Reviewed by: Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius J. E. Tiles (bio) May Sim . Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ix, 224 pp. Hardcover $85.00, ISBN 978-0-521-87093-1. Confucius and Aristotle, originators of influential ethical traditions in the East and the West, respectively, exhibit certain (perhaps only superficial) similarities in their doctrines: emphases on excellences of character and on finding a mean between extremes. So it may come as a surprise that May Sim appears to have written the first monograph-length treatment (p. 1) comparing these two masters. The distances to be bridged—historical, cultural, and linguistic—are, to be sure, formidable, but Sim probes sensitively and sensibly behind the superficial and suggests realignments that highlight subtle similarities and significant differences. "[T]he functional analogue of Aristotle's meson is Confucius' he (harmony) not zhong (the term most often translated as 'mean')" (p. 11; cp. pp. 100–105); "Aristotle's unwritten laws, which are embedded in ethos, are comparable to Confucian li" [ritual proprieties] (p. 18; cp. p. 181). Neither Aristotle nor Confucius is caught in the tension between egoism and altruism: "Both thinkers . . . direct us to a kind of moral content where self-interest and other-directedness cross" (p. 20). "[F]or both thinkers, by knowing and doing what is good for others in general, one is also doing what is good for oneself " (p. 29). As for differences, on the one hand, Aristotle gives insufficient attention to the culturally laden social relations "required by his own ethics of character and politics of virtue" (p. 13); thus, Aristotelians could "learn much from Confucians about the nature and ethical pertinence of ceremony and decorum" (p. 2). On the other hand, "Confucian agency is so embedded in ritual that there seems to be no more solid source of moral norms that might help assess existing proprieties and manners" (p. 13); thus, to avoid the "parochialism" that comes from grounding ritual propriety in the practices of an earlier Zhou dynasty, Confucians need to "learn from Aristotle a form of first philosophy [metaphysics] that grounds talk of our common humanity" (p. 3). As these examples suggest, Sim's project is to promote a dialogue (p. 18) between the two traditions in which each side is invited to consider the need to appropriate resources from the other to improve its own position. This is one of the senses in which this project represents a remastering; another is the possibility of our recovering one or more perspectives on moral thought that have been occluded by more recent developments in our own tradition. A significant part of the dialogue that Sim arranges explores the metaphysical underpinnings of the ethical norms and values each philosopher sought to institute. This aspect of Sim's project, as will be seen below, is likely to provoke intense debate. [End Page 296] To find this whole project worthwhile, one does not have to accept (as Sim apparently does, p. 21) Alasdair MacIntyre's thesis that, as far as the West is concerned, the "Enlightenment experiment with autonomy" has "been effectively refuted" by the followers of Nietzsche and "that Aristotelianism provides the only real alternative to a postmodernity that clings directly or indirectly Nietzsche" (p. 21). Nor is there any need to explore first the resources that might be offered to each thinker by subsequent developments in his own cultural sphere—Deweyan pragmatism in the one or Song neo-Confucianism in the other (p. 4). Cultural differences may serve to make the issues sharper, and better resources to fill lacunae do not necessarily help to clarify where the lacunae are located. I Sim begins by confronting a challenge articulated by Alasdair MacIntyre to the effect that no conversation can take place between the two masters (or their traditions) because each lacks the words to translate into his own language key concepts used by the other. For example, Aristotle lacks the resources to translate li (ritual propriety), and Confucius, the resources to translate polis (city state) and psyche (the form in virtue of which a living thing is alive, commonly translated "soul"). Moral shortcomings that are salient for one tradition—because of...

Philosophical BooksVolume 49, Issue 1 p. 78-80 In Praise of Blame - By George Sher J.e. Tiles, J.e. Tiles the university of hawai’i at mânoaSearch for more papers by this author J.e. Tiles, J.e. Tiles the university of hawai’i at mânoaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 16 January 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0149.2008.456_16.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume49, Issue1January 2008Pages 78-80 RelatedInformation

This is a critical review of Robert Innis' Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense: Language, Perception, Technic. In this book, one of Michael Polanyi's key preoccupations is related to the ideas of a number of thinkers, including Charles Peirce, John Dewey and Ernst Cassirer.

The Lives and Minds of Traditions J. E. Tiles History of Islamic Philosophy. Edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman. Routledge History of World Philosophies, vol. 1. London: Routledge, 1996 (hardcover), 2001 (paper). Pp. xx + 1,211 History of Jewish Philosophy. Edited by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman. Routledge History of World Philosophies, vol. 2. London: Routledge, 1997. Hardcover. Pp. xii + 934. The History of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, and the History of Jewish Philosophy, edited by Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (hereafter HIP and HJP), are two substantial works of reference first published seven and six years ago, respectively. The recent appearance of HIP and the forthcoming appearance of HJP in paperback provide an occasion to consider some of the issues they raise that are of particular interest to scholars who work at or across the boundaries of traditions. The two books raise such issues as whether philosophy in different cultural frameworks constitutes different "kinds" of philosophy (validating the need for distinct subdisciplines) and whether different cultures articulate thoughts in distinctive ways or otherwise exhibit different "mentalities." They highlight the possibility that traditions may betray themselves by accepting (e.g., under colonial pressures) alien images of themselves. They provoke the question "Are we failing (refusing) to recognize philosophy because it takes an unfamiliar form?" as the obverse of the question "But is this philosophy?" And although the two books have an editor in common, their material is organized in significantly different ways, suggesting the need to consider how best to structure the investigation of sizable histories of culturally linked traditions. Mentalities HJP begins boldly by problematizing its subject matter. In his introductory chapter, editor Frank identifies "the simple answer" to the title question of this chapter, "What Is Jewish Philosophy?" by declaring Jewish philosophy to be "an academic discipline invented in the nineteenth century by scholars intent on gaining a foothold of academic respectability" (HJP, p. 6). Frank intends to caution his readers against assuming that "the problems and issues that exercised earlier generations" are similar to those that "we are inclined to pose" (HJP, p. 8). No doubt the presence [End Page 403] of an academic discipline devoted to a subject makes a difference in how people approach that subject, but what difference it makes is not altogether clear. Frank appears to be trying to launch his readers safely past both the reef of an assumed "idiosyncratically Jewish enterprise" (HJP, p. 4) extending along the whole of the chronology and the sandbar that treats "Jewish" as a strictly non-attributive modifier of "philosophy." While steering around the latter, Frank inverts a remark made at the end of I. Husik's 1916 History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy, which held that "there are Jews now and there are philosophers, but there are no Jewish philosophers and there is no Jewish philosophy" (HJP, p. 5). Frank contends that, on the contrary, only since the nineteenth century and the construction of an academic discipline could there be Jewish philosophers "in a non trivial sense" engaged in Jewish philosophy (ibid.). But if the sandbar extends up to the nineteenth century, then three quarters of HJP cannot be a history of Jewish philosophy but only of philosophers who happened to be Jews. A very plausible account of what HJP is about rests, nevertheless, on the possibility of using Jewish culture (texts and practices) as sources (of problems) and resources (material with which to articulate solutions) for engaging in philosophy. HJP offers to tell the history of that enterprise. This account may be treated formally, so that it is left open what is to count as Jewish culture and what is to count as engaging in philosophy. Jews who engage in philosophy without drawing on Jewish culture-Leaman mentions Wittgenstein and Derrida in his concluding chapter (HJP, p. 896; cf. HJP, p. 87, on the problem of Ibn Gabirol)-are not part of the history of Jewish philosophy. There is no reason gentiles could not contribute to Jewish philosophy, provided they possessed sufficient mastery of the cultural material. This approach does not beg any questions about whether there are idiosyncratic Jewish ways of thinking that generate...

Turning to Others to Learn about Self J. E. Tiles Learning from Asian Philosophy. By Joel J. Kupperman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. viii + 208. Paper $19.95. In order to learn from Asian philosophy it is not sufficient to learn something about Asian philosophy. In addition to learning what is to be found in Asian philosophical texts, these texts must also be used as resources to advance one's own understanding of philosophical issues and problems—much as one might draw on the works of Aristotle or Augustine and of John Locke or John Rawls. Joel Kupperman has been learning from Asian philosophy for over thirty years, and has assembled Learning from Asian Philosophy to bring that experience together and make it more widely available. The core of his book consists of nine previously published articles supplemented by one that is previously unpublished. These ten taken singly or in pairs form the kernels of six parts, each with a new introductory essay and a brief (one- to four-page) "afterword." Kupperman draws most extensively on the ancient East Asian philosophers Confucius, Men cius, and Zhuangzi and to a lesser extent on Buddhism, and there is occasional input from the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gītā. His interests center on ethics and moral psychology. Two of the six parts deal with self: its formation and its fluidity. A third examines the extent to which a self should allow room for choice, and the place of choice in ethical theorizing. The remaining three parts deal with the scope, the demands, and the strategies for communicating ethics. The lessons Kupperman draws from Asian philosophy are rich and yet capable of further refinement; the concepts he uses to frame these lessons are familiar and yet call for further clarification. It is in part because it both opens paths and draws the reader to travel further along them that Kupperman's book is an exemplary illustration of how we in the West can profit from resources available outside our own traditions. The best tribute this reviewer can pay to this successful book is to attempt to venture further along these paths (in the second through fourth sections below), but before doing so it would be useful to take a look at Kupperman's line of approach. Matters of Method Skimming the book's Introduction, some readers of this journal may well hear alarm bells when they reach the fifth sentence. There Kupperman states that his "goal will [End Page 246] be to gain contributions to philosophical enterprises that are, in the end, primar ily Western rather than Chinese or Indian" (p. 3). Is not the first step to any genuine understanding of the East on the part of Westerners the realization that the enterprises are radically different? Is not the failure to appreciate this what commonly leads those who practice Western styles of philosophy to dismiss Asian traditions as containing little or nothing of value? Kupperman is well aware of the differences in these enterprises. The caution in one of his infrequent digressions on method—"we must not expect Confucian and Western philosophers to be answering exactly the same questions" (p. 103)—is posted in general terms on the back cover: "the two traditions [East and West] do not, by and large supply different answers to the same questions. Rather, each tradition is searching for answers to its own set of questions . . . ."1 Indeed, what Kupperman suggests should be the way to profit from trade with the East, at least within his areas of interest, is not to seek a wider range of answers to familiar questions but to find ways to supplement the arguably inadequate diet that feeds on these familiar questions. We stand to gain not by finding exotic doctrines to import but by coming across "reminders of problems or lines of thought that we might have forgotten about or ignored" (p. 3). Of course, we will have to "be cautious of imposing alien philosophical frameworks" (p. 86) and to be "wary of possible misinterpretation or over-interpretation" (p. 109), but our own intellectual economies can in some instances become healthier and more prosperous if we undertake to explore issues...

An Ineffective Inoculation J. E. Tiles Aristotle in China: Language, Categories and Translation. By Robert Wardy. Needham Research Institute Studies 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 170. Hardcover. I Robert Wardy's Aristotle in China has two chapters. The first, "The China Syndrome," examines and attempts to refute a variety of claims made in the spirit of Benjamin Lee Whorf to the effect that the natural language used by a culture "guides and constrains" the thought patterns available to it and, especially, to those who attempt to philosophize in that language. The second, "Aristotelian Whispers," examines a translation of Aristotle's Categories into Chinese made in the seventeenth century. As it is commonly held that doctrines in this basic Aristotelian text are heavily influenced by the Greek in which Aristotle wrote, the project of translating it into a non-Indo-European language offers the possibility of seeing the alleged "guidance and constraint" at work. The interest of the material covered in the second chapter, however, transcends the philosophic preoccupations to which it is harnessed, and it may be useful to begin by surveying what Wardy offers to sinologists and intellectual historians who may find disputes over Whorfian claims irksome rather than intriguing. The text featured in Wardy's second chapter, the Ming li t'an, appeared in Hangchou in 1631. It is a translation of one volume of In Universam Dialecticam Aristotelis, one of a series of Aristotelian texts and commentaries that had been published earlier in the century by the Jesuits of the Portuguese University of Coimbra. This member of the series contains a Latin version of selections from the Organon, including the Categories, along with "voluminous philosophical and philological comments" (p. 76). It begins not with Aristotle's Categories but with Porphyry's Isagoge, a commentary from the second century C.E. introducing the Categories. The translation into Chinese was the collaborative effort of a Chinese literatus, Li Chih-tsao , and a Jesuit, Francisco Furtado, who was educated at Coimbra. There is evidence that Li and Furtado "produced a more or less complete Chinese Organon" (p. 83), but the Ming li t'an consists only of the Isagoge, the Categories, and generous selections from related commentaries. There are three known surviving copies of this edition, located in Beijing, Paris, and the Vatican, as well as a 1965 Taipei reprint (p. 70). [End Page 545] Wardy provides a biographical sketch of Li (pp. 78-79), and readings of two prefaces original to the Chinese that indicate how the value of the work was presented to the Chinese (pp. 80-81). He engages in some speculation as to why the Jesuits might have thought this effort important, to whom the Ming li t'an might have been addressed, and how it was to be used (pp. 77, 86). There are also accounts of how the Ming li t'an presents the idea of philosophy and introduces Aristotle to the Chinese reader. The latter was "transformed from an ambivalent intellectual outsider to a paragon of the thriving scholar-official" (p. 95). The Chinese practice of explaining both a word and its meaning is said to have generated confusing signals about philosophy, as the name implies a lack of knowledge but its meaning implies an exceptionally high grade of knowledge. Wardy argues that this was "fruitful," not evidence that the notion is untranslatable (p. 91). The theory of the elements of discourse translated in the Ming li t'an is not, however, accompanied by the logical theory that constitutes its native Western habitat. Chinese readers of the Ming li t'an had, moreover, no surviving tradition of the self-conscious study of inference, and there is evidence that Western practices of disputation struck the Chinese as bizarre (p. 99 n. 108). Allusions in the translation to the familiar Chinese project of cheng ming (rectification of names) do not appear to be sufficient to make the idea of logic, or the passages that introduce it, at all clear (pp. 103-106). The translation nevertheless is able to draw on the way in which the correct use of names is tied to clear discrimination in Chinese tradition to offer a coherent reason...

Philosophical BooksVolume 37, Issue 3 p. 168-170 The Oxford History of Western Philosophy J. E. TILES, J. E. TILES UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I AT MÂNOASearch for more papers by this author J. E. TILES, J. E. TILES UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I AT MÂNOASearch for more papers by this author First published: July 1996 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0149.1996.tb02538.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume37, Issue3July 1996Pages 168-170 RelatedInformation

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesOne Dimensional Experimental ScienceJ. E. TILESJ. E. TILESUniversity of Hawai'i at Mānoa Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 45, Number 1March 1994 Society: The British Society for the Philosophy of Science Views: 9Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Views: 9Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/45.1.341 Views: 9Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 1994 by The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: John Neu Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences, 1994, Isis 85 (Oct 2015): 1–300.https://doi.org/10.1086/357072

Philosophical BooksVolume 35, Issue 3 p. 192-193 A Companion to Epistemology J.E. TILES, J.E. TILES THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I AT MĀNOASearch for more papers by this author J.E. TILES, J.E. TILES THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I AT MĀNOASearch for more papers by this author First published: July 1994 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0149.1994.tb02430.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume35, Issue3July 1994Pages 192-193 RelatedInformation