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Chinese and Western Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series III, Asia, Volume 16 The Bases of Values in a Time of Change: Chinese and Western Chinese Philosophical Studies XVI Edited by Kirti Bunchua, Liu Fangtong, Yu Xuanmeng and Yu Xujin The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy 1 Copyright © 1999 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication The bases of values in a time of change: Chinese and Western ; Chinese Philosophical Studies 16 / edited by Kirti Bunchua, Liu Fangtong, Yu Xianmeng, Yu Wujin. p.cm. — (Cultural heritage and contemporary change . Series III. Asia, vol. 16) Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Values. 2. East and West. 3. Philosophy, Chinese. 4. Philosophy, Comparative. I. Bunchua, Kirti. II. Liu, Fangtong. III. Yu, Xuanmeng. IV. Yu, Wujin. V. Series. VI. Series: Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series III, Asia ; vol. 16. BD232.B36 1999 98-44462 121.8’09—dc21 CIP ISBN 1-56518-114-X (pbk.) 2 Table of Contents Preface vii Introduction 1 George F. McLean Part I. The Present Shift in Cultural Values 1. The Contemporary Transformation of Chinese Marxist Philosophy 15 Liu Fangtong 2. Process as a Basis for Philosophy in a Time of Change 35 Warayutha Sriewarakul 3. Freedom and Cultural Traditions: The Basis of Values in a Time of Change 63 George F. McLean 4. Aesthetic Culture: from Tradition to Modernity 87 Chen Chaonan Part II. Material Basis of Values 5. The Loss of the Subject and the Disorder of Values: 99 Critical Reflections on Present Cultural Research Yu Wujin 6. Economic and Ethical Values 111 Lu Xiaohe 7. An Approach to Business Ethics: Fact-based Value for Fair Trade 123 Charn Mayot 8. Sustainability and a New Civilization 139 Wang Miaoyang 9. The Basis of Economic Values in Chinese Traditional Culture 147 Xu Hongxing Part III. Spiritual Basis of Values 10. The Dignity of the Human Person as the Basis for Community: 155 Pope John Paul II’s Contemporary Catholic Anthropology James A. Loiacono 11. Being and Values 177 Andrew Woznicki 3 12. Making Religion Ethical: The Value Orientation of 193 Religion in Contemporary Society Huang Songjie 13. The Basis of Values in a Time of Change 203 R. Balasubramanian 14. Renewal of Thai Buddhist Belief in Kamma and Rebirth 227 Veerachart Nimanong Part IV. Values and Asian Cultural Traditions 15. Is There a Thai Philosophy? 259 Kirti Bunchua 16. The Prospects and Justification of Thai Philosophy 263 Soraj Hongladarom 17. Changes of Values during the Renovation Period in Vietnam 275 Nguyen Trong Chuan 18. The Modern Significance of Chinese Traditional Culture 283 Fang Songhua 19. Existential Relationships and Optimal Harmony: 291 Philosophical Foundations for Valuesin a Times of Changes Vincent Shen Part V. Communication Between Cultures 20. The Change of Society and the Exchange of Values 317 Zhang Qingxiong 21. Lifeworld and the Possibility of Intercultural Understanding 327 Zhang Rulun 22. On the Unity of Pluralistic Values 339 Yu Xuanmeng Index 353 Acknowledgements 4 Preface Kirti Bunchua It has been a great honor for Assumption University and especially its School of Philosophy and Religious Studies to host this Symposium with the teams of distinguished scholars from the Institute of Philosophy of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Department of Philosophy of Fudan University, Shanghai. This is part of a series cosponsored by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) with the Chinese philosophers since 1997. Assumption University continues to promote the study of values and philosophy, especially the foundations of social life and civil society, with special attention to the way in which Buddhism and Christianity may jointly contribute over time. It is our hope, beginning with this work, to share the results of the research with philosophers in all parts of the world. Assumption University now has close collaboration with the scholars from mainland China. This project is surely not the last; we look forward to more such a collaboration in the future. Last but not least, I would like to thank Dr. George F. McLean for facilitating this precious opportunity for our School of Philosophy and Religious Studies to engage in cooperative world and effort of The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) for the restoration of civil society in our times. Assumption University Bangkok, Thailand 5 Introduction George F. McLean This turn of the millennia promises to be not only a change in numbers or even an incremental development along familiar paths. Far beyond this, we are living a profound vertical deepening of human awareness to new levels of human life and sacred meaning. This, in turn, enables us to engage horizontally a broadened, even global, diversity of peoples and cultures. This expansion of the dynamism of human awareness both in depth and in breadth opens new dimensions and creates new challenges for the work of philosophy. To appreciate the extent to which this is true it is important to keep in mind the history of the last millennium. If we turn to Western philosophy we find it to be characterized by the emergence of human reflection and its logical systematization, traced archetypically from Plato and his student, Aristotle. Philosophy in the first half of the present millennium was characterized above all by the rediscovery of the work of Aristotle and its elaboration into the great medieval systems of Aquinas and Scotus, Avicenna and Averroes, Moses Mamonides and others. There, one finds reason in the service of humankind, clarifying and systematically coordinating ideas and relating them to the sources, goals and virtues of human life. But the history of humankind and of philosophy is also tragic in its destiny, for the capabilities of reason can be the key to progress which bears the needs of its own frustration. Thus, at the end of the Renaissance in a series of delimiting strokes reason was wrenched out of the pattern of integral human life. Francis Bacon went about destroying the “idols” which bore the symbols of cultural traditions as the accumulation of creative human freedom; John Locke would erase the content of the mind and reduce it to a blank tablet, Descartes would bracket by doubt all but clear and distinct ideas — which meant all but the self and what could be built thereupon. This radicalization of reason and philosophy made it possible to work with clearly defined ideas and to develop correspondingly clear structures for science and philosophy. Most thinkers were fascinated by the new achievements made possible by this radical surgery. Only a few, such as Pascal and J.B. Vico, noted from the beginning the costs to be paid for this reductionist approach of rationalism. What characterizes the depth of the transformation now taking place is the new recognition of how restrictive, and indeed destructive, this reductionism has been. This awareness is made possible negatively by the experience of the violent tragedies of the recent century, the wars hot and cold, the pogroms and holocausts, and the rise of nationalist ideologies. In the first chapter, “The Contemporary Transformation of Chinese Marxist Philosophy,” Professor Liu Fangtong magisterially delineates this situation by contrasting modern with contemporary thought. In the former, reason as restricted to clear ideas is apt for attending to what is universal, i.e. to the natures or essences of things. But these are abstracted from what is unique and especially from the freedom of human persons and peoples. Corresponding to this is the restriction of reason to what is distinct; indeed the criterion of clarity is the ability to distinguish one idea as distinct from all others. This entailed, however, a decided turn to analysis which progressed precisely by dividing realities for purposes of conceptual clarity. What was left unattended was the synthetic appreciation of the unity and integrity of reality. There resulted a pattern of dualisms between mind and matter, subject and object, individual and community. This has constituted the destabilizing fault line of modern thought and generated not 7 only continual tremors, but the vicious extremes expressed in exploitation, oppression and war. Moreover, marked by this fascination with reason, modern thought neglected the practical and the aesthetic. This attempt to restrict human awareness to the sciences suggests the extent of the constructive project which lies ahead if philosophy is to retain modern achievements while expanding the structure of reason, recognizing additional dimensions of the person, and making possible authentic growth. The modern-contemporary schema of Professor Liu Fangtong allows him to rethink the fate of Marxism, to see its humane concerns and to project their retention and development. Indeed he sees Marx primarily as attempting to transcend modernity and its rationalism in order to free the subject from oppression. In that sense Liu Fangtong interprets Marx essentially as a contemporary philosopher. Unfortunately his efforts became bogged down in the very rationalism he intended to transcend. He was entrapped by the scientistic overlays of Engels who, in attempting to make this thought into a science like others, subjected it to universal and necessary laws which suppressed the freedom and creativity of people. Hence, in the late 70s and 80s in central Europe the great battle was to free the younger humanistic Marx from the later Marx. This is the great shared enterprise of most peoples today. The central importance of the paper of Professor Liu Fangtong to this volume and indeed to our times is to raise the question of just what developments in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical anthropology are required in order for such a project to succeed and hence to allow for a progressive and transformative view of values in a time of change.
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