The earliest Analects yet discovered, this work provides us with a new perspective on the central canonical text that has defined Chinese culture--and clearly illuminates the spirit and values of Confucius.

Professor Roger T. Ames is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i, Manoa. The following is a short excerpt from an interview with Professor Ames that took place on the eve of 2009 PESA Conference, December 1, 2009. Heesoon Bai, Editor of Paideusis, accompanied by Avraham Cohen, interviewed Professor Ames in his office.

Composed more than 2,000 years ago during a turbulent period of Chinese history, the Dao de jing set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Daoism, as this subtle but enduring philosophy came to be known, offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary. Now in this luminous new translation, based on the recently discovered ancient bamboo scrolls, China scholars Roger T. Ames (...) and David L. Hall bring the timeless wisdom of the Dao de jing into our contemporary world. Though attributed to Laozi, “the Old Master,” the Dao de jing is, in fact, of unknown authorship and may well have originated in an oral tradition four hundred years before the time of Christ. Eschewing philosophical dogma, the Dao de jing set forth a series of maxims that outlined a new perspective on reality and invited readers to embark on a regimen of self-cultivation. In the Daoist world view, each particular element in our experience sends out an endless series of ripples throughout the cosmos. The unstated goal of the Dao de jing is self-transformation–the attainment of personal excellence that flows from the world and back into it. Responding to the teachings of Confucius, the Dao de jing revitalizes moral behavior by recommending a spontaneity made possible by the cultivated “habits” of the individual. In this elegant volume, Ames and Hall feature the original Chinese texts of the Dao de jing and translate them into crisp, chiseled English that reads like poetry. Each of the eighty-one brief chapters is followed by clear, thought-provoking commentary exploring the layers of meaning in the text. The book’s extensive introduction is a model of accessible scholarship in which Ames and Hall consider the origin of the text, place the emergence of Daoist philosophy in its historical and political context, and outline its central tenets. The Dao de jing is a work of timeless wisdom and beauty, as vital today as it was in ancient China. This new version will stand as both a compelling introduction to the complexities of Daoist thought and as the classic modern English translation. (shrink)

Phronesis is essential for good decision‐making and actions. This literature review shows how phronesis has been discussed and related to elements of the field of administration and organizations. A search in the database systems Scopus, EBSCO, Web of Science, and Scielo, based on eligibility criteria, resulted in 43 theoretical and 14 empirical works. The analysis of these studies showed the most significant empirical contributions, the most cited authors, methods, journals, and central themes addressed in studies on phronesis to understand ethics (...) in business. From a virtue ethics perspective, we discuss the major theoretical and empirical contributions, as well as the implications of a restricted understanding of phronesis when it is treated apart from other elements of the virtue ethics framework. We present a synthesis of the concepts of phronesis, based on dimensions of magnitude and amplitude of the conceptions, ranging from formal to substantive phronesis, and covering individual, organizational, or societal levels of analysis. We argue that a substantive conception of phronesis within virtue ethics may improve our understanding of ethics because it assumes the interdependence of phronesis and moral virtues, integral anthropology, and the common good. We present a future research agenda, considering the study's limitations and findings. (shrink)

The classical Greeks give us a substance ontology grounded in ‘being qua being’ or ‘being per se’ (to on he on) that guarantees a permanent and unchanging subject as the substratum for the human experience. With the combination of eidos and telos as the formal and final cause of independent things such as persons, this ‘substance’ necessarily persists through change. This substratum or essence includes its purpose for being, and is defining of the ‘what-it-means-to-be-a-thing-of-this-kind’ of any particular thing in setting (...) a closed, exclusive boundary and the strict identity necessary for it to be this, and not that.In the Yijing 易經 or Book of Changes we find a vocabulary that makes explicit cosmological assumptions that are a stark alternative to this substance ontology, and provides the interpretive context for the Confucian canons by locating them within a holistic, organic, and ecological worldview. To provide a meaningful contrast with this fundamental assumption of on or ‘being’ we might borrow the Greek notion of zoe or ‘life’ and create the neologism ‘zoe-tology’ as ‘the art of living’. This cosmology begins from ‘living’ (sheng 生) itself as the motive force behind change, and gives us a world of boundless ‘becomings’: not ‘things’ that are, but ‘events’ that are happening, a contrast between an ontological conception of the human ‘being’ and a process conception of what I will call human ‘becomings’. (shrink)

The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to (...) live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays presented here constitute an attempt by a distinguished community of international scholars to provide a variety of exegeses of one of the Zhuangzi's most frequently rehearsed anecdotes, often referred to as "the Happy Fish debate." The editors have brought together essays from the broadest possible compass of scholarship, offering interpretations that range from formal logic to alternative epistemologies to transcendental mysticism. Many were commissioned by the editors and appear for the first time. Some of them have been available in other languages—Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish—and were translated especially for this anthology. And several older essays were chosen for the quality and variety of their arguments, formulated over years of engagement by their authors. All, however, demonstrate that the Zhuangzi as a text and as a philosophy is never one thing; indeed, it has always been and continues to be, many different things to many different people. (shrink)

Offers an in-depth exposition of the Confucian conception of persons as the starting point of Confucian ethics.

Philosophers on Education offers us the most comprehensive available history of philosopher's views and impacts on the directions of education. As Amelie Rorty explains, in describing a history of education, we are essentially describing and gaining the clearest understanding of the issues that presently concern and divide us. The essays in this stellar collection are written by some of the finest comtemporary philosophers. Those interested in history of philosophy, epistemology, moral psychology and education, and political theory will find Philosophers on (...) Education to be both an engaging and fascinating read. (shrink)

Ames shows that Zen has been present in America all along, though not by the name.

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.

This book broadens the inquiry into emotion to comprehend a comparative cultural outlook. It begins with an overview of recent work in the West, and then proceeds to the main business of scrutinizing various relevant issues from both Asian and comparative perspectives. Original essays by experts in the field. Finally, Robert Solomon comments and summarizes.

Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China, has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or (...) lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the "idea" of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey's "idea" of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a "Confucian democracy." Just as Dewey's "idea" of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi's Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process "starting here and going there" through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe objective of this module is to inform you on issues of concern for Research Ethics Committee members and investigators during the review process. The many guidelines on research ethics, including those from the South African Department of Health and the World Health Organisation, will be referred to extensively to educate you on the requirements of Research Ethics Committees. The evolution of the review process in South Africa will be detailed.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Impact of Fingarette’s Confucius: The Secular as Sacred on Confucian StudiesRoger T. Ames (bio)Confucius: The Secular as Sacred. By Herbert Fingarette. Hannacroix: Apocryphile Press, 2023.Writing a review of this Apocryphile Press edition of Herb Fingarette’s 1972 publication of Confucius: Secular as Sacred with its new preface by my good friend Michael Nylan is deeply personal. Like Michael and the several other distinguished scholars who have written their endorsements (...) for this new reprint, this occasion gives me a long moment to reflect on how this little book has changed my life. The project has also given me a reason to go back and reread the review of this book written by my longtime friend and collaborator, Henry Rosemont, Jr., published almost 50 years ago in Philosophy East and West.My first memory is of Herb Fingarette himself. I met this gentleman, and gentle he was, early on in my tenure at the University of Hawai‘i when Herb, always accompanied by Leslie, would make regular visits to participate in our public lectures and conferences. I always marveled at how in his presentations he would begin from some seemingly simple and offhand fact about our everyday lives. He would then quite masterfully take this ordinary detail and, through a series of incrementally insightful reflections and then again through his sensitive responses to the questions raised by his audience, elevate the discussion to become an extraordinarily memorable event. I remember well how this seasoned teacher always began the question session by calling upon the graduate students, leaving his eager professional colleagues to wait their turn. And then, with the rigor and impeccable logic of the best kind of analytical philosopher, he would gently and always smilingly, win everyone over to his conclusions.When Herb retired from Santa Barbara, he was adamant that he was retired, and in spite of the many efforts we made to draw him back into the circuit, he would have none of it. My only success in my numerous attempts to corral him was in persuading him to write a chapter for a Festschrift I edited celebrating the career of a philosopher much in his own mold as an independent thinker, my colleague Eliot Deutsch. [End Page 516]Even though Herb’s withdrawal from professional events was unequivocal, he was always available for a Reuben sandwich and a good conversation. Over the ensuing years that saw a clear-headed and always happy Herb carry on until a few years short of his centenary, I would sometimes accompany Rosemont in his regular pilgrimages to sojourn with his best Berkeley friends, which included, along with Herb, David Keightley, Huston Smith, and of course, Michael Nylan.Turning then from the large-souled man to the little book that changed the world of Confucian studies, to say that it was not well received is an understatement. When this monograph published by HarperCollins, a trade press, first appeared in the bookstores, whispers ran through the sinological community about how this pretender had the temerity to engage a canonical text well beyond his reach. Without proper philological training, he was actually challenging what we all know to be the proper translations of important Chinese terms. Again, Herb’s philosophical colleagues who were baffled by his efforts to engage Chinese philosophy as philosophy, also had his number, and it was not a high one.As Rosemont pointed out in both a critical, and to my knowledge, the first truly appreciative review of Fingarette’s commentary on the Analects (a feature review that in its pages would constitute a goodly portion of Fingarette’s 79-page book), what made this book an important inflection point for Confucian studies is that a rigorously trained philosopher was writing a philosophical and philological exegesis on what he deemed a philosophically profound text. Even for Fingarette who was himself initially nonplussed by the idea that the Analects was good philosophy, it took a careful reading and an open mind to fathom both the depth and the worth of the Analects for reflecting on our lives as they are lived today.It is a commonplace that we often do not appreciate those teachers who have influenced... (shrink)

In his Introduction to The Encyclopaedia Logic, G.W.F. Hegel reflects at great length upon the question “Where does philosophy begin? Where does the inquiry start?” And in this reverie, he concludes that because philosophy “does not have a beginning in the sense of the other sciences” it must be the case that “the beginning only has a relation to the subject who takes the decision to philosophise.”1 For Hegel himself, it is the ultimate project of such philosophizing to bring this (...) person—the finite spirit, the single intellect, the philosopher—into identity with God as the object of pure thinking. And it is also for Hegel that, like Confucianism, persons are not facts but achievements... (shrink)

ABSTRACTSince 2010, there have been series of discussions by stakeholders to revamp Ghana’s current juvenile justice system to make it more relevant and sustainable within Ghana’s domestic context....

The problems of environmental ethics are so basic that the exploration of an alternative metaphysics or attendant ethical theory is not a sufficiently radical solution. In fact, the assumptions entailed in adefinition of systematic philosophy that gives us a tradition of metaphysics might themselves be the source of the current crisis. We might need to revision the responsibilities of the philosopher and think in terms of the artist rather than the “scientific of first principles.” Taoism proceeds from art rather than (...) science, and produces an ars contextualis: generalizations drawn from human experience in the most basic processes of making aperson, making a community and making a world. This idea of an “aesthetic cosmology” is one basis for redefining the nature of the relatedness that obtains between particular and world-between tao and te. (shrink)

Alterity is in danger. It is a masterpiece in peril, an object lost or missing from our system, from the system of artificial intelligence and the system of communication in general.--from Radical AlterityWhere is the Other today? Can Otherness challenge our arrogant, insular cultural narcissism? From artificial intelligence to the streets of Venice, from early explorers to contemporary photographers, Jean Baudrillard and Marc Guillaume discuss the traces of radical alterity in our world. These provocative seminars, held in 1990 and 1991, (...) follow the multiple, intertwined trajectories first projected in Baudrillard's work and his reading of the "radical exoticism" posited by Victor Segalen--ideas Baudrillard extends into the realms of mass media, pseudonyms, technology, and that illusorily close yet radically foreign "primitive society of the future," America. In a world where no corner is unexplored, the Other remains a challenge to thought, a crack in the shell of universal understanding, impossible to communicate but potentially the linchpin of communication itself. Together, Baudrillard and Guillaume explore the threatened and fatal figures of radical alterity. This collection is no longer available in French, and this English edition includes an additional essay by Baudrillard, "Because Illusion and Reality Are Not Opposed."Jean Baudrillard will be remembered as one of the most provocative and renowned social theorists of the twentieth century. Economist and professor at the Université de Paris-Dauphine, Marc Guillaume has published several works in French rethinking contemporary socioeconomics and has collaborated with such thinkers as Jacques Derrida and Jacques Attali. (shrink)

En este artículo se cuestiona si el arte, y el objeto estético en general (lo bello) puede ser pensado desde la perspectiva de la nueva corriente filosófica del realismo especulativo. El asunto es enfocado bajo una doble perspectiva: lo que sería una concepción ontológica de lo estética y lo que sería una concepción estética de la ontología. Sólo bajo este doble enfoque es posible responder al desafío que lo estético plantea al pensamiento ontológico en general.