Cross-cultural study of human nature and ethics

Author: Zhao Guohua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: This book is a record of some of my recent explorations in the world of thought. They are like sketches of landscapes made during a journey—each section as a painting, each part as a series of regional paintings, and the entire book as a landscape album. Wittgenstein also made similar remarks in the preface to Philosophical Investigations. I compare my essays to landscape paintings, not out of imitation, but because I couldn’t find a better metaphor to describe the structure of this book. The content of this book is not a coherent theory but an orderly arrangement of relatively independent essays.
Part one employs the narrative method of the history of ideas to construct the development of Western theories of human nature, adopting the Western perspective of telling stories about people. This story begins with the Sphinx’s riddle in Greek mythology and ends with the deconstruction of postmodernism. Part two addresses the crisis of theories of human nature through the paradigm shift method, emphasizing Darwin’s theory of evolution as a paradigm for studying theories of human nature, philosophy, and ethics. I admit that the discussion of Darwin’s paradigm here is a grand narrative, but it is entirely necessary for establishing the paradigm. Detailed analysis and examples can only be developed after the paradigm is established, which will be the task of my next book.
Part three focuses on the comparison and dialogue between Chinese and Western ethics. It includes synchronic case studies of the axial age and a diachronic comparison of Confucian and Christian ethics. Any cross-cultural comparison without subjective arbitrariness must be based on dialogue theory. The dialogue theory discussed here first takes global ethics as a case study and then proposes the theory of model comparison.
Part four expands on the theoretical analysis of the third part and its application in university education. It particularly elaborates on the concepts of the university, liberal education, science and democracy, philosophy education, and the study of religious studies.