Sarah Mattice | University of North Florida (original) (raw)

Papers by Sarah Mattice

Exploring the Heart Sutra offers readers an interdisciplinary philosophical approach to this much... more Exploring the Heart Sutra offers readers an interdisciplinary philosophical approach to this much-loved Buddhist classic, with a new translation and commentary. Situating the Heart Sutra within a Chinese context, Sarah A. Mattice brings together voices past and present, Asian and Western, on topics from Buddhology, translation theory, feminism, religious studies, ethnography, Chinese philosophy, and more, in order to inspire readers to understand the sutra in a new light. Mattice’s argument for the importance of appreciating the Heart Sutra from a Chinese philosophical context includes a new hermeneutic paradigm for approaching composite texts; an argument for translating the text from the Chinese, rather than the Sanskrit; an extended discussion of the figure of Guanyin, bodhisattva of compassion and main speaker of the Heart Sutra, as a distinctively Chinese figure; an inquiry in to the history of women’s practice, with a special focus on China; and a commentary on the text that d...

Hypatia Reviews Online, 2017

Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Mar 23, 2015

This essay explores the early Chinese text Guanzi to address the question of ethical responsibili... more This essay explores the early Chinese text Guanzi to address the question of ethical responsibility in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. We begin with the premise that being responsive to the other, feeling the impossibility of renouncing ethical obligation, and experiencing the basic moral asymmetry at the heart of Levinas's project all rely on the welcome openness of the subject that Levinas describes as the subject's "radical passivity." However, his emphasis on infinite responsibility, coupled with the theme of radical passivity, gives the problematic impression that ethics amounts to a never-ending to-do list for the other, and certainly this is not what Levinas means. We turn to the Guanzi, which recommends that the ethically efficacious sage-prince must cultivate a state of passive stillness and inner vacuity. Only because the sage-prince maintains this deferential heart-mind is he freely open and responsive to others. Here the sage-prince looks strikingly like a good Levinasian: He is deferential, sensitive to context, and hyper-aware of the limits of his own knowledge. The Guanzi goes on to describe specific practices the sage-prince can employ to cultivate his ethical prowess, including practices of meditation and gentle physical exercises. Taking this insight into Levinas's context, we suggest that such practices of self-regulation are necessary to enable effective responsiveness to the other. From this perspective, responsibility is "infinite" not because I am perpetually beholden to the other's whims, but because I am perpetually accountable for calming and clearing my own mind of the unstable emotions, selfish desires, and intellectual machinations that prevent the welcome openness of radical passivity.

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 2014

Philosophy East and West, 2015

Religions, 2022

Gutoku Shinran 愚禿親鸞 (1173–1263) is one of Japan’s most creative and influential thinkers. He is t... more Gutoku Shinran 愚禿親鸞 (1173–1263) is one of Japan’s most creative and influential thinkers. He is the (posthumous) founder of what ultimately became Jōdo Shinshū, better known today as Shin Buddhism, the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in Japan. Despite this, his work has not received the global attention of other historical Japanese philosophical figures such as Kūkai 空海 (774–835) or Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253). The relationships of influence between Shin Buddhism in general—or Shinran’s work more specifically—and earlier Chinese sources, especially non-Buddhist sources, are complex, rarely examined in much detail, and often buried under layers of interpretive difficulties, made all the more challenging for contemporary Anglophone scholars by the ways in which Shin Buddhism has been marginalized in much of the philosophical scholarship on East Asian traditions. Exploring his work through a lens of connection to the broader Chinese philosophical landscape reveals new insights, both fo...

Paideusis, 2020

In this essay I am concerned with our understanding of philosophical dialogue. I will examine the... more In this essay I am concerned with our understanding of philosophical dialogue. I will examine the most prevalent western model of dialogue—the combat model—and suggest some flaws in this model. I will outline concerns as to how standards for what counts as ‘philosophical’ are determined, and use this outline to frame preliminary objections to conceiving of philosophical dialogue as combative. Noting that philosophy is a socially and historically rooted practice, I argue that the view of philosophy as a kind of combat has its origins in features of ancient Greek life. Next, I will look to other cultures and traditions for differing conceptual resources. Specifically, I look to ancient China’s philosophical narrative as one that does not primarily conceive of philosophy in terms of combat. I conclude by suggesting the relevance of this inquiry into methodology for practices of teaching philosophy.

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy, 2019

The last ten to fifteen years have seen a proliferation of philosophical manuscripts and chapters... more The last ten to fifteen years have seen a proliferation of philosophical manuscripts and chapters in English concerning Confucian ethics. Some of these have an overtly historical/textual approach, while others are explicitly comparative (often between Confucius 孔子 or Mencius 孟子 and Aristotle), and some seek to put ideas from the classical period into conversation with issues in contemporary ethics. Some projects begin from within a more "analytic" orientation, while still others identify themselves as belonging to the "continental" tradition. Theorists have argued that Confucian ethics is best understood as a species of deontology, as a distinctive form of virtue ethics, and as care ethics, to name a few. The project of trying to figure out the best already-present Western category to use for Confucian ethics is one that has occupied a great deal of time and effort in contemporary circles, and which may, as Stephen Angle has argued, be an example of the "unhealthy hegemony" of Western frameworks in comparative or cross-cultural philosophy. 1 As I see it, the project of Confucian Role Ethics (CRE), however, is not trying to intervene in that discourse. While Roger Ames and others use CHAPTER ONE

Philosophy East and West, 2021

Shaun O’Dwyer’s Confucianism’s Prospects: A Reassessment is a major contribution to the fields of... more Shaun O’Dwyer’s Confucianism’s Prospects: A Reassessment is a major contribution to the fields of both Confucian philosophy and political philosophy. In this review essay, I highlight O’Dwyer’s commitment to feminist concerns while raising questions about his skepticism about the intersection of Confucian and feminist philosophies.

Feminist Encounters with Confucius, 2016

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 2015

In Truth and Method, Gadamer asserts that prior to beginning the process of understanding a text,... more In Truth and Method, Gadamer asserts that prior to beginning the process of understanding a text, we make certain assumptions about the text being a unity modeled on a one-on-one conversation. How should we approach a text that was composed by so many authors over such a long span of time? Using resources from the Zhuangzi, I argue for expanding the metaphor across time, space, and identity in order to rethink Gadamer's assumption and its operative metaphor. Hermeneutics is not the title of a philosophical project that aspires to complete understanding, but the name of vigilance in thought which rests on its absence. 1 Jean Grondin Saying is not blowing breath, saying really says something; the only trouble is that what it says is never fixed. 2 Zhuangzi In Truth and Method, Hans-Georg Gadamer develops a master metaphor for understanding: understanding as conversation. The project of approaching a text is, for him, understood as if it were a conversation in which one listens to the other, attends to his or her needs, and is oneself changed by the experience. For many kinds of texts and other objects of understanding, this metaphor is apt and illuminating. However, certain kinds of texts-accretion texts such as the Warring States Daoist text the Zhuangzi-highlight one of the prejudices of this metaphor, and this account of understanding. When we take understanding to be a conversation, we often then reason about understanding as we would about a conversation. As Jean Grondin explains, "Gadamer heavily insists on the similarity that exists between dialogue that takes place between two participants in a conversation, and the dialogue which an interpreter conducts with a

Choice Reviews Online, 2014

ASIANetwork Exchange A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts, 2016

This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of ASIANetwork Exchange, whi... more This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of ASIANetwork Exchange, which is a journal of the Open Library of Humanities.

Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2012

Abstract: This dissertation addresses the importance of metaphors in metaphilosophical discourse.... more Abstract: This dissertation addresses the importance of metaphors in metaphilosophical discourse. Bringing together a variety of resources, from cognitive linguistics and hermeneutics to Chinese philosophy and aesthetics, it examines three specific metaphors ...

Philosophy Compass, 2013

Although aesthetics has been to some extent marginalized in western philosophy, within the Chines... more Although aesthetics has been to some extent marginalized in western philosophy, within the Chinese philosophical tradition aesthetics plays a key role. This article explores Chinese aesthetics as a site of valuable resources for rethinking the ways in which we conceptualize philosophical activity. After introducing a few distinct features of the Chinese aesthetic tradition, the article examines aesthetic distance in terms of guan, he, and ying, Chinese conceptions of artists and participants, and aesthetic suggestiveness or the inexhaustibility of a work of art, in order to suggest that the Chinese philosophical tradition might contribute its sense of connection between style or method of doing philosophy and aesthetics to a contemporary metaphor of philosophy as aesthetic experience.

Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2011

Abstract This essay examines the multifaceted roles of drinking parties in early Greece and in me... more Abstract This essay examines the multifaceted roles of drinking parties in early Greece and in medieval China. It takes as paradigm examples descriptions of ritual intoxication in Plato's Laws and in the poetry of Ouyang Xiu and Mei Yaochen, arguing that these divergent ...