Neutrality

Abstract: In response to climate change, the Chinese government has set a clear goal to reach its carbon peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, endeavoring to gradually realize net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This paper explores the concept of carbon neutrality and makes a comparative analysis of the gap between China, the European Union, and the United States vis-a-vis carbon neutrality based on international data. The main challenges China faces in its progress toward carbon neutrality are the following: first, China's energy consumption and CO2 emissions continue to increase, while its carbon peak has not yet been reached; second, carbon emission reduction in China is an arduous process, as the transition period allowed for the country to transition from its carbon peak to carbon neutrality is shorter than that of developed countries; third, China remains reliant on high-carbon fossil energy, with high energy consumption and low energy utilization efficiency; fourth, China's low level of economic development, compared with those of the EU, the US, or other developed countries, makes it relatively weak to withstand economic risks; and fifth, China's low-carbon and zero-carbon technologies are not mature. Therefore, this paper posits a three-stage/four-step strategy as well as seven specific suggestions that could benefit China's progress toward carbon neutrality.

Abstract: This article explores the alternate meanings of attitudinal neutrality in the context of the bipolarity-reciprocal antagonism issue. Specifically, it proposes a modification of the semantic differential technique wherein the "liking" and "disliking" components of attitude can be separately measured. A geometrical model is developed in which three nondirectional attitude variables ("total affect," "ambivalence," and "polarization") are distinguished from the usual attitude variable. Reliability and validity data are presented, and an application of the model is discussed. In his 1935 review of the general area of attitude theory and research, Gordon Allport concluded that most investigators basically agreed that "attitude is a learned predisposition to respond to an object in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner [p. 818J." Furthermore, he suggested that this bipolarity in the direction of an attitude (i.e., the favorable versus unfavorable) was viewed as its most distinctive feature. Thus, he felt that attitude had been conceptualized as a simple unidimensional concept—the evaluative (or affec

Abstract: This text examines the problem of historical truth. Seeking the roots of contemporary historical study in the Enlightenment, the authors argue that a model of historical research, based on neutrality and objectivity, served historians well until World War II. After that post-modernism suggested history could not reveal the truth about the past and the rise of social history produced a great amount of statistics which effectively swamped the search for historical truth. Accepting that much of history teaching has been flawed, the authors nevertheless argue for an affirmation of historical knowledge against the doubts of the sceptics and the relativists, guiding the reader through the complex areas of political correctness and multiculturalism.

Abstract: In this path-breaking work, Susan Buck-Morss draws new connections between history, inequality, social conflict, and human emancipation. "Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History" offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegel's master-slave dialectic and points to a way forward to free critical theoretical practice from the prison-house of its own debates.Historicizing the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the actions taken in the Haitian Revolution, Buck-Morss examines the startling connections between the two and challenges us to widen the boundaries of our historical imagination. She finds that it is in the discontinuities of historical flow, the edges of human experience, and the unexpected linkages between cultures that the possibility to transcend limits is discovered. It is these flashes of clarity that open the potential for understanding in spite of cultural differences. What Buck-Morss proposes amounts to a "new humanism," one that goes beyond the usual ideological implications of such a phrase. She asks us to embrace a radical neutrality that insists on the permeability of the space between opposing sides and reaches for a common humanity.