Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article presents a good dialogue on knowledge and knowing from many perspectives. What is exceptional is about citing (ex. section 2 and 3) many related works and use them to defend the author's position or present related ideas in a well drafted manner.  Table on page 20 is also a good strategy to present ideas in a more legible manner. What starts out as knowing one's concern and obscuring it versus genuine moral knowing and tradition's response expanded to an elaborate discussion throughout in the article.  The problem of discernment and comparison of it between religions shows its relevancy to be considered for publication. 

With the above reading of this article and other relevant points I recommend that this article is published. 

Author Response

Comments 1: This article presents a good dialogue on knowledge and knowing from many perspectives. What is exceptional is about citing (ex. section 2 and 3) many related works and use them to defend the author’s position or present related ideas in a well drafted manner. Table on page 20 is also a good strategy to present ideas in a more legible manner. What starts out as knowing one’s concern and obscuring it versus genuine moral knowing and tradition’s response expanded to an elaborate discussion throughout in the article. The problem of discernment and comparison of it between religions shows its relevancy to be considered for publication. With the above reading of this article and other relevant points I recommend that this article is published.

Response 1: Thank you for your generous reading and for recommending the article for publication. I am glad Table 1 was helpful.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

This is a very well researched and written paper. It addresses a very important topic, namely the practical and epistemological concerns that center around the problem of spiritual authority and how it can be validated. While based in the late Ming and early Qing Neo-Confucian tradition, the author raises helpful comparisons with how spiritual authority is adjudicated in the Chan and Catholic traditions. The former comparison is particularly well-developed, as is appropriate, given the Chan influence on Ming era Neo-Confucianism. The exploration of Neo-Confucian ledger practices is fascinating. My only disappointment with this paper was the very spare comparison with the Catholic practice of discernment; I kept hoping the author would address it more fully, and was disappointed when I reached the conclusion without this hope being fulfilled. But this is by no means a serious criticism of this paper; I sincerely hope that the author develops this comparison further in future works. If so, the author may wish to explore discernment in the Ignatian tradition, which, given its focus on visionary spiritual practice, had to contend with the problem adjudicating claims about spiritual experiences on a regular basis.

Author Response

Comments 1: This is a very well researched and written paper. It addresses a very important topic, namely the practical and epistemological concerns that center around the problem of spiritual authority and how it can be validated. While based in the late Ming and early Qing Neo-Confucian tradition, the author raises helpful comparisons with how spiritual authority is adjudicated in the Chan and Catholic traditions. The former comparison is particularly well-developed, as is appropriate, given the Chan influence on Ming era Neo-Confucianism. The exploration of Neo-Confucian ledger practices is fascinating. My only disappointment with this paper was the very spare comparison with the Catholic practice of discernment; I kept hoping the author would address it more fully, and was disappointed when I reached the conclusion without this hope being fulfilled. But this is by no means a serious criticism of this paper; I sincerely hope that the author develops this comparison further in future works. If so, the author may wish to explore discernment in the Ignatian tradition, which, given its focus on visionary spiritual practice, had to contend with the problem adjudicating claims about spiritual experiences on a regular basis.

Response 1: Thank you for this generous report and for the suggestion to look at the Ignatian tradition. I have added a short discussion of Ignatius’s rules for the discernment of spirits to Section 2.4, and the Conclusion now names a fuller comparison as a line of further research. I hope to develop it in a separate study.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper departs from the tension in Wang Yangming’s Inquiry on the Great Learning between the claim that liangzhi knows everything and the observation that human beings can nevertheless obscure their own liangzhi. The reviewer notes that existing scholarship mostly explains how liangzhi detects selfdeception from the perspective of moral epistemology. Against this background, the paper raises a further critical question: even if liangzhi infallibly perceives every stirring of the mindheart, how are we to distinguish genuine manifestations of liangzhi from selfish desires mistaken for liangzhi, given that the agent’s subjective conviction cannot serve as sufficient evidence? To address this puzzle, the author develops the original analytical concept adjudicative externality. The work also carries out comparative analysis with parallel phenomena in other religious traditions, namely Chan Buddhism (yinke / master’s sealconfirmation, wildfox Chan) and earlymodern Catholic discretio spirituum (discernment of spirits). The arguments are reasonably constructed; the topic and insights are innovative, and the manuscript contains almost no technical or copyediting flaws. I therefore recommend this paper for publication.

One minor point for the author’s consideration: while these comparative traditions likewise grapple with this very problem of discernment, the manuscript tends to present Chan authorization and Catholic discernment of spirits as relatively wellfunctioning institutional solutions. In practice, however, Chan masterconfirmation (yinke) carried a degree of subjectivity and could be shaped by sectarianfactional conflicts. I would encourage the author to reflect on three interrelated dimensions:

• Whether a doctrine logically permits independent mechanisms for critical assessment;
• Whether such assessment mechanisms were actually implemented as institutions in historical reality;
• Whether such mechanisms can guarantee infallibly correct judgements.

 

There are also several small technical points the author may verify and revise as appropriate:

1. The keyword “kuangchan 狂禪” appears in the keyword list, yet there is virtually no corresponding discussion in the main text. Given the thematic link between the title “Wild Fox Confucianism” and kuangchan, the author might add relevant explanatory remarks in the body. If the connection is not direct, the keyword may simply be removed.
2. Please check page 7, line 1: the word “form” seems unnecessarily italicized; please confirm the formatting.
3. In the reference list, Chineselanguage authors including Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Yangming, Zhu Xi, and Dong Ping lack a comma immediately following the surname, whereas other authors such as “Zheng, Zemian” do include this comma. Please standardize punctuation formatting across all author entries.

Author Response

Comments 1: This paper departs from the tension in Wang Yangming’s Inquiry on the Great Learning between the claim that liangzhi knows everything and the observation that human beings can nevertheless obscure their own liangzhi. The reviewer notes that existing scholarship mostly explains how liangzhi detects self-deception from the perspective of moral epistemology. Against this background, the paper raises a further critical question: even if liangzhi infallibly perceives every stirring of the mind-heart, how are we to distinguish genuine manifestations of liangzhi from selfish desires mistaken for liangzhi, given that the agent’s subjective conviction cannot serve as sufficient evidence? To address this puzzle, the author develops the original analytical concept adjudicative externality. The work also carries out comparative analysis with parallel phenomena in other religious traditions, namely Chan Buddhism (yinke / master’s seal-confirmation, wild-fox Chan) and early-modern Catholic discretio spirituum (discernment of spirits). The arguments are reasonably constructed; the topic and insights are innovative, and the manuscript contains almost no technical or copyediting flaws. I therefore recommend this paper for publication.

Response 1: Thank you for this careful summary and for recommending the article for publication.

Comments 2: One minor point for the author’s consideration: while these comparative traditions likewise grapple with this very problem of discernment, the manuscript tends to present Chan authorization and Catholic discernment of spirits as relatively well-functioning institutional solutions. In practice, however, Chan master-confirmation (yinke) carried a degree of subjectivity and could be shaped by sectarian-factional conflicts. I would encourage the author to reflect on three interrelated dimensions: whether a doctrine logically permits independent mechanisms for critical assessment; whether such assessment mechanisms were actually implemented as institutions in historical reality; whether such mechanisms can guarantee infallibly correct judgements.

Response 2: Thank you for these three questions. They fit the article’s distinction between the standing of a check and the correctness of its verdicts, and I now state them explicitly in the Introduction, with historical examples added in Sections 2.3, 2.4 and 5.

Comments 3: The keyword “kuangchan 狂禪” appears in the keyword list, yet there is virtually no corresponding discussion in the main text. Given the thematic link between the title “Wild Fox Confucianism” and kuangchan, the author might add relevant explanatory remarks in the body. If the connection is not direct, the keyword may simply be removed.

Response 3: Thank you. The link with the title is direct, so I have kept the keyword and added a new section on the term (Section 3.6).

Comments 4: Please check page 7, line 1: the word “form” seems unnecessarily italicized; please confirm the formatting.

Response 4: Thank you; the word is now set in roman.

Comments 5: In the reference list, Chinese-language authors including Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Yangming, Zhu Xi, and Dong Ping lack a comma immediately following the surname, whereas other authors such as “Zheng, Zemian” do include this comma. Please standardize punctuation formatting across all author entries.

Response 5: Thank you; the author names in the References have been standardized.