This essay deals with the medical recipe as an epistemic genre that played an important role in the cross-cultural transmission of knowledge. The article first compares the development of the recipe as a textual form in Chinese and European premodern medical cultures. It then focuses on the use of recipes in the transmission of Chinese pharmacology to Europe in the second half of the seventeenth century. The main sources examined are the Chinese medicinal formulas translated—presumably—by the Jesuit Michael Boym and (...) published in Specimen Medicinae Sinicae (1682), a text that introduced Chinese pulse medicine to Europe. The article examines how the translator rendered the Chinese formulas into Latin for a European audience. Arguably, the translation was facilitated by the fact that the recipe as a distinct epistemic genre had developed, with strong parallels, in both Europe and China. Building on these parallels, the translator used the recipe as a shared textual format that would allow the transfer of knowledge between the two medical cultures. (shrink)

Liquor consumption involves drinking, socializing, and networking. This article compares two alcoholic beverages, namely, Wuliangye from China and Absolut Vodka from Sweden, with the aim of identifying the means by which the Chinese brand can better succeed in its internationalizing efforts. The article first reviews theories of high- versus low-context cultures as well as cultural branding. Through analysis of the graphic and packaging designs of the two liquor brands, it then examines the impact of their cultural branding strategies on the (...) creation of their iconic identities. The Chinese brand expresses the idea of competition with Europe or the United States in the production of quality liquor through the creation of a strong brand identity in the global marketplace, which is realized in its new slogan – “Wuliangye for China, for the World.” Against this backdrop, the article explores the extent to which the production and branding of quality Chinese liquor can be perceived as a symbolic effort toward bringing China forward culturally. It concludes with a discussion of the findings' implications for branding specialists and communication designers. (shrink)

This article introduces the special section on the contribution of Jack Goody, which focuses on The Theft of History (2006). Goody attacks the notion of a radical division between Europe and Asia, which has become built into the commonsense academic wisdom and categorical apparatus of the social sciences and humanities. Eurocentrism is a constant target as he scrutinizes and finds wanting the claims of the West to have invented modern science, cultural renaissances, the free city, capitalism, democracy, love and secularism. (...) Goody’s approach favours a dynamic long-term basis for comparisons between societies and focuses on the exchange of information and goods across Eurasia to argue that the comparative advantage one society gains has been only temporary, swinging between different parts of Eurasia a number of times over the millennia. Goody suggests that China developed an active mercantile urban culture before Europe. Cities and towns with their mixture of luxury and learning, should not be seen as inevitably subordinate to centralized power structures in both eastern and western Eurasia. Goody criticizes the theoretical assumptions and the handling of evidence of Perry Anderson, Fernand Braudel, Norbert Elias, Moses Finlay, David Landes, Karl Marx, Joseph Needham, Immanuel Wallerstein and Max Weber. His concern is that the master categories of world history, such as antiquity, feudalism and capitalism, have been developed against a background of the particular European trajectory, then projected onto the world at large. Goody remains sceptical, not just about eurocentrism, but also the additional danger of being eurocentric about ethnocentricity, which he regards as a trap that postcolonialism and postmodernism frequently fall into. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Dialogue:Moving ForwardThomas Cattoi (bio) and Carol S. Anderson (bio)The San Francisco Bay Area is an interesting location in which to ponder Buddhist-Christian relations. The website UrbanDharma.org lists more than a hundred institutions affiliated with Buddhist organizations—a density higher than in the Beijing metropolitan area. Some of these centers have a clearly ethnic and denominational character, serving a predominantly immigrant population. Some, like many of the Tibetan organizations, function (...) as cultural centers but also attract a considerable Western clientele. Others, like the San Francisco Zen Center or Spirit Rock in Marin County, belong to the first wave of historical Buddhist centers established in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. A few more are trying to establish new forms of enculturated Buddhist practice that are more suited to Western sensitivities and are only loosely affiliated with the cultures of traditional Buddhist societies. At the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, alongside schools training Jesuit priests, Dominican friars, and Protestant ministers of various denominations, the Institute of Buddhist Studies prepares students from different walks of life to work as Buddhist chaplains in hospitals and educational institutions. Buddhism, in its various forms and manifestations, is no longer an exotic import from a little known “elsewhere,” but is part and parcel of the local spiritual landscape.For students and scholars practicing in such a diverse environment, it is perhaps difficult to imagine that for the greatest part of its history, most of Christendom was largely unaware of the very existence of the Buddhist tradition. While Clement of Alexandria and Jerome do mention Buddhism, and references to its practice can be found in the writings of medieval travelers such as Marco Polo, most European Christians lived in a world where the role of the religious “other” was played by Judaism and Islam. It was only in the early modern era, with the beginning of the European colonization of Asia, that non-Abrahamic religious traditions gradually entered the intellectual horizon of Western intellectuals and scholars. Around the year 1740, a French Jesuit named Jean-François Pons (1688–1752), otherwise remembered as a pioneer of Sanskrit studies in the West, came to the startling realization that many of the religious practices that missionaries and travelers had come across in regions as far apart as China, Japan, Nepal, and Mongolia were actually all parts of the same religious tradition. In his correspondence with his fellow Jesuits in France, he coined the [End Page vii] term Bauddhamatham—teaching of the Buddha—to refer to what would eventually be known as Buddhism. In the early years of the nineteenth century, many Sanskrit and Tibetan texts started to be catalogued and translated into the major European languages, bringing about the first encounter between Europe’s intellectual elites and this utterly foreign religious tradition.The nineteenth century also saw the beginning of a more existential engagement with the Buddhism tradition, albeit one that was limited to intellectual elites who were highly critical of institutional Christianity. In his work The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer found in Buddhism many echoes of his own philosophical insights. Many of the members of the Pāli Text Society, established in London in 1871, had rejected Christianity and thought they would find in Buddhism a moral framework in a society where the normativity of the Christian tradition had already started to be questioned. At the same time, we also see the beginning of the first comparative studies, where Buddhism and Christianity are compared from a speculative and doctrinal perspective. In 1880, Ernest de Bunsen claimed that if one made an exception for the crucifixion, many of the fundamental moral teachings of Buddhism and Christianity were virtually identical. This was just the beginning of a slew of similar studies.While the Christian churches were initially uninterested or outright skeptical about engaging in dialogue with non-Christian religious traditions, this attitude started to shift in the decades following the Second World War. The Second Vatican Council, for instance, marked an important shift in the Catholic Church’s attitude toward other religions. Before the 1960s, Catholic theology departments did not offer courses on other religious traditions or on interreligious dialogue... (shrink)

The history of the philosophical exchanges between China and the West is the history of the translations between the two traditions. On the western side, after the Jesuits, the range of translators became gradually broader. On the Chinese side, many intellectuals introduced Western classics in their language in the twentieth century. This led several historians to argue that Chinese philosophy took off with the translation-comparison of both traditions. However, not all comparisons are of equal value. Thus, translation in philosophy implies (...) comparing concepts or arguments and considering all the cultural references involved. This means taking a risk and accepting a limit. A risk is to be taken because translating interprets a “foreign thought” according to one’s context. This implies disclosing one’s presuppositions. There is a limit because transitioning from one set of references to another implies welcoming a part of “untranslatable” that always remains. According to Ricoeur’s words, “linguistic hospitality” is required here. This article first presents two interpretations of the translation-comparison processes. In the last part, it describes the necessity of linguistic hospitality in the context of Comparative Philosophy. (shrink)

Examining legal ethics within the framework of modern practice, this book identifies two important ethical issues that all lawyers confront: the difference between the role of lawyers and the role of judges in pursuing justice, and the conflicting responsibilities lawyers have to their clients and to the legal system more broadly. In addressing these issues, Legal Ethics provides an explanation of the duties and dilemmas common to practicing lawyers in modern legal systems throughout the world. The authors focus their analysis (...) on lawyers in independent practice in modern capitalist constitutional regimes, including the United States, Japan, Europe, and Latin America, as well as the emerging legal systems in China and the former Soviet bloc, to develop connections between the legal profession and political systems based on the rule of law. They find that although ethical tension is inherent in the legal practice of all these societies, the legal profession is essential to stable political institutions. (shrink)

This article presents a cognitive anthropological critique of François Jullien’s approach to language and culture. Jullien approaches ‘culture’ as a coherent set of concepts across time and space, relying primarily on identifying Chinese (and Greek) thought with particular concepts expressed in language. This mischaracterizes human culture, which exists on the level of individual mental representations, and relies on a form of linguistic determinism which fails to stand in the face of psychological and anthropological evidence. This leads Jullien to claim an (...) incredible degree of cultural (and ontological) divergence between the Chinese and Europeans. By accounting for the distribution and dynamism of mental representations, the degree to which thought is underdetermined by language, and above all the divergence of intuitive and reflective cognition on the individual level, we can arrive at an alternative, ontologically realistic account of cultural divergence. (shrink)

Jin Yuelin 金嶽霖 was a Chinese philosopher and logician. From 1914 to 1920 he studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, and received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia in 1920. From 1921 until 1925, he studied in Europe and visited Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, among other countries. During these years, he studied at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and at the University of Cambridge. At the end of 1925, Jin returned to (...) China and soon became a professor at Tsinghua University, where he began teaching logic in 1926. In 1931–1932, Jin went to Harvard University as a visiting scholar to study logic with the logician Henri M. Sheffer... (shrink)

Minority rights law has been an important axis for the evolution of international law itself. While much has been written about minority rights regimes in Europe, there is very little information available with regards to Asian experiences. Countries in Asia, with their diverse populations, are struggling with constructing legal systems that will deliver on the promise of equal rights to all its citizens. This book evaluates these attempts in four Asian states: India, China, Malaysia and Singapore by examining the theory (...) and practice of minority rights law in these vastly different settings. (shrink)

This book highlights the emergence of a new mathematical rationality and the beginning of the mathematisation of physics in Classical Islam. Exchanges between mathematics, physics, linguistics, arts and music were a factor of creativity and progress in the mathematical, the physical and the social sciences. Goods and ideas travelled on a world-scale, mainly through the trade routes connecting East and Southern Asia with the Near East, allowing the transmission of Greek-Arabic medicine to Yuan Muslim China. The development of science, first (...) centred in the Near East, would gradually move to the Western side of the Mediterranean, as a result of Europe's appropriation of the Arab and Hellenistic heritage. Contributors are Paul Buell, Anas Ghrab, Hossein Masoumi Hamedani, Zeinab Karimian, Giovanna Lelli, Marouane ben Miled, Patricia Radelet-de Grave, and Roshdi Rashed. (shrink)

While the resonance of Giambattista Vico's hermeneutics for postcolonialism has long been recognised, a rupture has been perceived between his intercultural sensibility and the actual content of his philological investigations, which have often been criticised as being Eurocentric and philologically spurious. China is a case in point. In his magnum opus New Science, Vico portrays China as backward and philosophically primitive compared to Europe. In this first study dedicated to China in Vico's thought, Daniel Canaris shows that scholars have been (...) beguiled by Vico's value judgements of China without considering the function of these value judgements in his theory of divine providence. This monograph illustrates that Vico's image of China is best appreciated within the contemporary theological controversies surrounding the Jesuit accommodation of Confucianism. Through close examination of Vico's sources and intellectual context, Canaris argues that by refusing to consider Confucius as a "filosofo", Vico dismantles the rationalist premises of the theological accommodation proposed by the Jesuits and proposes a new functionalist valorisation of non-Christian religion that anticipates post-colonial critiques of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

The study compares the changes in the theory of Marxism that took place in Europe (in the form of neo-Marxism and its movements, in particular the Frankfurt School) and the Sinicized version of Marxism. The study also examines how Sinicized Marxism was reflected in the political discourse and political philosophy of modern China (People’s Republic of China) and is reflected in social policy in the country. Studying the influence of socio-economic changes and the history of the people on ideological changes (...) allows us to identify several principles of Sinicized Marxism, which on an ongoing basis determine social policy and foreign relations. This is, first, etatism and the dominance of state interests over private ones, which limits human rights and national self-determination, but preserves the integrity and stability of the state, which protects the interests of the people. (shrink)

In the coming decades in the process of globalization the position of the USA and Europe will weaken, while the role of developing countries will increase. The role of the two largest emerging economies – China and India – will be of special significance. What future will these fast-growing giants face? The demographers agree that pretty soon India will lead the world in population and thus surpass China, while China will encounter serious ageing population problems. But economic and political scenarios (...) of the future are quite different: from resounding success and world leadership to collapse caused by demographic and socio-political troubles. Which of them is more feasible? In the present article I analyze the Chinese and Indian development models separately and comparatively and make a forecast of their perspectives in the 21st century. Such an analysis could be helpful for understanding Russia's ways of development. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

This volume combines philosophy, the social theory of knowledge, and historical analysis to present a comprehensive study of the idea of certainty as defined in the Western and Chinese intellectual traditions. Philosophical ideas such as certainty are the products of deeply layered socio-historical constructions. The author shows how the highly abstract idea of certainty in philosophical discourse is connected to the concrete social process from which the meaning of certainty is derived. Three different versions of certainty--in modern Western thought, in (...) German Idealism, and in traditional Chinese philosophy--are examined in the context of a historical-comparative study of Western and Chinese social processes. Three versions of the idea of certainty are represented by the three distinct philosophical discourse and societies explored in this book. However, the pursuit of certainty transcends culture as a fundamental aspect of philosophical thought. This in-depth study shows how the social genesis and function in philosophy of the specific meaning of certainty has been delineated through a process of complex idealogical negotiation by dominant social groups--the bourgeoisie in modern Western Europe, the nobility and state bureaucrats in 18th- and 19th-century Germany, and the landed gentry in traditional China. The author concludes by suggesting new avenues for study inspired by his research. (shrink)

Concerns of intellectual property infringement in China slow the dissemination of clean technology (Cleantech) innovation that could help bring the pace of global warming under control. We use the U.S. post‐World War 2 policy decisions with respect to Japan and Europe (the Marshall Plan) to show how this problem can be addressed. To help Japan become a western style democracy and stem the tide of communism, the U.S. transferred much of its extant intellectual property to Japan with a promise to (...) open US markets to Japanese goods. The United States did not require Japan to open its markets to U.S. goods. As a result, Japan became a staunch U.S. political ally in Asia, but also a serious economic competitor to the United States. While the Marshall Plan deployed different resources, the political outcomes were similar to Japan: Western Europe was a bulwark against communism. As global warming has become a major strategic issue, we argue that a comparable IPR initiative is required for China. This is not just a matter of doing the right thing as members of global commons, but is also matter of national security. We propose that by facilitating and managing the flow and sharing of U.S., EU, and Japanese Cleantech intellectual property with China—through a Cleantech Marshall Plan—a positive strategic relationship may be built while helping to bring global warming under control. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization an inherent (...) unsustainability driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

Leibniz was not the one to discover China, as far as Western culture was concerned. His historical contribution lies in the fact he presented Europe and China as two distinct ways of contemplating the world, as fully comparable and resulting in types of societies at the same high institutional, economic, technological, political and moral level. In this sense he saw China as the “Europe of the Orient” and as such susceptible to investigation by the same tools of natural philosophy which (...) Leibniz knew from the environs of European scholarship. He was the first representative of the classical school of European philosophy to knowingly reject Eurocentrism. Leibniz followed the intentions of learned missionaries in his understanding of the Christian mission as a cultural and civilisational task, a search for mutual agreement and connections, in favour of a reciprocal understanding. (shrink)

When Western science was introduced to modern China, more translated words were used to express fundamental concepts and terms than borrowed words. The process of academic translation, commensuration, and communication between Western and Chinese philosophy is a process of comparative philosophical research. Nowadays, however, it seems that Chinese philosophy is evaluated by a Western Hegelian criterion. This leads to the debate over whether or not China has philosophy. But it is meaningless to argue about whether or not China has (...) the name of philosophy. The key issue is whether or not China has the actuality of philosophy. Looking at the history of Western philosophy, it seems that the Hegelian definition of philosophy was the only one that existed in Europe. However, during the last 200 years after Hegel that the two main philosophical trends of positivism (scientism) and irrationalism developed from anti-Hegelianism or “Spurning Metaphysics.” As metaphysics is being reconstructed, the ghost of Hegel has reappeared. It is clear that in the future, philosophy will evolve from the development of human metaphysics or cultural philosophy. It is a process of the “negation of negation”: from traditional metaphysics to the spurning of metaphysics, and then to human metaphysics. (shrink)

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the East and West and advances a dialogue in the philosophy of engineering. Divided into three parts, the book starts with studies on epistemological and ontological issues, with a special focus on engineering design, creativity, management, feasibility, and sustainability. Part II considers relationships between the history and philosophy of engineering, and includes a general argument for the necessity of dialogue (...) between history and philosophy. It continues with a general introduction to traditional Chinese attitudes toward engineering and technology, and philosophical case studies of the Chinese steel industry, railroads, and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West. The book’s analyses of the interactions of science, engineering, ethics, politics, and policy in different societal contexts are of special interest. The volume as a whole marks a new stage in the emergence of the philosophy of engineering as a new regionalization of philosophy. This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume grew out of an international conference on the philosophy of engineering hosted by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. It includes 30 contributions by leading philosophers, social scientists, and engineers from Australia, China, Europe, and the United States. (shrink)

This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the East and West and advances a dialogue in the philosophy of engineering. Divided into three parts, the book starts with studies on epistemological and ontological issues, with a special focus on engineering design, creativity, management, feasibility, and sustainability. Part II considers relationships between the history and philosophy of engineering, and includes a general argument for the necessity of dialogue (...) between history and philosophy. It continues with a general introduction to traditional Chinese attitudes toward engineering and technology, and philosophical case studies of the Chinese steel industry, railroads, and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West. The book’s analyses of the interactions of science, engineering, ethics, politics, and policy in different societal contexts are of special interest. The volume as a whole marks a new stage in the emergence of the philosophy of engineering as a new regionalization of philosophy. This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume grew out of an international conference on the philosophy of engineering hosted by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. It includes 30 contributions by leading philosophers, social scientists, and engineers from Australia, China, Europe, and the United States. (shrink)

This article is a comparative study of the philosophical views on learning and learning methods elaborated by Wang Yangming and Francis Bacon. It argues that as different criteria for the advancement of learning Bacon's empirical learning and Wang's “learning of the heart-mind” represent two different philosophical orientations, and are responsible, at least partially, for laying down the basis for the parting ways of China and Europe at the dawn of the modern era. It concludes that an appreciation of the (...) mutual complementarity rather than opposition between these two philosophical approaches will be a sign for the new and real advancement of learning. (shrink)

In this essay, I compare two pioneer thinkers of the “just war” tradition across cultures: Gratian in the Christian tradition, and Mengzi (Mencius) in the Confucian tradition. I examine their historical-cultural contexts and the need for both to discuss just war, introduce the nature of their treatises and the rudimentary theories of just war therein, and trace the influence both thinkers’ theories have had on subsequent just war ethics. Both deemed just cause, proper authority, and right intention to be necessary (...) conditions for initiating a just war. However, Gratian’s theory has a presumption against injustice whereas Mengzi’s theory has a presumption against war. As a jurist of the Church, Gratian sought to discriminate just from unjust wars, while Mengzi, a moral-political advisor to rulers, was more concerned with avoiding bloodshed and building lasting peace. In addition to examining these thinkers’ respective historical influences, I submit that Gratian’s Decretum and the Mengzi are pioneering in two more senses. First, they offer important clues to understanding how just war ideas were developed very differently in medieval Europe and in premodern China. Second, both embodied features that helped shape their subsequent intellectual tradition, which in turn molded the different legacies of these two works. (shrink)

In the coming decades in the process of globalization the position of the USA and Europe will weaken, while the role of developing countries will increase. The role of the two largest emerging economies – China and India – will be of special significance. What future will these fast-growing giants face? The demographers agree that pretty soon India will lead the world in population and thus surpass China, while China will encounter serious population ageing. But economic and political scenarios of (...) the future are quite different: from resounding success and world leadership to collapse caused by demographic and socio-political troubles. Which of them is more feasible? In the present article I analyze the Chinese and Indian development models separately and comparatively and make prognosis of their perspectives in the twenty-first century. Such an analysis could be helpful for understanding Russia's ways of development. (shrink)

The Belt and Road initiative was announced in 2013 under the administration of China’s President, Xi Jinping. It was designed to fulfill the aim of interconnecting Asia, Europe, and Africa through reliable connectivity networks. In reaction to it, the 47th summit of G7 in June 2021 has given a response to this Chinese Initiative with the idea of Build Back Better World. G7 tried to show that the world can have an alternative to BRI. The main objective of the study (...) is to compare the feasibility of these two massive infrastructural projects. It is a qualitative document analysis of the previously published material on the related theme, that highlighted a competition of economic supremacy between the US and China. The research finds that BRI is gaining enough popularity as compared to B3W in the eyes of the world specifically in connecting different regions. (shrink)

The article provides a comparative analysis of the perception of time in Europe and China. Time is considered as one of the fundamentals of mentality. The author presents the specifics of mythological time, distinguishing sacred and profane times and analyzing the correlation between time, space, things, and their repetition. European logos time, which becomes mainstream in Modern Times, is examined. The article describes the postmodern period that took shape in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The formation and contemporary (...) image of time in China is traced in detail. This perception of time suddenly turns out to be the most relevant to today’s needs: in Chinese culture, time and space are closely connected, linearity is combined with cyclicality, involvement is combined with distancing, immovability and the ability to wait for the right moment – with an instant reaction. In Chinese culture, innovations are introduced under the guise of tradition, and activism, which has always been especially emphasized as the specificity of the modern Europe, as it turns out, is the most important characteristic of the Chinese. Under modern “network” conditions, the substantial understanding of things, which is characteristic of European culture, has given way to a networking perception, which is specific to the Chinese. This is a network in which interactions are carried out simultaneously and in different directions. By itself, a comparative analysis of mentalities yields important results and allows to draw far-reaching conclusions that are essential for understanding both the European and Chinese visions of the world. In conclusion, it becomes clearer what features of the Chinese mentality made possible not only the entry of China into the group of developed countries but also its transformation into one of the leaders among the world powers. (shrink)

This volume explores East Asian intellectual traditions and their influence on contemporary discussions of the ethics of war and peace. Through cross-cultural comparison and dialogue between East and West, this work charts a new trajectory in the development of applied ethics. A sequel to the volume Chinese Just War Ethics, it expands the range of the earlier work and includes attention to Japan and other Eastern and Western traditions for contrastive reflection and engages with the full range of Chinese intellectual (...) traditions for comparative analysis. The book scrutinizes pioneering works such as the Mengzi, the Han Feizi, and the Seven Military Classics, investigating their influence in subsequent times. It also engages with new texts and thinkers such as the Four Books of the Yellow Emperor, Zeng Guofan, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong, along with examining recent writings of the scholars of the People's Liberation Army. The final section of the book identifies and discusses some emerging issues in the comparative study of military ethics, just war and peace that derive from the preceding sections. The volume editors then offer some concluding remarks at the end of the book. This book will be of much interest to students of the ethics of war and peace, just war theory, military ethics, Asian studies and International Relations in general. (shrink)

This volume explores East Asian intellectual traditions and their influence on contemporary discussions of the ethics of war and peace. Through cross-cultural comparison and dialogue between East and West, this work charts a new trajectory in the development of applied ethics. A sequel to the volume Chinese Just War Ethics, it expands the range of the earlier work and includes attention to Japan and other Eastern and Western traditions for contrastive reflection and engages with the full range of Chinese intellectual (...) traditions for comparative analysis. The book scrutinizes pioneering works such as the Mengzi, the Han Feizi, and the Seven Military Classics, investigating their influence in subsequent times. It also engages with new texts and thinkers such as the Four Books of the Yellow Emperor, Zeng Guofan, Chiang Kai-shek, and Mao Zedong, along with examining recent writings of the scholars of the People's Liberation Army. The final section of the book identifies and discusses some emerging issues in the comparative study of military ethics, just war and peace that derive from the preceding sections. The volume editors then offer some concluding remarks at the end of the book. This book will be of much interest to students of the ethics of war and peace, just war theory, military ethics, Asian studies and International Relations in general. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, the understanding of the roles of vitamin D has expanded to include many nonskeletal effects such as reduced risk of acute respiratory tract infections, autoimmune diseases, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, neurological diseases, and adverse pregnancy and birth outcomes. The role of vitamin D for optimal health is well known in Western developed countries but less so in Central Asian countries. This narrative review compares the status of vitamin D between Central Asian countries and Northern (...) European countries. The analysis also summarizes the evidence for the beneficial effects of vitamin D and recommendations for Central Asian countries. (shrink)

The European project European and Latin American Systems of Ethics Regulation of Biomedical Research Project (EULABOR) has carried out the first comparative analysis of ethics regulation systems for biomedical research in seven countries in Europe and Latin America, evaluating their roles in the protection of human subjects. We developed a conceptual and methodological framework defining ‘ethics regulation system for biomedical research’ as a set of actors, institutions, codes and laws involved in overseeing the ethics of biomedical research on humans. (...) This framework allowed us to develop comprehensive national reports by conducting semi-structured interviews to key informants. These reports were summarised and analysed in a comparative analysis. The study showed that the regulatory framework for clinical research in these countries differ in scope. It showed that despite the different political contexts, actors involved and motivations for creating the regulation, in most of the studied countries it was the government who took the lead in setting up the system. The study also showed that Europe and Latin America are similar regarding national bodies and research ethics committees, but the Brazilian system has strong and noteworthy specificities. (shrink)

_The Belt and Road initiative was announced in 2013 under the administration of China’s President, Xi Jinping. It was designed to fulfill the aim of interconnecting Asia, Europe, and Africa through reliable connectivity networks. In reaction to it, the 47 th summit of G7 in June 2021 has given a response to this Chinese Initiative with the idea of Build Back Better World (B3W). G7 tried to show that the world can have an alternative to BRI. The main objective of (...) the study was to compare the feasibility of these two massive infrastructural projects. It is a qualitative document analysis of the previously published material on the related theme, that highlighted a competition of economic supremacy between the US and China. The research found that BRI was gaining enough popularity as compared to B3W in the eyes of the world specifically in connecting different regions._. (shrink)

In this paper examines the roles and influence of China in the world and, mainly, in European Union. For a decade, Chinese investors have been looking for opportunities to buy european assets. Especially since the beginning of the 2008 crisis we observed an increase of investment activities of Chinese companies. During the crisis, cash troubled european companies due to loss of liquidity were forced to sell their shares at significant discount. Over time, with stabilizing the economic situation in Europe, European (...) companies asset prices seemingly ceased to be cheap, nevertheless a volume of Chinese FDI to Europe continued to grow. Our goal will be detailed insight into these investments and try to identify the benefits and risks of these investments. Moreover, this paper not only provide insight into economic development of Chinese FDI but also take into account political issues and background of these investment. As far as a methodology is concerned, the basis of our work will be comparing an impact of Chinese investments in European countries and their impact on economic development in selected countries. In particular, we are interested in the behavior of Chinese investors and their motivation to buy in Europe. At the same time it will also be interested in the motives of European companies that have decided to sell shares to new owners. Finally, we will also examine ways in which Chinese investors proceed with acquisitions in the EU. Data comes from Eurostat, the national statistical offices and stock market prices. We will also be examining the political influence on these countries individually and globally, therefore as part of the EU. Based on the gained information we will try to assess the current situation of China’s influence in the euro area and at the same time try to estimate its future impact. Finally, based on the detected information to analyze the results of our research. (shrink)

The volume includes the proceedings of the 2nd Roma Sinica project conference held in Seoul in September 2019 and aims to compare some features of the ancient political thought in the Western classical tradition and in the Eastern ancient thought. The contributors, coming from Korea, Europe, USA, China, Japan, propose new patterns of interpretation of the mutual interactions and proximities between these two cultural worlds and offer also a perspective of continuity between contemporary and ancient political thought. Therefore, this book (...) is a reference place in the context of the comparative research between Roman (and early Greek thought) and Eastern thought. Researchers interested in Cicero, Seneca, Plato, post-Platonic and post Aristotelic philosophical schools, history, ancient Roman and Chinese languages could find interesting materials in this work. (shrink)

It can hardly be claimed that the advance in material civilization has done much for poetry. The growth of large towns has curtailed that intimate connection of man with nature which has in the past provided countless themes for song; the pressure of crowded populations fosters conventions of behavior which are inimical to the free play of imaginative impulse; the spread of standardized education does not always encourage the originality and independence which are necessary to creative work; the specialization of (...) intellectual life diminishes not merely the desire to write poetry but the ability to enjoy it. A mass of evidence shows that poetry is far less popular in western Europe and the United States than in countries like Persia or China or India, whose material civilization is far less advanced but which have kept a traditional taste for the beauty of words. At an even lower level, in societies where conditions are still primitive and existence is indeed hard, poetry may be the main pastime and consolation of peoples like the Asiatic Tatars or the Armenians or the Ainus, among all of whom it is a truly national art practiced with a high degree of accomplishment and enjoyed by whole populations. Compared with such societies, our own mechanized, urban world is indeed feeble and uncertain in its approach to an art which has in the past enjoyed great glory but seems now in danger of becoming an esoteric pursuit of cliques and coteries. (shrink)

Smart grids are rolling out internationally, with the United States nearing completion of a significant USD4-plus-billion federal program funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The emergence of smart grids is widespread across developed countries. Multiple approaches to analyzing the benefits of smart grids have emerged. The goals of this white paper are to review these approaches and analyze examples of each to highlight their differences, advantages, and disadvantages. This work was conducted under the auspices of a joint U.S.-China (...) research effort, the Climate Change Working Group Implementation Plan, Smart Grid. We present comparative benefits assessments of smart grid demonstrations in the U.S. and China along with a BA of a pilot project in Europe. In the U.S., we assess projects at two sites: the University of California, Irvine campus, which consists of two distinct demonstrations: Southern California Edison’s Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project and the UCI campus itself; and the Navy Yard area in Philadelphia, which has been repurposed as a mixed commercial-industrial, and possibly residential, development. In China, we cover several smart-grid aspects of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and the Shenzhen Bay Technology and Ecology City. In Europe, we look at a BA of a pilot smart grid project in the Malagrotta area west of Rome, Italy, contributed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Irvine sub-project BAs use the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid Computational Tool, which is built on methods developed by the Electric Power Research Institute. The TEC sub-project BAs apply Smart Grid Multi-Criteria Analysis developed by the State Grid Corporation of China based on the analytic hierarchy process with fuzzy logic. The B-TEC and TNY sub-project BAs are evaluated using new approaches developed by those project teams. JRC has adopted an approach similar to EPRI’s but tailored to the Malagrotta distribution grid. (shrink)

In the rapidly growing literature on comparative citizenship, a dominant assumption is that the nationality laws in Western states are converging on liberal norms of equality and inclusiveness. However, especially since the onset of the new millennium and an apparent failure of integrating Muslim immigrants there has been a remarkable counter-trend toward more restrictiveness. This paper reviews the causes and features of restrictiveness in the heartland of previous liberalization, north-west Europe. It is argued that even where it seems to (...) be strongest: with respect to the rules of naturalization, the restrictive trend is embedded within an overall liberal, sometimes even liberalizing framework. The notion of a wholesale “restrictive turn in Europe” therefore has to be rejected. (shrink)

Smooha argues that Joppke's thesis in his paper on comparative citizenship in Europe—there is no restrictive turn in citizenship and immigration laws and practices in Europe—is questionable. This is true not only for the pre-enlargement 15 EU countries during the years 1980-2006 under Joppke's study, but also for the post-enlargement 27 EU countries. When the time range is broadened to the post-1945 period, it is clear that the historical trend of liberalization has come to an end in Europe and (...) this is in spite of Europe's dire need of immigrants and the great desire of non-Europeans to immigrate to Europe. Europe is particularly fearful of Moslems, Arab Moslems, and Black Africans. Nevertheless, the comparison between Israel and the EU countries can put the discussion on Europe in perspective. Israel can be representative of non-European countries that claim to be Western or European countries that are latecomers to the West. When these countries are compared to the 15 EU countries, as described and analyzed by Joppke, it is evident that the EU core is liberal and Israel and non-core European countries are not liberal in their laws and practices. EU laws on immigration and naturalization are motivated only partially by ethnicity while those of other countries are more shaped by ethnic considerations and those of Israel are mainly determined by ethnicity and ethnicity-based fear. According to Smooha the EU might move in Israel's highly restrictive direction when it feels that its Western civilization, national cultures, and internal security are more significantly and increasingly threatened by non-European immigrants and their descendants. (shrink)

Philosophers, novelists, and intercultural comparisons : Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens /​ Richard Rorty Lifeworlds, modernity, and philosophical praxis : race, ethnicity, and critical social theory /​ Lucius Outlaw Modern China and the postmodern West /​ David L. Hall From Marxism to post-Marxism /​ Svetozar Stojanović Incommensurability and otherness revisited /​ Richard J. Bernstein Incommensurability, truth, and the conversation between Confucians and Aritotelians about the virtues /​ Alasdair MacIntyre The commensurability of Indian epistemological theories /​ Karl H. Potter Pluralism, relativism, and (...) interaction between cultures /​ Bimal K. Matilal The problem of relativism /​ Jiang Tianji. Between relativism and fundamentalism : hermeneutics as Europe’s mainstream political and moral tradition /​ Ferenc Feher Conceptual schemes and linguistic relativism in relation to Chinese /​ A.C. Graham The origins of the question : four traditional Japanese philosophies of language /​ Thomas P. Kasulis Meaning as imaging : Prolegomena to a Confucian epistemelogy /​ Roger T. Ames On the dual nature of traditional Chinese thought and its modernization /​ Li Zhilin A planetary macroethics for humankind : the need, the apparent difficulty, and the eventual possibility /​ Karl-Otto Apel Reasonable challenges and preconditions of adjudication /​ Antonio S. Cua The French Revolution and the Holocaust : can ethics be ahistorical? /​ Hilary Putnam Tradition and moral progress /​ Joel J. Kupperman The shape of artistic pasts, East and West /​ Arthur C. Danto. Surrealistic distortion of landscape and the reason of the milieu /​ Megumi Sakabe Why art changes /​ Richard Wollheim The transcendental in a comparative context /​ Frederick J. Streng Reflections on religious pluralism in the Indian context /​ Margaret Chatterjee Three enduring achievements of Islamic philosophy /​ Lenn E. Goodman Two dimensions of religion : reflections based on Indian spiritual experience and philosophical traditions /​ G.C. Pande Between nationalism and nomadism : wondering about the languages of philosophy /​ Graham Parkes The discourse of cultural authenticity : Islamist revivalism and enlightenment universalism /​ Aziz Al-Azmeh Traditional political values and ideas : an examination of their relevance to developments in contemporary African political order /​ Kwame Gyekye On the interpretation of traditional cultures /​ Maria L. Herrera. The concept of progress and cultural identity /​ Roop Rekha Verma Moses, Hsüan-tsang, and history /​ Agnes Heller Secularism : sacred and profane /​ Daya Krishna Scientific progress and content loss /​ Larry Laudan A dialectical view of scientific rationality and progress /​ Marcello Pera Scientific progress reconsidered /​ Ilkka Niiniluoto Does progress in science lead to truth? /​ Lorenz Krüger. (shrink)

Važna zadaća srednjoeuropskog povjesničara ili povjesničarke filozofije posljednjih desetljeća bila je interpretacija iznenada ponovno pojavljujućih elemenata njene ili njegove nacionalne kulture, uključujući i zajedničku ključnu riječ ovih tradicija – nacionalnu filozofiju. Moj rad nudi povijesnu rekonstrukciju pojma nacionalne filozofije na temelju mađarskih primjera. U prvome dijelu opisat ću nekoliko suvremenih dilema o upotrebi toga pojma. Glavni dio rada povezuje ovaj pojam s transformacijom javne sfere znanstvenika u kantijanskom razdoblju, uključujući Kantova osobna razmišljanja, kao i narativ mađarske »Rasprave o Kantu«. Analizom (...) ove rasprave nastojat ću pokazati da se taj pojam ne može u plauzibilnom obliku interpretirati niti u europskom niti u nacionalnom okviru, nego samo kao dio jedne moguće srednjoeuropske komparativne povijesti filozofije.An important task of a Central-European historian of philosophy was in the last decades to interpret the suddenly reappeared elements of her or his own national culture, including the common key word of these traditions – national philosophy. My paper offers a historical reconstruction of the concept of national philosophy, based on Hungarian examples. In the first part I will outline several contemporary dilemmas about the use of this term. The main part of my paper links this concept with the transformation of the public sphere of the scholars in the age of Kantianism, including Kant’s personal reflections, and the narrative of the Hungarian “Debate on Kant”. I will try to demonstrate, by the analysis of this debate, that it cannot be interpreted in a plausible form in a European, nor in a national framework, but just as a part of a would-be Central-European comparative history of philosophy.Une tâche importante pour un historien ou une historienne de la philosophie d’Europe centrale a été, ces dernières décennies, d’interpréter les éléments de sa propre culture nationale soudainement réapparus, y compris le mot-clé commun de ces traditions : la philosophie nationale. Mon article propose une reconstruction historique du concept de philosophie nationale, fondée sur des exemples hongrois. Dans la première partie, je ferai un aperçu de plusieurs dilemmes contemporains quant à l’emploi de ce terme. La partie principale de mon article relie ce concept à la transformation de la sphère publique des chercheurs à l’époque kantienne, y compris les réflexions personnelles de Kant, ainsi que le récit hongrois du « Débat sur Kant ». En analysant ce débat, j’essaierai de démontrer que ce concept ne peut être interprété sous une forme plausible dans un cadre européen ni dans un cadre national, mais seulement comme partie d’une éventuelle histoire comparative de la philosophie d’Europe centrale.Die bedeutungsvolle Mission des zentraleuropäischen Philosophiehistorikers oder der – historikerin in den vergangenen Dezennien hieß, die jählings wiederkehrenden Elemente seiner bzw. ihrer eigenen Nationalkultur zu explizieren, unter Einschluss des gemeinsamen Schlüsselwortes dieser Traditionen – der nationalen Philosophie. Meine Arbeit bietet eine historische Rekonstruktion der Notion der nationalen Philosophie auf der Grundlage der ungarischen Beispiele. Im Anfangsteil umreiße ich etliche gegenwärtige Dilemmas über den Gebrauch des angeschnittenen Begriffs. Der Hauptteil meines Papers verknüpft diesen Begriff mit der Umwandlung der öffentlichen Sphäre der Gelehrten zu Zeiten des Kantianismus, samt Kants persönlichen Überlegungen, wie auch dem Narrativ der ungarischen „Debatte über Kant“. Anhand der Analyse dieser Debatte versuche ich auszumalen, der Begriff lasse sich weder im europäischen noch im nationalen Milieu plausibel interpretieren, sondern ausschließlich als Baustein einer denkbaren zentraleuropäischen vergleichenden Philosophiegeschichte. (shrink)

Women have less access to and control over resources than most men. Such a pressure on men has implications for women’s and men’s health status. This paper explores the East–West health divide in Europe focusing on comparison of gender differences in self-rated health (SRH) in geographically close, historically highly connected but socially, politically and economically very different countries. Post-socialist Estonia, Lithuania and Russia are juxtaposed with highly developed social-democratic Finland. The first three countries belong to different strands of Christian culture, (...) share 50 years common history, while moving away from the socialism in rather distinct directions and representing two different types of neo-liberal regimes. Data from the fifth way of the European Social Survey on 5 480 individuals from Estonia, Lithuania, Russia and Finland was used to test the gender differentials in exposure and vulnerability to neomaterialist and psychosocial factors of health inequalities. In general, results confirm the existence of the East–West health divide along the Baltic Sea with regard to gender differences in SRH. But the shape of this divide largely depends on particularities of the compared countries. (shrink)

This paper will contend that we, in the first quarter of the 21st century, need an enhanced Age of Reason based on global epistemology. One reason to legitimize such a call for more intellectual enlightenment is the lack of required information on non-European philosophy in today’s reading lists at European and North American universities. Hence, the present-day Academy contributes to the scarcity of knowledge about the world’s global history of ideas outside one’s ethnocentric sphere. The question is whether we genuinely (...) want to rethink parts of the “Colonial Canon” and its main narratives of the past. This article argues that we, if we truly desire, might create “a better Enlightenment.” Firstly, by raising the general knowledge level concerning the philosophies of the Global South. Thus, this text includes examples from the global enlightenments in China, Mughal India, Arabic-writing countries, and Indigenous North America—all preceding and influencing the European Enlightenment. Secondly, we can rebuild by rediscovering the Enlightenment ideals within the historiography of the “hidden enlightenment” of Europe’s and North America’s past. In Part I, of two parts of this paper, a comparative methodology will be outlined. In addition, examples will be given from the history of ideas in India and China to argue that we need to study how these regions influenced the European history of ideas in the 16th and 17th centuries. Finally, towards the end of this text, a re-reading of the contributions from Egypt and Greece aspires to give a more global and complex context for Western Europe’s so-called Age of Reason. (shrink)

A prominent historiographic theme in the past decade has been a movement away from causal explanation of large-scale processes and outcomes and toward narrative interpretation of singular historical processes. This article argues for the continued vitality of large-scale historical inquiry and surveys the historiographic issues that arise in large-scale historical explanation. The article proceeds through an examination of several important recent examples of large-scale history: comparative history of Europe and China, the history of alternative forms of industrial organization, and (...) the history of technology. These three cases provide the basis for a conception of what may be called "conjunctural contingent meso-level" explanations: explanations that identify intermediate-level structures and processes and highlight both the structural factors that govern change and the multiple pathways that change can take. (shrink)

This book offers the first comparative account of the changes and stabilities of public perceptions of science within the US, France, China, Japan, and across Europe over the past few decades. The contributors address the influence of cultural factors; the question of science and religion and its influence on particular developments (e.g. stem cell research); and the demarcation of science from non-science as well as issues including the incommensurability versus cognitive polyphasia and the cognitive (in)tolerance of different systems of (...) knowledge. (shrink)

In recent years, sport entities have begun to prioritise environmental sustainability initiatives in their business strategies with the aim of minimising their environmental impact and engaging stakeholders within the ES movement. There has been minimal academic consideration of the ES movement in professional sport, particularly outside of North America and Europe. The aim of the present study is to provide an overview of the type and profile of ES initiatives being undertaken and communicated to stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region by (...) the industry bodies. Further, the study offers a conceptual model of the global-, country-, industry- and organisational-level forces impacting these sporting organisations’ ES practices. Various communication mediums of 114 professional sport teams from seven countries—Australia, India, New Zealand, Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea—were evaluated using content analysis. The results reveal low communication of ES practices by professional sport teams in the Asia-Pacific region compared to North America. Extended findings on the existing global profile of ES engagement provide a descriptive understanding of the ES movement in the Asia-Pacific region, and contribute to the identification of possible antecedents and correlatives to be evaluated in future research. (shrink)

The last twenty-five years or so have seen the emergence of exciting comparative work on Nietzsche and various philosophical traditions beyond the bounds of Europe. So far, however, the emphasis has been primarily on the cultures of India, China and Japan, with an almost exclusive focus on Buddhist, Hindu, Daoist, and Confucian traditions. Surprisingly, little work has been done on Nietzsche and the Islamic tradition. In this paper, I sketch out Nietzsche’s understanding of Islam, the ways in which he (...) uses it as a resource for his critique of Christianity and European modernity and the criticisms he has to make of it as one of the great monotheistic world religions. I then argue for the need to engage Nietzsche with specific Islamic falāsifa of the classical period (9-12th c.) rather than Islam itself, as some recent scholars have attempted to do. Although Nietzsche himself seems to have had no direct familiarity with any of the falāsifa, there are, I argue, many entry points for productive comparison and dialogue. This is at least in part because they share a significant common heritage: both were careful students of classical Greek and Hellenistic thought, and both put the insights they encountered there to work in bold new ways. Indeed, they appropriated, transformed and reanimated Greek ideas in new contexts and towards new ends that their progenitors would scarcely have recognized, and that were often radically challenging to their contemporaries. I focus here on a few select themes—the idea of philosophy as a “way of life,” the ideal of “becoming like God so far as it is possible” and the Platonic figure of the philosopher-ruler, all of which get taken up and re-imagined in radically novel and sometimes antipodal ways. (shrink)