Chung-Ying Cheng

In the Fall 1973 issue of Chinese Studies in Philosophy we presented translations of some selected writings of Professor T'ang Chün-i, whose Confucianistic-Humanistic philosophy is well known in Asia and beginning to be appreciated in this country. In this sequel to that issue we present Professor T'ang's expositions of his thoughts on the reconstruction of the humanistic spirit, on the development of the Chinese humanistic spirit, as well as on the relation between cultural consciousness and moral reason. In these writings Professor T'ang argues that a universal religion can be founded on the moral conscience of man and that specifically it can be founded on the moral nature or mind of man as understood by Confucianism. He also presents his critique of some Western and Buddhistic philosophical doctrines or views in a framework of distinctions between the proper humanistic thought on the one hand and the super-, non-, and subhumanistic thoughts on the other.

In this issue we present discussions on aesthetic questions (such as beauty, sense of beauty, and the nature and purpose of art and literature) which took place in the People's Republic of China during its first decade. These discussions concentrate on criticisms of the original and revised positions of Chu Kuang-ch'ien, the renowned aesthetician and art critic at Peking University. Although Chu has relinquished his old Crocean view regarding beauty and art, he has frankly indicated that he cannot accept a purely materialistic account of beauty as an independent objective material quality, and this is the basis for criticism of his revised position. Despite there being no definite conclusions reached, directions toward the socialist popularist aesthetic ideology of later decades can be vaguely detected in these discussions.

The _Journal of Chinese Philosophy_ initiates this volume on the origins of philosophy and their relations in philosophical languages, be it Chinese or Greek or European as not merely derived from the Greek. Given this understanding we see how a philosophical issue could be discussed significantly from both the European-Western position and the Chinese perspective. Each position and perspective embodies a different historicity and viewpoint as experienced in the vision and pursuit of reality and humanity. The contrast between the European and Chinese traditions of philosophy is impressive and yet mutually stimulating as shown in the works of Heidegger and post-Heideggerian authors. The authors of this book illustrate how the European-Western and Chinese approaches could be complementary and yet together could be philosophically insight-productive.

There are two aspects of the hermeneutic: the receptive and the creative. The receptive of the hermeneutic consists in coming to know and acknowledge what has happened, observing what there is as historically effected, foretelling what will happen as a matter of projection of future possibilities, and disclosing / discovering transcendental conditions, fore-structures or horizons of human understanding and interpretation; the creative of the hermeneutic, on the other hand, consists in realizing and demonstrating human sensibilities and human capabilities and needs, conceptualizing what is factual and real based on human cognitive and volitional faculties and experiences, developing values and pursuing regulative ideals of actions, and searching for best possible ways or methods to reach for individual and communal end-goals which will enhance human beings as autonomous entities and moral agents in the world. The receptive is represented by the phenomenological approach to Being and reality whereas the creative is conveyed by an ontology of reflection of human being for self-definition and self-cultivation of human faculties. This amounts to bringing out an existing distinction between ming (what is imparted) and li (the presupposed ground) on the one hand and xing ( human potentiality for being in oneself) and xin (human understanding and interpretation toward action) on the other in the tradition of Confucian metaphysics.Next, I shall focus on Heidegger and Gadamer as taking ontological receptivity (as a matter of fore-structures of Being or Language of human understanding) as the source of meaning of existence and meaningfulness of texts. Th ere are of course creative elements to be identifi ed with forming investigative projects of the Dasein for disclosing truth of the Being, but the main tone is to realize the Being or Language as base structures of our hermeneutic consciousness or hermeneutic space of understanding. Because of spacelimitation, however, I shall leave to another occasion the discussion of the creative formation and positive projection of a transformative cosmological philosophy in the Yijing tradition as represented in my onto-hermeneutics which takes experiences of ≫comprehensive observation≪ (guan) and ≫feeling- refl ection≪ (gan) as two avenues toward human understanding and hermeneutic enterprise of interpretation.

In the history of Chinese and European philosophy, metaphysics has played an outstanding role: it is a theoretical framework which provides the basis for a philosophical understanding of the world and the self. A theory of the self is well integrated in a metaphysical understanding of the totality of nature as a dynamic process of continuous changes. According to this view, the purpose of existence can be conceived of as the development and realization of the full potential given to the individual by its nature. In regard to human nature specifically, this idea of self-realization includes the development of all cognitive faculties as well as of the moral character. Metaphysics has, however, suffered a loss of importance in current debates, especially in ethics. As a result, we observe the emergence of such philosophical views as moral skepticism and even nihilism. The consequence of this tendency has been the renunciation of a claim to understanding and to providing a solid ground for ethics. Yet an intercultural dialogue can provide us with some hope as the consolidation of debates on crucial topics of our traditions might indeed serve as the basis for a more powerful philosophy in the future

This paper is motivated by a question of naturalized epistemology of W. V. Quine and the question is how a naturalistic account gives rise to theoretical understanding with its realistic ontology. I concentrate on the possibility of the principle of reification by way of interpretation and the point is how we interpret interpretation in a naturalistic account. First, we must distinguish between Quine and Carnap based upon the distinction of interpretation versus reduction. Second, we should take seriously the function of observation and the consequent interpretation with regard to reality and ontological understanding. This article also exams the positions of Descartes, Kant and recent philosophers Gadamer and Davidson. In doing so, some test cases of interpretation analyze in particular the case of “anomalous monism”. Finally, this paper makes effort to focus on quantum mechanics as an object of naturalistic interpretation, although it is itself a naturalistic interpretation of classical physics and relativity based upon observation of new features of reality. In conclusion, the Yijing philosophy of change is cited as a possible, useful and meaningful interpretation of quantum mechanics just as quantum mechanics could be a useful and meaningful interpretation of the Yijing’s onto-cosmology (which theory I had established two decades ago).

In The Philosophy of Change, the distinguished scholar of Chinese philosophy Chung-ying Cheng advances our understanding of the Yijing by analyzing its philosophy in comparison to Western philosophical traditions. Cheng focuses on critically comparing philosophies of science, religion, and metaphysics in Leibniz, Whitehead, Neville, and Cobb alongside classical Chinese views on reality, divinity, knowledge, and morality. The book begins and ends with questions related to the character of Chinese metaphysical traditions, which contrast with the mainline metaphysical traditions found in Western Europe and North America. Cheng argues throughout the book that the philosophical underpinnings of basic concepts in Chinese culture are ultimately rooted in key claims found within the Yijing 易經 and one of its standard commentaries, the Yizhuan 易傳. The book serves as a complementary volume to the author's previous book, The Primary Way: Philosophy of the Yijing, which lays out a comprehensive and systematic philosophy based on the symbolism and text of the classical document and its traditional commentaries.

Three basic questions regarding ethics and religion are explicitly raised by Kierkegaard; he offers his own answers to those questions. Since these three questions deal with basic issues of the meaning and purpose of human existence, they point to both theoretical and practical concerns which Confucianism also addresses. In addition, these questions provoke a Confucian response concerning the origin, nature and the goal of human existence. In this contrastive inquiry I present a polaristic approach which enhances the importance and significance of both Kierkegaardian and Confucian perspectives, posing a timely question of choice and decision for contemporary human persons.

Kant has attempted to develop a foundation of his metaphysics of morals and this foundation ultimately turns out to be a religious one. Consequently, the question for Kant is whether morality also provides a practical foundation for independent religious faith. In contrast, we see Confucianism as providing a system of morality which has its own religiousness or sense of ultimateness in terms of a robust form of moral life and its practice of li 禮 and reflective thinking on humanity. In this article, I wish to present these two forms of moral thinking which can be respectively titled moral theology and onto-ethics. A relative evaluation shows how a world morality could be consistent or justified within one's own religious tradition and yet can be and should be open to a common people humanity we experience as couched in an open cosmos we observe.

This article, from my onto-generative and onto-hermeneutic theories, will explore how Confucian virtue ethics could be modernized and globalized by answering challenges of civic duties, human rights, policy planning and decisionmaking regarding social and communal development with considerations of maximal sustainable goodness or benefits to both individual and groups. In doing so, we come to recognize the multifunctional potency of Confucian virtues in meeting modern and postmodern needs and demands in a complicated global-local environment, and see how this development of civic and other kinds of virtues form a unifying foundation for the justification, discovery and sustainable source of insights and motivations for vital action.