Suchergebnisse

Overview and foundation -- The standard andthe guidelines: The evolutionary basis of the five moral intuitions -- Applications -- Application one: Bad hurricanes and rising sea levels: Moral complexities in choices about global warming -- Appendix: Problem solving models -- Application two: Seeking consistency in Chinese ethics and law: Useful sources in Confucian ideas of trust and shame -- Appendix: What to do? A training program -- Conversations with Donald J. Munro -- Experiences with Tang Junyi and his legacy: Interview by Cheung Chan-fai -- Challenges and arguments: Interview with Liu Xiaogan.

How have traditional Chinese ways of thinking affected problem solving in this century? The traditional, imperial style of inquiry is associated with the belief that the universe is a coherent, internally structured unity understandable through the similarly structured human mind. It involves a reliance on antecedent and authoritarian models, coupled with an introspective focus in investigations, at some cost to objective fact gathering.In contrast, emergent forms of inquiry are guided by the values of individual autonomy and new perspectives on objectivity. In the 1930s and 1940s, some liberal educators held the model of Western science in great esteem, and some scientists practicing objective inquiry helped to create an awareness in the urban areas of inquiry not directed by political values.Drawing on philosophical, social science, and popular culture materials, Donald Munro shows that the two strains coexisted in twentieth century China as mixed motives. Many important figures were motivated by a desire to act consistently with the social values associated with the premodern or received view of knowledge and inquiry. At the same time, these people often had other motives, such as utilitarian values, efficiency, and entrepreneurship. Munro argues that while many competing positions can coexist in the same person, the seeds of the positive, instrumental value of individual autonomy in Chinese inquiry are beginning to compete in both scholarly and popular culture with other, older approaches.

Readers may be interested in the status of the concept of "alienation" and of Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (where the topic is most extensively discussed) in mainstream Chinese Marxism. The topic is important, among other reasons, because it has figured so prominently in "revisionist" philosophical writings of the problem of freedom in societies where the bureaucracy becomes a new class. The points I am about to make are based both on my own research and on talks with philosophers in the People's Republic in 1973.

"Human nature changes" – a vague statement acceptable to Marx and to Engels, to Stalin and to Mao. The point is: what is it that changes, under what conditions does it change, and what is the nature of the change? The article that follows is a case study of the interaction between the concrete cultural and social dimensions of a given country and a philosophical concept that has made its way into that country's official ideology. It examines the idea of the malleability of human nature in contemporary China. The concept is of monumental importance in Chinese Marxism, and examination of its evolution and implications will illuminate the Chinese definition of social class, and the causes of a nationwide crisis in the educational system in 1958 that foreshadowed the dramatic 1966 closing of all schools and their subsequent restructuring. Most important, the analysis clarifies the meaning of a term so often used in discussions of Chinese thought and so rarely understood.

Although there is no detailed definitive Chinese Communist interpretation of the thinkers of the 100 Schools Period, this does not mean that one cannot isolate certain constants from which deviation is not permitted. The sayings of Marx-Engels and Mao Tse-tung which are directly relevant to the early thinkers, if not strictly about them, have obviously been the primary guidelines for the scholar in Communist China. Especially in the material produced since 1957, when relatively intensive study of the period began, one becomes aware of more specific trends in interpretation. With the basic tenets of Marx and Engels as tools for interpretation, it is axiomatic that understanding the class struggle of a given time is the key to understanding the thought of that time. The "contention" among the 100 Schools is taken to be a reflection of the intensity of class struggle in the Warring States Period. It is also axiomatic that the history of the struggle between progressive and reactionary forces is reflected in the enduring philosophical struggle between materialism and idealism. But the philosophical concepts associated with materialism and idealism are not native to China; nor are their Marxist definitions universally accepted in the history of Western philosophy. Therefore, in interpreting the thought of the 100 Schools Period, scholars most frequently cite Marx-Engels definitions as support for their own interpretations or to criticise those of others. Engels states that all those who take spirit as prior to the existence of the natural world and thus in the last analysis admit a creator (Old Testament variety or the more sophisticated Absolute Spirit of Hegel) belong in the idealist camp.

An exposure to Chinese Communist discussions of the nature of "struggle" leaves a curious visual image. The portrait is not of two poles with a middle ground between, but of a situation in which the middle ground has moved to one of the two sides, leaving combat of one against two. For the middle ground or compromise between opposites has become an equal if not greater menace to progress (which emerges from struggle) than the obvious enemy itself. The "either-or" polarity is nothing new in Marxism, but it has taken on new significance in Chinese philosophical discourse.