This volume offers a comprehensive overview of the status of the Buddhist tradition in a contemporary and global context. Buddhist experts from several Asian and Western nations address a number of ethical problems from the Buddhist perspective, including medical and environmental ethics, feminism, the social impacts of materialism, and ethnic minorities. All major schools of Buddhism are represented--Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana--as well as a variety of sects such as Ch'an/Zen, Lojong, and Pure Land.

Everybody knows that the Revolution of 1911 was an anti-imperialist and antifeudal democratic revolution led by the revolutionary and democratic group of the bourgeoisie in the period of the old democratic revolution in China. The leader of that revolution was Sun Yat-sen, and the guiding ideology was his old Three People's Principles. It is well known that Chairman Mao has made a series of scientific appraisals of these facts, but the newspapers and magazines controlled by the anti-Party clique of Wang (...) Hung-wen, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, Chiang Ch'ing and Yao Wen-yuan openly oppose Chairman Mao's scientific appraisals, betraying the fundamental principles of Marxism, distorting the Revolution of 1911 as a struggle between Confucians and Legalists, and replacing Sun Yat-sen as the standard-bearer of the revolution with Chang T'ai-yen, who played first an active and then a devastating role in the revolution. All this is part of the clique's attack on the Party in order to usurp the Party, seize power, restore capitalism and fabricate the "history" of the struggle between the Confucians and the Legalists. (shrink)

This book explains the general intellectual climate of the early Ch'ing period, and the political and cultural characteristics of the Ch'ing regime at the time. Professor Huang brings to life the book's central characters, Li Fu and the three great emperors - K'ang-hsi, Yung-cheng, and Chien-lung - whom he served. Although the author's main concern is to explain the contributions of Li Fu to the Lu-Wang school of Confucianism, he also gives a clearly written account of the Lu-Wang and Ch'eng-Chu (...) schools from the twelfth century to the eighteenth. In a clear, succinct style, Huang explains the historical differences between the Ch'eng-Chu and Lu-Wang schools without sacrificing the subtleties of either. The book culminates in a discussion of the hero-emperor K'ang-hsi's appropriation of the 'Tradition of the Way' from his intellectual officials, which denied them their traditional role as moral censors and critics of the emperor's exercise of authority. (shrink)

Hsiin Yiieh's Shen-chien is one of the four major philosophical works that have survived from the later Han dynasty. Presented here for Western readers is an English translation by Ch'i-ytin Ch'en of the entire work, supplemented with selections of Hsiin Yiieh's other essays. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books (...) while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

RésuméSi on la compare avec l’habituelle coercition infligée au condamné à mort dans le monde romain, la peine réservée au parricide ne manque pas de surprendre par son originalité. Le coupable est chaussé de sabots de bois, sa tête est ensuite recouverte d’une cagoule en peau de loup et il sera ensuite flagellé à l’aide de verges sanguines. Pour finir, le contrevenant prend place dans un sac de cuir qui sera cousu après l’intromission d’un bestiaire composé d’un chien, d’un coq, (...) d’une vipère et d’un singe d’après la description donnée par Modestin au Digeste 48.9.9 pr., ceci avant que l’ensemble ne soit jeté à l’eau. Même si la symbolique précise de chaque élément est difficile à saisir en raison de leur origine diffuse, car issue de l’imagination populaire mêlée à divers substrats religieux imbriqués, cette procédure punitive forme un tout cohérent qui ne constitue pas un châtiment politisé au sens strict, c’est-à-dire déployé dans le cadre juridique de la cité. La justice humaine se borne surtout à établir la faute gravissime incombant au contrevenant, laquelle remet en cause le socle de l’organisation romaine, ainsi qu’à préparer son rejet total de la communauté humaine et du droit qui y standardise les rapports. En ce sens, l’homme se garde de donner directement la mort au parricide et la procédure d’expulsion n’est pas sans rappeler celle d’autres individus dits «monstrueux» parce que frappés d’anormalité physique, notamment sexuelle, car ceux-ci remettaient en cause le principe même de l’existence sociale. Cette priorité absolue que constitue la sauvegarde du groupe social dans le traitement du crime a pu servir de point d’ancrage à certaines positions contemporaines qui commandent d’extraire le contrevenant de l’ordre légal, afin de traiter efficacement un acte considéré comme abominable dans l’absolu. C’est l’exemple de la théorie du droit pénal de l’ennemi dont les lointaines racines peuvent être repérées dans les procédés d’expulsions socio-juridiques qui trouvaient à se déployer dans l’Antiquité romaine. (shrink)

Yen Fu was one of the four representatives who looked to the West for truth before the birth of the Chinese Communist Party. Our research on his life and work is still insufficient. Needless to say, both Yen Fu and Lin Shu were known as famous translators in pre-Liberation days. But Lin Shu cannot be equated with Yen Fu, insofar as their ideological and academic achievements and their contributions to modern China are concerned. From the post-Liberation days to the eve (...) of the Great Cultural Revolution, research works on Yen Fu remained scanty and he was seldom mentioned in articles on the advanced models among modern Chinese thinkers. More articles on Yen Fu appeared during the Criticize-Lin, Criticize-Confucius Campaign because Yen Fu had been mentioned by Chairman Mao. But the "Gang of Four" openly defied Chairman Mao's explicit direction by tampering with modern Chinese history, fabricating the struggle between the Confucians and the Legalists and describing Yen Fu as a Legalist. Chairman Mao pointed out: "Before the May Fourth movement, the struggle on the Chinese cultural front was one between the new bourgeois culture and the old feudal culture, and the antagonisms between modern schools and imperial examinations, between the new learning and the old learning and between Western thought and Chinese thought were all of the same nature." But, in the articles by Liang Hsiao and Lo Ssu-ting, all this has been described as the struggle between Legalists and Confucians and between Legalism and Confucianism. Thus, Chang Tai-yen, not Sun Yat-sen, is regarded as a bourgeois revolutionary and "Legalist." Yen Fu, not the "Confucian" K'ang Yu-wei, is treated as a representative of the bourgeois Reformists. This attitude has caused serious theoretical, ideological and academic chaos. We should do away with the chaos, conduct a thorough criticism of the "Gang of Four" and push forward our academic research work in accordance with the principle of "letting a hundred schools of thought contend.". (shrink)