Asian Studies最新文献

{"title":"Touch and Breath","authors":"Fabian Heubel","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.115-144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.115-144","url":null,"abstract":"“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?\u0000The “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).\u0000The 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).","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"6 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141006145","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":"V bran subjektivnosti in avtonomiji","authors":"Téa Sernelj","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.145-169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.145-169","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"4 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141011252","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":"Why Is “A White Horse Not a Horse”?","authors":"Shiqin She","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.273-308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.273-308","url":null,"abstract":"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”.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"51 39","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141009872","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":"Od »skromnih stvari« do »velikega Daota«","authors":"Xiaobo Yang","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.171-191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.171-191","url":null,"abstract":"China’s distinctive cricket culture—related to the insect, not the game—has given rise to a unique genre of texts known as “cricket books” (xishuai pu 蟋蟀譜). These texts, serving as instructional manuals for cricket-fighting, fall under the branch of pulu (譜錄) in traditional Chinese bibliography. Beyond scientific and technological merits, this genre has profound aesthetic and philosophical significance. Nurtured by the highly developed urban leisure culture of the Song dynasty, it embodies a philosophy of leisure. During the Ming dynasty, cricket books ultimately attained the esteemed title of “Classics” (jing 經) due to their profound philosophical resonance and embodiment of Confucian values. This article undertakes a philosophical exploration of these texts, aiming to unveil the embedded interpretative framework of Dao-Qi (道-器) in their examination of the colouration (se 色) and physiognomy (xiang 相) of crickets. This framework represents a fusion between Confucianism and Daoism: while Daoism embarks on a journey of transcendence from the very bottom (the most minute and humble things under Heaven, or weiwu 微物) to the very top (the “Great Dao”), Confucianism strives to bridge these two extremes through the emotion (qing 情) inherent in human hearts. This fusion can be aptly characterized as a philosophy of “emotion towards things” (ai wu 愛物). Moreover, this article addresses the challenges posed by modern society to traditional Chinese cricket culture, articulating concerns about the survival and revival of these time-honoured traditions in today’s technology-driven world.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"13 23","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141006027","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":"Richard Wilhelm and Alfred Döblin Transread the Chinese Tradition","authors":"Peter C. Perdue, Huiwen Helen Zhang","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.13-41","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.13-41","url":null,"abstract":"This article compares the transreading of Chinese texts in German by Sinologist Richard Wilhelm and novelist Alfred Döblin. Wilhelm, a spiritual intermediary between China and Europe, worked with eminent Chinese scholars to write accessible translations for German readers of Confucian and Daoist classics. Döblin relied on Wilhelm’s translation of the Liezi for his artistic breakthrough, The Three Leaps of Wang-lun: Chinese Novel. Over two decades later, while exiled in France, he crafted an idiosyncratic presentation of Confucius. Although he used excerpts from James Legge’s English translation, Döblin’s perspective on Confucius is grounded in his exposure to Chinese texts in Wilhelm’s German translation. Both Wilhelm and Döblin reinterpreted Chinese philosophy to provide lessons for 20th-century Western readers.\u0000Our analysis recognizes the social environment that shaped both writers’ interest in Chinese philosophy. We examine selected passages from these two representatives of the German literary tradition in order to indicate their convergent positions on Sino-Western cultural contact. Their shared stances toward the Chinese tradition, their own marginal positioning, physical migration, and intellectual alienation culminated in a unifying, outsider’s view. Both Wilhelm and Döblin initiated and promoted significant interactions on a basis of equality between Chinese and Western cultures.\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"9 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141005910","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":"O živi filozofiji","authors":"Timo Ennen","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.95-113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.95-113","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"87 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141011207","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":"Preporod kitajske filozofije s pomočjo metode sublacije","authors":"J. Rošker","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.245-270","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.245-270","url":null,"abstract":"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. \u0000This 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.\u0000In 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.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":" 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141129402","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 Critical Non-Humanism in Postwar Japan","authors":"Jay Hetrick","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.309-341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.309-341","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I argue that the infamous discussions around “overcoming modernity” that occurred in Japan in 1942 shared Michel Foucault’s conceptual conflation between humanism and modernism. That is, these discussions were not only declarations—in line with other postcolonial struggles of the time—against the dominance of the West politically and culturally. Philosophically, the programme of overcoming modernity can be understood as a set of discourses on anti-humanism that, in some ways, foreshadow those we find in Europe two decades later. In the case of the Kyoto School, the anti-humanist standpoint arose quite naturally from the particular philosophical history of Japan, combined with the fact that the philosophers in this school were close readers of Nietzsche and Heidegger, anti-humanists avant la lettre. For Sakaguchi Ango, whose ideas were very much opposed to the Kyoto School, a critique of the human was developed from his enthusiastic embrace of Jean-Paul Sartre. Ultimately, I argue, we need both the Kyoto School and Sakaguchi in order to understand the theoretical foundation for the various forms of critical non-humanism we find in contemporary Japanese art, philosophy, and culture.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"28 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141008415","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":"Li Zehou’s Ideas on Chinese Modernity Revisited","authors":"Piotr Machajek, Martyna Świątczak-Borowy","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.43-61","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.43-61","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"49 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141010135","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":"Ko sta Dialectica in Logica odpotovali na vzhod","authors":"Zhemeng Xu","doi":"10.4312/as.2024.12.2.63-92","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2024.12.2.63-92","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":516765,"journal":{"name":"Asian Studies","volume":"19 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141009315","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}