1. A mainstream view on the origins of the imperial legal tradition in China is that imperial Chinese law underwent a process of Confucianization beginning in the Han dynasty. This point of view, f...

Confucian writings on ritual from the classical period (ca 8th-3rd centuries BCE), including instruction manuals, codes of conduct, and treatises on the origins and function of ritual in human life, are impressive in scope and repay careful engagement. These texts maintain that ritual participation fosters social and emotional development, helps persons deal with significant life events such as marriages and deaths, and helps resolve political disagreements. These early sources are of interest not only to historians and Sinologists, but also to (...) philosophers and social scientists; they contain enduring insights into the nature and status of rituals more generally. This chapter surveys classical Confucian theories of the origins and functions of ritual, and summarizes some strident critiques of them from contemporary thinkers in the Mohist, Daoist, and Legalist schools of thought. The aim is to indicate key issues as well as promising strategies for analyzing ritual in Confucian thought and action. (shrink)

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)

The interplay between language and politics has been the subject of increased academic interest in the last few decades. The idea that language can be used as a device not only for communication but also for control and manipulation, however, is by no means new. This article traces the emergence of one of the first fully formed Chinese theories of language, Xunzi’s ‘rectification of names’ doctrine, in order to reconstruct a social history of language in early China. In addition to (...) situating Xunzi’s philosophical system in the intellectual and historical context of the late Warring States period, this article also draws on Michel Foucault’s theory of knowledge and power to argue that early Chinese thinkers were fully aware of language’s constitutive role in the restoration of sociopolitical stability and thus sought to portray linguistic engineering as an efficacious, noncoercive, tool of government as part of an overarching single ruler-based political system. (shrink)

This essay calls attention to an aspect of Confucius's notion of ren that has often been overlooked or even denied in much recent discussion of the topic. While the egalitarian aspect of ren, i.e., the idea that every human being has the potential to become a ren person, is frequently asserted, the leadership dimension of ren has for the most part been given short shrift. I argue that for Confucius, ren is the leadership virtue. This conclusion is mainly based on (...) a careful and systematic analysis of what may be called ?the definitional ren passages? and some ?elucidative ren passages? in the Analects. (shrink)

As China and the United States strive to be the primary global leader in AI, their visions are coming into conflict. This is frequently painted as a fundamental clash of civilisations, with evidence based primarily around each country’s current political system and present geopolitical tensions. However, such a narrow view claims to extrapolate into the future from an analysis of a momentary situation, ignoring a wealth of historical factors that influence each country’s prevailing philosophy of technology and thus their overarching (...) AI strategies. In this article, we build a philosophy-of-technology-grounded framework to analyse what differences in Chinese and American AI policies exist and, on a fundamental level, why they exist. We support this with Natural Language Processing methods to provide an evidentiary basis for our analysis of policy differences. By looking at documents from three different American presidential administrations––Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden––as well as both national and local policy documents (many available only in Chinese) from China, we provide a thorough comparative analysis of policy differences. This article fills a gap in US–China AI policy comparison and constructs a framework for understanding the origin and trajectory of policy differences. By investigating what factors are informing each country’s philosophy of technology and thus their overall approach to AI policy, we argue that while significant obstacles to cooperation remain, there is room for dialogue and mutual growth. (shrink)

This paper is a prolegomena to discussions about a differentiated Confucian MBA curriculum. We draw upon Kant’s notion of individual autonomy and our observations of practice to argue that there are three models extant for the MBA degree. One of these, that which emphasizes leadership, holds considerable potential if it develops in the context of a genuinely Confucian university. This distinctive MBA—which could emerge in China—would express Confucian metaphysics and thus actively embrace China’s history, philosophy and culture. It would manifest (...) as a genuine alternative to the western, globalized, neoliberal MBA. A Confucian MBA would promote a concept of leadership that emphasizes cooperation and other Confucian ‘values’ while minimising the role of competition. (shrink)

Nearly all of the scant comparative work on Søren Kierkegaard and Confucius places the two starkly at odds with each other. Kierkegaard is pictured as the paradigmatic exemplar of the Western self: a discrete rights-bearing and volitional atom who is quite alone in the world, while Confucius, by contrast, is the paradigmatic exemplar of the Eastern self: a complex and irreducibly embedded communitarian bundle of relations and rich social roles. In this article, I challenge this oppositional approach, since it is (...) both erroneous and obscures fruitful dialogue between the two on conceptually commensurate problems. I argue (1) that Kierkegaard offers a relational ontology of the self which moves in a Confucian direction, (2) that subjectivity and relational reciprocity are not fundamentally at odds in the two thinkers, (3) that both thinkers value a life of harmonious integration that entails right relation to others, and finally (4) that Confucius’ appeal to Heaven as a source of normativity allows for salutary social critique of prevailing ethical norms and practices, in a way that provides important comparative insights with Kierkegaardian theism. (shrink)

Objectives:Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism have influenced societies and shaped cultures as they have spread across the span of history and ultimately across the world. However, to date, the interrelated nature of their impacts has yet to be examined largely due to the lack of a measure that comprehensively assesses their various tenets. Building on a conceptual integration of foundational texts on each ideology as well as on recent measure development work (much of which is unpublished), the current studies developed a (...) comprehensive measure of these ideologies (the Three Teachings of East Asia Inventory; TTEA) and validated it across four languages.Methods:A combined sample of 2,091 online respondents (Study 1: 322 Chinese respondents, Study 2: 400 Japanese respondents, Study 3: 362 Taiwanese respondents, Study 4: 688 White Americans and 319 Asian Americans) completed 25–35 min online survey in their preferred language: English, Traditional Mandarin, Simplified Mandarin, or Japanese.Results:Exploratory Factor Analyses within a 122-item pool identified 18 stable dimensions across all samples. Measurement invariance analyses identified the final 61-items of the TTEA inventory (demonstrating reasonable invariance across all languages), confirming 18 individual tenet subscales that organize into four higher-order composites: Buddhism, Taoism, Restrictive Confucianism, and Empowering Confucianism. A shorter 36-item version of the TTEA inventory was also developed. The TTEA scales demonstrated (1) acceptable internal consistency, (2) discriminant validity, and (3) incremental predictive validity for current life satisfaction and vitality.Conclusions:The TTEA inventory offers one of the first comprehensive, multilingual measures that will allow cross-cultural researchers to examine the influence of three related Eastern ideologies on societies across the world. (shrink)