To counter the tendency of making Confucianism "localized" and thereby turning Confucianism research into research of local social history, the author criticizes this tendency and thinks it is unilateral to emphasize or stress the importance of a small unit's locality, but ignore the oneness of the distribution of Confucianism and the universality of Confucian thought. The thesis emphasizes that the main schools of Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties are all not local ones and cannot be reduced to reflections (...) of some local need and social structure. The author points out that we need to self-examine the following phenomena: aggrandizing the function of local social structure to culture and thought, coming down academic schools to reflections of local social benefits, opposing this kind of research to the research of thought itself, thus rejecting philosophical research and analysis of thought itself. (shrink)

The Five Relationships are commonly held to be fundamental to Confucian thought and, according to some scholars, constitute the basis of all human relationships. This essay examines how the ruler-minister relationship served as a site over a debate about the political importance of virtue in early Chinese philosophy. Some early texts, including the Confucian texts Mengzi and Xunzi, argue that virtue confers a different status that rulers should recognize by treating the virtuous as equals or even superiors. In particular, these (...) texts claim that teachers and worthies are not ministers, and thus do not fit the rulerminister paradigm. Other texts, such as the Han Feizi and Guanzi, argue against this position, denying that virtue is relevant to political status. They claim that the ruler is superior to all, and that it is dangerous to grant special status based on moral qualities. The texts that adhere most closely to the Five Relationships are actually those considered Legalist, not Confucian. Thus, reexamining the Five Relationships is a way to throw light on the contested status of the morally worthy in early Chinese social and political thought. (shrink)

Weiming’s program of overcoming the enlightenment mentality and throws a critical light on his conceptions of religious or spiritual Confucianism, of a Confucian modernity, and of the multiple modernities theory in general. It defends a unitary rather than multiple concept of modernity in terms of the realization of a morally controlled principle of free subjectivity and tries to show how Confucianism, understood as a secular ethics, could contribute to this goal.

Developed here is a Confucian balance between two key democratic ideals, liberty and community, by focusing on the Confucian notion of li (ritual), which has often been considered hostile to liberty. By adopting a semiotic approach to li and relating it to recent studies of ritual in various Western disciplines, li's contribution to communication and its aesthetic dimension are explored to show how emphasizing harmony without sacrificing reflective experience and personal fulfillment renders li a concept of moral empowerment of free (...) individuals in community. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the development of the New Confucianism movement during the twentieth-century and questions whether it is, in fact, a distinctly new intellectual movement or one that has been mostly retrospectively created. The questions that contributors to this book seek to answer about this neo-conservative philosophical movement include: 'What has been the cross-fertilization between Chinese scholars in China and overseas made possible by the shared discourse of Confucianism?'; 'To what extent does this discourse transcend geographical, political, cultural, (...) and ideological divides?'; 'Why do so many Chinese intellectuals equate Confucianism with Chinese cultural identity?'; and 'Does the Confucian revival of the 1990s in China and Taiwan represent a genuine philosophical renaissance or a resurgence in interest based on political and cultural factors?'. (shrink)

This book examines democracy in recent Chinese-language philosophical work. It focuses on Confucian-inspired political thought in the Chinese intellectual world from after the communist revolution in China until today. The volume analyzes six significant contemporary Confucian philosophers in China and Taiwan, describing their political thought and how they connect their thought to Confucian tradition, and critiques their political proposals and views. It illustrates how Confucianism has transformed in modern times, the divergent understandings of Confucianism today, and how contemporary Chinese philosophers (...) understand democracy, as well as their criticisms of Western political thought. (shrink)

This highly accessible book provides a comprehensive unpacking and interpretation, suitable for students and scholars in all fields, of towering philosopher Mou ...

Liang Shuming, considered to be the Last Confucian, was a Buddhist.

This book explores a pivotal dimension of Mou Zongsan’s philosophy—that is, his project of reconstructing a moral metaphysics based largely on a dialogue between reinterpreted Chinese thought and Kantism—and thoroughly analyzes a ...