This article examines the rise and decline of the enthusiasm for intelligence testing in early twentieth-century China, focusing on the appeal, the challenges, and the critiques revolving around this psychological instrument. The introduction of intelligence testing reflected not only China’s urgent needs in modernizing its merit system, but also Chinese psychologists’ aspirations for pursuing exactitude and redefining the racial characteristics of their compatriots against foreign interpretations. But despite psychologists’ endeavors, the political and geographical fragmentation of Republican China troubled the epistemic (...) imperative of uniformity demanded by Euro-American psychometrics and therefore undermined the validity of measurement. Subsequently, the legitimacy of intelligence testing began to be questioned by several influential Chinese psychologists in the late 1920s and 30s. The difficulties in standardization and the hostility within the psychology community formed a vicious cycle, impeding the progress of nationwide testing. Through this history, the article demonstrates not only the elevation of measurement to epistemic authority in modern China, but also how its promise was challenged by a diverse and rapidly changing society. (shrink)

While the movement to ensure patient’s rights to information and informed consent spreads throughout the world, patient rights of this kind have yet to be introduced in mainland China. Nonetheless, China is no different from other parts of the world in that nurses are expected to shoulder the responsibility of safeguarding patients’ best interests and at the same time to uphold their right to information. This paper expounds on the principle of protectiveness grounded in traditional Chinese medical ethics concerning the (...) practice of informed consent. Nurses in China have a moral obligation to treat patients with sincerity. This notion carries a strong sense of parental protectiveness. As far as information-giving is concerned, nurses in China are ambivalent about the notion of truthfulness. The findings of an empirical study undertaken in seven Chinese cities reveal that nurses in China experience similar difficulties related to the disclosure of information as their counterparts in other parts of the world. A nurse’s narrative, the Chan case, is used to illustrate the typical difficult situation that nurses in China often encounter in looking after vulnerable patients who would like to learn more about their therapeutic regimens. The moral tension embedded in nursing practice is analysed. It is found that most nurses would prefer to tell the truth to patients, but their primary ethical justification is not that of respect for patients’ autonomy or safeguarding patients’ right to self-determination. Rather, it is basically beneficent in nature; that is, they base their decision to reveal the truth on whether or not patients will receive more relevant treatment and better nursing care. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractA recent study reported that longevity in Caenorhabditits elegans can be inherited over several generations. This is probably achieved through the following epigenetic mechanism: inherited demethylated histones at some central loci, such as miRNA, transcription factors or signaling regulators affect the expression of certain genes leading to the longevity phenotype.

Although Mencius (fourth century BCE) and Augustine (356–430 CE) were centuries apart with very different philosophical vocabulary and metaphysical outlooks, both thinkers were progressive in their positive assessment of feminism characteristics. They brought the hidden feminine element in their respective traditions to the foreground. Both thinkers emphasize the affective dimension of morality and propose a political philosophy built on love and the family model. Contrary to accepted cultural norms, they repudiated the viewpoint that regards the female body and female gender (...) as merely a means to an end. Strongly opposing the stance of social contractarianism and political realism, they espoused a social-political theory based on a developmental and relational account of human being and embraced a complementary model of cooperation, care, and governance rooted in humaneness and rightness, love and justice. (shrink)

This article analyzes a popular meme that has spread rapidly among Chinese internet users in the last few years, ‘garlic chives’ ( jiucai), as a self-mockery of the bio-economic subject in contemporary China. This metaphor refers to those ordinary Chinese people who are constantly lured to participate in all kinds of economic activities, but whose investments are destined to be consumed by the establishment. Through a close study of this popular meme and the social conditions from which it arises, this (...) article demonstrates two main features of the Chinese economic subject that supports the state’s economic sovereignty: the thriving of self-sufficient and rule-abiding individuals, and the quality of these individuals as hard working and capable of producing wealth on their own. This article offers a critique of PRC’s post-socialist governmentality, and it provides insights about the relation between the biological and the political in our complicated world order. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning of Confucian de 德 in the Book of Rites 《禮記》. Using intertextual discussions with texts supplemented by the Analects《論語》, the Mengzi 《孟子》, and the Xunzi《荀子》, I argue that ritual and virtue are closely interrelated. Without ritual, virtue is raw. Without virtue, ritual is barren. De’s interrelationship with ritual is central to Confucian ethics. Ritual is constitutive for all Confucian virtues. This central thesis coupled with subsequent features such as de’s aesthetic dimension and thick interpersonal relationships (...) demonstrate that the Confucian de has multilayered meanings that cannot be fully captured by either the contemporary concept of virtue or the Aristotelian idea of arête. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo is often regarded as the champion of the doctrine of weakness of the will. John M. Rist in his 1994 'Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized' draws an interesting analogy between Aristotle's 'akrasia' and Augustine's 'concupiscentia'. However, such an analogy without further qualification is defective and misleading because it implies that Augustine commits himself to the notion that since everyone is perpetually akratic and, thus, always morally blameworthy. I argue that, for Augustine, weakness of the will has equivocal meanings (...) and is manifested in four kinds of case--their scope goes far beyond Aristotle's discussion of 'akrasia' in Book Seven of the 'Nicomachean Ethics'. There are, therefore, considerable differences between Aristotle's and Augustine's account of weakness of the will. Consequently, for Augustine, moral responsibility for the moral agent also varies in each of the four cases. (shrink)

After more than three decades of economic reform, is China better off? More importantly, do the Chinese people enjoy a greater sense of well-being? Reflecting on the current state of affairs, Jiwei Ci's Moral China in the Age of Reform is a timely and thought-provoking book.The book is a critique of China's lack of political and moral reform after its economic reform since 1978, detailing Professor Ci's genuine concern for the future of China. His personal experience, as a Chinese who (...) lives and teaches in Hong Kong, lends an additional first-person perspective to a penetrating logical analysis of China's predicament in the postmodern context. In their relentless pursuit of wealth, Ci points out, the people of China... (shrink)

What is philosophy? What is metaphor? Could thinking take place metaphorically? If one follows the mainstream Western definition of philosophy, the answer to the latter question would certainly be negative. Metaphors are perceived as primitive, pre-analytical, and imprecise—thus pre-philosophical! Drawing on multiple cross-cultural resources, Metaphor and Metaphilosophy: Philosophy as Combat, Play, and Aesthetic Experience by Sarah A. Mattice insightfully challenges this widespread assumption in the current...

There has been some controversy about whether or not in the 'Enneads' sensible matter is generated by a higher principle. If not, is sensible matter eternally self-subsisting? If so, what precisely is the manner of its generation? H.-R. Schwyzer argued that sensible matter is not generated because generation implies corruption. Kevin Corrigan, on the contrary, argued not only that sensible matter is generated but also that there are multiple generations of such matter. In this paper, the authors re-examine some key (...) texts and conclude that a careful reading of the 'Enneads' indicates that neither Schwyzer's nor Corrigan's account is plausible. Rather, in the 'Enneads' both intelligible matter and sensible matter are generated by higher principles in the sense that both eternally depend on these higher principles for their existence but not insofar as they have a beginning in time. Moreover, there is exactly one generation of sensible matter rather than multiple generations. (shrink)

Among the many silk manuscripts excavated from Changsha Mawangdui Tomb 3 in Hunan province in the winter of 1973, one text was named Wu xing [by contemporary scholars]. Twenty years later, in the winter of 1993, there was a text [of itself] titled Wu xing among the many bamboo slip texts excavated from Jingmen Guodian Tomb 1 in Hubei.

This paper presents a refreshing new reading of Augustine's view on matter. It argues that Augustine's evolving view on matter from the negative to the positive, from the overly simplistic understanding of matter as something purely physical to a nuanced view of spiritual matter, played an essential role in the Confessions. Matter, in this new understanding, accounts for both space and time. As Augustine matured as a thinker, he saw matter's potentiality also positively as possibility for grace for the embodied (...) self and that which creates the depth of our being. Augustine owed this nuanced view of matter partly to its Plotinian origin but he modified it with his lived experience of faith. (shrink)

The first part of this paper examines the practice of informed treatment decisions in the protective medical system in China today. The second part examines how health care professionals in China perceive and carry out their responsibilities when relaying information to vulnerable patients, based on the findings of an empirical study that I had undertaken to examine the moral experience of nurses in practice situations. In the Chinese medical ethics tradition, refinement [jing] in skills and sincerity [cheng] in relating to (...) patients are two cardinal virtues that health care professionals are required to possess. This notion of absolute sincerity carries a strong sense of parental protectiveness. The empirical findings reveal that most nurses are ambivalent about telling the truth to patients. Truth-telling would become an insincere act if a patient were to lose hope and confidence in life after learning of his or her disease. In this system of protective medical care, it is arguable as to whose interests are being protected: the patient, the family or the hospital. I would suggest that the interests of the hospital and the family members who legitimately represent the patient's interests are being honoured, but at the expense of the patient's right to know. (shrink)

Is a reconciliation possible between Chinese philosophy and woman when taking into account infamous gender-oppressive cultural practices such as foot-binding, concubinage, etc., in premodern Chinese societies? The article tackles the complexity of the subject by calling the readers' attention to texts from Confucian classics that indeed support intellectual equality of the sexes and classless access to education, while noting diverging historical cultural evidences of women's education and their social status in premodern, modern, and postmodern Chinese societies. The article challenges the (...) belief that Confucian philosophy is unequivocally a sexist ideology to be a foregone conclusion. While not intending to exonerate Confucian philosophy from its opponents' charges, the article questions the adequateness of Western liberal feminism as the means to reappropriate Confucian philosophy. It suggests that a more culturally sensitive approach coupling with better historical and contextual analysis would prove to be both helpful and necessary. (shrink)

One INTRODUCTION: IN SEARCH OF THE VOICES OF NURSES IN CHINA Two motives launched this study to search for the voices of nurses in China. ...