'China, by her resources and her population, is capable of being the greatest power in the world after the United States.' Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China In 1920 the philosopher Bertrand Russell spent a year in China as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Beijing, where his lectures on mathematical logic enthralled students and listeners, including Mao Tse Tung, who attended some of Russell's talks. Written at a time when China was largely regarded by the West as backward (...) and weak, The Problem of China sees Russell rise above the prejudices of his era and presciently assess China's past, present and future. Russell brings his analytical and insightful eye to bear on some fundamental aspects of China's history and politics, cautioning China against adopting a purely Western model of social and economic development, which he regarded as characterized by a combination of greed and militarism. Beginning with an overview of nineteenth-century Chinese history and considering China's relations with Japan and Russia, Russell then contrasts Chinese civilization with Western. He devotes a fascinating chapter to the character of the Chinese, which he argues is complex but ultimately defined by a 'pacific temper'. With uncanny foresight, Russell predicts China's resurgence, but only if it is able to establish an orderly government, promote industrial development under Chinese control and foster the spread of education. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new introduction by Bernard Linsky. (shrink)

This essay explores Confucian views on war as seen in the Spring and Autumn Annals . The interpretation is based mainly on the Gongyang Zhuan , supplemented by other authoritative sources in the Gongyang tradition, such as D ong Zhongshu (179-104 BCE) and H e Xiu (129-182). The Spring and Autumn Annals contains three components: facts, words, and principles. This essay explicates the principles for going to war and the principles for conducting a war. The Confucian perspective sheds light on (...) war against enemies of civilization, conditions for waging a preemptive war, punitive expedition, as well as the use of weapons of mass destruction. The Confucian views as presented here are realistic and pragmatic in nature but are also compatible with the humanistic concern of Confucianism. This essay ends with a summary of the salient and sophisticated features of the Confucian views on war. (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)

The article argues in the first part that the Lunyu is the only early text in which Confucius is not depicted as the ultimate sage authority who knows an answer to all questions. Instead the Confucius of the Lunyu leaves questions open and points out limits of possible knowledge. The second part of the article shows that in the exegesis of the Gongyang Zhuan we find exactly the same attitudes of Confucius. The article argues in the third part that the (...) specific character of the Lunyu construction of Confucius lies in its ascribing to him professional attitudes found in the realm of historiography and ritual expertise. (shrink)

Dong Zhongshu is generally acknowledged as the most important Confucian philosopher of the Former Han dynasty and is usually assigned a key role in the adaptation of Confucian thought to the demands of the centralized imperial state. However, recent research has brought his contribution to this process into question. ;The dissertation is divided into four parts. In the first, I reconstruct the events of Dong's life. I review all evidence on his dates of birth and death, his service in the (...) imperial government, and the times at which documents by him were written, determining his chronology with greater accuracy than has been the case previously. ;The second part relates Dong's philosophy in as much detail as possible, leaving aside all Chunqiu fanlu material except that which can be shown to be authentic. The first chapter deals with Han forerunners of Dong: the Huang-Lao and early Gongyang schools, the Shangshu dazhuan, Lu Jia, and Jia Yi. The second chapter reconstructs a general outline of his philosophical system, and the third discusses three aspects of it for which quantities of reliable material have survived: his legal thought, prognosticatory theory, and attempts to control rain. The picture of Dong as the architect of "Imperial Confucianism," long under suspicion, is revealed as a total fiction. ;Part Three traces the development of Gongyang thought from the time of Dong's death up to He Xiu . I demonstrate a correlation between the fortunes of the two branches of the Gongyang tradition and their attitudes to the Wang Mang interregum, and show the close links between Gongyang scholars and the Later Han court. ;The topic of Part Four is the Chunqiu fanlu itself. The first chapter discusses its physical condition, the second reviews previous scholarship, the third investigates Yin-Yang and Five Forces ideas, the fourth takes up a variety of other features, and the fifth is devoted to a detailed analysis of rainmaking. (shrink)

The turn to descriptive studies of ethics is inspired by the sense that our ethical theorizing needs to engage ethnography, history, and literature in order to address the full complexity of ethical life. This article examines four books that describe the cultivation of virtue in diverse cultural contexts, two concerning early China and two concerning Islam in recent years. All four emphasize the significance of embodiment, and they attend to the complex ways in which choice and agency interact with the (...) authority of tradition. In considering these books, this article examines the relations between our academic claims concerning the self and ethics, conceptual or theoretical claims made in the elite writings of traditions, and the lived experiences of the people we study. The conclusion turns to our methodological foundations for studying these topics both comparatively and constructively. (shrink)