The Confucian revival which manifests itself in the Modern Confucian current, belongs to the most important streams of thought in contemporary Chinese philosophy. The Rebirth of the Moral Self ...introduces this stream of thought by focusing on the second generation Modern Confucians— Mou Zongsan, Tang Junyi, Xu Fuguan and Fang Dongmei. These scholars argue that traditional Confucianism, as a specifically Chinese social, political, and moral system of thought can, if adapted to the modern era, serve as the foundation for an ethically meaningful modern life.
In China, humanism, especially within the framework of Confucian ethics, developed quite differently from humanist discourses in Europe. Therefore, it is important to understand the origins and ...development of Confucian ideas that place human beings at the center of culture and the cosmos. Through the lens of the cultural particularities of humanism, this knowledge can help us gain a more complex and multi-layered insight into the universal factors that make up human nature. This paper critically examines the foundations, development, and distinctive features of traditional Chinese humanism, which emerged within the framework of classical Confucian teachings. Beginning with an analysis of the Confucian view of the relationship between the individual and society, the author explains the conceptual origin and historical development of various models of humanism in the Chinese tradition. The paper then sheds light on the reasons for the transition from religions to humanities that took place in China during the Axial Age, and highlights various implications of this transition manifested in Confucian ethics and its search for a better social order.
This paper addresses the question of whether it is possible to develop theoretical methods to reconcile absolute principles on the one hand and relative tenets on the other. I will look at this ...question through the lens of classical Chinese logic and, more concretely, through the elaborations of the Chinese logician Hui Shi on this relationship. The examination of this problem proceeds from a general introduction of the basic framework of semantically determined classical Chinese logic, through an illumination of Hui Shi's specific contributions to the field, to a tentative explanation of his conception of the nature of the relation between absoluteness and relativity, embedded in more general structures of his thought and illustrated by his interpretation of the possibility of unifying identity and difference.
There has been a significant amount of research carried out in Slovenia on the revival of Confucianism, particularly since 2012 and 2014, when the first two research projects on this topic were ...approved. Members of the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, have been consistently conducting research in Slovenia and various Chinese, Taiwanese, and East Asian archives and libraries. These efforts have led to several important publications in Slovene, English, and even Chinese, and represent an ongoing commitment that continues in the present day. Therefore, it is not surprising that the present special issue of the Slovenian academic journal Asian Studies, focusing on the Confucian revival, already marks the fourth special issue in this area of research. This review article’s objective is thus to summarize the key achievements of Slovenian research in this field and provide a comprehensive overview of the diverse Slovene research activities and publications related to Modern New Confucianism. It covers not only research on the revival of Confucianism in China and the broader Sinic region, but also includes Confucian studies in other East Asian regions and the wider Sinic area.
V Sloveniji je bilo opravljenih veliko raziskav konfucijanskega preporoda, zlasti od leta 2012 oz. 2014, ko sta bila odobrena prva dva raziskovalna projekta na to temo. Člani in članice Oddelka za azijske študije na Filozofski fakulteti Univerze v Ljubljani so odtlej kontinuirano izvajali raziskovalno delo tako v Sloveniji kot tudi v različnih kitajskih, tajvanskih in vzhodnoazijskih arhivih in knjižnicah. Te študije so privedle do vrste pomembnih publikacij v slovenščini, angleščini in celo v kitajščini, ki predstavljajo rezultate kontinuiranih prizadevanj, ki se nadaljujejo še danes. Zato ni presenetljivo, da je pričujoča številka že četrta posebna številka slovenske znanstvene revije Asian Studies (Azijske študije), ki je posvečena preporodu konfucijanstva. Cilj tega preglednega članka je torej povzeti ključne dosežke slovenskih raziskav na tem področju ter zagotoviti celovit pregled različnih raziskovalnih dejavnosti in publikacij v Sloveniji, povezanih s sodobnim novim konfucijanstvom. Obravnava ne le raziskave o preporodu konfucijanstva na Kitajskem in v širši vzhodnoazijski regiji, temveč tudi študije konfucianizma v drugih vzhodnoazijskih regijah in na širšem siniškem območju.
In the final decades of the 20th century, the majority of modern Sinophone scholars believed that Confucianism was an outdated and obsolete ideology that was not only unsuitable for the development ...of modern science and democratic societies, but also responsible for the deep social and political crisis that had branded China for the previous two centuries. Modern New Confucians, however, never assumed that the Confucian system was responsible for such a situation. Most of them believed that Confucianism was compatible with science and democracy. Moreover, the majority of them assumed that the East Asian cultures would never be able to develop truly democratic structures of their societies unless they incorporated the appropriate elements of their own, i.e. Confucian, traditions. This paper critically analyses the theoretical models of Tang Junyi and Mou Zongsan on the possible revival and development of Confucian proto-democracies.
The essay deals with problems encountered by Western researchers working in the field of Chinese philosophy. It begins with a discussion of intercultural and transcultural methodologies and ...illuminates some of the most common issues inherent in traditional intercultural comparisons in the field of philosophy. Taking into account the current state of the so-called postcomparative discourses in the field of transcultural philosophy and starting from the notion of culturally divergent frames of reference, it focuses upon semantic aspects of the Chinese philosophical tradition and exposes the need for discursive translations. On this basis, a new postcomparative approach in transcultural philosophical studies of Chinese philosophy is suggested. In this context, the author proposes the application of an innovative principle, based upon what can preliminary be denoted as the method of sublation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to numerous global problems that can only be solved on a global scale. Especially in light of the good performance of the Sinic region in containing and ...eliminating the coronavirus, the importance of intercultural dialogue between East and West became even more evident. In this context, this paper explores the role of digital technologies and the underlying ontology of digital objects in China as well as in the wider Sinic region. Indeed, the third millennium, which has just begun and will witness the accelerating trends of global warming and most likely the deepening of the gap between rich and poor, numerous wars, and new pandemics, will certainly be marked by the development of digital technologies. Therefore, the paper investigates the specific features of traditional Sinic perceptions of technology as such, as well as their ideational underpinnings, which certainly influence specific Sinic perceptions of digital objects. This will, I hope, provide us with a better understanding of the cultural conditionality of differences and commonalities in the global processes of digitalization and their ontological underpinnings, so that we can pay more attention to both the dangers and the opportunities that cross-cultural interactions in this area can offer us.
Eric S. Nelson’s Heidegger and Dao: Things, Nothingness, Freedom masterfully interweaves the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and classical Daoism, offering an intricate examination of their ...treatment of key concepts such as things, nothingness, and freedom. The book explores the nuanced variations and transformative interpretations of these central ideas, illuminating their profound impact on both Western and East Asian philosophical traditions. Both Asian and Western academics have long sought a book that offers a coherent and comprehensive introduction to the European reception of East Asian, and especially Daoist, philosophy, and thus one of the most significant contributions of this work is in fulfilling this need.
Eric S. Nelson’s Heidegger and Dao: Things, Nothingness, Freedom masterfully interweaves the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and classical Daoism, offering an intricate examination of their treatment of key concepts such as things, nothingness, and freedom. The book explores the nuanced variations and transformative interpretations of these central ideas, illuminating their profound impact on both Western and East Asian philosophical traditions. Both Asian and Western academics have long sought a book that offers a coherent and comprehensive introduction to the European reception of East Asian, and especially Daoist, philosophy, and thus one of the most significant contributions of this work is in fulfilling this need.
This paper investigates the relation between different models of ethics and their impact upon crises solution strategies. Because COVID-19 is a global-scale crisis, it has to be solved on the global ...level. In this framework, it is important to consider knowledge and ethical theories from different cultures. The paper outlines some theoretical groundworks for alternative models of social ethics from the perspective of traditional Chinese, particularly Confucian, philosophies. Among other issues, this perspective is meaningful because in the Sinitic areas the pandemic has so far been brought under control much quicker and more effectively than in other regions of the world. First, the paper introduces the Chinese philosophy of life and highlights its current relevance; then, it presents traditional Chinese models of relational and anti-essentialist concepts of the self and investigates their impact to the Confucian models of social ethics. On this basis, it illuminates some new ways of understanding interpersonal and intercultural interactions that might help us develop new strategies against current and future pandemics.
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