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.
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.
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.
Based on comparative philosophical methodology, this paper presents a new hermeneutic method for interpreting Chinese (especially ancient Chinese) texts. It first introduces the rich tradition of ...Chinese hermeneutics and then analyses its possible dialogues with European hermeneutic methods, especially Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons”. It identifies some methodological problems inherent in this method and, on this basis, proposes the application of a new hermeneutic method that may be more suitable for the interpretation of traditional Chinese metaphysical and literary texts. It is based on the traditional philosophical-aesthetic notion of jingjie 境界. The author preliminarily refers to this method as a “fusion of aesthetic realms”.
Recently, much work has been put into the scholarly understanding and interpretation of the complexities of the Daoist tradition. This includes a critical exploration of its contribution to ...contemporary environmental issues. In this paper, the author reflects on the intersection of Daoist humanism and ecology and highlights the theoretical and historical implications associated with the Daoist approach to the environment. These starting points can tell us much about how Daoist philosophical thought can be successfully connected to humanism and the sciences of ecology and the environment. The article points to the possibility of an alternative worldview that can help us, in our limited time and space, nonetheless find the possibility of living some kind of sustainable yet here-and-now moment. In doing so, the author starts from some key questions found in classical texts. Through her analyzes, she examines the potential applicability of classical Daoist thought and practice in China and in the West, both in relation to the modern ecological crisis and to the role and place of human beings within nature and society.
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 this book, Jana S. Rošker offers the first comprehensive overview and exegesis of the work of Li Zehou, who is one of the most significant and influential Chinese philosophers of our time. Rošker ...shows us how Li's complex system of thought seeks to revive various Chinese traditions, and at the same time attempts to harmonize or reconcile this cultural heritage with the demands of the dominant economic, political, and axiological structures of our globalized world. Variously characterized as ""neo-traditional,"" ""neo-Kantian,"" ""post-Marxist,"" ""Marxist-Confucian,"" ""pragmatist,"" ""instrumentalist,"" ""romantic,"" and more, Li's work was central to the period known as the Chinese Enlightenment in the 1980s and has helped modify and transform antiquated patterns of Chinese intellectual discourse. He is one of the rare Chinese thinkers whose work has not only had a deep and lasting impact on Chinese intellectuals, but has acquired a broad readership outside of China as well. Seen from a broader intercultural perspective, Li's unique and imaginative approach to a wide range of basic theoretical problems has created new styles of intellectual investigation, while reminding us of our belonging to a common humanity, regardless of differences in our individual cultures, languages, preferences, and traditions.. This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. View the book online at the SUNY Open Access Repository at https://soar.suny.edu/handle/20.500.12648/14802
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.
