PREFACE

Our world is now under the menace of nihilism, devoid of any ideal values to which one could devote his or her life. This is especially experienced in the post-modern cultural movement, understood not as a new phenomenon announcing the end of the modern world, but as a tendency to deny the value of modernity. This movement of negation is now showing itself through the deconstruction and even the destruction of all conventional values. As a result, mankind is now walking through the dark valley of nihilism. In facing this situation, many serious thinkers propose as a way out the reawakening of the human moral consciousness and of the sense of moral responsibility. To attain this goal moral education is much emphasized in different ways.

But morality should not be understood as the cultivation of human qualities only. As Martin Heidegger has pointed out justly, the philosophy of subjectivity and its man-centered modern culture--especially "human, too human" self-assertion--constitute the essence of a closed type of humanism. This is the very tendency which leads man finally to his doom in nihilism. As a way out of this dark valley morality must lead men out of this closed type of humanism, rather than becoming entangled with it. In other words, moral experience, as the process of self-realization and the fulfillment of human relationships should not be limited to human subjectivity.

Cultural traditions are one of the ways in which humankind can escape the limit of its own subjectivity. The tradition is taken not as a kind of given constituted in the past, as both rationalism and fundamentalism would think, but as a living process of meaning formation. I agree with Gadamer's concept of living traditions: all are supported by their own cultural tradition as their horizon of meaning. Through understanding one's cultural tradition, one is enabled to return to the most precious part of one's own self. Cultural tradition is not merely a way out of our limited self, it is also our resource for coming to the best of our self. That is why, in this volume, we include some papers which look back to the best of the Chinese cultural traditions: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.

Though every one lives in his or her own cultural tradition, it should be understood also that each tradition is one among other traditions. Comparison with other traditions is therefore another way to escape the limits of our own subjectivity. Comparison is also a way of communication and of learning languages other than our own. On the other hand, comparison with other traditions is also a way of achieving self-consciousness and the contrast which appears through the process of comparison might bring us to the consciousness of the specificities of our own tradition. For this reason we present in the present volume some papers comparing the Chinese philosophical traditions with those of Western philosophy.

In order to climb out of the dark valley of nihilism, it is not enough to appeal to one's own cultural tradition and to situate it among others. Morality and moral traditions are but modes of the manifestation of Being in human history. This means that our moral life and moral traditions must have metaphysical foundations and should be understood as ways of realizing our being as rooted in the Being of all beings. Heidegger's notion of Ab-grund does not mean that human beings do not have metaphysical foundations but only that we should not choose any particular manifestation of Being as our foundation. This means that we are free, but that this freedom is nevertheless grounded. Searching into the metaphysical foundation of our being is essential therefore to its realization and to that of our common being with others. For this reason an important part of this volume is devoted to metaphysical reflection.

This volume is an outcome of the International Conference on Morality, Metaphysics and Culture organized by The International Society for Metaphysics and the department of philosophy of the National Chengchi University and of Fujen Catholic University in Taipei. The Conference was supported financially by both the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China and the United Daily News Cultural Foundation; the publication of this volume is supported financially by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. To all these organizations, to the authors of the papers presented in this volume, and especially to Prof. George F. McLean of The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy the editors wish to express their deepest gratitude.

National Ghengchi University

Taipei