Philosophy

The actual founder of the Tiantai Buddhist School -Zhiyi made a great contribution to the development of Chinese Buddhism. In his masterpiece, The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra, he presented his philosophical system of Buddhism, a comprehensive picture of the Buddhist doctrines and practices, with his Five Sections as an exegetic device to interpret the Lotus Sutra. This paper outlines the whole structure of this work in order to explore how his system of Buddhism is presented through his hermeneutic approach and to deepen our understanding of his philosophy.

Husserl's theory of empathy plays a crucial role in his transcendental phenomenology. At the core of various critiques leveled at Husserl's theory lies the issue of bodily similarity between oneself and the other – not only because Husserl conceives of it as the factor that motivates empathy, but also because his account of it has been taken to be problematic. In this article, I review a main interpretation of the issue of bodily similarity in Husserl, which takes the bodily similarity in question to be a visual resemblance between oneself and the other. By contrast, I give a new interpretation of bodily similarity by taking into account Husserl's emphasis on tactual experience with regard to the constitution of one's own lived body and the foreign body. I argue that the bodily similarity in question amounts to a similar manner of twofold bodily manifestation in oneself and the other, and I also suggest that this interpretation further enables a new understanding of interpersonal relations in Husserl.

胡塞爾的他者構造理論雖然扮演著重要作用，但也招致了諸多批評。以許慈為代表的批評者認為該理論事實上是一個不成熟的理論。他們通過檢討第五《笛卡爾式沉思》，認為胡塞爾的他者理論預設了一種自然主義立場，而這一立場原則上與胡塞爾的超越論立場相悖。本文通過重構胡塞爾的類比理論並分析他的研究手稿，檢討上述自然主義批評，認為胡塞爾事實上還提出了一種與自然主義立場不同的人格主義立場。根據該立場，對他者的經驗首先是對他者身體之為“表達性統一體”的經驗，而不是以他者軀體作為構造的出發點；其次，這種經驗是一種源初的、直接的感知行為，而不是以自我為仲介的虛擬意識；再次，人格主義為自然主義立場提供了基礎，並且與胡塞爾的超越論立場相契合

In recent years, the phenomenological approach to empathy becomes increasingly influential in explaining social perception of other people. Yet, it leaves untouched a related and pivotal question concerning the unique and irreducible intentionality of empathy that constitutes the peculiarity of social perception. In this article, I focus on this problem by drawing upon Husserl's theory of image-consciousness, and I suggest that empathy is characterized by a "seeing-in" structure. I develop two theses so as to further explicate the seeing-in structure in question: first, empathy as a phenomenologically sui generis act is an intentional fusion of both presentation and representation; and second, empathic intentionality is in essence twofold in that it is at once directed at both the other's sensuously given body and the other's nonsensuously given mentality. In this light, I argue that empathy is better conceived as a quasi-perceptual act that is fundamentally different from external perception simpliciter and other complex acts such as signitive,  recollective and imaginative intention.

[Abstract] In the first Logical Investigation, Husserl proposes an important theory of sign theory, but he substantially revises this theory in manuscripts that are now called the " 1914 text " after the " transcendental turn " and gives a new phenomenological explanation of the complex nature of signitive intention. In this article, I compare the first LI and the " 1914 text, " analyze some of the core concepts related to signitive intention, so as to disclose the scope of such a revision, and thereby I argue that the complex nature of signitive intention consists in the " twofold unity " of double intentionality.

McDowell motivates a disjunctive conception of experience in the context of other minds skepticism, but his conception of other minds has been less frequently discussed. In this paper, I focus on McDowell’s perceptual account of others that
emphasizes the primitivity of others’ bodily expressivity and his defense of a
common-sense understanding of others. And I suggest that Husserl’s subtle analysis
of bodily expressivity not only bears fundamental similarities with McDowell’s
but also helps to demonstrate the sense in which McDowell’s emphasis on bodily
expressivity can remove some of the grounds for other minds skepticism. I argue
that the other’s behavioral manifestation is first and foremost perceived in a salient
Gestalt and social perception is inherently infused with a constitutive propensity
with which we normally take the other as human person in the first place. In this
light, I show that Husserl’s account can better elucidate human expressivity and its
intrinsic features, thereby helping to remove some of the props of other-minds skepticism. As a result, I believe it proves fruitful to juxtapose McDowell’s and Husserl’s account of bodily expressivity, so as to alternate the Cartesian picture of other minds that engenders skeptic anxiety and to secure a common-sense understanding of other people.

McDowell motivates a disjunctive conception of experience in the context of other-minds skepticism, but his conception of other minds has been less frequently discussed. In this paper, I focus on McDowell's perceptual account of others that emphasizes the primitivity of others' bodily expressivity and his defense of a common-sense understanding of others. And I suggest that Husserl's subtle analysis of bodily expressivity not only bears fundamental similarities with McDowell's but also helps to demonstrate the sense in which McDowell's emphasis on bodily expressivity can remove some of the grounds for other minds skepticism. I argue that the other's behavioral manifestation is first and foremost perceived in a salient Gestalt and social perception is inherently infused with a constitutive propensity with which we normally take the other as human person in the first place. In this light, I show that Husserl's account can better elucidate human expressivity and its intrinsic features, thereby helping to remove some of the props of other-minds skepticism. As a result, I believe it proves fruitful to juxtapose McDowell's and Hus-serl's account of bodily expressivity, so as to alternate the Cartesian picture of other-minds that engenders skeptic anxiety and to secure a common-sense understanding of other people.

Social cognition primarily explains interpersonal understanding on the basis of two classical models, i.e., "theory theory" and "simulation theory." Although this classical framework contains various insights, it also consists of problematic presuppositions. Phenomenology of empathy and its contemporary heir-"direct social perception theory" provide a substantial alternative to mainstream theories, and they claim that the starting point of knowing others does not lie in theoretical inference or mental simulation but rather in perceptual experience. They hold that perception servers as an indispensable access to others' mental life.

In his papers on empathy (2008, 2012), Iso Kern discusses various problems regarding empathy from both Confucian and phenomenological perspective. By using Husserl's theory of empathy, Kern characterizes basic intentional features of empathy, analyses the relationship between reflective and pre-reflective empathy, and that between self-consciousness and consciousness of others. In this paper, I focus on Kern's analysis of empathic intentionality, so as to further examine the intentional structure of empathic act, without engaging with other aspects of Kern's analysis. I argue that, although imagination plays an important role in empathic experience, imagination itself is not the key factor of empathic act. I argue that empathy is a special form of other-perception, a form of intentional fusion of both perception and representation. And I propose that empathy thus conceived is more structurally akin to image consciousness than to pure imagination. I further point out that empathic intentionality is not uni-directional but bi-directional in nature and this empathic bi-directionality enables us to take over the other's perspective in a quasi-perceptual way.

Recent enactive approach to social cognition stresses the indispensability of social affordance with regard to social understanding and contends that it is affordance that primarily solicits one's reaction to the other, such that one becomes affected by the other and attends to the other's situated appearance in the first place. What remains to be explored, however, is the sense in which social affordance is delineated by an affective sphere and the extent to which the affective sphere serves as a meaning constraint for social sense-making. In this paper, we analyze Husserl's genetic theory of affection, so as to better understand the nature of the social affective sphere. And we argue that social understanding takes places at different levels and it is at the passive and pre-reflective level that the social surroundings are pre-delineated by a sort of affective ambience where the empathizer and the empathizee come into contact. Once this is appreciated, we can better articulate the affective structure of social affordance and its meaning constituents. And we show that, at the passive level, social coupling is in nature an affective intertwinement between oneself and the other and it consists of a particular kind of corporeal intentionality with which one adverts to the other's presence and responds to the other's appeal.

It is well-known that Husserl denies bodily behaviour as expressive in the I. Logical Investigation but he dramatically changes his view and holds that bodily behaviour is essentially expressive in works such as Ideas II. A mainstream explanation of the change is that Husserl develops a more cogent conception of embodiment such that he can ultimately include bodily behaviour into the category of expressive phenomena. In this paper, I explore another source of this change by examining the by and large overlooked “1914 texts.” I argue that the change is significantly informed by Husserl’s revised conception of indication, such that he can offer a proper account of the intimate relation between the body and the spirit and, eventually, opt for a new view of bodily expressivity. By doing so, I also elucidate some intrinsic characteristics of bodily expressivity, such as its demand feature and its twofold unity.