Lisa Ann Raphals (born May 15, 1951) is an American professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), [1] [2] and of philosophy at the National University of Singapore. [3] She compares early China and ancient Greece. She is the author of a number of books, including Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece and Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China, as well as a collection of poems and translations entitled What Country.
Raphals is married to John C. Baez, who is a professor of mathematics at UCR. [4]
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: CS1 maint: date and year (link)The Tao Te Ching is a Chinese classic text and foundational work of Taoism written around 400 BC and traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, though the text's authorship, date of composition and date of compilation are debated. The oldest excavated portion dates back to the late 4th century BC, but modern scholarship dates other parts of the text as having been written—or at least compiled—later than the earliest portions of the Zhuangzi.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Contemporary philosophers consider it a major subfield of philosophy, along with ethics, logic, and metaphysics, which are more ancient subdivisions of philosophy. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in (contemporary) epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:
Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to contemplate and act productively using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence, and non-attachment, and virtues such as ethics and benevolence.
A virtue is a trait of excellence, including traits that may be moral, social, or intellectual. The cultivation and refinement of virtue is held to be the "good of humanity" and thus is valued as an end purpose of life or a foundational principle of being. In human practical ethics, a virtue is a disposition to choose actions that succeed in showing high moral standards: doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong in a given field of endeavour. When someone takes pleasure in doing what is right, even when it is difficult or initially unpleasant, they can establish virtue as a habit. Such a person is said to be Virtuous through having cultivated such a disposition. The opposite of virtue is vice, and the vicious person takes pleasure in habitual wrong-doing to their detriment.
Prudence is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. It is classically considered to be a virtue, and in particular one of the four cardinal virtues. Prudentia is an allegorical female personification of the virtue, whose attributes are a mirror and snake, and who is frequently depicted as a pair with Justitia, the Roman goddess of Justice.
Eudaimonia, sometimes anglicized as eudaemonia or eudemonia, is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of 'good spirit', and which is commonly translated as 'happiness' or 'welfare'.
The microcosm–macrocosm analogy refers to a historical view which posited a structural similarity between the human being and the cosmos as a whole. Given this fundamental analogy, truths about the nature of the cosmos as a whole may be inferred from truths about human nature, and vice versa.
Virtue ethics is an approach to ethics that treats virtue as central.
Ethics involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than traditional moral conduct.
The Han Feizi or Hanfeizi is an ancient Chinese text named for its attribution to the political philosopher Han Fei. It comprises a selection of essays in the Legalist tradition on theories of state power, synthesizing the methodologies of his predecessors. Its 55 chapters, most of which date to the Warring States period mid-3rd century BC, are the only such text to survive fully intact. The Han Feizi is believed to contain the first commentaries on the Dao De Jing. Temporarily coming to overt power as an ideology with the ascension of the Qin dynasty, the First Emperor of Qin and succeeding emperors often followed the template set by Han Fei.
Phronesis, is a type of wisdom or intelligence relevant to practical action. It implies both good judgment and excellence of character and habits, and was a common topic of discussion in ancient Greek philosophy. Classical works about this topic are still influential today. In Aristotelian ethics, the concept was distinguished from other words for wisdom and intellectual virtues—such as episteme and sophia—because of its practical character. The traditional Latin translation is prudentia, which is the source of the English word "prudence". Among other proposals, Thomas McEvilley has proposed that the best translation is "mindfulness".
Philip J. Ivanhoe is an historian of Chinese thought, particularly of Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism. He is a professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Georgetown University. Ivanhoe is perhaps best known for two claims: that Neo-Confucian philosophers such as Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming have systematically misinterpreted earlier Confucians such as Confucius himself, and Mengzi; and that Confucianism may usefully be understood as a version of virtue ethics.
Jiyuan Yu was a Chinese moral philosopher noted for his work on virtue ethics. Yu was a long-time and highly admired Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, in Buffalo, New York, starting in 1997. Prior to his professorship, Yu completed a three-year post as a research fellow at the University of Oxford, England (1994-1997). He received his education in China at both Shandong University and Renmin University, in Italy at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and in Canada at the University of Guelph. His primary areas of research and teaching included Ancient Greek Philosophy, and Ancient Chinese Philosophy.
Philosophy is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The Stoics believed that the practice of virtue is enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived, flourishing life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it with a life spent practicing certain virtues in everyday life such as courage or temperance and living in accordance with nature. It was founded in the ancient Agora of Athens by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC.
The I Ching or Yi Jing, usually translated as Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), the I Ching was transformed over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200 BC) into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings". After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought.
Comparative studies of the Roman and Han empires is a historical comparative research involving the roughly contemporaneous Roman Empire and the Han dynasty of early imperial China. At their peaks, both states controlled up to a half of the world population and produced political and cultural legacies that endure to the modern era; comparative studies largely focus on their similar scale at their pinnacles and on synchronism in their rise and decline. The Han and Roman empires declined roughly within the same time frame during the third and fifth centuries A.D, respectively with the onset of the Three Kingdoms Period and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. However, the Chinese empire came together again under the Sui and Tang dynasties while the Eastern administrative half of the Roman Empire survived the fall of the Western half and continued well into the 15th century AD.
Deng Xi was a Chinese philosopher and rhetorician who was associated with the Chinese philosophical tradition School of Names. Once a senior official of the Zheng state, and a contemporary of Confucius, he is regarded as China's earliest known lawyer, with clever use of words and language in lawsuits.
The philosophy of happiness is the philosophical concern with the existence, nature, and attainment of happiness. Some philosophers believe happiness can be understood as the moral goal of life or as an aspect of chance; indeed, in most European languages the term happiness is synonymous with luck. Thus, philosophers usually explicate on happiness as either a state of mind, or a life that goes well for the person leading it. Given the pragmatic concern for the attainment of happiness, research in psychology has guided many modern day philosophers in developing their theories.
Hyun Jin Kim is an Australian academic, scholar and author.