Addresses Ming Dynasty philosopher Wang Fuzhi’s neo-Confucianism from the perspective of contemporary ecological humanism. In this novel engagement with Ming Dynasty philosopher Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692), Nicholas S. Brasovan presents Wang’s neo-Confucianism as an important theoretical resource for engaging with contemporary ecological humanism. Brasovan coins the term “person-in-the-world” to capture ecological humanism’s fundamental premise that humans and nature are inextricably bound together, and argues that Wang’s cosmology of energy (qi) gives us a rich conceptual vocabulary for understanding the continuity that exists (...) between persons and the natural world. The book makes a significant contribution to English-language scholarship on Wang Fuzhi and to Chinese intellectual history, with new English translations of classical Chinese, Mandarin, and French texts in Chinese philosophy and culture. This innovative work of comparative philosophy not only presents a systematic and comprehensive interpretation of Wang’s thought but also shows its relevance to contemporary discussions in the philosophy of ecology. “This is a fine study of Wang Fuzhi’s complex and fascinating neo-Confucian cosmology. I learned an immense amount about one of China’s last great Confucian intellectuals.” — John Berthrong, author of Expanding Process: Exploring Philosophical and Theological Transformations in China and the West. (shrink)

In Chinese philosophy’s encounter with modernity and feminist discourse, Neo-Confucianism often suffered the most brutal attacks and criticisms. In “Neo-Confucians and Zhu Xi on Family and Woman: Challenges and Potentials,” Ann A. Pang-White investigates Song Neo-Confucians’ views (in particular, that of Zhu Xi) on women by examining the Classifi ed Conversations of Zhu Xi (Zhuzi Yulei), the Reflections on Things at Hand (Jinsi Lu), Further Reflections on Things at Hand (Xu Jinsi Lu), and other texts. Pang-White also takes a close (...) look at the Song law regarding women’s property rights and the Song educational system. Surprisingly,Zhu exhibited a level of flexibility, though still limited, on these subjects. He was particularly adamant about the importance of women’s education. In addition, even though he opposed the social practice and women’s ownership of dowry (seeing it as a form of commercializing marriage), he did not absolutely oppose women’s property rights. However, his normative and philosophical view on the male/yang and female/yin relationship was less satisfactory. At one place, he used it to illustrate gender equity; at another place, he defended female subordination. Zhu’s social-political teaching on women’s role could benefit from a more consistent development of his metaphysics of li-qi and yin-yang, which can bring new insight to the contemporary feminist “essentialist versus non-essentialist” debate on sex and gender. (shrink)

A major addition to our understanding of the development of Neo-Confucianism--its complexity, diversity, richness, and depth as a major component of the moral and spiritual fiber of the peoples of East Asia.

This paper explores the extent to which the Confucian concept of ren (humaneness) has application in ways that are comparable tocontemporary versions of environmental virtue ethics. I argue that the accounts of self-cultivation that are developed in major texts of the Confucian tradition have important direct implications for environmental thinking that even the Neo-Confucians do not seriously entertain.

Neo-Confucian metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical theories provide support for an architectural ethic. The latter can be justified through an emphasis on the humane person who becomes one with all things, appropriate knowing of reality, and an extended theory of virtue. Built space can express a wide range of virtue or excellence, some human-centered, some not, demonstrating how _qi_ 氣 and _li_ 理 present an enormous range of possibilities. A Neo-Confucian approach to built space also aligns with specific themes (...) prevalent in Western “biophilic” design, emphasizing the causal interrelation between a building and its surrounding environment. Finally, the former discussion can serve as a useful response to the tension between contemporary Western architectural principles and the current call toward sustainable design. An architectural ethic rooted in Neo-Confucian philosophy appears to call for a revision of certain prominent design principles while also being sympathetic to particular concerns of aesthetic creativity. (shrink)

In Chinese philosophy’s encounter with modernity and feminist discourse, Neo-Confucianism often suffered the most brutal attacks and criticisms. In “Neo-Confucians and Zhu Xi on Family and Woman: Challenges and Potentials,” Ann A. Pang-White investigates Song Neo-Confucians’ views (in particular, that of Zhu Xi) on women by examining the Classified Conversations of Zhu Xi (Zhuzi Yulei),the Reflections on Things at Hand (Jinsi Lu), Further Reflections on Things at Hand (Xu Jinsi Lu), and other texts. Pang-White also takes a close look at (...) the Song law regarding women’s property rights and the Song educational system. Surprisingly, Zhu exhibited a level of flexibility, though still limited, on these subjects. He was particularly adamant about the importance of women’s education. In addition,even though he opposed the social practice and women’s ownership of dowry (seeing it as a form of commercializing marriage), he did not absolutely oppose women’s property rights. However, his normative and philosophical view on the male/yang and female/yin relationship was less satisfactory. At one place, he used it to illustrate gender equity; at another place, he defended female subordination. Zhu’s social-political teaching on women’s role could benefit from a more consistent development of his metaphysics of li-qi and yin-yang , which can bring new insight to the contemporary feminist “essentialist versus non-essentialist” debate on sex and gender. (shrink)

This essay is an examination of the perception during the Song dynasty of moral life and human nature as reflected in the moral thought of Zhu Xi 朱熹. It is based on the assumption that for every historical period there is a corresponding particular type of morality.1 The thesis that this analysis defends is the existence of an immanent transmoral dimension within Neo-Confucian morality. This dimension is fully immanent as a constantly present grounding of the individual. It is also (...) fully transmoral as a capacity that enables the individual to surpass conventional notions of morality or moral norms and practices, and to reach the ultimate source of morality. The latter is inward but anchored in a higher... (shrink)

This paper reviews the history of Korean Neo-Confucian thought from its introduction in the late fourteenth century until the end of the Joseon dynasty in the early twentieth century. With the founding of Joseon in 1392 the Neo-Confucian synthesis that had swept China was adopted in Korea, replacing the Buddhist establishment of the previous dynasty. The introductory section discusses the major figures in this transition and their grasp of the new metaphysical framework and ascetical theory which now supplemented (...) the traditional Confucian ethical core. The new teaching took deep root in the fifteenth century, but it did so in the context of succession problems leading to a series of “literati purges” of Confucians serving in government. The sixteenth century marked the coming to full intellectual maturity of the Neo-Confucian thought of the Cheng-Zhu school on the Korean peninsula. Toegye and Yulgok, the most famous names in Korean Neo-Confucian thought, represented opposing sides in the celebrated Four Seven Debate concerning the origination of feelings in the mind-and-heart. As the Mongols established the new Qing dynasty in China in the seventeenth century, Korean Neo-Confucians felt they had become the sole heritors and defenders of true civilization, leading to a period of intense and conflicted conservative orthodox orientation towards the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian school. In the intense factional struggles of the time the Yulgok followers of a faction led by Song Siyeol rose to dominance, and in the early eighteenth century the second most celebrated controversy, the Horak Debate, broke out within the ranks of this single intellectual lineage. The debate is best known for the question of whether and how humans and all other creatures share the same “original nature,” but it also inquired deeply into the accessibility of the original nature in techniques of meditative self-cultivation. The latter part of the eighteenth century is known for the emergence of a broad, loosely coordinated movement away from philosophical questions towards “practical learning,” or “Silhak” as twentieth century historians have named it. Philosophical inquiry continued to have a lively life well into the nineteenth century, however, with a deepening and radicalization of lines of thought established in the earlier debates, as well as some creative crossing and merging of the boundaries that separated the intellectual lineages of Toegye and Yulgok. (shrink)

This essay explores the sudden emergence of Neo-Confucianism as an independent intellectual and professional calling, and its adoption by both scholars and political leaders as the dominant intellectual and epistemological discourse in early modern Japan (1600-1868). I shall do this by examining two of the mostimportant early Neo-Confucian converts from Zen Buddhism, Fujiwara Seika and Hayashi Razan during the late 16th and the early 17th centuries. Their conversions were initially separate events, each prompted by personal circumstances and choices. But (...) these converts later sparked the appearance of other exclusive Neo-Confucianists, and eventually to the new intellectual mainstream of a Neo-Confucianism independent of Buddhism, during the Tokugawa period. Previous scholars have approached the issue of these converts from Zen to Neo-Confucianism through the lens of a philosophical shift. However, this is a hasty conclusion which ignores socio-intellectual factors surrounding these converts’ life and situation. My preliminary research reveals that Neo-Confucianconversion was not the result of philosophical change; rather, it was propelled by practical and utilitarian motivation. They abandoned Buddhism to locate themselves as ‘professional’ Neo-Confucianists, and this strategy successfully served their purpose. (shrink)

Confucius gave counsel that is notoriously hard to follow: "What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose on others" (Huang 1997: 15.24). People tend to be concerned with themselves and to be indifferent to most others. We are distinct from others so our self-concern does not include them, or so it seems. Were we to realize this distinctness is merely apparent--that our true self includes others--Confucius's counsel would be easier to follow. Concern for our true self would extend (...) concern beyond the narrow selves we appear to be. The neo-Confucians held just such a view. They espoused an identity with the universe and everything in it, arguing that this identity explains a natural concern for everyone and everything, not just for our narrow selves. However, many things in the universe differ from each other, that is, some have qualities others lack. If they are all one and the same thing then that one thing differs from itself. I will suggest that the objection can be answered with some metaphysical innovation. I will address the objection by sketching a theory--call it the theory of aspects--that explains how numerically identical things can differ qualitatively. (shrink)

This article examines women's bodies in South Korea and the modes of Neo-Confucian governmentality at work within this consumer society. The concealed woman's body under Neo-Confucianism appears to have been supplanted by a liberated consumer body. This seems to represent a major shift in what the body means today. Nonetheless, the techniques of governmentality that controlled women's bodies under strict Neo-Confucian codes remain active in Korea's consumer society, so that despite the appearance of a striking shift in body (...) presentation, the methods of control remain remarkably similar. This article first examines the Neo-Confucian conception of the body, focusing on Neo-Confucian discourses on the female body and self, and the Neo-Confucian techniques of governmentality employed to control women's bodies. Next it observes how women live out the capitalist body in Korea's consumer society, using mostly journals, magazines and various women's views. Finally, it attempts to show how the new principles of consumer culture combine with Neo-Confucian techniques of governmentality to control women's bodies. (shrink)

The author examines some Confucian-trained Tokugawa Japanese scholars who were concerned about the deleterious impact of Buddhism on native Shinto thought and practice. Several leading Confucian-tr...

This Companion is the first volume to provide a comprehensive introduction, in accessible English, to the Neo-Confucian philosophical thought of representative ...

Contemporary Neo-Confucianism, as represented by Tang Junyi, Mou Zongsan and Tu Wei-ming, has a definite religiosity. They consciously draw a parallel between the Christian God-human relationship and Confucian Heaven-human relationship, and argue for the superiority of the latter. They characterize the Christian God as “pure transcendence”; in contrast, they embrace immanentism of the Heaven and assert the divinity of human nature. This article argues that these Confucian thinkers have a very distorted understanding of classical Christian theology. They cherry-pick (...) some statements from the Neo-Orthodox theologians, charge this God for its remoteness from us, and happily ascribe divinity to human nature. They are totally unaware that their immanentism is déjà vu to the Neo-Orthodox theological movement. The religious thoughts of Tang, Mou, and Tu, though in different degrees, resemble German liberal theology in many crucial ways, against which Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann have successfully revolted. Instead of using Neo-Orthodox theologians as a foil, the future development of Neo-Confucian religiousness has much to learn from this theological movement. (shrink)

This chapter explains how Xunzi's text and views helped shape the thought of the Neo-Confucian philosophers, noting and explicating some areas of influence long overlooked in modern scholarship. It begins with a general overview of Xunzi’s changing position in the tradition (“Xunzi’s Status in Neo-Confucian Thought”), in which I discuss Xunzi’s status in three general periods of Neo-Confucian era: the early period, in which Neo-Confucian views of Xunzi were varied and somewhat ambiguous, the “mature” period, in (...) which a broad consensus formed and then became orthodoxy for several centuries, and a late and often overlooked reassessment of Xunzi that took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the second section (“Debating Human Nature on Xunzi’s Terms”), I discuss in greater detail Neo-Confucian criticisms of Xunzi’s views on human nature, noting that in key respects the Neo-Confucians accepted Xunzi’s somewhat uncharitable characterization of the doctrine that human nature is good, thereby taking on a considerably greater burden of proof than necessary. In the third section (“Virtue without Roots”), I attempt to explicate what is perhaps the most prominent but also the most laconic Neo-Confucian criticism of Xunzi, which is that Xunzi misunderstands the “great root” or “great foundation” of cosmic and social order, finding it in conventional human relationships rather than in the deeper, purer and more powerful inner workings of human nature. In the final section (“The Accretional Theory of Knowledge Acquisition”), I explain how the major differences between Xunzi and his Neo-Confucian critics can be cast as a dispute about how moral knowledge is acquired, where Xunzi’s critics assume that acquiring moral knowledge of any meaningful kind is impossible without a natural base or foundation of moral knowledge to begin with. (shrink)

The author examines some Confucian-trained Tokugawa Japanese scholars who were concerned about the deleterious impact of Buddhism on native Shinto thought and practice. Several leading Confucian-trained scholars appealed to Zhu Xi’s thought in various ways to reinforce and preserve Shintoism and its original spirit.

A metaphor is an effective way to show how something is to be conceived. In this article, I look at two Neo-Confucian Korean philosophical contexts—the Four-Seven debate and Book of the Imperial Pivot—and suggest that metaphors are philosophically expedient in two further contexts: when both intellect and emotion must be addressed; and when the aim of philosophizing is to produce behavioral change. Because Neo-Confucians had a conception of the mind that closely connected it to the heart (心 xin), metaphor’s (...) empathy-inducing and perspective-giving capacities made it an especially helpful mode of philosophizing in the history of Korean philosophy. (shrink)

This essay is a case study concerning the problem of rethinking the relationship between Neo-Confucian (Cheng-Zhu school) and Chan schools of thought. The study builds a comparative perspective on two representative texts assembled during the Song dynasty that concern methods of self-cultivation. My theoretical framework is hermeneutical and involves a twofold articulation of correlatives: “inward-outward” and “procedural morality-substantive morality.” By presenting a comparative interpretation of ideas developed in these texts, this analysis highlights the following two components: first, the existence (...) of explicit confluences between major ideas of the influential Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian school, which most virulently criticizes the Buddhist tradition, and Chan’s practical methods of self-cultivation; second, it calls attention to the presence of Chan influences in the Neo-Confucian text. Through comparative analysis, this essay intends not only to bring to light Chan influences insightfully integrated by Neo-Confucians within their own discourse on self-cultivation, but also to understand the multidimensional relation between Song-dynasty Neo-Confucian and Chan practices. (shrink)

This is the first book in English to study the thoughts of Contemporary Neo-Confucian philosophers in great depth.

Offers three Neo-Confucian understandings of broadening the Way as broadening oneself, through an ongoing process of removing self-boundaries.

In his critical examination of the most interesting and significant case, As the title shows, Of ideological 'love and hate' in the whole history of chinese philosophy and religion, The author first points out the mahayana influences on the formation of neo-Confucian philosophy. He then shows the neo-Confucian vehement attacks upon mahayana buddhism, Based on the three confucian principles inseparable and complementary to one another. After a philosophical clarification of mahayana thought against the neo-Confucian attacks, He (...) concludes that, Despite their lack of understanding buddhism in terms of the middle way, The neo-Confucianists' ethico-Social criticism is very hard-Hitting and requires a mature philosophical reflection on the part of mahayana buddhists themselves. (shrink)

Well known as a scholar of Asian culture, de Bary examines the concepts of self-understanding and self-cultivation in neo-Confucian thought from the 12th to the 17th centuries, in relation to the social, political, and scholarly roles of educated men in late imperial China. Rejecting the notion that.

Cheju Island, Korea's historic island of exile, with a harsh natural environment, early developed a negative image as human habitat. The author challenges this perception and shows how Neo-Confucian state ideology during the Yi dynasty created and conserved the island as a viable habitat by using feng-shui--a powerful medieval science of surveying--to shape the island's built environment and quality of life. The outcome, reflecting sustained political commitment to the philosophical concept of enlightened undervelopment, was a sincere landscape inhabited by (...) a virtuous people. (shrink)

Ch'en Ch'un: An Introduction . CHEN CH'UN THE MAN Ch'en Ch'un (-), honored as Master of Pei-hsi (the river in the northern part of the prefecture) was one ...

This article attempts to see whether value can be independent of fact. I argue that, in this regard, the two traditional models of ethics, Kant's deontology and Bentham/Mill's utilitarianism are both faulty. In comparison, while contemporary Aristotelian virtue ethics does seem more promising, I argue that such a version of virtue ethics is still deficient. The main purpose of this article is to develop an alternative version of virtue ethics, what I call neo-Confucian ontological virtue ethics, drawing on Cheng (...) Hao and Cheng Yi's identification of virtue and nature, which provides a negative answer to our question without committing the 'naturalist fallacy'. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Wang Yangming'sNeo-Confucian religious beliefs can bewarranted, and that the rationality of hisreligious beliefs constitutes a significantdefeater for the rationality of Christianbelief on Alvin Plantinga's theory of warrant. I also question whether the notion of warrantas proper function can adequately account fortheories of religious knowledge in which theaffections play an integral role. Idemonstrate how a consideration of Wang'sepistemology reveals a difficulty forPlantinga's defense of the rationality ofChristian belief and highlights a limitation ofPlantinga's current conception (...) of warrant asproper function. (shrink)

This article proposes to discuss the role of music within confucian philosophy as a whole and within neo-Confucian philosophy in particular. The discussion includes a consideration of the construction of chinese music; philosophical correlations drawn between musical elements and features of both macrocosm and microcosm; musical aesthetics in the confucian and neo-Confucian philosophical systems; and affinities between the nature of music and the broader outlook of confucian and neo-Confucian philosophy. The suggestion is made that (...) these affinities help to explain the prominent role of music in these two philosophical schools. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

Though not deriving from European modernity at all, the Chinese tradition of Neo‐Confucianism bean many similarities to the American pragmatic tradition….