scholarly journals Confucian Harmony in Dialogue with African Harmony: A Response

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenyang Li
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Central Place ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Confucian Philosophy ◽  
Equal Split

Engaging in dialogue with African philosophy, I respond to questions raised by Thaddeus Metz on characteristics of Confucian philosophy in comparison with African philosophy. First, in both Confucian philosophy and African philosophy, harmony/harmonization and self-realization coincide in the process of person-making. Second, Confucians accept that sometimes it is inevitable to sacrifice individual components in order to achieve or maintain harmony at large scales; the point is how to minimize such costs. Third, Confucians give family love a central place in the good life before extend love to the rest of the world. Fourth, the Confucian philosophy of gender equality is based on appropriate division of labor consistent with its yin-yang philosophy, rather than equal split of power in the family. Fifth, in the Confucian view, hierarchy and harmony do not necessarily contradict each other, though hierarchy is not essential to all forms of harmony. The two can co-exist.

Virtuous Emotions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristján Kristjánsson
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Emotion Theory ◽  
Moral Theorizing ◽  
Emotional Value

Aristotelian virtue ethics has gained momentum within latter-day moral theorizing. Many people are drawn towards virtue ethics because of the central place it gives to emotions in the good life; after all, Aristotle says that emotions can have an intermediate and best condition proper to virtue. Yet nowhere does Aristotle provide a definitive list of virtuous emotions. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle does analyse a number of emotions. However, many emotions that one would have expected to see there fail to get a mention, and others are written off rather hastily as morally defective. Whereas most of what goes by the name of ‘Aristotelian’ virtue ethics nowadays is heavily reconstructed and updated Aristotelianism, such exercises in retrieval have not been systematically attempted with respect to his emotion theory. The aim of this book is to offer a revised ‘Aristotelian’ analysis and moral justification of a number of emotions that Aristotle either did not mention (such as awe, grief, and jealousy), relegated, at best, to the level of the semi-virtuous (such as shame), made disparaging remarks about (such as gratitude) or rejected explicitly (such as pity, understood as pain at another person’s deserved bad fortune). It is argued that there are good ‘Aristotelian’ reasons for understanding those emotions either as virtuous or as indirectly conducive to virtue. The book begins with an overview of Aristotle’s ideas on the nature of emotions and of emotional value, and it ends with an account of Aristotelian emotion education.

Materialisation of the Good Life in the New House

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Lan Wei
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Intergenerational Relationships ◽  
Western Society ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rural Architecture ◽  
Family House

Abstract Over the past two decades, Chinese rural architecture has experienced dramatic changes through the Building the Chinese Socialist New Village movement. Thousands of new houses, particularly in the model of the New Village, have risen abruptly out of the ground. These Western-style new houses with a garden (huayuan yangfang), which often appear in the media as typical family houses in Western society, largely represent the image of the good life of the state and the peasant in contemporary China. In this article, I focus on how the family house is produced and consumed in Baikou New Village in south China. By presenting the materiality of the dwelling space, this paper probes the intertwined processes of the materialisation of the blueprint of the good life and how the new houses influence family life (especially intergenerational relationships) in post-socialist Baikou New Village.

5. Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Brad Inwood
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Self Control ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Wise Person ◽  
The Family

Ethics is the part of the Stoics’ legacy that is most prominent and influential today. Their theory of the good life for human beings falls into the family of theories associated with Socrates and his followers. This tradition includes Plato and most Platonists, Xenophon, the Cynics, Aristotle, and later Aristotelians, all of whom share the view that virtue, the excellence of a human being, is the highest value and is its own reward. ‘Ethics’ discusses the Stoics’ views on human nature and rationality; the four basic virtues: justice, courage, wisdom, and moderation or self-control; and the doctrine that the fully rational and wise person will be free of passions.

Ecocritique and Anecdote

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-48
Author(s):  
Sean Cubitt
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Living Well ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Notion

Section 1 starts by considering the central notion of this book: a “ecocritique”. The ecocritique recognises that the good life for all includes the well-being of the world we are involved in at every level from the cellular to the cosmic. It is all encompassing. Section 1 then considers how the term “anecdote” relates to ecocritique. Anecdotes provide a peculiarly powerful tool for finding out the meaning of living well, as well as the answering the oft-asked question: who is this “we”? The beauty of anecdotes is that they operate in a non-contemporaneous time. They operate equally well in the past, present, and future. A primary political and ecocritical task of anecdotal method, therefore, is to recognise this hybrid temporality, and to free and maintain its capacity to generate new futures and new pasts.

scholarly journals Die Idee einer Hegelianischen ,Wissenschaft‘ der Gesellschaft

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Neuhouser
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Normative Commitment ◽  
Constitutional State ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Senses ◽  
State Form

AbstractThis paper sets out the kind of intellectual enterprise Hegel’s science of society is by explaining its aim (reconciliation) and the method it employs to achieve that aim. It argues that Hegel’s science of society, similar to Smith’s and Marx’s, offers an account of the good social order that is grounded in both an empirical understanding of existing institutions and a normative commitment to a certain vision of the good life. It spells out the criteria Hegel appeals to in his judgment that the modern social order is fundamentally good and worthy of affirmation, namely, that its three principal institutions−the family, civil society, and the constitutional state−form a coherent and harmonious whole that promotes the basic interests of all its members in a way that also realizes freedom in all three of the senses relevant to social theory: personal, moral, and social freedom.

Vigilantism in Comparative Perspective

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Abrahams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Twilight Zone ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The World ◽  
Thing In Itself

Vigilantes have arisen at many times in different regions of the world, taking the law into their own hands as defenders, often by force, of their view of the good life against those they see to be its enemies. They have a strong attraction for some commentators and they rouse equally strong hostility in others. For yet others, who attempt to take a broader view, they are a source of deep ambivalence. Academic interest in the phenomenon has grown strongly over recent years, and this has contributed significantly to an increase in knowledge of its distribution beyond the bounds of western Europe, the United States, and particularly in many parts of Africa. Although vigilantes are most commonly male, increased evidence of women’s vigilantism has also come to light in recent years. Vigilantism is difficult to define in rigorous terms, partly because of general problems of comparative study, but there are also special reasons in this case. Vigilantism is not so much a thing in itself as a fundamentally relational phenomenon which only makes sense in relation to the formal institutions of the state. It is in several ways a frontier phenomenon, occupying an awkward borderland between law and illegality. Many of its manifestations are short-lived and unstable, nor is it always what it claims to be. For these reasons, definitions of vigilantism are best treated as an “ideal type,” which real cases may be expected to approximate to or depart from. This approach provides the possibility of comparing different cases of vigilantism and also allows one to explore the differences and similarities between it and other “dwellers in the twilight zone,” such as social bandits, mafias, guerrillas, and resistance movements.

Seeing Clearly

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Peace Of Mind ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Practical Guidance ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Basic Ideas

Many of us, even on our happiest days, struggle to quiet the constant buzz of anxiety in the background of our minds. All kinds of worries—worries about losing people and things, worries about how we seem to others—keep us from peace of mind. Distracted or misled by our preoccupations, misconceptions, and, most of all, our obsession with ourselves, we do not see the world clearly—we do not see the world as it really is. In our search for happiness and the good life, this is the main problem. But luckily there is a solution, and on the path to understanding it, we can make use of the rich and varied teachings that have developed over centuries of Buddhist thought. This book explores the central elements of centuries of Buddhist philosophy and practice, explaining how they can improve life and teach us how to live without fear. Mining important texts and lessons for practical guidance, it provides a guide to the very practical goals that underpin Buddhist philosophy. After laying out the basic ideas, the text walks readers through a wide range of techniques and practices we can adopt to mend ingrained habits.

“Despite the contradictions”

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Narrative

This chapter offers closing thoughts that reiterate and summarizes the main points of the book. The chapter explores the ways people make a careful survey of their situation and work out a method to yield growth despite life's contradictions and pressures. If their lives look at times like wind-torn shrubs, that does not mean that they are poorly adapted or lethargic. Instead, it offers evidence of the hard work it takes to thrive in a world where the good life is hard to find. It shows that a dominant myth blaming inequality on laziness has guided, upheld, and justified racial inequalities in South Africa and the world since the earliest mercantile and colonial encounters between Europeans and Africans, and this narrative was never eradicated, despite antislavery, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements that achieved important legal and structural changes. The struggle to change this social narrative is an unglorified resistance with no clear ending point, but it is essential to the pursuit of the good life. It also shows evidence that in order to generate employment while aiming for the higher goal of seeking good, South Africa must address the history of antiblack disrespect that perpetuates dysfunctional employment structures. The people described in this book refuse to conform to narratives of inevitable happy endings or easy hope, but neither do their stories end only in despair.

scholarly journals SQUATTING OUTSIDE THE WORLD: NOTES FOR AN ARCHITECTURE OF ETHICS

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-209
Author(s):  
Steven Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Mind takes place in the world, and that matters. We are bodies among bodies, and, no matter what we think, what we do is a matter of where. And thinking about where is a problem for architecture. Richard Luecke’s pithy summary of Aristotle’s Politics was that we go to the city to live but stay to live the good life. The interplay of going and staying takes up a critical theme of Aristotle’s work. To understand the world, he said, we must understand both motion and stasis – not the going alone but the staying that takes place in the middle of it. Luecke took up William James’s figure of perchings in the flight of a bird and put it to work in thinking about cities. The city is a perch for the winged thing we are. To understand our flight, we must also attend to our perching. Aristotle speaks of the city as a place to go and a place to stay, but he also speaks of it as a koinonia turned toward good. That marks it as being human. Aristotle directs our attention to the necessity of the city (we go to live) and to its good (we stay to live the good life). But the staying, the dwelling, is understood within a structure of action: the good is that toward which all things aim. Dwelling, still, we turn. Which qualifies the going, because we are political animals. Going to the city to live, we go nowhere other than where we are. The city is the form of human presence.

Salo, the Ukrainian Pork Fat: Shrugs, Jokelore, and the “Six-Fingered”

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Kollegaeva
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
The World ◽  
Pork Fat

Salo—cured pork fat—is considered to be the quintessential national dish in Ukraine. This article is an ethnographic exploration of how salo has become a contested space where wider anxieties over the industrialization of food and Ukrainian identity are played out. Russian jokes about Ukrainians and their love for salo highlight the complex relationship between the countries. A certain shrug with which many Ukrainians respond when asked about their “national” dish articulates how ambiguous they see their place in the world: not wanting to be labeled as folksy and peasant-like at the periphery of Europe, but still seeing salo as a marker of the good life that could unite the contending parts of the country. The Museum of Salo employs salo to reimagine Ukrainian identity as cosmopolitan, ironic, and “European.”

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