Looking at the life and legacy of Emperor Yang (569-618) of the brief Sui dynasty in a new light, this book presents a compelling case for his importance to Chinese history. Author Victor Cunrui Xiong utilizes traditional scholarship and secondary literature from China, Japan, and the West to go beyond the common perception of Emperor Yang as merely a profligate tyrant. Xiong accepts neither the traditional verdict against Emperor Yang nor the apologist effort to revise it, and instead offers a reassessment of Emperor Yang by exploring the larger political, economic, military, religious, and...
Looking at the life and legacy of Emperor Yang (569-618) of the brief Sui dynasty in a new light, this book presents a compelling case for his importa...
This volume examines the values that have historically guided the negotiation of identity, both practical and ideal, in Chinese Confucian culture, considers how these values play into the conception and exercise of authority, and assesses their contemporary relevance in a rapidly globalizing world. Included are essays that explore the rule of ritual in classical Confucian political discourse; parental authority in early medieval tales; authority in writings on women; authority in the great and long-beloved folk novel of China Journey to the West; and the anti-Confucianism of Lu Xun, the...
This volume examines the values that have historically guided the negotiation of identity, both practical and ideal, in Chinese Confucian culture, con...
The Zhongyong--translated here as Focusing the Familiar--has been regarded as a document of enormous wisdom for more than two millennia and is one of Confucianism's most sacred and seminal texts. It achieved truly canonical preeminence when it became one of the Four Books compiled and annotated by the Southern Song dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Within the compass of world literature, the influence of these books (Analects of Confucius, Great Learning, Zhongyong, and Mencius) on the Sinitic world of East Asia has been no less than the Bible and the Qu'ran on Western...
The Zhongyong--translated here as Focusing the Familiar--has been regarded as a document of enormous wisdom for more than two millennia and is one ...
Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in science, politics, economics, social institutions, and the expression of cultural values. Indeed it is the simultaneity and interdependence of these changes occurring in every dimension of human experience and endeavor that makes the present so historically distinctive. The essays gathered here give voice to perspectives on the always improvised relationship between technology and cultural values from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia,...
Recent history makes clear that the quantum leaps being made in technology are the leading edge of a groundswell of paradigm shifts taking place in...
Thinking Through Confucius critically interprets the conceptual structure underlying Confucius' philosophical reflections. It also investigates "thinking," or "philosophy" from the perspective of Confucius. Perhaps the philosophical question of our time is "what is philosophy." The authors suggest that an examination of the Chinese philosophy may provide an alternative definition of philosophy that can be used to address some of the pressing issues of the Western cultural tradition. This book finds an appropriate language for the interpretation of traditional Chinese philosophical thought --...
Thinking Through Confucius critically interprets the conceptual structure underlying Confucius' philosophical reflections. It also investigates "think...
Here, Western environmental philosophers and some of our most distinguished representatives of Asian and comparative philosophy critically consider what Asia has to offer. The first section provides an ecological world view as a basis for comparison. Subsequent sections include chapters by leading contemporary scholars in Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Buddhist thought that explore the Western perception of Asian traditions--the perception that Asian philosophy is a rich conceptual resource for contemporary environmental thinkers.
Here, Western environmental philosophers and some of our most distinguished representatives of Asian and comparative philosophy critically consider wh...
Few if any philosophical schools have championed family values as persistently as the early Confucians, and a great deal can be learned by attending to what they had to say on the subject. In the Confucian tradition, human morality and the personal realization it inspires are grounded in the cultivation of family feeling. One may even go so far as to say that, for China, family reverence was a necessary condition for developing any of the other human qualities of excellence. On the basis of the present translation of the Xiaojing (Classic of Family Reverence) and supplemental passages...
Few if any philosophical schools have championed family values as persistently as the early Confucians, and a great deal can be learned by attendin...
How Chinese is contemporary Chinese art? Treasured by collectors, critics, and art world cognoscenti, this art developed within an avant-garde that looked West to find a language to strike out against government control. Traditionally, Chinese artistic expression has been related to the structure and function of the Chinese language and the assumptions of Chinese natural cosmology. Is contemporary Chinese art rooted in these traditions or is it an example of cultural self-colonization? Contributors to this volume address this question, going beyond the more obvious political and social...
How Chinese is contemporary Chinese art? Treasured by collectors, critics, and art world cognoscenti, this art developed within an avant-garde that lo...
The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also (albeit incidentally) with social and political order. In many ways the Zhuangzi established a unique literary and philosophical genre of its own, and while clearly the work of many hands, it is one of the finest pieces of literature in the classical Chinese corpus. It employs every trope and literary device available to set off rhetorically charged flashes of insight into the most unrestrained way to live one's life, free from oppressive, conventional judgments and values. The essays...
The Zhuangzi is a deliciously protean text: it is concerned not only with personal realization, but also (albeit incidentally) with social and poli...
This volume contains essays by a range of distinguished philosophers on the problem of self-deception, or rather, self and deception. The work proceeds from the assumption that changing constructions of self within Western cultures, and alternative notions of self in other cultures requires that we rethink traditional strategies for explaining the phenomenon of self-deception. The concept of self is central to any sustained inquiry into self-deception, the pertinent issue being what sort of self is victim (or beneficiary) of self deception. Several of the authors here base their thinking...
This volume contains essays by a range of distinguished philosophers on the problem of self-deception, or rather, self and deception. The work proceed...
