Rules Of Propriety Research Articles

Adam Smith, human betterment, and his erroneous indentification with self-interested human action

In this essay I discuss the proposition that Adam Smith has been widely misinterpreted as asserting in his second book, The Wealth of Nations, that emergent modern economies are driven by the strictly selfish motives of their human inhabitants. The propositions articulated in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which offered a theory of society, extended seamlessly into his second book, and continued to be part of his theory of economy. In both works, he distinguished the universal state of being self-interested from actions taken in one's self-interest, and modeled people as creating and following rules of propriety that enabled them to better get along with their neighbors. This distinction explains why, in his second book, he refers to people following their “own interest” in their “own way” explicitly avoiding any suggestion that people pursued only their strictly selfish interests in the process of wealth creation. That cautionary effort failed, although Smith continues to be a spectacularly successful theorist of society and economy, especially of interest to scholars in behavioral and experimental economics.

Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830, ed. Marc C. Wallace and Jane Rendell

<i>Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830</i>, ed. Marc C. Wallace and Jane Rendell

The Voice of Peace: Philosophical Musicality as a Promoter of Peace in Confucianism

The main focus of this article is the explanatory power that music has in Confucianism according to the Analects (Lunyu 論語) and The Classic of Rites (Liji 禮記), which is reaffirmed in the Song Dynasty by Zhou Dunyi in the chapters on music in Tongshu (通書, The Penetrating Book). The article suggests that Tongshu’s chapters on music demonstrate the non-linear and non-metaphysical musical nature of Confucianism. According to this suggestion, the chapters introduce a dynamic, living model for the Confucian Way, on its own terms. This musical model supports the early Confucian vision of a multifaceted person, progressing in a multi-dimensional Way within a multi-layered polysemic world. Progressing along the Way, self-cultivation appears as one’s task to develop the various musical potentialities inherent in her or himself. The article opens with the epistemological idea of “musical knowledge” acquired by attuned hearing that winds up in a creative, peacemaking heart. Next, it introduces the ontological idea of a government that models cosmic harmony, depicting the leader as having an orchestral conductor’s aptitude; last, it presents a pragmatic perspective on the idea of musical education through the rules of propriety, depicting the practitioner as a skillful music player.

Harmonia confuciana e a ideia de desenvolvimento sustentável na sociedade moderna.

Abstract: Youzi, Confucius’ disciple, proposed the thought of “Harmony is Valued”, which was also the value pursuit of Confucius. They interpreted the implication of “Harmony” from practicing the rules of propriety. “He” means “harmony”. Mencius called the harmony between people “Support of the People”, and he discussed the harmonious coexistence between the revolutionaries and the public from the perspective of “Benevolent Policy” and “Good Nature”. Xunzi explained the institution, normalization and impartiality necessary for society from the aspect of “Harmony”, which expanded the theoretical implication of “Harmony”. Confucian thought of “Harmony is Valued” is also the embodiment of the ideology of “Advocating Fairness” and “Harmony Between Man and Nature”, which contained the thought of the harmonious relationship between people and nature. Confucian thought of “Harmony is Valued” has achieved an innovative development in modern society, which complies with the idea of sustainable development. It is of great referential significance for rethinking the relation between people, the relation between human and nature, and the relation between economic development and natural environment etc.

Articulating displacement: Sierra Leonean Muslim dress practice and the aesthetics of negotiation

In this paper, I examine the spatial and emotional poetics of dress practices deployed by Sierra Leonean Muslim women living in the Washington, DC metropolitan area as they navigate the complexity of life lived in the diaspora. Focusing on the way women utilize sartorial expression to reject or accept imposed moral regimes, I show how dress practices are part of a repertoire of tactics used to challenge displacement, express belonging, and enact pious presence in public venues. In so doing, I illustrate the way differing opinions about stylistic choices reassemble and rearticulate the strategic ways that Sierra Leonean women distinguish themselves, create personal and public subjectivities, and embrace or challenge dominant, and at times imposed, rules of propriety and morality in their everyday lives.

Paper Bodies: Letters and Letter Writing in the Early American Novel

This article suggests that in early American novels, the letter served as a kind of paper body, a contested space where women writers and their readers vied for control over the female form, symbolizing the broader cultural struggle in which women were enmeshed during and shortly after the American Revolution. Using Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy, Tabitha Gilman Tenney’s Female Quixotism, and the letter-writing manuals that informed these novels, this article argues that epistles in early American fiction function less like scenery and more like characters with rules of propriety governing their construction, delivery, reception, and response. While letters offered a certain amount of agency to women as paper bodies that could travel long distances unaccompanied into the private rooms of men, they could also pass out of their writers’ control. Men and women could intercept, change, misinterpret, redirect, and generally manipulate epistles as they saw fit. In these novels, no matter what choice a woman makes—write or avoid writing, read or avoid reading—her agency is as easily destroyed as the paper on which her words are written.

Adam Smith: From Propriety and Sentiments to Property and Wealth

“Why return to Adam Smith?” Because we learn that he had fresh-for-today insights, derived from a modeling perspective that was never part of economic analysis. Smith wrote two classics: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; hereafter Sentiments); and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776; hereafter Wealth). In Sentiments it is argued that human sociability in close-knit groups is governed by the “propriety and fitness” of conduct based on sympathy. This non-utilitarian model provides new insights into the results of 2-person experimental “trust” and other games that defied the predictions of traditional game theory in the 1980s and 90s, and offers testable new predictions. Moreover, Smith shows how the civil order of “property” grew naturally out of the rules of propriety. Property together with what I call Smith's Discovery Axiom then enabled his break-through in Wealth that defined the liberal intellectual and practical foundation of two centuries of Western economic growth.

Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose?: Public Domains and Intellectual Property Law

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World . By Lawrence Lessig. New York: Random House, 2001. 352 pages. $30.00 (cloth). $15.00 (paper). Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity . By Siva Vaidhyanathan. New York: New York University Press, 2001. 240 pages. $27.95 (cloth). $17.95 (paper). Who Owns Academic Work? Battling for Control of Intellectual Property . By Corynne McSherry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. 275 pages. $29.95 (cloth). $16.95 (paper). THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AUTHORIZES CONGRESS to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The words copyright and patent do not appear, and as Siva Vaidhyanathan and others have pointed out, this clause describes not a natural right but a mechanism to ensure and enrich the public good. The earliest copyright provisions in the United States guaranteed a fourteen-year term. Today, the interpretation of this constitutional article emphasizes "exclusive right" over "limited times": "writings and discoveries" are now called "intellectual property" and are behaving ever more like real property. The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term [End Page 739] Extension Act grants a copyright of life of the author plus seventy years, and the idea of "moral right" is expanding creators' or owners' control within and beyond that time period. In addition, the American legal tradition of "fair use," which permits for quotation and limited copying even while a work is covered by copyright for the purposes of criticism, research, or education, is being eroded by both technology and law. For example, music companies have been experimenting with CDs that cannot be copied, and the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act forbids decoding, and therefore copying, of encrypted DVDs. The realm of patent is also growing: patents have notoriously been granted to cell lines and organisms, but, perhaps more importantly, they are now routinely granted to scientific discoveries previously deemed "basic" and therefore public. 1 Perhaps in our time "the progress of science and useful arts" has slowed so much that Congress and its agencies have had to take aggressive measures to promote it? Perhaps musicians used to be able to make a decent living until kids started ripping their CDs? Perhaps authors and inventors are refusing to produce unless their great-grandchildren benefit from their work? Well, of course not, and Vaidhyanathan and Lawrence Lessig make various and vehement cases for the ways in which thinking about words or ideas as property is actually constraining creativity and innovation. Vaidhyanathan traces the expansion of American copyright from the late nineteenth century on, giving an especially interesting account of the complexities and absurdities raised by its application to film and music; Lessig presents the technical, conceptual, and regulatory history of the Internet and predicts a bleak future for what he calls "the most powerful and diverse spur to innovation of any in modern times" (5). Central to both these books is a defense of "fair use" as a fundamental principle of democracy rather than a hole that we now have the technology to plug. Corynne McSherry's book is less polemical than the other two, although no less sobering; beginning from the claim that "the university's traditional service mission, once construed as an obligation to provide tools for public decision-making, has been substantially redefined to mean the transfer of university research from academia to the market via patenting and licensing" (2), it shows how the university is increasingly turning to property as a concept with which to resolve disputes and determine value, where it once might have governed itself by rules of propriety. [End Page 740] Together, the three books provide many examples of creators, researchers, and scholars in all circles and fields choosing or being forced to contend with intellectual...

人的複製與人的尊嚴: 多元化的社會與儒家道德共同體

人的複製與人的尊嚴: 多元化的社會與儒家道德共同體

Language and Words

Despite attention to effects of Confucianism on Asian communication, views of Confucian philosophy are hampered by predilection to look at its social implications rather than Confucius's many observations about words and speaking. Comprehensive examination of Confucian Analects yields four principles: (a) words define and reflect moral development, (b) beautiful words lacking substance are blameworthy, (c) actions are more important than words, and (d) appropriate speaking relies on rules of propriety. Five weaknesses are found in current views linking Confucianism and Asian communication: (a) collectivist metaphors are inappropriately foregrounded, (b) social position is assumed incompatible with individual will, (c) moral character is excluded from discussion of language in Confucian societies, (d) personal freedom is thought the essence of ability to reason and formulate messages, and (e) Confucianism is used retroactively to explain observed communication behaviors in Confucian societies. Research suggestions from several disciplines and methodologies are offered.

Understanding the Culture and Behaviour of East Asians — A Confucian Perspective

The economic miracle of East Asia is followed by the emergence of a new common identity in Confucianism among the nations in the region. Being the predominant cultural determining force in East Asia, Confucianism has deeply influenced East Asian behaviour. Three behavioural traits in East Asians are discussed. First, the East Asian's lack of "personality" is traced to the Confucian social institution of Li-rules of propriety. Second, the East Asian's lack of principled moral thinking is linked to the dyadic, relation-based character of the Confucian ethic, its lack of hypothetical reasoning and its hierarchical view of human relationships. Third, the East Asian's lack of assertiveness is rooted in the Confucian ideal of man as a reflection of harmony in the cosmos and the Confucian ideal of society as based on the fulfillment of duties rather than the assertion of rights. The implications of these Confucian traits suggest the need to re-formulate Western conceptions of and approaches to East Asian behaviour.

THE LEGALIST SCHOOL1AND LEGAL POSITIVISM2

Law is the authoritative principle for the people and is the basis of government; it is what shapes the people. The Book of Lord Shang, Chap. V, Par. 26. If the people be led by laws and controlled by punishments, they will try to evade them but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue and controlled by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame and will moreover attain character. Analects, book ii, Chap. iii Lcgge, Vol. 1. p. 146