The Ecological Era and Classical Chinese Naturalism: A Case Study of Tao Yuanming

Author:
Shuyuan Lu

Publication date:
2017

Publisher: 
Springer

Abstract:

Reflecting the currently growing eco-movement, this book presents to western readers Tao Yuanming, an ancient Chinese poet, as a representative of classical oriental natural philosophy who offered lived experience of “dwelling poetically on earth.” Drawing on Derrida’s specter theory, it interprets Tao Yuanming in a postmodern and eco-critical context, while also exploring his naturalist “kindred spirits” in other countries, so as to urge the people of today to contemplate their own existence and pursuits. The book’s “panoramic” table of contents offers readers a wonderful reading experience.

Table of Contents:
Tao Yuanming and the Meta-question of Humanity
Tao Yuanming’s Natural Philosophy
Tao Yuanming and Naturalistic Romanticism
The Evolving Perception of Nature and the Death of Tao Yuanming
The Specter of Tao and the Plights of Contemporary Human Existence
Conclusion: The Last Sacrifice and the Evocation

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy

Editor: 
Alexus McLeod

Publication date:
21-02-2019

Publisher:
Bloomsbury Academic

Abstract:

Focusing on early Chinese ethical and political thought across multiple schools and thinkers, this book presents a comprehensive overview of the research being done in Chinese comparative ethics and political philosophy. 

In addition to chapters on Chinese comparative and interpretative thought, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy brings early Chinese ethics and political philosophy into conversation with Western and Indian Philosophy, as well as Western Theology. Contributors discuss numerous texts and schools in Pre-Qin and Han Philosophy, including Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, the Xunzi, the Liyun, and the Zhuangzi. The volume also shows how early Chinese ethical and political theories can be used to contextualise contemporary philosophical issues, such as metaethics, human rights, emotions, and the connection between ethics and metaphysics.

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Alexus McLeod, University of Connecticut, USA)

Part I: Historical Approaches

1. Confucian Role Ethics: Issues of Naming, Translation, and Interpretation, Sarah Mattice, University of North Florida, USA

2. From Patterning to Governing: A Constructivist Interpretation of the Xunzi, Kurtis Hagen, SUNY Plattsburgh, USA

3. Some Considerations in Defense of a Radical Reading of the Mohist Jian Ai, Alexus McLeod (University of Connecticut, USA

4. Ritual and Vulnerability of a Prosperous World: A Reading of the Liyun, Michael D. K. Ing, Indiana University, USA

5. Morality Without Moral Reasoning: The Case of Heshanggong, 
Misha Tadd, Peking University, Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, China

6. Nothingness and Selfhood in the Zhuangzi, 
David Chai, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

7. Han Fei's Rule of Law and Its Limits, 
Alejandro Barcenas, Texas State University, USA

Part Two: Comparative Approaches

8. Non-Impositional Rule in Confucius and Aristotle, Matthew D. Walker, Yale-NUS College, Singapore

9. Other People Die and That is the Problem, Amy Olberding, University of Oklahoma, USA

10. The Problem of Anxiety in the Zhuangzi, Indian, and Hellenistic Philosophy, Alexus McLeod, University of Connecticut, USA

11. Son of Heaven: Developing the Theological Aspects of Mengzi's Philosophy of the Ruler, Joshua Brown, University of Dayton, USA

12. Justifying Human Rights in Confucianism, May Sim, College of the Holy Cross, USA

Annotated Bibliography in Early Chinese Ethics and Political Philosophy, Alexus McLeod, University of Connecticut, USA

Heaven Is Empty: A Cross-Cultural Approach to "Religion" and Empire in Ancient China

Author:
Filippo Marsili

Publication date:
December, 2018

Publisher: 
SUNY Press

Abstract:

Heaven Is Empty offers a new comparative perspective on the role of the sacred in the formation of China’s early empires (221 BCE–9 CE) and shows how the unification of the Central States was possible without a unitary and universalistic conception of religion. The cohesive function of the ancient Mediterranean cult of the divinized ruler was crucial for the legitimization of Rome’s empire across geographical and social boundaries. Eventually reelaborated in Christian terms, it came to embody the timelessness and universality of Western conceptions of legitimate authority, while representing an analytical template for studying other ancient empires. Filippo Marsili challenges such approaches in his examination of the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han (141–87 BCE). Wu purposely drew from regional traditions and tried to gain the support of local communities through his patronage of local cults. He was interested in rituals that envisioned the monarch as a military leader, who directly controlled the land and its resources, as a means for legitimizing radical administrative and economic centralization. In reconstructing this imperial model, Marsilire interprets fragmentary official accounts in light of material evidence and noncanonical and recently excavated texts. In bringing to life the courts, battlefields, markets, shrines, and pleasure quarters of early imperial China, Heaven Is Empty provides a postmodern and postcolonial reassessment of “religion” before the arrival of Buddhism and challenges the application of Greco-Roman and Abrahamic systemic, identitary, and exclusionary notions of the “sacred” to the analysis of pre-Christian and non-Western realities.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: An Empire without a “Religion”

1. Readings of the “Sacred”: Chinese Religion, Chinese Religions, and Religions in China

2. Writing the Empire: Ex Pluribus Plurima

3. Narrating the Empire: Metaphysics without God, “Religions” without Identity

4. Time, Myth, and Memory: Of Water, Metal, and Cinnabar

5. Place and Ritual: From Templum to Text

Conclusions: The Importance of Getting Lost

Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism

Author:
Edward Slingerland

Publisher:
New York, NY : Oxford University Press

Publication date:
December 2018

Abstract:

Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as the radical, "holistic" other. The idea that the early Chinese held the "strong" holist view, seeing no qualitative difference between mind and body, has long been contradicted by traditional archeological and qualitative textual evidence. New digital humanities methods, along with basic knowledge about human cognition, now make this position untenable. A large body of empirical evidence suggests that "weak" mind-body dualism is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it.

Edward Slingerland argues that the humanities need to move beyond social constructivist views of culture, and embrace instead a view of human cognition and culture that integrates the sciences and the humanities. Our interpretation of texts and artifacts from the past and from other cultures should be constrained by what we know about the species-specific, embodied commonalities shared by all humans. This book also attempts to broaden the scope of humanistic methodologies by employing team-based qualitative coding and computer-aided "distant reading" of texts, while also drawing upon our current best understanding of human cognition to transform our basic starting point. It has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Chapter One: The Myth of Holism in Early China

PART I: Qualitative Approaches to Concepts of Mind and Body

Chapter Two: Soul and Body: Traditional Archeological and Textual Evidence for Soul-Body Dualism

Chapter Three: Mind-Body Dualism in the Textual Record

PART II: Quantitative Approaches to Concepts of Mind and Body

Chapter Four: Embracing the Digital Humanities: New Methods for Analyzing Texts and Sharing Scholarly Knowledge

PART III: Methodological Issues in the Interpretation of Textual Corpora

Chapter Five: Hermeneutical Constraints: Minds in Our Bodies and Our Feet on the Ground

Chapter Six: Hermeneutical Excesses: Interpretive Missteps and the Essentialist Trap

Conclusion: Naturalistic Hermeneutics and the End of Orientalism

Cultivating a Good Life in Early Chinese and Ancient Greek Philosophy: Perspectives and Reverberations

Editors: 
Karyn Lai, Rick Benitez, Hyun Jin Kim

Publication date:
December 2018

Publisher:
Bloomsbury

Abstract:
This book engages in cross-tradition scholarship, investigating the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live good lives. Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos.

By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and practices a way of life especially in these two traditions. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Drawing on the insights of thinkers including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions, and discuss action as an indispensable method of learning and, indeed, as constitutive of self. The result is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics, demonstrating the importance of philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions.

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Karyn Lai, Rick Benitez, Hyun Jin Kim)

Part I: Harmony, Balance, Beauty: Understanding Conceptions of Cultivation

1. Cultivation and Harmony: Plato and Confucius (Rick Benitez, University of Sydney, Australia)

2. Cultivating Noble Simplicity: Plato (L.M.J. Coulson, University of Sydney, Australia)

3. The Beauty Ladder and the Mind-heart Excursion: Plato and Zhuangzi (Wang Keping, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing)

4. Awareness and Spontaneity: Three Perspectives in the Zhuangzi (Lisa Raphals, University of California, Riverside, USA)

5. Understanding “Dao's Patterns”: Han Fei (Barbara Hendrischke, Sydney University, Australia)

Part II: Doubt, Predicament, Conflict: Cognitive, Affective and Epistemic Difficulties

6. Skepsis and Doubt: Ancient Greece and the East (Yasuhira Yahei Kanayama, Nagoya University, Japan)

7. Wisdowm and Cognitive Conflict: Outlines for Scepticism (Per Lind, Lund University, Sweden)

8. Understanding Fortune and Misfortune in a Good Life: 'Solon' and 'Confucius' (Hyun Jin Kim, University of Melbourne, Australia and Karen Hsu, University of Melbourne, Australia)

9. Emotion and Self-Cultivation: Marcus Aurelius and Mengzi (Jesse Ciccotti, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)

10. Dislodging Mundane Wisdom: the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi and the New Testament Gospels (Lauren Pfister, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)

Part III. Here, Now, Ever-after: How to Achieve and Practice a Good Life

11. Knowing How to Act: Aristotle (Sophie Grace Chappell, Open University, UK)

12. Learning to be Reliable: Confucius' Analects (Karyn Lai, University of New South Wales, Australia)

13. Auditory Perception and Cultivation: the Wenzi (Andrej Fech, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong)

14. Cultivation and the Arts of Writing: Liu Xie (Will Buckingham, Open University, UK)

15. Death and Happiness: Han China (Mu-chou Poo, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong)

The Philosophical Thought of Wang Chong

Author:
McLeod, Alexus

Publication date:
September 2018

Publisher:
Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract:

This book is a study of the methodological, metaphysical, and epistemological work of the Eastern Han Dynasty period scholar Wang Chong. It presents Wang’s philosophical thought as a unique and syncretic culmination of a number of ideas developed in earlier Han and Warring States philosophy.  Wang’s philosophical methodology and his theories of truth, knowledge, and will and determinism offer solutions to a number of problems in the early Chinese tradition.  His views also have much to offer contemporary philosophy, suggesting new ways of thinking about familiar problems.  While Wang is best known as a critic and skeptic, Alexus McLeod argues that these aspects of his thought form only a part of a larger positive project, aimed at discerning truth in a variety of senses.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Wang Chong and Philosophy in Early China

Background, Writings, and Influence

Philosophical and Critical Method

Truth: Properties and Pluralism

Naturalism:

Free Will, Allotment, and Inborn Characteristics

Conclusion: The Significance of Wang Chong’s Philosophical Thought

Having a Word with Angus Graham: At Twenty-Five Years into His Immortality

Editor:
Carine Defoort and Roger T. Ames

Publication Date:
March 2018

Publisher:
State University of New York Press

Abstract:
This volume engages with the works and ideas of Angus Charles Graham (1919–1991), one of the most prominent Western scholars of Chinese philosophy, at the twenty-fifth anniversary of his passing. Over a professional career of more than thirty years, Angus Graham produced an impressive amount of scholarship on a wide array of topics, ranging from Chinese grammar and philology to poetry and philosophy. His combination of rigorous scholarship and philosophical originality has continued to inspire scholars to tackle related research topics, and in so doing, has required of them a response to his views. This book illustrates the range of scholarship still elaborating upon, disagreeing with, and reacting to Graham’s work on Chinese thought, philosophy, philology, and translation.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Having a Word with Angus Graham: At the First Twenty-Five Years into His Immortality
Carine Defoort and Roger T. Ames

1. Reading the Zhuangzi Anthology
Esther S. Klein

2. Reflections on Textual Analysis in the Post-Graham Era
Liu Xiaogan

3. Cognitive Attunement in the Zhuangzi
Harold D. Roth

4. Vital Matters, A.C. Graham, and the Zhuangzi
Michael Nylan

5. Remarks on Intertranslatability and Relativism
Henry Rosemont, Jr.

6. Getting to the Bottom of “Things” (wù 物): Expanding on A.C. Graham’s Understanding
Robert H. Gassmann

7. Míng (名) as “Names” Rather than “Words:” Disabled Bodies Speaking without Acting in Early Chinese Texts
Jane Geaney

8. Unfounded and Unfollowed: Mencius’ Portrayal of Yang Zhu and Mo Di
Carine Defoort

9. Reconstructing A.C. Graham’s Reading of Mencius on xing 性: A Coda to “The Background of the Mencian Theory of Human Nature” (1967)
Roger T. Ames

10. Reason and Spontaneity Reconsidered
Lisa Raphals

11. Spontaneity and Marriage
Paul Kjellberg

12. Rationalism and Anti-Rationalism in Later Mohism and Zhuāngzǐ
Chris Fraser

Language As Bodily Practice in Early China: A Chinese Grammatology

Author:
Jane Geaney

Publisher: 
State Univ of New York Press 

Publication Date:
March, 2018

Abstract:
Jane Geaney argues that early Chinese conceptions of speech and naming cannot be properly understood if viewed through the dominant Western philosophical tradition in which language is framed through dualisms that are based on hierarchies of speech and writing, such as reality/appearance and one/many. Instead, early Chinese texts repeatedly create pairings of sounds and various visible things. This aural/visual polarity suggests that texts from early China treat speech as a bodily practice that is not detachable from its use in everyday experience. Firmly grounded in ideas about bodies from the early texts themselves, Geaney’s interpretation offers new insights into three key themes in these texts: the notion of speakers’ intentions (yi), the physical process of emulating exemplary people, and Confucius’s proposal to rectify names (zhengming).

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. Discounting the Language Crisis in Early China

1. The Crisis of Blockage: Accessing and Transmitting Obscure Things

2. The Crisis of Blockage: Why Not “Language and Reality”?

3. The Prescriptive Crisis: Nomenclature, Not System

4. The Prescriptive Crisis: Naming and Distinguishing

5. The Prescriptive Crisis: Correcting Names without “Performing” Rules

Part II. Understanding Early Chinese Conceptions of Speech and Names

6. Successful “Communication”: Getting the Yi 意 and Becoming Tong 通 

7. “Ritual” versus Li 禮 as the Visible Complement of Sound

8. Zhengming and Li 禮 as the Visible Complement of Sound

9. Embodied Zhengming: How We Are Influenced by Seeing versus Hearing

10. Separating Lunyu 12.11 from Zhengming 

Epilogue
Appendix Glossary of Terms with Aural or Visual Associations
Bibliography
Index

Ancient Greece and China Compared

Editors:
G. E. R. Lloyd and‎ Jingyi Jenny Zhao

Publisher: 
Cambridge University Press

Publication Date:
February 28, 2018

Abstract:

Ancient Greece and China Compared is a pioneering, methodologically sophisticated set of studies, bringing together scholars who all share the conviction that the sustained critical comparison and contrast between ancient societies can bring to light significant aspects of each that would be missed by focusing on just one of them. The topics tackled include key issues in philosophy and religion, in art and literature, in mathematics and the life sciences (including gender studies), in agriculture, city planning and institutions. The volume also analyses how to go about the task of comparing, including finding viable comparanda and avoiding the trap of interpreting one culture in terms appropriate only to another. The book is set to provide a model for future collaborative and interdisciplinary work exploring what is common between ancient civilisations, what is distinctive of particular ones, and what may help to account for the latter.

Table of Contents:

Introduction G. E. R. Lloyd;
Part I. Methodological Issues and Goals:

1. Why some comparisons make more difference than others 
Nathan Sivin;

2. Comparing comparisons 
Walter Scheidel;

3. On the very idea of (philosophical?) translation 
Robert Wardy

Part II. Philosophy and Religion:

4. Freedom in parts of the Zhuangzi and Epictetus 
R. A. H. King;

5. Shame and moral education in Aristotle and Xunzi 
Jingyi Jenny Zhao;

6. Human and animal in early China and Greece 
Lisa Raphals;

7. Genealogies of ghosts, gods and humans: the capriciousness of the Divine in early Greece and China  Michael Puett

Part III. Art and Literature:

8. Visual art and historical representation in Ancient Greece and China  
Jeremy Tanner;

9. Helen and Chinese femmes fatales  Yiqun Zhou

Part IV. Mathematics and Life Sciences:

10. Divisions, big and small: comparing Archimedes and Liu Hui  
Reviel Netz;

11. Abstraction as a value in the historiography of mathematics in Ancient Greece and China  
Karine Chemla;

12. Recipes for love in the ancient world  
Vivienne Lo and Eleanor Re'em

Part V. Agriculture, Planning and Institutions:

13. From the harvest to the meal in prehistoric China and Greece: a comparative approach to the social context of food 
Xinyi Liu, Evi Margaritis and Martin Jones;

14. On libraries and manuscript culture in Western Han Chang'an and Alexandria Michael Nylan

Afterword by Michael Loewe

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies

Editor: 
Sor-hoon Tan

Publisher: 
Bloomsbury Academic

Publication Date:
August 2016

Abstract:

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies presents a new understanding of the changing methods used to study Chinese philosophy. By identifying the various different approaches and discussing the role, and significance of philosophical methods in the Chinese tradition, this collection identifies difficulties and exciting developments for scholars of Asian philosophy.

Divided into four parts, the nature of Chinese philosophical thought is illuminated by discussing historical developments, current concerns and methodological challenges. Surveying recent methodological trends, this research companion explores and evaluates the methodologies that have been applied to Chinese philosophy. From these diverse angles, an international team of experts reflect on the considerations that enter their methodological choices and indicate new research directions. The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy Methodologies is an important contribution to the education of the next generation of Chinese philosophers.

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender

Editor:
Ann A. Pang-White

Publication Date:
April, 2016

Publisher: 
Bloomsbury Academic

Abstract:

Covering the historical, social, political, and cultural contexts, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender presents a comprehensive overview of the complexity of gender disparity in Chinese thought and culture.

Divided into four main sections, an international group of experts in Chinese Studies write on Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist approaches to gender relations. Each section includes a general introduction, a set of authoritative articles written by leading scholars and comprehensive bibliographies, designed to provide the non-specialist with a practical and broad overview. Beginning with the Ancient and Medieval period before moving on to Modern and Contemporary approaches, specially commissioned chapters include Pre-Qin canonical texts, women in early Chinese ethics, the yin-yang gender dynamic and the Buddhist understanding of the conception of gender. Considering why the philosophy of women and gender dynamics in Chinese thought is rarely confronted, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Chinese Philosophy and Gender is a pioneering cross-disciplinary introduction to Chinese philosophy's intersection with gender studies.

By bridging the fields of Chinese philosophy, religion, intellectual history, feminism, and gender studies, this cutting-edge volume fills a great need in the current literature on Chinese philosophy and provides student and scholars with an invaluable research resource to a growing field.

[Dissertation] Changing Along with the World: Adaptive Agency in Early China

Author:
Mercedes Valmisa

Adviser:
Willard Peterson

School:
Princeton University

Defended:
2016

Abstract:

One of the major philosophical problems in Early China was the relationship between the person and the world, and in particular, how to act in relation to the world. This dissertation addresses the problem of agency in Early China, and pursues three main guiding questions: how to act efficaciously in different situations, how to cope with uncertainty and unpredictability in ordinary life, and how to achieve control and freedom.

I offer a critical and systematic analysis of an extraordinary model of successful action that I call “adaptive agency” or “adaptation” (yin 因). As opposed to other models of action attested in early texts, such as the prescriptive and the forceful, the adaptive agent necessitates great capacity of situational awareness, reflection, flexibility, and creativity in order to produce responses ad hoc: strategies of action designed for specific, non-permanent, and non-generalizable life problems. This model for choosing an action as an adjusted response to a specific situation guarantees the agent a higher success rate in his actions, let these be in political, military, professional, medical, religious, ethical or ordinary life contexts.

This dissertation is both born from a new methodological orientation and a contribution toward establishing it, by means of exemplifying how we can build meaningful critical theories in Early Chinese philosophy and intellectual history without using the obsolete hermeneutical categories of school of thought, book and author. I trace tensions and similarities in the Early Chinese approach to the problem of agency cross-textually, using a large range of textual materials and research methods. The philosophical proposal of adaptive agency is particularly suitable to this kind of methodological project, for it consistently appears across a wide variety of texts, authors, and intellectual orientations throughout the Early Chinese period, and therefore could not be studied by using the traditional hermeneutical categories.

Zhuangzi’s Critique of the Confucians: Blinded by the Human

Author:
Kim-chong Chong

Publisher:
SUNY Press

Publication Date:
2016

Abstract:

The Daoist Zhuangzi has often been read as a mystical philosopher. But there is another tradition, beginning with the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, which sees him as a critic of the Confucians. Kim-chong Chong analyzes the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, demonstrating how Zhuangzi criticized the pre-Qin Confucians through metaphorical inversion and parody. This is indicated by the subtitle, “Blinded by the Human,” which is an inversion of the Confucian philosopher Xunzi’s remark that Zhuangzi was “blinded by heaven and did not know the human.” Chong compares Zhuangzi’s Daoist thought to Confucianism, as exemplified by Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi. By analyzing and comparing the different implications of concepts such as “heaven,” “heart-mind,” and “transformation,” Chong shows how Zhuangzi can be said to provide the resources for a more pluralistic and liberal philosophy than the Confucians.

Table of Contents:

Blinded by heaven
The pre-established heart-mind
The transformation of things
Zhen, some normative concerns
The facts of human construction
Metaphor in the Zhuangzi and theories of metaphor
Self, virtue (de) and values in the Zhuangzi

Language, Discourse, and Praxis in Ancient China

Author: 
Zhenbin Sun

Publisher:
Springer

Publication Year:
2015

Abstract:

This book investigates Chinese comprehension and treatment of the relationship between language and reality. The work examines ancient Chinese philosophy through the pair of concepts known as ming 名-shi 實. 

By analyzing the pre-Qin thinkers’ discourse on ming and shi, the work explores how Chinese philosophers dealt with issues not only in language but also in ontology, epistemology, ethics, axiology, and logic. Through this discourse analysis, readers are invited to rethink the relationship of language to thought and behavior. The author criticizes and corrects vital misunderstandings of Chinese culture and highlights the anti-dualism and pragmatic character of Chinese thoughts. The rich meaning of the ming-shi pair is displayed by revealing its connection to other philosophical issues. The chapters show how discourse on language and reality shapes a central characteristic of Chinese culture, the practical zhi. They illuminate the interplay of Chinese theories of language and Dao as Chinese wisdom and worldview. 

Readers who are familiar with pragmatics and postmodernism will recognize the common points in ancient Chinese philosophy and contemporary Western philosophy, as they emerge through these chapters. The work will particularly appeal to scholars of philosophy, philosophy of language, communication studies and linguistics.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

1. Methodological and historical inquiry
2. Four notions of names
3. Synthesis of language and reality
4. Moral practice and language
5. Sociopolitical practice and language
6. Linguistic practice and language
7. Speech
8. Argument
9. Dao
10. Practical Zhi (實踐之智)

New Visions of the Zhuangzi

Editor:
Livia Kohn

Publication Year:
2015


Publisher:
Three Pines Press

Abstract:
New Visions of the Zhuangzi is a collection of thirteen essays on the ancient Daoist philosophical work, presenting new angles and approaches. It overcomes the traditional division of schools in favor of topics, sheds new light on key philosophical notions, examines Zhuangzi's use of language, and explores issues of his use of language. In addition, it also applies modern neuroscience to its instructions, explores its vision of the ideal mind, and connects Zhuangzi's teachings to issues of education and community relevant in contemporary society.

Table of Contents:

Preface 
Livia Kohn v

Beyond Our Control?
Two Responses to Uncertainty and Fate in Early China
Mercedes Valmisa 1

Joys of an Empty Skull:
The Tension between Nature and Death in the Zhuangzi
Agnė Budriūnaitė 24

Zhuangzi and the Heterogeneity of Value
Chris Fraser 41

Zhuangzi’s Weiwuwei Epistemology:
Seeing through Dichotomy to Polarity
Alan Fox 61

Parodoxes of Health and Power in the Zhuangzi
Hans-Georg Moeller 72

Zhuangzi 莊子 x Comme des Garçons:
When Dress Meets Body in the Warring States
Lucia Q. Tang 84

How Metaphor Functions in the Zhuangzi:
The Case of the Unlikely Messenger
Robert Elliott Allinson 97

Different Layers of Ineffability in the Zhuangzi
Roy Porat 119

The Rhetoric of Transformation:
The Arts of Persuasion in the Zhuangzi
Jung Lee 137

Hermits, Mountains, and Yangsheng in Early Daoism:
Perspectives from the Zhuangzi
Thomas Michael 149

Forget or Not Forget? The Neurophysiology of Zuowang
Livia Kohn 165

Infants, Children, and Moral Development in the Zhuangzi
and the Daode jing
Erin M. Cline 184

Zhuangzi and the Coming Community
Eske J. Møllgaard 205

Contributors 215

Index 217

Ritual and Religion in the Xunzi (《荀子》中的禮儀與宗教)

Editors: 
T. C. Kline III, Justin Tiwald

Publisher:
SUNY Press

Publication Year:
2014

Abstract:
Xunzi, a founding figure in the Confucian tradition, is one of the world’s great philosophers and theorists of religion. For much of the last century, his work has been seen largely as critical of religion, particularly the popular beliefs and invocations of supernatural forces that underpin so many religious rituals. Contributors to this volume challenge this view and offer a more sophisticated picture of Xunzi. He emerges not as critic, but rather as an adherent of religion who seeks to give religious practices meaning even though many religious beliefs are mistaken or self-serving. Each essay offers a powerful illustration of Xunzi as both a religious devotee and as a philosopher of religion, drawing on a wide array of disciplines and methodologies.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Notes on Conventions
Introduction

Religious Vision

1. Xunzi as a Religious Philosopher
Edward J. Machle

2. A Happy Symmetry: Xunzi’s Ecological Ethic
Philip J. Ivanhoe

Ritual Theory

3. Ritual and Religion: A Lesson from Xunzi for Today
Robert C. Neville

4. Xunzi: Ritualization as Humanization
Lee H. Yearly

5. Xunzi’s Reinterpretation of Ritual: A Hermeneutic Defense of the Confucian Way
Mark Berkson

Comparative Approaches

6. Ritual and Tradition in Xunzi and Dōgen
James Robson

7. Sheltering Under the Sacred Canopy: Peter Berger and Xunzi
T. C. Kline III

Selected Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index

Dao Companion to the Analects

Editor: 
Olberding, Amy

Publication Year:
2014

Publisher:
Springer

Abstract:
This volume surveys the major philosophical concepts, arguments, and commitments of the Confucian classic, the Analects. In thematically organized chapters, leading scholars provide a detailed, scholarly introduction to the text and the signal ideas ascribed to its protagonist, Confucius.

The volume opens with chapters that reflect the latest scholarship on the disputed origins of the text and an overview of the broad commentarial tradition it generated. These are followed by chapters that individually explore key areas of the text’s philosophical landscape, articulating both the sense of concepts such as ren, li, and xiao as well as their place in the wider space of the text. A final section addresses prominent interpretive challenges and scholarly disputes in reading the Analects, evaluating, for example, the alignment between the Analects and contemporary moral theory and the contested nature of its religious sensibility.

Dao Companion to the Analects offers a comprehensive and complete survey of the text's philosophical idiom and themes, as well as its history and some of the liveliest current debates surrounding it. This book is an ideal resource for both researchers and advanced students interested in gaining greater insight into one of the earliest and most influential Confucian classics.


Table of Contents:
1. Introduction, Amy Olberding.

- Part I Text and Context.-
2. History and Formation of the Analects, Tae Hyun Kim and Mark Csikszentmihalyi.- 
3. The Commentarial Tradition, John B. Henderson and On-Cho Ng.- 
4. Confucius and His Communit, Yuet Keung Lo.

- Part II The Conceptual Landscape.- 
5. Ren 仁: An Exemplary Life, Karyn Lai.- 
6. Ritual and Rightness in the Analect, Hagop Sarkissian.- 
7. Family Reverence (xiao 孝) in the Analects:
Confucian Role Ethics and the Dynamics of Intergenerational Transmission, Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr..- 
8. Language and Ethics in the Analects, Hui Chieh Loy.- 
9. Uprightness, Indirection, Transparency, Lisa Raphals.- 
10. Cultivating the Self in Concert with Others, David B. Wong.- 
11. Perspectives on Moral Failure in the Analects, Amy Olberding.

- Part III Mapping the Landscape: Issues in Interpretation.- 
12. The Analects and Moral Theory, Stephen C. Angle.- 
13. Religious Thought and Practice in the Analects, Erin M. Cline.- 
14. The Analects and Forms of Governance, Tongdong Bai.- 
15. Why Care? A Feminist Re-appropriation of Confucian Xiao 孝, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee.- 
16. Balancing Conservatism and Innovation: The Pragmatic Analects, Sor-hoon Tan.

- Indexm.
- Index Locorum.

Heaven and Earth Are Not Humane: The Problem of Evil in Classical Chinese Philosophy 天地無仁：中國古典哲學中惡的問題

Author:
Franklin Perkins

Publisher:
Indiana University Press

Publication Year:
2014

Abstract:
That bad things happen to good people was as true in early China as it is today. Franklin Perkins uses this observation as the thread by which to trace the effort by Chinese thinkers of the Warring States Period (c.475-221 BCE), a time of great conflict and division, to seek reconciliation between humankind and the world. Perkins provides rich new readings of classical Chinese texts and reflects on their significance for Western philosophical discourse.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements
Note on Abbreviated Citations
Introduction: Philosophy in a Cross-Cultural Context
1. Formations of the Problem of Evil
2. The Efficacy of Human Action and the Mohist Opposition to Fate
3. Efficacy and Following Nature in the Dàodéjīng
4. Reproaching Heaven and Serving Heaven in the Mèngzĭ
5. Beyond the Human in the Zhuāngĭ
6. Xúnzĭ and the Fragility of the Human
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

The Huainanzi and Textual Production in Early China 《淮南子》與早期中國的文本生產

Editors: 
Sarah A. Queen & Michael Puett

Publication Year: 
2014

Publisher: 
Brill

Abstract: 

The Han dynasty Huainanzi is a compendium of knowledge covering every subject from self-cultivation, astronomy, and calendrics, to the arts of government. This edited volume follows a multi-disciplinary approach to explore how and why the Huainanzi was produced and how we should interpret the work.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgements
Foreword
About the Contributors
Introduction - Sarah A. Queen and Michael Puett

PART ONE AUTHORSHIP AND TEXTUAL FORMATION:

1. Root-Branches Structuralism in the Huainanzi - Andrew Meyer
2. Daoist Inner Cultivation Thought and the Textual Structure of the Huainanzi - Harold D. Roth
3. Representations of Confucius in the Huainanzi - Sarah A. Queen
4. Creating a Book and Performing it: The “Yao Lüe” Chapter of the Huainanzi as a Western Han Fu - Martin Kern

PART TWO KNOWLEDGE AND RHETORIC:

5. Tool Metaphors in the Huainanzi and Other Early Texts - John S. Major
6. The Huainanzi’s “Heavenly Patterns” and the Shiji’s “Treatise on the Celestial Offices”: What’s the Difference? - David W. Pankenier
7. A Note on Logical Connectives in the Huainanzi - Michael Nylan

PART THREE AUDIENCE AND RECEPTION:

8. Sages, Creation, and the End of History in the Huainanzi
       《淮南子》中聖人，創造與歷史的終結 - Michael Puett
9. The Liu Clan’s ‘Flesh and Bone’: The Foundation of Liu An’s Vision of Empire 
     劉氏骨肉: 劉安帝國觀的基礎- Judson B. Murray
10. The Discourse about Lords (Zhuhou) in the Huainanzi 《淮南子》諸侯論
       - Griet Vankeerberghen 
11. Breaking through Heaven’s Glass Ceiling: The Significance of the Commoner Woman of Qi in the “Lan Ming” Chapter of the Huananzi - Anne Behnke Kinney

References
Index of Terms