ABSTRACTS

FromNormativeTheorytoDiagnosticPractice
Hans Sluga, LI Hua (trans.)

The essay delineates a critique of abstract normative theorizing in ethics and politics by describing an alternative diagnostic practice in philosophy. It sketches the evolution of this practice from Kant through Marx and Nietzsche to Foucault and seeks to identify its distinctive character by comparing and contrasting it to diagnostic practices in medicine. In conclusion, the essay argues that the specific element in a philosophical form of diagnostic practice lies in its concern with the conceptual tools needed in any diagnosis of the present and in its attention to the epistemological limitations inherent in such practice.

OntheReflectiveCharacteristicofHabermas’sConceptofDiscourse
YANG Li-yin

As one of Habermas’s key words, the concept of “discourse” is intensively characteristic of reflection through language. Firstly, the contents of discourse reflect the three worlds which are the objective world, the social world and the subjective world Habermas has divided. Secondly, the success of discourse requires the subject of discourse to have some fundamental capability of reflection, such as the capability of reflecting the lifeworld, the basic capability of speech understanding and the ability of creating the meaning of life. At last, there are two results after the reflecting: if the discourse reflects all the three worlds, a consensus will be achieved; if not, the discourse will fail. This kind of “discourse” doesn’t break away from but develops the traditional theory of reflection.

DoesPlotinushaveanOntologyBasedonHypostasis?
CHEN Yue-hua

It has long been debated that whether the One, Intellect and Soul in Plotinus’s philosophy are so-called “hypostases”, and whether Plotinus has an ontology based on “hypostasis”. Through some textual analysis, this article aims to clarify that “hypostasis” is not a special term of Plotinus but has become a special concept through other Neo-Platonists and Christian Theology of Trinity. “Hypostasis” has various meanings and usages which should be distinguished according to the context. In Enneads, it mainly refers to comparatively independent substance or substantial existence. The One and the other two are more appropriate to be put into the category of “principle” in the sense of traditional Greek philosophy. They construct the explanatory cores of Plotinus’s ontology.

DoubleFaciesofCartesianCogito:Descartes’ “WillinJudgment”
MAO Zhu

InMeditationsonFirstPhilosophy, Descartes developed his arguments through hyperbolic doubt. With this new method in searching for clear and distinct knowledge, Descartes grounded early modern philosophy with the awakening Ego, which was intended to solve the “old opinions” of the existence of God and the material world. According to Descartes, the arguments in the first two meditations were said to be unfolded according to the order of reason. This paper, however, will expound how exactly Descartes defined his new subject, the “Ego Cogito”. Starting from a discussion of the problems of the will in Descartes’rescogitans, it will try to unveil the voluntaristic factors in Descartes’sCogito, and provide a different viewpoint from the wild-accepted opinion that Descartes is a prototype of the early modern rationalist.

ACriticalCommentaryonZhuXi’sCorrectionstoTheBookofFilialPiety
TANG Wen-ming

InCorrectionstoTheBookofFilialPiety, Zhu Xi tries to fitTheBookofFilialPietyinto his system of Four Books Studies. It is a great success due to its later influence. Yet, Zhu Xi’s interpretation ofTheBookofFilialPietydoes not always hold water due to his deviation from the implications ofTheBookofFilialPiety. The thesis tries to characterize Zhu Xi’s critique and affirmation ofTheBookofFilialPietythrough a textual analysis, clarify the stance of Zhu Xi’s argumentation, and then revaluate Zhu Xi’s view ofTheBookofFilialPietyin a new perspective which integrates the system of Four Books with the system of Six Classics.

DeitiesandSacrificialRitesinHanshiwaizhuanEssays
MENG Qing-nan

HanshiwaizhuanEssaysinherited to some extent the belief in deities formed in the Pre-Qin period and held that the deities withHeavenorHeavenlyGodas the head intervened in people’s production and life, following the principle of rewarding the good and punishing the evil. However,HanshiwaizhuanEssaysalso gave a telepathic elaboration of the interaction betweenHeavenand man to weaken the power and the will of deities, and at the same time introduced the theory ofyinandyangas a new basis of this principle. This contradictory attitude is reflected in the understanding of sacrificial rites.HanshiwaizhuanEssayson the one hand recognized the role of sacrificial rites in pleasing deities, and on the other hand asserted that sacrificial rites helped to maintain the feelings integral to the established proprieties.

TimeConsciousnessinTheBookofSongs
XU Di

Time consciousness inTheBookofSongsfinds expression firstly in the form of daily life, secondly, it embodies human understanding of life and expression of emotions, and thirdly, the people in the Zhou Dynasty extended their personal life beyond reality. Thus, their concern with time was extended to political destiny, fate and former sovereigns. Therefore, their understanding of political destiny and personal fate was integrated with the recounting of the former sovereigns’ virtues, which was an elucidation of time consciousness from the perspective of life and history as well as an inevitable reflection of the ancient religious ideas.

ABriefAnalysisofSchleiermacher’sPhilosophicalEthics
ZHANG Yun-tao

Schleiermacher’s philosophical ethics, which is essentially a philosophy of culture or philosophy of history, mainly deals with the interaction between reason with its characteristics of universality and particularity and nature as well as Good as its results. Although it is apparently formalistic, lacking in contents, it shows the initiative, sociability, historicality and transcendence of self-existence, and determines the relations among God, the world and the self, the relations among individual cultivation and the Other, community and communication, the relations among feelings, cognition and the will, which helps lay a solid foundation for his theology and hermeneutics.

YuefuTraditioninAncientChineseNarrativePoetry
XIN Xiao-juan

In the ancient Chinese narrative poetry, the tradition ofTheBookofSongsand that of Yuefu influenced each other but they were different. Yuefu narrative poems emerged from the folk tradition, and emphasized more on plot construction, fictional features and entertainment. The imitations by the Wei-Jin poets as well as Du Fu's narrative poetry and the works of Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi, are all the indispensable links of Yuefu narrative tradition, and have exerted a far-reaching influence on the narrative poems after the Tang Dynasty.

SubversionandReconstructionoftheNostalgicComplexinClassicalChineseFictions
LI Meng-yun

In the history of Chinese literature, poets wrote numerous home-related works with the feature of over-idealizing the home-returning trip because of a strong nostalgic complex plus an arduous home-returning trip. In contrast, Chinese novelists in ancient times described the complexity of the home-returning trip with various adventures though they still had a fairly strong nostalgic complex. This paper focuses on the home-returning stories in classical Chinese fictions, reveals the cultural implications of “home-returning” in the traditional Chinese context, and explores the possibility and methodology of interdisciplinary studies on classical Chinese fictions.

EvolutionoftheTypesofMetaphorinthePoemsoftheNorthSongDynasty
ZHANG Yi-nan

Types of metaphor are an efficient tool for revealing the evolution of aesthetic criteria for poetry. This study reveals that the artificialization in the evolution of the types of metaphor in the poems of the North Song Dynasty was more obvious that that of the Tang Dynasty. There were three stages in this evolution similar to the evolution of the poems of the Tang Dynasty. The first stage and the last stage were quite similar to the previous trend while the middle stage experienced some transformation which found expression in the parallel development of the mode of clear artificialization and the naturalistic mode. Poets of this period like Wang Yuchen, members of Xikun School, Ouyang Xiu, Mei Yaocheng, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, Chen Yuyi and Chen Shidao were free to choose their own aesthetic criteria, explored various techniques independently and created new types of metaphor with rich implications, which revealed the solid poetic foundation and various styles of the North Song Dynasty.

OnSocializedServiceofChina’sGrainProductionfromtheDemandPerspective
QIU Xu & LUO Guang-qiang

The evolution of grain production modes has promoted farmers’ demand for better socialized service for grain production while the demand for more socialized service of grain production has in turn improved the existing grain production modes. Due to different regions and individual differences, farmers have both similar and different demands for socialized service. This paper analyzes the the existing problems of socialized service for China’s grain production from the demand perspective and brings up some proposals for the construction of socialized service system, the reasonable management scale, the development of rural education and other projects, which should have much significance to the further development of China’s socialized service for agriculture.

BasicStructuralElementsofCollegeCulturalQualities
WANG Xiang-hong

This paper discusses the role of the basic structural elements in promoting college cultural qualities. These elements include material culture, behavior culture, institutional culture and spiritual culture, and they are both related and interdependent with their own features. They combine to form a special campus culture and promote the overall college development through creative activities.