This writing addresses a direct response to as well as shares a careful reflection with Ed Casey and Bob Neville, two of my longtime good friends, whom I invited to a panel I organized for Plenary Section 1, 11th East-West Philosophers’ Conference entitled “Place”, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawai’i, May 25, 2017. It starts with the question of understanding the meaning of place for humanity and human development. To understand place as the birthplace of life and humanity is essential to understanding (...) what a place is, because a place has to link to other places and to the whole of space as a totality of places. Places are developed historically and transferred to us with their values just like our own life comes to us in the development of our histories and cultures. This leads to the idea of a place as not separable from time. I have only addressed time to some extent in this paper, but I have introduced time as an essential part of our defining characterization of humanity and its resources. This then leads to our deep understanding of humanity as the creative product of time and space, which is derived from a common life origin: creativity. Throughout, I have also elaborated my thinking on the complex issue of “deep roots” and “shallow roots” of Confucianism, in light of inspirations from Bob Neville, who has raised important questions. (shrink)

Confucius must have inspired his disciples to identify the process and structure of the human self and required self-cultivation in embodying and developing virtues within and practicing virtues as potential ways for its full self-realization. My discussion will be carried out through a conceptual and onto-hermeneutic analysis of the underlying self (ji) structure and its born nature and mind as content as deliberated in the Lunyu (the Analects). On the basis of this approach we will come to see how a (...) moral psychology of virtues is founded and how such a moral psychology has implications for moral onto-generative metaphysics and onto-generative ethics. (shrink)

Essays appearing in Chinese philosophical periodicals in 1978 concentrated to a large degree on continuing and deepening criticism of the "gang of four," often in the name of scientific study of Marxism-Leninism. On occasion, however, there were studies on independent subjects such as "artificial intelligence," an essay which is included in this issue.

The general circumstances in which Confucianism developed during the century between the death of Confucius and the rise of Mencius and Haün Tzu may be observed in the "Biographies of Confucians" in the Shih-chi [Historical Records] and in the chapter entitled "On Learning" in Han Fei Tzu.

In examining phenomenology as a base onto-generative hermeneutics I find the gradual movement from pure phenomenology in Husserl to an ontological phenomenology in Merleau-Ponty through Heidegger and Gadamer. I argue thus that there is an implicit connection between the phenomenological and the ontological. In order to bring out the desirable connection between the two we must have hermeneutic interpretation of one in terms of the other. This leads to the idea of onto-hermeneutic circle of phenomenology and ontology based on the (...) integration of the four phenomenologies which represent a wider comprehension and deeper intuition. It is in terms of this wider comprehension and deeper intuition of reality I introduce the Chinese notion “ben-ti 本體” as “onto-generative” as well as onto-phenomenological. I suggest five principles as constituting the basic formulation of such a hermeneutic system as both theory and methodology: Principle of comprehensive observation ; Principle of objective reference 1 ; Principle of perception, reflection, and memory ; Principle of intersubjective understanding and interpretation based on ; and Principle of practical end and action. (shrink)

This volume, an assemblage of essays previously published in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, conveniently and strategically brings together some of the trenchant interpretations and analyses of the salient, structural aspects of the ...

The concept of rectifying names [cheng-ming] is a familiar one in the Confucian Analects. It occupies an important, if not central, position in the political philosophy of Confucius. Since, according to Confucius, the rectification of names is the basis of the establishment of social harmony and political order, one might suspect that later political theories of Confucian-ists should be traced back to the Confucian doctrine of rectifying names. It need not be added that the theory of rectifying names, as (...) developed by Hsün Tzu in the third century B. C., served the double purpose of strengthening his political doctrine of government on the one hand and repudiating doctrines of names on the other. (shrink)

In the study of Chinese philosophy, whether looking at its historical development or comparing different schools of one particular period, the question of categories inevitably appears. The question of categories, in simple terms, may be understood as the question of those concepts concerned with basic thinking. Analyzed more closely, the question of Chinese philosophical categories can be divided into the following topics: the types and content of categories; standards for defining categories; the special characteristics of categories; category changes and their (...) functions; comparing categories; and judging categories. (shrink)