This essay offers a new reading of Xunzi’s ritual theory against the backdrop of excavated technical manuals from the Mawangdui and Zhangjiashan collections. While most studies tend to focus on the sociopolitical and moral aspects of Xunzi’s thought, I attempt to demonstrate that in composing his theory of ritual, Xunzi was not only concerned with defending the Confucian tradition against the criticism of his fellow philosophical masters, but was also responding to the emergence of bio-spiritual practices such as meditation, sexual (...) cultivation, and gymnastic exercises. Alarmed by the growing popularity of these individual corporal techniques among the Warring States elite, Xunzi opted to repackage and redefine ritual as a superior technology of the body that would enable humans to transform their bodies and minds and obtain physical and spiritual bounties while at the same time enhancing sociopolitical stability and harmony by creating an organic communal body. (shrink)

Moral philosophers of late have been examining the implications of experimental social psychology for ethics. The focus of attention has been on situationism—the thesis that we routinely underestimate the extent to which minor situational variables influence morally significant behavior. Situationism has been seen as a threat to prevailing lay and philosophical theories of character, personhood, and agency. In this paper, I outline the situationist literature and critique one of its upshots: the admonition to carefully select one’s situational contexts. Besides being (...) limited in application, this strategy accentuates an untenable person/situation dichotomy. The deeper lesson of situationism lies in highlighting the interconnectedness of all social behavior—how we are inextricably involved in the actions of others, and how minor tweaks in our own behavior can lead to major payoffs in our moral lives. Situationism is better seen as an opportunity for moral progress than a threat to individual autonomy. (shrink)

This paper discusses certain conceptual tensions in a set of archeological texts from the Warring States period, the Guodian corpus. One of the central themes of the Guodian corpus is the disanalogy between spontaneous, natural familial relationships and artificial political relationships. This is problematic because, like many early Chinese texts, the Guodian corpus believes that political relationships must come to be characterized by unselfconsciousness and spontaneity if social order is to prevail. This tension will be compared to my earlier work (...) on the “paradox of wu-wei (effortless action),” and the Guodian corpus’ “solution” to the problem of teaching spontaneity—drawing upon the transformative power of music—will be placed within the landscape of early “Confucian” and “Daoist” theories concerning human nature and self-cultivation. (shrink)

This article examines the reasons early Confucians offer to support the belief that clothing is formative of its wearer’s character, as well as the arguments other early Chinese texts raise to object to it. It focuses on early Confucian discourses about three representative items of clothing, including the cap used in the coming-of-age ceremony, the accessories made by jade, and a style of clothing named shenyi 深衣. These cases demonstrate that, in early Confucian thought, clothing is said to be able (...) to shape the wearer’s character by registering in the wearer its moral symbolism with both psychological-cognitive and bodily means. While this emphasis on symbolism also invites objections that undermine the normative status early Confucians want to ascribe to a specific style of clothing, their discourses still enrich the current understanding of Confucian self-cultivation, in terms of both its method and goals. (shrink)

This article examines the operation of “skilled feelings” in metaphors for the heart-mind (xin 心) as ruler of the body. It focuses on three Chinese philosophical texts in contexts outside of the “Confucian” texts that have dominated the emerging field of comparative virtue ethics—the Zhuangzi 莊子, Sunzi Bingfa 孫子兵法 (Sunzi’s Art of War), and Huangdi Neijing 黃帝內經 (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine)—and briefly contrasts the Chinese accounts to influential Greek metaphors of the mind as ruler of the body (...) and passions. (shrink)

A central challenge for early Confucian ethics, which relies heavily on the moral rules, scripts, and instructions of ritual, is to provide an account of how best to deviate from ritual when unexpected circumstances demand that one must do so. Many commentators have explored ways in which the Confucian tradition can meet this challenge, and one particularly interesting line of response to it focuses on “mind-reading”—the ability to infer others’ mental states from their behavior. In this article, I introduce nunchi (...) 눈치, a Korean word meaning a keen social awareness and facility in dynamic social situations, and make the case that it represents a key component in a full account of how to best deviate from ritual. (shrink)

To say Early Confucians advocated the possession of a sense of shame as a means to moral virtue underestimates the tact and forethought they used successfully to mold natural dispositions to experience shame into a system of self, familial, and social governance. Shame represents an adaptive system of emotion, cognition, perception, and behavior in social primates for measurement of social rank. Early Confucians understood the utility of the shame system for promotion of cooperation, and they build and deploy cultural modules (...) – e.g., rituals, titles, punishments – with this in mind. These policies result in subtle alterations to components of the evolved shame system that are detectable in data form contemporary cross-cultural psychology that show that populations in the Confucian diaspora have a unique shame profile compared to Western and non-Western populations. The status of Confucian diaspora populations as outliers in the context of shame is partially explained by appeal to the cultural transmission and historical endurance of relevant Early Confucian cultural modules. (shrink)

There is a tendency in academia to read early Chinese masters as consistent philosophers. This is to some extent caused by the specific form in which these masters have been studied and taught for more than a century. Convinced of the influence that the form of transmission has on the content, this article studies the more fragmented parts of the book Zhuangzi—instruction scenes or dialogues—and more specifically their formal traits rather than the philosophical content conveyed in them. The focus is (...) on one fragment in Chapter 7 which portrays Liezi, a shaman and Master Calabash. The persons and stages of the instructions scenes in the Zhuangzi seem to promote a non-teaching, in which the learner learns while the teacher does not teach. The non-availability of the teacher and his unwillingness to teach are, paradoxically, at the core of the teaching, although not presented as a valuable alternative. (shrink)

The overwhelming motif of nineteenth century anti-Semitic discourse is the metaphor of the Jew as a ghost. In all cultures, the ghost represents the antithesis of what is categorically human: it represents the other par excellence. By using the heuristic of the ghost to interpret how Enlightenment discourse has dealt with the other, this article will argue that the Enlightenment model of the self and its relation to others was a contributing factor to Modern Racism. Enlightenment discourse on subjectivity finds (...) its counterpart in Confucian notions of subjectivity. By looking at how ghosts are understood within Confucian discourse and how they are evoked in popular literature, I argue that Confucian philosophy’s model of subjectivity contributed to the success of the Chinese empire’s assimilation project. (shrink)

This essay examines the role of virtue and the status of non-moral goods in conceptions of the good human life through an exploration of the thought of Confucius and Mencius. Both Confucius and Mencius lived in quite similar worlds, but their conceptualizations of the world differed from each another. This difference led them to hold different views on the role of virtue and the status of non-moral goods. On the one hand, Confucius highlighted the self-sufficiency of virtue, but he acknowledged (...) and appreciated the intrinsic and instrumental value of non-moral goods. On the other hand, while Mencius underscored the role of virtue as the best means to the best ends, he tried to depreciate the value of non-moral goods. As a consequence, even though their conceptions of the good life were essentially predicated on virtue, they parted company concerning the status of non-moral goods in human life. (shrink)

This essay highlights an alternative tradition of understanding value conflicts in early Confucian thought. In contrast to a prominent position among interpreters that argues for the resolvability or harmonization of conflicting values, I argue that some early Confucians conceptualized value conflicts as irresolvable. In other words, when meaningful aspects of a situation come into tension with each other and values are threatened to be either left unfulfilled or harmed, early Confucians put forth a variety of views. Some believed that all (...) values could be tended to as long as one had the moral imagination of a sage, whereas others saw the world as a place where irreconcilable conflicts between values could occur for even the most profound people. Within this diversity, I take up a view about irresolvable value conflicts where the confrontation with a deep value conflict leaves behind a moral remainder that can mar even the character of a sage. (shrink)

Some democratic theorists have argued that contemporary people should practice only a civility that recognizes others as equal persons, and eschew any form of deference to authority as a feudalistic cultural holdover that ought to be abandoned in the modern era. Against such views, this essay engages early Confucian views of ethics and society, including their analyses of different sorts of authority and status, in order to argue that, properly understood, deference is indeed a virtue of considerable importance for contemporary (...) democratic societies and the citizens who constitute them. (shrink)

La actual crisis pedagógica que vive Occidente, constatada por todos aquellos educadores que deben enfrentarse diariamente a unos estándares cada vez más bajos y al consecuente perjuicio en lo que a la autoridad del profesorado se refiere, fue ya profetizada en su momento por Hannah Arendt (“The Crisis in Education”). La educación es uno de los factores más importantes para definir la calidad de vida de un país y, desde esta perspectiva, una crisis educativa es una crisis en todos los (...) ámbitos sociales, económicos y, en última instancia, políticos. El presente artículo intenta exponer cómo la educación y el conocimiento fueron concebidos en la antigüedad a través de dos modelos, Grecia y China, para mostrar así en qué medida los autores clásicos pueden todavía enseñarnos con sentido común a afrontar los problemas metodológicos actuales. Mediante una exposición comparativa, se analizarán las teorías clásicas griegas, así como la epistemología y pedagogía en el confucianismo clásico y tempranomedieval, destacando cómo estos autores confrontaron relativismo, opinión y acumulación vacía de conoci-miento, frente a la búsqueda de la verdad y la selección cuidadosa y científica de saber. En última instancia, destacaremos la necesidad de recuperar nuestra tradición clásica para mantener un nivel educativo adecuado. (shrink)

The Xing Zi Ming Chu 性自命出 presents a distinctive account of human dispositions that centers on the spontaneous arising of affects like joy and sadness. This focus on emotion grounds a particular conception of the function of music and ritual that gives music a central role in self-cultivation. Although the account of human dispositions in XZMC was ultimately overshadowed by the opposing views of Mengzi 孟子 and Xunzi 荀子 and the question of whether our dispositions are good or bad, its (...) views remained central for Ru 儒 philosophy of music. The first three parts of the essay trace the development of the ideas appearing in XZMC through the “Discourse on Music” chapter of the Xunzi and parts of the Yueji 樂記. The fourth section highlights the distinctiveness of XZMC’s account through a contrast with the views of Mengzi and Xunzi. The essay concludes by examining the ways in which, in accounting for ritual and music, both the Mengzi and Xunzi employ views like those of the XZMC, even if those are in tension with their core philosophical theories. (shrink)

This paper formulates the categories of "ethics," "self," and "subject" for an analysis of classical rabbinic ethics centered on the text, "The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan." Early rabbis were concerned with the realms of life that today's scholars describe as ethics and self-cultivation, yet they had no overarching concepts for either the self/person or for ethics. This analysis, then, cannot rely only upon native rabbinic terminology, but also requires a careful use of contemporary categories. This paper first sets out (...) basic features of "Rabbi Nathan" and presents appropriate formulations of the relevant scholarly terms. The latter sections address possibilities for employing and revising these categories in descriptive and comparative studies more broadly, first surveying relevant scholarship on Christian, Muslim, and Manichaean sources, and then turning to ancient East Asian sources with a particular focus upon passages in the "Zhuangzi". (shrink)

It is sometimes assumed that the best people—those whom it would be appropriate to admire and emulate—ought to be free of all moral defects. Numerous contemporary scholars have attributed this assumption to the early Confucian philosophers with moral perfection said to be a necessary condition for sagehood. Drawing upon the early Confucian literature I will argue in support of two claims. The first is that the early Confucians did not insist on the moral perfection of the sage; on the contrary, (...) the sage was explicitly understood to be morally fallible. The second claim is that the early Confucians were right to reject moral perfection as a suitable ideal. I conclude with a discussion of the relative merits of taking “love of learning” (haoxue好學)—rather than moral perfection—as one’s ideal. (shrink)

Among the various claims by early Chinese philosophers to hear someone’s de 德 or virtue through their music, the most astonishing statement may be found in the Yue Ji 樂記 : “Only Music cannot be faked”. While this classic Ru 儒 musical treatise on the development of human excellence in accordance with music is wide-ranging, the aim of this essay is narrow, in that it seeks to interpret this single sentence of the text by way of an explanation of the (...) reciprocal patterning between authentic emotions, character, and sound described by the Yue Ji. (shrink)

This essay examines the Ru 儒 notion of ming 命, usually translated into English as “fate,” with an emphasis on the thought of two prominent Ru thinkers, Zhu Xi 朱熹 of Song 宋 China and Jeong Yagyong 丁若鏞 of Joseon 朝鮮 Korea. Although they were faithful followers of the tradition of Kongzi 孔子and Mengzi 孟子, they held very different views on ming. Zhu Xi saw the realm of fate as determined by contingent movements of psychophysical force, whereas Jeong Yagyong believed (...) it to be utterly contingent upon the unfathomable deity, Shangdi 上帝. These differences have important consequences for their conceptions of the good human life as well as the development of their respective cultivation programs. In conclusion, I argue that their differences are directly related to their different stances on the goal of Ru study. Zhu Xi, in confrontation with Buddhism, tried to put all people on the road to becoming a sage, while Jeong Yagyong aimed at the actual attainment of sagehood even if only some people could do so. (shrink)

In both content and historical position, the “ Xing Zi Ming Chu ” is of obvious significance for understanding the development of classical Chinese philosophy, particularly Confucian moral psychology. This article aims to clarify one aspect of the text, namely, its account of human motivation. This account can be divided into two parts. The first describes human motivation primarily in passive terms of response to external forces, as emotions arise from our nature when stimulated by things in the world. The (...) second comes from the role of the heart, which takes a more active role in shaping our responses to the world. This article focuses on the role of the heart. At stake is the status of human agency, in particular, the degree to which the heart, through the formation of a stable intention, allows us to go beyond being simply pulled along by external forces. (shrink)

This paper formulates the categories of "ethics," "self," and "subject" for an analysis of classical rabbinic ethics centered on the text, "The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan." Early rabbis were concerned with the realms of life that today's scholars describe as ethics and self-cultivation, yet they had no overarching concepts for either the self/person or for ethics. This analysis, then, cannot rely only upon native rabbinic terminology, but also requires a careful use of contemporary categories. This paper first sets out (...) basic features of "Rabbi Nathan" and presents appropriate formulations of the relevant scholarly terms. The latter sections address possibilities for employing and revising these categories in descriptive and comparative studies more broadly, first surveying relevant scholarship on Christian, Muslim, and Manichaean sources, and then turning to ancient East Asian sources with a particular focus upon passages in the "Zhuangzi". (shrink)

The debate over whether human nature is good or bad and how this is related to self-cultivation was central in the minds of traditional Chinese thinkers. This essay analyzes the interrelationship between the key concepts of xing 性, qing 情, and xin 心 in the Guodian text of the Xing Zi Ming Chu 性自命出 discovered in 1993 in Hubei province. The intellectual engagements evident in this Guodian text emerge as more syncretic and dynamic than those that can be found in (...) the discourse of any single tradition, such as Gaozi, Mencius, or Xunzi. Its thesis on human nature and moral cultivation reveals the existence of a possibly more diverse intellectual discourse from which the different foci of philosophical debate represented by later thinkers developed. (shrink)

Bibliografía seleccionada y comentada sobre Taoísmo Clásico : Dao De Jing.