Eric Schwitzgebel

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.5 Vol.38 : 5-13

Shaun O’dwyer

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.15 Vol.38 : 15-41

It is a widely held belief that State Shinto was the main indigenous ideological driver of Japan’s descent into ultranationalism and war in the 1930s. However, much less is known today of Japanese Confucian justifications for war in the same era. This article joins a small group of other studies researching a now little-known educational and research association formed in 1918 by Japanese Confucian scholars and Sinologists, the Shibunkai (斯文会) which reached the peak of its influence and patronage from Japan’s political elite in the 1930’s. This article reviews the Shibunkai’s early efforts to revive traditional Confucian morality and promote Chinese learning, its pursuit of “Confucian Diplomacy” with the Kong family estate at Qufu in Shandong Province, and its elaboration of a Confucian Pan-Asian doctrine that accorded Japan, with its supposed purified version of Confucianism, the role of leader and guardian of East Asia’s spiritual and moral culture. Last, this article analyses some of the seldom-studied war-era literature produced by Shibunkai scholars to argue that a modern Japanese “Imperial Way” Confucianism played a role in the moral legitimation of Japan’s war against China in 1937-1945. Based on its analysis of the Occidentalism and self-Orientalism in the Shibunkai’s wartime publications, the article concludes that there is a need for more critical reflection on Occidentalist and self-Orientalist trends in Confucian normative theorizing amidst the troubled geopolitical conditions of East Asia today.

Imperial Way Confucianism, Shibunkai, imperialism, Orientalism, Occidentalism

Philip J. Ivanhoe

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.43 Vol.38 : 44-66

This essay presents and evaluates Harvey Lederman’s Introspective Model as an interpretation of Wang Yangming’s philosophy. According to the Introspective Model, one achieves genuine knowing when pure knowing assays one’s occurrent thoughts and discovers that there are no doxastic conflicts among them. Lederman compares the Introspective Model to what he calls the Perceptual Model and argues for the superiority of the former over the latter as an interpretation of Wang’s philosophy. I argue that neither the Introspective nor the Perceptual Model offers a plausible account of Wang’s philosophy; both go awry by construing Wang’s thought as primarily concerned with epistemology while largely ignoring its metaphysical and moral dimensions and historical context. I provide a sketch of an alternative, the Spontaneous Response Model, and argue that it avoids the shortcomings of the other two models and enables one to understand Wang’s philosophy in a more comprehensive and systematic way that sees it as intimately related to the philosophical debates of its time. I also show the virtue of this alternative model as a basis for translating Wang’s writings, which of course is itself an act of interpretation.

pure knowing, genuine knowing, introspective, perceptual, spontaneous response, epistemology, doxastic conflict, knowing and acting, self-cultivation

Guoxiang Peng

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.67 Vol.38 : 67-89

There were various dimensions to Yangmingxue 陽明學, or the Yangming school, as defined not only by Wang Yangming 王陽明 himself but also by his students and followers in the mid-late Ming dynasty. This article will treat Yangmingxue as a whole from the perspective of political culture. It will explore two political orientations in Wang Yangming school, namely dejunxingdao 得君行道 (“carrying out the Way through the support of the emperor”) and jueminxingdao 覺民行道 (“carrying out the Way by enlightening the common people”), analyze the implications of these two orientations and scrutinize their relationship. Also it will examine and evaluate the concept of the “common people as political subjects” implied in Yangmingxue and the political ideal in the Confucian tradition. The core questions that will be discussed are: First, how should we understand the political orientation, jueminxingdao, pioneered by the Yangming school, in addition to dejunxingdao? Second, how should we understand the relationship between jueminxingdao and dejunxingdao in the Yangming school? Third, how should we understand the concept of the “common people as political subjects” implied in Yangmingxue and what is the dilemma it had to face? Last, why the Confucian political subject could not be established and how to establish it.

Yangming School, Political Orientations, dejunxingdao, jueminxingdao, Confucian Political Ideal

Michael R. Slater

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.91 Vol.38 : 91-129

This paper compares the naturalistic interpretations of religion offered by the Chinese Confucian philosopher Xunzi (c. 310-219 BCE) and the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952), and shows how each philosopher reconceived the nature of religious life in fundamentally non-supernatural, ethical, and therapeutic terms. While acknowledging that there are important differences between their respective views―especially on such matters as the nature and scope of ethical knowledge, the nature of ethics, and what form an ideal society will take―and that their views were furthermore shaped by very different historical and cultural contexts, the paper argues that both philosophers nevertheless took this naturalized, ethical and therapeutic conception of religion to be the correct and more profound way to understand religious life, and the best way to develop an appropriate sense of oneness with and reverence for the social and natural worlds that we inhabit. For both Xunzi and Dewey, in short, religious attitudes, experiences, and practices are valuable not because they put us into proper relations with something supernatural, but rather because of their capacity to orient and enrich our lives at both the individual and social levels and put us into proper relations with other human beings and the natural world. Overall, the paper argues that a comparative study of Xunzi’s and Dewey’s interpretations of religion not only reveals features of their thought that we might otherwise miss, but also helps us to better understand the range of possible forms that a naturalistic interpretation of religion can take.

Xunzi, Dewey, religion, comparative philosophy, naturalism

Joseph Sta. Maria , Elena Ziliotti

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.131 Vol.38 : 131-152

Can Confucian ethics contribute to diagnosing the root causes of video games’ toxicity and formulating design requirements for redressing it? Contemporary Confucian studies on technology have not addressed these questions, although video games have become an important part of contemporary human life. This paper advances Confucian-inspired ethical studies on technologies by bringing attention to the moral dimension of this underexamined aspect of contemporary life. By focusing on League of Legends (one of the most popular toxic online multiplayer games), we argue that League’s toxic environment hinders the cultivation of ren (仁), shu (恕), and he (和), but Confucian conceptual resources can inspire the formulation of at least three design recommendations against League’s toxicity. The first is to eliminate killing in the game by banking on players’ desire to express their skillfulness. The second is to include a re-watching feature to sanction toxic players with the aim of inculcating sympathy in them. The last is to add a procedure before and after each match, where players can cordially interact with each other and develop mutual respect.

Confucianism, toxicity, ethics of technology, League of Legends

Chan Lee

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.153 Vol.38 : 153-174

This paper begins to examine different interpretations of causa sui as the key notion used by Strawson to argue for the impossibility of ultimate moral responsibility. Descartes’ and Spinoza’s interpretations are representative in understanding the notion of causa sui. Strawson is, I think, on the side of Descartes. If causa sui can be interpreted differently from the way in which Strawson did, the idea of moral responsibility would change. I shall here examine Spinoza’s notion of causa sui, which is an alternative approach to Strawson’s, for leading to the possibility of moral responsibility. The Chinese concept of the Supreme Polarity (taiji) can be interpreted as a foundation of self-determination when philosophically comparing it with Spinoza’s idea of causa sui, which means an immanent and efficient cause. In the Chinese context, the ontological account of an agent explains how and why persons actively participate in the ordering of the world in the Confucian way of life. Based upon this, I will attempt to examine the idea of moral responsibility with the notion of taking responsibility for oneself or, as I will call it, “self-assignment”, and consider how the role a person plays might contribute to understanding the relationship between free will and moral responsibility. In other words, the ontological claim that the unitary principle of Heaven-and-Earth is innately immanent in each person seems to endorse the possibility of ultimate responsibility even though the teleological commitment to making the world better implies the absence of free will. This is one of the alternative ways that we can take moral responsibility without free will.

causa sui, supreme polarity, free will, moral responsibility, self-assignment

Yutang Jin

DOI:10.22916/jcpc.2022..38.175 Vol.38 : 175-190