The story of Turandot originated in the East. It was later transformed into the tale of a merciless princess, and adapted onto the stage. Puccini‟s Turandot has been one of the most frequently restaged operas in the West, but Turandot‟s unreasonable cruelty and abrupt change of character have raised a lot of questions. Since quite a few contemporary playwrights and directors try to interpret Turandot with elements of empathy, this paper analyse the versions of Turandot in the Eastern world in (...) discussion with the Western versions. (shrink)

By discussing Bonduca (1611) a a Jacobean tragi-comedy in the Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher canon, generally judged by scholars to be the work ofthe second one alone, this paper looks into the tragic story of Queen Boadicea, as rewritten in fiction. The cultural and semiotic codes that Bonduca represents are examined in the context of imperialism. The paper explores the conflict between the Romans and the colonized Iceni tribe and discusses the legitimization of colonization in the light of historical (...) records alongside fictional accounts. The paper shows how the Boudican Revolt can be seen as part of the disempowerment of Brittany. The study serves as an example of the need for a complex multi-dimensional framework for the comparative study of literatures and cultures. (shrink)

The thirty-three sections of the Chuang Tzu annotated by Kuo Hsiang of the Chin dynasty were published during the period of the Northern Sung dynasty. Meanwhile, a preface allegedly by Kuo Hsiang was also printed in the book. The preface is as follows:Chuang Tzu was a man who had good knowledge of the origins of things in the universe and avoided no fantastic ideas. His remarks are hard to understand yet pertinent to phenomena. Any remark which is hard to understand (...) yet pertinent to phenomena may be true but useless; any remark which touches no actual things may be lofty but impracticable. This is surely different from a reluctant rise after inability. If the mind is free from preoccupations, it will respond to events at any time, and as a result, remarks will be cautious. Adapting himself to changes in the universe, Chuang Tzu was not merely turning out writings in the form of dialogues on things beyond human experience. (shrink)

Hao Wang was one of the few confidants of the great mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel. _A Logical Journey_ is a continuation of Wang's _Reflections on Gödel_ and also elaborates on discussions contained in _From Mathematics to Philosophy_. A decade in preparation, it contains important and unfamiliar insights into Gödel's views on a wide range of issues, from Platonism and the nature of logic, to minds and machines, the existence of God, and positivism and phenomenology. The impact of (...) Gödel's theorem on twentieth-century thought is on par with that of Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or Keynesian economics. These previously unpublished intimate and informal conversations, however, bring to light and amplify Gödel's other major contributions to logic and philosophy. They reveal that there is much more in Gödel's philosophy of mathematics than is commonly believed, and more in his philosophy than his philosophy of mathematics. Wang writes that "it is even possible that his quite informal and loosely structured conversations with me, which I am freely using in this book, will turn out to be the fullest existing expression of the diverse components of his inadequately articulated general philosophy." The first two chapters are devoted to Gödel's life and mental development. In the chapters that follow, Wang illustrates the quest for overarching solutions and grand unifications of knowledge and action in Gödel's written speculations on God and an afterlife. He gives the background and a chronological summary of the conversations, considers Gödel's comments on philosophies and philosophers, and his attempt to demonstrate the superiority of the mind's power over brains and machines. Three chapters are tied together by what Wang perceives to be Gödel's governing ideal of philosophy: an exact theory in which mathematics and Newtonian physics serve as a model for philosophy or metaphysics. Finally, in an epilog Wang sketches his own approach to philosophy in contrast to his interpretation of Gödel's outlook. (shrink)

Contextualism and Disagreement This paper argues that attributor contextualism is in conflict with ordinary language methodology. Attributor contextualism has at its center the thesis that, the truth-values of knowledge attributions vary with the conversational contexts. This thesis entails that if two speakers in similar contexts make conflicting knowledge attributions, at least one of these attributions is false. One important argument for attributor contextualism depends on ordinary language methodology, a methodology that places great trust in ordinary speakers and prevents judging a (...) substantial group of ordinary speakers' simple knowledge attributions false. I argue that there is strong empirical evidence that ordinary speakers do extensively disagree in similar contexts. My conclusion is that one cannot coherently hold the attributor contextualist thesis and use ordinary language methodology, because the lesson we learn from the empirical evidence is that using the methodology would prove the thesis false. Since prominent attributor contextualists explicitly adopt the methodology, and that the methodology is what distinguishes attributor contextualism from its main rival, invariantism, the conflict with the methodology is a problem for attributor contextualism. (shrink)

Building on the emerging literature on the ethics of social enterprises (SEs), this paper advances the underexplored role of frontline workers (FLWs) as embedded agents at the interface between communities and SEs. Specifically, we uncover the subjectivity of FLWs as they navigate moral ambiguities while performing their professional roles, dealing with rules and regulations within the organizational hierarchy and living as members of local communities. Based on an inductive case study of a microfinance organization in Cameroon, we find that FLWs (...) engage in three rationalization strategies: cautious disengaging, safeguarding self-interest, and justifying relevance. Our findings offer a better understanding of the ethics of SEs by unpacking the subjectivity of FLWs. We highlight a bottom-up account of caring SEs, identify a boundary condition to subjectivity, and present a nuanced view of FLWs in embedded organizations. We also discuss the practical implications for SEs to improve their compassion and cater for the mental wellbeing of FLWs. (shrink)

Dushu carried a most interesting article in its eleventh issue: "Starlight in the Dark of the Night" . In this article the author, Wu Zengding, introduced to the reader the autobiography of Vera, an aristocratic Russian woman of the nineteenth century who planned the assassination of a Russian tsar. The most engaging part of this article is the analysis—or rather, description—of the "enormous fascination" exerted by revolution. I have said many times that there is nothing more fascinating for young people (...) than revolution and love; and, under certain circumstances, the fascination of revolution is more powerful than that of love. Simply put, at least one of the factors that led Vera to take the extreme road of revolution was her fear and rejection of the shi su existence of married women in old Russia. I am reminded of the heroine, Lin Daojing, in Yang Mo's novel Song of Youth, who is rescued by Yu Shuize from a state of hopelessness after fleeing from marriage, and subsequently cohabits with him. She later ruptures with Yu Shuize , not only because of political conflicts, but also because of conflicts in their outlook on life. Had she stayed with Yu, she would inevitably have gone down the road of worldliness—having children, looking after the home, doing the family budget, dealing with birth, old age, illness, and death; she would have become garrulous and overly talkative, and so forth. There would be no more romance, no more drama—and readers would have objected to that. (shrink)

The multicultural work, The Dream of the Red Chamber, posits a field for exploring the interconnection between Confucian interpretations and its intrinsic Goddess narrative. In this article, I examine the reconciliation of the former with the latter. The immanent transcendence in Neo-Confucianism is not enough for interpreting this novel, for covering the question of a natural connection between Vermilion Pearl and Shen Ying, for a dichotomy of tian and the earth, the transcendent and the immanent. The Goddess narrative of repairing (...) tian can rectify this difficult position and a nomadic spirituality forged in a mutually cultivating process is proposed, both to rescue the Confucian interpretation of the novel and to find a way of reconciling the Confucian ‘tian’ and the Goddess. (shrink)

This article discusses the practice and development of organ donation by capital prisoners in China. It analyzes the issue of informed consent regarding organ donation from capital prisoners in light of Confucian ethics and expounds the point that under the influence of Confucianism, China is a country that attaches great importance to the role of the family in practicing informed consent in various areas, the area of organ donation from capital prisoners included. It argues that a proper form of organ (...) donation from capital prisoners can be justified within the Confucian moral context in which the proper interests of capital prisoners and their families, the benefit of organ receptors, and a rightful order of society should all be appropriately considered. From the Confucian perspective, the act of donating organs from a capital prisoner must be decided by both the prisoner and his/her family (i.e., each side should hold a veto power), whereas such donation, in the proper circumstance protected by a rightful procedure, should be appreciated as a morally praiseworthy act of the prisoner who is willing to make the final effort to repent and correct his/her evil conduct and to leave something good to the world. (shrink)

Dispositionality is a modal notion of a certain sort. When an object is said to have a disposition, we typically understand this to mean that under certain circumstances, the object would behave in a certain way. For instance, a fragile object is disposed to break when dropped onto a concrete surface. It need not actually break - its being fragile has implications that, so to speak, point beyond the actual world. According to dispositionalism, all modal features of the world may (...) be accounted for in terms of its dispositional features. My aim in this paper is to assess the prospects for dispositionalism by examining the most promising theories. Sections 1 and 2 clarify the assumptions and desiderata of a successful dispositionalist theory of modality. Section 3 introduces the principles governing the dispositionalist theories that apparently meet the desiderata. Sections 4 through 6 show that dispositionalism nonetheless faces three problems: while dispositions help account for modal features of the world that are local, diachronic, or gradable, they cannot account for certain modal features of the world that are global, synchronic, or absolute. I end by discussing the costs of preserving dispositionalism. (shrink)

Despite Donald Davidson's influential criticism of the very notion of conceptual schemes, the notion continues enjoying its popularity in contemporary philosophy and, accordingly, conceptual relativism is still very much alive. There is one major reason responsible for Davidson's failure which has not been widely recognized: What Davidson attacks fiercely is not the very notion, but a notion of conceptual schemes, namely, the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism. However, such a notion simply cannot carry the (...) weight of conceptual relativism for it does not catch the essences of conceptual relativism. Consequently, I argue that the very notion of conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism have survived Davidson's attack. Therefore, the failure of the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and Kantian scheme-content dualism, even if Davidson can claim victory, does not mark the end of the very notion of conceptual schemes.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

I propose to sketch my views on several aspects of the philosophy of mathematics that I take to be especially relevant to philosophy as a whole. The relevance of my discussion would, I think, become more evident, if the reader keeps in mind the function of (the philosophy of) mathematics in philosophy in providing us with more transparent aspects of general issues. I shall consider: (1) three familiar examples; (2) logic and our conceptual frame; (3) communal agreement and objective certainty; (...) (4) the transcommunal universality of mathematics; (5) the big jump to the potential infinite; (6) the reconciliation of local creation with the hypothesis of discovery; (7) Platonism as realism plus conceptualism; (8) foundational studies and mathematical practice; and (9) the decomposition of philosophical disagreements. The views of Gödel and Wittgenstein are emphasized in order to add specificity to the discussions. (shrink)

Many are reluctant to accept primitive modality into their fundamental picture of the world. The worry often traces to this thought: we shouldn't adopt any more primitive - that is, unexplained - notions than we need in order to explain all the features of the world, and primitive modal notions are not needed. I examine one prominent rival to modal primitivism, combinatorialism, and show that in order to account for all the modal features of the world the combinatorialist must adopt (...) two additional primitive notions. My own modal primitivist view takes as primitive the notion of incompatibility between properties or relations. I show how the non-modal notions that the combinatorialist must adopt as primitive may be analyzed using my notion. The upshot is that with respect to the number of primitive notions, my modal primitivist theory comes out ahead. (shrink)

Someone asks a climber why he wants to climb a mountain—everyone knows that climbing is dangerous and is of no practical advantage—and he replies, "Because it is there." I like this answer because it shows a sense of humor—it is quite clear that it is because he wants to climb it, but he tries to trick us by saying that it is because the mountain is there that he is itching to get at it. Apart from this, I also like (...) what the climber does, scaling sheer cliffs for no good reason. It may cause aching muscles, and there is a risk you might knock your brains out, so the average person does all he can to avoid climbing mountains. From the point of view of thermodynamics, this is the very rarely seen phenomenon of negative entropy. Because human beings always tend toward what is beneficial and avoid what is harmful, and in thermodynamics spontaneous phenomena are known as entropy-increasing phenomena, anything that tends toward the harmful and avoids the beneficial must be negative entropy. (shrink)

In the discussions regarding the philosophical system and the essence of Marxism, ontological theory is a very important issue. At the moment, there are three basic sets of opinions on this problem, namely, the opinion that Marxism, in fact, does not consist of any ontological theory , the opinion that Marxist ontology is a theory of practical ontology, and the opinion that it is a dialectical materialist theory of material monism. The latter two acknowledge that Marxist philosophy does involve an (...) ontological theory. The following article, proceeding on this premise, will focus on whether the ontological theory in Marxist philosophy is a theory of practical ontology or a dialectical materialist theory of material monism. I would like to propose a number of topics for concrete discussion surrounding this general issue. (shrink)

By rethinking the meaning of a central idiom in the Great Learning, this essay intends to open up a new horizon for the hermeneutics of early Confucian thinking, which has little to do with metaphysics. Through a careful etymological study of ge wu and a dialogue between the Great Learning and Heidegger's phenomenology of human affection, I demonstrate the critical position of the human heart in early Chinese thinking. This new interpretation of early Confucian moral teachings also recovers an invigorating (...) possibility for contemporary discourse on the question of ethics. (shrink)

This article has a hermeneutical interpretation of 'heng', one key word in the Laozi. The term 'heng' was not known until 1973 when the two silk manuscripts of the Laozi were unearthed in China. On the base of a reintroduction of heng into the text and of my philosophical reading of the Laozi's concept of 'heng', I argue for an alternative interpretation of dao as heng dao. I suggest that heng dao is neither a metaphysical substance nor mystical nothingness. It (...) is rather the differentiated appropriation of nature and life itself as experienced in the everyday. (shrink)