This paper examines the concept of Rendaozhuyi in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Appearing as early as 1903, Rendaozhuyi is the Chinese rendering of both humanism and humanitarianism. For the Chinese intellectuals during the Late Qing and Early Republican period, “rendao” itself represented a modern value of humanity and human dignity. In the wake of the Great War, Rendaozhuyi gained tremendous popularity among the May-Fourth scholars. Some of them held it up as a universal ideal and tool to critique Chinese tradition, while others respectfully disagreed, worrying it would undermine the collective morale of “strengthening the nation”. Finally, the late 1920s saw the rapid ebb of the discussions of Rendaozhuyi. Keywords: Rendaozhuyi, humanism, humanitarianism, conceptual history

This paper focuses on the change of the meaning of “gospel” in Chinese context since the 17th Century. In the late Ming dynasty, Catholic missionaries were the first to translate “gospel” into Chinese with their writings about the Bible. Then the term became intermingled with traditional Chinese belief of seeking blessings. After the ban on Christianity imposed by the Emperor Yong Zheng, Chinese Catholics hid their faith and disguised it as Buddhism, Taoism and folk religions. At the end of the 19th century, “gospel” was connected to colonialism and became a trigger for Sino-Western conflict. The critique of and hostility toward the term abruptly arose. In the 20th century, “gospel” turned into a new concept, which went beyond its religious connotation and gradually referred to all kinds of “good news”.

The conceptual changes of Jian儉 in the pre-Qin period were the results of changes in the social and political structure. It originally referred to Jian virtue, which was a kind of political norm of clan states. This required the aristocrats to be moderate in accordance with the patriarchal hierarchy and generously share their wealth with their own clansmen. The opposite of Jian virtue is Tan (貪greed) and Chi (侈extravagance). In the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, many states formed their politics based on ministerial families. The aristocrats glorified greed and extravagance as Fu (富riches), and stigmatized Jian virtue as Pin (貧poverty). After the collapse of the clan-based state order, the states in the Warring States Period gradually developed into territorial states, and the institutional political norm became a new, abstract concept, indicated by the compound Jian Yue (儉約economy) and was used to describe the consumption attitudes of individuals and families. Meanwhile, with the increase of social mobility, the pursuit of riches was highly popular in the ideological world. The new expression of “means-ends” advocated by Legalists, which stipulated that individuals and families acquire wealth through Jian Yue (economy), took shape and endures to this day.

This paper focuses on the change of the image of “mouse” which was transformed from the legend of Fifteen Strings of Cash to the other versions. The legend of Fifteen Strings of Cash, written by Zhu Suchen, was a story of the vindication of defendants in a court case and formed the basis for a series adaptations. The legend of Fifteen Strings of Cash provided a frame of imagination about the image of a “mouse”. Meanwhile, the adaptation of the legend in folk opera provided a more ethical narrative than the original. The folk versions not only strengthened the “evil” of the “mouse”, but also heightened the suffering of innocent scholars. In the contemporary versions after 1949, the “mouse” as an animal disappeared in the story, and Lou Ashu (“shu” means “mouse” in Chinese) became a pure villain in this play, which also symbolized “evil” and pointed to the feudal and backward old society.

This essay uses semiotics and complexity theory to examine processes of sign formation. Simplicity and complexity, construed as differences in configuration of elements, are then applied to sign formation. Sign formation is understood as the effort of one entity to gain the attention of another entity. Examples such as signs of wild animals also show that the signifying functions of signs always happen in time. Simplification of commercial signs can be interpreted as the use of lowest common denominators in human transactions. Analysis of interaction between large numbers of humans and behaviour shows simplification of sign formation and illuminates social-cultural and political processes including the dynamics of violence.

To arrive at a practical solution in the political problem, one must take the road of aesthetics because, in Schiller’s opinion, it is only through beauty that we arrive at freedom. This can only be demonstrated if we first know the principles by which reason is guided in political legislation; for, although in its aesthetic state human action is truly free and it is free to the highest degree from any constrictions, it is not, nevertheless, beyond laws. Reason and the illumination of the mind, Friedrich Schiller believes, are not enough to make the truth triumph and heal the political: an education of feeling is necessary. The education of feeling represents the most stringent necessity as it becomes both a means to render efficient the improvement of ideas and judgments in practical life, and a cause generating this improvement. For, any amelioration in the sphere of the political must have in view the ennoblement of the character, and the instrument most at hand to this aim is the art of the beautiful.Beauty is the common object of the two impulses or instincts (reason and experience) and is best expressed through the concept of play; it is only play that renders man complete and develops his double nature. Making the beautiful a mere play does not involve a degradation of beauty; restricting the beautiful, which is regarded as an element of culture, to mere play is not in contradiction with the dignity of beauty, but we must look at the idea of play as it was expressed by Johan Huizinga also, and see man as the homo ludens providing the art of life.

A challenge to scrutinize the intimate unity of the aesthetical and the ethical levels of the human beingness in Friedrich Schiller's theoretical writings makes the present essay's content. We approach a basic idea unfolding the creed of the eminent artist and philosopher in the great power of 'beauty' to activate and to enrich the value of 'humanness'. By articulating a conceptual apparatus modulated on the sensitive-rational becoming of human being, our attempt focuses on the meaningfulness of the 'moral living' through the 'art's experience', highlighting a peculiar state, designed by Schiller as "the most sublime humanity". The call for a philosophy of 'beauty' - including the moral dimension - remains a valuable learning to be disclosed, especially in times of spiritual disarray - as the present-days have many similarities with those of the end of the 18th century.

Since the first degrees of musicality of mankind, the music became a sphere of investigation for naturalists (Darwin), economists (Karl Bücher), philosophers (Spencer, Schopenhauer, Cioran), who tried to explain, through their theories, the process of the beginning and settlement of this phenomenon as well as its influence on the human being.Schopenhauer will consider art, and especially music, as the only liberating form from delusion and suffering, from the omnipotence will to live. Making a strange parallelism between music and the will to live, Schopenhauer will find between these two a report of identity: “the world is an incarnation of music as well as an incarnation of Will: There is no art besides music that expresses an ideal aspect of Will, the Will itself in its purest essence”.If at Schopenhauer the music expresses the Will itself in its purest essence, at Emil Cioran “the metaphysical madness of the musical experience… weakens the will to live and the vital main springs”.Through music Emil Cioran found the way to himself, to his ego and his profound musical nature.The moments of separating of the delusions world are for the human being moments in which the entire existence feels like a melody and all of the being’s sufferings assemble and melt into “a convergence of sounds, into a musical enthusiasm and into a warm and resonant universal community”, into a “sweet and rhythmic immateriality”.

In his writings on mnemonics, Bruno established a complex affinity between magic and Kabbalah on the one hand, and between Lullism and the art of memory on the other. The Nolan is no stranger to the hermetic text of the Renaissance, based on the Corpus Hermeticum and especially on the Kore Kosmu, which pursued value purification of exteriority through interiority.In The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, Bruno picks up on the hermetic exercise of pattern conversion, from the sense-related vices towards the reason-related virtues, operating thus a reorientation from the exterior toward the noetic interior. One recognized here the same technique Plato used in his Republic, when he amassed all the gods of Homer into one alone, the embodiment of Truth, Justice and Good.The purpose of The Expulsion dialogue is to grant a return to unity to the intellect. Thus, Bruno unveils the fact that the magical religion of the Egyptians becomes his own, seeking, by way of magical rituals, to attain divine loftiness, that condition in which things acquire their meaning and significance, making thus possible the acknowledgement of their existence.