If past is prologue, then The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand may suggest an intellectual course for the United States in the 21st century. At least Menand, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, thinks so. This enthralling study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey shows how these four men developed a philosophy of pragmatism following the Civil War, a period Menand likens to post-cold-war ..

Mozi (fifth century B.C.) was an important political and social thinker and formidable rival of the Confucianists. He advocated universal love -- his most important doctrine according to which all humankind should be loved and treated as one's kinfolk -- honoring and making use of worthy men in government, and identifying with one's superior as a means of establishing uniform moral standards. He also believed in the will of Heaven and in ghosts. He firmly opposed offensive warfare, extravagance -- including (...) indulgence in music and allied pleasures -- elaborate funerals and mourning, fatalistic beliefs, and Confucianism. (shrink)

This dissertation reinterprets the notion commonly translated as "human nature" (renxing in the Mencius by appealing to philosophical assumptions common to Warring States thought. Taking advantage of recently unearthed archeological finds from the Mencian school, the argument is made that renxing in the Mencius is most adequately understood as a dynamic disposition shaped by cultural and historical conditions, not as an a-historical "nature" common to all humans at all times. The notion of "becoming human" in the Mencius that results from (...) this re-reading brings the text as a whole into focus. The central themes of the Mencius - the role of family, personal growth, moral development, and human advancement - are each understood within the framework of this alternative reading. (shrink)