Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy最新文献

{"title":"Moral Conflicts and the Application of Ethics","authors":"Gan Shaoping","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0027","url":null,"abstract":"Moral codes, like legal codes, are necessary preconditions for civilized interpersonal communications and for harmonious social development. Moral practice may help society realize its best possible state. Indeed, moral codes, in conformity to all people’s interests, reflect people’s basic interests, as viewed from a longterm and holistic rather than short-term and immediate perspective. Those whose behavior is contrary to said codes face systemic or regulatory sanction, public condemnation, or conscience-driven self-castigation. Accordingly, questions such as whether or not public property should be appropriated for private gain do not occasion philosophical debate, for their moral properties are so plain that people may settle them without much need for reflection. What evokes people’s interest in moral philosophy is often another sort of question. For instance, if one accords a pregnant woman and her fetusmore-or-less equal moral standing as living beings, whose life should be saved in the event of the pregnancy encountering dystocia? If a fireman rushed into a burning room and found twin children lying in a bed, but could only save one of them, what decision should he make? Questions such as these indicate that when certain ethical theories (or principles, or codes) are applied to different objects, conflicts may occur due to the ambivalence of the ethical principles that aim to protect human beings’ rights to life. Stephan Sellmaier calls such conflicts “moral paradoxes (moralische dilemmata),” stating that they “arise within a [given] ethical theory.”1 Meanwhile, one might, as an example of a slightly different sort of question, ask whether the introduction of clear criteria for declaring brain death would help to expedite organ transplantation. People hold different ideas onwhether brain death is itself death or merely the beginning of the process of dying: those who consider brain death as marking death may say that since the patient has passed away, the donation of his or her organs not only causes no moral hindrance, but also tremendously benefits the recipient(s) of the donation. On the other hand, those who view brain death as merely the beginning of an irreversible dying process, and not as death itself, argue that since the removal of the patient’s organs causes true death, it is an evil and an infringement upon the patient’s right to life. The former position is distinctly utilitarian insofar as its starting point is the maximization of universal interest; the latter is rigorously deontological in that it privileges the sanctity of individual value. Sellmaier calls such conflicts “ethical differences","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116665528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Normative Body and the Embodiment of Norms","authors":"M. Wehrle","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Phenomenologically speaking, one can consider the experiencing body as normative insofar as it generates norms through repeated actions and interactions, crystallizing into habits. On the other hand according to Foucauldian approaches, the subjective body does not generate norms but is itself produced by norms: Dominant social norms are incorporated via repeated practices of discipline. How is the individual level of habit formation in phenomenology related to this embodiment of supra-individual norms? In what sense can we differentiate between a habit formation that results in a skill and one that disciplines a body? To address these questions the paper will analyze examples of the embodiment of norms in Foucault and feminist philosophy and show how they rely on the phenomenological concept of the actual and habitual body.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130929463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Is “Intention” Present or Not?","authors":"Zhang Jiang","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0028","url":null,"abstract":"From the beginning to the end of writing a text, or more precisely, from the writer’s first thought determining it to its final completion as delivered to the public, our belief is that the thought and its expression in the text should be regarded as the intention of the author’s subjective consciousness. Since the 1940s, however, the general tendency of contemporary Western literary theory has been to deny the existence of a text’s original intention and meaning; any explanation of the text that attempts to comply with the author’s and the text’s intention is abandoned, leading to relativistic and nihilistic text interpretations. In our view, regardless of how one resolves or resists the intention, it is always in the text, and even if “the author is dead”, once delivered to the reader, the text cannot be changed. In other words, the intention – the author’s intention to be precise – is still present, determining the text’s quality and value, and affecting the other’s understanding and interpretation of the text. This influence and decision may not be perceived by the other, who can automatically resist it, but the penetration and the determining power of the intention are present throughout the whole process of understanding and explaining the text, and whether you admit it or not, accept it or not, the intention always takes effect, and cannot be escaped. It can only be a delusion to believe that one can decide the text’s meaning independently of the author’s intention. It is puzzling to see this simple truth completely disregarded. What kind of theory provides a basis for deconstructing the intention, and what is the foundation of such a theory? In the development of Western literary theory in the last hundred years, there have been many explanations given for completely denying and later deconstructing the existence of intention. However, the most fundamental and key clues are to be found in the following: the first is William K. Wimsatt’s “Intentional Fallacy,” which denies the author’s intention in interpreting the text; the second is Clive Bell’s “Significant Form” cutting the relationship of production and construction between the author and the text; the third is the structuralist semiotics approach which holds that all texts are their symbols’ own operation; the author is only a tool to operate these, and the self-organization and self-structuring of the system of symbols is the fundamental way of generating the text. This paper will discuss these one by one.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121495627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Toward a Liberative Phenomenology of Zen","authors":"Bret W. Davis","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The questions pursued in this essay are: What can philosophers today learn from a tradition of psychosomatic practice such as Zen Buddhism? How does such a tradition challenge the very methodology of our cerebral practice of philosophy? And finally: What would it mean to bring Western philosophy and the psychosomatic practice of Zen together, not necessarily to merge them into one, but at least to commute between them so that they may speak to and inform one another? In pursuing these questions, it is demonstrated, we have much to learn from the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy. The middle two sections of this essay explain how Nishida Kitarō (1870-1945) and Nishitani Keiji (1900-1990) challenged the disembodied methodology of Western philosophy by drawing on their psychosomatic practice of Zen. The final section of this essay critically compares and contrasts the psychosomatic practice of Zen with the pragmatist “somaesthetics” of Richard Shusterman. Shusterman himself pursued connections between his project and Zen practice, yet it will be argued that the guiding aims of his pragmatically and aesthetically orientated somaesthetics need to be distinguished from the primarily enlightening and liberative aims of the psychosomatic practice of Zen.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121845312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Metaphor of the Net","authors":"Yvonne Förster","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract My aim in this paper is to sketch a picture of how we currently visualize human vs. artificial intelligence. I am going to analyze images depicting the transcendence of the human in recent movies, which I take to be significant for the contemporary conditio humana. I will examine how movies like Her (USA 2013, Spike Jonze) or Transcendence (USA 2014, Wally Pfister) invent and use images of human and artificial life. I will then analyze the images themselves, how they are connected and what underlying ontological assumptions can be found. My main focus will be on the concept of the body and figures of disembodied intelligence. I will argue that disembodied intelligence has become a central topos in contemporary cinema. I will show how these ideas relate to the presentation of technology as a highly complex and dynamic net-structure, comparable to the characteristics of the human brain.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"439 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132341943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring Pregnant Embodiment with Phenomenology and Butoh Dance","authors":"Tanja Stähler","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How does pregnancy transform our embodiment? This question will be explored with the help of phenomenology and Butoh dance. Although Butoh has not yet been able to fulfil its true potential for disclosing female embodiment and particularly pregnant embodiment, it will provide us with helpful clues. In pregnancy, objects are less ready-to-hand, more out of reach - world as we know it becomes removed. The habit body vanishes away. But pregnancy is not just a loss of the ordinary: it also opens up new dimensions. One such dimension is that of being touched from within. A phenomenology of the pregnant body thus leads to a removal of world, but also reveals new dimensions of world, and it even comes to disclose the other as a new world within. It means to carry something alien, like the stone in Butoh play Child’s Breath, which can only be carried slowly, awkwardly.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"57 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126144466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Criticism of Gehlen’s Theory of Instinct-Reduction and Phenomenological Clarification of the Concept of Instinct as the Genetic Origin of Embodied Consciousness","authors":"Lee Nam-in","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0025","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the past 20 years, the concept of instinct has been discussed in respect to various disciplines such as evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, linguistics, ethics, aesthetics, and phenomenology, etc. However, the meaning of instinct still remains unclarified in many respects. In order to overcome this situation, it is necessary to elucidate the genuine meaning of instinct so that the discussion of instinct in these disciplines can be carried out systematically. The objective of this paper is to establish the genuine concept of instinct on the basis of a phenomenological criticism of A. Gehlen’s theory of instinct-reduction. Moreover, it seeks to show that this concept is the genetic origin of the embodied consciousness. According to Gehlen, instinct is defined as Instinkthandlung. However, this definition of instinct is problematic in the formal logical sense, since the definiendum (the instinct) is already included in the definiens (Instinkthandlung). Moreover, it faces different kinds of serious material problems. Criticizing Gehlen’s theory of instinct systematically, I will show that instinct should be redefined as “the innate living force that urges a species of living being to pursue a certain kind of object,” and I will attempt to clarify this definition of instinct in a more detailed manner by offering 11 points. Thereafter, I will argue that Gehlen’s theory of instinct-reduction has to be replaced by the theory of instinct-enlargement in human beings. Finally, I will point out that the genuine concept of instinct is nothing other than the genetic origin of the embodied consciousness.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"115 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114494916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bodily Dasein and Chinese Script Components","authors":"Kwan Tze-wan","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the Shuowen, one of the earliest comprehensive character dictionaries of ancient China, when discussing where the Chinese characters derive their structural components, Xu Shen proposed the dual constitutive principle of “adopting proximally from the human body, and distally from things around.” This dual emphasis of “body” and “things around” corresponds largely to the phenomenological issues of body or corporeality on the one hand, and lifeworld on the other. If we borrow Heidegger’s definition of Dasein as Being-in-the world, we can easily arrive at a reformulation of Xu Shen’s constitutive principle of the Chinese script as one that concerns “bodily Dasein.” By looking into various examples of script tokens we can further elaborate on how the Chinese make use not only of the body in general but various body parts, and how they differentiate their life world into material nature, living things, and a multifaceted world of equipment in forming a core basis of Chinese characters/components, upon which further symbolic manipulation such as “indication”, “phonetic borrowing”, semantic combination, and “annotative derivation”, etc. can be based. Finally, examples will be cited to show how in the Chinese scripts the human body (and its parts) might interact with other’s bodies (and their parts) or with “things around” (whether nature, living creatures, or artifacts) in various ways to cover the social, environmental, ritual, technical, economical, and even intellectual aspects of human experience. Bodily Dasein, so to speak, provides us with a new perspective of understanding and appreciating the entire scope of the Chinese script.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128462843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Body, Language and Mediality","authors":"Tani Toru","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Husserl attempted to found logics and language on intuition, and particularly perception. The relationship between logical language and intuition is therefore one of the fundamental themes of his phenomenology. Husserl regarded the two as sharing an isomorphic structure, and this article shows that this structure can be characterized as “mediality.” That is, the “meaning” of language appears by mediation of sound or script, while the “I” as person appears by mediation of the body. I will show furthermore that intuitions themselves appear through the mediation of language, and interpret this idea of mediality in terms of the Japanese language. Guided by Husserl’s notion of Sprachleib (linguistic living body), I will also attempt an analysis of the “bodily” function of Chinese script and onomatopeia as aspects of Sprachleib and show how the Sprachleib functions as a “cultural living body” that makes community possible.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124745651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Possibility of a Disembodied Mind","authors":"Lau Chong-Fuk","doi":"10.1515/yewph-2017-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/yewph-2017-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Even though the Cartesian mind-body dualism has largely been dismissed in contemporary philosophy, the idea that the conscious mind can be a bodiless and non-spatial entity is still held to be possible. This paper examines a series of arguments by Jaegwon Kim, Peter Strawson, and Immanuel Kant against the possibility of a disembodied mind. It is argued that although the concept of a disembodied mind is coherent, it derives from a more fundamental concept in which the mind and the body are originally unified. The unity of mind and body, which can be called a person, is logically prior to the concept of the mind as a disembodied person, and thus the possibility of a disembodied mind turns out to depend on the existence of the physical and spatial world.","PeriodicalId":174891,"journal":{"name":"Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy","volume":"115 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117277423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}