dividing it into types. Thus our normative, (phenomenal) world is good but that
good is a function of the mind. Moral categorization and action are a
simultaneous and combined responses of the heart-mind to the perturbations or
the disharmonies we encounter. The analysis of mind is functional?there is no
goodness of the mind separate from the goodness of its categorizing and acting.
Knowing is acting. The school of heart-mind somewhat gingerly accepted the
implication of their Mencian heritage. There is no evil. I say
"gingerly" because whether one should formulate or teach this
conclusion or not is itself a choice that the mind must assess for its
contextual value. In itself, as it were, the heart-mind is beyond good and evil.
Others, hence, criticized school of heart-mind was for its own Zen-like
implications. Any moderately clever student could figure out that whatever he
chose to do was right (c.f., Zhuangzi?s initial criticism’s of Mencian
idealism). They, in turn, criticized the Buddhist character of their rival’s
assumptions that some kind of state of mind (enlightenment, realization) would
magically result in sagehood. The moralistic name-calling of this
inter-Confucian debate sapped further development of theory of mind. That
coupled with its irrational optimism in the face of growing awareness of the
vulnerability and weakness of China to resist Western and Japanese military and
political power resulted first in mildly more materialistic and utilitarian
systems. Eventually intellectuals developed a wholesale interest in the next
Indo-European thought invasion, which took the form of Marxism. Maoist theory of
mind was an unstable mixture of Marxist economic and materialist reductionism
and traditional Chinese optimism. The right political attitude (typically that
of the part member) would give good communists spectacular moral power and
infallible situational intuitions about how to solve social problems. Again, the
obvious failure in the face of irrational theoretical optimism has produced a
general antipathy to idealizations. One can guess that the next phase, like the
Buddhist phase, will be one of borrowing and blending. However, the current
skepticism about the general outlines of folk psychology in the West and its
essentially alien character probably will keep Chinese theory of heart-mind
distinctively Chinese.
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University Press) pp. xi-277. Fingarette, Herbert. 1972 Confucius The Secular as
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Philosophical Tradition," in Raymond Dawson (ed.), The Legacy of China pp.
28-56. Graham, Angus. 1967 "The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human
Nature," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies 6/1, 2 pp. 215-274. Graham,
Angus. 1989 Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La
Salle, IL: Open Court) . Hansen, Chad. 1991 "Should the Ancient Masters
Value Reason?," in Henry Rosemont (ed.), Chinese Texts and Philosophical
Contexts: Essays Dedicated to A. C. Graham (La Salle, IL: Open Court) pp.
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University Press) pp. xv-448. Hansen, Chad. 1993 "Term Belief in
Action," in Lenk et al (ed.), Epistemological Issues in Chinese Philosophy
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China (Stanford: Stanford University Press) . Munro, Donald J.. 1977 The Concept
of Man in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press) pp. xii,
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