Neo-Confucian influence in early modern Japan was highly intellectual, indicating that Confucian ideals did not change the nature of Japanese norms of social lives. For early modern Japanese intellectuals, the conflict and contradiction between reality and ideals had always been a source of debate and inspiration. Within the theme of Neo-Confucian rites, the contradiction was highlighted owing to the fact that it included a guideline for authentic ancestral worship and religious policy. Once introduced within the Japanese circumstances (...) of the day, Confucian understanding on spirits and proper rites lead Japanese scholars to define what was legitimate worship in the format of state religion: it was necessary to authorize traditional Japanese worship toward domestic shrines. Within thepractical process of policy making, it must be noted that a keen interest toward local beliefs had emerged through the discussion. Arai Hakuseki (1657‐1725) reflects such political interest within his work ‘Kishinron’. In order to understand the impact of Japanese interpretation of Neo-Confucian ideals, it is essential to focus on the interrelationship between religious policy and interest toward local beliefs. (shrink)

abstract: The first Christian missionaries arrived in Japan in the middle of the sixteenth century. They missionized quite a number of Japanese people but also angered many through their disrespectful behavior and destruction of temples and shrines. Less than 100 years later, Japan closed its borders, persecuted Christians, and banned Christianity in total. The reasons for this drastic step weren't solely political but also theological. Theological arguments concerning theism, eschatology, ethics, and theology of religion are found in official edicts, (...) in "disputes" between Christian missionaries and Buddhist scholars, as well as in theological treatise. One of the reoccurring arguments against Christianity includes the description of the arrogant behavior of the missionaries. According to the documents, they displayed an attitude of knowing everything concerning the world next to the ignorant Buddhists. This exclusivist mindset wasn't compatible with the order of Japan and the three teachings. In the eyes of the authorities, this doctrine secured peace and ensured domestic stability. Especially the Japanese and former Christian Fabian Fucan, as well as the Buddhist monk Suzuki Shōsan, adduce various Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist teachings against the charge of ignorance. Conversely, Fucan's writing, as well as the edicts, records of religious "disputes," and other treatises, include the accusation that Christianity does not contain any new doctrine advancing the local one. Moreover, it is stated that Christian salvation exclusivism suggests a powerless God, and the missionaries were described as hypocrites and liars, as they did not keep their commandments. (shrink)

Confucius is finally rehabilitated. Party dignitaries kneel at his ancestral shrine. The benevolent Confucian is a new image of China for the outside, and for Chinese dealing with the collapse of ideology and the moral fabric of their society. The word tianxia is usually translated “all under Heaven.” It has a complicated history and a complicated contemporary appropriation in a desperate ideology-cum-PR campaign. The tianxia-idea is that China has for millennia been a government of all under heaven. It was (...) such a government in the past, is one today, and offers the whole world its benevolent alternative to liberalism and democracy. More than one contributor to this strong collection of interesting essays suspects that the Confucian revival is an act of desperation. As soft power, Confucianism may be no match for global capitalism. Soft power is not readily synthesized by official campaign. Its genuine source is in everyday life, and the life of ordinary Chinese is without much resonance beyond its borders. The whole world uses Chinese electronics, though almost none but the Chinese read their books, watch their television, or listen to their music. The world’s love affair with China is fixated on the economic numbers and is no less capricious. It has never been clear whether tianxia means a cultural realm without political boundaries, as is urged by modern ideologists, or is just another word for China, which is how modern Chinese dictionaries explain it. On the official account, membership in “all under Heaven” is a matter of shared culture, sustained by affective ties rather than coercion, but it is a culture that values order over freedom, ethics over law, and authority over democracy and human rights. Outsiders worry that tianxia is the cloak of a rising hegemon. However, the important audience for lofty talk of tianxia may be internal. Whether foreigners really trust it may be less urgent than for the Chinese to believe it about themselves. Postsocialist China has no unifying vision and has yet to honestly scrutinize official socialism. The new discourse of tianxia speaks to their need for a vision of their place in the world. The image of a tianxia government of benevolent authority may be more useful for identity within China than for offering the world a viable alternative to democracy and human rights. (shrink)

Many passages in early Confucian texts such as the Analects and Mengzi are focused on virtue, recommending qualities like humaneness (ren 仁), righteousness (yi 義), and trustworthiness (xin 信). Still others emphasize roles: what it means to be a good son, a good ruler, a good friend, a good teacher, or a good student. How are these teachings about virtues and roles related? In the past decade there has been a growing debate between two interpretations of early Confucian (...) ethics, one that sees virtues as fundamental, and the other of which starts from roles. Recently there have been two new contributions to the debate: Virtue Ethics and Confucianism (2013), edited by Stephen C. Angle and Michael Slote, which develops the virtue ethical interpretation, and Henry Rosemont, Jr.’s Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (2015), which defends the role-based interpretation. This paper lays out the main contours of the debate between Virtue Ethical Confucianism and Confucian Role Ethics, as well as examines the distinctive contributions of these two new works. (shrink)

Truth-telling to competent patients is widely affirmed as a cardinal moral and biomedical obligation in contemporary Western medical practice. In contrast, Chinese medical ethics remains committed to hiding the truth as well as to lying when necessary to achieve the family's view of the best interests of the patient. This essay intends to provide an account of the framing commitments that would both justify physician deception and have it function in a way authentically grounded in the familist moral concerns of (...) Confucianism. It reflects on the moral conditions and possibilities for sustaining a Confucian understanding of truth-telling and consent in mainland China. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese commentators rightly see that understanding Zhuangzi's way with words is the presupposition for understanding Zhuangzi at all. They are not sure, however, if Zhuangzi's words are super-effective or pure nonsense. I consider Zhuangzi's experience with language, and then turn to Heidegger's word of being to see if it may throw light on Zhuangzi's way of saying. I argue that a conversation between Heidegger and Zhuangzi on language is possible, but only by expanding Heidegger's notion of Gestell (enframing) and (...) through a destruction of the dominant Confucian discourse that obscures Zhuangzi's way of saying. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese commentators rightly see that understanding Zhuangzi's way with words is the presupposition for understanding Zhuangzi at all. They are not sure, however, if Zhuangzi's words are super-effective or pure nonsense. I consider Zhuangzi's experience with language, and then turn to Heidegger's word of being to see if it may throw light on Zhuangzi's way of saying. I argue that a conversation between Heidegger and Zhuangzi on language is possible, but only by expanding Heidegger's notion of Gestell and through (...) a destruction of the dominant Confucian discourse that obscures Zhuangzi's way of saying. (shrink)

Women struggling for recognition encounter an important difficulty in structural barriers to property ownership. In this paper, I propose to investigate the possibility of a roughly Confucian conception of property that both eschews the liberal property rights conception and provides more space for women than has been allowed in traditional Confucian property schemes. Western property regimes also failed to provide women with adequate access to property, but this was corrected in a manner in keeping with the Western fixation (...) on the individual. Important social problems arose in connection with the Western individualized approach to property relations. The traditional Confucian approach managed to avoid the Western problems, but, as in the West, it failed to provide women with sufficient access to property. I argue here that Confucianism is adequately supplied to correct this deficiency through two routes: one ritual-based and one canon-based. (shrink)

Across the world, socio-economic forces are shifting the locus of long-term care from the family to institutional settings, producing significant moral, not just financial costs. This essay explores these costs and the distortions in the role of the family they involve. These reflections offer grounds for critically questioning the extent to which moral concerns regarding long-term care in Hong Kong and in mainland China are the same as those voiced in the United States, although family resemblances surely exist. Chinese moral (...) values such as virtue and filial piety embedded in a Confucian moral and social context cannot be recast without distortion in terms of modern Western European notions. The essay concludes that the Confucian resources must be taken seriously in order to develop an authentic Chinese bioethics of long-term care and a defensible approach to long-term care policy for contemporary society in general and Chinese society in particular. (shrink)

This essay introduces the philosophy of harmony in Classical Confucianism. In the first part of the essay the author summarizes the concept of harmony as it was developed in various Confucian classics. In the second part, the author offers an account of the Confucian program of harmony, ranging from internal harmony in the person, to harmony in the family, the state, the international world, and finally to harmony in the entire universe.

Confucian state doctrines have shaped Asian cultures for millennia as prescriptive codes of conduct with an emphasis on hierarchy and obligation. Yet a premise at the core of lǐ —understood as propriety, ritual, or generally a cultural grammar—is authenticity, and authentic respect cannot be commanded. What if the lǐ were to be elegant instead? Hans-Georg Gadamer analyzed play as a fusion of horizons that are absorbed into the same event, co-constituting subject and object in an aesthetic experience, and dissolving (...) their dichotomy. We consider examples from Japanese aesthetics in this framework to give depth to key Confucian concepts: the values that enable a relationality that is not in conflict with autonomy; the points of reference for self-improvement through culture; a social organization that enacts reciprocity; and the essential posture this requires. The radical simplicity of the philosophy of tea, chanoyu, and the aesthetic refinement of the Katsura Rikyū palace illuminate the principle of emotional resonance in encounters, which underlies the fusion of cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic horizons. This view reveals how the relational premise of the Confucian philosophical system entails an ontological commitment to mutuality. This is indeed ethics, but neither particularism nor generalism; in its aesthetic dimension it is the mode of perception of a self fulfilled in play. (shrink)

While the concept of Menschenwürde (universal human dignity) has served as the foundation for human rights, it is absent in the Confucian tradition. However, this does not mean that Confucianism has no resources for a broadly construed notion of human dignity. Beginning with two underlying dilemmas in the notion of Menschenwürde and explaining how Confucianism is able to avoid them, this essay articulates numerous unique features of a Confucian account of human dignity, and shows that the Confucian (...) account goes beyond the limitations of Menschenwürde. It is arguably richer and more sophisticated in content, and more constructive for protecting and cultivating human dignity. (shrink)

This book offers a side-by-side consideration of two competing interpretations of Confucius' ethical teachings in the Analects, ultimately arguing that Confucius’ ethics has important things to teach us about both our inner character traits and our social roles.

This book offers a side-by-side consideration of two competing interpretations of Confucius' ethical teachings in the Analects, ultimately arguing that Confucius’ ethics has important things to teach us about both our inner character traits and our social roles.

The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci's teaching on the goodness of human nature in The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven represents the fruit of the first encounter between Catholicism and Confucianism. This article will consider the Thomistic and neo‐Confucian sources in Ricci's enunciation of the Catholic doctrine on the goodness of human nature in this Chinese catechism. It will illustrate that Ricci developed his teaching, which is fundamentally Thomistic, with the help of terminology borrowed from the Chinese philosophical (...) tradition. His distinction between the good of nature and the good of virtue leads to prioritising the cultivation of human nature. Ricci's teaching reflects the early modern Jesuits’ appreciation of human freedom. It also displays a Catholic reaction to the sixteenth‐century neo‐Confucian intellectual trend that ignored the importance of moral cultivation. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Chinese Mental Health Act of 2013 is overly individualistic and fails to give proper moral weight to the role of Chinese families in directing the process of decision-making for hospitalizing and treating the mentally ill patients. We present three types of reactions within the medical community to the Act, each illustrated with a case and discussion. In the first two types of cases, we argue that these reactions are problematic either because they comply with the (...) law but undermine the patient’s interests by refusing the family’s request to have the patient hospitalized, or violate the law by hospitalizing patients in response to the real concerns of their families. In the third type of situation, psychiatrists inappropriately encourage families to produce evidence of the patient’s behavior that is harmful to self or others in order legally to commit the patient. Each of these problems, we conclude, should be tackled by supplementing Article 30 of the Act with the stipulation that a psychiatrist may authorize the involuntary hospitalization of a patient, who is not at risk of causing physical harm to self or others, with the consent of all major family members. Drawing on the deeply culturally embedded moral traditions of Confucian medical familism, this proposal would facilitate the proper treatment of a significant number of Chinese mentally ill patients under the care of their families. (shrink)

: This paper argues that three salient corrupt practices that mark contemporary Chinese health care, namely the over-prescription of indicated drugs, the prescription of more expensive forms of medication and more expensive diagnostic work-ups than needed, and illegal cash payments to physicians—i.e., red packages—result not from the introduction of the market to China, but from two clusters of circumstances. First, there has been a loss of the Confucian appreciation of the proper role of financial reward for good health care. (...) Second, misguided governmental policies have distorted the behavior of physicians and hospitals. The distorting policies include (1) setting very low salaries for physicians, (2) providing bonuses to physicians and profits to hospitals from the excessive prescription of drugs and the use of more expensive drugs and unnecessary expensive diagnostic procedures, and (3) prohibiting payments by patients to physicians for higher quality care. The latter problem is complicated by policies that do not allow the use of governmental insurance and funds from medical savings accounts in private hospitals as well as other policies that fail to create a level playing field for both private and government hospitals. The corrupt practices currently characterizing Chinese health care will require not only abolishing the distorting governmental policies but also drawing on Confucian moral resources to establish a rightly directed appreciation of the proper place of financial reward in the practice of medicine. (shrink)

: Puritanism and Confucianism have little in common in terms of their substantive teachings, but they do share an emphasis on bounded, authoritative, localized human arrangements, and this profoundly challenges the dominant presumptions of contemporary globalization. It is not enough to say that these worldviews are ‘‘communitarian’’ alternatives to globalism, for that defines away what needs to be explained. This article compares the ontology of certain elements of the Puritan and Confucian worldviews, and, by focusing on the role of (...) both authority and activity in these systems, assesses (with the assistance of Max Weber) the theories of harmony that each invoke. It concludes by identifying the distinct options that these two modes of human existence suggest for those who wish to defend the relevance of boundedness and authority, and thus the very possibility of a human-scaled politics, in today’s world. (shrink)

Some philosophers argue that throughout its long history, Confucian ethics have stressed character formation or personal cultivation of virtues. Thus, it seems appropriate to characterise Confucian ethics as ethics of virtue. in this book, the author attempts to critique the apparent similarity and show, on the contrary, that Confucian ethics are better conceived of as a unique kind of ethics, in which rule-based morality and virtues are united. Through a unique analysis of Confucian ethics and comparison (...) between Confucian ethics and some Western ethical theories, the author also hopes to generate suggestions and ideas on how to integrate or unify rule and virtue in one moral theory. (shrink)

This essay begins a conversation between Bernard Williams and Confucius (of the Analects ) in response to the general question of whether individuals are internally motivated in adopting role-specific reasons for action. It is argued that certain social roles such as Father, Son, Husband, Wife, Minister or Ruler, and Citizen or Subject are thick ethical concepts operative in Confucian ethical communities, such that the application of these thick ethical concepts results in role-specific internal reasons for action. If so, the (...) Confucian emphasis on li 禮 constitutes ethical knowledge regarding the applicability of these thick ethical concepts, the practice of which actively offers individuals reasons to apply their social roles. This expands Williams' ethical theorizing to account for the ethical significance of social roles and relationships within Confucian ethical communities, as the collective practice of li within a Confucian ethical community serves as a background to the sort of ethical theorizing favored by Williams. (shrink)

One of the common targets that contemporary feminists are critical of concerning the problem of the body is Rene Descartes' mind and body relation. Feminist scholars can identify at least three lines of investigation of the body in contemporary thought that may be regarded as legacies of the Cartesian view, which treat the body as primarily an object for: 1) the natural sciences, particularly for the life sciences, biology, and medicine; 2) as an instrument or a machine at the disposal (...) of consciousness or allocating an animating, willful subjectivity; and 3) as a vehicle of expression of private thoughts and feelings; that is, as fundamentally passive and transparent. Recently, feminist scholars are seriously thinking of a new conceptual model that can displace Cartesian dualism and that can emancipate notions of the body from Cartesian dominant mechanistic models and metaphors. In this light, this paper turns to a Confucian theory of the body for revelation and the case of Mencius is introduced, in which the mind is regarded as the major component of the body and a coherent model is adopted. Can we then conclude to ask in what ways the reclaiming of the body in the Contemporary Western discussion may learn from the Confucian ideas of the body...? (shrink)

In his article, "The End of Aesthetic Experience" (1997) Richard Shusterman studies the contemporary fate of aesthetic experience, which has long been regarded as one of the core concepts of Western aesthetics till the last half century. It has then expanded into an umbrella concept for aesthetic notions such as the sublime and the picturesque. I agree with Shusterman that aesthetic experience has become the island of freedom, beauty, and idealistic meaning in an otherwise cold materialistic and law-determined world. My (...) paper starts from the main dimensions of aesthetic experience in the history of Western aesthetics as concluded by Shusterman. In terms of our experiential practices in the fragmentation of modern life and the disjointed sensationalism of the media, I also agree with Shusterman that people are losing the capacity for deep experience and feeling, especially when we are undergoing various extensive series of informational revolutions. My paper is also a response to Shusterman's claim that the concept of aesthetic experience is worth recalling, not for formal definition but for art's reorientation toward values and populations that could restore its vitality and sense of purpose. I mention the recent calls for values and life concerns in art in the Anglo-American aesthetics circles, which has also turned to the possible strength of aesthetic experience, claiming that "Aesthetics is the Mother of Ethics." Amidst the discourse is the review of John Dewey's notion of "aesthetic experience," which claims to support a transcultural view and common patterns, as the relationship is structured around human needs. A basic question posed in the article is whether this Deweyan notion still remains equally influential as in the past and whether it really provides a satisfying answer to the problem of art and value? The discussion will turn then to neo-Confucian aesthetic models for reference, and to point out some meaningful comparative revelations. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's critical studies concerning regimes of power are of special interest when applied to architecture. In particular, he warned of the hazards of building surveillance into architectural structures for the purpose of monitoring people and took as his historical exemplar English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's ?Panopticon,? a structure originally used to assist in rehabilitating prisoners. He felt this kind of regulatory control resulted in maintaining power of one group over another. This article discusses what Foucault called the general ordering of (...) the visible and the invisible by examining architecture as he viewed it?as an operation of power, control, and domination. More to the point, it places this belief in the context of power constructions in both sacred and school architecture and how this, in turn, creates a carceral society. This article also puts forward some of Foucault's thinking on architecture and connects this to his ideas of perceptual visibles and invisibles. The suggestion of schools as institutions of conformity and how their built environment functions as a regulatory force for this conformity is also explored. (shrink)

Contrary to the views proposed by modern animal rights scholars, this essay reconstructs the Confucian argument for the moral defensibility of the Confucian ritual use of animals by providing an expository analysis of classical Confucian literature. The argument is developed by focusing on the issue of the sacrificial use of animals in the Confucian tradition. While animals are treated according to certain regulations and restrictions, they are not spared from being offered as sacrifices. An essential component (...) of Confucian virtues, reverence, requires showing deep respect to Heaven, gods, spirits, and humans but not to animals. If Confucians change the rituals in ways that spare animals, they would fail to show the depth of reverence to gods, spirits, and humans that they should. (shrink)

이 글은 중국공산당의 주도 아래 기획되고 있는 ‘유교중국’의 재구축과정에서 지식인의 역할에 주목한다. 특히 유교의 현재적 재구성에서 국가의 입장과 달리 정치적인 것을 넘어설 가능성에 관심이 있다. 현재 유교의 ‘통치이념화’의 진행 속도는 교과과정 안에 유교경전이 재진입하는 제도 변화의 단계에까지 와 있다. 1905년 과거제가 폐지되면서 중국에서 유교는 떠도는 유혼(遊魂)이 되었다. 중국의 근현대 100년은 자기부정의 역사였다. 중국공산당은 유교를 부정하면서 계급정당으로 출발한 당이다. 하지만 2000년대에 진입하면서 중국공산당은 어느 특정 계급의 정당이 아닌 ‘국민의 정당’으로 성격변화를 시도하기 시작했다. 혁명당이 아닌 집권당의 정체성을 강화해온 중국공산당으로서는 언제까지나 반전통을 고수할 (...) 수 없다. 이제 공산당은 자기 문명과의 관계를 재설정해야 한다. 더구나 경제성장과 함께 마르크스주의는 더 이상 사회통합이데올로기로서의 기능을 상실했다. 민족문화이기 때문에 부정되었던 유교는 이제 같은 이유로 새로운 사회통합 이데올로기의 역할을 떠맡아야 한다. 하지만 이처럼 유교가 화려하게 부활하면서 대륙의 신유학 담론을 주도하는 지식인의 책임과 역할에 대한 재조정 또한 필요하다. 첫째, 유교의 통치이념화의 조건으로서 20세기의 역사경험을 어떻게 수용하고 해석할 것인가. 둘째, 20세기가 만들어놓은 문화적 배경인 평등주의와 개인화, 다원화 경향을 유교의 재해석에 어떻게 활용할 것인가. 최소한 이러한 두 요소가 함축된 유학이어야 ‘비판담론으로서의 유학’, 즉 ‘지속가능한 유학’으로 거듭날 가능성이 존재한다. 멀리는 전통의 재현을 유념하되, 가까이는 20세기의 역사적, 문화적 배경이라는 맥락을 고려하면서 유교를 대담하게 재해석할 때 세계와 아시아가 공감할 수 있는 유학이 새로이 창조될 수 있을 것이다. (shrink)

본고에서는 宋代 이후에 중의철학이 道醫와 儒醫의 관계를 통해 어떻게 심화되는가 하는 문제에 접근할 것이다. 그 구체적인 사례로서 중의학의 역사에서 이론의 절정기였던 金元의 시대에 朱震亨의 相火論을 중심으로 하여 그 철학적 사유방식과 그 특징을 밝히고자 한다. 이러한 중의철학은 道醫와 儒醫의 變奏로 특징지을 수 있다. 이는 道醫에서 儒醫로 전환되는 과정을 지닌 것이 아니라 실천적 성격이 강한 道醫의 토대 위에 형이상학적 성격이 강한 儒醫로 심화되는 과정을 지닌다. 이러한 과정에서 특히 生理, 心理 및 病理의 현상과 본질 및 그 양자의 다양한 변수에 관해 體와 用의 관계와 (...) 같은 논리적 확장성의 논법이 정교하게 활용되었다. 여기에 인체의 生理의 조화를 心性의 수양과 동일선상에 놓고 哲理와 醫理의 합치를 통해 터득하는 道理의 정신적 차원이 있다. 이는 중의철학의 영역이 인체의 생태학적 시공간에 관한 논의를 넘어서 수양의 가치론적 시공간에 관한 논의로 확충되었음을 단적으로 보여준다. 이는 생명현상의 不可逆的 세계를 이해하고 이를 바탕으로 하여 생명정신의 可逆的 세계를 지향하려는 취지를 지닌다. 여기에서 임상과 이론이 통합적으로 만나는 철학적 지평, 즉 道醫와 儒醫의 變奏가 있다. 이것이 바로 지식과 지혜가 통합되는 중의철학의 지평이자 중의학의 醫道의 진정한 경지인 것이다. (shrink)

Mou Zongsan, one of the main representatives of New Confucianism in twentieth-century China, has presented, under the designation of a moral metaphysics, an ambitious philosophical reconstruction of Confucianism drawing both on Kantian critique and Buddhist scholasticism. I have argued elsewhere that this "philosophized" Confucianism can be understood as a reformulation of the daotong, the traditional view that the correct transmission of the Confucian Way proceeds from a master to his disciples. Unlike what Mou's prominent academic standing, at least in (...) his later years, might suggest, the core of Confucianism in his view is thus transmitted not in public discourse but in an intimate communication... (shrink)

Argues that the only way to understand the Confucian vision of the consummate moral life is to take the tradition on its own terms.