With the rise of nihilism which Nietzsche proclaimed in his Gay Science and with the death of God at the hands of the positivists, metaphysics and morality are again condemned to death. The tragedy is not only celebrated by Sartre with his philosophy of the absurd, but also tacitly accepted by the theologians of "the death of God". Nowadays, it could seem that there is nothing but atheism and nihilism, and that talk about values is rather taboo. However, is it true that God is dead? Is it true that metaphysics survives as no more than a relic in the museum of the history of thought?

Immanuel Kant restored metaphysics from its immanent death at the hands of Locke and Hume and transformed it into a kind of epistemology. He also built a kind of transcendental morality which, he claimed, could be guaranteed against mistakes. Such metaphysics and morality no longer needed the authority of God as their backbone, for they claimed their autonomy through self-evidence and their truth as mathematical fact. Indeed, Kant saved metaphysics and morality, but only to make them impossible for human beings: Hegel may be correct in dismissing the practicality of Kant's ethics. As a matter of fact, in its ontological roots metaphysics is neither epistemology nor a specific branch of anthropology, and the same could be said of morality as well, for it cannot generate practical values.

This volume on the relationship between metaphysics and morality shows that neither Nietzsche nor Kant, neither the positivists nor the empiricists are right in handing in a verdict against metaphysics and traditional values. The authors here reject such a claim by demonstrating the validity of moral values in humankind's most basic activities. They also demonstrate the inner, inseparable relationship between metaphysics and morality which appears in culture. More than merely reconfirming moral values and the indispensability of metaphysics, they advocate a kind of creative morality based upon the human capacity of self-transcendence. Thus, they suggest a new understanding of metaphysics in terms of ontological transcendence--a kind of metaphysics reconciling immanence and transcendence, phenomenology and ontology.

The volume consists of two main parts: the first studies morality in the Chinese tradition, while the second deals with the metaphysical foundations of moral philosophy. The division is not in logical order: it follows an existential order which the editors find more appropriate for dealing with human activities. According to this, moral activities are seen as specific intersubjective communication and self-regulation with a feed-back controlled character which aims at rendering the communication harmonious. In this context, most Chinese authors stress the characteristics of harmonious communication between the subjects, that is, between human beings and God, and between human beings and nature. They regard these characteristics as the most important factors determining the essence of morality and consider the increase of human relationship in terms of richness and growth of moral consciousness in the moral agents. In this sense the authors are in search of what they call a "creative morality."

The first part of the volume begins with a work of Dr. Stanislaus Lokuang who attempts to provide a metaphysical foundation for the theory of morals expounded in The Doctrine of the Mean. The dynamic self-transcendence neglected by modern moralists is stressed by Dr. Lokuang as the most essential factor determining human moral consciousness. This point is further discussed by Dr. Vincent Shen in his essay on Lao Tzu's critique of Confucian ethics. The main contribution of Lao Tzu consists in his demand for a total relationship of Tao-Nature-Man and in his insight regarding human freedom. These two factors, often neglected by Confucianists, are emphasized by Shen in his reconstruction of Chinese morality.

In the third Chapter, Dr. Gabriel Ly Chen studies the historical process of atheism in China and shows that the original or authentic characteristics of Chinese morality are rather transcendental, not immanent. This transcendentality explains the true structure of human relationships and, hence, of human beings as moral agents. The human capacity for self-transcendence again is discussed by Dr Tong Lik-kuen of Fairfield University. His paper attempts to reinterpret Confucian morals not as an autonomous, closed system of human regulations as some Neo-Confucians would understand it, but as a creative human force. To throw more light on Confucian morality, he relies on Nietzsche's insistence on self-overcoming or self-transcending as the most basic and natural force of human beings. In the next chapter, Dr. Fu Pei-jung returns to the point emphasized by Dr. Vincent Shen, namely, the total relationship of man and God, man and nature. In his comparative study of Spinoza and Lao Tzu, he painstakingly shows the necessity of creating morality in the context of this total relationship embraced by both Lao Tzu and Spinoza.

In the next two chapters the factor of love is brilliantly discussed by Dr. Manuel Dy of the Ateneo de Manila and Prof. Gotthold Hasenhüttle of the University of Saarbrucken. For them, the fundamental values which constitute morality are universal and with regard to love there are great similarities between Christian and Confucian ethics, between Max Scheler and Wang Yang-Ming.

These contributors have taken some metaphysical principles such as self-transcendence, harmony or total relationship to be the foundation of morality. In Part II of this work this moral foundation is discussed more in depth and detail. The principle of a creative morality is grounded on a spiritual basis; as Prof. Eliot Deutsch of the University of Hawaii notes: a person "is an articulation of the spiritual ground of one's being and the creative transformation of the constraints, limitations and conditions of one's individual being." Through a similar idea, Dr. Thomas Fay relates metaphysics to morality in terms of human responsibility. He supplements the works of Drs. Dy and Hasenhüttle, by presenting the dialectic of freedom with responsibility, the relationship between love and duty. In this way the principle of responsibility is seen to play as important a role as the principle of self-transcendence. It is not surprising that Dr. André Mercier separates morality from metaphysics and shows the necessity of metaphysical foundations for any possible morality. However, such a metaphysical foundation is not yet discussed by him.

Drs. T. Imamichi of Tokyo University and George F. McLean take up this issue and further develop the metaphysical foundation. To McLean, who follows many of Gadamer's ideas, this metaphysical foundation could be found in our cultural heritage which he understands as "the cumulative sense of human dignity and appropriate social relations which lie at the heart of the culture(s) we inherit". Thus, to understand our metaphysical foundation is tantamount to a thorough understanding of our cultural heritage, and vice versa. These, in turn, serve as the "meta-foundation" for human and social morals. As the history of human cultures is marked by dramatic crises, transformations and changes, culture must not be understood as a kind of museum relic. Rather, it enriches itself by these very crises, changes and transformations, and as such the search and development of metaphysical foundations continues incessantly. Prof. Imamichi illustrated this in reflections upon moral crises as well as upon meta-technical problems.

All these discussions point in the same direction and reveal common aims: (a) a true, authentic and human morality cannot be limited to the terms of static natural laws; (b) the metaphysical principles of creativity, self-transcendence and freedom, which the legalists and utilitarians reject, are the conditions sine que non for creative morality; (c) by the same token these very metaphysical principles which are the conditions of morality are also the principles of cultures; and (d) cultures are the modes of emergence into time of the power of being.

National Taiwan University

Taipei