Bo Mou

The _History of Chinese Philosophy_ is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Chinese philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide seventeen accessible entries organised into five clear parts: Identity of Chinese Philosophy Classical Chinese Philosophy (I): Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy (II): From _Han_ Through _Tang_ Classical Chinese Philosophy (III): From _Song _Through Early _Qing_ Modern Chinese Philosophy: From Late _Qing _Through 21st Century This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Chinese philosophy, and will be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance this rich and complex philosophical tradition.

This volume is the first encyclopedia of Chinese philosophy that has ever been published in the English speaking world; it is a valuable reference book not only for those students and scholars in the field of Chinese philosophy but also for all philosophers who are interested in broadening their philosophical perspectives and in how some resources in another significant philosophical tradition could jointly contribute to fundamental philosophical concerns and issues. My strategy in this review is this: first, I will highlight a number of prominent features of this reference book at the surface level; and then, after a brief background introduction, I will make some comments on some distinct characteristics of the volume at a deeper level in regard to its editorial strategy and methodological approaches and in view of the relation of Chinese philosophy with Western philosophy.

The purpose of this paper is to present and explain a meta-philosophical methodological framework of how to look at seemingly competing approaches for the sake of cross-tradition understanding and constructive engagement in comparative philosophy in a global context. For this purpose, first, I introduce and explain some relevant conceptual and explanatory resources employed in the framework, especially the distinction between the methodological perspective and the methodological guiding principle, and make some initial methodological points. Second, I suggest six meta-philosophical adequacy conditions for adequate methodological guiding principles, which constitute one core portion of the suggested methodological framework.

In this paper, I suggest an approach to the alleged problem with the Tarskian formal definition of truth: its enumerative character seems to make it unable to capture our pretheoretic general understanding of truth. For this purpose, after spelling out two requirements for extending an enumerative definition to new cases, I examine to what extent Tarski's Convention T provides what are needed for extending the Tarski's enumerative definition. I conclude that, though not explicitly providing what are needed, Convention T does implicitly suggest something quite promising and provide necessary conceptual resources for its further modifications. Then I suggest a Tarskian explicitly general definition of what it is to be a truth-definition on the basis of some theoretical and conceptual resources within Tarski's semantic theory, and I explain how it would make the Tarskian seemingly enumerative formal definition have a general character in accord with our pretheoretic understanding of truth. Finally, I examine the current proposal in comparison with Davidson's approach and in the light of Hintikka's new perspective

In this article, through a comparative analysis of Dewey's and Laozi's relevant accounts, I examine a pragmatic insight concerning moral rules and moral experience to the effect that (i) fixed and formulated moral rules should not be taken as the final absolute moral authority, and (ii) attention needs to be paid to the moral agent's own moral experience that responds to the felt demands in concrete situations. The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding the crucial points of the pragmatic insight and to look at how, in certain complementary ways, Dewey's and Laozi's distinct approaches could contribute to the pragmatic insight and learn from each other. I endeavour to show several points: (1) The pragmatic insight has its distinct metaphysical foundations in Dewey's and Laozi's accounts, whose combination could enhance each other's visions and overcome each other's limitations; (2) Both Dewey and Laozi reject some sharp dualism to look at the nature of moral experience that responds to the felt demands in concrete situations; in so doing, their distinct focuses on different aspects, or developing stages, of such moral experience could be complementarily coordinated into a whole; (3) Their characterisations of the pragmatic insight are also based upon their distinct but related naturalistic perspectives to human moral foundation; Laozi's approach could provide some constructive insight for and due natural limitations on Dewey's account.

In this paper, I give a metaphilosophical analysis of the core idea of deflationism by discussing some basic conceptual and methodological issues involved in the debate between deflationism and substantivism. In so doing, I argue for three positive points. First, the crux of the dispute between deflationism and substantivism is whether or not truth is substantive in its metaphysical nature and in its explanatory role in philosophical enterprises, rather than whether or not a minimal approach regarding conceptual resources is taken to explain truth; a minimal approach itself is philosophically innocent. Second, there is no intrinsic connection between the core idea of deflationism and the Tarski-style equivalence thesis, which is often identified as implying or supporting the former. Third, there are some unbridged fundamental gaps between the core idea of deflationism and various redundancy theses; these redundancy theses cannot be identified as the former, nor can they be used to justify the former on their own.

This book is an inquiry into the philosophical concern with truth as one joint subject in philosophy of language and metaphysics and presents a theory of truth, substantive perspectivism (SP). Emphasizing our basic pre-theoretic understanding of truth (i.e., what is captured by the axiomatic thesis of truth that the nature of truth consists in capturing the way things are), and in the deflationism vs. substantivism debate background, SP argues for the substantive nature of non-linguistic truth and its notion’s indispensable substantive explanatory role, both of which are not only intrinsically beyond what the linguistic function of the truth predicate can tell but are fundamentally related to the raison d’être of the truth predicate. Taking a holistic approach, SP endeavors to do justice to various reasonable perspectives, which are somehow contained in many competing accounts of truth, through a coordinate system: SP interprets such perspectives as distinct but related perspective-elaboration principles that distinctively (regarding distinct dimensions of the truth concern and/or for the sake of distinct purposes) elaborate, but are also unified by, the truth axiom thesis. To look at the issue from a broader vision, the book also takes a cross-tradition approach exploring the relationship between Daoist thinking of truth and thinking about truth in analytic philosophy.This book will enhance our systematic understanding of the issue through its holistic approach, broaden our vision on the issue via its cross-tradition approach, and enrich the conceptual and explanatory resources in treating the issue

The History of Chinese Philosophy is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Chinese philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide seventeen accessible entries organised into five clear parts: Identity of Chinese Philosophy Classical Chinese Philosophy : Pre-Han Period Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Han Through Tang Classical Chinese Philosophy : From Song Through Early Qing Modern Chinese Philosophy: From Late Qing Through 21st Century This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Chinese philosophy, and will be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance this rich and complex philosophical tradition

A concise alphabetic guide to the main concepts,figures, topics and important movements of thought that have shaped Chinesephilosophy over the last three thousand years. The entries are conciselywritten, terms are cross-referenced and transcriptions are typically givenin the pinyin system. Chinese Philosophy A-Z stresses philosophicalrelevance in choosing entries while paying due attention to historical linksbetween relevant ideas and movements of thought. The volume also shows howsome of the central ideas under discussion contribute to the philosophicalenterprise as a whole. The book is aimed at students, teachers ofphilosophy, and educated non-specialists who are interested in Chinesephilosophy, particularly those readers new to Chinese philosophy.

: For the purposes of interpretation and constructive engagement, the structure and content of Confucius' version of the Golden Rule (CGR) is examined by elaborating its three dimensions as suggested in the Analects. It is argued that the CGR, which consists of two intertwined central ideas in Confucius' ethics, shu and zhong, involves three interdependent and complementary dimensions: (1) the methodological (i.e., the methodological aspect of shu), which consists of the principles of reversibility and extensibility; (2) the internal starting point (i.e., the substantial aspect of shu), which somehow points to the fundamental virtue ren and constitutes the internal starting point for applying the methodological principles of the CGR; and (3) the external starting point (i.e., zhong as one's sincere and devoted commitment to those established social constituents specified by the li, regardless of the involved moral recipient's social status), which constitutes the external starting point for applying the methodological principles of the CGR

In this paper, I give a metaphilosophical examination of three major orientations in comparative studies (i.e., historical one, interpretation-concerned one, and philosophical-issue-concerned one) and four 'sins' that are oft-cited in critically evaluating a comparative study, namely over-simplification, over-use of external resources, exaggerated distinction, and blurring assimilation. I argue that the appropriateness of these 'sins' depends on orientations, purposes and methodological approaches in comparative studies and that, in those comparative studies with the interpretation-concerned and philosophicalissue- concerned orientations, due simplification, use of external resources and assimilation are not merely legitimate but also adequate or even necessary. In so doing, I explain how constructive engagement between Chinese and Western philosophy, or, more generally speaking, between different philosophical traditions, is related to contemporary development and resources of philosophy.