Download or read book The Confucian Cycle written by William A. Taylor and published by First Edition Design Pub.. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2,500 years ago, the Chinese sage, Confucius, observed that all governments follow a cycle: from unity, through prosperity to stagnation, then to collapse and anarchy. He taught that when government officials sought personal power or wealth instead of taking care of the people, society lost the “Mandate of Heaven” and fell apart. By “Mandate of Heaven,” Confucius meant that God Himself had directed how society should work. Chinese history shows 15 or 20 collapses when government lost virtue and the country broke apart in civil war, but whenever the Chinese followed Confucius’ rules, Chinese society worked well. From his day to ours, civilizations all over the world have followed the same cycle Confucius observed. Today’s United States is well into the “stagnation” phase and many observers predict a collapse. But America has an advantage Confucius never imagined. Unlike the Chinese, America’s voters have the power to replace their rulers and reform their government without armed revolution. The Taylors’ wide-ranging tour through history, culture, and modern news sheds new light on how the past both predicts the future and can be used to alter it for the better. Keywords – China, America, Sage, Confucius, Government, Trade, Exports, Imports, Money, Economy, History, Culture, Rulers, Voting, War, Policy

Download or read book The Age of Confucian Rule written by Dieter Kuhn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just over a thousand years ago, the Song dynasty emerged as the most advanced civilization on earth. Within two centuries, China was home to nearly half of all humankind. In this concise history, we learn why the inventiveness of this era has been favorably compared with the European Renaissance, which in many ways the Song transformation surpassed. With the chaotic dissolution of the Tang dynasty, the old aristocratic families vanished. A new class of scholar-officials—products of a meritocratic examination system—took up the task of reshaping Chinese tradition by adapting the precepts of Confucianism to a rapidly changing world. Through fiscal reforms, these elites liberalized the economy, eased the tax burden, and put paper money into circulation. Their redesigned capitals buzzed with traders, while the education system offered advancement to talented men of modest means. Their rationalist approach led to inventions in printing, shipbuilding, weaving, ceramics manufacture, mining, and agriculture. With a realist’s eye, they studied the natural world and applied their observations in art and science. And with the souls of diplomats, they chose peace over war with the aggressors on their borders. Yet persistent military threats from these nomadic tribes—which the Chinese scorned as their cultural inferiors—redefined China’s understanding of its place in the world and solidified a sense of what it meant to be Chinese. The Age of Confucian Rule is an essential introduction to this transformative era. “A scholar should congratulate himself that he has been born in such a time” (Zhao Ruyu, 1194).

Download or read book A Cycle of Cathay written by William Alexander Parsons Martin and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Cycle of Cathay written by William Alexander Parsons Martin and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Philosophers of the Warring States A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy written by and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophers of the Warring States is an anthology of new translations of essential readings from the classic texts of early Chinese philosophy, informed by the latest scholarship. It includes the Analects of Confucius, Meng Zi (Mencius), Xun Zi, Mo Zi, Lao Zi (Dao De Jing), Zhuang Zi, and Han Fei Zi, as well as short chapters on the Da Xue and the Zhong Yong. Pedagogically organized, this book offers philosophically sophisticated annotations and commentaries as well as an extensive glossary explaining key philosophical concepts in detail. The translations aim to be true to the originals yet accessible, with the goal of opening up these rich and subtle philosophical texts to modern readers without prior training in Chinese thought.

Download or read book Transformations Of The Confucian Way written by John Berthrong and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its beginnings, Confucianism has vibrantly taught that each person is able to find the Way individually in service to the community and the world. John Berthrong’s comprehensive new work tells the story of the grand intellectual development of the Confucian tradition, revealing all the historical phases of Confucianism and opening the reader’s eyes to the often neglected gifts of scholars of the Han, T’ang, and the modern periods, as well as to the vast contributions of Korea and Japan. The author concludes his revelatory study with an examination of the contemporary renewal of the Confucian Way in East Asia and its spread to the West.

Download or read book Confucianism and Chinese Civilization written by Arthur F. Wright and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Stanford University Press classic.

Download or read book The Confucian World Observed written by Weiming Tu and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A workshop sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989 brought together more than two dozen scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore Confucian ethics as a common intellectual discourse in East Asia. The participants included specialists on the societies of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore as well as scholars who specialize in comparative studies. In nine intensive sessions, they probed the ways in which the Confucian ethic has shaped perceptions of selfhood, dynamics of familial relations, gender construction, social organization, political authority, popular beliefs, and economic culture in East Asia. This book is a distillation of the essence of their multidisciplinary and cross-cultural examination of these issues. It seeks especially to illuminate claims that Confucian ethics have provided the necessary background and a powerful motivation in the rise of industrial East Asia, the most dynamic region of sustained economic growth and political development since World War II.

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 A Cycle of Cathay written by William W. Appleton and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the English interest in China during the 17th and 18th centuries. Examines Chinese vogue in England, created from the stories and philosophies brought back by travelers.

Download or read book Chasing the Chinese Dream written by William N. Brown and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book explores the historical, cultural and philosophical contexts that have made anti-poverty the core of Chinese society since Liberation in 1949, and why poverty alleviation measures evolved from the simplistic aid of the 1950s to Xi Jinping’s precision poverty alleviation and its goal of eliminating absolute poverty by 2020. The book also addresses the implications of China’s experience for other developing nations tackling not only poverty but such issues as pandemics, rampant urbanization and desertification exacerbated by global warming. The first of three parts draws upon interviews of rural and urban Chinese from diverse backgrounds and local and national leaders. These interviews, conducted in even the remotest areas of the country, offer candid insights into the challenges that have forced China to continually evolve its programs to resolve even the most intractable cases of poverty. The second part explores the historic, cultural and philosophical roots of old China’s meritocratic government and how its ancient Chinese ethics have led to modern Chinese socialism’s stance that “poverty amidst plenty is immoral”. Dr. Huang Chengwei, one of China’s foremost anti-poverty experts, explains the challenges faced at each stage as China’s anti-poverty measures evolved over 70 years to emphasize “enablement” over “aid” and to foster bottom-up initiative and entrepreneurialism, culminating in Xi Jinping’s precision poverty alleviation. The book also addresses why national economic development alone cannot reduce poverty; poverty alleviation programs must be people-centered, with measurable and accountable practices that reach even to household level, which China has done with its “First Secretary” program. The third part explores the potential for adopting China’s practices in other nations, including the potential for replicating China’s successes in developing countries through such measures as the Belt and Road Initiative. This book also addresses prevalent misperceptions about China’s growing global presence and why other developing nations must address historic, systemic causes of poverty and inequity before they can undertake sustainable poverty alleviation measures of their own.

Download or read book The Life and Works of Mencius written by James Legge and published by . This book was released on 1875 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Worship of Confucius in Japan written by James McMullen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How has Confucius, quintessentially and symbolically Chinese, been received throughout Japanese history? The Worship of Confucius in Japan provides the first overview of the richly documented and colorful Japanese version of the East Asian ritual to venerate Confucius, known in Japan as the sekiten. The original Chinese political liturgy embodied assumptions about sociopolitical order different from those of Japan. Over more than thirteen centuries, Japanese in power expressed a persistently ambivalent response to the ritual’s challenges and often tended to interpret the ceremony in cultural rather than political terms. Like many rituals, the sekiten self-referentially reinterpreted earlier versions of itself. James McMullen adopts a diachronic and comparative perspective. Focusing on the relationship of the ritual to political authority in the premodern period, McMullen sheds fresh light on Sino–Japanese cultural relations and on the distinctive political, cultural, and social history of Confucianism in Japan. Successive sections of The Worship of Confucius in Japan trace the vicissitudes of the ceremony through two major cycles of adoption, modification, and decline, first in ancient and medieval Japan, then in the late feudal period culminating in its rejection at the Meiji Restoration. An epilogue sketches the history of the ceremony in the altered conditions of post-Restoration Japan and up to the present.

Download or read book The Shi King the Old Poetry Classic of the Chinese written by William Jennings and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Brief History of Early Chinese Philosophy written by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Manufacturing Confucianism written by Lionel M. Jensen and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible that the familiar and beloved figure of Confucius was invented by Jesuit priests? Based on specific documentary evidence, historian Lionel Jensen reveals how 16th- and 17th-century Western missionaries used translations of the ancient RU tradition to invent the presumably historical figure who has been globally celebrated as philosopher, prophet, statesman, wise man, and saint. 13 illustrations.

Download or read book Confucianism written by Jennifer Oldstone-Moore and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six centuries before the birth of Jesus, a Chinese sage named Master Kong or Kong Fuzi (later latinized to Confucius) drafted the principles of a society founded upon virtue. For more than two thousand years, Kong Fuzi's work has remained the foundation of Chinese civilization. In this lavishly illustrated volume, Jennifer Oldstone-Moore takes readers on an insightful tour of this enduring belief system. Not quite a religion, more than a philosophy, Confucianism coexists with Daoism and Buddhism in Chinese spiritual life, guiding personal relations and social structure. Oldstone-Moore explains the essence of Confucian belief--the primary importance of filial relations, and the need for governments to be founded upon virtue--and she underscores the overarching importance of the Confucian canon. Though Confucius's own sayings are preserved in the Analects, he saw himself as an editor and mediator of the wisdom of antiquity, which he gathered in the Six Classics and Four Books, which stress harmony in the social order. The author sheds much light on these texts--The Book of Changes, the Classic of History, the Classic of Poetry, the Spring and Autumn Annals, the Book of Rites, and the now-lost Classic of Music--and also discusses the role of heroes (such as the Sage Kings), rituals and the Chinese calendar, sacred places, and Confucianism's place as a state religion through much of Chinese history. No society on earth has had the continuous history--as a single people, culture, and state--that China enjoys. One of the keys to that unity, to China's very identity, is Confucianism, deftly elucidated in this attractive, informative volume.