Year: 2016

John Williams is a President’s Graduate Fellow at the National University of Singapore; he has articles on the Zhuangzi collection forthcoming in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy (2017) and Philosophy East & West (2017).

Daoist Primitivism: A Counter-Intuitive Take on Human Dignity and Well-Being

One common trope throughout the otherwise heterogeneous Daoist corpus is the “reversal of opposites”: that is, turning a commonly held position on its head. For instance, people apparently don’t want to be ugly and rejected by society. The Zhuangzi‘s “Ren Jian Shi“《莊子•人間世》, however, demonstrates that an ugly reject—in this case, a discombobulated freak named Shu—can live out his natural years (zhongqitiannian 終其天年) because nobody bothers him: viz, the government gives him extra rations out of pity, he doesn’t have to serve in the military due to his deformities, and so on, among many other hidden benefits bestowed on this seeming loser.[1] Thus, what was first taken to be the case, the disappointment of being an ugly reject, has been reversed.

Nadia Ruiz is a PhD student at University of Kansas. Her research interests include philosophy of science and metaphysics.

Parental Involvement

I grew up in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua—a border city next door to El Paso, Texas. All that divides the two cities are the Rio Bravo, a wall and an international bridge. You would think that eases my interactions with both American and Mexican cultures. However, the vast majority of the El Paso population is Mexican or first-generation Mexican-Americans. Hence, El Paso’s culture is very similar to the culture found in Mexico—an American city infused with Mexican culture. It wasn’t until I moved to the Midwest that I saw the difference between Mexican and American cultures.

Kranti Saran is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ashoka University and a Research Associate at Harvard University.

The Bodhisattva and the Disposition to Justice

The 8th century Indian Buddhist monk Śāntideva’s classic Bodhicaryāvatāra depicts the individual of good psychological health: the bodhisattva. The bodhisattva is dedicated to working for the well-being of all sentient creatures. The mind of the bodhisattva is marked by six perfections or pāramitās: generosity, moral conduct, forbearance, effort, meditative absorption, and insight.

Conspicuously absent from Śāntideva’s list is something essential to a healthy mind: the disposition to justice.

Sungwoo Um is a PhD Philosophy candidate and  Assistant Director of the Center for Comparative Philosophy at Duke University.

Why Not Be a Good Child? – Filiality as a Relational Virtue

Filiality (or filial piety; xiao; 孝) is the virtue that a good child has in relation to his or her parents, which consists of living in the way that expresses love, respect and support to them. It has been regarded as a central virtue in Confucian traditions. Confucius even says that filiality is “the root of virtue and all [ethical] teaching grows out of it”.[1] But it has been largely neglected especially in the Western culture, partly due to its alleged danger of undermining autonomy or independence of the children. If it really requires unreasonable things—such as absolute obedience to one’s parents—and thus unavoidably undermine other liberal virtues like autonomy or independence, negligence on this virtue may be well-deserved.

However, there can be many different conceptions on what it takes to be filial.