The book deals with the last century which determined China’s path to the modern era. In its interdisciplinary approach it originally investigates these processes of modernization and describes different aspects of Chinas successive, often painful transformation from traditional Confucian rigidity towards a modern state, determined by both, pressures and advantages of globalization. The contributions reflect the political, intellectual, cultural and axiological elements of these developments, especially considering the fact that in during these last hundred years, China has successfully paved its way which has led it from a backward, poor semi-colonial society to the position of a global superpower. On the other hand, these contributions are also to a great extend also reflect our perception of contemporary, “modern” China, for they – each in its own way and from different aspects – re-open questions concerning its specific characteristics that will in spite of certain universal conditions definitely determine the image of further Chinese developments and, at the same time, of our common, global future.
COBISS.SI-ID: 264097024
Specific Chinese models for theories of knowledge were premised upon a structurally ordered external reality; since natural (or cosmic) order is organic, it naturally follows the ‘flow’ of structural patterns and operates in accordance with structural principles that regulate every existence. In this worldview, our mind is also structured in accordance with this all-embracing but open organic system. The axioms of our recognition and thought are therefore not arbitrary, but follow this rationally designed structure. The compatibility of both the cosmic and mental structures is the basic precondition that enables humans to perceive and recognize external reality. The present study shows that this paradigm of structural epistemology can already be found in the earliest Chinese theories of knowledge. The introduction of Chinese models and their incorporation into Western discourses fills an important theoretical gap in the Western model of structuralism. The book offers an insight into epistemological systems that arose outside the discourses of the Euro-American intellectual tradition. It can thus help us to eliminate and supersede certain culturally conditioned prejudices as to the superiority and omnipresence of Western theoretical models, while demonstrating incontrovertibly that the results of Western discourses are by no means the only force driving theoretical innovation at the present time.
COBISS.SI-ID: 49541986
Traditional Chinese philosophic discourses differ in many basic ways from those in the West. In this context, we have first of all to mention the principle of immanence, which is essentially dissimilar to basic approaches of transcendental metaphysics. Immanent notions, which define most of traditional Chinese theories, are, of course, necessary products of the holistic world view. If there is no division between two worlds (material and ideal or subjective and objective), it is hard to define which of them ought to be more important or more absolute. This is the very reason for the fact, that the majority of prevailing ideal discourses of traditional China do not contain any notion of transcendence in the sense of exceeding one and crossing into another (usually “higher”) sphere. Zhu Xi’s朱熹 (1130–1200) philosophy was founded upon the binary category of the concepts li 理 and qi 氣. Although in Western, and also in modern Chinese literature, these two concepts have mostly been translated in a dualistic sense, representing the ideal principle and matter respectively, fresh insight into the underlying structural paradigm of traditional Chinese philosophy offers new possibilities of interpretation. The present chapter follows from recognizing that traditional translations of these two concepts are Eurocentric. The author substantiates the problematic role of these presumptive translations through critical analyses of the methodological approaches which led to the traditional understanding of this binary category. A new alternative richer understanding of the complementary relation, composed by the two anti-poles of structure and creativeness, is proposed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 49903202
The article introduces the basic principles of versification in classical Chinese poetry in Tang dynasty when rigorous metrical and tonal rules prevailed for writing poetry. In this way, it points out the methodological problematic of the perception of classical Chinese poetry which is often still determined by Euro-centric approaches. In this context, the author focuses upon the analysis of the most complex and challenging poetic form which is represented by regulated verse called lüshi; this form has to consider rules such as tonal, grammatical and semantic parallelism in the second and the third distich. The tonal parallelism requires that the second line of the distich represents a tonal contrast to the first line. Here, we are dealing with a metric system which has been determined by the specific tonal nature of Chinese language and which is therefore not known in the European poetic metrics. The grammatical parallelism means parallel arrangement of word types in the distich. The semantic parallelism represents antithesis on a meaning level. Both latter principles follow the traditional patterns of mediating contents and are conditioned by the specifically Chinese model of analogies. Furthermore, the author emphasizes the fact that the due to the complicated nature and rigidness of the versification rules they were not always fully considered even by the greatest and most well-known poets.
COBISS.SI-ID: 51050338
The monograph is the outcome of several years of research of mediaeval Pali Buddhist commentarial literature, focusing on rare Pali sub-commentaries from Burma and Sri Lanka which have been ignored or considered lost by modern Pali scholarship. These texts—still extant in manuscript form—are an important missing link in Pali textual transmission. The authors’ recent discovery of the old Anguttara-sub-commentary in Burma/Myanmar, a text previously considered either lost or non-existent (a palm leaf manuscripts of this text was held in Universities Central Library, Yangon) throws completely new light on the development of Pali literature. A microfilm of the manuscript of the Anguttara Nikaya Puranatika was obtained in Burma and served as the basis of this monograph. The discovery of this manuscript essentially changed our understanding of mediaeval Pali tradition and showed many aspects of Theravada Buddhism unknown before, e.g. the manuscript often suggests different readings for the commentaries, gives different lists of Buddha’s disciples, criticises earlier commentators etc. The monograph includes a critical edition of this manuscript with extensive notes, where the text is analysed by applying comparative and philological methods. This is the first systematic comparative analysis of these rare manuscripts in the wider context of Theravada Buddhist tradition. The manuscript sources combined with the available printed editions showed a radically different structure of the sub-commentaries on the first four nikayas: instead of one set of sub-commentaries, as previously accepted, two different sets were in fact compiled at least three centuries apart—and they are still in existence at present. These texts are a very important missing link in Pali textual transmission and give us new information about the transmission of Pali canon over a period of more than three hundred years which has not been researched before. This research is a beginning of a new direction in Buddhist studies which will radically re-examine the beliefs and ideas about Buddhism that were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
COBISS.SI-ID: 51283298