|
Item
|
Title
|
Author
|
|
1
|
The Concept of Ceremonial Rituals and Political Order as Reflected in the “Debate over Whether a Monk Should Bow Before an Emperor” from the Eastern Jin Dynasty
The nature of the “Debate over Whether a Buddhist Monk (śramaṇa) Should Bow Before an Emperor” (the “Debate”) during the Eastern Jin Dynasty can be understood as an “argument over court rituals.” The purpose of the “Debate” was to determine the codes of behavior of a monk during an audience with an emperor, which had not been expounded by the Confucian Classics. To be more specific, the discussion revolved around the “bowing rituals.” Disagreements and contentions about the “bowing rituals” frequently occurred during the Eastern Jin dynasty. Such frequent occurrences demonstrated that people at that time intended to reaffirm the power relations and social hierarchies between emperors and their ministers through ceremonial ritual protocols. Since the “Debate” occurred within the context of “argument over court rituals,” its implication transcends the traditional view of Confucian-Buddhist debates, and signals a possibility to reexamine the “Debate” from the interrelated perspectives of ritual concepts and political order. Keeping this complexity in mind, this paper begins its investigation by pointing out that the crux of the “Debate” lies in “zai san jhih yi,” which broaches the issue of the identity of monks in a nation’s political order. Furthermore, this paper analyzes two representative approaches to the “Debate”— Huan Xuan’s theory of “zih sheng jhih de” and Hui Yuan’s idea of “fang wai jhih bin”— and reveals how Huan Xuan and Hui Yuan transformed the generally accepted concept of ceremonial rituals so as to construct their own discourses. In doing so, this paper explores the political significance underlying the narrative strategies employed by Huan Xuan and Hui Yuan respectively.
|
Chin, Wai-tong
|
|
2
|
The Statement of Repentance
for the Fall of Ming: An Analysis of the Social Context and Thoughts from Wang Fuzhi’s Critique of the Jing-Ling School
Due to the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Wang Fuzhi’s commentary on the Jing-Ling School was more critical than that of the Classical School. Such criticism reflected Wang’s pang of repentance in his later years, and gave him the urge to constantly perfect his poetic criticism and theoretical framework. This paper provides evidence to reveal the influence and interconnectedness of Wang’s social relationships—such as family, teachers, friends, regions, political alliances, and loyalist communities—and investigates how such interrelations had penetrated into his critical discourse of the Jing-Ling School as well as Wang’s transformation from a Jing-Ling-style learner to an adopter of a much harsher social stance. Moreover, as a former Jing-Ling-style learner, Wang is distinguished from other contemporary critics of the fall of Ming during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. In addition to the analysis through the lens of social sciences, this paper suggests that Wang’s criticism of the Jing-Ling School also exhibited his unique thoughts of tiyao (style and essentials) and wenzhi (outer grace and inner substance), which subtly embody the conceptions of the yi-xia distinction that entails the debate over the civilized xia and the uncivilized yi. Wang was apprehensive of poetry being the possible downfall of the nation, and that poetry, as a substitute for music, would suffer the same tragic fate as music under the invasion of yi. Therefore, Wang’s focus on the significance of wenzhi, tiyao, and poetry derives from his concerns of the dire circumstances surrounding the survival of Xia culture.
|
Zhang, Huan-huan
|
|
3
|
Confucian Humanism and Non-complacent Consciousness in Yang Mu’s Poems and Articles
While it is difficult to reconcile Yang Mu’s oeuvre, including poetry, translation and editing, from a single approach, this article attempts to explore elements of Confucian humanism and non-complacent consciousness across Yang Mu’s poetry and prose. By ducumenting the two seminal ideological strands, this article traces the development and demonstrations of such trains of thought in Yang’s works.
The aesthetics of Confucian humanism and non-complacent consciousness represent the significant foundation of Yang Mu’s creations, through which his observation of the present world is emeshed with profound humanistic spirit. Although Yang Mu’s views and philosophy are inspired by Chen Shixiang and Xu Fuguan, he focuses more on the outward expression of internal emotions after drastic shifts in the external world. Through examining the tradition of lyrical expressions and the notion of worldliness from New Confucianism, this article investigates the fundaments for Yang Mu to elucidate worldly experience by means of his poetry.
This article does not seek to construct a universal interpretive framework of Yang Mu’s poetry. Rather, it highlights Yang Mu’s real-life encounters and real-world interactions, and demonstrates that the profound expressions of sentiment and non-complacency in Yang Mu’s poetry exhibit his concerns for the order of life and the value of ethics within the scope of the collective human life experience.
|
Hsu, Chia-wei
|
|
4
|
In Defense of the "No Principled Difference Argument"
According to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP), an agent is morally responsible for what she has done only if she could have done otherwise. Harry G. Frankfurt (1969) presents the Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs) as counterexamples to the PAP, and argues that PAP is therefore false. However, Philip Swenson (2015, 2016) has recently proposed the “No Principled Difference Argument” (NPDA) to defend PAP. Firstly, he claims that our intuitive reaction to FSCs is that an agent may not be responsible for omitting to act, i.e. omission in the Frankfurt-style cases (OCs). Then, he argues that there is no principled distinction between FSCs and OCs. Thus, the agents in FSCs, likewise, may not be responsible for their actions. In response to Swenson’s view, Florian Cova (2017) rejects NPDA by appealing to two principles of responsibility ascription—the performance condition and the explanation condition—and explicates the significant differences of moral responsibility between FSCs and OCs. If the two conditions proposed by Cova were true, Swenson’s NPDA would fail to defend PAP. Nonetheless, this paper argues that the performance condition is confronted with problems of applicability and legitimacy, as well as explanatory dilemma, while the explanation condition lacks an appropriate theoretical foundation. Therefore, Cova’s objections to NPDA remain untenable.
|
Hsiao, Ming-yuan
|
|
5
|
The Task of the Translator in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: A Case Study of the Translation of "Entropy" into the Chinese Character "Shang"
“Entropy” was a term first coined to indicate the transformation of thermal energy and was later adopted to describe the degree of disorder of a closed system. It is said that the concept was introduced into China in the 1920s and was first translated as shang. Hence, the initial question of this study revolves around how such translational equivalence was made. How was the translation/transcreation formed by the translator? Was the Chinese character coined by the translator through combining the radical huo, meaning “fire,” with the root shang, meaning “quotient?” Or, was it a long existent but rare character rediscovered and redefined by the translator? What was its original meaning? In addition, was the choice of a single character shang made under the influence of various translation projects of Western scientific terms launched during the late Qing dynasty? Therefore, the present study takes the translation of the term “entropy” as a point of departure, and explores the pronunciation and definition of shang as well as the history of how it becomes the Chinese counterpart of “entropy.” The process of English-to-Chinese translation of “entropy” exhibits prominently the translator’s originality and innovation. For contemporary relevance, Bernard Stiegler’s notion of negentropy is employed to address the important questions of how AI automatic translation may pose impact on human language and the translator; accordingly, the paper offers substantial insights into the task of the translator defined by Walter Benjamin.
|
Cheng, Hui-wen
|
|
