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This article explores how vernacular aesthetics have been re-appropriated from pictorial to modern documentary photography over the past century to instigate a modern collective imagination of the industrial disintegration in the Chinese urban milieu. Within the scope of a discursive visual process, Jean Philippe Gauvrit (b.1963) documents the departure of the industrial urban society in his photo-essay Shanghai in JP Gauvrit (2008). The paper claims that Gauvrit’s documentary photography can be understood as a visual critical discourse of several representational perspectives of time that render visible anachronistic and new social structures that come into being: between utopias of the past and visions of the future in an alternative chronotopic ‘present’ cartography. Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1981) conception of chronotope, in this study, the sublime industrial comes to be represented as an intelligible reconfiguration of linear and cyclical time. By linking that socio-economic reality of that time with a collective consciousness, documentary photography can serve as a chronotope that reveals both the tension and the assimilation relating to the historical myths that lie between the fall of an industrial mode of production and the birth of a post-industrial cultural city in an era of de-industrialization.

This paper discusses the nature of Confucian ethics and its tense relations with modernity through analysing the arguments contained in Chen Lai’s 陈来 Confucian Theory of Virtue. The author points out that Confucian ethical theory is a kind of virtue ethics and that the distinction between public virtue and private virtue in modern moral projects necessarily leads to the elimination of the latter by the former. This is a general predicament of virtue ethics faced by modern societies.

There has been an impressive revival of virtue ethics as a rival to deontology and consequentialism in contemporary Western normative ethics. Correspondingly, many comparative philosophers have shown a great interest in finding virtue ethics potentials in other philosophical traditions in the world, the most impressive of which is Confucianism. While the result of such comparative studies is equally impressive, in almost all these studies, scholars tend to use a historical example of virtue ethics in the Western philosophical tradition, particularly the Aristotelian one, as the ideal type of virtue ethics, to measure historical examples of virtue ethics in other philosophical traditions. The result is thus conceivably skewed: however great these non-Western examples of virtue ethics are, they are perceived to be deficient in one way or another in comparison with the Aristotelian one. In this paper, I first construct an ideal type of virtue ethics in its contrast with ideal types of consequentialism and deontology: a normative ethics in which virtue is primary. I then use this ideal type of virtue ethics to measure Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Zhu Xi’s virtue ethics, both regarded as historical types of virtue ethics, concluding that Zhu Xi’s is closer to the ideal type of virtue ethics than Aristotle’s.

Wang Baoxuan’s 王葆玹 argument that Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty respected the Five Confucian Classics and tolerated non-Confucian schools because the “supremacy of Confucianism” (獨尊儒術) was not implemented until the reign of Emperor Cheng can be disputed. Additionally, Wang’s premise that masters learning (子學) in the Warring States period was the source of classics learning (經學) in the Western Han dynasty, and the extinction of masters learning during the supremacy of Confucianism led to the decline of classics learning, can also be debated. This paper proposes that with regard to the supremacy of Confucianism, the focus was on the second founding of the Han dynasty, not on the relationship between classics learning and masters learning. Both the Qin dynasty and the Western Han dynasty had masters learning as their guiding ideology, but Emperor Wu found that solely relying on masters learning, which was a collection of ideas by important thinkers, was not sustainable. Instead, the Han dynasty needed to be based on classics learning, which represented the traditional Chinese civilization that was inherited from the three ancient and sacred Chinese dynasties of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou. The supremacy of Confucianism was thus a means of ensuring the continuity and stability of the Han dynasty that was applied by Dong Zhongshu and Emperor Wu.

OBJECTIVES The primary objective of this study is to clarify the concepts of physical education and sport from a philosophical perspective and propose the potential of kinesiology as a promising alternative. METHODS The method of philosophical argumentation was employed to carefully examine the logical consistency of physical education, sport, and kinesiology. The conceptual tools of connotation and denotation were used to analyze these definitions, and their compatibility was thoroughly assessed. RESULTS Through deductive analysis, it was discovered that both physical education and sport face inherent challenges of limited externalization and excessive externalization. These challenges hinder the accurate representation of reality or weaken the distinct identity of the disciplines. Conversely, it was argued that kinesiology possesses the conceptual capacity to encompass both physical education and sport as a discipline. CONCLUSIONS Considering the apparent conceptual constraints of physical education, it becomes reasonable to reassess the nomenclature of our field. This paper has demonstrated the philosophical significance of kinesiology and its potential as a viable alternative. However, since philosophical arguments may not always perfectly align with practical reality, further exploration and evaluation from diverse perspectives are necessary to determine the suitability of adopting the term ‘kinesiology’ as an alternative.

This issue of Asian Studies delves into the challenges inherent to humanity and the human condition. Over the course of centuries, these challenges have laid the groundwork for conceptual frameworks commonly referred to as humanism, which have undergone development within a multitude of cultural contexts. Numerous analyses and critiques of these frameworks can be found in many papers contained in this issue, especially regarding the dynamics between humans and non-humans. These discussions have arisen from various regions around the globe, often labeled as post-humanism and transhumanism, among others.

The following paper offers a comparative study of Song Neo-Confucian and late Ming Jesuit arguments on the exceptionality of human beings and the role played by non-human others in the process of producing the discursive premises of the anthropological difference. It focuses on the arguments made by Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130‒1200) and Matteo Ricci (1552‒1610) in favour of a claim that there is something particular about being human. Its historical premise is that the Jesuit missionary activity in China resulted in a peculiar encounter between the scholastic tradition, based on Aristotle’s philosophy, and Confucian teachings. In case of Chinese as well as Western philosophical discourse, the figure of the non-human other has played an important role in establishing the very meaning of being human.

That artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and related technologies could use a few good booster shots of “humanism” is widely apparent. In both program code and implementation, AI and algorithms have been accused of harbouring deep-seated flaws that conflict with human values. They are prime examples of the skew towards white, Western, men and demonstrate the bankruptcy in the face of neoliberalist, profit- and market-oriented social paradigms that this special issue seeks to address. Currently, computer scientists and AI researchers who are looking to remedy these problems are often in favour of more data, more powerful machines, more complex algorithms—in short, that we should fix problems with AI by building better AI. In this view human beings and the world can be modelled in code—our lives, interactions, society, and our very selves can be broken down into data points which can be assessed by highly advanced technologies. When these scientists and researchers seek to broaden their approach they often look to philosophy. However, the philosophy they look to is overwhelmingly Anglo-analytic, which views the world in extremely similar ways. Both AI and Anglo-analytic philosophy argue for solutions to humanistic problems which are essentially mathematical. They share in seeing important concepts, such as persons, emotions, agency, and ethics, as mechanistic, atomistic, and calculable. In this paper I will argue that Classical Chinese philosophy offer insightful resources for addressing the humanist problems in AI. Rather than arguing for mathematical solutions, or envisioning persons, emotions, agency, and ethics, as other rigid, atomistic, and mechanistic approaches, Chinese philosophy emphasizes transformation, interrelatedness, and correlative developments. Accordingly, it offers tools for appreciating the world, society, and ourselves as spontaneous, complex, and full of tension. AI can be programmed and used in ways that do not reduce the complexity and conflict in the world, but provide us instead with tools to make sense of it—tools that are humanistic in nature. To this end, Chinese philosophy can be a helpful collaborative partner.

In this contribution, I shall attempt to clearly work out the political implications of Nishida Kitaro’s theory of pure experience in An Inquiry into the Good. This effort comes in response to the multitude of vastly different claims about the political meaning and dangers of Nishida’s early philosophy. Is it an implicit foundation for Japanese nationalism and the seeds of the controversial political philosophy he would work out later? Or is it a subtle attempt to critique the nationalist philosophy and educational policies surrounding Nishida while he was writing in the Meiji era? Or, perhaps most obviously, is this work unconnected with any and all political matters (including those that Nishida would face later on in his life)? In this paper, I shall argue that, although there is good reason to endorse any of these claims, ultimately a balanced assessment will find that Nishida’s early philosophy was indeed apolitical in nature, and that attempts to claim the contrary inevitably either go beyond textual evidence or miss key elements of his thought. Yet, as I shall further argue, being apolitical hardly means that Nishida’s work has no political consequences. Instead, for better or worse, the defining characteristic of Nishida’s early political philosophy is its capacity to allow readers to transcend such political issues.

This article argues that the concept of the “barbarian” is inapplicable to the Chinese tradition. By contrasting the Greek and later European view on what it means to be human with the image of the authentic human in Chinese philosophy, this paper argues that the Chinese tradition did not have a conception of what the Greeks understood as “barbarian”. In the former, the ideal of the human is understood through an investigation of the concept of ousia, which is characterized by a dualistic hierarchy between “form” and “matter”. The same dualism and hierarchy that distinguishes ousia, can be mapped onto the Greek distinction between the human and barbarian. Chinese metaphysics is not consistent with the Greek idea that reality is constituted by unchanging forms that are self-identical and keep within their own boundaries. Relatedly, the idea that there is a static hierarchy among the myriad things of the world is also foreign to Chinese metaphysics. Instead, the Chinese metaphysical tradition assumes that nothing will stay the same forever as all “things” are a function of how they relate to an ever-changing environment. One important consequence of this view is that the human and non-human distinction is much more dynamic. Related to this dynamic view of self is the (Confucian) view that the human being only becomes authentically human through their acculturation. This acculturation is the process of a person’s growth through public symbolic media such as li (礼), yue (乐) and wen (文). This process of growth shapes the person into an other-regarding social being (ren 仁). Importantly, no one is born a fully-realized human; human-ness is not an essence that is possessed but is always a result of the process of acculturation.

This paper explores the relationship between language and reality and the ecological implications of dualism, categorical logic, and the Aristotelian three laws of logic, on humans’ attitude toward the natural world. The paper engages in a comparative analysis of two traditions: one from the West (Neo-Platonism) and one from the East (Daoism). It argues that while both Neo-Platonism (as represented by Plotinus’ Enneads) and Classic Daoism (as represented by the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi) are successful in debunking rigid dualistic logic, Plotinus’s Oneness emanation theory in the end falls short of supporting an inclusive ecological ethics in a comprehensive manner. Still mired in dualism, Plotinian Neo-Platonism treats nature and the physical world as recalcitrant matter—an evil best to be avoided rather than embraced. By contrast, Classic Daoism’s non-dual multi-universe perspective of the world has much to offer with regard to creating a new eco-philosophy and ethics that supports a healthy, sustainable, ecology.

In recent decades there has been much discussion of Daoist thought in the light of environmental or ecological ethics. In this paper, I will discuss the meanings of ziran and wuwei, the two key terms in Daoism within its own tradition and then explore the possibility of establishing a form of “green Daoism” through an interpretative reconstruction of a ziran-wuwei ethic that is relevant to environmental and ecological concerns. I will argue that the Daoist idea of ziran-wuwei does not simply mean to accept things passively, but rather it entails a proactive dimension that can be used to challenge aggressiveness and destructive attitudes towards eco-cosmic unity and diversity. The paper intends to show that although some of the ecological issues we address today may not be the major concerns of ancient Daoism, and that the complexity of the ecological problems and solutions are dependent on modern technology, it will not prevent us from taking Daoism as a cultural resource with which we can examine the human place in nature in view of the current environmental crisis.

Recently, much work has been put into the scholarly understanding and interpretation of the complexities of the Daoist tradition. This includes a critical exploration of its contribution to contemporary environmental issues. In this paper, the author reflects on the intersection of Daoist humanism and ecology and highlights the theoretical and historical implications associated with the Daoist approach to the environment. These starting points can tell us much about how Daoist philosophical thought can be successfully connected to humanism and the sciences of ecology and the environment. The article points to the possibility of an alternative worldview that can help us, in our limited time and space, nonetheless find the possibility of living some kind of sustainable yet here-and-now moment. In doing so, the author starts from some key questions found in classical texts. Through her analyzes, she examines the potential applicability of classical Daoist thought and practice in China and in the West, both in relation to the modern ecological crisis and to the role and place of human beings within nature and society.

In this paper, I argue that nourishing life (yangsheng 養生) as a self-cultivating practice stands as an alternative model of biopolitics that challenges the neoliberal one. Existing scholarship on nourishing life focuses much on its ethical significance, for instance, as an effective way to lead a long life, whereas Nelson’s most recent monograph Daoism as Environmental Philosophy: Nourishing Life provides new insights into the socio-political aspect of it, in terms of an ecological way of government. However, Nelson’s discussion of biopolitics rarely engages with the Seven Sages in the Bamboo Forest (zhulin qixian 竹林七賢) that nonetheless practice nourishing life themselves, as an art of living and a political strategy. Focused on nourishing life in Ji Kang as one of the Sages, I situate my position against Jullien’s claim that the self-cultivating sage is uncritical due to his incapacity to think of conflict in the face of power. And in the context of his book I also highlight Heubel’s negligence of the neoliberal political economy underlying Foucauldian biopolitics in the context of his intercultural study of nourishing life as a possible model of biopolitics. As such, based on Nelson’s consideration of the non-coercive ethos and praxis of Dao, I propose a biopolitics of nourishing life as opposed to the neoliberal “environmental technology” that normalizes materialist lifestyle and attitudes, the production of freedom as commodity.

There are three good reasons why Daoism is a bad candidate for addressing contemporary environmental issues. First, the Laozi and Zhuangzi do not contain a concept of “nature” akin to ours today. Second, the philosophies of the Laozi and Zhuangzi are anything but revolutionary in spirit—and we need some revolutions. Finally, we need big changes from the top, and early Chinese thinkers did not conceive of political institutions in the way that we have them. Despite these reasons, or perhaps precisely because of them, early Daoist attitudes can provide insightful resources for reflecting on some of our most unreflected upon attitudes. In particular, the need for growth in nearly all areas of society is taken as a given, or even necessity, for our way of life. And while environmentalism and climate change are complex and tricky issues, growth has been identified by many as a common denominator when figuring out exactly what needs to change. This paper argues that if we shift our focus from seeking to find environmental concerns in the Laozi and Zhuangzi to philosophizing with these texts, then we can reflect on our environmental issues in interesting ways. To this end I will present “not contending” (不爭) “awareness of contentment” (知足), “not acting for” (無為) and “according to itself” (自然) as key Daoist attitudes which steer our thinking away from growth and along trajectories which can help human systems be better synchronized with non-human ones.

In this paper, particular key aspects of the philosophies of Plotinus and Wang Yangming have been analysed comparatively on the basis of important passages of their works. The method used for this investigation can be defined as that of transversal comparative induction, in which the focus is more on working out the details of affinities and similarities. As this means a first step in an encompassing systematic context, differences will be introduced more briefly. The present investigation aims to provide a foundation for a more differentiating and therefore complementing second part, which will consider other contents and topics in both philosophies. The present analysis is performed in three systematic steps and with regard to three basic philosophical ideas: (1) the idea that human consciousness is a central medium in the universal process and interrelatedness of (biological) life as a whole; (2) the idea that the self-unfoldment of reality represents a meta-cognitive process beyond the limits of subjectivity and finite consciousness; and (3) the idea that it is our major task to perfect and know ourselves by means of a “return” to the highest underlying foundation of this universal process. In their own ways, Plotinus and Wang Yangming both show that by enfolding human reflexivity toward the ineffable source of all reality in thought, feeling, human activity, and natural processes, namely by actively pursuing the path of moral and intellective perfection, we become fulfilled mediators of a universal process and of that which all of it represents.

For Martin Buber, a person participates in two kinds of relationship: the I-Thou and the I-It. In the case of the former, the wholeness of being is employed resulting in genuine dialogue, while the latter objectifies things and is thus devoid of anything genuine. Among the influences on Buber’s thought, that of Daoism has not gone unnoticed by scholars of comparative philosophy. This paper will contribute to said discourse by examining Buber’s concept of the interhuman and its employment of the following themes: oneness and the genuine person, non-deliberate action (wuwei) and the in-between, and genuine dialogue as a turning towards being. What our analysis will show is that Buber’s interhuman philosophy bears witness to the transcendence of words by bringing to life the silence from which they arise and recede, attuning participants in genuine dialogue to the spiritual resonance between themselves and the primal Thou, while elevating their faith in human life in the process. The interhuman was seen by Buber as a viable solution for the societal ills of his time and it remains so half a century after his passing.

In this explorative paper, I propose that relatively recent trends in Western continental philosophy can provide a much more commensurate access to Chinese philosophy than found in most mainstream Western philosophy. More specifically, I argue that three prominent European philosophical approaches to interpretation can offer meaningful parallels to classical Confucian views of interpretation. These are Paul Ricoeur’s term “distanciation”, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophy of hermeneutics and, finally, Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive notion of “différance”. While the last two approaches have had their internal clashes, I see them in this specific case as mutually reinforcing by stimulating the continuous reinterpretation of tradition, advancing the view that Western and Chinese philosophies cannot be reduced to the other in conceptual terms, and stipulating that a finalized meaning or interpretation of each is a priori unattainable. In this way, they provide a future opening for—and even integration of—a Chinese-Western philosophical dialogue.

This paper explores the Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji’s idea of community as an alternative to Heidegger’s thinking on “Volk”. Watsuji was so greatly influenced by Heidegger’s unique way of philosophizing using ordinary German language that he undertook an etymological analysis of the Japanese word for humans, which provided him with the central idea of his ethics, namely that human beings are individual and social at the same time. However, despite this positive response to the German philosopher, Watsuji criticized Heidegger regarding the concept of authenticity. In Watsuji’s Ethics, authenticity is not regarded as a state of isolation but as a kind of communal relationship, which he characterizes as “nonduality between the self and the other”. In his lectures in the 1930s, however, Heidegger further developed the notion of authenticity, reconsidering it as the Volk, or a “space for community” on the basis of which actual community comes forth. According to my interpretation, Watsuji’s idea of nonduality between the self and other, which serves as a primordial place for the existence of any kind of community, can help us to consider our primary coexistence in a manner different from Heidegger’s.

Based on comparative philosophical methodology, this paper presents a new hermeneutic method for interpreting Chinese (especially ancient Chinese) texts. It first introduces the rich tradition of Chinese hermeneutics and then analyses its possible dialogues with European hermeneutic methods, especially Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons”. It identifies some methodological problems inherent in this method and, on this basis, proposes the application of a new hermeneutic method that may be more suitable for the interpretation of traditional Chinese metaphysical and literary texts. It is based on the traditional philosophical-aesthetic notion of jingjie 境界. The author preliminarily refers to this method as a “fusion of aesthetic realms”.

The aim of this paper is to bring Gilles Deleuze and the Kyoto School into an imaginary conversation around the idea of philosophy as a way of life, or what I call ethico-aesthetics. I first show how ethico-aesthetics in the Kyoto School modernizes the traditional notion of geidō, or ways of art, through the language of continental philosophy. Even though the discourse they construct in this respect remains less rigorous than that of the other domains of philosophy with which they engage, the ethico-aesthetic concepts of Nishida Kitarō, Nishitani Keiji, and Ōhashi Ryōsuke provide a starting point from which we might begin to piece together Deleuze’s seemingly random, but persistent and ultimately significant references to East Asian art and philosophy. I argue that Deleuze’s references to the Zen sage and poet-painter—in addition to his uses of the Stoics, Spinoza, and Nietzsche—are necessary to fully understand the immanent goal of his ethico-aesthetics. I conclude by demonstrating that, although there is no evidence that Deleuze was familiar with the Kyoto School, he unwittingly offers more complete and contemporary solutions to the ethico-aesthetic issues presented by some of its key thinkers.

In this paper, the principal question is the following: How and to what extent can Nishida’s basho (“place”), as it is outlined in his famous treatise Basho (1926), taken together with the “adjoining” essay The Unsolved Issue of Consciousness (1927), be understood and interpreted from Plato’s and/or Plotinus’ (i.e. Neoplatonic) philosophical viewpoint—and, possibly, also vice versa? What do Nishida’s conception (or rather intuition) of basho on the one hand, and Plato’s quite “vague” concept of chóra in Timaeus and/or Plotinus’ first hypóstasis “the One” on the other, have in common? The main formal similarity between basho and “the One” is that they cannot be “predicated” (in the Aristotelian sense) by anything else—or, to put it in Platonic terms, both are absolutely transcendent. However, there are also several important differences, mainly because of the different frames of thought, which are discussed in this paper.

This article will focus on the interpretation of a key concept in Chinese Neo-Confucianism of the Ming dynasty, namely that of xing 性. The concept is commonly translated as “nature” in Western languages, but this text will point out that there is a gap between the meaning of the Western concept “nature” and the Chinese concept 性. The main contribution of this paper is therefore to suggest a new method of interpreting Chinese philosophical concepts that bridges this gap. The method takes its inspiration from the hermeneutic theory of F. Schleiermacher. It consists, firstly, in re-placing the concept in its historical context—i.e. in the original “language area” where it assumes a meaning; secondly, in identifying the conceptual network which surrounds it, and thirdly, in determining the meaning of the concept in question by its relations to other concepts within the network. The end product of such a method is what we call the “semantic dictionary” of a concept. This article will give an example of how part of the meaning of 性 can be determined by its relations to another key Neo-Confucian concept, li 理.

PURPOSE This study was conducted for the purpose of exploring the direction and quality of Pilates research in the future by comparing and analyzing research trends in the field of Pilates natural science at home and abroad. METHODS In order to analyze domestic and foreign Pilates research trends, we analyzed academic papers of the last 10 years (2013-2022) in the natural science field, and domestic papers were used as the keyword ‘Pilates’ using DP Pia, Kiss, and Riss, which are academic information services. A total of 105 papers were used by searching. For overseas studies, Pub med and Scholar were used, and only SCI and SCIE papers were collected and 129 papers were searched. RESULTS First, according to the comparative analysis of research trends by domestic and foreign fields, physiology (61%), kinematics (24.8%), and rehabilitation (14.2%) were found in the order of domestic, whereas in foreign countries, kinematics (34.9%) and physiology (33.3%) and rehabilitation (31.8%), a study with a relatively even distribution was conducted. Second, in the comparative analysis by study subject, domestic literature was the highest with 68.7% of studies targeting women, and was conducted separately by various age groups. Foreign fields, 40.9% of studies conducted by gender were found, and there were many studies that considered the characteristics of musculoskeletal disorders and metabolic diseases rather than gender. Third, looking at the comparison by research variable, studies have been conducted on various topics in physiology and kinetic dynamics. However, while domestic studies have focused on changes in body composition, foreign studies are actively conducting research on muscle function, musculoskeletal disorders, and rehabilitation. CONCLUSIONS In summary, it is judged that active research in the field of kinematics and rehabilitation should be conducted for more diverse subjects in the field of Pilates.

The history of pizza is shrouded in mystery. Competing interpretations of the exact origin, development, and even etymology are as diverse as pizzas themselves. What is certain, however, is that from various types of flatbread meals popular among soldiers and poor workers emerged some standards. Certain experts were then able to refine the process and carefully combine ingredients. The key to this tradition, as well as its popularity around the world, is found in the core elements developed by such pizzaiolos. But this has all changed, and contemporary pizza is no longer topped with whatever just happens to be available, as in the flatbreads of old. Nor does it have to adhere to the standards set forth by experts on taste. Today there are Hawaiian, chocolate, and even fruit pizzas. There are pizzas with cauliflower crust, smashed chicken “bread” and pizzas topped with 24 karat gold. And perhaps most importantly, customized pizzas—pizzas that are designed by the consumer with no regard for anything but their own momentary desires. We think this represents a twofold problem, in terms of both approach and of carrying on tradition, and also think comparative philosophy is just like pizza. In this paper we will thus address these problems through proposing a conception of the trans-cultural that is linked to the art of pizza. Moreover, we expand the scope of diversification to include methodology. Based on methodological insights derived from Chinese tradition and contemporary Chinese scholarship, we argue that comparative philosophy as an art (poiesis) could be a welcome alternative which involves: respect for authority (tradition), trust in tested methods and recipes as conditions for creativity and originality, recognition of the philosophical import of style (form is content) and the significance of inspiration and mastery of skills.

This paper traces the history of comparative philosophy and points to a transition toward post-comparative philosophy. It is argued that, theoretically speaking, comparative philosophy was created by making a distinction between Western and non-Western philosophy and then re-entering this distinction into one of its sides, namely non-Western philosophy. Historically speaking, comparative philosophy was preceded by Orientalist academic disciplines such as Indology and Sinology founded in the 19th century, as well as by the establishment of disciplines like “Chinese Philosophy” in non-Western countries. With the emergence of the field of comparative philosophy in the 20th century, two camps developed: one focusing on difference and the other on sameness. Post-comparative philosophy, it is argued, moves beyond difference and sameness and engages in diverse philosophical endeavours by employing sources from various traditions without constituting a specific field based on culturalist distinctions.

This paper aims to bring into the global ethics debate concrete alternative models of specific relational ethics developed in the context of Sinic traditions that have not yet been widely introduced into Western scholarship or integrated into the framework of global discourses on ethics and morality. Although much research has been done on certain elements and aspects of such ethical models, there have been no concrete attempts to incorporate them into a global axiological framework that could have helped humanity develop strategies for solving the current global crises we face. The paper first provides a critical overview of the conceptual history, specific characteristics, and social relevance of relationism. It then addresses the question of how relational ethical models could be integrated into the value system of contemporary global ethics without reproducing the still dominant normativity of Western epistemology and its corresponding axiology. After highlighting some problems related to the methodology and structure of traditional models of comparative philosophy and ethics, the author suggests that this integration of relationism into the general framework of global ethics could be done by applying a new method, which can be tentatively called the method of transcultural philosophical sublation. Starting from different frames of reference that define the basic tenets of modern Western and traditional Chinese axiology, the author demonstrates the application of this method on the example of different conceptions of the human self.

This paper introduces a method of doing and teaching East Asian philosophy transculturally. The method underlies a pedagogy that has proven successful with students from diverse international backgrounds studying primarily in English, which suggests its potential for the wider scholarly community. The method centres on the practice, or gongfu, of doing philosophy with classical Chinese texts. The gongfu approach emphasizes the skill of interpreting and analysing texts within the context of the traditional works themselves. We have found that this skills-based approach to analysis bears much philosophical fruit. It does so, moreover, without subordinating the texts, their ideas, and their arguments to other more academically predominant frameworks. Or in more positive terms, it allows and encourages students to critically philosophize with the early Confucian and Daoist texts on their own terms, and to then creatively bring those unique insights and perspectives to bear on contemporary life. This paper first introduces the gongfu approach to doing and teaching Chinese philosophy and its distinctive characteristics. It then contextualizes the value of this method through critically examining the nature of Chinese philosophy and how we can do Chinese philosophy in English. (How Chinese is it, and in what ways?) Throughout I offer short case studies from our program. I conclude by highlighting its promise as a mode (or valuable component) of transcultural philosophizing and briefly reflect on some reservations one might have.

This paper makes a historic review on the development of the Logic of Natural Language (LNL) in China, which can be roughly divided into three periods: the first period which spanned from the late 1950s to the late 1980s was the initial period of LNL in China; the second period, a transitional period from the preliminarily integrated mode of LNL to the deeply integrated mode of LNL, lasted for the whole decade of the 1990s; the third period was from 2000 on, and during this period the deeply integrated mode became the mainstream of LNL. In today’s China, LNL is not only an important research field of logic, but has also exerted a great impact on linguistic studies and the studies in the field of natural language processing (NLP).

The paper presents a ten-year history of social network logics in China. It tells the story of how this new research area was started, how its research agenda was extended, and, in particular, how a focus on graph games developed. Important ideas and research results are summarised, with an emphasis on the connections between them. An important aspect of this history is the successful collaboration between Chinese and international colleagues.

This paper outlines the Chinese research on mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics. Firstly, it presents the introduction and spread of mathematical logic in China, especially the teaching and translation of mathematical logic initiated by Bertrand Russell’s lectures in the country. Secondly, it outlines the Chinese research on mathematical logic after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The research in this period experienced a short revival under the criticism of the Soviet Union, explorations under the heavy influence of the Cultural Revolution, and the vigorous development of mathematical logic teaching and research after the period of “Reform and Opening Up” that started in the late 1970s, and the full integration of Chinese mathematical logic research into the international academic circle in the new century after 2000. In the third part, it focuses on the unique and original results of the Chinese mathematical logic research teams from the following three aspects: medium logic, lattice implication algebras and their lattice-valued systems of logic, and Chinese notation of logical constants, which can be used as a substantive supplement to the relevant literature on the history of mathematical logic in China. The last part is a reflection on the shortcomings of contemporary Chinese research on mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics.

This article studies some central developments in the propagation and teaching of mathematical logic in 1930s China. Focusing on the emergence of a twofold disciplinary approach to mathematical logic, namely as a discipline studied and disseminated by Chinese philosophers on the one hand and mathematicians on the other, this paper explores one of the key turning points in the development of the academic notion of mathematical logic in China. Apart from casting some light on the teaching of mathematical logic in the framework of both philosophical as well as mathematical spheres of inquiry, this article also provides some preliminary insights into the circumstances surrounding the first systematic introduction of mathematical logic into the modern standardized system of education, which gradually took shape over the late-1920s and early 1930s in China.

The paper presents an analysis of the persuasive use of the narrative in the Lüshi Chunqiu using approaches of rhetoric narratology and rhetorical criticism. Twenty-one narratives are identified as vehicles of indirect persuasion and put on the mimetic and thematic scales to show how their relation to reality and history corresponds to their rhetorical use in discourse. Three of those narratives, exhibiting typical traits of historical anecdotes, are analysed in detail in their original context, to prove their parabolic function. The author argues that parabolic use of the narrative, including fables and parables, but also anecdotes and historical anecdotes, forms an important part of the Warring States period tradition of political and philosophical discourse. The author further proposes to use the term “parabolic narrative” to describe all such instances of using narratives in indirect persuasion. These can be found not only in the Lüshi Chunqiu, but also in other important works of the period, such as Zhuangzi, Zhanguoce, or Han Feizi.

This paper has attempted to characterize “Zhiwu lun” as the presentation of the incapacity of object-oriented knowledge to represent the realm of “things”, highlighting Gongsun Long’s epistemological and ontological value beyond a logical one. This paper proposes that only based upon this assumption does “Zhiwu lun” allow a thorough interpretation of “Mingshi lun”, whereby the intuitive function of “names” provides a better solution to the cognitive limits imposed by object-oriented (self-)consciousness. Methodologically, this paper mainly considers the Heidelberg School’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s critique of judgment in “Judgment and Being” to be both a complementary justification and reconstruction of the implicit structures of Gongsun Long’s view. This paper has presupposed the interpretation of Gongsun Long’s key concept of 指 as “judgment” in Hölderlin’s sense, in contrast to “things” (物) and “name” (名), then verified this hypothesis, as well as the relationships amongst these translations, by a close textual analysis and new translation of “Zhiwu lun”.

The paper examines the development of the idea of Supreme Peace (taiping 太平) in premodern Chinese philosophies of history. It is shown that while Daoists identified it with the pristine unity of humans and nature, Han Confucians equated Supreme Peace with the harmonious social system under the rule of one of the first Chinese emperors or Confucius. In the latter case, the notion of taiping was reduced to a descriptive category, which was then employed by historiography but ridiculed in the critical thought of Wang Chong. With Huainanzi and the Xiang’er commentary to Laozi, the Daoists started to argue that it is possible to restore the Supreme Peace under new historical conditions. This was systematically developed in the Scripture of Supreme Peace (Taipingjing), which offered a detailed depiction of the future era of equality and freedom. However, after this radicalization, the idea of taiping was utilized by imperial propaganda and disappeared from the dominant philosophical discourse. An exception to this rule was Li Gou (1009–1059), who envisaged Supreme Peace as an ideal socio-economic system resulting from endowing peasants with land and money. A similar vision was expressed by Gong Zizhen (1792–1841), for whom Supreme Peace had to entail land equalization and the reduction of social inequalities. Similarly to Taipingjing, however, Gong Zizhen described taiping as the culmination point of the increase of human knowledge. With such an approach, the premodern Chinese views of Supreme Peace became noticeably close to Western progressivism, and therefore inspired the utopian project of Kang Youwei.

The present paper investigates poetry written in China on the theme of the COVID-19 pandemic following the outbreak in January 2020, considered both as a social phenomenon and as literary texts. The analysis is primarily interested in considering the impact of the pandemic on poetry’s interaction with social reality. In order to do so, the essay follows two trajectories. Firstly, it explores the public role performed by poets in the nationwide popular mobilization that sustained the party-state’s effort to curb the epidemic, with a strong emphasis on poetry as a social practice, specifically in a time of crisis, as outlined by both the state and the authors themselves. Secondly, a close reading of selected texts shows the heterogeneity of standpoints adopted by poets in their individual understandings of their role during China’s anti-COVID mobilization effort, especially in relation with the “master narrative” advanced by the state. The paper demonstrates that the final configuration of China’s pandemic poetry was made possible by Chinese poetry’s longstanding tradition of social responsibility, and that the transgression of boundaries between the official and unofficial poetry scenes, and “amateur” and “professional” authors, was instrumental to promote poets’ public engagement.

This paper examines COVID-19 narratives of China as a form of soft power. The coronavirus pandemic and its handling have presented an image problem for China on the global stage. The country has struggled to control the narratives surrounding the pandemic. This article is interdisciplinary in nature with a focus on contemporary Chinese history, culture, and politics, as well as communication issues and narratives. It analyses non-fictional and fictional narratives as part of China’s COVID-19 diplomacy. Beyond documentaries, this paper examines the two docudramas Heroes in Harm’s Way 最美逆行者 (2020) and With You 在一起 (2020) and how these popular TV shows present the coronavirus crisis in China at the beginning of the pandemic. We argue that they provide positive narratives of the COVID-19 response that highlight people’s courage and sacrifice to inspire the Chinese population to stand together as a nation. The docudramas showcase everyday life during the lockdown in Wuhan over 76 days from the end of January 2020 to early April 2020. Nurses, doctors, and patients are represented as heroic characters who fight the pandemic together. Heroes in Harm’s Way and With You are testament of a united China broadcast both to domestic audiences and viewers abroad. The docudramas function as damage control to enhance China’s image in the world. This helps increase China’s soft power as the country presents itself as a capable force for good within its boundaries and beyond.

The COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to numerous global problems that can only be solved on a global scale. Especially in light of the good performance of the Sinic region in containing and eliminating the coronavirus, the importance of intercultural dialogue between East and West became even more evident. In this context, this paper explores the role of digital technologies and the underlying ontology of digital objects in China as well as in the wider Sinic region. Indeed, the third millennium, which has just begun and will witness the accelerating trends of global warming and most likely the deepening of the gap between rich and poor, numerous wars, and new pandemics, will certainly be marked by the development of digital technologies. Therefore, the paper investigates the specific features of traditional Sinic perceptions of technology as such, as well as their ideational underpinnings, which certainly influence specific Sinic perceptions of digital objects. This will, I hope, provide us with a better understanding of the cultural conditionality of differences and commonalities in the global processes of digitalization and their ontological underpinnings, so that we can pay more attention to both the dangers and the opportunities that cross-cultural interactions in this area can offer us.

Artists are responding very differently to the COVID-19 around the world. In Japan, this has been manifested in artistic production of the mythical creature called Amabie, one of the yōkai. Most often, it appears as a mermaid, with both animal and human features recognizable by its three limbs, long hair, beak-like mouth and body covered by scales. This is a mythical character which, according to legend, allegedly predicted the plague and advised people to share drawings of its image with each other, thus protecting them from diseases. The character was documented for the first time in 1846 in one of the early kawaraban newspapers. This paper presents a new wave of Amabie that overran social media when COVID-19 seriously affected Japan. The author focuses on the world of art, where the character distinctly stepped to the fore, and examines the characteristics of Amabie’s interpretation by selected artists. One of the first to attract special attention in this respect is the artist Shigeru Mizuki (1922–2015), a master of the yōkai genre, whose comic book featuring Amabie was revived in the midst of the pandemic. He was followed by other illustrators, designers and artists or groups of artists. Utilization of the character of Amabie as a talisman, however, is specific not only of the artists’ domain. The mass popularization of the character, including drawings, puppets, paper sculptures, costumes, sweets, tattoos and the like can be followed through all kinds of social media. The paper attempts to lay stress on the phenomenon of the struggle of Japanese society with COVID-19 through the prism of popularizing Amabie folklore, which has become in the last few months an internet meme and mascot of pop culture that has spread around the entire world.

“Science” and “magic” are not simply two opposing thought processes which have a straightforward relationship, first, on a presumed axis of progress—from magic to science, and second, within the context of a presumed cultural divide—Western “science” vs. Eastern “tradition”. The aim of this paper is to examine in historical perspective the introduction of so-called “Western medicine” in Japan and examine the idea that through this introduction “traditional” Chinese knowledge was simply superseded by “modern” Western science. By looking into the intellectual currents within the field of medicine, specifically in eighteenth-century Japan, and comparing them to those in the West, the article tries to challenge the narrative of “modernity” as a sort of uniquely Western achievement defined by “disenchantment”, “rationalism” and “science”.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives dramatically and caused much fear around the world. While social media can contribute to faster information flow, this environment also gives rise to intensifying anxiety. This paper examines the research questions of how the Chinese National Commission (NHC), as the main authority for the health-related issues, presents the news about COVID-19 pandemic to English-speaking readers, which topics related to the coronavirus are stressed most, and what reporting strategies are used in presenting the current events and issues. The results indicate that the authorities are well-informed about the dynamics of public attention, since the same dynamics can be observed in the amount and structure of news. Moreover, from the perspective of reporting strategies we can see that the authorities subtly follow all the criteria that were proposed to allay fears and slow down or break the spiral of negativism with regard to the pandemic.

COVID-19 has brought many changes to society and encouraged mankind to reflect on its civilization. The pandemic has revealed that our health care systems and community solidarity are far more fragile than we believed. It made us rethink the solidarity of human civilization and community, and more fundamentally, reconsider the global ecosystem beyond human society. This paper claims that COVID-19 was an inevitable result of the anthropocentric perspective, and argues that it is necessary to change the perception to an ecological worldview and practice ecological justice in order to solve this situation. First, it analyses the ecological reasons for the regular outbreak of zoonotic diseases, including COVID-19, and then it examines Naess’s deep ecology with regard to a fundamental change of perception, but also finds several weaknesses in this. Third, this paper focuses on Zhu Xi’s philosophy in order to compensate for the weaknesses of deep ecology. It argues for the importance of human roles and obligations in relation to the safety and health of the environment based on his philosophy, and explains ecological justice by applying his social equality theory to ecology. Finally, it sheds new light on Zhu Xi’s theory of investigation of things (gewu 格物) as a practical way of implementing ecological justice.

The article examines the specifics of the Chinese containment measures of the COVID-19 pandemic and their social consequences at the beginning of 2021. The author analyses empirical psychological research results on distress and anxiety of people in times of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, and explores to what degree the individual feelings of anxiety in contemporary China are conditioned by the traditionally prevailing absence of faith in higher transcendent forces on the one hand, and social isolation on the other. It proceeds from Xu Fuguan’s interpretation of the origins of a traditional Chinese concept of “concerned consciousness” (youhuan yishi 憂患意識). The author shows that this concept can be compared to the feeling of anxiety, but highlights important differences which separate it from the anxiety as developed and understood in the framework of modern Western philosophy. The paper aims to provide some preliminary answers to the questions of whether and in what way such a traditional feeling of anxiety in the sense of a “concerned consciousness” manifested itself in the period of social isolation that was implemented as a part of the government measures for the COVID-19 pandemic in China. These questions are being investigated through an analysis of philosophical studies on concerned consciousness on the on hand, and a contemporary case study on the other. The results show that the specifically Chinese kind of anxiety, which is rooted in concerned consciousness, is tightly linked to the relational nature of Chinese ethics and the corresponding understanding of individual identity. In addition, it is connected with the traditional understanding of human destiny, which is not fatalistic or determinist, but rather based on autonomous decisions based on the social responsibilities of a free human self.

Different disasters throughout history have prompted Japan to develop diverse approaches to recovery, revitalization, and local resilience. The current global COVID-19 pandemic is no exception. In this paper, we argue the need to study the impacts of COVID-19 on outside major cities such as Tokyo as such areas were already experiencing socioeconomic decline. Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture is a city that has also been undergoing extensive post-disaster reconstruction after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), notably through various bottom-up approaches, often initiated by volunteers and migrants bringing new, creative ideas to community revitalization. These efforts continue to shape the social life of its residents during COVID-19, making Ishinomaki an important case study in both disaster reconstruction and rural revitalization. This paper examines examples in which creativity played a key role in revitalization, recovery, and community resilience in Ishinomaki over the last decade to shed light on current creative revitalization initiatives at the grassroots level, initiated and carried out by citizens. Drawing on an ethnographic approach conducted remotely in the form of semi-structured interviews, the paper presents the personal narratives of a diverse range of residents and social networks committed to rebuilding the soft infrastructure that is often overlooked compared to hard infrastructure. The paper proposes suggestions for the future based on lessons learned from the past decade, and hopes to illuminate how Japan’s rural areas are adapting to a new normal in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alma M. Karlin, a young woman adventurer who made her journey around the world between 1919 and 1927, stayed in Japan for a little more than a year. As a young woman without significant funds, she relied on her own ability to earn a living during her stay in the country. Among the items she brought back from Japan to Slovenia there are many small objects which are not typical “exotic objects from the Far East”. They are rather small and trivial items such as a wall calendar, a streetcar ticket, children’s miniature toys, a part of ceremonial wrappings, and paper bookmarks. This paper focuses on the small and untypical items Karlin brought back from Japan. Karlin’s travelogue and other writings, including her notes on the unused postcards, give us some information about her life in Japan. Together with her travelogue, notes and messages on the objects in her legacy, we can reconstruct some aspects of her everyday life in Japan. Though small and trivial, such items collected by Karlin reveal some important details of her experience in the central part of Tokyo in the Taishō period.

The paper focuses on an aspect of the history of the collection of Ivan Skušek Jr., an early 20th century Slovenian collector that has not yet been looked at thoroughly, namely, its “apartment” period, the time when the collection was on display in three consecutive apartments Ivan Skušek Jr. and his Japanese wife lived in. Due to the failed plans to establish a museum, the collection ended up being on display in lived spaces for the entire period between their arrival to Ljubljana and Marija Skušek’s passing, all together for 43 years—much longer than it was ever displayed in museum settings. The paper focuses on the way a lived space functioned as a setting for the display of the collection and how this combination created a place for communication, appropriation and knowledge acquisition—how the collection was lived in, lived with and lived through. The analysis thus reflects on the implications of the setting of the lived-in museum: how it impacted the collection and its parts, how it conditioned the lives of its owners and how this mode of presentation influenced the reception of the visitors. In the second part of the paper, the analysis is based on specific material—Skušek’s archive that was recently analysed in the Slovenian Ethnographic museum collections, including a number of photographs of the interiors of the apartments.

This paper investigates the relation between different models of ethics and their impact upon crises solution strategies. Because COVID-19 is a global-scale crisis, it has to be solved on the global level. In this framework, it is important to consider knowledge and ethical theories from different cultures. The paper outlines some theoretical groundworks for alternative models of social ethics from the perspective of traditional Chinese, particularly Confucian, philosophies. Among other issues, this perspective is meaningful because in the Sinitic areas the pandemic has so far been brought under control much quicker and more effectively than in other regions of the world. First, the paper introduces the Chinese philosophy of life and highlights its current relevance; then, it presents traditional Chinese models of relational and anti-essentialist concepts of the self and investigates their impact to the Confucian models of social ethics. On this basis, it illuminates some new ways of understanding interpersonal and intercultural interactions that might help us develop new strategies against current and future pandemics.

The paper’s main aim is to bring forward Marija Skušek (born Tsuneko Kondō Kawase 近藤常子(1893–1963) and her presentations and transmission of Japanese culture to the Slovene (at that time Yugoslav) public as the first Japanese citizen who was naturalised in Slovenia. It focuses mainly on the period from 1920, when she first entered the country, until the Second World War, drawing special attention to one of her main activities––giving lectures in the years 1930–1931, and on a smaller scale 1935–1936, mostly presented to the public under the title “A Japanese about a Japanese Woman”. Such lectures testify to the Japanese-Slovenian cultural exchanges, and the cultural milieu in Slovenia in which she acted. The author takes into consideration newspaper and journals sources discussing her activities and in particular the data available from the “Archive on Marija Skušek–Tsuneko Kondō Kawase”, recently re-discovered at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum of Slovenia, where her original lecture’s manuscripts, correspondence, newspaper clips and photos are collected.

Ivan Skušek Jr. (1877–1947), whose collection of Chinese and Japanese objects has been the subject of research and interest in recent years, can be considered the first collector of East Asian objects in the Slovene ethnic space to have built his collection systematically, examining and verifying the provenance, value, and significance of each item. His extensive collection can compare to Western European collections of East Asian objects while at the same time bearing a stamp of local uniqueness pertaining to the European periphery. Skušek’s legacy includes an important collection of Chinese money from all periods of Chinese history, which is introduced in this paper for the first time. A crucial distinction between this and other collections of Chinese coins is that evidence exists that tells us how Skušek collected the coins, and reveals a lot about his sources and advisors. It has long been known that during his stay in Beijing Skušek befriended many influential and knowledgeable people, including a Franciscan missionary, Fr. Maurus Kluge, who assisted him in assembling his numismatic collection. The paper presents the cooperation between the two in the light of a recent find––the original list and summary appraisal of the most valuable part of Skušek’s numismatic collection and Kluge’s letters to Skušek.

While a few larger collections of objects of East Asian origin entered Slovenian mu­seums after the deaths of their owners in the 1950s and 60s, individual items had begun finding their way there as early as the nineteenth century. Museums were faced early on with the problem not only of how to store and exhibit the objects, but also how to categorize them. Were they to be treated as “art” on account of their aesthetic value or did they belong, rather, to the field of “ethnography” or “anthropology” because they could illustrate the way of life of other peoples? Above all, in which museums were these objects to be housed? The present paper offers an in-depth analysis of these and related questions, seeking to shed light on how East Asian objects have been showcased in Slovenia (with a focus on the National Museum and the Slovene Ethnographic Museum) over the past two hundred years. In particular, it explores the values and criteria that were applied when placing these objects into individual categories. In contrast to the conceptual shift from “ethnology” to the “decorative and fine arts,” which can mostly be observed in the categorization of East Asian objects in North America and the former European colonial countries, the classification of such objects in Slovenia varied between “ethnology” and “cultural history,” with ethnology ultimately coming out on top. This ties in with the more general question of how (East) Asian cultures were understood and perceived in Slovenia, which is itself related to the historical and social development of the “peripheral” Slovenian area compared with former major imperial centres.