Doing God’s Work: The Missonary’s Task of Translation or Who Makes the Best Jesuits: Comparatists, World Literature Scholars, or Real Jesuits?

Author(s): Dorothy Figueira / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

This paper takes as its point of departure the sixteenth-century Jesuit construction of Confucianism and the manufacture of the figure of Confucius in the form of translations of the Chinese classics. In examining the Jesuit policy of accommodation in Asia, I ask whether we might not view these efforts as precursors for the tasks we seek to perform as Comparatists and World Literature scholars. Like the Jesuits in China who sought to package Confucius, we seek to package the world by contextualizing form and argument, canonizing a body of work, producing creative readings sand projecting a vision onto the foreign Other. I focus in particular on the work of Matteo Ricci and his catechism, the Tianzhu shiyi, as a work of cultural mistranslation. I ask to what degree are our current critical readings of the Other not also failures. I question the purposes for which one “misreads”.

THE “BAMBOO NETWORK” OF SOUTHEAST-ASIA AND ITS SOCIO-PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS

Author(s): Ștefan CIORÎIA / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The Chinese bamboo network designates an economic network of enterprises run by Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. In general, these firms are medium and small-sized, having at their top the members of one family. The bamboo network is largely concentrated in the major cities along Southeast Asia: Hong Kong, Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Ho Chi Minh City. The entrepreneurs connect their businesses through a network of relationships. In Southeast Asia, they represent what Amy Chua named “market dominant minority. The Indian scholar Pankaj Mishra noted that the bamboo network represents the most powerful economic entity in Asia except China and Japan. In the same time, what makes the bamboo network so specific is that they have kept the traditional beliefs in Confucianism. What is the specific of the Chinese bamboo network and how does it function within the regional political environment? The research methods used in this paper are mainly based on the analysis of social documents from economy books and handbooks, academic and press articles. The aplication field of the paper can be used in the human sciencies, as for example sociology or international relations, but it also has a large application in the economic sciences. We showed that Southeast Asia’s business environment is extremely specific, and even unique in the way of making business. Its features are deeply grounded in the Confucian philosophy which makes it hardly approachable by the Western managers.

Confucius and the Rectification of Names

Author(s): Silviu Lupaşcu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The Ch’un-ch’iu (Chunqiu) or Annals of the Spring-Autumn Period had been indited according to the textual pattern of a Court chronicle which describes the autocratic regime of the twelve dukes who governed the State of Lu from the Shan-tung (Shandong) region, a vassal-state of the Eastern Chou (Zhou) dynasty (770-256 B. C. E.), during the period 722-481 B. C. E.. The syntagm “Spring-Autumn” is a standard synecdoche which designates an entire calendarial year, or, through a semantic extension, a chronicle the textual continuity of which is structured according to the calendarial continuity of the yearly intervals which include diplomatic dialogues, political intrigues and feudal wars, in the framework of the relationships developed by the State of Lu with the neighboring states, as well as testimonies concerning eclipses, floods, earthquakes and wonders of nature.The decadence of the Chu-hsia (Zhu Xia) civilization, under the Eastern Chou (Zhou) dynasty (770-256 B. C. E.), could have been prevented only through the establishment of a new political order, conformably to the Confucianist ritual ideal, capable to mirror the celestial will in the rigors of an ascetical monarchic regime and in the necessity of the rectification of names (cheng-ming; zhengming).In spite of the fact that he defended the political-moral order of the Eastern Chou (Zhou) dynasty, Confucius traversed the experience of the disintegration of this order and of the transition towards an unknown epoch. Even if he was a loyal subject of the State of Lu, Confucius was forced to to admit that Lu “has only the name, not the substance of a great State”, and the ideal of the rectification of names (cheng-ming; zhengming) did not mold in a lasting manner the immediate historical time. The purity of the unicorn did not preserve his liberty as against the violence of the hunters, its wonderful nature did not preserve his existence as against the ignorance and brutality of human beings. The coming of the unicorn presaged, simultaneously, Confucius’ unfulfilment as a statesman, his imminent death and his investiture as an “uncrowned monarch” (su-wang; suwang).

SAGES – DEAD OR ALIVE? RELEVANCE OF CONFUCIANISM IN STUDIES OF SOUTH KOREAN MODERNITY

Author(s): Tomasz Sleziak / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

In the almost 100 years between 1864 and 1962, Korea saw extensive changes in its socio-political arrangements. The enthronement of king Gojong of Joseon and the start of the first five-year plan of the Republic of Korea (otherwise known as South Korea) collectively appear to embody a transition between the pre-modern and modern, between monarchy and republic, between agriculture and heavy industry, and between Neo-Confucian orthodoxy and (at least nominal) democracy. But is this really the case? What do these terms truly signify in a theoretical sense?

The power of paradox: notes on categories of the tragic, mono no aware, and lacrimae rerum

Author(s): Maria Korusiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 34/2020

The paper is an attempt to investigate the intriguing convergence of the inner logic of three aesthetic categories that emerge from the experience of finitude of existence in diverse cultural environments: the awareness of the tragic in Western cultures, the Japanese category of mono no aware, expressing the painful beauty of things in their impermanence, and a famous Greco-Roman notion of lacrimae rerum (tears of things). All three – despite the deep disparities between the cultural traditions they represent – prove to be the “places” of paradox, of powerful synchronic tension resulting from the “clash” of contradictory forces, transforming one’s perception of the universum. It seems that it is the paradoxical nature of the experiences labelled by these categories (as confirmed by neuroscience) that allows us to confront our finitude with the aid of aesthetic tools.

Pan Maoming’s Philosophy and Cosmology: a Historiographical Research on the Sources and Cultural Background

Author(s): Sergii Rudenko,Chang Feng-Shuo,Zhang Changming / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2020

This paper presents the results of the authors’ study of the philosophical heritage of the Ancient Chinese philosopher Pan Maoming, who played an essential role in the development of spiritual culture, as well as Philosophy and Science of Ancient Southern China (nowadays, Guangdong Province). The authors carried out historiographical research of currently available ancient and modern sources, which contain data on the life and philosophical ideas of Pan Maoming; reconstructed the Pan Maoming’s intellectual biography; revealed the main features of his worldview. The authors reconstructed the social, cultural, and philosophical context of the historical epoch in which Pan Maoming’s philosophical and scientific views arose and developed; clarified the philosopher’s historical role in the development of local culture in the Southern region of Ancient China. The article contains the author’s description and interpretation of the main philosophical ideas of Pan Maoming, the main amid which the authors consider the ethical concept of “peace and emptiness,” the concept of “clumsiness”; the idea of “monasticism for the happiness of the people.” The authors compared Pan Maoming’s philosophical ideas with Lao-tzu’s philosophical doctrine and came to the conclusion that Pan Maoming formed his own unique and original elaboration of Taoist philosophy, significantly developed its linguistic (conceptual) apparatus and worldview. The authors paid particular attention to the description and analysis of Pan Maoming’s cosmological views, which include the doctrine of “Inner alchemy” (Neidan), the doctrine of “chaos, order and causality.” The authors concluded that Pan Maoming’s cosmological ideas significantly developed a way of understanding the Universe, the relationship between “inert” and “living” matter, the “world of nature” and the “world of human” in the Taoist philosophical culture.

Book review: Xueliang Ding. (2017).丁學良. Zhengzhi yu zhongguo tese youmo 政治與中國特色幽默. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

Author(s): Antonio Leggieri / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

Chinese Kung-fu Films and the Posthuman Daoism

Author(s): Wong Kin Yuen / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

This paper argues that Chinese- Kung-fu films are unique presentations of human movement as a system of bodily aesthetics. By adopting a Daoist aesthetics of yin-yang cosmology, martial artists perform the dictum by Zhuanzi’s “The myriad things come out of ji and go into ji”, with the character ji as some kind of the Deleuzian “desiring machine”. There we see a human-technicality convergence as characterized by a posthuman merger within the process of complex visuality, particularly presented through the cinematic form. Kung-fu performance on screen, therefore, affords a kind of natural cyborg intersectionality within what can be called a posthuman Daoism, a kind of commingling of the ancient and posthuman technics.

ROYAL JOSEON SOGYŎKSŎ AND PŎPCHO: THE PHILOSOPHICAL ENCUMBRANCE OF SARIM IN THE KIMYO LITERATI PURGE (1519)1

Author(s): David W. Kim / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2021

The early modern history of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) in East Asia is often depicted as an era of political conflict between the king, the Hun’gu faction, and the Sarim faction. The four major Sahwa (literati purges) reflect its seriousness through which Neo-Confucian scholars were sacrificed by the punishments of execution, exile, or dismissal. The Kimyo Sahwa was the most notorious incident for the Chinese ideology of the Sarim political party. What, then, happened in 1519? What kind of social transformation occurred in relation to the Sungkyunkwan scholars (the national university of the era)? Why did the public office of Daoist Sogyŏksŏ become one of the most controversial issues at the Joseon court? How was the royal shrine of Samch’ŏngjŏn criticised by the leaders of the Sarim faction? This paper explores the politico-religious landscape of early modern Korea through the key features of Jungjong coup (Royal Coup of 1506), Jo Gwangjo (1482–1520) and ‘the Literati Purge of 1519’, and argues the critical insight that the Daoist rituals and sacred sites (altars for the sky, stars, and gods) were traditionally maintained in the Pŏpcho philosophy of the royal sovereignty even if the culture of Jongmyo (ancestral altars) and Sajik (altars of soil and grain) were legally implemented at the beginning of the Confucian Joseon.

CONTEMPORARY REVIVAL OF SPIRITUAL HERITAGE AS A BASIS FOR FAITH IN THE FUTURE

Author(s): Kaspars Kļaviņš / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

The pace of globalisation, which by the end of the 19th century had become unstoppable and since then only accelerated, brought people ever more things invoking reaction. This had an effect on public safety, economic welfare, health, longevity and identity. Today, the “East” and the “West” are just theoretical constructs inherited from our past that exist amidst a vibrant mutual exchange of various spiritual teachings, religions, technologies, lifestyle models and even stereotypes.

Восприятие свободы в китайской языковой картине мира: традиция и современность

Author(s): Ksenia Mikhailovna Naumova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 4-5/2021

This article examines the changes in the linguistic and cultural concepts of freedom (自由zìyóu) in the Chinese linguistic worldview, which have occurred as a result of extralinguistic and socio-cultural transformations brought by globalization processes between the 20th and 21st centuries. The starting point of the research is the traditional ideas about freedom, rooted in Confucianism and the Taoist worldview, according to which disobedience and self-will of the individual can lead society and the country to chaos, so freedom should be limited by norms and prohibitions. By studying empirical data with the help of definitional, quantitative, interpretative, and contextual analysis, a total of more than 1000 phrases with the lexical unit of interest were gathered. Thus, the idea of freedom in modern Chinese society was described in great detail. The results obtained were accompanied with the data of the quantitative analysis of the most frequent collocations based on the materials of the Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese in Peking University. The article provides many examples that prove that the lexeme 自由 zìyóu occurs in phrases that describe numerous and diverse spheres of human activity. The conclusion was made that it has expanded its combinability capabilities as a result of the semantic shift that took place with the penetration of liberal ideas into China from the West. The research is of great importance and benefit for Chinese philologists, as well as for anyone interested in studying globalization processes and their impact on the traditional cultures of the East.

Haiku Estetiği ve Oruç Aruoba’nın Haikuları Üzerine Yapısal Bir Deneme

Author(s): Nurcihan Akhan,Didem Ardalı Büyükarman / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 108/2021

Haiku is the shortest type of poetry known in the World. After leaving the borders of Japan, the first reflections appear especially in French poetry. Haiku, which has Japanese culture and beliefs in its background, is not a creed but has a life philosophy with its own. Haiku tries to put forward that philosophy of life in the simplest way. In Japanese culture and beliefs, nature takes the first place. Haiku carries the traces of a life identical to nature. Haiku poetry, which entered Turkish literature with French translations, is not a type of poetry adopted until recently, although its name is mentioned from time to time. But in 90’s, haiku has become popular in Turkish poetry. Also in that years, respectable amount of haiku readers begin to emerge in our country. In this article, the brief history of haiku as a genre is mentioned and main points in Turkish poetry were tried to be determined. Finally, the haikus written by Oruç Aruoba, who have made significant contributions to the recognition and meaning of haiku poetry, have been evaluated. Some of the haikus he wrote were selected and examined in terms of structure and essence, and it was tried to draw attention to the polysemy of haiku.

Egoul ca monstru lăuntric în poemele lui Jalāl ad­-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī și Mahmūd Shabestarī

Author(s): Andrei Victor Cojocaru / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 29/2022

In Eastern philosophy, the ego is understood as a false identity and as a “knot” in the flow of existence, being the major obstacle for the liberation from the cyclical suffering of the world. In fact, the ego is a subjective way of interacting with the surrounding universe, being the cause of the microcosmic chaos. The ego implies a manifestation of multiplicity understood as separation (on the one hand: I-you, I-others; on the other hand: a certain self in contradiction with another self). Moreover, the contradictions and the suffering are rooted in the tendency to view the individual existence as being separate from the universal existence. In some traditional Persian poems, we are dealing with an association of one’s ego with an inner monster. Understood as a distorted image of a certain reality, the inner monster appears as a misshapen representation of the true self. In this article, I will limit myself to the analysis of the previous issue in the verses of the poets Jalāl adDīn Muhammad Rūmī and Mahmūd Shabestarī.

Developing an Online Platform for Promoting Wushu and Qigong Classes in the Confucius Institute, University of Veliko Tarnovo

Author(s): Borislava Lecheva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The following paper explores the opportunities for developing an online platform for promoting Wushu and Qigong classes in the Confucius Institute at the University of Veliko Tarnovo. It focuses on Facebook as the most suitable online platform to be used for sharing materials and discusses the main principles upon which the materials in hand were based. The study is useful due to the ever-growing significance of online teaching materials and the need for developing new strategies for Wushu and Qigong promotion in times of great social changes.

Енергийни практики в китайското изкуство на войната и мира

Author(s): Valeri Ivanov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The Chinese cultural tradition connects the origin and existence of the world, the human being and society with the presence of a unified and all-pervading energy substance. This substance creates both the formal structures and their comparability and interrelationship. This universal substance is shared on all levels and aspects of existence, regardless of their manifestation. In this mutual sharing, the substance undergoes its fluctuations and transformations which are expressed in constructive or destructive ways of stimulating or repressing influence. This substance can be perceived, studied, understood, guided, and used, consciously or not. This view delineates the unified cosmos in which the subjective and the objective are only a matter of reference in determining existence.

Modern Academic Sinology in Ukraine: Philosophical Research Area in the 1990s – 2020s

Author(s): Heorhii Vdovychenko / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2022

The article offers an overall score of the main philosophical achievements of Ukrainian academic Sinology from the very dawn of the independent Ukraine’s era up to this day. The contribution of its leading figures to the study of the history of Chinese philosophical education, science and culture since the very beginning to the present day is the main object of the research. Over thirty years of philosophical Sinology’s development at the A. Yu. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NAS of Ukraine) and the H. S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the NAS of Ukraine, first of all scholarly works of V. Kiktenko and S. Kapranov, are in the spotlight here. The article also deals with the Sinological studies of their colleagues both from these two institutes, namely V. Pyrohiv, V. Hamianin and A. Usyk, and from other domestic academies, as the ones of O. Shparyk from the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine, the Institute for Pedagogical and Adult Education. The scholarly heritage of V. Sednev as doctoral student of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the NAS of Ukraine and the one of O. Boichenko from the Center for Humanitarian Education of the NAS of Ukraine are also reviewed here. It is noteworthy that the life paths of not only these two, but also many other Ukrainian Sinologists were closely connected exactly with the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Chinese studies in it. We have already explored the progress of philosophical Sinology both at this and a number of other universities in the capital of Ukraine, for example the National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, and at some regional Ukrainian institutes and universities. This study revealingly testifies to their fruitful cooperation both with Sinologists of the NAS of Ukraine and with the Ukrainian Association of Sinologists, arose on the basis of this cooperation.

„Realizacja Dharmy Buddhy w nurcie budownictwa socjalistycznego społeczeństwa”. O początkach drogi do legalizacji pierwszej wspólnoty buddyjskiej w PRL

Author(s): Przemysław Skrzyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2021

The pioneering community of Polish Buddhists called “Zen Circle”, operating in the 1970s, raised well-founded concerns of national public and administrative order bodies. This group, derived mainly from artistic and hippie environments, should be considered one of the most original and radical manifestations of an alternative and contesting culture to the reality of the People’s Republic of Poland. At the same time, the effectiveness of the activities undertaken by the community in the administrative field, led to a precedent situation in which its religious and non-religious activities were legalized. In this article, I reconstruct the administrative efforts made in the first period of community activity (1975–1978), but above all, I analyze the attitudes and motivations of the parties involved in the above-mentioned process: community members, decision-making officials and services responsible for the internal security of the country. Based both on the group’s internal materials and interviews with members, as well as on documents prepared by state bodies, I analyze the process of shaping the identity of the first Polish Buddhists.

Działalność wspólnoty buddyjskiej „Koło Zen” w latach 1978–1980 w kontekście politycznych i administracyjnych uwarunkowań PRL

Author(s): Przemysław Skrzyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2021

The article attempts to present the beginnings of the first Buddhist community in Poland, the „Zen Circle”, which crystallized and legalized its activity in the conditions of a state with an undemocratic political system. In the chronological aspect, it is a continuation of the content contained in the article entitled The Realization of the Buddha-dharma in the Construction of Socialist Society. On the Beginnings of the Path to the Legalization of the First Buddhist Community in the People’s Republic of Poland, focusing on the period when the painter Andrzej Urbanowicz (1938–2011) was the leader of the community. This text presents and analyzes the further efforts of Buddhists who, under the leadership of Andrzej Janusz Korbel (1946–2015), developed effective forms of religious and popularizing activity, and led to the registration of the community (1980), despite police and administrative repressions that began almost a decade earlier. In the second part of the article, I pre- sent some possible reasons for the decision taken by the Office for Religious Affairs to enter the „Zen Buddhist Community in Poland – Religious Association” into the register of associations. The lack of preserved documentation containing the formal argumentation of this decision prompts us to formule hypotheses that will be discussed in more detail in the doctoral dissertation being prepared.

Философско-смисловото поле на преводаческо-интерпретативната техника на гъ-и

Author(s): Yana Stefanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2023

The article aims to present the controversy surrounding the geyi's translation and interpretation technique, which was used in the third and fourth centuries in China, commonly translated as "matching concepts", which is the most distinct manifestation of the adaptation of Buddhist concepts to classical Taoist doctrines. For this purpose, its basic philological and philosophical interpretations of the term are presented. Studying the spread and adaptation of Buddhist doctrines in China gives the unique opportunity to balance these two opposing positions. The very specificity of the philosophical sense of the translator and the interpretive technique of the geyi is considered in its aspect as one of the main factors that shaped the features of Chinese Buddhism and its subsequent final detachment from its Indian equivalent. Its use and improvement mark the beginning of the formation of East Asian Buddhism as an essentially new Buddhist doctrinal strand.