The author's primary aim is to help readers discover what is distinctive in Confucius & to learn what he can teach us.

Against the overly intellectualistic reading of Confucianism, this paper argues for understanding Confucianism from the perspective of qigong (or gongfu) cultivation that aims at increasing the abilities to lead a good life.

By rethinking the meaning of a central idiom in the Great Learning, this essay intends to open up a new horizon for the hermeneutics of early Confucian thinking, which has little to do with metaphysics. Through a careful etymological study of ge wu and a dialogue between the Great Learning and Heidegger's phenomenology of human affection, I demonstrate the critical position of the human heart in early Chinese thinking. This new interpretation of early Confucian moral teachings also recovers an invigorating (...) possibility for contemporary discourse on the question of ethics. (shrink)