Doubt, time and violence in philosophical and cultural thought : Sino-Western interpretations and analysis

Product Description As the title of the present publication suggests, the ten essays of this book try to approach an inconvenient trauma of global human reality and uniformity of media and cyberspace in which human lives suffer harm, loss of inner identity and of broader meaning. Indeed, our postmodern and post-identity times are characterized by a flux of rapid social changes, uncertainty, vague and shaking moral values, by violence and frightening information with its contradictory truths and genuine ambiguity; finally by the violence of unpredictable climate change resulting in various and frequent calamities and devastation of life. Doubt and time are the central concern of modern philosophy and remind us that violence is inherent in the human condition and that reflection on it, regardless of different cultural sensibilities, is ipso facto part of the mainstream of our individual and global concerns. These and many other fascinating topics from Western and Chinese history were explored and brought to light by a learned forum of distinguished scholars and experts whose contributions are contained in this publication. About the Author Artur K. Wardega, SJ, is director of the Macau Ricci Institute and a specialist in 20th-century Chinese and French literature. He has written several articles published in the Macau Ricci Institute's quarterly Chinese Cross Currents and in scholarly journals in China and abroad. His recent publications include a French translation of the novel Lishan nongchang by the renowned Hakka writer Zhong Lihe (1915-60) under the title La Ferme de la Montagne Li (Arras, 2010). He edited the 2007 MRI Symposium proceedings under the title Belief, History and Individual in Modern Chinese Literary Culture (Cambridge, 2009) and (with Anders Hansson) Portrait of a Jesuit: Matteo Ricci, MRI Jesuitas Publication Series (Macau, 2010). Recently he edited a trilingual book jointly published by the MRI and Centre Sevres of Paris, Playing Bach in France and in China: An Encounter of Musicians in Macau (Macau, 2011) and together with Antonio V. de Saldanha he edited, In the Light and Shadow of an Emperor: Tomas Pereira, S.J., the Kangxi Emperor and the Jesuit Mission in China, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012