In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 133-152 [Access article in PDF] Benjamin Franklin in Jewish Eastern Europe: Cultural Appropriation in the Age of the Enlightenment Nancy Sinkoff * Figures In 1808 an anonymous Hebrew chapbook detailing a behaviorist guide to moral education and self-improvement appeared in Lemberg, Austrian Galicia. Composed by Mendel Lefin of Satanów, an enlightened Polish Jew (maskil in the Hebrew terminology of the (...) period), Moral Accounting (Sefer Heshbon ha-Nefesh) was a crucial weapon in Lefin's lifelong literary war against Hasidism, the new Jewish pietistic movement which had captured the hearts and souls of much of eighteenth-century Polish Jewry. 1 The core of Moral Accounting was a boxed grid, seven lines by thirteen, which correlated, respectively, to the days of the week and to thirteen virtues in need of improvement. The grid was to be used daily throughout a thirteen-week cycle which repeated four times during the course of a year. Addressing a traditionally-educated Jewish audience, Mendel Lefin did not disclose the gentile source of the method of moral self-reform, but he did acknowledge that it was not his innovation: "Several years ago a new method was revealed, and it is [such] a wonderful invention for this [kind] of [moral] education that it seems that its renown will spread as quickly, if God desires it, as that of the invention of printing which brought light to the world." 2 [End Page 133] The creator of this "wonderful invention" was none other than Benjamin Franklin, whose "Rules of Conduct" first appeared in 1791 in the second part of his English Autobiography. 3There has been a noticeable interest recently among historians of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) to map carefully, region by region, the nuances and varieties of the Jewish encounter with modernity. 4 Nonetheless, Haskalah scholars have generally regarded Mendel Lefin's use of Franklin's technique as a confirmation of their view that the impetus for the Haskalah among East European Jewry lay in its exposure to the West in general and to the Berlin Haskalah's Western orientation in particular. 5 They have viewed Moral Accounting as merely a translation of yet another text of the European and American Enlightenments into Hebrew, and they have paid little attention to the Polish context and orientation of Lefin's work. 6 Implicit in this view, too, was the problematic assumption that translation of a text is an uncritical, acquiescent act. Mendel Lefin's wholesale adoption of Franklin's "Rules of Conduct," implied, first, a static, unidirectional influence of a Western text on an East European and, second, that Franklin's work itself had a fixed, absolute meaning which Lefin simply appended to his Hebrew book. Yet the appearance of the "Rules of Conduct" in Hebrew and [End Page 134] Lefin's use of other Western and non-Jewish texts were anything but mechanical. 7Not only Lefin's Jewishness but his Polish origins and Polish orientation make the assumption of passivity particularly acute. Effaced from the map of Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, Poland's history has not been integrated into general historical treatments of the Enlightenment. 8 Just as studies of the Jewish Enlightenment describe a trajectory from Berlin to Austrian Galician to Russia, so do general interpretations of the European Enlightenment draw a line from Germany and France to Russia, bypassing Poland. For example, in Roy Porter and Mikulás Teich's important book, The Enlightenment in National Context, Poland is nowhere to be found. 9 Yet Poland, too, had an Enlightenment (Oswiecenie), beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, which was stimulated by many of the same forces that spurred change in the West: the desire to reform antiquated political systems, to liberate education from religious dogma, and to create a rational state apparatus. In Poland the Enlightenment had its own national coloring; it was sponsored not by a rising bourgeois class but by royal and noble circles (and thus lacked the social critique of the Enlightenment in the... (shrink)

The role of cultural models in the process of adaptation to the new technologies is very different according to different civilizations. Some basic cultural items seem to be particularly crucial, such as, for example, the levels of pragmatism or rationalism which characterize a civilization or some periods of its history. This paper presents a sketch aimed at setting up a comparison between Western and Eastern cultures facing the problem of adapting to new technologies. The concept ofcold utilitarianism is (...) introduced. It allows a way of defining adaptation which is only partial and contradictory in Western culture, while it completely describes, though perhaps provisionally, the Eastern way of making and using technology. (shrink)

Cultural differences occur in the use of categories to aid accurate recall of information. This study investigated whether culture also contributed to false (erroneous) memories, and extended cross-cultural memory research to Turkish culture, which is shaped by Eastern and Western influences. Americans and Turks viewed word pairs, half of which were categorically related and half unrelated. Participants then attempted to recall the second word from the pair in response to the first word cue. Responses were coded (...) as correct, as blanks, or as different types of errors. Americans committed more categorical errors than did Turks, and Turks mistakenly recalled more non-categorically related list words than did Americans. These results support the idea that Americans use categories either to organize information in memory or to support retrieval strategies to a greater extent than Turks and suggest that culture shapes not only accurate recall but also erroneous distortions of memory. (shrink)

This essay, which is part of an ongoing monographic study of the Société Européenne de Culture, looks at the SEC's relationship with Europe's communist intelligentsia during the first phase of the Cold War. European intellectual life during this period is generally associated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Yet the SEC, the membership of which included some of Europe's most eminent figures, ranging from Camus and Jaspers, to Adorno and Merleau-Ponty, to Lukács and Sartre, can be seen as having (...) provided a reference point particularly for the European left, not least because of its unique openness to communist participation. Giving special attention to the Dialogue Est-Ouest (Venice, March 1956), one of the earliest encounters between Europe's eastern and western intellectuals since before the war, this essay considers how the SEC's engagement with contemporary Marxist theory there not only embedded the dialectic as the SEC's operational method. It also provided an early indication of that institution's imminent shift from a preoccupation with universal values to an awareness of cultural difference and diversity, as a result of the critique of current western liberal ideology and its cultures, undertaken by the SEC in light of the Thaw. (shrink)

Philosophical inquiries into the nature of consciousness have long been intrinsically tied to questions regarding the nature of the self. Although philosophers of mind seldom make reference to the role of cultural context in shaping consciousness, since antiquity culture has played a notable role in philosophical conceptions of the self. Western philosophers, from Plato to Locke, have emphasized an individualistic view of the self that is autonomous and consistent across situations, while Eastern philosophers, such as Lao Tzu (...) and Confucius, have argued for a collectivistic view of the self, one that is interconnected to others and embedded within specific social contexts and situations. Here we argue that a comprehensive theory of consciousness needs to account for the role of cultural context and its bidirectional interaction with neural and genetic mechanisms in shaping a variety of conscious phenomena, from visual perception to self- awareness. We review recent evidence of cultural variation in neurobiological mechanisms underlying these phenomena and discuss the implications of these cultural neuroscience findings for the study of consciousness. (shrink)

A consistent finding reported in the literature is that epistemically suspect beliefs are less frequently endorsed by individuals with a greater tendency to think analytically. However, these results have been observed predominantly in Western participants. In the present work, we explore various individual differences known to predict epistemically suspect beliefs across both Western and Eastern cultures. Across four studies with Japanese and Western individuals, we find that the association between thinking style and beliefs varied as a (...) function of culture. Specifically, while Westerners who scored higher on measures of Type-2 analytic thinking tended to endorse epistemically suspect beliefs less, this association was not observed in Japanese samples, suggesting that the often-observed negative association between analytic thinking and epistemically suspect beliefs may be exclusive to Western individuals. Additionally, we demonstrate that a tendency to think holistically is positively associated with the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs within both samples. Overall, we discuss how various individual differences predict the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs across cultures. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study assessed the extent to which culture impacts the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect. This trade-off effect occurs because emotional items are better remembered than neutral ones, but this advantage comes at the expense of memory for backgrounds such that neutral backgrounds are remembered worse when they occurred with an emotional item than with a neutral one. Cultures differ in their prioritisation of focal object versus contextual background information, with Westerners focusing more on objects and Easterners focusing more (...) on backgrounds. Americans, a Western culture, and Turks, an Eastern-influenced culture, incidentally encoded positive, negative, and neutral items placed against neutral backgrounds, and then completed a surprise memory test with the items and backgrounds tested separately. Results revealed a reduced trade-off for Turks compared to Americans. Although both groups exhibited an emotional enhancement in item memory, Turks did not show a decrement in memory... (shrink)

In the context of increased movement across borders, this book examines how key cultural texts and concepts are transferred between nations and languages as well as across different media. The texts examined in this book are considered fundamental to their source culture and can also take on a particular relevance to other cultures. The chapters investigate cultural transfers and differences realised through translation and reflect critically upon the implications of these with regard to matters of cultural identity. The book (...) offers an important contribution to cultural approaches in translation studies, with ramifications across different disciplines, including literary studies, history, philosophy, and gender studies. The chapters offer a range of cultural and methodological frameworks and are written by scholars from a variety of language and cultural backgrounds, Western and Eastern. (shrink)

In the field of Conflict Transformation, Restorative Justice is often perceived as a transformative process focused on healing relationships after a specific harm. The parties considered in a RJ setting are those harmed, those responsible and the community impacted. This is particularly true in the field of criminal and transitional justice, and in an extended and spiritual view, there is reconciliation with the parties and God. Despite cultural differences, RJ theory and concepts have been accepted favorably in the many countries. (...) From a viewpoint focused on methodology and process, however, cultural differences have a significant effect for implementation. For example, important concepts such as control, choice, harm, responsibility, apology, shame, reconciliation and forgiveness vary greatly in the manner in which they are perceived from culture to culture and may create obstacles for successful implementation of a successful process when one culture’s process and definitions are forced upon another. Therefore, promotional factors and the implication of semiotics are an absolute consideration in developing a RJ process within a particular culture. This paper discusses the cultural differences between the United States and Japan with regard to semiotic obstacles in the implementation of a RJ model in the Japanese criminal justice system. While the exploration of cultural differences, particularly between the United States and Japan is not new and has been the focus of many disciplines, little has been considered regarding the assimilation and implementation of a Western RJ model into the Eastern culture of Japan. In sum, is an attempt to clarify and integrate the effects of cultural differences for some factors as they apply to a RJ based reconciliation process focused in Semiotics, Social psychology and the Sociology of law as they apply to the United States and Japan. (shrink)

This paper investigates microcultural imperialism upon Eastern cultural heritage. In particular, it exposes the loss of Korean cultural artifacts during wars, and also during imperial cultural expeditions, visits of scholarly research groups, and diplomatic encournters. The paper argues that imperialist domination is sometimes concealed in the name of Oriental Studies projects and the assumed superiority of certain nations in terms of knowledge and technology.

Past work has shown systematic differences between Easterners' and Westerners' intuitions about the reference of proper names. Understanding when these differences emerge in development will help us understand their origins. In the present study, we investigate the referential intuitions of English- and Chinese-speaking children and adults in the U.S. and China. Using a truth-value judgment task modeled on Kripke's classic Gödel case, we find that the cross-cultural differences are already in place at age seven. Thus, these differences cannot be attributed (...) to later education or enculturation. Instead, they must stem from differences that are present in early childhood. We consider alternate theories of reference that are compatible with these findings and discuss the possibility that the cross-cultural differences reflect differences in perspective-taking strategies. (shrink)

This article discusses the temporalization of space central to the mainstream discourse of European modernity: a discourse which hierarchized all cultural spaces into a temporal narrative enabling Europe’s self-portrayal as the emancipatory future of humanity. This discourse created a gap between the perceived particularism of non-European cultures (seen as traditional) and the universalism of a modernity associated with the contemporary cultures of Europe and North America, while portraying modernization as a passage from the former to the latter. Chinese intellectuals who (...) adopted this metanarrative therefore faced the following challenge: how can Chinese particularism be adapted to a culture of modernity regarded as universal? While May Fourth iconoclasts answered this question by simply rejecting the idea that an accommodation between Chinese particularism and modern universalism was possible, other intellectuals attempted to argue that at least some aspects of Chinese culture could still be of value within the context of modern universalism. This article discusses an interesting instance of such an attempt at negotiating the perceived tension between the modern discourse of universalism and the particularism of Chinese culture, as provided by Liang Shuming in Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies. This work attempted to show that Chinese culture could still be of value within the context of modernity by providing a new metanarrative which peripherized the role of Western culture in the process of modernization. This article suggests, however, that by adopting a portrayal of modernization as a passage from particularism to universalism, Chinese culture could be reauthorized, within Liang’s metanarrative, only at the cost of being de-complexified, homogenized, and de-historicized; only at the cost of being no longer Chinese. (shrink)

This is a true cross-cultural anthology which presents philosophers from different cultures in dialogue with one another. The text includes selections from both traditional and contemporary Western and non-Western philosophy: African American, Latin American, and feminist philosophers as well as Asian, African, Native American, and Islamic philosophers. The reader is organized by topic, and highlights the similarities and differences between Western and Non-Western philosophers -- it arranges selections so that authors speak to one another across cultures. (...) Chapter introductions and section introductions within chapters guide students. The second edition includes new sections on non-Western epistemology, the question of life after death, Rawls and criticism, and understanding others' experience and points of view. (shrink)

"The enterprise initiative is probably the most significant political and cultural influence to have affected Western and Eastern Europe in the last decade. In this book, academics from a range of disciplines debate Mary Douglas's distinctive Grid Group cultural theory and examine how it allows us to analyse the complex relation between the culture of enterprise and its institutions. Mary Douglas, Britain's leading cultural anthropologist, contributes several chapters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All (...) Rights Reserved. (shrink)

This case study focuses on how divergent cultural norms can impact ethical decisionmaking between a superior and subordinate in a high-pressure workplace. In order to ensure that today’s business students adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct in an international and multicultural environment, it is imperative they recognize and respond appropriately to different cultural views of ethics. In the accompanying case, Jane, a Chinese national living and working in the United States, encounters multiple ethical dilemmas during her employment at (...) TrustUS. Readers are introduced to important cultural factors that differ between Eastern and Western societies and are asked to apply these concepts to gain insight into how cultural background might influence the ethical decision making of a professional in a managerial accounting context. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of the cultural codes implied in the iconography of St Nicholas (Santa Claus). The argument posits the iconography of St Nicholas as a vessel for capturing meanings and accumulating them in the construction of public culture. The discussion begins from the earliest developments of the Christian era and proceeds to contemporary depictions (imagology). The study is conducted on the basis of a representative selection of renditions of Saint Nicholas, including 350 pictures of medieval representations (...) (Western and Eastern Christianity), folk extensions and secular representations and it is theoretically grounded in the Tartu School of semiotics. (shrink)

The essay broadens the understanding of Ortega's thought by elaborating his historiosophy, which is crucial to fully comprehend his popular work, 'The Revolt of the Masses'. The author argues that Ortega's famous sociological framework (based on the interplay between the elites and the masses) is very often trivialized due to the lack of knowledge about his anthropological assumptions, upon which the model of the evolution of culture is constructed. Utilizing the already existing literature (inter alia a synthetic work by (...) K. Polit), the essay reconstructs three philosophical crises in European thought that can be ultimately depicted as a suggestive sinusoid of social attitudes operating throughout the history of Western Civilization between the two boundary lines of the primary 'belief'. The belief is in fact a trust in the first data people have to adopt before they start to think philosophically: the priority of the object or the subject (historically: fides or ratio). The sinusoid shows the cyclical change of the first data people tended to accept and reveals a certain cultural mechanism: every culture is first developed by the inspired generation of individuals who structure reality in some way and then fight for the dissemination of their framework. After they prevail and the culture is accepted on a mass level, a process of degradation starts - this is because the culture gradually looses its link with the vivid circumstances that once constituted the stimulus for the founding generation. As a result, the culture becomes gradually more formal and distant from 'real life' - the elites do not innovate anymore, perceiving their world view as well-established and the masses are able only to renovate what is inherited. In the long run this leads to 'vital disorientation', which must force the next great generation of individuals to structure reality anew. 'The Revolt...' perceived in this way receives another layer of understanding. The popular interpretation of the book is that mass men, knowing their inherent rights (thanks to democracy) and having leisure time (technological advance) enter the public stage and want to be ruled by somebody of their sort. The author highlights that, apart from these two, a third factor is present: the long-term socialization of the culture of 'pure rationalism'. The mass man already feels that it does not correspond fully to his daily experience and becomes disoriented as a result. In consequence, the time of mass movements has come (that will be organized in accordance with the radicalized principle of either rationalism or irrationalism), until the elites harness the revolted masses again. The final part of the essay suggests the possible Eastern European dimension of Ortega's predictions about postmodern Europe and indicates that his intuitions were sufficiently accurate to foresee the emergence of some main currents in the contemporary humanities and sciences. (shrink)

In an article in Cognition, Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich [Machery et al., 2004] present data which purports to show that “East Asian” native Cantonese speakers tend to have descriptivist intuitions about the referents of proper names, while “Western” native English speakers tend to have causal-historical intuitions about proper names. Machery et al take this finding to support the view that some intuitions, the universality of which they claim is central to philosophical theories, vary according to cultural background. Machery (...) et al hypothesize that the differences in intuitions about reference stem from general psychological differences between Eastern and Western subjects. Machery et al conclude from their findings that the philosophical methodology of consulting intuitions about hypothetical cases is flawed vis ` a vis the goal of determining truths about some philosophical domains. To quote Machery et al, “our data indicate that philosophers must radically revise their methodology” because “the intuitions philosophers pronounce from their armchairs are likely to be a product of their own culture and their academic training” ( [Machery et al., 2004] pp.B9). “The evidence suggests that it is wrong for philosophers to assume a priori the universality of their own semantic intuitions” ( [Machery et al., 2004] pp. B8). In the following study, I present data incompatible with Machery et al’s results. Native Cantonese-speaking immigrants from a Cantonese diaspora 1 in Southern California do not have descriptivist intuitions about the referents of proper names when presented with a Cantonese story and Cantonese questions about reference and truth-value. This data raises questions about the quality of Machery et al’s study and the conclusions they draw from it. (shrink)

Each of us bears a unique name given to us at birth. When people use your name, they typically refer to you. But what is the linkage that ties a name to a person and hence allows it to refer? Li's book approaches this question of reference empirically through the medium of referential intuitions. Building on the literature on philosophical and linguistic intuitions, she proposes a linguistic-competence-based account of referential intuitions. Subsequently, using a series of novel experiments, she investigates the (...) variation of referential intuitions across different cultures, as well as the developmental trajectory and the underlying causes of the observed cultural differences. What she finds is that the cultural patterns of referential intuitions are already in place around age seven, and the differences are largely attributable to the distinct perspective taking strategies favoured by easterners and westerners, rather than the moral valence of actions involved in the experimental materials. These results are taken to better support referential pluralism (in particular, the ambiguous view) than referential monism. By undertaking this fascinating research, Li's book provides new insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying people's referential usage of names. It will be valuable to students and scholars of linguistics, philosophy of language and experimental philosophy, and in particular, to those who research into semantic intuitions and theories of reference. (shrink)

By examining selected works by Stephen Gaukroger, Alfred North Whitehead, Lynn White, Jr., Benjamin Farrington, and Paul Gans, the author discusses the formation of Western culture and the intellectual tools and the social conditions that contributed (and still contribute) to its being. He concludes that a metaphysics and a realistic epistemology—based on an ancient Greek confidence in the human intellect, in its ability to reason to truths that acknowledge the immaterial character of human intellection—is required for the West (...) to retain its identity and develop its own culture. (shrink)

Thanks to the exchange of arguments, groups outperform individuals on some tasks, such as solving logical problems. However, these results stem from experiments conducted among Westerners and they could be due to cultural particularities such as tolerance of contradiction and approval of public debate. Other cultures, collectivistic cultures in particular, are said to frown on argumentation. Moreover, some influential intellectual movements, such as Confucianism, disapprove of argumentation. In two experiments, the hypothesis that Easterners might not share the benefits of argumentation (...) was tested. In Experiment 1, Japanese participants had to solve a standard logical problem individually and then in groups. They performed significantly better in groups. In Experiment 2, Japanese participants had to estimate the weight of various animals. They did so individually, then after learning of another participant's estimates, then after discussing these estimates with the other participant, and then indi.. (shrink)

Louise Sundararajan’s aim in Understanding Emotion in Chinese Culture is to provide an explanatory framework for cross-cultural differences between Chinese and what she refers to as “Western” cultures from the methodological perspective of indigenous psychology, which aims to give voice to the knowledge that exists beyond the limits of mainstream “Western” psychology. Her book is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing from philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, physics, biology, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics. She also identifies some of the shared roots of (...) Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, and other similarities between Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Indian cultures, in order to further explicate the various concepts of Chinese emotions. As a result, Sundararajan also draws some more general conclusions regarding what she refers to as “Eastern” cultures. (shrink)

Nowadays, young people from all over the world are fascinated by the mass popular culture of South Korea. This process of spread of Korean culture in the world came to be called “Korean current” or “Korean wave”, which became a kind of “Korean cultural boom”. The spread of the “Korean wave” has been compared to a viral disease that first spread throughout East Asia, then Southeast Asia, and eventually engulfed the entire world. Despite the fact that the phenomenon (...) of the “Korean wave” had a sufficient public resonance, due to its novelty and unexpected emergence, it remains an understudied subject of scientific study, especially in the West and in particular in Ukraine. That is why the topic of this study is relevant nowadays. The aim of the article to investigate the mass cultural phenomenon “Korean wave”, to analyze its sources and dynamics of development, to characterize its inherent features, to determine the aspects of its spread and popularization, to investigate its influence on world society and culture, as well as to find out the peculiarities of its influence on the consciousness of the masses. The research methodology is based on a philosophical and cultural analysis of such a mass phenomenon of modern artistic culture as the “Korean wave”. When writing the work, we tried to adhere to the principles of objectivism, systematicity, comprehensiveness and multifactoriality. To comply with these principles, we used a number of general scientific and special methods in the research: comparative-historical, axiological, phenomenological, logical, retrospective, analytical-synthetic, socio-critical, systemic, structural-functional, generalizing and statistical. Adherence to these principles and methods made it possible to avoid bias and tendencies in judgments. Results. Such a mass cultural phenomenon as the “Korean wave” is a kind of entanglement of opposite principles: modern Western (progressive-innovative) and traditional Eastern (Confucian) cultural values. It manifests itself in the spread of fashion to everything Korean (or to be more precise, South Korean): not only K-pop, dramas, toys, clothes and other types of South Korean entertainment industry, but also Korean cuisine, household items, etc. In the past, despite the geographical proximity and cultural connectivity, for political reasons the countries of Asia largely suppressed cultural exchanges among themselves. China, Korea and Japan began to develop cultural ties between themselves relatively recently. It should also be noted that South Korea is a country that was previously considered a cultural periphery in international exchanges, now it plays an important role in the regionalization of mass culture as a whole in East and Southeast Asia and the product produced by it is considered a center of mass culture and one of the ways of cultural exchange throughout Asia. Conclusions. To sum up, we can say that the great popularity of the “Korean wave” is a kind of leap in the modern culture of South Korea. This phenomenon is represented not only by the synthesis of modern Western (European-American) culture and traditional Eastern (Korean), but also by the fact that in our time it has turned into a powerful locomotive of the entire South Korean economy, a kind of “dragon’s head”. The phenomenon of the “Korean wave” helps to raise the level of the image of South Korea as a prosperous country, and also visually demonstrates the modern South Korean culture to the world. The “Korean Wave” demonstrates to other countries in Asia and to the whole world in general that South Korea is not a periphery in our time, it is no longer a third world country, and it is as modern an urbanized country as most of the developed countries of the West, which has not only modernized its culture, but also spread it, and even managed to influence other countries and their cultures. (shrink)

The literature suggests that a whole-institution culture of academic integrity is needed in order to prevent academic integrity breaches. It is also suggested that the national cultures and individual backgrounds of academic staff and students can impact on their propensity to breach academic integrity policies and on their uptake of initiatives aimed at enhancing academic culture. Much research has been conducted on academic integrity related to culture in the western world including the behaviours of international students, (...) and some work has been conducted in various Asian contexts. However, little is known about how national culture and religion affect academic integrity in eastern countries with a Muslim majority. This paper presents a synthesis of the literature related to academic integrity and culture in regions where Muslims are the majority. An integrative literature review was carried out. Keywords were used to search and to collect academic integrity related research published from 2010 to 2020. The literature reviewed revealed that academics in countries with a Muslim majority faced challenges related to their local cultures, which included social and religious perceptions and practices. However, they were also able to draw upon some national and religious practices that supported and enhanced academic integrity. This paper concludes with recommendations for incorporating these positive cultural factors into an academic integrity framework for policy and practice appropriate for Muslim contexts. (shrink)

Recently a "Seminar to Coordinate the Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Cultures" was held at Shenzhen University. The focus of the meeting was the discussion of the meaning and significance of "comparative studies in Eastern and Western cultures." Why did we discuss this problem? To us, studying comparisons between Eastern and Western Cultures is, fundamentally, for the purpose of resolving the question, "How did, and how does, China's culture develop?" Naturally this is (...) a question that cannot be resolved in a short time, and neither can a consensus on this issue be achieved in the short run. Nonetheless, it is a lesson that holds epochal significance for us at present and therefore has to be proposed for discussion and commands our careful and earnest consideration. (shrink)

Children and adults from a remote Zafimaniry village in eastern Madagascar were probed for their intuitive understanding of the biological inheritance of bodily features. They were told a story about a baby adopted at birth, and were asked whether, when grown, he would be more likely to resemble his birth parents or his adoptive parents in bodily traits, beliefs, preferences, temperaments, and skills. In spite of the fact that the Zafimaniry, like other Southeast Asian and Malagasy peoples, profess explicit (...) beliefs concerning the fixation of individuals' properties that are at variance with Western folkbiology, Zafimaniry adults responded as do American adults on the task. Zafimaniry children, however, did not repond as did the adults, nor did they respond as did the majority of American children. Rather, they responded in the manner most consistent with what would be predicted, for children as well as for adults, from the ethnographic literature. That is, they tended to judge that an adopted boy would resemble his adoptive rather than his birth parents on virtually all traits, including bodily traits. The implications of these findings for current debates within cognitive science and anthropology are discussed. (shrink)

Considering the basic assumption that the modern Law and State theory does not only bear similarities, but also draws true epistemological parallels to theconstructions of Theology, Hans Kelsen intends to lay bare the ideological meaning that lies at the very core of the traditional dualism which constitutes Law and State into autonomous entities. Taking into account Kelsen´s original perceptions – which are seconded by more recent contributions from Claude Lefort and Hans Lindahl’s political and symbolic concepts and from Carl Schmitt’s (...) notions on political theology – our intention is now to demonstrate the highly conservative role played by the duality of the Law/State structure, whose aim is to remove, from under the sway of legal control, a considerable part of the State’s actions.Herebelow, therefore, we will analyse the very legitimacy of the so-called “Public Law,” which seems to point to a trend towards shunning the legal power regulation. Finally, based on the functional method pioneered by Ernst Cassirer, legal institutions such as “collective will” and “public interest” will be problematised, in order to ascertain whether they contain theological, conservative and authoritarian traits incompatible with the conceptual and substantial unity intrinsic to the Rule of Law. (shrink)

Communication on the Internet is often described as “anonymous”, yet the usage of the term is often confusing, even in academia. Three levels of anonymity, visual anonymity, dissociation of real and online identities, and lack of identifiability, are thought to have different effects on various components of interpersonal motivation. Specifically, we propose that cross-cultural differences in interpersonal motivation (autonomy vs. affiliation) are illustrated by choices individuals make when deciding whether or not to remain anonymous while communicating online. Autonomy is often (...) valued in Western societies, whereas Eastern societies tend to emphasize affiliation, suggesting that individuals in Western societies will gravitate toward online communities that allow lower levels of anonymity, while individuals in Eastern societies will be more likely to seek out online communities that promote higher levels of anonymity. The research presented in this article supports this notion, suggesting that we need to consider cultural differences when designing online communication systems and other communications technologies. (shrink)

Cross-cultural interviewing can pose challenges for journalists, given potential differences in language, word choice, volume, body posture, and group dynamics. This article explores some of the complexities of cross-cultural interviews with the dual aim of heightening awareness of ethical considerations for journalists who conduct them and of discussing ethical principles that may help in guiding their work. This article attempts to move the discussion of cross-cultural interviews beyond traditional Western ethics. Eastern moral philosophy and ideals of trust and (...) human relations similar to, but predating the work of contemporary Western communitarians are considered. The authors' ethnographic study of MLB's “Nippon Summer”—the influx of Japanese players in 2007—and analysis of articles resulting from press coverage of those players serve as a framework for discussing ethical considerations at play in cross-cultural journalism, when, for example, West writes East. (shrink)

We would like to open some questions here about the institutional and cultural conditions of anything that might be called cultural studies or multiculturalism. By introducing cultural studies and multiculturalism many intellectuals aim at a more democratic culture. We share this aim. In this essay, however, we would like to argue that the projects of cultural studies and multiculturalism require: a more international model of cultural studies than the dominant Anglo-American versions; renewed attention to the institutional environments of cultural (...) studies; and a questioning of the relations between multiculturalism and identity politics. We seek less to “fix” these problems than to provide a critical analysis of the languages, the methods of criticism, and the assumptions about identity, culture, and politics that present the problems to us. Because the thickets entangling what our group calls cultural studies are so deeply rooted in Western academia, which to a large degree constitutes our own group, the counterexample of cultural criticism in other contexts can be more than usually instructive. We begin by considering the position of cultural studies in China, since our group includes a number of Chinese intellectuals, on whose experience the following section is largely based. The Chicago Cultural Studies Group began meeting in June 1990. It includes Lauren Berlant, David Bunn, Vinay Dharwadker, Norma Field, Dilip Gaonkar, Marilyn Ivy, Benjamin Lee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Xinmin Liu, Mathew Roberts, Sharon Stephens, Katie Trumpener, Greg Urban, Michael Warner, Jianyang Zha, and Jueliang Zhou. (shrink)

The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino - whose work on magic was the most influential account written in premodern times - this groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical. Besides Ficino, the premodern story of magic also features Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Aquinas, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Porta, Bruno, Campanella, (...) Descartes, Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton, to name only a few of the prominent thinkers discussed in this book. Because pictures play a key role in the story of magic, this book is richly illustrated. (shrink)

We propose in this paper to focus upon the de-ontological self concept discoverable in Eastern and Western philosophical traditions. In a larger study, we intend to contrast this “no self” paradigm with major pro-ontological formulations of the self concept. These pro-ontological definitions can be divided into three basic types, namely the absolute-universal self, the transcendental-constituting self, and the natural-organic self.

It is only in Western Europe that the whole pattern of culture is to be found in a continuous succession and alternation of free spiritual movements; so that every century of Western history shows a change in the balance of cultural elements, and the appearance of some new spiritual force which creates new ideas and institutions and produces a further movement of social change (Christopher Dawson).

The conceptual and methodological contributions of Marxist aesthetics from Eastern European countries like Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and East Germany were productive and significant despite various hurdles faced concerning institutionalization, legitimization and differing theoretical abuses. In its mode of inquiry and discursive practices, Eastern European Marxist aesthetics is both similar and dissimilar to its Western, Soviet, Russian and Chinese counterparts. The specificity here is the function of a unique geographical and socio-historical context, as well as (...) interaction with other contemporary paradigms of thought. The innovative impulses of Eastern European Marxist aesthetics affected six scholarly domains: aesthetics of praxis, theory of realism, critique of modernity, semiotics, theory of genre and cultural theory. This paper provides a general survey of the intellectual achievements of Eastern European Marxist aesthetics across these six domains and will show how this theoretical tradition has influenced the modern history of ideas. (shrink)

Humanism built Western civilization as we know it today. Its achievements include the liberation of the individual, democracy, universal rights, and widespread prosperity and comfort. Its ambassadors are the heroes of modern culture—Erasmus, Holbein, Shakespeare, Velázquez, Descartes, Kant, Freud. Those who sought to contain humanism’s pride within a frame of higher truth—Luther, Calvin, Poussin, Kierkegaard—could barely interrupt its torrential progress. Those who sought to reform humanism’s tenets from within—Marx, Darwin, and Nietzsche—were tested by the success of their own (...) prophecies. So runs the approved view. It is not shared by John Carroll. Instead, Carroll articulates a disruptive and compelling alternative narrative of the course of Western civilization since the Renaissance and the Reformation contrived to unleash reason, will, and a superhuman man on the world. The West’s five-hundred-year experiment with humanism has failed, he maintains in this bracing study of humanism’s rise to preeminence and its headlong tumble into contradiction, because humans ultimately need some kind of contact with a higher, or metaphysical, order beyond the confines of their time-bound, mundane selves. And if this wasn’t entirely clear before September 11, 2001, Carroll concludes, it surely is now. His provocative and brilliant arguments will challenge received wisdom on every side. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the four guiding principles of medical ethics—autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—reflect the values of western culture, but do not necessarily apply outside of it. Western medical practitioners faced with the care of nonwestern patients need to examine their own prejudices in order to accept, not merely tolerate, other values. Acceptance of the other requires that the doctor welcome the patient as one welcomes a guest, openly and equally, with a willingness to (...) listen and to be changed by the encounter. It is through the nurture of trusting relationships that ethical dilemmas in clinical medicine may be resolved, without recourse to the colonial moral hegemony of the principlist approach. (shrink)

Bioethics as it stands today is a typically American product, but whether it can be spread across the globe as easily as Coca-Cola remains to be seen. Historically, we can observe that the internationalization of bioethics has taken place in a form of concentric waves beginning in the United States and encompassing increasingly new territories having older roots. Born in the 1960s, bioethics as the study of ethical issues in life sciences began to permeate the Anglo-Saxon world. Ten years later (...) it penetrated countries with developed liberal democratic traditions and remnants of the different Protestant attitudes to life where issues such as patients' rights, abortion, euthanasia, eugenics quickly started to appear frequently in newspapers, magazines, and on television. Then in the '80s the bioethics wave swept into the European community, and by the end of the '80s and early '90s bioethics advanced timidly into Eastern Europe. Because the difficult birth of bioethics in Eastern Europe is not widely known, the purpose here is to provide a perspective of that development, including its struggle with a totalitarian legacy, as well as to offer some comments as to how current cultural gaps between East and West, and especially between the Western and Orthodox worlds, might be bridged. (shrink)

This book describes in detail a culture and way of thinking which predates Western philosophy by several centuries. It is an ideal guide for the Western reader to the historical and philosophical basis of Eastern cultures.

Building a bridge between the anthropologies of West and East, the author shows how an intrinsically pathological--marginal--Western culture can be partially reconstructed to go "beyond marginality" by incorporating elements of a more authentic world view.

Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western culture from Columbus' voyages to today's tropical island retreats. Few narratives are so powerful - and, as Carolyn Merchant shows, so misguided and destructive - as the dream of recapturing a lost paradise. A sweeping account of these quixotic endeavors by one of America's leading environmentalists, Reinventing Eden traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations in shopping malls, theme (...) parks and gated communities. With eloquence and insight, Merchant shows how the drive to conquer nature and to explore and settle the globe, springs from this utopian pastoral impulse throughout Western history. Time and again, human manipulation of the environment is our downfall: Eden is achieved by fencing off pristine beauty in national parks and wildlife preserves, while leaving the majority of the earth in ruins. Challenging both narratives, Merchant argues that the green veneer of city-park conservation has become a cover for the corruption of the earth and the neglect of its environment. Reinventing Eden is a bold new way to think about the earth that includes green political parties, sustainable development and a partnership between humans and earth that is nothing short of an ecological revolution. (shrink)

As we attempt to engender a dialogue between different philosophical traditions, one of the first of the topics which need to be addressed is that of the very nature of dialogue. In other words, we need to engage in a dialogue about dialogue. Toward that end, this essay attempts to rethink the nature of dialogue from the perspective of two key members of the Kyoto School, namely its founder, Nishida Kitar1945), and its current central figure, Ueda Shizuteru (b. 1926). The (...) Kyoto School is the most prominent group of modern Japanese philosophers, whose thought emerges from the encounter between Western and Eastern traditions. This essay seeks to elucidate and further unfold the implications of rethinking of the nature of dialogue from the perspective of Nishida's and Ueda's primarily Zen Buddhist reception of and response to Western philosophy. (shrink)