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Paper-cut is not simply a form of traditional Chinese folk art. Lucky motifs developed in paper-cut certainly acquired profound cultural connotations. As paper-cut is a time-honoured skill across the nation, interpreting those motifs requires cultural receptiveness and anthropological sensitivity. The author of this article analyzes examples of paper-cut from Northern Shaanxi, China, to identify the cohesive motifs and explore the auspiciousness of the specific concepts of Fu, Lu, Shou, Xi. The paper-cut of Northern Shaanxi is an ideal representative of the craft as a whole because of the relative stability of this region in history, in terms of both art and culture. Furthermore, its straightforward style provides a clear demonstration of motifs regarding folk understanding of expectations for life.

Mingli tan 名理探 (Investigation of Name-Patterns) is the first Chinese work dedicated to introducing Aristotelian logic. It was largely forgotten after being published in the 1630s, only rediscovered more than two centuries later, and then considered by modern academia more or less a failed project. However, through the lens of mingli, the key term to translate ‘logic’ in the book, this paper argues that despite the scarce readership and influence of Mingli tan, its translation practice should not be deemed as a failure. Instead, it is a work that reveals how translators can intervene with conceptual paradigms creatively and meaningfully. This paper provides a thorough examination of mingli, a culturally loaded term, by contextualizing it in the late Ming (1582‒1644), a time of significant Sino-European cultural contacts. In doing so, it sheds light on the neglected philosophical value carried by the term through translation, and highlights the translator—Li Zhizao李之藻 (1565‒1630)—and his pioneering effort in infusing it with a novel Aristotelian and Christian sense. Mingli is also examined in the broader intellectual history. Through an investigation into its traces in later Chinese translations of ‘logic’ starting from the 19th century until the 1980s, this study reveals a line of changes in the Chinese reception of logic suggested by the shift from the use of mingli to the phonetic translation luoji 逻辑 to denote logic, indicating that mingli can serve as a meaningful clue to track the transition of Chinese thought from traditional to modern paradigms.

This paper attempts a new reading of Gongsun Long’s “Baima lun”, through comparison with the Heidelberg School’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s “Being and Judgement” as a critique of self-consciousness and its judgmental form. It demonstrates that “Baima lun” correspondingly employs a reflectivity, or logic-transcending, anti-foundational perspective of “Being”, in order to undertake an ironical critique of judgment by a judgment as an illustration and confirmation of the epistemological ideas developed in “Zhiwu lun” and “Mingshi lun”. Consequently, based on the GSLZ, this paper proposes a new nominalist approach which differs from that of Hansen. Derived from further elaboration of the Heidelberg School’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s conception of Being, this paper posits that “things”, as read in “Mingshi lun”, are a specific dimension of “Being”, as singular infinity, and “name”, as superior to “zhi” or judgment in the rendering of things as criticized in “Zhiwu lun” and “Baima lun”.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Social transformations in Sinic intellectual history reveal a complex interaction among evolving cultural, philosophical, and artistic ideas and socio-political shifts. The Sinic region, encompassing areas in East and Southeast Asia influenced by Chinese script and culture—particularly Confucianism and various forms of Chinese Buddhism—includes China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, parts of Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other neighbouring countries. The term “Sinic”, originating from the Latin word for China, highlights the shared cultural and linguistic heritage across these regions. This history illustrates how shifts in intellectual thought have continually influenced and been shaped by changes in societal structures and governance. The present publication explores the intricate relationship between the individual and the state—a theme that resonates deeply through the annals of Asian thought. This relationship, characterized by an evolving dialogue between personal autonomy and state authority, serves as the backdrop to the discussions presented in this issue. Each paper contributes to a broader understanding of how individuals have negotiated their space within the structures imposed by state ideologies, influencing and reshaping them in turn.

Maruyama Masao (1914–1996) became a leading figure of post-war Japanese democratization with the publication of his essay “Theory and Psychology of Ultra-Nationalism” (1946). The idea of kokutai was central to his interpretation of ultra-nationalism as a concept that connected ‘nationalistic’ ideas of the late Tokugawa period with the imperialist propaganda of the 1930s. This concept was linked with the millennia-old Chinese notion of the ruler as the ‘father’ of the people in a land that is an extension of the family (jia). In Japan, however, the connection between the family (kazoku) and the nation(state) (kokka) was based on the imperial linage that upheld the blood-relation between the tennō and the deities. In the present paper, I will examine Maruyama’s interpretation of the role of the family in Japanese ultra-nationalism on the basis of his studies “The Ideology and Dynamics of Japanese Fascism” (1948) and “Nationalism in Japan: Its Theoretical Background and Prospects” (1951) (in Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, 1956; in English, 1963), linking these essays with Maruyama’s war-time studies on the Tokugawa era. I will show that the elements on which Maruyama focused his analysis of the ‘family-state’ (kazokukokka) are those features of Japanese nationalism that he had already detected in his war-year studies; that is, features in which he saw the preservation of the Tokugawa social structure of hōkensei. I will argue that this social structure was understood by Maruyama as a power structure in which the ‘transfer of oppression’ is possible due to the decentralized, i.e., family-like character of social relationships.

Chinese humanism developed distinctly from European humanist discourses, reflecting unique cultural and philosophical traditions. Analysing these differences can enhance our understanding of both the specific characteristics of Chinese humanism and the diverse potentialities within contemporary global humanist thought. This comparative perspective, enhanced by employing the method of sublation, underscores the planetary relevance of humanism. It demonstrates how diverse cultural perspectives enrich and broaden the scope of global discourse, leading to a more inclusive understanding of humanism worldwide. In this paper I will give a brief historical overview of the origins and development of the formation of ideas which, in China, placed the human being at the centre of culture and the cosmos. But in order to better understand the differences that demarcate Chinese views of humans and their position in the world from European ones, we will first look at how the relationship between people and the communities in which they live is structured in the Chinese tradition. We will then examine the political and philosophical currents shaping Confucian discourse and take a look on the way in which each of them contributes to the Chinese model of humanism. By applying the method of sublation, we intend to investigate how these two systems could complement and enhance each other, thereby helping to establish a foundational framework for a newly proposed transcultural planetary ethics.

Zia Nai-zin 謝乃壬, Xie Fu-ya or Hsieh Fu-yah 謝扶雅 (1892–1991), a remarkable Chinese Christian philosopher, theologian, and translator, developed his unique philosophy of “in-ism” (唯中論) from the 1960s to 1980s to indigenize Christianity into the ideal “Chinese Christianity” (中華基督教). Zia declared that the essence of Confucianism is the concept of Zhong 中 (neutrality, avoidance of extremes) and compared the Confucian teaching of the Unity of Heaven and Humans (天人合一) with the Christian Christology, which argues that Jesus Christ is the unity of divinity and humanity. Zia further stated that New Confucians emphasize the Way of Humans over the Way of Heaven, while the Christian doctrine of incarnation balanced both divinity and humanity and achieved the Unity of Heaven and Humans. While Zia’s reinterpretation of the Doctrine of the Mean is controversial, following the recently developed method of sublation, this paper aims to evaluate whether Zia’s Christian reinterpretation of Zhongyong 中庸 has successfully sublated Confucianism and Christianity. I argue that although Zia’s interpretation of Zhongyong contains certain philological flaws, overall he successfully produced new insights enriching both Christianity and Confucianism by grounding both on the same ontological ground of Zhong.

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.

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.

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.

The present paper aims to shed light on certain methodological challenges that Chinese intellectuals faced in the process of coming to terms with Marxist thought. Even at the beginning of these processes, i.e., in the first decades of the 20th century, Chinese theorists faced several difficulties regarding the issue of cross-cultural philosophical syntheses. Thus, in their endeavours to adapt Marxism to the specifically Chinese worldview, they sought suitable adaptations of traditional philosophical methodologies that would enable them to fruitfully integrate classical Chinese and modern Marxist discourses. Zhang Dainian 張岱年 (1909–2004) has played a particularly prominent role in this process. Therefore, this paper aims to shed light on his contribution to the establishment of new Chinese and cross-cultural philosophical methodologies. In terms of exploring general philosophical issues, Zhang established a unique philosophical system known as “neo-materialism” in which he attempted to integrate Marxist materialism with some basic approaches of traditional Chinese philosophy. The crucial features that defined this philosophical system were based on his innovative methodology, which is critically presented in this paper.

The problem of the relation between the female gender and Confucian humanism is far more complex than it seems to be on the first glance. Especially if we consider the many misogynistic phenomena we can encounter in the course of Chinese history, such as foot-binding or the concubinage, we might be inclined to think that female philosophy was impossible in traditional China. This paper aims to challenge the standard views on this problem. It aims to shed some light on the fact that in this context we have to differentiate between classical teachings that were relatively egalitarian in nature, and later ideologies that more or less openly promoted the inferior position of women in society. The paper will analyse the work of the female Han dynasty scholar Ban Zhao (45–117 CE), who was the first well-known female thinker in the history of Chinese philosophy. Through this analysis, the author also aims to expose the contradiction between dominant conventions on the one hand, and latent, often hidden criticism of gender relations in female writings of traditional China on the other. In this way, the paper aims to promote a more culturally sensitive approach to the historical and conceptual study of gender discourses in China by connecting textual analyses with actual and comprehensive knowledge of the historical and social contexts in which they were placed.

This paper is based on research that centres on the city of Tokyo, a mature city that is experiencing various transformations, in order to show how social capital and innovation can help build up resilient communities. It presents two major topics: 1) the potential of localities and their social capital and social innovation to actively react to change, and 2) the role of localities for inclusive urban governance. By focusing on five small neighbourhoods in the south of Taito-ward in central-east Tokyo, the paper addresses the following questions: a) what kinds of social networks and interaction exist at the local level, b) how are residents contributing to neighbourhood revitalization and community identity, and c) what are specific examples of social innovative practices, emerging in periods of crisis, in the case-study area as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic? By adopting a mixed methods approach drawing especially on in-depth interviews conducted with a range of independent business owners, the study reveals the dynamics between long-term residents and newcomers as they negotiate shared identities that continue to shape the present and future of some of Tokyo’s oldest neighbourhoods. The research findings highlight the need for good urban governance to draw on an improved understanding of the potential of localities, place-based social capital building, and new social practices that are emerging in local third sectors, such as volunteer-run industry-based organizations, which are vital in maintaining informal networks as an alternative to more traditional neighbourhood groups to bond, bridge, and link diverse community members.

This paper examines the coupling in early texts of two masters, Yang Zhu 楊朱 and Mo Di 墨翟. The two thinkers are most famously paired in the Mencius as the prominent preachers of extreme doctrines, while they are also sometimes presented in other early texts such as the Zhuangzi and Han Feizi as useless debaters on trivial topics. These alternative portrayals of Yang-Mo are usually simplified as a second-rate imitation or repetition of the standard Mencian depiction. The paper argues that such a reading represents a serious misunderstanding of the pre-imperial textual transmission. Unfamiliarity with Yang-Mo as sophists may also be the result of the unconscious acceptance of Mencius’ description. The unconventional portrayal of Yang-Mo, very likely relatively unrelated to Mencius’ portrayal, had its own history in early China. Presented in various contexts, this alternative Yang-Mo image was once circulated in various forms for different intended audiences.

The paper introduces the transhumanism and cosmic communism of Mao Zedong and discusses its relation to a Marxian conception of human nature and analogous Soviet visions. Having shown that the two-sided understanding of human nature in Marx opened doors for its transhumanist interpretations, the article identifies instances of the latter in the ideal of the New Soviet Man, the views of Trotsky, and the communist (or at least Sovietized) cosmism of Tsiolkovsky and Bogdanov. In parallel to and prior to his contact with Marxism, Mao became occupied with the problems of immortality, alternative spaces, the destruction of the Earth, and the power of human will, and his early transhumanism only revived after 1949. It is shown that based on his revision of historical materialism and belief in the limitless potential of human powers, Mao envisaged that technological and cultural revolutions would still and endlessly occur under communism(s), including their cosmic phases, and even after a global nuclear catastrophe. This would be, however, a future of “something more advanced” than humans, free from their current physical limitations.

This paper will introduce a novel perspective on Confucian democracy by connecting it with Ernesto Laclau’s (2005) conception of democracy in On Populist Reason. Specifically, I argue that the normatively ideal ruler-ruled relationship in Confucian political theory can be conceptualized as the people making a radical investment in a virtuous leader. This argument will proceed in several steps. Firstly, I will provide context surrounding Confucianism and Laclau’s (2005) novel political ontology. Secondly, I will draw on the psychoanalytic work of Jacques Lacan (2001) to explore the notion of a radical investment and how it can be appealed to by politicians, rhetoricians and philosophers through their use of empty signifiers, signifiers without a fixed conceptual signified (such as MAGA or “Take Back Control”). In Laclau’s application of Lacanian psychoanalysis these represent an unachievable full harmonious community with no conflicts between different interests. I will then argue that a core part of Confucius’ political message, his constant advocacy for a virtuous ruler modelled on the Sage-Kings of the Zhou dynasty, is essentially a Laclauian conception of politics, because the Zhou kings are playing the role of empty signifiers in Confucius’ political theory. That is, they represent an unachievable ideal of a fully harmonious community. Finally, I argue that this increases Confucianism’s potential for compatibility with democracy since these psychoanalytic dynamics could be replicable in modern democracies and would be normatively desirable should a virtuous leader utilize them.

The article explores the aesthetic theory of Shitao, an early Qing dynasty painter who belonged to the Individualist school of painting which advocated painting from subjective experience of life and learning from the Dao, thus following the aesthetic tradition of literati landscape painters. Shitao composed his own theory of painting and aesthetics in the work The Remarks on Painting (Huayulu 畫語錄), which was the result of his artistic practice and philosophical reflections collected throughout his life. The article delves into Shitao’s critique of the Traditionalist school of painting which prevailed in his time as the mainstream painting style, advocating imitation and repetition of the old masters. For Shitao and other Individualist painters, such an approach and attitude towards art led to creative stagnation and a departure from the aesthetic ideals of classical landscape painting. With their artistic and theoretical intervention, however, they managed to preserve, upgrade and bring to life new perspectives in artistic production and aesthetic theories. This paper presents Shitao’s defence of subjectivity as a vital catalyst for the rejuvenation of artistic perspectives and the restoration of Chinese art, thus providing an invaluable contribution to the discourse on artistic creativity and subjectivity.

“Become hard!” is the supposedly “new tablet” that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra has placed above us. It can hardly be denied that modernization in particular has relentlessly imposed a need to develop one’s hardness and strength. Is it even possible to imagine a form of modernization based on the commandment to “Become soft!”? While this is the old and always new instruction to which Lǎozǐ pointed in his advice to become like water, Nietzsche finds it unbearable. He asks, “Why so soft?”, and “Why so soft, so retiring, and yielding?” And Lǎozǐ answers that hardness is deadly: “The hard and strong are the followers of death.” Then Nietzsche responds, “Don’t you want to conquer and win?” And Lǎozǐ replies, “The soft and weak win over the hard and strong”. Where are the modernizers who believe in the old “tablet” Lǎozǐ has given us in the praise of softness and weakness? Where are the modernizers who know about the hard but are able to preserve the soft? Where are the modernizers who are able to philosophize not with the hammer but with the brush? The “good old authoritarian character” (Theodor W. Adorno) has been educated to (masculine) hardness. For this mode of being human (feminine) softness is nothing but a form of weakness on which the creator wants to put his stamp. As a philosophical source of criticism of the authoritarian character, the Daoist classic Lǎozǐ has a value that can hardly be overestimated. It moves toward a paradigm of self-relation or subjectivity in which the eye and light cannot claim primacy as the means by which humans can access the true and the good, but touch and breath form a pivot by which they can learn to walk a Way that wanders between hardness and softness. Therefore, at the centre of character formation and cultivation is a self-relation described in the sixth chapter of the Lǎozǐ by the paradoxical image of the “ravine” (gǔ 谷). The ravine is a natural image in which the hard stone of the mountain cliffs and the soft water flowing through them belong together. At the same time, this chapter of the Lǎozǐ has been associated with the motif of the female in commentaries since antiquity. Moreover, the analogy between the ravine and the female sex organ opens up a thought-provoking approach to the relation between the female and the soft in the Lǎozǐ. However, the ravine as a paradoxical image does not stop there. Rather, the Way it suggests leads in a direction that can be summed up in the phrase “knowing hardness and preserving softness”. In the following paper, the discussion of the female and the male in relation to the soft and the hard aims at a broader reflection on a theory and practice of breath (qì 氣) that constitutes a transcultural philosophy of the Way (dàozhéxué 道哲學).

In this article, I will introduce and describe my current research work, which centres on re-interpreting Chinese philosophy by implementing an innovative approach suitable for transcultural philosophical comparisons. To commence this undertaking, I was compelled to address certain issues, leading me to seek a novel methodology for transcultural research. This article will begin by briefly addressing the still existing general problems of transcultural philosophical comparisons. I will then examine the recent and current landscape of research in the field of Chinese comparative philosophy, with a specific focus on emerging paradigms referred to as “post-comparative” approaches. In the latter part of this paper, building upon a concise overview of my previous research findings, I will elucidate the current stage of development of the method of sublation. Furthermore, I will provide a theoretical framework outlining the subsequent phases of investigation.

This paper considers what it would mean to conceive of philosophy as living. In the first part, by way of a discussion on intercultural encounter recently taken up by Cora Diamond, I first illustrate why philosophical conflict cannot be resolved within already given modes of thought or self-contained finite philosophical traditions, but instead transcends those. In the second part, I show why this dynamic plays out not only between cultures but also between the individual and that individual’s own tradition. I do this by drawing from insights of the two major proponents of xinxue 心學 (Learning of the Heart-Mind), Lu Jiuyuan 陸九淵 and Wang Yangming 王陽明. The way xinxue deals with both orthodox and heterodox traditions illuminates how we can understand philosophy as something living. It is neither self-contained and indifferent to its own heritage or to the culturally alien, nor does it consist of the mere accumulation of diverse philosophical contents. The deepening of individuality that xinxue introduces into Chinese philosophy consists in the relation of the individual to what has already been conceived. Ultimately, by grasping this dynamic that happens through the individual, we may better grasp why philosophy is not reducible to given modes of thought nor to self-contained finite philosophical traditions, but instead is infinite.

We propose Li Zehou’s idea of “Western Learning for Substance, Chinese Learning for Function” (Xi ti Zhong yong 西體中用) as an interpretative framework for two distinct theories: Sungmoon Kim’s political theory of public reason Confucianism and Yan Lianke’s literary theory of mythorealism. This paper aims to show that Xi ti Zhong yong can provide a unified explanatory framework for these two apparently distinct theories. Second, we show that Xi ti Zhong yong can be applied even more broadly to other phenomena occurring in contemporary discourses on China. In particular, we show that it provides new interpretative perspectives in political philosophy and literary theory.

The Vietnamese envoys’ records during their diplomatic journeys to Beijing, especially poems and prose, have attracted increasing academic attention, from both international and local scholars. Some studies have comprehensively examined the Vietnamese envoys’ routes when visiting China, literary works, diplomatic strategies, and Confucian beliefs, such as the Taiwanese scholar Chen Yiyuan’s (陳益源) journal paper, which specifically problematizes the absence of filial expression related to the envoys’ journey in Xiaogan (孝感), Hubei Province. The systematic works of Liam C. Kelley and Peng Qian (彭茜) chiefly delineate the harmonious and normal communication based upon the long-developed cultural congruity between Vietnam and China. Their studies and other relevant research show the sophisticated impact of Chinese Confucianism on the Vietnamese envoys. However, there is so far insufficient investigation into the official representatives’ transformation and violation of Confucian manners and thoughts at specific historical moments. Hence, this paper intends to specify the practices of Confucian discourses in the final negotiation between the states of the Nguyễn and the Qing in 1883, both of which encountered the military threat from France and other Western countries. Our findings suggest that although those last envoys, including Phạm Thận Duật and Nguyễn Thuật, utilised a Sinocentric and Confucian manner to bargain with the Chinese for military aid, overall the Nguyễn adopted a Machiavellian approach instead. This means there was a division between political utility and ritual ethics, and the Vietnamese envoys, as pragmatic politicians, prioritized national security while discussing military aid in terms of Confucian rhetoric and values.

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.

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.

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.

The bi (“disc”) is an object that was originally made from jade, and became an independent motif that appeared widely in different pictorial materials during Han times. The bi disc is considered one of the earliest jade forms, and has been used for ritual purposes or as an ornament from the Neolithic period until today. This paper focuses on the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), a period in which jade bi discs were extensively used and placed in burials of different ranks. Present finds show that images of bi discs also appeared widely in Han burials, in which they were depicted on coffins, funerary banners covering coffins, and mural paintings, and were also engraved on pictorial stones and pictorial bricks, these practices becoming more ubiquitous in the later Han period. By studying various images of bi discs in different burials throughout the Han period, this paper will explore the development and significance of different pictorial representations of bi disc in Han burial context, and also attempt to reveal the rich content and thoughts embedded in the form of bi discs during this period of time.

More than 200 heavily decorated jars with five mouths, which are commonly known as hunping and date from the second to the early fourth centuries, have been excavated from tombs in Jiangnan. Remarkably, each of these vessels is unique in appearance. One of their most notable features is that they are adorned with figures of many animals. Of these, the most numerous are birds. This paper endeavours to discover why artisans put so many birds on these vessels. Although many analysts believe the birds are the souls of the departed flying to the heavens, that does not explain why there are so many. This paper contends that the answer lies in local Jiangnan legends and beliefs, in which sparrows stole rice from Heaven and introduced its cultivation to humans. Birds thereby were seen as grain and fertility gods and thus emblems of good fortune for both the dead and the living.

The standard pictorial formula of Fuxi and Nüwa, a pair of indigenous Chinese deities, started to absorb new motifs from Buddhist art during the early medieval period when Buddhism became more prominent in China. In this paper, I focus on the juxtaposition of Fuxi-Nüwa and cintamani, a magic Buddhist jewel, depicted on the ceiling of the corridor in the tomb of Lady Poduoluo, Pingcheng, Shanxi (435 CE). Through a detailed visual analysis, I explain the multiple meanings embedded in the combination of the Chinese mythological figures with the Buddhist symbol in the funerary space, thus challenging the previous studies that understand cintamani only as a substitute for the sun and moon. This paper furthers the discussion on the hybrid image by investigating the mural painting on the ceiling of Mogao Cave 285 in Dunhuang. Despite their different spatial and temporal contexts, both the tomb of Lady Poduoluo and Mogao Cave 285 present a similar pictorial formula, featuring the hybridization of cintamani and the Fuxi-Nuwa pair. This phenomenon invites us to explore the transmission of such motifs. I, therefore, situate the production of the syncretic scheme of Fuxi-Nüwa with cintamani within a broader historical context and examine the artistic exchange between Pingcheng and Dunhuang by tracing the movements of images, artisans, and patrons in early medieval China.

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of quoting Confucius, the classical Chinese thinker of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Firstly, it approaches the core issue of quotes and historicity of the “master said” narrative which marked the tradition of quoting Confucius and understanding his heritage through the form of quotes. In the core part of the paper, a selection of ten quotes that most commonly circulate on the Internet are analysed and traced to their most probable sources, while the paper then concludes by approaching the problem of misquoting from a historical and philosophical point of view.

Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, Marxism is still highly significant in China. Therefore, my paper studies the contemporary usage of one of the key concepts of Marxist theory: ideology. While one can draw on numerous accounts of Western political scientists of the shifting ideology of the CCP leadership, Western scholarship has overlooked critical theories of ideology of Chinese origin that developed in the 1990s in the context of an academic re-evaluation of Karl Marx’s theories. My paper analyses the work of Yu Wujin (俞吾金, 1948–2014), a key representative of this intellectual current. His monograph On Ideology was the first comprehensive treatment of the concept by a Chinese scholar. Clarifying the relation of Yu’s theory of ideology with CCP positions, I will argue that in leaving behind dialectical materialism and in reviving ideology in its critical sense, his work provides a theoretical foundation for a limited pluralization of Marxist discourse in reform era China.

The present paper deals with Li Zehou’s contributions to the discussions of Marxism in the second half of the 20th century. In Li’s philosophy, Marx’s theories were reshaped, modified, and upgraded in a theoretical framework that differed from the original. He agreed with Marx’s presumption that the making and using of tools was the basic material practice, which made human evolution possible. Nevertheless, he saw Marx’s further development of this theory as problematic, because he saw it as being one-sided: progress from the means of production to the relations of production, and then on to the superstructure, only concerned the external developments of the relation between the manufacture and use of tools. At this point, Li was more interested in their internal influences, i.e., in the ways in which the making and use of tools has reshaped the human mind. He was highly sceptical of Marxist economic theories and criticized the crucial concepts elaborated by Marx in his Capital through the lens of Kantian “transcendental illusions”. Proceeding from his combination of Marx and Kant, the present paper will critically analyse some crucial differences between the Marxian idea of the class struggle as a driving force of social progress, and Li’s own version of historical materialism.

Kashima city is best known for having the oldest martial arts schools in Japan. While some of its martial arts schools, such as the Kashima Shinryū, were officially established in the latter half of the medieval period, there was already a long tradition of martial arts in Kashima region since the Kofun period (the fourth to the seventh centuries AD). This paper focuses on archaeological remains and the landscape around the Kashima Grand Shrine, to clarify the significance and influence of the Kashima Grand Shrine in managing the eastern part of the territory of ancient Japan. This paper examines some characteristics of the region, such as its coastal location that enabled the transportation of materials and soldiers. Another specific aspect of the place could be the advanced metal production evident in the giant sword of the Kashima Grand Shrine made in the early ancient period. Ancient workshops for metallurgy were found at the former local government office in Hitachi-no-kuni, the area of today’s Ibaraki Prefecture. It thus seems no coincidence that Kashima was chosen as a kind of military base. The archaeological findings that have been made in this location provide many reasons why the lineages of various martial arts schools, including the Kashima Shinryū, derived from this city, which led to the formation of later bushi groups in the medieval period of eastern Japan.

This paper examines the discourse on bushido in the late Meiji period. My aim is to shed light on bushido’s hybridity by using the concept of transculturation. Transculturation conceptualizes encounters between different cultures as a process of mutual construction. The bushido theorists that are discussed in this paper are in some sense transculturators, struggling between Japan and the West, the particular and the universal, and tradition and modernity. One of the common theoretical strategies for solving this problem attempted to valorize bushido and was mostly dependent on establishing equivalence with similar traditions in Western culture, such as chivalry or gentlemanship. Nitobe’s famous book on bushido went beyond this type of strategy. He not only accounted for things in Japanese cultural tradition by using Western logic, but also reinterpreted Western concepts in light of Japanese cultural traditions. This makes Nitobe a more perfect example of a transculturator than others. The ultra-nationalist discourse on bushido by Inoue Tetsujiro shows another curious aspect of bushido’s hybridity. Bushido became at once purified and hybridized through the distinction he made between superficial formality and the essential spirit. Thus, the discursive strategies of bushido theorists are closely related to bushido’s hybridity.

This paper interrogates the notions of time and money in Islamic (economic) tradition by applying Toshihiko Izutsu’s theory of the key terms of a worldview. A Japanese scholar of Islam, Toshihiko Izutsu (1914–1993), wrote extensively on Islamic studies, eastern mystical traditions, and Sufism. His theory of key ethical concepts in the Qur’an is a semantic analysis of an Islamic worldview, which can be applied also more specifically to economic thought in Islamic tradition. Applying Izutsu’s theory would shed light on the main ethico-economic concepts and postulates in Islamic intellectual history, such as the notions of time, money, and commodity purchases, as well as their relation to man as a time-contingent being. As well as the introduction and conclusion, this paper is divided into three main parts. In the first part, I introduce Izutsu’s life and his semantic theory. The second focuses on Islamic economics and its relation to Sharī‘a as a moral concept, whereas the third part inquires more specifically upon the notion of time and money in classical and contemporary Islamic economic thought.

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.

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.