RT Article
T1 Path-bound normativity and a Confucian case of historical holism
JF Asian philosophy
VO 32
IS 2
SP 215
OP 235
A1 Zheng, Yujian
LA English
PB Carfax
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1800080026
AB I bring a new thesis of historical holism to bear on the well-known Mencius-Xunzi dispute about xing/性. The significance of doing so seems bi-directional: in the first direction, i.e. applying the thesis to the dispute, my reconstruction of both Mencius’s and Xunzi’s views aims at revealing a largely neglected but important aspect of Confucian thought. While in the second direction, whoever is otherwise convinced by the Mencian insight may find its successful reconstruction as a case of historical holism good evidence for the thesis itself, which seems ground-breaking in certain areas of contemporary analytic philosophy. The paper largely focuses on the first direction, with quite detailed exposition of key analytic elements for understanding historical holism. A notion of retrospective necessity stands out in the exposition, supporting the main idea of path-bound normativity which turns out to be, for our present case, a notion of implicit and endogenous normativity.
K1 xing/性
K1 retrospective necessity
K1 path-bound normativity
K1 Mencius-Xunzi dispute
K1 Historical holism
DO 10.1080/09552367.2021.1977456