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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Simon Prosser
Abstract: William James’ Principles of Psychology, in which he made famous the ‘specious present’ doctrine of temporal experience, and Edmund Husserl’s Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, were giant strides in the philosophical investigation of the temporality of experience. However, an important set of precursors to these works has not been adequately investigated. In this article, we undertake this investigation. Beginning with Reid’s essay ‘Memory’ in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, we trace out a line of development of ideas about the temporality of experience that runs through Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Hamilton, and finally the work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, both of whom were immediate influences on James (though James pseudonymously cites the latter as ‘E.R. Clay’). Furthermore, we argue that Hodgson, especially his Metaphysic of Experience (1898), was a significant influence on Husserl.
Comment: Background reading on temporal perception - a nice historical survey of discussions of the specious present.
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Abstract:
Reviving Confucianism with evolutionary and medical conceptual tools in the British Straits Settlements before the Pacific War, the Straits Chinese philosopher, physician, reformer, and revolutionary Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957) pathologized Eurocentrism as a disease under his innovative but also troubling system of medical Confucianism. According to Lim, Eurocentrism was caused by certain (Christian) metaphysical pathogens—speciesism and dualism in human nature—and its pathogenesis involves insensitivity and maladaptation to one’s environment at individual, national, and even ‘racial’ levels. For Lim, the signs and symptoms of individuals, nations, or ‘races’ suffering from Eurocentrism manifest as immoralities and injustices (commonly understood by contemporaneous theorists of evolution as atavism)—such as unjust wars—and degeneration in traits, physical or otherwise—such as indolence. In his attempt to overcome Eurocentrism in fin-de-siècle philosophical theories and practices, Lim’s medical Confucianism presents to us one of the earliest, systematic examples of a comprehensive Anglo-Chinese hybrid philosophy, attempting to tread a thin line between Eurocentrism and Sinocentrism by creating a new centre at imperial peripheries. However, Lim’s problematic, inherited conceptions of race and eugenics also present a cautionary tale of a doctor relying too much on his master’s tools in diagnostics and treatment.Comment: Considers a historical example of comparative philosophy, its promises and pitfalls. Can be a good basis for debate over the aims and content of comparison; first systematic articulation of Straits Chinese philosophy