Comparative Philosophies in Intercultural Information Ethics

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics. The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an intermission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions

Women and Dao in Gao Xingjian’s works

Drawing on the existing scholarly studies that have gone beyond the misogynist paradigm, such as those by Mabel Lee, Gilbert Fong, Terry Siu-han Yip, Kwok-kan Tam, and Mary Mazzilli, I intend to explore the connection between the Zen Buddhist comprehension of Dao and the representation of women in Gao Xingjian’s novels and plays. As desire and sexual relationships play a very crucial part in the realm of Zen, the role of women is inevitably bound up with self-awareness and self-reflection, which are enshrined by Gao Xingjian as necessary on the path toward individual enlightenment. According to Gao, even if women’s roles are socially and culturally constructed or sometimes become a privileged trope of defying social convention, the truth that emerges from secular life often incorporates the spirituality into women’s unique biological and psychological construction, immune to men’s full understanding but inexorably furnishing a way leading to the state of Zen

Propitiating the \u3ci\u3eTsen,\u3c/i\u3e Sealing the Mountain: Community Mountain-closure Ritual and Practice in Eastern Bhutan

This interdisciplinary study examines a community ritual in Mongar, eastern Bhutan, in connection to its socio-ecological context. We provide an in-depth documentation of the tsensöl (btsan gsol) deity-propitiation ritual to ‘seal’ territory and prohibit entry to higher mountain reaches. The ritual and the community mountain-closure period (ladam) that it precedes are first situated in context of other documented (but now defunct) territorial sealing practices in Tibet and the Buddhist Himalaya. We then analyse and discuss the syncretic, flexible and place-based nature of tsensöl, and show how the ritual, the mountain god Khobla Tsen and ladam are interrelated in expressing community concerns for safe-harvests and wellbeing. We conclude by examining what a ritual such as tsensöl might tell us about village political ecology, community concerns and knowledge of the environment

A man, burning : communicative suffering and the ethics of images

This paper assumes a relationship among life, death and power in order to underline the following: under certain conditions, self-sacrifice—or the form of death broadly associated with self-immolation—has the power to mobilise political life. This hypothesis has been theoretically supported by Biggs’ and Bradatan’s work on self-immolation at large, as well as Murray’s work on thanatopolitics and Mbembe’s thesis on necropolitics. On these grounds I argue that photographic imagery of people who set themselves on fire can perform a political function; such a performance is feasible insofar as the visibility of their ‘communicative suffering’ in the process, and not death itself, relies upon some constructive (‘positive’) instead of merely destructive (‘negative’) aspects of human mortality. Whether a desired (or sometimes undesired) transformation may occur depends upon the ethics of images: their capacity to implicate viewers into a common cause must invoke a ‘responsive gaze’: not only in terms of survivors’ sense of empathy but, first and foremost, guilt.peer-reviewe

Mimesis stories: composing new nature music for the shakuhachi

Nature is a widespread theme in much new music for the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). This article explores the significance of such music within the contemporary shakuhachi scene, as the instrument travels internationally and so becomes rooted in landscapes outside Japan, taking on the voices of new creatures and natural phenomena. The article tells the stories of five compositions and one arrangement by non-Japanese composers, first to credit composers’ varied and personal responses to this common concern and, second, to discern broad, culturally syncretic traditions of nature mimesis and other, more abstract, ideas about the naturalness of sounds and creative processes (which I call musical naturalism). Setting these personal stories and longer histories side by side reveals that composition creates composers (as much as the other way around). Thus it hints at much broader terrain: the refashioning of human nature at the confluence between cosmopolitan cultural circulations and contemporary encounters with the more-than-human world

The Postmodern Paradox: How the Christian Scholar has Both Declined and Thrived as a Result of Postmodernism’s Influence in Higher Education

The Christian scholar faces an interesting paradox concerning postmodernism’s influence in higher education (Edlin, 2009). One of the key components of the modernism paradigm was the ability for humans to reason (Pells, 2007). Universities were based largely on a model in which young adults were expected to first acquire knowledge, principles, and skills, and then later apply that which was learned to their career ambitions, citizenship, or professional development (Willis, 1995). But in the 1960s and 1970s, higher education began to face increasing social pressure as the ideas of modernism associated with knowledge acquisition, power, and authority came under scrutiny and were replaced with plurality and skepticism (Maranto, Redding, & Hess, 2009). This trend largely grew out of the ideas of French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard and his work The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Cary, 1999). Postmodernism has declared Christian scholarship null and void. Conversely, it has unintentionally reignited the quest to understand the spiritual nature of mankind and the world. Thus, Christian scholars have an opportunity to re-engage in a dialogue that had appeared to be closing (Martini, 2008). Ultimately, the Christian scholar must be grounded in an understanding of Biblical principles and open to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit if in fact they are to carry forth the great task of protecting the Truth with which they have been entrusted (2 Timothy 1:14) and they must not shy away from the conversation