Abstract

This review article on Chenyang Li’s The Confucian Philosophy of Harmony will be divided into three sections. In the first section I will briefly describe Li’s Confucian Philosophy of Harmony, highlighting the major arguments of each chapter. The second section will critically analyze the contrasts Li draws between Confucian and ancient Greek notions of harmony. Here I do not attempt to criticize Li, but rather build on his comparison between Chinese and Greek philosophy, which plays only a minor role in this work. I propose that there is room to think about Greek philosophy, and Plato in particular, in ways that promote a more dynamic interpretation of the relationship between harmony and order. Reversing the mainstream trend of “using the West to understand China” (以西释中), I will show that we may also benefit from “using China to understand the West.”