An Engaging Environment for Ancient Chinese Texts: An Introduction to ctext.org

An Engaging Environment for Ancient Chinese Texts: An Introduction to ctext.org

The Chinese Text Project is a well-established resource in Sinology, providing open access to a large number of ancient Chinese texts. As a digital medium, it utilizes crowdsourcing, linked data, knowledge graph and other computational technologies to provide an interactive interface for users who are interested in ancient Chinese texts. Beyond its main aim of providing open access to Chinese literature and philosophy texts, the project features an integrated Chinese character dictionary tool, images of scanned source texts, a search function for parallel passages, and much more. In terms of structured data, the project’s data wiki contains a wealth of records on entities such as persons, locations, and works.

Voluntad y deseo en la filosofía moderna: un acercamiento computacional

Voluntad y deseo en la filosofía moderna: un acercamiento computacional

Introduction: in this study, Cebral Loureda analyzes how will and desire are conveyed in: Ethics, by Spinoza; The Phenomenology of Spirit, by Hegel; The World as Will and Representation, by Schopenhauer; and Thus spoke Zarathustra, by Nietzsche. With the idea of determining theses texts’ degree of cohesion, the author follows a computational and quantitative methodology to compare and contrast them, as well as assess their internal contradictions. A normalized corpus, statistics and visualizations are employed so as to evaluate the terminology, topoi and sentimentality of these works.  In relation to terminology, author’s findings revealed that Nietzsche uses a highly differentiated vocabulary from that of the other philosophers, adding marked emotional connotations to his discourse. Visualizations showed the terminological commonalities between Hegel and Schopenhauer and shed light on the former bearing the highest number of semantic connections with the other philosophers.  As for topoi, results showed there is a clear dichotomic tension between conceptual and vital experience in the studied documents. Redefining this dualism, however, Cebral Loureda observed that the concrete is always intertwined with the abstract and vice versa.  Regarding the sentimental dimension of these works, examination unveiled that Nietzsche’s presents the greatest negative sentimental load. In contrast, Spinoza’s is the most emotionally balanced. With all this, Cebral Loureda proves that there is a high degree of cohesion among these philosophical works, which link reason and emotion to will, time and spirit, core notions of modern philosophy and society.