Download or read book Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age written by Heiner Roetz and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confucian Ethics of the Axial Age describes the formative period of Chinese culture--the last centuries of the Zhou dynasty--as an early epoch of enlightenment. It comprehensively reconstructs the ethical discourse as thought gradually became emancipated from tradition and institutions. Rather than presenting a chronology of different thinkers and works, this book discusses the systematic aspects of moral philosophies. Based on original texts, Roetz focuses on filial piety; the conflict between the family and the state; the legitimating of the political order; the virtues of loyalty, friendship, and harmony; concepts of justice; the principle of humaneness and its different readings; the Golden Rule; the moral person; the autonomous self, motivation, decision and conscience; and various attempts to ground morality in religion, human nature, or reason. These topics are arranged in such a way that the genetic structure and the logical development of the moral reasoning becomes apparent. From this detached perspective, conventional morality is either rejected or critically reestablished under the restraint of new abstract and universal norms. This makes the Chinese developments part of the ancient worldwide movement of enlightenment of the axial age.
Download or read book Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning written by Geir Sigurðsson and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-01-08 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reconsideration of the Confucian concept li (ritual or ritual propriety), one that references Western philosophers as well as the Chinese context. Geir Sigurðsson offers a reconsideration of li, often translated as ritual or ritual propriety, one of the most controversial concepts in Confucian philosophy. Strong associations with the Zhou period during which Confucius lived have put this concept at odds with modernitys emphasis on progressive rationality and liberation from the yoke of tradition. Sigurðsson notes how the Confucian perspective on learning provides a more balanced understanding of li. He goes on to discuss the limitations of the critique of tradition and of rationalitys claim to authority, referencing several Western sources, notably Hans-Georg Gadamer, John Dewey, and Pierre Bourdieu. An exposition of the ancient Chinese worldview of time and continuous change further points to the inevitability of lis adaptable and flexible nature. Sigurðsson argues that Confucius and his immediate followers did not endorse a program of returning to the Zhou tradition, but rather of reviving the spirit of Zhou culture, involving active and personalized participation in traditions sustention and evolution.
Download or read book Ironies of Oneness and Difference written by Brook Ziporyn and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the development of Chinese thought, highlighting its concern with questions of coherence. Providing a bracing expansion of horizons, this book displays the unsuspected range of human thinking on the most basic categories of experience. The way in which early Chinese thinkers approached concepts such as one and many, sameness and difference, self and other, and internal and external stand in stark contrast to the way parallel concepts entrenched in much of modern thinking developed in Greek and European thought. Brook Ziporyn traces the distinctive and surprising philosophical journeys found in the works of the formative Confucian and Daoist thinkers back to a prevailing set of assumptions that tends to see questions of identity, value, and knowledgethe subject matter of ontology, ethics, and epistemology in other traditionsas all ultimately relating to questions about coherence in one form or another. Mere awareness of how many different ways human beings can think and have thought about these categories is itself a game changer for our own attitudes toward what is thinkable for us. The actual inhabitation and mastery of these alternative modes of thinking is an even greater adventure in intellectual and experiential expansion.
Download or read book The Origin and Goal of History written by Karl Jaspers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-28 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was a German psychiatrist and philosopher and one of the most original European thinkers of the twentieth century. As a major exponent of existentialism in Germany, he had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. He was Hannah Arendt’s supervisor before her emigration to the United States in the 1930s and himself experienced the consequences of Nazi persecution. He was removed from his position at the University of Heidelberg in 1937, due to his wife being Jewish. Published in 1949, the year in which the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, The Origin and Goal of History is a vitally important book. It is renowned for Jaspers' theory of an 'Axial Age', running from the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. Jaspers argues that this period witnessed a remarkable flowering of new ways of thinking that appeared in Persia, India, China and the Greco-Roman world, in striking parallel development but without any obvious direct cultural contact between them. Jaspers identifies key thinkers from this age, including Confucius, Buddha, Zarathustra, Homer and Plato, who had a profound influence on the trajectory of future philosophies and religions. For Jaspers, crucially, it is here that we see the flowering of diverse philosophical beliefs such as scepticism, materialism, sophism, nihilism, and debates about good and evil, which taken together demonstrate human beings' shared ability to engage with universal, humanistic questions as opposed to those mired in nationality or authoritarianism. At a deeper level, The Origin and Goal of History provides a crucial philosophical framework for the liberal renewal of German intellectual life after 1945, and indeed of European intellectual life more widely, as a shattered continent attempted to find answers to what had happened in the preceding years. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Foreword by Christopher Thornhill.
Download or read book Practicing Transcendence written by Christopher Peet and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-05 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces readers to the concept of the Axial Age and its relevance for a world in crisis. Scholars have become increasingly interested in philosopher Karl Jaspers’ thesis that a spiritual revolution in consciousness during the first millennium BCE decisively shaped world history. Axial ideas of transcendence develop into ideologies for world religions and civilizations, in turn coalescing into a Eurasian world-system that spreads globally to become the foundation of our contemporary world. Alongside ideas and ideologies, the Axial Age also taught spiritual practices critically resisting the new scale of civilizational power: in small counter-cultural communities on the margins of society, they turn our conscious focus inward to transform ourselves and overcome the destructive potentials within human nature. Axial spiritualities offer humanity a practical wisdom, a profound psychology, and deep hope: to transform despair into resilience, helping us face with courage the ecological and political challenges confronting us today.
Download or read book Ethnic Ethics written by Anthony J. Cortese and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1990-07-05 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains and offers insights into the humanizing effects of the ethnic and cultural sources of moral values. The author provides an alternative to the concept of moral development formulated by Lawrence Kohlberg, arguing that morality is socially constructed, not based on rational principles of individuals. Cortese offers critical analyses of ethnicity and moral judgment, combining two controversial and central areas: morality and race relations. Critiquing the cognitive-developmental model, Cortese examines social class, gender, and ethnic differences in moral judgment and concludes that moral judgment reflects the structure of social relations, not the structure of human cognition. He carefully situates his own argument in relation to both Kolbergian theory and the feminist critique thereof.
Download or read book Classical Confucian Political Thought written by Loubna El Amine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intellectual legacy of Confucianism has loomed large in efforts to understand China's past, present, and future. While Confucian ethics has been thoroughly explored, the question remains: what exactly is Confucian political thought? Classical Confucian Political Thought returns to the classical texts of the Confucian tradition to answer this vital question. Showing how Confucian ethics and politics diverge, Loubna El Amine argues that Confucian political thought is not a direct application of Confucian moral philosophy. Instead, contrary to the conventional view that Confucian rule aims to instill virtue in all members of society, El Amine demonstrates that its main aim is to promote political order. El Amine analyzes key aspects of the Confucian political vision, including the relationship between the ruler and the people, the typology of rulers, and the role of ministers and government officials. She also looks at Confucianism’s account of the mechanisms through which society is to be regulated, from welfare policies to rituals. She explains that the Confucian conception of the political leaves space open for the rule of those who are not virtuous if these rulers establish and maintain political order. She also contends that Confucians defend the duty to take part in government based on the benefits that such participation can bring to society. Classical Confucian Political Thought brings a new understanding to Confucian political theory by illustrating that it is not chiefly idealistic and centered on virtue, but rather realistic and driven by political concerns.
Download or read book The Axial Age and Its Consequences written by Robert N. Bellah and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes the bold claim that intellectual sophistication was born worldwide during the middle centuries of the first millennium bce. From Axial Age thinkers we inherited a sense of the world as a place not just to experience but to investigate, envision, and alter. A variety of utopian visions emerged and led to both reform and repression.
Download or read book Confucian Ethics written by Kwong-Loi Shun and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative study of the Confucian and Western view of the self.
Download or read book Confucian Ethics in Retrospect and Prospect written by Qingsong Shen and published by CRVP. This book was released on 2008 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Heavens and the Earth Graeco Roman Ancient Chinese and Mediaeval Islamic Images of the World written by Vittorio Cotesta and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-08-16 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vittorio Cotesta’s The Heavens and the Earth traces the origin of the images of the world typical of the Graeco-Roman, Ancient Chinese and Medieval Islamic civilisations. Each of them had its own peculiar way of understanding the universe, life, death, society, power, humanity and its destiny. The comparative analysis carried out here suggests that they all shared a common human aspiration despite their differences: human being is unique; differences are details which enrich its image. Today, the traditions derived from these civilisations are often in competition and conflict. Reference to a common vision of humanity as a shared universal entity should lead, instead, to a quest for understanding and dialogue.
Download or read book Anticipating China written by David L. Hall and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1995-08-17 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By providing parallel accounts of the contrasting developments of classical Chinese and Western traditions, Anticipating China offers a means of avoiding the implicit cultural biases which so often distort Western understanding of Chinese intellectual culture. The book shows that failure to assess the significant cultural differences between China and the West has seriously affected our understanding of both classical and contemporary China, and makes the translation of attitudes, concepts, and issues extremely problematic.
Download or read book An Introduction to Confucianism written by Xinzhong Yao and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-13 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces the many strands of Confucianism in a style accessible to students and general readers.
Download or read book Axial Civilizations And World History written by J©đhann P©Łll © rnason and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays by social theorists, historical sociologists and area specialists in classical, biblical and Asian studies. The contributions deal with cultural transformations in major civilizational centres during the "Axial Age," the middle centuries of the last millennium BCE, and their long-term consequences.
Download or read book Friendship and Hospitality The Jesuit Confucian Encounter in Late Ming China written by Dongfeng Xu and published by Suny Chinese Philosophy and Cu. This book was released on 2022-01-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a comparative and deconstructive reading of the cross-cultural encounter between the Jesuits and their Confucian hosts in late Ming China.
Download or read book The Chinese Enlightenment written by Vera Schwarcz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely accepted, both inside China and in the West, that contemporary Chinese history begins with the May Fourth Movement. Vera Schwarcz's imaginative new study provides China scholars and historians with an analysis of what makes that event a turning point in the intellectual, spiritual, cultural and political life of twentieth-century China.
Download or read book Autonomy and Social Interaction written by Joseph H. Kupfer and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1990-08-14 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes a distinctive contribution to the growing discussion of autonomy. As the ability to determine ones life in both thought and action, autonomy is foundational among our many and varied values. Other philosophical treatments tend to emphasize the significance of autonomy for moral theory or institutional arrangements such as legal, political, or economic power structures. Kupfer, however, focuses on the context of social relations and interactions in which autonomous living occurs. He handles autonomy and social interaction reciprocally, so that the significance of each for the other is drawn out. In addition, key themes are threaded throughout, such as the nature of dependency, self-concept and self-knowledge, and authority.
