This book rewrites the story of classical Chinese philosophy, which has always been considered the single most creative and vibrant chapter in the history of Chinese philosophy. Works attributed to Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi and many others represent the very origins of moral and political thinking in China. As testimony to their enduring stature, in recent decades many Chinese intellectuals, and even leading politicians, have turned to those classics, especially Confucian texts, for alternative or complementary sources of moral authority and political legitimacy. Therefore, philosophical inquiries into core normative values embedded in those classical texts are crucial to the ongoing scholarly discussion about China as China turns more culturally inward. It can also contribute to the spirited contemporary debate about the nature of philosophical reasoning, especially in the non-Western traditions. This book offers a new narrative and interpretative framework about the origins of moral-political philosophy that tracks how the three normative values, humaneness, justice, and personal freedom, were formulated, reformulated, and contested by early Chinese philosophers in their effort to negotiate the relationship among three distinct domains, the personal, the familial, and the political. Such efforts took place as those thinkers were reimagining a new moral-political order, debating its guiding norms, and exploring possible sources within the context of an evolving understanding of Heaven and its relationship with the humans. Tao Jiang argues that the competing visions in that debate can be characterized as a contestation between partialist humaneness and impartialist justice as the guiding norm for the newly imagined moral-political order, with the Confucians, the Mohists, the Laoists, and the so-called fajia thinkers being the major participants, constituting the mainstream philosophical project during this period. Thinkers lined up differently along the justice-humaneness spectrum with earlier ones maintaining some continuity between the two normative values (or at least trying to accommodate both to some extent) while later ones leaning more toward their exclusivity in the political/public domain. Zhuangzi and the Zhuangists were the outliers of the mainstream moral-political debate who rejected the very parameter of humaneness versus justice in that discourse. They were a lone voice advocating personal freedom, but the Zhuangist expressions of freedom were self-restricted to the margins of the political world and the interiority of one's heartmind. Such a take can shed new light on how the Zhuangist approach to personal freedom would profoundly impact the development of this idea in pre-modern Chinese political and intellectual history.
Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy. explores the composition, language, thought, and early history of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), showing its texts as dynamic cultural products that expressed and shaped the political and ...
These are some of the questions that have motivated modern scholarship to approach ālayavijñāna, the storehouse consciousness, formulated in Yogācāra Buddhism as a subliminal reservoir of tendencies, habits, and future possibilities.
With its new translation of source materials (some translated for the first time), its explanatory aids where necessary, its thoroughgoing scholarly documentation, this volume will be an indispensable guide for scholars, for college ...
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge ... Morris, Charles M. Writings on the General Theory of Signs (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971). Morrison, Robert G. Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in ...
Introduction: Why Confucianism?
In The Humanist Spirit of Daoism, the eminent Chinese thinker Chen Guying presents his understanding of the significance of Daoist philosophy.
More than a straightforward account of Mohist principles and practice, this volume immerses readers in the Mohist mindset and clarifies its underpinning of Chinese philosophical discourse.
It is most commonly perceived , however , as the art of persuasion , the artistic use of oral and written ... have been made to established modes of knowledge , and the field of rhetorical studies has gradually expanded its vision .
This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority.
This book examines different views on the concept of truth in early Chinese philosophy, and considers a variety of theories of truth in Chinese and comparative thought.