Perspective, the Visible and the Invisible in Chinese Paintings: A Response to Jean-Luc Marion

In the Chinese translation of The Crossing of the Visible, French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion, raised a question about the nature of Chinese paintings: does the relationship between the visible and the invisible commonly found in the Western painting play the same role in Chinese paintings? This essay aims to answer this question. Chinese paintings maintain the acceptance that the sense of perspective is the implementation of the invisible by the varieties of perspective, the invisible vanishing point and the poem. My response to Marion’s call opens a fresh dialogue between the French thought and the Chinese thought.

人類自然的身體性狀是不應被技術改造的嗎？

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. Human beings always try to transcend their limitations. Emerging technologies provide a set of powerful tools that promise to significantly improve human performance, stimulating the desire of some technical experts to transform the human body. Against this backdrop, superhumanism has come into being in today's society and is flourishing. Superhumanism has been criticized by some Chinese scholars on the basis of traditional Chinese thought. Their criticism of superhumanism is a difficult task that involves multi-level reflection on human nature, technology, and value. I argue that for the issue of superhumanism, theoretical innovation is more important than continuing to invoke traditional thought.

The Theoretical Approach of Indigenization of Chinese Protestant Theology in the First Half of the 20th Century

From the early 20th century, Chinese “Indigenous Theology” served as the main line in the development of Chinese Protestant theology. It represents an important orientation in the communications between Chinese and Western culture as well as the development of modern Chinese thought. Chinese Indigenous Theology was the theoretical result of the combination of Chinese and Western religious spirit and thought, with a strong background of traditional Chinese culture. Its main purpose was to interpret and develop modern Chinese Protestant thought within the frame of Chinese traditional culture, mainly Confucianism, and to construct a native Christian theology with Chinese characteristics. As will become obvious, the theoretical construction of Indigenous Theology caused Western Protestant theology, with its fundamental spirit of "Dichotomy between God and Man" and its thought pattern of “External Transcendence”, to Chinese Indigenous Theology, grounded on a "Unity of God and Man" and a “Internal Transcendence”. However, due to excessive adherence to the historical experience of Indigenization, modern Chinese Protestant theology came to lack a sufficient response to and discussion of the issues of modernization and universalization. In this paper, both the theoretical achievements and the shortcomings of Chinese Indigenous Theology will be summarized and reviewed carefully.

On the English Translation of Jian’ai by Late Qing Missionary-Sinologists

With an increasing volume of research being conducted on the transmission of premodern Chinese thought in the Western world, a plethora of studies have been published on the English translation of the ancient text Mozi, primarily through the lens of cross-cultural translation studies. Discussions on how the concept of jian’ai – often rendered as “universal love” – should be expressed in English have also taken place in this framework, while the topic has rarely been examined hermeneutically or with reference to histories of knowledge transfer, intellectuals, or scholarship. This article discusses the translation of jian’ai into English by the missionary-sinologists Joseph Edkins and James Legge during the mid-to-late 1800s. It points out that, while both scholars used the term “universal” to translate the concept, they differed on whether “equal” could be used. The author also demonstrates how differences in translation can signify differences in thinking. Using the “unit of thought” of hermeneutics as a methodology to study the translators’ conception of jian’ai via a comparison of common structural levels, a case can be made that both of them used the criticism by Mengzi of Mozi as a kind of “situational construction”. However, in terms of “situational processing”, Edkin’s demonstrated the necessity and equality of jian’ai by quoting the words of ancient sages and wise rulers just as Mozi did, while Legge focused on the “Teng Wen Gong I” chapter of the Mengzi, arguing that the idea of “equality” was not espoused by Mozi himself but rather his later followers. From the perspective of “situational fusion”, Edkins pointed out that, while jian’ai is similar in form to the love of Christ, it in fact shares more similarities with utilitarianism. By contrast, Legge believed that jian’ai was more in line with the thought of Confucius, while he also discussed the similarities and differences between jian’ai and the love of Christ. The differing understandings of jian’ai arrived at by these two scholars demonstrates that missionaries sent to China after the mid-nineteenth century underwent a transition from amateur to professional sinologists. Moreover, by examining how Mohism was introduced to the West in modern times, it can be shown how Legge’s interpretation of jian’ai coined a longstanding translated name for the concept.

Self, Mind and Body, Agency

Chapter 1 lays out the dominant views of self, agency, and moral responsibility in early Chinese philosophy. The reason for this is that these views inform the ways early Chinese thinkers approach mental illness, as well as the role they see it playing in self-cultivation as a whole (whether they view it as problematic or beneficial, for example). This chapter offers a view of a number of dominant conceptions of mind, body, and agency in early Chinese thought, through a number of philosophical and medical texts. It covers the Confucian view of personhood as role-based and communal, and the Zhuangist deconstructive view of the self. Finally, the chapter includes an argument that early Chinese thinkers recognized a distinction between mind and body, and that mind was dealt with as a separate category, thus making the topic of “mental illness” possible.

The Dao of Madness

This book offers a picture of madness as a category and a tool in the early Chinese tradition, giving an account of how early Chinese thinkers developed a conception of mental illness connected to both medicine and ethics, particularly in the Warring States and Han periods. Specifically, it is concerned with the connections between madness, mental illness in general, and philosophical positions on personhood, moral agency, responsibility, and social identity. Madness is a near universal category in human thought. In early China, madness (kuang ?) has particular unique forms, shaped through consideration of the features of mind and body, cultural norms, and illness and health. While madness and other forms of mental illness were taken as either foils or ideals by different thinkers in early China, they were nearly always contrasted with operability, proper communal development, and progress on a specifically moral path. This book explores these conceptions of madness in early Chinese thought.