Author Archives: Bill Haines

Book: The Global Encyclopedia of Informality

 

While scouring the web for freebies this morning, I came across something that may be of interest to many readers here: The Global Encyclopedia of Informality, University College London, 2018, in two volumes.

http://oapen.org/search?identifier=642570;keyword=informality

 

Here’s the table of contents for Volume 1:

Continue reading →

Who’s Which? Which What?

My guess, really just a guess, is that the discussion of role ethics or relational ethics might benefit from some direct attention to a couple of fallacies available for commission—one minor, one major.  I don’t know whether they’re actually committed or directly discussed in the literature.  Possible examples of each can be found in Henry Rosemont’s essay “Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role-Bearing Persons” (in Mary Bockover, ed., Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility: Essays Dedicated to Herbert Fingarette, Open Court 1991, pp. 71-101).  I’ll make that my text.  I don’t understand it.

Continue reading →

Confucianism and Household Servants?

This post expands a question I asked once in the old Discussions section.

It is sometimes said that the (or a) Ruist picture of moral psychology stresses family because Ruists stress the development of moral sensibilities starting with people’s earliest relationships, which are their childhood relationships at home.  So … what about household servants?

Continue reading →

Analects 2.13

A while back, in the now-vanished Discussions section, I proposed a new idea about Analects 2.13.  Here I’m putting it back on the record.

2.13

子貢問君子。子曰：「先行其言，而後從之。」(ctext.org)

On Tzŭ Kung asking about the nobler type of man the Master said: “He first practices what he preaches and afterwards preaches according to his practice.” (Soothill)

Continue reading →

Question about family and society in the Chinese philosophical tradition

Here are three different ideas:

  1. Having the right attitudes in my family relationships tends to give me the right attitudes in my political relationships.
  2. Where right family attitudes prevail in society, the right political attitudes tend also to prevail.
  3. Differences in family culture from region to region, or from time to time, tend to be accompanied by analogous differences in political culture.

Idea #2 is very abstract, and can be understood simply in terms of order versus disorder, or natural respect versus the lack of it.  Idea #3 contemplates a variety of kinds of stable order, and perhaps a variety of forms of government.

Where might idea #3 appear in the Chinese tradition?

Two Concepts of Roles

There are many images and metaphors that might serve as cores of conceptions of something for which one could use the English word “role.”  One way to look for some is to look at words from other languages.  I’ll look here at two, one from Greek and one from old Chinese.

Continue reading →