Xinyan Jiang

The yin yang model of thinking is most essential to the Chinese cosmology, ontology and outlook on life. This paper is a systematic discussion of such a dialectical way of thinking and its significance. It starts with investigating the origin and the meaning of terms “yin” and “yang”, and explains the later developed yin yang doctrine; it then shows how greatly and profoundly the yin yang model of thinking has influenced Chinese philosophy and Chinese character. It concludes that Chinese naturalistic, dialectical, and optimistic attitudes toward the world and life are all based on the yin yang model of thinking and that the yin yang doctrine is the starting point for anyone to understand Chinese people and their philosophies

In the universe, there are countless pairs of opposites. In Chinese philosophy, there are general names for these opposites, i.e., yin and yang. In this paper I argue that the unity of opposites is a theme common to Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, and Laozi, the best known Daoist. More specifically, I argue that both Heraclitus and Laozi believe the following: 1) opposites produce and depend on each other, without one there can’t be another; 2) each thing in the universe consists of opposites and is a unity of opposites, there is nothing that is absolutely one-sided; 3) the conflict between opposites changes everything and makes new things possible. Nothing is at rest and new beings constantly come to exist, since there is constant struggle between opposites. As far as their views on the unity of opposites are concerned, Heraclitus’s and Laozi’s philosophies are extremely similar.

This paper discusses some paradoxical propositions in Chinese tradition, especially the School of Names. It not only explains what Chinese philosophers mean by these propositions and why there are such paradoxes in Chinese philosophy, but also makes an attempt to formulate these paradoxical propositions in the language of symbolic logic. Meanwhile, the paper makes a comparison between Chinese views about contradiction and Aristotle?s law ot non?contradiction and explores the relation between them. It comes to the conclusion that once the difference between Chinese concept of contraries and Aristotle?s is made clear, inconsistency between Chinese paradoxial propositions and Aristotle?s. law of non-contradiction disappears

Moral Perception is the moral agent’s perception of the morally significant situation. In recent decades, the question about the role of moral perception in the moral life has drawn more and more attention in contemporary ethical theories. It has been widely acknowledged that the virtuous person perceives a given morally significant situation differently from others. But, current discussions of moral perception have been focused on the cognitive function of moral perception i.e., moral perception's making a certain feature of a given situation salient for the agent, but there is not much that has been said about the evaluative nature of moral perception, i.e., moral perception's offering the agent a certain evaluation of the saliently perceived feature of a given situation. This paper is intended to show that moral perception has both cognitive and evaluative dimensions. More specifically, it argues that moral perception is not only a matter of saliently seeing certain features of a morally significant situation but also a matter of evaluating these features. It is such an integration of cognitive and evaluative dimensions of moral perception that provides with the agent motivational power and makes her action possible.

This article discusses Confucius's view of courage in comparison with Aristotle's and Neo-Confucians'. It proposes the following arguments: Confucius's conception of courage is much broader than Aristotle's, since it does not confine courage to the category of martial virtue and moral excellence that presupposes a noble motive; both Confucius's and Aristotle's conceptions of courage hold that courage is concerned with the fear of external threats but not the strength in self-improvement as Neo-Confucians have proposed; and Confucius's conception of courage is more relevant and significant than Aristotle's and Neo-Confucians' to contemporary life

“The Archimedean point for moral life” discussed in this article refers to the starting point of one's moral reasoning and what ultimately makes moral life possible. The article intends to show that Mengzi's doctrine of the Four Beginnings may throw some light on our search for such an Archimedean point. More specifically, it argues for the following: Mengzi's doctrine of the Four Beginnings actually takes moral sentiments as the Archimedean point for moral life; Mengzi's view of the starting point of moral reasoning and the ultimate ground for moral life not only can be empirically supported to a great extent, but also logically plausible

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese ThoughtXinyan JiangOn the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. By Jane Geaney. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. Pp. vii + 267. Paper $20.00.On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought by Jane Geaney is a most valuable and original work on Chinese philosophical views of the senses [End Page 489] in the Warring States period (ca. fifth to third centuries B.C.). It may well be the first systematic study of this topic in the English-speaking world. For this reason alone, it is worthy of attention from all who study Chinese philosophy.The book includes a wide range of discussions of the positions presented in classical Chinese philosophical texts such as the Lunyu, the Mozi, the Mengzi, the Laozi (Daodejing), the Zhuangzi, and especially the Xunzi. Based on these texts, the author argues that there are some shared views on the senses among early Chinese philosophers and that these Chinese views are significantly different from those in Western philosophy. What best distinguishes early Chinese theories of the senses from Western ones is their view of sense discrimination.Sense discrimination is the subject of this book, which carefully examines early Chinese views on the individual senses, especially hearing and seeing, and their relation to the "heartmind" (xin). Geaney uses the term "sense discrimination" to mean something other than "sense perception" or "sensation." By "sense" Geaney refers to "things like hearing, seeing and other specialized forms of interaction between the inside and outside of human beings" (p. 175); by "sensation" she means one's direct and private awareness of sense data (p. 31); and by "sense perception" she refers to the interpretation of sense data (p. 32). Sense discrimination might be something that lies between sensation and perception since it neither represents sense data as directly as sensation does nor interprets sense data as much as perception does. It seems that by "sense discrimination" Geaney refers to the distinguishing function of the senses. For Geaney, sense discrimination is "the general operations characteristic of each of the senses" (p. 175). In other words, a typical operation of a sense always involves discrimination although it does not involve inference. For instance, to sense a color is to discern it "in terms of a background of other colors and the preferences associated with that form of discrimination" (p. 35). Since sense discrimination is a non-inferential activity and does not involve the employment of a concept, it is still a function of the senses but not a function of reason.For Geaney, knowledge associated with sense discrimination in early Chinese thought is different from sensation and perception as understood in Western philosophy, but has some resemblance to aspect perception in the Wittgensteinian sense. Aspect perception is the perception of particular aspects of the objects that are perceived. For example, "seeing x as a rabbit" or "seeing x as a duck" is an aspect perception (p. 33). It seems to Geaney that in Western philosophy, at least in so-called representative realism, the function of sensation is to represent sense data, and the function of perception is to interpret sense data. Sense data in themselves are content-neutral and uninterpreted. The knowledge gained from sensation involves uninterpreted raw data only and is therefore infallible, while knowledge from perception is based on the interpretation of raw data and is therefore not error-free. Aspect perception does not involve inference but does involve interpretation. Therefore, it is fallible as well (pp. 31-32). Geaney argues that in Warring States Chinese thought there was not a notion of sense data that are uninterpreted raw material. Hence, Warring States Chinese philosophers did not [End Page 490] have the concepts of sensation and perception as understood in Western traditions (p. 33).According to Geaney, although the distinction between things "as they seem to us" and things "as they are in themselves" was not a philosophical problem, and skepticism was not a real issue in early Chinese thought, it was not the case that early Chinese philosophers simply held a naive realist position that our senses always tell us what things...

This paper proposes that the study of Chinese philosophy in the English speaking world has evolved in the three stages, i.e., the stage of preliminary introduction, the stage of communication, and the stage of deep study. The paper also tentatively investigates how problematic methodology in the study of Chinese philosophy and the prevalent conception of philosophy contribute to the marginalization of Chinese philosophy in the English speaking world and suggests some possible ways for the study of Chinese philosophy to emerge from the current difficult situation. At the end this paper emphasizes that no matter whether the study of Chinese philosophy can make the English speaking philosophical world accept Chinese philosophy as genuine philosophy, increased understanding and appreciation of the important and unique contribution of Chinese philosophy is its significant accomplishment nevertheless.

This paper examines Kang Youwei’s view of sexual equality based on the study of his The Book of the Great Unity (Da Tong Shu 《大同書》). The paper shows that Kang’s critique of the subjection of women is the most systematic, profound, and fierce in the history of modern Chinese philosophy. Although his theory of the oppression of women and sexual equality is essentially the combination of liberalism, utilitarianism, and socialism, his work on the subject should be given a special place in modern feminist philosophy. Unlike Western feminist thinkers, Kang understood the suffering of oppressed women in non-Western countries, especially in China, and spoke out for them in a way that no one did before. The volume on women’s oppression and liberation in The Book of the Great Unity could be regarded as a book on the subjection of women in developing countries crossing cultures and religions.

An important question about the nature of courage is whether it is a form of self-control. In this paper I argue that there are different kinds of courage and therefore the question whether courage is a form of self-control cannot be given a uniform answer. Courage exhibited in all cases may be classified as either spontaneous or deliberative courage. Spontaneous courage is not a form of self-control and usually is called for in emergency situations. It results from long-term moral cultivation, not a mindless impulse. Deliberative courage is usually shown in nonemergency situations. It may or may not involve self-control. In general, other things being equal, courage without exercising self-control is morally preferable. The absence of self-control is a necessary condition for ideal courage but ordinary courage is always accompanied by the exercise of will power.

An important question about the nature of virtue is whether an agent's being virtuous requires the harmony in the agent between right action and right passion. This dissertation tries to answer this question by examining a particular virtue-- courage. ;The dissertation discusses different positions in both the West and the East on the relation of action and passion in the virtue of courage. These positions form a spectrum as follows: Mencius's view : courage does not involve battling with adverse desire or feeling, since the courageous agent is fearless. Furthermore, great courage or moral courage is emotionally motivated. Aristotle's view: courage is not a form of self-control, although the courageous agent has medial fear. However, while courage is not emotionally motivated in the same way as other Aristotelian virtues, it is not an apathetic state, since it is emotionally motivated by love for the noble to a certain degree. James Wallace's view: courage sometimes is a virtue of self-control, and sometimes is not. Neither harmony between action and passion nor an internal struggle on the part of the agent is a necessary condition of courage. Robert C. Roberts's view: courage usually involves battling with the desire to flee and overcoming fear. Although there are exceptions, courage is basically a form of self-control. ;After examining the above positions, the author states her own views on the issues. The author believes that the relations between action and passion in cases of courage are various. In the case of ideal courage, an agent's action and passion are in harmony, but the agent's emotional motivation mainly comes from the agent's other virtues. In the case of ordinary courage, although the agent has to battle with adverse passion, the courageous action is not simply the outcome of the victory of will power over passion. There are both cognitive and emotional factors which contribute to the strength of will. ;Through the study of courage, the dissertation concludes that the harmony of action and passion is only a criterion of perfect virtue. Virtue in general does not require such harmony