In the 1980s and 90s in psychology, many cross-cultural comparisons were made concerning individualism and collectivism with questionnaires and experiments. The largest number of them compared “collectivistic” Japanese with “individualistic” Americans. This chapter reviewed 48 such empirical comparisons and found that Japanese were no different from Americans in the degree of collectivism. Both questionnaire studies and experimental studies showed essentially the same pattern of results. Many researchers who believed in “Japanese collectivism” suspected flaws in those empirical studies. However, none of the suspected flaws was consistent with empirical evidence. For example, although it was suspected that “Japanese collectivism” was not supported because college students provided data as participants, the studies with non-student adults did not support this common view either. It is thus unquestionable that as a whole the empirical studies disproved the reality of “Japanese collectivism.”

The release of the Fender Telecaster, Gibson Les Paul, and Fender Stratocaster in the early 1950s has led that era to assume the status of a “golden age” of electric guitar design and production. This chapter seeks to broaden the terms according to which we understand this pivotal moment through multiple lenses. First, it documents an earlier turning point in electric guitar history in the mid to late 1930s, when the Spanish-body electric ascended to prominence over its Hawaiian-style counterpart. Next, it examines the prehistory of the commercial solid body through the preproduction prototypes built by Les Paul, Leo Fender, and Paul Bigsby. Third, the chapter highlights the continued importance of hollow body electrics throughout the 1950s, in conjunction with the early years of rock ‘n’ roll. Lastly, it foregrounds the impact of low-cost electric guitars produced by companies such as Harmony and Kay, which helped make the instrument into a more accessible commodity.

This chapter argues that certain conventional discourses of sustainability, along with related frameworks for intergenerational ethics, create conceptual barriers to realizing the goals of genuine sustainability and intergenerational flourishing. Early Confucianism provides a model of intergenerational ethics that may better align with these goals. In particular, early Confucianism offers a relationally grounded ethics that conceptualizes community diachronically and emphasizes the importance of building and sustaining harmonious, flourishing human communities over time. These Confucian ideas resonate with relational and communitarian approaches to intergenerational ethics and sustainability, which can helpfully supplement existing frameworks for intergenerational ethics by emphasizing shared values and concerns, including commitments to common intergenerational projects.

This paper revisits the concept of reasonabilism, which subsumes a form of reconfiguration of an holistic conception of consciousness in a manner that ties contingent rational expressions or the principle of consistency to corresponding enabling sets of affectivities and conatus (degrees of beneficence or their negation as contained in volitional states) and vice versa, such that they become two sides of the same coin. The paper explores the basis of reasonability and reasonabilism in African thought, showing that African thought is not as long on the formal radial scale as it is deep on the substantive relational scale, including the relationalities and sociality of pure consciousness (self-reflecting intensionality, its representations and levels of reality) and the implications of these for the scale and depth of conceptions of justice, especially intergenerational justice as it relates to the environment and development generally. Contemporary Africa faces the challenge of retaining and deepening the conatal depth of beneficence in its Indigenous philosophical resources and heritage while expanding its radial of consistency to meet the global challenges of looming environmental disaster and the question of environmental sustainability, poverty, disease, etc. This paper also tries to point towards the necessary reconceptualization and reinvigorations that would further enrich African thought along the required lines.

Wagner’s early compositional training is seldom examined, perhaps because of his unambiguous claim in 1851 to be an autodidact, taught only by ‘life, art and myself’. Yet Wagner’s work with Christian Müller and particularly with Theodor Weilig on early works and in abstract skills (notably counterpoint) reveal various dependencies. Wanger’s shifting attitude towards this period of training sits alongside his choice of more public mentors, in Beethoven and Weber, whose works he studied and arranged.

“Interface” in present usage is a modern concept whose roots lie in physical science and engineering disciplines. For serendipitous reasons it happens to work well as a conceptual tool for structuring Sun Tzu’s approach to leadership topics, starting with the political level (the ruler) and extending in the military realm down to the level of common soldiers. That is the focus of Theme #13.

Many of the justifications for the electoral college focus on maintaining the harmony and cohesion of the Republic. Upon closer scrutiny, however, we find that the electoral college does not contain the results of fraud and accidental circumstances within states. Instead, it magnifies their consequences for the outcome nationally. Direct election, by contrast, would create disincentives for fraud and recounts. Similarly, the electoral college does not produce concurrent majorities around the country and force winning candidates to moderate their stances to appeal successfully to all segments of society and all geographic locations. Equally problematic is the view that victory in the electoral college ensures presidents effective coalitions for governing. Moreover, the electoral college does not produce compromise within states, and it is fundamentally different from constitutional provisions that require supermajorities to take positive action. The electoral college produces neither majority-vote victories for presidents nor mandates for their governing. It is also not a bastion of federalism. Direct election of the president would not diminish the role of state and local parties and officials or the nominating conventions, and national standards for elections are already in place and not to be feared.

In this transitional chapter, Chen proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP): “Politeness is the judgement of a behavior – both linguistic and otherwise – that it is appropriate in context for the purpose of harmony.” Appropriateness, further, is defined in terms of the position of the speaker and hearer; the maintaining of face, and the avoidance of friction between all parties involved. Chen then moves to the proposal of a general politeness theory based on Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation into it notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The theory – Brown and Levinson extended (B&L-E) – is a set of causality relations: waht a speaker does (either benefitting or hurting) to face (either self-face or other-face) leads to a particular type of politeness or impoliteness. The benefitting of other-face, for instance, often leads to the evaluation of politeness. The benefitting of self-face, on the other hand, may (or may not) result in a judgement of impoliteness to other. Of the two models, Chen argues, MCP is a cultural specification of B&L-E. His view is therefore that there should be a universal theory of politeness such as B&L-E, which is capable of subsuming under it culture-specific models such as MCP.

In Chapter 2, Chen takes his readers to the roots of Chinese face and politeness: the social structure of hierarchy and the social value of harmony. Both features are traced to Confucianism, a codification of a society in which every member knows the rung they are at on the ladder of the social hierarchy and is expected to behave accordingly. To keep such a society stable, the notion of harmony is championed by Chinese philosophers, most notably Confucius. To promote harmony, Chen demonstrates, Confucius prescribes an elaborate system of behavioral rules for people of all walks of life. The monarch and the ruling class should be benevolent, subordinates loyal; parents should be caring; children filial; husbands should be responsible, wife faithful. Finally, every member of the society should strive for ren, which includes all that is good, and treat others with deference and respect. Lastly, Chen argues that the notions of hierarchy and harmony have been remarkably stable across the ages and appear to be present in contemporary Chinese-speaking societies outside mainland China: Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In this book, Rong Chen provides a thorough discussion of Chinese politeness and argues for universality in politeness theorizing. Based on in-depth analyses, the author dichotomizes Chinese face into Face1 and Face2 – the former referring to the person and the latter to the persona of the speaker – and proposes a model of Chinese politeness (MCP), with the notion of harmony at the center. Chinese politeness thusly conceived – the author argues – should be seen as a cultural-specification of a universal theory of politeness dubbed Brown and Levinson Extended (B&L-E), a model that anchors with Brown and Levinson’s theory but with the incorporation of the notions of self-politeness and impoliteness. The author then applies MCP and B&L-E to the analyses of Chinese politeness, both diachronically and synchronically, and to comparisons of politeness between Chinese and other languages. The results demonstrate that B&L-E is capable of accounting for variation as well as consistency across time and space, differences as well as similarity between linguacultures, and fluidity as well as stability in meaning making in authentic interaction. The monograph hence presents a rare challenge to politeness research and pragmatics, which have emphasized particularism at the expense of universalism.

This chapter highlights the affinities between moderation, modesty, and humility. It uses the example of the Swedish term lagom, which connotes a certain form of humility and respect for limits.

This conclusion draws together the central themes of the book, laying out how George and the Irish Land War helped to further drive liberals, conservatives, and socialists towards an organicist utilitarian politics. It also offers a brief summary of the subsequent trajectory of the land question and some of its orientating politics in Ireland, Britain, and the Unitec States. The conclusion discusses why the late nineteenth century remains such a critical moment for contemporary discussion of liberalism and democracy.

This chapter examines the role of land in the history of political thought, specifically with regard to the concepts of value, productivity, natural harmony, and independence, and how, via the notion of the body as a universal materialist foundation, these have been conceptualised in the history of land reform agitation, both in Ireland and beyond. It examines the ideas and influence of key figures such as Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill, setting them in a much broader context of the long-standing tensions between liberal political economy and liberal individualism. The distinctiveness of land, based on the presumption of an individual natural right to life to which land was integral, formed the basis of this paradox in political thought. The chapter also analyses the place of land in Irish political economy, and the challenges faced by Irish economists in discarding references to moral purposiveness in economic thought.

Legal ethics challenges us to do the right thing when no one is looking. Beware the lawyer who tells you that something is ‘arguably legal’. Clinical legal education in your law school helps with the answer, because it places you in contact with real clients and teaches how to be a moral lawyer. But do we choose the right thing according to law only, or law and something else? Here, we use a detailed table to examine how Chinese relational ethics are strengthened by comparisons with Western duty-based and virtue ethics frameworks, in contexts including: understanding duty versus (v) knowing your values; education through law or through character development?; asking what should I do v who should I be, v to whom do I owe respect and obedience?; action v character v harmony; rightness v excellence v social cohesion; absolute duties v judgment in choosing virtues v the Confucian balance between all; general principles v particular circumstances v loyalty in pursuit of harmony; reason v emotion v respect in relationships; rule logic v caring perspectives v appropriate role relationships; and the contrasts between universal values, cultural relativity and the political community.

[35.1] In a society in which it is often said that the quantity, variety and sources of law made by or under the authority of parliaments is expanding at a significant rate, resolving apparent conflict is a staple activity of the courts. Interpretative resources are drawn on to resolve such conflict.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between Augustus/Octavian and Apollo’s incarnation as citharoedus (lyre-player). The main contention of the chapter is that the Augustan period fostered a revival of music which resonated with, and to some degree embodied, a restorative political message. Not only did Augustus integrate images of Apollo Citharoedus into his own imagery (both in Rome and in the commemorative monuments around the gulf of Actium), but he also exploited harmonia as a metaphor for his newly established regime, imbuing musical rituals like the Ludi Saeculares of 17 BCE with powerful symbolic resonances. The chapter also makes a case for seeing Mark Antony’s use of music as a key part of a project to present himself through the symbolic language of Hellenistic kingship, against which Octavian in turn defined his own musical ‘programme’.

Chapter 2 summarizes the key principles of Confucian philosophy and the influences of Confucian values on individuals, societies, and modern economic activity in East Asia. As the chapter explains, the most important principle in the development of internal ethics is benevolence, and it is part of the virtues that are considered to be preconditions for a hierarchically structured, harmonious society. The impact of Confucian principles on business activities in East Asian countries has been reflected in internal moral development (business ethics), interpersonal relations (organization and management structure of companies), and business culture in general. The chapter discusses the significant variation of this impact in East Asian countries and regions (specifically, in mainland China, the Hong Kong and Taiwan regions, Japan and Korea). It explores the impact of Confucianism on business culture; and then, in light of that discussion it considers the implications of Confucian business culture for competition law and policy in East Asia.

After expounding the conceptions of harmony that are central to Confucianism and the sub-Saharan ethic of ubuntu, I apply them to three major topics pertaining to ageing. I show that indigenous East Asian and African values of harmony both entail that only the elderly can be truly virtuous, that the elderly have a strong claim to life-saving resources, and that they are entitled to care from their children, views that I point out are not characteristic of moral thinking in the contemporary West, either for prominent philosophies or the cultures out of which they grew. I suggest that many Anglophone moral philosophers should be given pause by the existence of different perspectives on the part of at least two long-standing philosophies, and conclude by briefly proposing some ways that cross-cultural debate might be undertaken.