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Interpretational Paradox, Implicit Normativity, and Human Nature: Revisiting Weakness of Will from a Perspective of Comparative Philosophy

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Abstract

This essay critiques or engages a wide range of existing works on the ancient and well-contested issue of weakness of will, from a new perspective of comparative philosophy combined with a focus on a largely neglected Davidsonian paradox of irrationality. It aims at revealing the interplay between the descriptive and the normative in the very notion of critical interpretation, as well as a special relation between holding-true and making-true which helps to explain the non-accidentalness of the descriptive coat of the Plato Principle and some of the Mencian paradigmatic tenets. By the same token, it also sheds light on some holistic picture about a certain implicit type of dynamic normativity, which seems evidently applicable to, for example, the Mencius-Xunzi 荀子 dispute on human nature, but scarcely noticed or articulated in contemporary contexts of comparative philosophy.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong

    Yujian Zheng

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  1. Yujian Zheng
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Zheng, Y. Interpretational Paradox, Implicit Normativity, and Human Nature: Revisiting Weakness of Will from a Perspective of Comparative Philosophy. Dao 16, 145–163 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-017-9544-z

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