In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.1 (2004) 47-54 [Access article in PDF] Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research*(A Recommended Manuscript) Adopted on 16 October 2001Revised on 20 August 2002 Ethics Committee of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai, Shanghai 201203 Human embryonic stem cell (ES) research is a great project in the frontier of biomedical science for the twenty-first century. Be- cause the research (...) involves the use of human embryos, it triggers serious debate on ethical issues. Opponents consider the embryo to be an early form of human life that should be respected and not destroyed. However, the majority of scientists support embryonic stem cell research, believing that it offers good prospects for the treatment of diseases that have remained incurable until now and so will benefit humankind. The Ethics Committee of the Department of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai seriously discussed the ethical debate initiated by embryonic stem cell research. We concluded that we should support the scientists of our country in actively carrying out human embryonic stem cell research for the noble cause of "medicine being a beneficent art." For the healthy and orderly development of human embryonic stem cell research in our country, we put forward the following recommended Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research as a reference for leaders, administrative departments, and related scientists. Preface Article 1. Human embryonic stem cells are the primitive cells that play the main role in the growth and development of a human body. These [End Page 47] primitive cells have the potential for infinite proliferation, self-renewal, and multi-directional differentiation. If scientists can discover the mechanism of differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, it will be possible to induce differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to form various types of human cells for clinical cell therapy. If human embryonic stem cell research can be integrated with modern biomedical engineering techniques, it also will be possible to make repair and replacement of human tissues and organs a reality. Article 2. There are two ways to classify human embryonic stem cells. One way is to classify them according to their potential for differentiation. There could be three kinds of stem cells: totipotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, and unipotent stem cells.A totipotent stem cell has the potential to develop into a whole individual. It can differentiate into the more than 200 cell types in the whole body, construct any tissue or organ of the body, and finally develop into a whole individual. The fertilized egg and the cleavage cells at the very early stage of embryonic development are totipotent stem cells.A pluripotent stem cell has the potential to differentiate into many cell types derived from the three embryonic layers. However, it has lost the capacity to develop into a complete organism.A unipotent stem cell is derived from the further differentiation of the pluripotent stem cell. It can differentiate only into one cell type such as a hematopoietic stem cell, neural stem cell, and others.The other way is to classify human stem cells according to their source. There could be two kinds of human stem cells: embryonic stem cells and tissue stem cells (also called adult stem cells). The former involves experimentation with embryos, which has serious ethical implications. Ethical issues associated with the latter are mainly expressed in the various opinions regarding the allocation of health resources. Article 3. Human embryonic stem cells are the group of cells called the blastocyst inner cell mass during the early stage of embryonic development. They are the main source of totipotent stem cells, and hence the focal and hot point in stem cell research. Studies on the clinical application of embryonic stem cells probably will involve use of the somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT) technique, which destroys the early human embryo. At present, the ethical and moral debate is very serious in human embryonic stem cell research regarding whether the research will develop... (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen encountering something unfamiliar, it is natural to describe and understand it by reference to what is familiar. Commentary on Chinese landscape painting usually relies heavily upon analogies with Western art. James Elkins, concerned to understand the implications of this procedure, asks whether in seeing and writing about this art we ever can escape our Western perspectives. His problem is not just that he himself does not know Chinese. Even bilingual specialists or native Chinese speakers employ this (...) vocabulary, for the vocabulary of contemporary art history, developed in the West, now is the language of academic art history everywhere. We know that we are distorting our descriptions of this Chinese art, even though we don't know how to “get it right.” In the history of European painting from Cimabue to the present, it would be hard to find any Western paintings that could be confused with any art made in China, so the frequent reliance of scholars upon such comparisons seems problematic. Of course, in the near future this situation might change. Perhaps in fifty years, as China becomes more prosperous, art history will become a hybrid discipline. At that point, the situation, which Elkins analyzes, will be reversed. But such a change is a long way in the future. (shrink)

The idea of “just war” is not alien to Chinese thought. The term “yi zhan” (usually translated as “just war” or “righteous war” in English) is used in Mencius, was renewed by Mao Zedong, and is still being used in China today (zhengyi zhanzheng). The best place to start exploring this Chinese idea is in the enormous Art of War corpus in premodern China, of which the Seven Military Classics is the best representative. This set of treatises served (...) as the military bible in imperial China from 1078 CE. Ideas analogous to ius ad bellum and ius in bello can be found in these texts. These norms are present in these military texts, elaborated in subsequent commentaries, understood as a matter of fact in Chinese political history, and recently and briefly acknowledged by a few Chinese military scholars in the mainland and in Taiwan. This Chinese just war ethics has its distinctiveness vis-à-vis James Turner Johnson's articulation of the Western classic view. It differs from Johnson's claims that military lethal violence is intrinsically morally neutral and that last resort is not a primary consideration in deciding for war. Contemporary Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) military publications show that the PLA understands the general idea of just war, but they acknowledge only the ad bellum part, not the in bello components. (shrink)

This singular work presents the most comprehensive and nuanced studies available in any Western language of Chinese aesthetic thought and practice during the ...

Goldin thus begins the book by asking the basic question "What are we reading?" while also considering why it has been so rarely asked. Yet far from denigrating Chinese philosophy, he argues that liberating these texts from the mythic idea that they are the product of a single great mind only improves our understanding and appreciation. By no means does a text require single and undisputed authorship to be meaningful; nor is historicism the only legitimate interpretive stance. The first (...) chapter takes up a hallmark of Chinese philosophy that demands a Western reader's cognizance: its preference for non-deductive argumentation. Chinese philosophy is an art he demonstrates, more than it is a rigorous logical method. Then comes the core of the book, eight chapters devoted to the eight philosophical texts divided into three parts: Philosophy of Heaven, Philosophy of the Way, and Two Titans at the End of an Age.. (shrink)

This article deals with the Chinese ink painting tradition, as a paradigm in which art and life are coupled and intertwined. In fact, in Chinese classical aesthetics, art and life do not produce a dramatic tension, but are inscribed in a common process of naturalness or spontaneity. The painter has to learn how the breath, or vital energy, that flows in every single image-phenomenon, can be enlivened by the brush strokes. Moreover, the paper builds a dialogue between the (...) European and the Chinese main patterns. Showing alternately the continuity or the discontinuity between art and life, both traditions of thought display the possibility to learn a sort of “art of living”, through – and not despite – the dynamic de-coincidence that appears in the folds of human experience. (shrink)

The now-global phenomenon of Asian martial arts traces back to something that began in China. The idea the Chinese communicated was the dual cultivation of the spiritual and the martial, each perfected in the other, with the proof of perfection being an effortless mastery of violence. I look at one phase of the interaction between Asian martial arts and Chinese thought, with a reading of the Zhuangzi 莊子 and the Daodejing 道德經 from a martial arts perspective. I do (...) not claim that the authors knew about martial arts. It was not Daoist masters who took up martial arts, but martial arts masters who, at a specific time, turned to Daoism to explain the significance of their art. Today, though, Daoist concepts are ubiquitous in martial arts literature, and a reading of these classics from a martial arts perspective shows how they lend themselves to philosophical thinking about this practice. (shrink)

Modernism is often implicitly known and understood from the “Western modernist” perspective and history. The wide recognition of the Western modernist canon as centre and universal displaces the contribution and significance of the non-Western world in the modern movement. Within Asia, the modernisms that arose from various nations in the region had subtly different notions of culture, identity, nationhood, and modernity, although almost every Asian country was related in one way or another to the history of Western imperialism. Using a (...) comparative analysis, this article examines modernism in twentieth-century Asia from a multicultural viewpoint, and bringing into picture the place of Asia in the history of modernism. (shrink)

As a response to the problems of language in Chinese modern and avant-garde art from 1988 to 1998, early video art reclaimed the independence of language from social reality and political influence and established it on the basis of the time phenomenon. By comparing the category of time in the Western philosophical tradition and in Chinese traditional thought, we find that the “immediacy” of Zen provides a hermeneutical approach to the nature of language as a reflective medium, closely (...) related to the silent experience. In line with the three basic principles of transcendental Zen, video media purifies body language into the immaterial language in three ways – through disembodied video movement, the de-objectified video image, and discontinuous video narrative. (shrink)

This paper explores Zha Changping’s humanistic criticism of pioneering Chinese art as a new paradigm in art criticism after the postmodern disintegration of traditional art history with its linear art history writing. It introduces the “seven forming factors” at the heart of Zha’s “world relational aesthetics,” which, on one hand, gauges the pulse of the time, while on the other hand seeking to uncover the underlying relational logic informing this generation of pioneering artists’ intellectual outlook and artistic output.

Modernism is often implicitly known and understood from the “Western modernist” perspective and history. The wide recognition of the Western modernist canon as centre and universal displaces the contribution and significance of the non-Western world in the modern movement. Within Asia, the modernisms that arose from various nations in the region had subtly different notions of culture, identity, nationhood, and modernity, although almost every Asian country was related in one way or another to the history of Western imperialism. Using a (...) comparative analysis, this article examines modernism in twentieth-century Asia from a multicultural viewpoint, and bringing into picture the place of Asia in the history of modernism. (shrink)

How contemporary Chinese art is creating “a philosophy of life, a philosophy of politics, and a natural philosophy,” as artist Qiu Zhijie says it must, is explored in this collection of essays by philosophers and art historians from America and China.

The article is devoted to the exhibition and creative activities of representatives of the Juelan Society and figures of Soviet unofficial art – a comparative analysis allows us to see common points regarding the choice of artistic means and techniques, themes and motives, the fate of creative associations. The purpose of the article is to determine the similarities and differences of the process of the origin of unofficial art in China and Soviet Russia. The author's field of attention includes identifying (...) similarities in the choice of genre, composition, artistic means, as well as the semantic content of the images revealed in the works of artists. It is important for the disclosure of the topic to determine the features and common features in the organization of creative activity and communication between members of artistic associations. The study concluded that Chinese and Soviet figures of unofficial art rallied around small associations, "circles", clubs, societies, offering an alternative to the official and, from their point of view, regressive art view of independent creativity. The artists of the Juelan Society sought to instill a modernist vision in Chinese culture, and Soviet conformists decades later developed their own understanding of contemporary art. Their attempts had a strong influence on the work of Chinese painters of subsequent generations and became a phenomenon in the art of their countries, still have an impact on its development. Their ideas and creative findings are the sources of the processes that take place in the artistic worlds that cooperate in the field of culture of Russia and China. (shrink)

Chinese calligraphy is a potent tool for intercultural communication in addition to being an art form, especially with its graceful brushstrokes and flowing letters. Chinese calligraphy, a blend of artistic and aesthetic beauty, enables intercultural exchange and reveals the intricacies of Chinese writing, fostering understanding and appreciation among different cultures. The aim of the research is to investigate the function and influence of Chinese calligraphy in fostering cross- cultural communication. This research evaluated the aesthetic assessments of (...) different Chinese calligraphy scripts on Chinese participants and non-Chinese international students from East Asia, Europe, and Latin America. This research explores how calligraphy brings down linguistic boundaries and promotes intercultural understanding and appreciation through a thorough examination of calligraphic styles, methods, and historical settings. The study explores calligraphy's use in modern contexts, including its use in art exhibits, classrooms, and online forums, and finds that it can improve identification and cross-cultural communication. The findings show Chinese calligraphy's continuing significance in a world growing more interconnected by offering insights into how it affects cross-cultural relationships. The study contributes to the conversation on identity, cultural legacy, and the transformational potential of art in promoting cross-cultural communication. (shrink)

The question that I propose to examine here is to what extent or in what sense there has been an avant-garde presence in Chinese art. And in what sense is the avant-garde present in contemporary Chinese art connected to avant-garde in the west. Before examining the relevance of the avant-garde to developments in Chinese art, it is necessary to provide a brief account of avant-garde in western art.

In this article, Carter tells the weaving tale of the globalization of art and the interplay between eastern and western contemporary art. Carter sketches out the history of contemporary art in China with a keen eye towards the interplay between Chinese artists and the various western influences over time, such as the 16th century Jesuit artists, Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, and Dada to name a few. This history is marked by a ubiquitous tension as Chinese artists incorporated western innovations (...) into their work, while also maintaining the poetic and literary foundation of Chinese art. Coupling that with the influence of the Cultural Revolution and Soviet realism on the Chinese are world, Carter discusses the tenuous boundaries upon which Chinese art has been and continues to be produced. After considering this history, Carter goes on to analyze the effect Chinese art has on the western art world--both how it shapes the western art world and how this globalization, in turn, shapes Chinese art. In navigating this boundary, Carter explains how Chinese artists find mediate appealing to a global audience while maintaining their Chinese roots. Carter concludes this essay by considering the economic success of Chinese art in the west and drawing attention to the negotiations still taking place today between local culture/global culture, tradition/innovation and authenticity/market appeal. (shrink)

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize the (...) world in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

The article examines the influence of ancient Chinese philosophical concepts on the formation of modern piano art in China. Ancient Chinese materialistic philosophy is based on such teachings as Wu-xing and Yin-Yang, the Great Limit (Tai Chi), the eight trigrams and others. With the passage of time and the rapid development of science, these philosophical concepts not only did not lose their significance, but also had a powerful influence on the formation of modern Chinese piano creativity, deeply (...) influenced the form and cultural connotation of Chinese music, and also became the theoretical basis for the works of many modern composers. The philosophical and aesthetic Taiji system presented by composer Zhao Xiaosheng, integrated into the modern piano composition system, marked the beginning of a revolution in the field of piano art, combining the theoretical foundations of traditional Chinese philosophy and the principles of modern composition methods. The research methodology is based on philosophical and cultural analysis, musicological analysis, and semantic analysis. Of particular interest is the comparative analysis of the musical and philosophical "Tai chi composition system" by Zhao Xiaoshen, the dodecaphony of A. Schoenberg and the set theory of M. Babbitt and A. Fort, which the Chinese composer considers the sources of his creativity. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that a correlation is proposed between the key categories of ancient Chinese philosophy and modern experiments in the field of musical expression. The authors managed to demonstrate the high degree of influence of Chinese philosophy on music, to clearly show that the basic postulates of ancient Chinese philosophy have been encoded in the basis of traditional Chinese music since ancient times, and in the twentieth century they were the basis of modern Chinese theory of composition, while playing a colossal role in identifying the common foundations of modern composition of the West and East, while preservation of local features of the diverse sphere of these cultures. The emergence and formation of a philosophical and theoretical system of musical composition, based on the concepts of classical Chinese philosophy, organically refracted in the latest achievements of Western music composition, emphasizes the ontological significance of these concepts for both Eastern and Western culture. And the creation of appropriate musical works undoubtedly leads to positive trends in the development of modern Chinese music and classical Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

In the process of interpreting works of pictorial art, it is easier to understand not the "style", but the "theme", that is, not how to write, but what to write. In the history of modern art, which attaches more importance to "style", the problem of "theme" is not fundamental and is among the primitive issues worthy of the attention of amateurs who do not understand art. However, sometimes it is in simplicity that the essence lies. The simplest questions that interest (...) almost everyone are the link between works of art and society. When analyzing the "topic", the subject under study is not confined to one work of art, since an integrated approach to the consideration of the problem should be used. The author's main contribution to the study of the history of the development of Chinese painting is a new perspective – the analysis of works based on the "theme". The results of the study revealed the main themes of Chinese pictorial art, identified the main reasons for referring to them, and also established their symbolic meaning, connection with philosophical and literary traditions. The important role of literary scientists in determining the directions of thematic development of Chinese landscape painting is revealed, the significance of the images of the fisherman and the traveler as carriers of the spiritual content of the landscape is determined. The conclusion is made about the prominence of certain themes in the pictorial art, depending on the processes of social development of China. (shrink)

Unlike in Western countries, scholars and the Chinese government pay less attention to the role of extracurricular activities in fostering children’s cognitive and non-cognitive well-being. Accordingly, essential ECAs such as visual arts programs are serviced by expensive privately owned schools, creating social injustice. The primary aim of the current study is to examine whether children benefit from ECAs if parental support and guidance for managing time spent on ECAs and academics exist based on the threshold model. The study comprised (...) over 2,400 primary school students in one Chinese province and considered the SES of the area. Surprisingly, the present study’s findings illustrate that contemporary Chinese parents differ from traditionally aggressive and overbearing parents who do not value their children’s interests. However, the current study finding suggested that children’s participation in out-of-school visual art activities doesn’t have a substantial value in promoting children’s academic performance in the face of genuine interest and supportive parenting, which negates the threshold model. (shrink)

The idea of beauty in the West has often been connected with the idea of woman, whose beauty has been celebrated in sculptures of the nude since classical Greece and in paintings since the sixteenth century. the nude is not a genre in either traditional or contemporary Chinese art, however, and although there has been nakedness in the representations of the body in the contemporary art of China, its presence is marked by two characteristics that distance the Chinese (...) naked body from the Western nude. (shrink)

For anyone working in aesthetics interested in understanding the richness of the Chinese aesthetic tradition this handbook is the place to start. Comprised of general introductory overviews, critical reflections and contextual analysis, it covers everything from the origins of aesthetics in China to the role of aesthetics in philosophy today. Beginning in early China (1st millennium BCE), it traces the Chinese aesthetic tradition, exploring the import of the term aesthetics into Chinese thought via Japan around the end (...) of the 19th century. It looks back to early practices of art and craftsmanship, showing how the history of Chinese thought provides a multitude of artifacts and texts that give rise to a wide range of aesthetic creations and notions. Introducing various perspectives on traditional arts in China, including painting, ceramics, calligraphy, poetry, music and theatre, it explores those aesthetic traditions not included in "canonic" art forms, such as martial arts, rock gardening, and ritual performance. Written by Chinese, European, and American theoreticians and practitioners, this authoritative research resource enhances contemporary aesthetics by revealing the possibilities of a Chinese philosophy of art. (shrink)

This work contains a full, critical translation of Huai Nan Tzu, Book 9, Chu-shu, which is part of "an important compendium of knowledge and philosophical speculation... presented to the Chinese court of Wu Ti during the first century of the Former Han ". Preceding the translation is a dense philosophical analysis of the treatise, and of its place in a painstakingly reconstructed history of ideas, particular to the development of China up to that date. China had already gone through (...) nearly two millennia of history. (shrink)

Art and philosophy are the two major elements of the human world. The existence of art and philosophy can expand the spiritual world of human beings to a greater extent and enrich their spiritual life, thus supporting the construction of the material world. And music, as an aural art, has also been given a philosophical meaning in the evolution of history because of its birth and development. Therefore, when studying music, one should first study the history of music. The philosophy (...) of music history education is not only profound and contains world culture and philosophy, but also carries history and economy. Music history education is also a vivid art form of philosophy, where teachers create an artistic beauty to attract students and achieve the purpose of imparting knowledge by optimizing their educational philosophy. To develop the philosophy of education to its fullest extent, teachers must adhere to the concepts associated with the philosophy of art. To explain this process in greater depth, this paper provides a brief review of the aesthetic philosophy and historical evolution of Chinese. (shrink)