Atman in Advaita Vedanta: Variations on a theme from the Principal Upanishads”

“Semiotic Place and Personality in Charles Peirce’s Theory of Determination”

My main attempt in this paper is to scrutinize “semiotic place” and “personality” with special regard to Charles Peirce’s “theory of determination.” In his theory of determination, Peirce considered two processes of determination, one from object to interpretant, and the other from idea to mind. A successful occasion of semiotics proceeds from object to interpretant. Semiotics is a place of an extensional process that consists of an infinite chain of references. While semiotic determination is reversible in terms of references, the epistemological process of determination is temporal and irreversible. In this intensional process, the idea grows into the individual mind, as the universe is unfolded by the agency of mind.

Based on these two processes of determination, personality, which Peirce calls mind, on one hand, is “objectified” as “sign” or “interpretant” in the place of semiotics through communicational inference that enables us to realize the particular in the realm of becoming. Mind, on the other hand, “subjectifies” the most primitive real, which Peirce calls idea, into this temporal world. This process of “subjectification” enables the continuity of ideas, through which idiosyncratic person as idea produces the generalized mind as idea in the particularized place of “here-and-now.”

These two thinkers demonstrate that Confucian thinkers of the Chosun Dynasty, on the one hand, struggled to solve social and political problems of the time in terms of Zhu Xi’s philosophy; on the other hand, they offered new interpretations of Zhu Xi’s philosophy reflecting their own particular ‘place’. This is where we can indicate the particular place of Zhu Xi’s philosophy in Korean Confucianism. The investigation into this particular ‘place’ will elucidate why Confucianism chose a different path in Korea, drawing a stark contrast to Confucianism in China.

“The Multicultural Synergy in Dunhuang”

The discussion will focus on the multicultural synergy and practice in Dunhuang, and its implications for the education today, in China, Asia, the world, and beyond. Dunhuang as an important stop in the Silk Road became a transition zone of Central Asia, West Asia, India, Persia and more distant Byzantine Empire (Fan & Wu, 2004; Rong, 2001). The collision and fusion of multiculturalism promoted the formation of Dunhuang civilization and its unique culture and products. The discussion will examine the successful interaction and convergence of multiculturalism (Banks, 2010) in Dunhuang and its manifestations in Dunhuang Grottos.

LI, Puqun (Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada)

“The Length of Mourning versus the Nature of Mourning—A Critical Analysis of the Analects 17:21”

On the surface the debate between Confucius and Zaiwo at Analects 17:21 is about what would be the proper length of a mourning ritual for departed parents. But I think the core of the debate is actually about the nature of mourning for parents. In particular, it is about the connection and tension between feelings (spontaneous and reflective) that are associated with mourning for parents and the seemingly complete arbitrariness in the length of such mourning. With this understanding of the debate, I argue:

(1) that although Zaiwo seems to have appealing, practical reasons to challenge the practice of three-year mourning, his reasons, seen from Confucius’ perspective, severely deviate from the true root of mourning—one’s genuine appreciative feelings toward parents, and thus Zaiwo’s reasoning is morally misleading.

(2) that, contrary to prevalent readings of 17:21, Confucius’ connecting the rite of three-year mourning with one’s early childhood experience of being taken care of by one’s parents for three years should be better (or more charitably) read as an illustration of the importance of reflecting on moral feelings for the purpose of moral cultivation than as a justification (or proof) for the idea that the number of years of being taken care of by one’s parents in early childhood must match the number of years of mourning for one’s parents. 

(3) that in Confucius’ vision the three-year mourning rite, exemplified by junzi (君子) and established by the sage kings can serve as a regulative and uplifting moral ideal for common people. However, this is not to deny that three-year mourning, if taken as a heterogeneous (‘moral’) demand, can be too high for many people and its actual implementation may lead to ritual formalism and hypocrisy.

Today, the majority of sovereign states can fairly be described as “democracies” characterized by elected political leadership and some measure of individual rights and liberties.  Likewise, most states have economies where the marketplace is the chief arbiter of economic exchange.  Virtually all these polities and economies have as their underlying “operating system” Western liberal principles and values.

There is one place that stands as an exception to this model, the small remote country of Bhutan.  Because of its Himalayan location, its centuries of closure, and the good fortune of having avoided conquest and colonization, when Bhutan emerged as a democratic state with a relatively free internal market in the 21^st century, it did so with its 1300-year-old belief and value system intact. Its philosophical beliefs and mores are overwhelming Buddhist, not Western and liberal in character. Contemporary Bhutan, the country that seeks Gross National Happiness as its fundamental goal, is the only democratic, market-based state in the world constitutionally and culturally rooted in Buddhist principles and ethics.

This exceptionality matters because it provides and authentic basis for theoretical comparison between two distinct models of democracy and development. Here, the comparison is between two autonomous, identifiable traditions of thought (liberalism and Buddhism) that differ on important first-order philosophical principles.  Such comparisons can bring to light new questions, frames of inquiry and alternative approaches to our understanding of democracy and development.

This paper will compare the differences and similarities between Buddhist and liberal philosophy that lie at the core of two different approaches to democracy and development. To illustrate, Bhutanese Buddhist and Western liberal conceptualizations of the nature of the individual “self,” “human nature,” and “the pursuit of happiness”—the building blocks of social theory—are profoundly different.  Because of their distinctive ontological and ethical stances, what constitutes “good government” and “appropriate economic development” differs in critical ways, even though both Bhutan and Western nations can be described as “democratic” and “market-based.”

By understanding better a Buddhist approach to democracy and development, those of us in the West can develop a realistic and relativistic view of our own political principles and values and, perhaps, discover novel ideas useful in addressing contemporary political and economic challenges such as ideological polarization, income inequality, and sustainable economic development.