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The increased speed of communication, spatial compression, and the growing possibilities of new high-speed technologies, are among the major features of rapid changes leading the present-day highly interconnected and 'shrinking' world. In this context, social practices can benefit from newly emerged spaces of social interaction, which deeply modified the contours of social space, cultural communities, and — last but not least — scholarly activities. In this paper, I engage in a reflection on some of the shifts and innovations brought about by the process globalisation in philosophical practices. Doing philosophy in times of globalization comes with a plethora of new opportunities, yet it also gives rise to novel issues which call for further assessment. More specifically, I will focus on two features of current philosophical practices, namely, collaboration and pluralism: while doing philosophy has always involved forms of collaboration and pluralism, the process of globalisation widely contributed an unprecedented increase in collaborative research works, as well as a dramatic increase of philosophical pluralism. Lastly, I will suggest that the current status of philosophical practices, characterised with high degrees of diversity and increased levels of both intra-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaboration, encourages and urges metaphilosophical reflection: questions about the disciplinary identity, as well as about the philosophical method, have now become more salient than ever.

Pinqua’s example is one of the few we have of an outside merchant working for many years as a successful porcelain dealer and then becoming a Hong merchant. At the time of his appointment in 1782, Pinqua had thirty-five years of experience dealing with foreigners and had earned a good reputation as a dependable and trustworthy merchant. However, despite that past experience, it proved to be insufficient to overcome the challenges he faced as a Hong merchant. Not only did that new position require him to trade in a much wider variety of goods, but Pinqua also had to assume the debts of failed men, which meant he needed to trade in much larger volumes in order to generate enough income to service those payments. As a Hong merchant, he was called upon by Chinese officials — including the emperor — to supplement administrative budgets when they failed to meet the needs at hand. Even though Pinqua was said to be ‘rich’ when he began his appointment, within five years he was having serious cash flow problems. Pinqua’s demise is testimony to the negative influences that surrounded the Hong merchants and led to most of their businesses ending in failure.

The theoretical-practical thought of the Hindu philosophical systems of Sāmkhya and Yoga interprets the human relationship with Nature from the perspective of an interconnectivity that demands the abolition of egoic, territorial, and ontological boundaries, proposing a

Our aim is to revisit some of the defining themes of Fernando Pessoa's poetic thought, such as the experience of insubstantiality, emptiness, vagueness, and indeterminacy, in light of the current of Chinese thought in which they are most relevant: Taoism. Without claiming that Fernando Pessoa was directly influenced by Taoist thought, we believe that it offers a fruitful hermeneutic key for understanding various aspects of the Pessoa experience that clearly contrast with the dominant Western culture. Here we continue our attempt to read and rethink Pessoa from heterotopic, namely Eastern, perspectives that allow us to illuminate aspects of the Pessoa experience and thought that are less visible without this expatriation from the contours of his most immediate cultural tradition and horizon. Inspired by the work of François Jullien, who through "dépaysement" seeks in the Chinese language-thought the "alterity" and the contrast that allow him to better understand the unthought of European-Western culture from its Greek matrix, we intuit the fruitfulness of interpreting Pessoa's thought from that "heterotopia" par excellence which, as Foucault noted, is China—in this case, in its Taoist dimension—given the thematic affinities we shall demonstrate. It should be noted that viewing Pessoa from a radical cultural alterity is not without correspondence to the impulse of self-evasion and othering that is the essence of his heteronymic experience.

The introduction presents the reader with a justification for the need for developing a constructive dialogue between different philosophical and religious traditions emanating from Asia and Europe. More specifically, it recounts the legacy and emphasises the potentials of intercultural encounter that has symbolically connected the port cities Lisbon and Macao for more than 450 years. The contributions originate in the 2019 Lisbon−Macao Philosophy Symposium and are dedicated to the theme “Philosophical Encounters between the Lusophone- and the Chinese-speaking World as a Bridge between East and West”.

Chinese martial arts had a significant influence on the emergence of martial arts in culturally tributary nations of China, such as Korea, Vietnam, and particularly Japan. Of this Chinese legacy in Japan, Karate 空手, or Karate-dō 空手道, is arguably the most expressive, both in terms of its direct origins from Chinese martial arts and its global visibility, having become the most popular combat sport in the world today. The author traces the trajectory of the Chinese origins of Japanese karate through the triangular historical relations among the island of Okinawa, China, and Japan.

Through a dialogue between Christian and Buddhist philosophers, this article seeks to present the spirituality of these two cultures. The Judeo-Christian tradition emphasizes the aspect of transcendence in the relationship between the human and the divine. The Buddhist tradition privileges the immanent presence of God, which identifies with the world. An indeterminate reality that negates particularity, the divine in Buddhist culture is described as the "nothing that is everything." In a distinct manner, Christianity conceives the divine in personal terms and affirms that the relationship with it entails the safeguarding of alterity and individual identity.

As a special ethnic group in Macao and an outcome of Oriental-Western cultural communications and inter-ethnic contacts, the Macanese people are of great research value in sociology, ethnology, and cultural studies. This article analyzes the situations of three categories of Macanese reunions, namely religious rituals, traditional celebrations, and thematic celebrations. Four points are maintained in this article: (a) religious activities as "rituals" are god–man and man–man interactions; (b) with the application of social media, traditional celebrations as "ceremonies" represent "the invention of tradition," old and new; (c) homage to "models" and historic glories carries significant meaning for thematic reunions as "celebrations"; (d) the cultural identity of the Macanese people is an important premise for defining their ethnicity.

From the end of the 16 th century to the beginning of the 17 th century, under the direction of the archdiocese in Macao (China), Jesuit missionaries set foot in China and Vietnam in turn to preach the Gospel and convert believers in these two countries. The main reason for the success of the Jesuits was the use of appropriate missionary methods and advocating proper cultural integration in each country. However, due to the different paradigm of historical development in China and Vietnam, and especially due to disagreement about the perception and behavior of indigenous culture among the Jesuits themselves, the process of evangelization in the two countries occurred differently. Based on historical and logical methods, especially the comparative method, this study analyzes and compares the similarities and differences in missionary methods and the advocacy of cultural integration in the two countries mentioned above. Primary sources were the foundation of the work, such as archival records and recently published research results of Chinese and Vietnamese scholars as well as other researchers. The results of this work contribute to assessing the similarities and differences in the process of applying missionary methods and cultural integration. The work further contributes to the study of Christian history in China and Vietnam in the16 th and 17 th centuries.

D. Sinibaldo de Mas o ministro espanhol que inventou o iberismo e que queria comprar Macau para vender à China

The cartographic contents of two world map sheets of father Giulio Aleni S.J., archived in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome, are digitally analysed. The maps, printed in at least two editions starting in the year 1623, were inspired and influenced by the more famous Matteo Ricci’s world map, printed in different versions, after the end of the XVI century. Although it is a later cartography, the Aleni’s world map is a unique masterpiece worldwide, as it is very likely the first map of the world known at that time, written in Chinese and having a size enabling an easy use of the map itself. It is a map that merges the Western and Chinese geographical knowledge and is a relatively accurate representation, with some exceptions, of the actual outlines of continents which are depicted, as in the large Matteo Ricci’s world map, from a non-Eurocentric point of view. Arriving at Macao in the Jesuits’ mission in 1610 Aleni taught mathematics at the college there, while learning the Chinese language. At the Ming’s court he was asked to write a geographical book describing countries depicted in the Matteo Ricci’s world map (RWM). Annexed to the book, named 職 方外 紀 (Zhifang waiji, Geography of countries non-tributary to China) printed in 1623, he edited the two world maps with Chinese characters, definitely inspired by that of his famous predecessor, but with some significant differences. The two maps sheets (one 630 x 552 mm and the second 1230 x 642 mm in size) are analysed and the cartographic content of the Aleni’s planisphere (AWM) is compared with that of RWM. Differences in continents’ borders, as those for North America, Korea, Java, are assessed, together with some discrepancies between geographical terms which pose the question of the sources Giulio Aleni investigated. Some conjectures about the correct dating of the edition of the map, to be set between 1623 and 1649, are also discussed. A facsimile high-quality copy of the maps was printed by the University of Brescia to better disseminate this important cartographic heritage.

During the dispute between Portugal and the Holy See over the rights of Patronage (Padroado real) in Asia, the Inquisition played a secondary role in the legal allegations of the Crown. In the local context of the controversies with the apostolic vicars sent by the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, priests and missionaries of the Portuguese Padroado saw the Holy Office as an instrument to defend the rights of the Crown, arresting and excommunicating on behalf of the tribunal. Imperial agents in the Estado da Índia envisioned the Inquisition as an instrument for claiming jurisdictional rights over territory, while they also faced conflicts with the inquisitors.

Abstract New encounters in America, Africa, and Asia facilitated the "discovery" of non-Biblical religious traditions that were distinct from the ancient paganism known to Christian humanists and antiquarians from classical sources and patristic literature. Although Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism did not exist as concepts in the early modern period, the three articles in this special issue illustrate the learning process by which a number of influential and pioneering Catholic missionaries came to distinguish these various traditions from each other. We argue that they did not simply "invent" new religions arbitrarily: instead, on the basis of the very broad categories of true religion and idolatry, they engaged in some close interaction and "dialogue"-albeit usually polemical-with local religious elites and their writings, including Eastern Christians. In addition, in the case of the Jesuits in particular, we note that these various engagements were often connected events...