NTU Philosophical Review

With the recent unearthing of such Warring States bamboo manuscripts as “Taiyi sheng shui” of Guodian and “Heng xian” of the Shanghai Museum corpus, thestudy of Chinese metaphysics has gained a wealth of new materials and concepts for exploration. Yet new materials continue to come forth, such as the recentlypublished Shanghai Museum v. 7 manuscript “Fan wu liu xing” (in two copies), a text rich in metaphysical significance and of tremendous value to the study ofpre-Qin intellectual history. In a form similar to the Chuci text “Tian wen,” this text is made up of a series of fundamental questions—all in rhymed stanzas—such as“By what means are all things able to take form?” or “Once things take form, by what means do they survive?” It constitutes an important early example ofmetaphysical inquiry in the Chinese tradition, with interesting similarities to and differences from major received philosophical texts from the same time period and region. This essay aims to provide a credible reading of the first half of this important new document and make a brief inquiry into its metaphysical significance.

In Hegel’s philosophy God is “the sole object of philosophy”, in other words, philosophy has to attain in God the complete knowledge, to relate everything to God and to explain everything through God; thus philosophy in essence is a theology and is a worshiping of God. In the context of Hegel’s philosophy, God is considered to be both the final result and the precondition of philosophy, both its final goal and its starting point.The speculative philosophy of Hegel has been formed in the context of the dialogue between various philosophical theories. Regarding knowledge aboutGod, Hegel rejects the validity of the “three agnosticisms” of the Enlightenment: the rationalist theology of Wolff, the critical philosophy of Kant and Jacobi’stheology of feeling. The agnosticism of Wolff’s rational theology was founded on objective view, whereas Kant’s critical philosophy and Jacobi’s philosophy offeeling refuted the possibility of knowing God based on subjective standpoints. Hegel held that these three theories are all based on the faculty of intellect ratherthan on the one of reasoning. He argued that reasoning can attain knowledge not only of the existence of God but also about God Himself.

Traditional epistemology embraces an inferential concept of justification: a belief is justified just in case it can be reasonably inferred from other beliefs. Inferential justification immediately incurs the problem of infinite regress, since the justifying beliefs themselves are in need of further justification. In this paper I will try to explicate a new idea of inferential justification that does not regress indefinitely. I will begin by analyzing the traditional notion of inferential justification as involving three principles, namely narrow inferentialism, formalism, and linear regress justification. All three principles are critically examined, and in their place, three new ones are proposed: broad inferentialism, materialism, and interactive justification. The principles constitute a new inferential approach which admits of no infinite regress.

This article is concerned with the problem of how to avoid the Third Man Argument which Plato put forward in Parmenides. According to Gregory Vlastos, this argument is based on two tacit assumptions: the Self-Predication and the Non-Identity Assumption. In recent years there have been a number of interpretations which attempted to avoid the Third Man Argument by proving that the Self-Predication Assumption is not an acceptable part of Plato’s theory. However, in this article I will show that the fallacy of the Third Man Argument does not lie in the Self-Predication Assumption, but in the Non-Identity Assumption. That is, we may avoid the Third Man Argument by proving that the Non-Identity Assumption is false.Moreover, in this article I will point out that by putting forward the Third Man Argument, Plato does not really intend to raise a criticism of his own theory. Rather, the two versions of the Third Man Argument, which are set out in Parmenides 132a1-b2 and 132d1-133a7 respectively, should be considered as his warnings against the possible misunderstandings concerning the relationship between Forms and particulars, i.e. the relationship of “participation.” In other words, if we mistakenly interpret the conception of participation in a materialistic manner, the Theory of Forms will inevitably be caught in the “Largeness Regress”; and if we comprehend the relationship of participation in terms of the “likeness” between Forms and particulars, and consider the later to be a symmetrical relation, then the Theory of Forms must fall into the “Likeness Regress.”

This paper argues against grounding the normativity of the judgment of taste on morality, and argues that the uniqueness of aesthetic normativity can beclarified through the distinctive status and function of the modality of the judgment of taste, and that the normative content of the judgment of taste constitutes the content of the judgment itself. Two distinct notions of sensus communis－pure sensus communis and ideal sensus communis—are strictly discriminated by applying the constitutive/regulative distinction, which can be seen in the following two contexts: the distinction between law of understanding and principle of reason, and the distinction between mathematical law and dynamic law. ‘Pure sensus communis’ is the effect of the free play of imagination and understanding; it is not only a feeling, but also a capacity for feeling (taste) and a constitutive norm and principle of the judgment. ‘Ideal sensus communis’ is the a priori connection between pure sensus communis and moral feeling; it is the effect of the harmony among imagination, understanding and reason. With respect to the normative force, pure sensus communis is analogous to dynamic law of understanding (for example, the law of causality); nevertheless, ideal sensus communis is regulative for the judgment of taste, just as principle of reason is regulative for empirical judgment. Beauty can symbolize morality precisely because the pleasure of taste is pure, but not vice versa; otherwise the autonomy of taste would be violated. Taste can be guided in its purposive self-sharpening and self-purifying by ideal sensus communis to enhance humanity, so that it becomes “pragmatically” possible to ground a world in concordance with moral ideal through the enhancement of humanity. In the end, this paper argues that the reason why Kant seems to ground beauty on morality lies in the pragmatic significance of his critical natural teleology.

The discussion in this article is about the criticism to Hu Hong in The doubt of Zhi yan Proposed by Zhu Hsi. The author is aiming to clear the dissimilar wayof thinking between the two philosophers to the effect that both their significant theory could be appeared. Hu Hong’s philosophical announcement alwaysintegrates the ontological and practical theory, which results to the ambiguity and give rise to the criticism from Zhu Hsi. Zhu Hsi possessed the position of thegoodness of nature to query Hu Hong about his no good and no evil opinion toward the theory of the human nature. In the definition of the mind and nature,master Zhu Hsi proposed the mind comprise the nature and the felling and argued with Hu Hong’s different opining. Concerning about the practical procedure theory, Zhu Hsi insist the cultivation should be built on daily life, and critic Hu Hong’s philosophy being short of this understanding. In this article the author will use the interpretational structure of the practical theory and the theory of being to analyze the different consciousness in these two systems and suggest that there exist no real conflict between them so as to explain both their philosophical thinking.

Most of the Western philosophers regard self-consciousness as a problem of theoretical philosophy, and conscience as a problem of practical philosophy.Both of them belong to different areas of philosophy. In contrast with this, some philosophers in the tradition of Confucianism tend to ascribe both concepts topractical philosophy. This tendency reaches its highest point in the writings of Mou Zongsan (1909-1995), the most important representative of ContemporaryNeo-Confucianism. Fichte (1762-1814) is one of few Western philosophers, who regard both concepts as the problems of practical philosophy. It’s worthy tonotice that both Mou Zongsan and Fichte come to this conclusion by criticizing Kant’s theory of self-consciousness. I argue in this paper the following two points: (1) Mou Zongsan and Fichte have similar idea of practical self-consciousness. (2) Mou Zongsan identifies practical self-consciousness with conscience; on the contrary, Fichte holds them to be heterogeneous, the former is pure thinking and the latter sensible feeling.