要新观点——反思与批判, 生态社会主义的实践和启示等.